Indian Ideology - Perry anderson

INDIAN IDEOLOGY - PERRY ANDERSON (OCT 2012)

Perry Anderson has a few things to say about India which might not be palatable for most Indians.

I remember the buzz around the book when it was about to be released- the constant chatter by the twitterati and the interviews by the author to various print and social media.

But come October 2012 - post the book release - there was hardly a murmur. There were a few strong reviews all right, but they picked the book on technicalities and, to my mind, did not attempt to address the issues raised by the author.

The contentious issues raised are essentially as follows:-

-  The idea that a sub continental unity existed in India extending back to 5000 years is a myth.

-  Partition was essentially the handiwork of the Congress and not the Raj or Jinnah, with Nehru and Gandhi being the main culprits.

As Indians, we have all lapped up this great story of the grand Indian civilization – images of Kumbh Mela being performed  2500 years ago and still continuing flashes before us .We devoured Nehru’s ‘Discovery of India’, Amartya Sen’s ‘Argumentative Indian’ and other such ‘feel good’ books on the same vein.

But Perry Anderson says that the story of the ‘Grand Indian civilization‘  is all wrong- it’s a myth.

Sample a few passages from the book:-

“The subcontinent as we know it today never formed a single political or cultural unit in pre-modern times. For much the longest stretches of its history, its lands were divided between a varying assortment of middle-sized kingdoms, of different stripes. Of the three larger empires it witnessed, none covered the territory of Nehru’s Discovery of India. Maurya and Mughal control extended to contemporary Afghanistan, ceased below the Deccan, and never came near Manipur. The area of Gupta control was considerably less. Separated by intervals of five hundred and a thousand years, there was no remembered political or cultural connection between these orders, or even common religious affiliation: at its height, the first of these Buddhist, the second Hindu, the third Muslim.

…The ‘idea of India’ was essentially a European, not a local invention, as the name itself makes clear. No such term, or equivalent, as India existed in any indigenous language. A Greek coinage, taken from the Indus river, it was so exogenous to the subcontinent that as late as the 16^th century, Europeans would define Indians simply as ‘all natives of an unknown country’...”

The British created India:

‘The British had taken over the subcontinent with such relative ease because it was politically and socially so tangled and fractured, but in imposing a common infrastructural, juridical and cultural grid on it, they unified it as an administrative and ideological reality for the first time in its history. The idea of India was theirs.’

And he takes Nehru and his ‘Discovery of India’ to the cleaners:

‘Nehru, on the other hand, had enjoyed a higher education Gandhi lacked, and an intellectual development not arrested by intense religious belief. But these advantages yielded less than might be thought. He seems to have learnt very little at Cambridge, scrapping a mediocre degree in natural sciences that left no trace thereafter, did poorly in his bar exams, and was not much of a success when he returned to practice law in the footsteps of his father. The contrast with Bose, a brilliant student of philosophy at Cambridge, who was the first native to pass the exams into the elite ranks of the Indian Civil Service and decline entry to it on patriotic grounds, is striking.

But an indifferent beginning is no obstacle to subsequent flowering, and in due course Nehru became a competent orator and prolific writer. What he never acquired, however, was a modicum of literary taste or mental discipline. His most ambitious work, ‘The Discovery of India’, which appeared in 1946, is a steam-bath of Schwarmerei with few equals in the period.

But ‘The Discovery of India’ – not to speak of its predecessor ‘The Unity of India’ – illustrates not just Nehru’s lack of formal scholarship and addiction to romantic myth, but something deeper, not so much an intellectual but a psychological limitation – a capacity for self-deception with far-reaching political consequences.

            ‘India was in my blood and there was much in her that instinctively thrilled me’, he told his readers. ‘She is very lovable and none of her children can forget her wherever they go or whatever strange fate befalls them. For she is part of them in her greatness as well as her failings, and they are mirrored in those deep eyes of hers that have seen so much of life’s passion and joy and folly and looked down into wisdom’s well.’

Not all of  ‘The Discovery of India’ is of similar quality. But the Barbara Cartland streak was never far from the surface: ‘Perhaps we may still sense the mystery of nature, listen to her song of life and beauty, and draw vitality from her. That song is not sung in the chosen spots only, and we can hear it, if we have ears for it, almost everywhere. But there are some places where it charms even those who are unprepared for it and comes like the deep notes of a distant and powerful organ. Among those favoured spots is Kashmir, where loveliness dwells and an enchantment steals over the senses.’ A mind capable of prose like this was unlikely to show much realism about the difficulties facing the national movement.

The author highlights the fissiparous tendencies that almost fractured India during the time of partition, as India was ‘never a political union’:

Bengal …had a stronger common identity, a richer cultural-intellectual tradition and more advanced politics under the Raj. …In the Hindu community a movement led by Bose’s brother Sarat, and in the Muslim community by the the local head of the League, Suhrawardy, joined forces to call for United Bengal as an independent state, adhering neither to India nor to Pakistan. Mountbatten wanted only two Dominions in the sub-continent, though if it was difficult to avoid, did not rule out a third. Jinnah, to his credit, said he would not oppose a unitary Bengal.

             ….When the question was put to the Bengal Assembly, the vote was 126 to 90 in favour of unity.

….densely forested mountainous uplands inhabited by tribal peoples of Tibeto-Mongoloid origin untouched by Hinduism, with no historical connection to any subcontinental polity. In the valleys, three Hindu kingdoms had long existed, the oldest in Manipur, the largest in Assam. The region had lain outside the Maurya and Gupta empires, and had resisted Mughal annexation….

…. So remote were these from anything to do with India, even as constituted by the Victorian Empire, that when Burma was detached from the Raj in 1935, officials came close to allocating them to Rangoon rather than Delhi.

The basic point the author is making is that India was never a political union throughout its history. Period.

But, isn’t that a given? Isn’t it obvious that India was never really a political union? Why waste reams of paper on such an obvious fact?

The basic ‘idea of India’ for the present modern state, I would like to believe, does not hint at a ‘political unity’ though the ages. But rather, a ‘civilizational unity’.

If the basis of a modern nation should only be a ‘historical political unity’, then of course, India, immediately after partition, should have split up into 600 plus principalities. There were too many Maharajas, Nawabs and Princely states floating around.

To my understanding, there was never any suggestion of a ‘political unity’; but it was always the idea of a ‘civilizational unity’, that Nehru and his ilk were sold upon, and that is the foundation on which they wanted to build this brand new country called India.

Is the idea of ‘civilisational unity’ good enough to build a nation? Who decides if it is so?

Is the ‘American way’ the ‘right’ way to build a nation?
Is it ok that you systematically obliterate the indigenous ‘Red Indians’ and usurp their lands?

What about the Latin American countries? Where are the Mayans and the Incas? Is that the way to build a nation?

I would like to believe that a ‘continual civilizational and cultural unity’ is not a bad start point to build a brand new nation.

But is this enough to sustain a fledgling nation?

Well that is an existential query facing India today, that only time will answer conclusively. But one may daresay that there are fewer naysayer’s in 2013, as compared to 1947, on whether India can survive or not.

But there are a few aspects that Indians have got right in building a brand new nation.

One of them is a canon called ‘unity in diversity’. One may scoff at this, but evidence suggests that this actually works in India. 
Consider this:-

It is a fact that in India there is no subversion of any Indigenous culture. There are insurgencies, yes - folks wanting to break away from the Republic. But the point remains- there is no subversion of any indigenous culture.

So,  the Monpa’s of Tawang, the Meitei’s  in Manipur, the Ladakhi’s, the Thambi’s of Tamil Nadu all have a distinct, strong, vibrant identity of their own, within the union of India. 

The proof of the same is that you will never hear of any ‘refugees’ from India due to persecution by the state.

Which country did Dalai Lama pack his bags and come to?

When Quaid-e- Azam, Jinnah, proclaimed Urdu to be the common language of Pakistan, thereby sparking the seed of Bengali insurgency, which country did the Bangladeshi’s take refuge in?

Look at Tibet or Xinjiang in China. The indigenous population in these areas, are a shrinking minority every day, due to the Han sinicization process of China. Does this happen in India?

Things are definitely bad here in India. Lots of poverty and corruption. But one thing  no one can blame us for, is of  subversion of any indigenous culture in India, unlike say  in China.

The fact of the matter is that today, in all states including Kashmir, there have been free and fair elections and there is stability and progress.

I had attended a cultural festival in Tawang in October 2012. The crowd- all local- about 5000 strong, were dancing to their local rock stars numbers, as well as to Bollywood numbers. They even loved the crass jokes by the special guests from Bollywood  - Ehsan Qureshi and Shakti Kapoor. It was a simple depiction of how different cultural strains can co-exist together – ‘Unity in diversity’.

More damning however is the author’s take on the Congress being the main culprit behind partition and not Jinnah or the Raj.

He squarely blames Gandhi’s evocation of Hindu spirituality and invocation of Lord Ram into the political discourse that drove away Muslims -including Jinnah- from the Congress.

‘The official view in Delhi, shared across the political spectrum, has always been that it was Jinnah’s personal ambition that fired Muslim separatism, destroying the unit of the national liberation struggle ……

…Like most politicians, Jinnah was certainly ambitious. But he was also an early architect of Hindu-Muslim unity; had little mass following down to the end of the thirties; and even when he acquired one, probably aimed at a confederation rather than complete separation.

………but it was not Jinnah who injected religion into the vocabulary and imagery of the national movement, it was Gandhi. That he did not do so in any sectarian spirit, calling on Muslims to defend the Caliph in the same breath as Hindus to restore the golden age of Rama, was of little consequence once he jettisoned mobilization against the British without regard for his allies in the common struggle.

…..What remained was Gandhi’s transformation of Congress from an elite into a mass organization by saturating its appeal with a Hindu imagery. Here, unambiguously, was the origin of the political process that would eventually lead to Partition.’

Gandhi’s statements: ‘I yield to none in my reverence for the cow’..

… warning his son against marrying a Muslim on grounds that it was ‘contrary to dharma’ and – a telling simile – ‘like putting two swords in one sheath’… (did not make things better either.)

The author also blames Nehru, for being unwilling to accept the ‘cabinet mission plan’ for devolution of powers between Congress and Muslim league, which might have prevented partition.

‘..But for Nehru,.... (cabinet mission plan) was worse than partition, since it would deprive his party of the powerful centralized state to which it had always aspired, and he believed essential to preserve Indian unity. Congress had always insisted on its monopoly of national legitimacy. That claim could no longer be sustained.

But if the worst came to the worst, it was better to enjoy an unimpeded monopoly of power in the larger part of India than to shackled by having to share it in an undivided one.

So while the League talked of partition, Jinnah contemplated confederation; while Congress spoke of union, Nehru prepared for scission. The Cabinet Mission Plan was duly scuppered. Everything then turned on how the spoils were to be distributed.

There are further telling passages in the book. 

The author paints both Gandhi and Nehru as ‘black’- devious and unscrupulous characters, whereas the popular Indian discourse deifies them.

The opinions expressed by the author , are however  a matter of conjecture and ascribes intentions to Gandhi and Nehru which might not be wholly true.

The truth, of course, would probably be somewhere in between.