Before I get down to reviewing
this book- A New Idea of India- by Hash Madhusudan and Rajeev Mantri, I must
confess that I stopped reading intellectual books claiming to have the recipe
of success for the individual, the society, the nation and the world at large,
long time back. The intellectuals intimidate me, their theories bore me. Most
of the thinkers appear to me like mercenaries waiting and watching the
successful trend to adopt them. They will pick already successful cases, build
a theory around them and then trot it around as if they were themselves
responsible for those successes. That said, I picked this book with a sense of
old intimidation. A serious book on contemporary politics, society and
economics with recommendatory and laudatory notes from almost ten leading
intellectuals from both sides of ideological divide with a hard cover- the book
came to me courtesy Indic Academy.
It is a general refrain that one
should not judge a book by its cover. Now, here is one book which one can
safely judge from the cover. The cover is beautifully designed with the
backdrop of original copy of Indian Constitution, adorned with the paintings
based on Hindu mythology. Those who pretended to be defended the Constitution a
few months back while resolving to wipe out the traditional symbols of Hindu
Dharma would not believe the original constitution to carry pictures from
Ramayana and Mahabharata. The Constitution of India represents the time when
India, that is Bharat, bruised, battered and fractured into pieces by the
fanatics. This was a time when a parliament balanced between the left and the
right, within and without the party in power, Congress. To counter the leftist
leanings of Nehru, we had a strong force of Patel and the balance resulted in a
Constitution. However, with the demise of Sardar Patel, Rajendra Prasad- the
Right in the ruling dispensation lost its mooring. As the Congress devolved
into an often despotic dynasty over the next half century, the Right was
relegated to a corner as the Nehruvian idea overwhelmed the entire nation from
Intellectual discourse to economic direction to judicial and political
positioning. It is this idea which left-leaning intellectuals called 'The Idea
of India' which they felt suddenly came under danger as the masses annoyed with
dishonest rhetoric and widespread corruption voted the supposedly right wing,
BJP under Narendra Modi came into power.
This tendency to fix a wide and
diverse nation as India under the singular idea of Nehru's socialism, minority
appeasement and majority shaming is what has frustrated the nation which spend
decades standing in queues to get something as basic as a Two-Wheeler or a
phone connectivity. The leftist intellectual elite which has comfortably
ensconced itself in an ecosystem built over the years still is neither able to
understand the political change in 2014 nor is able to tolerate it. They had
painstakingly built a gargantuan statue of Nehru, overshadowing not only any
diverse political opinion (represented the reality of Nehru as a politician,
quickly ensuring that after the demise of Sardar Patel, every dissenting voice
from Acharya Kriplani to KM Munshi was shown the door), rather the nation
itself. India, which had prided itself historically as a custodian of cultural
and ideological diversity was quickly reduced into what Sanjeev Sanyal mentions
in the foreword as various shades of Left- the Nehruvian left, the Marxist
left, the Lohiaist Left, the Lodhi Road Left and so on. Nehru's idea of an
embarrassed and accidental Hinduism, built around Godse pushed the Majority
community of India to a corner, to keep its head down in an eternal shame of
assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, and work without ever speaking out, without
ever being noticed. Having eliminated any competing voices, the elite intellectuals painted the Nehru's socialist-secularist idea as the singular concept which authoritatively defined India as 'the' idea of India. It is out of the frustration from this fanatic control over narrative that this book has emerged. This reminds me of Nietzsche's famous quote-
"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."
Such complete was the control of Nehruvian narrative on intellectual landscape of India that, in this book authors point out, that even the failure of Nehru's economic policies were blamed on the ancient Hindu culture when Economist Raj Krishna termed snail-paced growth of Indian economy as Hindu Rate of Growth and not a Nehru rate of growth. The book raises many such critical points analyzed in the course of study which we often tend to overlook because we have thus been conditioned by the media which has been taking side with the political force which till 2014 was considered as inevitable and because the public memory is short. The noise of narratives often cloud our understanding of things pushed to the populace innocently by the intellectually. There is huge noise since 2014 about a conspiracy to convert India into a Hindu Rashtra as if it is against the idea of a multi-faith society. The authors here begins with Savarkar's idea of a Hindu Rashtra in which every citizen would enjoy same rights and will be governed by identical laws irrespective of his or her caste, creed or religion. Taking from the definition of Dharma as a mode of life or Code of Conduct, the writer contends that India being a Hindu Rashtra can never become a theocratic state quoting BJP Patriarch Shri LK Advani who said that a Hindu Rashtra and a Secular State are virtually synonymous.
Unlike the narrative created by the vested intellectual interests claiming that India as a nation was formed only after 1947 (actually a claim contested by Nehru himself), the writers quote Ernest Renan where he wrote-
"The nation, like the
individual, is the outcome of a long past of efforts, sacrifices and
devotions."
Such a definition goes against
the intellectual tribe which claimed India as a nation to be an entity entirely formed
by Nehru and therefore ought to remain forever in debt with Nehru and his brand of
politics and by implication to remain eternally obligated to these
intellectuals. In spite of all evidences to the contrary, why these
intellectuals are hell-bent at erasing the history of India is also well
explained with Tom Sowell's quote taken from his essay "Intellectual and
the Society" –
"The only test for most
intellectuals is whether other intellectuals go along with them…Intellectuals
have no accountability to anybody but their own community."
This explains the relative silence
with which the sins of communal crimes of the past governments have been
whitewashed. How many even remember Indira Gandhi's statement on Nellie
Massacre wherein when questioned about the delay in calling in the Central
Forces (Assam was under President's rule), famously said- "One has to let
such events take their own course before stepping in." The lies have been
spoken so often to us as a nation that we have started believing then to be
truth. Authors painstakingly go to primary sources, substantiate their claims
and back their theory with official records. Take for instance the usual attack
on the Right wing by the LGBTQ activists who have been cunningly taught by the
media that it is the so-called Hindutva forces which have been opposing their
just liberation. It never came into common public notice that the three
petitioners opposing the decriminalization of Section 377 were Apostolic
Alliance of Churches, the Utkal Christian Council and Trust God Ministries. All
India Muslim Personal Law Board opposed it calling it against Indian values and
culture. Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind in a statement said that Homosexuality is against
nature, religion and cultural values of India. It should not be allowed. In
contrast RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said in 2018,
"Everyone is a part of
society. How they are, they are, accept people for what they are. Society has
changed. It is important that society prepares itself so people do not feel
isolated."
The leftist myth-making ability
is so subtle and is supported by international forces is so strong that still
editorials are written with the sole objective of making the woke population
believe that the Hindutva forces stand for orthodoxy on the LGBTQ issues
against the liberal Islamist and Christian mobs. Another eye-opener is the
narrative built around Rajiv Gandhi as the force behind Indian Mobile
revolution. In 1987, the World Bank funded the DoT and urged the government to
push for cellular revolution in India. Sam Pitroda who happily took the title
of Father of India's telecom revolution, undeservedly, blocked it, being
overcommitted to CDOT's chosen path of fixed line. He went to the media arguing
that luxury car phones were obscene in a nation where people were starving.
Between 1989 and 1999, tele-density of India barely changed from 0.6 percent to
2.8 percent. However, the actual game changer, writers contend was the 1999
National Telecom Policy which resulted in 15 percent tele-density by 2010. It
is also a given fact that both BSNL and AirIndia slipped into red under the
stewardship of Congress and it is also a story almost never told to the people.
This book is a lonely but firm
voice of the truth. It stands out for its spirit of search and speaking out
what has long been stifled. Authors diligently delve into various realms, from
Education (exposing the myth of minority education as hallmark of secularism-
say St. Stephens offering 40% reservation for 2% of population based on their
religious faith even after being funded by tax payers who a majorly from other
religion), into the area of Judicial activism and even the matter of judicial
appointments, economic principles and the shadowy politics of secularism
(Secular state paying salaries to Muslim clerics out of taxes largely collected
from competing faith). In fact the success of the book is that when you close
it, it leaves you hungry for more reading. I wish the authors decide to
dedicate one book to each of the sections they cover. Time has come for the
lies to be called out and for the truth to be told. This book should not be
recommended reading. It should be mandatory reading for those who care about
the country. We must explore the truth, find the truth, know the truth and face
the truth, because as Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) said- "There are two
ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to
believe what is true." We cannot allow ourselves to be fooled any longer.
The book is available for sale at Amazon.
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