The Quintessential Outsider

Defining a Nation October 1, 2010

Posted by chitranshu in Society & Politics.
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I am back on this blog after a long time, almost two years. There is a lot that can be said about these two years, but instead of getting into all that, I shall come straight to the point of what made me get back to this blog. It was an article in yesterday’s Times of India, and I felt compelled to write about it. Here goes:

Ayodhya was never a temple issue to me. Neither was it a Hindu-Muslim problem.

He is right. Ayodhya was never a temple issue. Neither was it a Hindu-Muslim problem. It wasn’t a problem at all, in fact, until the British (or someone in their era) decided to make it an issue. Until then, both Hindus and Muslims in Ayodhya/Faizabad were quite happy worshipping alongside each other at that place. When India finally gained independence, someone else decided to make it an even bigger issue, and a few decades later, some people in their mad quest for power took this issue and blew it up to catastrophic proportions.

The whole story can be summarized in one line. Ram is we; Babar is not. Period.

I do not agree with this. “Ram is we” might be a comfortable statement for a lot of Hindus, but not all, since there are some Hindus who believe in alternative versions of the Ramayana, some who look at him as just another deity and not the focal point of their faith, and some who are openly critical of him as an upper-caste and/or chauvinist icon not worthy of their worship. To me, Ram is just one of many deities from whose stories you can learn a lot, both good and bad. I do not need the word of a judge to convince me whether or not he is a deity, unlike a prominent politician who declared happily on national television yesterday that Ram has been declared a deity by the court. The point is, Hinduism as a system of beliefs has always had a freedom and openness which cannot be summarized in one line or focused on just one person, whether historical or mythological.

The second bit, “Babar is not”, also depends on how you interpret his efforts to conquer India and build an empire here. He stayed on in India unlike many others who plundered and went back, and his descendants made this nation their own for centuries. Their destruction of temples and building of mosques may prove them to be intolerant or fanatics, but not necessarily un-Indian, especially when they also built some monuments and institutions which still stand today.

If this statement was comparative, e.g. Ram is more ‘we’ than Babar, it would probably be OK. But a plain black-and-white statement like this one is not what this nation is about.

If, God forbid, the goons of Osama break the statue of Liberty and there is a movement to restore the statue, would it be called a movement of extreme right-wing Christians? Or a movement of all Americans?

Firstly, the Statue of Liberty is not in any way related to Christianity, but is a symbol of freedom and democracy, values which the United States built itself on while the rest of the world was still ruled by monarchs. These values may have existed in ancient civilizations at different points of time, and on the other hand, Christianity may have a lot of other good values, but correlating a symbol of freedom with Christianity does not make sense. Ram, on the other hand, is in every sense a Hindu icon, and while the Father of this Nation might have desired Ram-Rajya, he did not mean to see it at the cost of destruction and communal hatred.

Secondly, since the possibility of the “goons of Osama” conquering the United States and destroying its monuments like the Statue of Liberty is VERY REMOTE, maybe we should look at some other examples of goons destroying monuments. Perhaps the WTC attack, but those were also symbols of modern capitalism, and not Christianity. Maybe the Bamiyan statues in Afghanistan – now that is a situation very similar to what Babar did, except that the Taliban did not have any significant Buddhist populace under them to bother about. The point is, ALL OF THESE events are worthy of criticism, including the destruction of the Babri Masjid by another bunch of goons.

Movements to restore destroyed monuments are worthy of appreciation, but not if that restoration comes at the cost of human life. To take an example in India itself, the construction of Somnath temple was appreciable, and if the Babri Masjid dispute could have been resolved amicably, then we could have proudly looked forward to the restoration of a temple at that site, or better still, a school, hospital, orphanage or any other common utility. India did not need all the violence that happened in the name of this dispute, violence which took the lives of both Hindus and Muslims.

“Ayodhya” is standing up against Obama when he meddles with Kashmir and asks us to solve the problem before he agrees to our legitimate demand for Security Council membership.

India is greater than the exploitative US, obsessed with its hegemonistic diplomacy of appeasing dictators and insulting democracies.

For Obama, the Saudi king is a great friend. Oil. Oil, my dear. And for the Saudis too, the kafir American security umbrella is acceptable. Money, honey.

Standing up against Obama for your national pride, or against any other leader for that matter, is good if it involves a question of principle, not if it implies a sense of superiority and being judgmental about other nations. India has stumbled from an idealistic non-aligned path onto the pragmatic path of “realpolitik”, but while treading onto the toes of some small neighbours who have, in turn, accused India of trying to play Big Brother, an accusation which some bigger neighbours are now cleverly manipulating against India to extend their own hegemony. The point is, that hegemony and pragmatism are as much a part of international politics as national pride and self-respect, but letting that pride inflate your head into believing that you are “greater” than others is a folly.

I have never ever seen an American leader expressing sympathy with the exiled Kashmiri Hindus. The entire India desk at Capitol Hill has been so overwhelmingly JNU-ized that they will never think of Hindu pain and a Hindu nation still nurturing democratic values and a pluralism that’s so rare in this world of increasingly shrinking human values.

Perfectly valid point. However, while Hinduism as I know it is the best example of pluralism and tolerance among the world’s religions, I am not sure that the “Hindu nation” that some people desire will have place for this pluralism and tolerance.

For the US, Tianenman can be forgotten and the Dalai Lama is just a matter of breakfast honours. The real meat of friendship and business is with the communist rulers of Beijing. Money, honey. “Ayodhya” is genuinely giving shelter to exiled Tibetans and accepting the Dalai Lama.

Realpolitik. The same explanation as in the case of the Saudis.

“Ayodhya” is also opposing the firangs to overshadow the Commonwealth Games that we are hosting at a huge cost and inconvenience to the Indian people. Once they were called the British Empire Games. The queen is permanently made to sully the spirit of democracy and pluralism by heading the games organizing body. And we now have to have a dust-binned ‘Prince’ of the colonial rulers to compete with our President to have the games inaugurated. What a shame these “secularists” bring to the nations that gave birth to them!

If at all, the Congress, Gill sahib and the most revered Kalmadiji thought that the President of India doesn’t deserve to have the honours to inaugurate the games we are hosting, it’s fine. It’s their president, and their levels of respect for her.  Still, they could have managed to have an African President to get he games inaugurated. What stopped them?

Why always a gora whose ancestors looted our nation and bled us like no one else?

The mess that was caused in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games was due to corruption, and I, just like many other Indians, believe that things would not have been any different under any other party, as from our point of view, honest and competent politicians are as few in one party as in any other.

That we accepted the criticism until it was valid and asked them to shut up when it wasn’t is a reasonably balanced approach, unlike our insecure and defiant neighbours who are seeing a conspiracy theory even as their cricketers destroy the credibility not only of their country, but also of their sport, a favourite of the Commonwealth which is strangely absent from the Commonwealth Games.

Regarding the question of the queen heading the organizing body and her son inaugurating the Games, I think they have been rendered titular and ineffective as much in their own nation as anywhere else in the Commonwealth, so having them perform these ceremonial duties is just a matter of convenience, and in that too, we have asked/forced them to share this ceremonial stage with our own titular head-of-state. Where’s the problem?

Our dear anglicized friends would say, oh Tarun, grow up. We are a strong nation, why bother about such trivialities? It is this kind of people who testified against Bhagat Singh in the Lahore court and they are the apologists for the likes of Kasab. They could have well taken care of in a Brtitish colony like insects.

Those who testified against Bhagat Singh were probably anglicized loyalists, but the apologists for the likes of Kasab are a different breed altogether. They are the ones who raise the bogey of human rights only for selective causes while conveniently ignoring others like the plight of Kashmiri Pandits, or the variety of hostile conditions which our soldiers have to face. Unlike the anglicized loyalists who would probably have been happy under foreign rule as long as it fulfilled their material desires, these “human rights” type apologists think of themselves as revolutionaries, much like Bhagat Singh did. And even they haven’t uttered a word in support of Kasab as far as I can remember.

Life is not just “roti” and a chained splendour of “durbarism”. If that was the case, Soviet Russia won’t have collapsed and Gandhi won’t have fought against the British with a loin cloth and Hedgewar would not have started a movement to ensure we never got enslaved.

The reasons for Soviet Russia’s collapse were entirely different from the reasons that drove Gandhi to stand up against the British. And Hedgewar? He doesn’t even belong in that sentence.

“Ayodhya” is to stand up with the patriotic Indian soldier defending the motherland in Kashmir and demanding severe punishment to the Pakistani agents of separatism who sponsor stone pelters.

Many of those patriotic Indian soldiers defending the motherland in Kashmir will probably not agree with your definition of Ayodhya. And as for the stone pelters, they might be provoked and sponsored by some Pakistani agents, but at least some of them do have legitimate grouses against the Indian state and the Indian armed forces, and stone pelting is probably what they had to resort to when all else failed.

The problem is not the British. They are patriotic people. The problem is those self-defeating Indians who love white racism so much, their souls beaten up by Macaulayism. They love to be the slaves of the empire and get some leftover bones.

They are facilitated by the Indians who crave for some cosmetic positions and an allowance to register their presence in the gora-land.

“Ayodhya” is all about standing up against such pusillanimous attitude of the neo-raibahadurs.

When you say that the British are patriotic people, do you know that the British consist of four different nationalities – the English, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish – who have not necessarily been in agreement about their patriotism, even in recent history? Meanwhile, there is a small section of people in Britain, India and elsewhere in the world, which wants to look forward with an internationalist and humanist outlook, not backward with a narrow jingoistic outlook. Do you include these “world citizens” in your definition of neo-raibahadurs?

Say no to anything that’s against the grain of our nation, her pride and her sovereignty. That’s Ayodhya spirit to me.

The nation, our dear Bharatvarsha, is a replica of Ayodhya. The symbol of Rama’s nobility and virtuous regime. Those who destroy Ram Setu and go against the Sarayu’s soul are denationalized Indian passport holders.

India is an Ayodhya nation. Ram Rajya nation of Bapu.

No to violence and yes to inclusioveness. Where is Hindu-Muslim discord in it?

Except for the mention of Bapu, I do not see anything in those last few sentences which says yes to inclusiveness. As for the Ram Setu, it is a pity that we did not consider the ecological impact of the project to be of as much significance, if not more, as the impact on our religious sentiments, whatever they might be.

To me, India is much more than a replica of any one place, the rule of any one individual (however great he might have been), or the home of any one identity. India is one of the few places in the world where faith and rationalism can coexist together, where secularism does not mean that you cannot display your religious identity in public, where you can question even your gods and deities. That the space for such openness has been reducing is problematic, and this space needs to be protected, not just for certain faiths or ideologies or as a matter of political convenience or appeasement, but as a core value on the basis of which any free and democratic nation is built.

I disagree equally with the “human rights” apologists who perennially oppose our armed forces, the hawks who believe that these forces are the answer to every insurgency, the paranoid communists who see a Western conspiracy in every economic reform, the “slaves of the empire” who find fault with everything in their own country while heartily appreciating everything foreign, the “vote-bank” leaders who conveniently ignore illegal immigration and put our national security in peril, and the fundamentalists and jingoists who define India/Bharat in their own narrow ways, and often resort to violence against their own countrymen in the name of religion, language or caste.

Each of these groups of people has some valid arguments to make, and they deserve to be respected for that, but they often stretch those arguments to fit their respective ideologies, much like this columnist has done here. And that is where problems occur. Many of these problems often have a simple straightforward path which leads to a solution, but we are so often blinded by our ideologies and beliefs that we cannot see that path. Just like the path of building a school, hospital or some such utility at the disputed site in Ayodhya was a solution which so many ordinary folks on the street could think of and discuss, but not the powers that mattered.