HVK Archives: India is ageless and for ever
India is ageless and for ever - The Observer
Dina Nath Mishra
()
14 August 1997
Title: India is ageless and for ever
Author: Dina Nath Mishra
Publication: The Observer
Date: August 14, 1997
Do you think India will stay united in the next 50 years, or disintegrate
into independent nations? This question, along with others, was posed to
12,651 adult respondents for the countrywide survey by ORG-MARG-India
Today. The outcome of this survey has been published in India Today special
issue of August 18, 1997. Forty-one per cent of the respondents opined that
India would stay united. Thirty-six per cent people said that India would
disintegrate. Twenty-three per cent fall in "don't know/can't say"
category. It is really shocking that more than one-third of the people
think that India is not going to remain united.
This is a direct reflection of the weakest government that we have today at
the Centre. If this poll was conducted in the year 1972, I am sure the 80
per cent of the respondents would have unhesitatingly told that India would
remain united, come what may. The confidence of the government of the day
is reflected in mass mind as through centuries Indian people have
accumulated a sense of defeatism and intellectual paralysis.
V S Naipaul, internationally celebrated author, has written on this
occasion: "India is a country that, in the north, outside Rajasthan, was
ravaged, and intellectually destroyed to a large extent, by the invasions
that began in about A D 1000 by forces and religions that India had no
means of understanding ... what happened from A D 1000 on, really, is such
a wound that it is almost impossible to face. Certain wounds are so bad
that they can't be written about. You deal with that kind of pain by
hiding from it. You retreat from reality ... I do not think, for example,
that people like the Incas of Peru or the native people of Mexico have ever
got over their defeat by the Spaniards. In both places, the head was cut
off. I think the pre-British ravaging of India was as bad as that. Muslims
shouldn't be too sensitive about this. Because in the Islamic world, a
similar vandalisation occurred with the Mongols. Muslims all over still
grieve about that".
"What has the invasion of India led to? They will see a totally destroyed
town. Religious wars are like that. People who see that might understand
what the centuries of plunder and slaughter meant. War isn't a game. When
you lost that kind of war, your towns were destroyed, the people who built
the towns were destroyed, you are left with a headless population. That's
where modern India starts from.
Given this inheritance of intellectual paralysis what India has achieved
during last 150 years is by no means a still achievement. In 19th and 20th
century, the process of partial regeneration of the national intellectual
stamina was accomplished. Remnants of defeatism found expression in such a
large percentage of people. who think that Indian unity has again entered a
danger zone. This, coupled with the weak government of the day, is
responsible for, the disturbing conclusion that there is mounting
scepticism over the ability of India to endure as a single entity.
Many Western thinkers have been nourishing a thought for the last five
decades that India is bound to disintegrate. In fact, during the British
period hundreds of researchers and writers have sown the intellectual seeds
of self-destructive themes and theories in the minds of a large part of
English intelligentsia of India.
Myths such as India has never been a nation, Dravid-Arya controversy,
theory of Aryan invasion, that Vedas were the songs of shepherds and
martial and non-martial races were popularised in the academic elite of
India. The partition of the country in 1947 was the result of British
scheme of India's disintegration which they achieved in a very systematic
manner with the help of Muslim League led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Even
after that, dismemberment of India has been a secret agenda of US, and it
is working towards that end even now. The immediate target is the state of
Jammu and Kashmir and certain smaller states of North-East.
After the disintegration of Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, it has been
fashionable in the West to talk of India's falling apart in near future.
Some of Indian intellectuals also subscribe to it. A tiny but influential
section of. India has entered into post-nationalist phase. I know of a
very influential political leader who controls the political strings of the
central government nowadays, does not have any stakes in India. His whole
family is settled abroad and has good business there. This old gentleman's
concerns are personal and limited to a large extent. Bit by bit, India's
sovereignty is being infringed upon. For example, India has agreed to talk
with Naga rebels in US under the church umbrella. US has been exerting
various types of pressures on India about J&K, knowing fully well that once
J&K falls apart, the process of India's disintegration would gather momentum.
Few years back, the then speaker of Pakistan National Assembly came to
Delhi and talked of India's disintegration. But that was wishful thinking.
It's something that Pakistan's ISI is working overtime towards. The
forces of destabilisation within the country have links with ISI. This is
not only limited to Kashmir and Punjab. in fact, in the eastern sector ISI
is aiding and abetting terrorism on a large scale.
Let us assess the danger of the fragmentation. An anti-Indian premise is
based on the wrong presumption of pluralism. For example, the linguistic
states are cited as proof of pluralism, and a case is made out in other
spheres also. It has become fashionable to talk of a pluralistic character
of India. The fact is India's culture is 'diverse' and not 'pluralistic',
for the thought process which runs through various languages is the same.
Diverse means varied expressions or manifestation of the same thing. But
in the attempt to call India pluralistic, the aim is to say that the whole
that is India has no intrinsic character, and that the whole is only a sum
total of the parts. This way, every part can claim to be totally unique and
can also claim that the whole exists only because of it. And if this
separateness is challenged, it will threaten to cease to be a part of the
whole and the whole will thus crumble. India's case is just the reverse. On
a cultural level, from diverse expressions in dress, language, food,
marriage, system, family values, religious festivals and functions, social
institutions, there is a complete oneness of the connecting values. That
is what unites India and that gives strength to the Indian unity despite
diverse manifestations.
The Indian army and Indian bureaucracy are capable enough to protect the
unity of the country. All India organisations like the Congress, the BJP
and Sangh Parivar and other similar institutions add to the strength of
national unity.
The metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore
and others are new pillars of pan-Indian togetherness and cultural unity.
Back
Top
|
