MARCH 10
Understanding India
1993 has been a year of meetings for me. During this period I have travelled extensively throughout the country in order to attend a number of conferences and seminars and in the process have met people from a broad cross-section of society. Most of the people I met seemed to have lost their optimism about the way this country is going to develop. But I differ from them. I am still full of hope for India’s future.
It is my firm belief that despair runs counter to nature’s overall system and that like any other kind of negativism it is unworthy of serious consideration. Have we forgotten, perhaps, that even the blackest of nights is followed by the sunrise? This sequence of events is so totally and perfectly predictable that an astronomer can tell with confidence the exact moment the sun will rise one thousand years from today. In a world, therefore, in which day will quite unfailingly follow night every twenty four hours ad infinitum, how is it possible that the darkness of despair will not be dispelled by the light of hope?
Here is an illustration of this point. On December 6, 1992, when the Babri Mosque was demolished, many newspapers made the assertion that this would turn out to be only the first of a long series of such incidents, anything from 300 to 3,000 mosques having been targetted by extremists for demolition. But my interpretation of the situation was quite the reverse. I said that no other mosque was going to be demolished, for what we had witnessed was not the beginning of anti-masjid politics but the end.
This may appear strange today, but both communities very soon gave their tacit approval to the idea that Muslims should forget about their one mosque and Hindus should forget about the many mosques that, in the heat of the moment, they felt should be demolished. Though there is still some talk, on both sides, in the former antagonistic vein, passions are definitely cooling over what is, after all, an anachronism, which cannot continue indefinitely.
What underlay my own personal conviction about how this situation would develop was substantial historical evidence that destruction having run its course, must ultimately abate and come to an end. The entire history of mankind abounds in such instances.
However, a welcome panacea to cut short present ills would be the general acceptance of pluralism. But upholders of this principle have first to contend with the problem—nay, threat—of ‘cultural nationalism’. The proponents of this latter movement insist that India’s composite culture must be moulded into a uni-Indian culture, being of the view that it is only through such endeavour that social harmony can be produced.
Serious-minded people regard this movement as a genuine threat to the integrity of the country. This is because any attempt to replace the existing cultural set-up with an artificially formulated ‘culture’ would bring in its wake a fresh spate of strife and dissension. Such steps, disruptive as they are of the status quo, can never produce social harmony.
I do not, however, see any real danger in such a movement, for the simple reason that those who set themselves up against nature are bound to fall far short of their objectives. Their goals, could they but grasp this fact, are unrealizable.
Those who advocate changing the ‘composite’ culture of the country show their ignorance of the fact that culture is almost always of an inherently composite nature. Culture is not something, which can be formulated in some office, or in some meeting or conference: it is invariably the result of a long and natural process of social action, reaction and interaction. Far from being the instant fallout of some political resolution, it is the culmination of a time-honoured, historical accretion. This being so, I regard cultural nationalism, or uni-culturalism as being against the laws of nature. Not even a super power can fly in the face of nature.
Besides, where uni-culture smacks of narrow-mindedness, multi-culture stands for broadmindedness. I cannot believe that my countrymen would be so foolish as to prefer to be narrow-minded. In July, 1993, a meeting was held in New Delhi in memory of Mr. Girilal Jain, the former editor of the Times of India. Speaking on this occasion, the present editor, Mr. Dilip Padgaonkar, made the point that because the human identity is composed of so many elements, it can never be thought of as being limited in form. According to influences which had shaped his own life, he mentioned being born into a particular family and growing up with a particular mother tongue and having the religion of his social background. When he went abroad to different countries, there were other influences, which went into the shaping of his identity. Many of these elements became inseparable parts of his psyche. Describing the vastness of the human personality, he said, “I am large enough to contain all these contradictions.”
I think these words convey the spirit not only of India but also of humanity in its broadest sense. In terms of the sense of identity, which a language confers, there are still complaints about the non-fulfillment of promises made by Indian leaders prior to 1947, that ‘Hindustani’ written in both Persian and Devnagri scripts would be the national language of liberated India. The later decision to make Hindi the official language of post-independence India is still regarded as an affront and a deliberately limiting factor. But, in the context of the present day, I regard all this lamentation over Hindi’s predominance as having little or no relevance.
Language may be an important part of a composite culture, but it is not minted by a handful of people. It comes into being after centuries of development. When Muslims came to India, they brought with them Arabic and Persian. At that time many languages were spoken in Delhi and the surrounding areas, such as Haryani, Punjabi, Khadi Boli, Brijbhasha, Rajasthani, etc. With the interaction of Muslims and the local people, a new language began to develop. This language came to be known as Hindustani. It was a common language formed by deriving words from both foreign and local languages. Even today, it is the language of many people in India, although Muslims remain more Urdu-oriented, while Hindus, generally speaking, are more Hindi-oriented. It is significant that all the major Hindi dailies use Hindustani written in Devnagri script, that being the only really understandable language for the majority of the Indian people.
Muslims, however, still make a grievance of this use of Devnagri script. But they are wrong to do so. If they were simply to apply themselves to learning this script along with Urdu script they would find that they could have easy access not only to news and journalistic commentary but to a much wider field of literature and general information that is available to them at present. Devnagri script, being phonetic, is easy to learn, and its acquisition would bring it home to Muslims, once they began to make use of it, that the prevalent national language in actuality is Hindustani rather than Hindi, a language with which they have been familiar all their lives. They should learn a lesson from the many Hindu Punjabi officials who were schooled in Persian and Urdu, but who, after independence had suddenly to make the transition from Urdu to Hindi in their official work, without their ever having had any previous knowledge of Devnagri script. No one says that this changeover was easy, but the fact remains that it was successfully accomplished by dint of personal endeavour. Muslims must begin to see linguistic change as the need of the hour.
Whatever the concomitant pressures on the national identity, it should be borne in mind that the future of a nation, inevitably shaped as it is by historical forces, is never carved out by just a single individual, or a single group. And India is no exception to this rule.
