By: M. R. Lalu
There have been attempts aplenty to differentiate the existence and the idea that India represents from multiple angles. The controversial one that has gained prominence in the recent days is to narrate the idea which is India, as a union of states. And they, who confirm to be convinced to call India a Union of states, are totally against the idea of a nation. They take the constitution as the rock base document to define this argument and take instances of integration of different princely states into the national administration, post independence. From a peripheral view this argument appears to gain currency. But the ethnicity of a landscape that remained a geographically united cultural entity for millennia loses its charm as the arguments to establish it as a union of states to what the constitution defines it for the sake of administrative ease. Can the constitution discover or at least define the soul of a nation, particularly a country such as India which owns a great tradition of cultural upbringing that it cherished beyond the modern boundaries. This needs a seriously genuine debate. Beyond politics, a civilisational aspect which is dormant behind the existence of a country remains a reality and attempts to break it for petty momentary gains are dangerous.
Centuries of invasions and the scars that they brought to the collective psyche get revamped every generation. Probably, as a country we were successful in glorifying the brutality that the invasion had on this land and the invaders are still eulogised to be heroes. At present, the majoritarianism which is aggressively blamed and debated across the country has mostly been an output of the historical brutalities and the rejections and denials that followed in an independent India by deliberately concealing the struggles and hardships to counter the invasions. A new generation, ignorant of the historicity of bravery that its ancestors fought with, against the brutal invading force is natural to dig deeper into the concealed realities and excavate the debris of its lost identity. To understand India, it is necessary to go beyond the politically discovered concept of ‘union of states’ and embrace the cultural ethos that enshrined in the soul of India, and avoiding which, not only the present generation, but the generations to come would also remain confused and incompetent to sublimate the rigidity with which we distorted the idea that India represents.
Rahul Gandhi’s subjugating remarks by accentuating and projecting India as a mere conglomeration of states naturally puts his intelligence into test and reveals the depth of his ignorance on the cultural dimensions which he failed to study. To reduce a living civilisational reality to a civic nation cannot be wholesome but a futile practice to assess the land in terms of its geological components and give it a mere political image. The civilization that India represented for almost five thousand years remains indisputably accurate and the global community accepts and appreciates its Vedic heritage. The hatred that we spew out on a daily basis, especially between the Hindus and the Muslims is mainly due to the ignorance and the confusion of what, as a country India stands for or a deliberate and a well calibrated conspiracy for not paying attention to the spiritual essence which we inherited from our ancestry irrespective of the religious differences. India’s contribution to pluralism and multiculturalism has been so solid that every religious ideology could successfully find its place to flourish though some of them landed with sword and acrimony. This cannot be understood with a semitic arrogance and the veracity of India being truly secular has not come through a constitutional injection. It cannot survive naturally without being secular as its basic cultural outlook is secular, accepting all the different views and extracting the best in them. This was the reason why India never found joy in entering any other territory by force or expanding its land though it had been connected with a large part of the world socially, economically and culturally for centuries. It is true that a political entity, to call India, came into existence after 1947 but its constitutional values such as respecting the diversity and democratic principles always existed here well before it became a British colony. The geographical existence of India being a glorious land was found in Vedic literature and probably, nobody, except those from the ancient times deserve the royalty for the discovery of the secular essence that India stands for. So India never existed as a mere conglomeration of boundaries, but a Rashtra – a nation which is a civilisational entity per se.
What we own today is the fallacy that our intellect has been deliberately engraved on. An attempt to define the idea of India as a mere geographical landscape, politically alive by the mercy of a constitutional mechanism would be the repetition of a historical wrong and what we frequently miss out is the nationalism which should have been essentially strengthened by the ancient spiritual wisdom. The widening distance and disagreements between religions in India is sure to exercise its precariousness when it comes to the existence of a nation. Digging up the past could not have happened, if the past was documented for the future generations with genuineness. From Babri to Gyanvapi the reason that is playing out behind all the irrational controversies is the partiality with which the history was codified, extolling somebody and demonising someone else. The apt vocabulary that the history should have been genuinely presented with was the truth of suppression, invasion and bloodshed along with the tribulations and the bravery with which such attempts were barricaded. This is what is missing and the dejection that it triggered has mainly arm-twisted the country into a majoritarian build-up. A genuine curiosity to regain what is lost when the country was captured and tortured by alien forces and reinstate the reality to its ancient glory is the attempt behind the resurrection of monuments in India justified as. To end the controversy, we need to go beyond the political interpretations of India and understand its national essence and reason out its distorted ancestry and regain it amicably suitable to the modern age. (The author is a freelance journalist/social worker. He can be reached at mrlalu30@gmail.com)
