Though I have matured in that part of the world where debates are driven by science, I was raised in an Indian culture – with all its diversity and contradictions, yet in peace with itself. That was that.
MY CONCERNS
India is profoundly important for me. With its 1.3 billion people, most below age 25 years, it is equally important to the future of the world.
Today, we are seeing a change. An urge to see India as the world’s super-power. The material is keen to replace the spiritual. Nothing wrong with that. However, if this change is not driven carefully, the carnage is waiting to happen.
War against Religion
India will certainly avoid the carnage that was seen during the Socialist/Communist revolutions of the 19th and 20th century. These revolutions can be seen as the ‘ship of tradition’ colliding with the ‘beacon of modernism’.
The revolutions against religion started in the late the 18th century, first in Protestant America and then in Catholic France. The new idea then spread to Christian Europe and later in Latin (Catholic) Americas. In the early 20th century, the same phenomenon erupted in (Orthodox) Russia and in then (Catholic) Spain. In the late 20th century, the majority of China (the Hans, ~85% of the population) bled themselves during the Chinese revolutions. With it, more or less all Buddhist-majority states were affected.
In all the above battles, material wars were won by capitalism but the cultural wars were won by the socialists. It was during these times, religion was reduced to individual choice since whence it has been used for politics, not policy.
Layers of complexity
In the post-socialist 20th century, religion is back on the agenda. The complexity lies in ironing out the contradictions and inconsistencies in the religion and its approach to life, well beyond the caste/race, colour, gender, and in fact their relationship with other religions.
India – with its linguistic, cultural and religious diversity – is more akin to Germany. No, not of the 20th century Germany, but of the 16/17th centuries. And in that sense, it is prone to the Wars of that Germany.
I wish my India does not have to go through such a terrible war, of layers of complexity.
LANGUAGE
India officially speaks 26 languages. Our contradictions and idiosyncrasies only increase, as we attempt to link desperately our extant to everything extinct.
Here are some.
English
English is NOT an official language of India, at least constitutionally. Because it is a ‘foreign language’. So it is called an ‘associate language’ of India. Whatever that means.
But English is widely spoken and taught. It is the language of our Parliament, our business and our world. Only Bollywood and our illiteracy keep English from conquering us fully.
After some six decades of independence, why such insecurity and contradictions remains a puzzle. But maybe not, when one looks at the behaviour of New India.
Sanskrit
There is a great wish to revive Sanskrit, the long dead language of Ancient India. Here is one attempt: in the province of UttarKhand, Sanskrit was recently declared an official language.
No. It is not a disconnect with reality but a wish to reclaim the past. As to the root cause of that wish, it is complex – religion, regionalism, power, politics…all play their part.
If tiny Israel can revive its ancient Hebrew language, why cannot mighty India? For the tiny, stateless, persecuted Jewish peoples, having a unique language was important. Also, Israel was supported by some 75 million whites in the 1950s. India has to find its own resources.
Hindi
In 1871 when Prussia (Germany) became the new kid on the colonial block, the ‘scramble for the world‘ began. Within 5 years, in 1876, Queen Victoria declared herself the ‘Empress of India’. The Raj had already defeated an Indian uprising in 1857.
India was vast and was under Mughal domination, though a declining one. The language of the Mughals was Urdu which itself is a unique Indian language – a mixture of Persian, Arabic, local dialects and Sanskrit.
The British spread the rhetoric that Urdu was the ‘language of the Muslims’, where some facts were used to create a great fiction. Eastern and Southern India already had a rich culture in language, and Urdu was indeed the language of Muslim elite and those who worked with them.
In the north, the language was Khadi-Boli (straight/stiff language) – a mixture of heavy Sanskrit and some Arabic and Persian. Many traders – of all faiths – used Urdu for trade, patronage and prestige just as many Indians use English today.
The British soon standardised Khadi-Boli from the Bengal Presidency, the provincial British base. Soon, Khadi-Boli was promoted as the ‘language of Hindus’ of the eastern Bengal (today’s Bihar). In the Bengal Presidency, Bengali was the spoken language of both Hindus and Muslims.
While English remained the official language of British India, ironically, Khadi-Boli became the voice of seekers of Indian independence. The Raj felt the boomerang!
In 1949, India renamed Khadi-Boli as ‘Hindi’. In another ten years, its grammar and script (Devanagari) was standardised. Amongst the various Sanskrit scripts, the Devanagari script was patronised by the British since the 1870s.
For today’s New India, the challenge is to impose Sanskrit on a diverse nation, to ‘unify’ the great nation. In our global village, where major languages play a role of prestige on the world stage, the New India wants a voice and identity. However, India’s historical baggage frustrates it.
But why can’t we be happy with our past? What prevents us from taking pride in our heritage, our diversity and, in our English?
The basic concept is: a language will survive if it deals with daily – a) Business +/- science (the brains), English is dominant here; – b) Culture +/- religion (the heart/emotions), regional languages play the tunes here.
CULTURE
India is undergoing a massive cultural change. The relevance of cultural practices is increasingly becoming outdated, and is being challenged. At the same time, traditions thought to be derived from ancient religious texts are being revived. Everything is in flux.
Though religion is being closely associated with one’s identity, Hinduism itself is increasingly coming under scrutiny. The nightmarish question for everyone is the line where the tradition stops and modernity begins. This is the 21st-century challenge to India, a country that invests in a family.
India is being polarised, fit to tear itself apart in the near future. All religions and ideologies have undergone this process. So, nothing new here.
Women
The contradictions of Indian behaviour towards women at the UN was interesting.
Far more interesting is the response to such contradictions. Instead of resolving the issue, we use high-flying fallacious arguments. Indians, being 33% illiterate, takes the bait and falls for the eminence and the ancient.
Among the semi-literates, there is an urge to revel in 5000-year old civilisation. That urge is so strong and so severe that any seeker of reconciliation is seen as ‘anti-India’, and is challenged or brutalised. The views gets entrenched.
Reconciling the fact that women were treated very poorly in ancient India, with explicit sanction of religious text, is very difficult. One more reason why some leave religion or become an atheist – certainly not Love–Jihad.
REGIONALISM
A country with 26 official languages, and hundreds of local dialects, India is bound to have regional passions. Europe, after 500 years of wars, still bickers based on regionalism. Something to learn for young India?
Telangana
I was born in Andhra Pradesh. In 2014, Andhra Pradesh – a state where 95% of the population speak one language, belongs to one religion and cohabit one culture – was divided, on flimsy grounds. Passions ran high, accusations were exchanged, and people died.
There will be more is to come. In 1956-India, the demarcation of a state based on language was a sensible modern concept. For the New Indians, these divisions of modern India is justifiable ancient India (Bharat) had 56 provinces (desam).
The New Indians (who seek world prestige) are opening a can of worms: no one knows the boundaries of these ‘desams’, except their vague mention in the historical texts. In a country where one finds a thousand different versions of Ramayana, how difficult would it be to sketch the ancient boundaries?
The bickering would certainly lead to the war of words, then deeds; and finally lives. Hope we learn from the mistake of Europe and Arab lands.
WAR OF RELIGIONS
Hatred does not rain anymore. In India, it pours in with every election and by-election. The New Indians are angry just like the Prussians, who were angry with the world in the late 19th century.
Though I cover anti-Muslim agenda here through the eyes of fanatics, the sophistry of New India reveals disdain for many others. Power, regionalism, linguistic jingoism have become tools for the politics of the new kind.
Historical Background
In 1987, Doordarshan (then India’s only TV channel) began broadcasting Ramayana and Mahabharatha. Every Hindu child thought himself to be an incarnation of a god or his ally.
The innocent myths became real: superstitions had scientific rationale, non-human ‘raakhshas’ took on human characters (Muslims and ‘others’) and battle-plans began in earnest (political elections).
In 1991, the Indian government opened its door to foreign investments – glibly called as ‘Liberalisation of India‘. Funds were deposited not only to help India crawl out of poverty but also for the rise of Hindutva and its programmes. Indian diaspora began funding India just as American-Germans were funding Germany in the early 20th century; only the institutions differed.
Soon, the pitched battles of gods and raakshas on Indian TVs would be channelled and financed by the arm-chaired Hindu-warriors in the West.
1992: Watch this documentary to understand the venom that started to be spewed in the name of Ram, the Vaishnava god. Though the foot-soldiers who destroyed the historic Babri Masjid were poor brain-washed Indians, they were incited by fanatic elites and their like-minded Indian diaspora.
2001: America, the victor of the Cold-War and land of opportunity for many well-to-do Indians, and its ‘War on Terror’ gave ultimate legitimacy to virulent anti-Muslim campaign in India.
Now in the eyes of semi-literate material-aspiring New India, Muslims became the scourge of the world – and foreign. They had to be dealt with – from subtle to systemic, from individual to collective punishments, from economic to religious torments.
Today is the critical time for Hindus, and Muslims.
Can Hinduism ever evolve into a juristic-minded religion? Or will it submit itself to Indian Supreme Court to remain its guiding light? Can Muslims further Shariah as a tool of progress, or will they be forced to follow the diktats of the Indian Supreme Court?
