Forging An All-India Identity With A Global Mindset by Randeep Wadehra

India’s ongoing economic restructuring is aimed at integrating it with the emerging international economic order, unleashing indigenous genius in diverse fields of economic activity. So much so that, driven by its success in the IT industry, our economy’s traditional primary, secondary and tertiary sectors are perking up too. However, it’s increasingly being felt that a new credo, which is appropriate to the nascent globalized milieu, ought to replace conventional ideologies and isms as they’re fast becoming obsolete. Therefore, we must examine the Indian polity’s present health. Is it dynamic enough to warrant confidence in its enduring stability, so essential for enabling India take its rightful place in the emerging international power hierarchy?

Spiraling social unrest, epitomized by caste wars, sub-cultural turmoil and sectarian violence, is a tough poser, alas! One wishes, like the economy, it was fairly feasible to streamline our society too.

Since independence, our collective national psyche has been suffering from schizophrenia of sorts. On the one hand we unstintingly approved a secular constitution sans state religion, and on the other, the body-politic is being wracked by partisan unrest of the worst possible kind. And, let’s not forget the sense of alienation that our compatriots in the Northeast feel vis-à-vis the rest of India, leading to insidious insurgency. Over the years, India’s secular-social fabric hasn’t just frayed at the edges, but has developed gaping holes all over it. Terrorism and group conflicts have become endemic. Forces of obscurantism are doing their worst to subvert the emergence of a liberal post-modern milieu.

The grand Gandhian vision of a genuinely tolerant polity has been reduced to a pathetic platitude mouthed by dishonest politicians, even as they do their worst to tear apart the traditional composite culture. Obviously things have gone terribly wrong somewhere, the reasons for which need to be investigated.

Aware of the extremely complex social stratification in India, the makers of our constitution made every effort to give it a cast-iron secular character. Through a series of provisions that protect the rights of various minorities and other vulnerable groups, they sought to separate religion from the state, and keep the former confined to ecclesiastical sphere so that it doesn’t take on a militant theocratic form. Nehruvian secularism, inspired by the atheist Soviet system, ensured that India didn’t have a state religion.

It exemplified the majority community’s self-confidence when it repeatedly kept the Jana Sangh – and its later day incarnations – out of power for more than four decades after the blood-spattered partition. That self-confidence appears to have been dented now. Hindus are becoming increasingly susceptible to the extremist propaganda that they’re second class citizens in their own country. Over a period of time, successive generations of Hindus have begun to feel that their secular outlook is being taken as a sign of timidity. Aggressive posturing by minority communities appears to have tacit support from assorted political parties, which cynically treat different strata of the society as their respective vote banks. The Sangh Parivar too doesn’t miss any opportunity to exploit the ‘appeasement of minorities by the centre’ to broaden its base among educated middle-class Hindus. Sections of Hindu community – buffeted by the crosscurrents of antagonistic attitudinizing of minorities and the Hindutva propaganda – are losing poise, giving militancy a fillip. Conversely, the minorities feel threatened by the renascent Hindu assertiveness.

The Muslim community is still in search of a way to reconcile its worldwide Islamic personality with nationalism. Its dual loyalties have often led to societal convulsions. Sikhs, once considered as members of militant Hindu sect, are in the process of establishing a sub-cultural identity that’d be distinct from Hinduism – a quest that, sometime back, led to the separatist movement triggered off by demagogues like Bhindranwale, which resulted in avoidable tragedies. Christians are looked upon as having an agenda to proselytize entire India leading to sporadic and horrendous, violence.

Is it possible to untangle the communal conundrum that’s slowly asphyxiating the once healthy organism called Indian polity? The answer is an unequivocal “yes”. An honest effort is needed at the following levels at least:

Society

I recall an apt observation made by David Gress (Multiculturalism in World History, September 1999, Vol. 5, No. 8), “When social and cultural capital and self-confidence decline, the capacity to benefit from cultural exchanges also declines.” Each community has developed a ghetto mentality vis-à-vis other communities. There’s an urgent need to promote multicultural exchanges and understanding in order to avoid demonization of “the other”. Multiculturalism, a vital input in promoting secularism, implies respect for other cultures while remaining loyal to one’s own. Let’s look back at history and draw certain lessons as to how our forefathers coped with an increasingly complex social structure.

India’s been home to almost all religions in the world. It’s the original melting pot of diverse ethnic groups. In the pre-Christian era there was no resistance to the assimilation process in the subcontinent. The coming of Christianity to South India – much before it had reached Europe – too didn’t create any social stress, let alone conflict. The arrival of Islam triggered off unprecedented violence and conflict. Muslims, who first invaded India in 711 AD, preferred to keep their identity distinct from the local people. Islam’s monotheistic belief-structure clashed with the Hindu polytheism that was further stratified by a complex caste system. However, despite the clashes the people belonging to the two religions co-existed in relative peace in the rural areas.

The traditional Hindu tolerance towards alien people and their faiths facilitated their co-option into the evolving social structure. In fact they greatly benefited from interaction with alien cultures and developed a way of life that left little scope for intolerance. Donald Eugene Smith, in his book The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism, observes, "The Hindu state of ancient medieval, or modern times was not a narrowly sectarian state in any sense; patronage was frequently extended simultaneously to various sects and religions…” Emperor Ashok’s (a Hindu convert to Buddhism) edicts are irrefutable proof of this.

The inherent pantheistic nature of our civilization sustains religious open-mindedness. The spirit of co-existence and tolerance that’s characterized Hinduism since ancient times has its parallel today in the freedom of religious worship that’s guaranteed under our constitution. So much so that it’s ingrained in our minds that respect for all religions equals secularism. Admittedly, for a polity to be genuinely secular it has to be outside the pale of religion altogether.

The creed of assimilation, mutual trust and harmonious co-existence practiced by our ancestors needs to be adapted to today’s context wherein every form of human activity needs to be integrated into an evolving global structure. But the question is, how? It’s been universal experience that social disharmony results in loss of lives, destruction of national assets and decreased productivity causing immeasurable economic losses both at micro and macro levels. A genuinely secular society can ensure peace which, in turn, spells all round progress and prosperity. It’ll also facilitate the formation of more productive work-environment – so essential for a robust economy, ensuring a durable integration into the global economic structure with fruitful results for all. The global community, especially investors, will certainly reject a chaotic, unstable and mired-in-medievalism India.

Governance

It’s time to eschew populism. Common secular laws, applicable to all citizens, are essential for the formation of a secular society. There has been a lot of misuse of personal laws that does not augur well for the formation of a just polity. Caste-panchayats are another threat to the existence of a multi-cultural civil society. Exploitation in the name of religious sanctity of certain practices that belong to the distant past has been well documented. Medieval mindset and globalization are antithetic to each other. Scrap all personal laws and bring different religions, castes, sub-castes and tribal groups etc under the common secular law of the land.

All forms of reservations on the basis of caste and religion, be these in the field of employment, professional education or electoral constituencies, need to be abolished. Meritocracy must rule supreme, making governance near-perfect. All issues will be decided on merit. The culture of respecting true merit in all walks of life needs to be evolved in order to obliterate all forms of social friction. The current socio-political-administrative superstructure promotes sectarianism. Make the power structure more just, and its functioning more transparent and responsive, by giving merit a chance.

Human Resource Development

Our education system needs complete overhaul. Any attempt to promote obscurantism and intolerance often begins in classrooms. This should be checked ruthlessly. All religion-based educational institutions must be closed down immediately. The school should be a secular platform for disseminating value-based education. Morality needs to be redefined – taking it out of the realm of theocratic didacticism and placing it in the context of liberal global mindset. In order to make secularism the creed of the 21^st century India, we should facilitate young students’ understanding, and practicing, of multiculturalism. Study of all forms of theology should be allowed as an optional subject at post-graduate level when scholars would be mature enough to successfully resist all attempts at indoctrination.

Secularism is a profound, abstract and, hence, intractable concept when compared to multiculturalism. It may be defined as essentially humanism that rejects all religions, and is strictly atheist-rationalist in its approach. Rationalism and reason are essential inputs in the evolution of a modern secular polity. Unfortunately, even when our constitution provides for promotion of scientific temper, dens of irrationality and obscurantism have been flourishing with impunity. Education was left more or less to individual states. This was a cardinal sin as it endangered the very existence of the nascent liberal-democratic ethos that needed careful centralized nurturing.

Education should be a strictly federal subject – with rationalism forming its main ingredient. This approach alone can beat back the tide of fundamentalism currently sweeping our socio-political scenario. Moreover, let’s not sanitize history or give it a slant expedient to the political party in power. History as handmaiden of political expediency can be an explosive proposition. Teachers must boldly elucidate the palatable and not-so-palatable aspects relating to all cultures and eras of history. This confronting of harsh realities is bound to promote a more mature understanding of the dynamics of cultural interaction.

Once students learn to practice multiculturalism, they can be trusted to develop a secular outlook as citizens. This is possible if, at the college and university level, rationalism becomes the norm for all intellectual pursuits. Instead of discouraging young scholars from being inquisitive it’d be more fruitful to encourage them to question and examine all existing canons – academic, political, theological or otherwise. All attempts at intellectual esotericism and withholding of information should be thwarted. Their spirit of inquiry should be so robust as to not accept dogmas or theses at face value but rigorously investigate, test and validate these. Rational ethos developed in campus is bound to translate into a more vibrant and enlightened society.

This spirit of scientific inquiry can evolve a culture wherein our political leaders will come under the scanner. The TINA factor that’s been responsible in subverting our politico-administrative culture and institutions will simply disappear. If only our voters were educated enough, perhaps they wouldn’t have been repeatedly fooled into voting for candidates on the basis of caste and creed by ignoring merit. The chances of having the extant quasi-feudalistic ruling families – both at the centre and the states – would’ve been nil.

Identity is essential to an individual for various socio-psychological reasons. But it’s not a static concept; it changes as one evolves. Today the traditional caste structure has become irrelevant to the vocation one chooses. If rationalism prevails, even religious and linguistic identities will become redundant. Eventually, one might well see the emergence of an all-India identity in its most genuine form. The next logical step in our collective evolution as a nation would be global citizenship based on the ideals of secularism, peace and progress.