LIBERATING INDIAN MIND -17
DEMOCRATIC TEMPERAMENT

Night’s interval is enough for us to cool down. I was a bit remorseful after losing my temper, so I myself made an advance, “We looked for the baby in wilderness while it was all the time in our lap.”

“The day you shall learn to speak straight, people shall start listening you. Presently they listen to unlistine you. Just for courtesy.

“I mean we have shown all the concern for communal harmony, all the worry on communal tension but did not understand where the problem lies. Not even Gandhiji, who spent maximum time fighting the social divide, could identify the root cause and therefore failed to reach the solution available.”

“I was expecting just this. You have road-rolled Marx, Gandhi stood safe and tall. The day will come, you shall smash him down, I thought, and lo! it has come to-day after such a long wait.” he laughed sardonically to temper his sarcasm.

I ignored him. “Gandhiji, and almost all our intellectuals, thought religious divide to be the culprit. They tried to make Allah and Iswar sit side by side, or at least the words to be uttered indiscreetly with equal reverence across religious divide. It was an easy task for the Hindus who had a thousand synonyms of the Lord Supreme and had already added a few from Muslim inventory, such as Khuda, Rabb, and had no problem with Allah, as those who thought no other synonym, not even Khuda could rightly signify the One who tolerated no Other. But even so they had no problem so long others used
the synonyms inadequately defining the Allah.

“It was the elite section of the Muslims, claiming non-Indian heredity and converted upper caste Hindus who formed a tentative solidarity and claimed for lion’s share in despicable democratic set up, but had a greater inclination towards oligarchy. Earlier Indians had religious divide, communal segregation as well. But the clash on social plane was missing as most of the converts to Islam had been Hindus and still retained the old ties.”

“That is half truth yaar. They formed the oppressed castes of Hindu society which they hated because they had been hated by them and found their salvation in Islam.”

“This may lead us astray. But in brief let me tell you that with rare exceptions, all of them were forced to change their faith through different measures. Even in Iran the same had happened. As a test case, see that none of the most oppressed castes got converted. Those who had changed their faith followed their old customs and beliefs, otherwise you shall neither be able to understand why a muslim Kabir advocated yoga and Upanishadic unity, criticised Hindus in tune with the Siddhas, why those converted belonged to weaver, smith, and dyers etc. who had something ready or in process, of which they could be deprived on slightest pretense as the land owners on their failure to pay the land rent due to recurrent failure of crops or famine but the cobblers, washermen, even those tortured to serve as scavengers did not avail the opportunity. But that is not the moot point.

“I simply say that communal-ism was missing in medieval India, it was wedged by the British. They themselves had racial, and colour biases ingrained in their psyche. Moreover colonial compulsions left them with the only remedy. They created and manipulated the fissure to deepen and engineered it to widen at the time of their imminent departure. Our political leaders right from the time of Nehru retained it as a shuffling device. How strange that Indian communal-ism in its last analysis proves to be secular. It has been donned as such by those who perpetuated it to enlarge their democratically unjustified demands.” I felt I have explained it threadbare.

“My dear, you have again come to zero point: communal-ism is secularism and secularism communal-ism. Why do you waste so much of your time and waste mine as well? Don’t you advocate Brahmvad in a different name?”

“I wanted to tell you that communal-ism is anti-democratic in nature. It persist because we did not adhere to democratic principles. I wanted to tell you that democracy is a great leveler. Genuinely followed, it can change our psyche as its compulsions are different. But if you want to identify a group as communal, identify the one with lurking tendency to get more than its share; the inbuilt love of autocracy, dictatorship in it; the readiness to use force as a weapon of quick solution.”

“You mean…”

I cut him short, “I don’t mean anything beyond what I have said. But the very fact that Indira Gandhi resorted to dictatorship, she herself was not free from the slur. The moment Prof. S. Nurul Hasan took over as education minister and started to gain absolute control over a subject in concurrent list in violation of fair play, the day the tool of molding minds was usurped he initiated the formidable program of revising Indian history. This was the first time that a coercive attempt was made to prove that all that is glorious in India came from Iran and civilization in India started with the Muslim rule in India. The virus entered our national psyche denying it any initiative, accomplishment, and innate ingenuity. It has destroyed our immune system, that is one reason you fail to receive the correct signals. If cultural castration hurts you, destruction of immune system may be another option.”