Manu Pillai is on the fringes of being able to think

Manu Pillai writes-

To some thinkers, India was enriched and made strong by the breathtaking heterogeneity that had long been its hallmark; others argued that homogeneity was what made sturdy nation-states, and as far as possible, diversity ought to make way for a master narrative and a master culture, largely woven around a majoritarian religious principle.

Why does Pillai not mention that to other thinkers, India was enriched by ants capable of digging up gold and men whose heads were in their stomachs? There were also some people who thought India was enriched by economic activity. Such thinkers were far superior to the stupid sort who prattled in breathless, school girl fashion, about 'breathtaking heterosexuality' or whatever.

Thinkers are supposed to be smarter than the ordinary man. People who talk stupid shite are not thinkers. They are Shashi Tharoors.

To some, as Shashi Tharoor puts it, India resembled a thali or a platter with “a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast.”

How stupid do you have to be if you think Tharoor is worth quoting? Or is it a Malyallee thing?

This vision of nationalism was focused on transcending difference by looking to a shared, modern future – whatever India’s fragmented yesterdays may have been, everybody could now be an equal partner in shaping its tomorrow.

This vision was bullshit. European Imperialism had become unsustainable. It was obvious that the successor states would look like Nation states whether or not they had any source of internal cohesion. The Treaty of Laussane showed that, if Islam featured, then Religion would trump Language when it came determining territorial boundaries. Greek speaking Muslims went to Turkey and Turkish speaking Christians went to Greece. Interestingly Hindu areas which could have gone to Burma chose India while the Muslim Rohingyas had always wanted to join East Pakistan. No doubt there are non Hindu states in the Indian Union. But they have separatist movements. By contrast, there is no Hindu separatist movement in India. Thus, whether we like it or not, it is Hinduism which defines India. Minorities may want out but they can only sustain a separatist struggle if they are contiguous to a foreign country willing to help them.

On the other hand, to proponents of what would become Hindutva, this was, to quote Ashutosh Varshney, the “opposite of nation building” for a “salad bowl does not produce cohesion; a melting pot does”. And if India had to become a melting pot, as opposed to a thali or a salad bowl, its regional cultures and local identities would have to make sacrifices for a greater cause. Hindutva was the pot, and it was the smaller cultures that would have to endure the melting.

This is foolish. Hinduism, notoriously, is riddled with all sorts of food taboos. We have no choice but to use thalis even to dine with our own family. We can't just throw everything into the stew-pot. At dinner, we see the stricter granny won't take any root vegetables. The less strict granny will have potato but not onion. But, unlike the strict granny, she won't take tomatoes unless fully de-seeded. Both blithely turn a blind eye to chicken or egg preparations for the son-in-law because the fellow is a Harvard M.B.A or has landed a job with Google.

Pillai is a Hindu. Does he really think any Hindutva proponent is crazy enough to propose large-scale intermarriage between castes, let alone a homogenization of Hindu diet?

Given that the freedom fighters had to rally Indians behind them and stand up to imperial might, it is understandable that the first of these visions was more popular – to take everyone along in a working consensus was wiser than to succumb to quarrels about which culture would become national, and whose identities would need to be renounced.

The freedom fighters rallied people by saying Whitey was stealing everything. We must throw out Whitey. Some went further and said we must also throw out anything which came with Whitey- like the English language.

Instead of one kind of uniform appearance, a joint cooperative effort was what they envisioned. As early as 1884, the poet and champion of the modern Hindi language, Harishchandra, explained this vision of Indian nationalism. Referring to all residents of Hindustan as Hindus, he declared:

“Brother Hindus! You, too, should not insist any more on all details of religious faith and practice. Increase mutual love and chant this ‘mahamantra’. Who lives in Hindustan, whatever his colour and whatever his caste, he is a Hindu. Help the Hindus. Bengalis, Marathis, Panjabis, Madrasis, Vaidiks, Jains, Brahmos, Mussalmans, all should join hands.'

This guy was agitating against cow-slaughter and for the replacement of Urdu by Hindi. This greatly reassured the 'Mussalmans'. 

The following year, the prominent Muslim reformer Sir Syed Ahmed Khan added his weight to this conception of Indian nationalism: “Remember,” he pointed out, that “the words ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muhammadan’ are only meant for religious distinction, otherwise all persons whether Hindu, Muhammadan, or Christian, who reside in this country belong to one and the same nation.’

Sir Syed rejected the notion that 'the two communities' of India could be represented by the Indian National Congress. He laid the foundation for the formation of the Muslim League and thus the creation of Pakistan.

Why is Pillai quoting people whose legacy was Partition?

By 1909, Madan Mohan Malaviya too, in an address to the Indian National Congress, reaffirmed this position. “How ennobling it is,” he pronounced, “to even think of that high ideal of patriotism where Hindus, Mohammedans, Parsees and Christians stand shoulder to shoulder as brothers and work for the common good of all... we cannot build up in separation a national life such as would be worth living; we must rise and fall together.”

Malaviya helped found the Hindu Mahasabha. Whom will Pillai quote next? Savarkar? Jinnah?

Perhaps the greatest support for this vision of modern Indian nationalism came from Mahatma Gandhi and the country’s future prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

But, it was Gandhi and Nehru who pushed Jinnah down the path to Partition. The former treated him as a Muslim leader, not an all India politician, while the latter thought he wasn't even that but simply some sort of scarecrow representing 'feudalism' or something of that sort.

Though they disagreed on many things, the Father of the Nation and his protégé were more or less in agreement on the broad idea of what made the Indian people one.

But this agreement was worthless. It was Jinnah and Liaqat and Shurawardy and so forth that they needed to convince. Nehru couldn't even convince his pal, Sheikh Abdullah, to accept integration into India of his Muslim majority area.

No one can pretend that either Gandhi's or Nehru's 'vision' prevailed after Independence. Rather India became a little more, not less, Westernized. Jawaharlal and Indira spoke idiomatic Hindi. Rajiv's Hindi was poor- 'hum jeetenge ya losenge'- while Rahul's Hindi and English are both so moronic that only Malayali speaking people will elect him.

Ethnic nationalism would not work here because the subcontinent was bursting with ethnic diversity, and forcing any kind of rigid, overpowering uniformity over its peoples would break the nation before it was even born.

Quite true. That's why it was clear to everybody that India would either be a Hindu nation or it would be a mere geographical expression.

Religion, as far as Gandhi saw it, could mobilise people but could not serve as a sufficient or enduring basis for nationalism.

Nor could anything else. Gandhi believed in village autarky. There was no need for a Nation.

It had value, admittedly, and there was civilisational unity among the people despite numerous differences – why else would men and women from across the subcontinent crisscross the land on pilgrim routes that encompassed Rameswaram and Benares, Jagannath and Haridwar? But this did not make India a land of Hindus alone – everyone who had adopted India as their home had a place in the nation.

Including the Eurasians. Had the British transferred power to 'country bottled' Britishers or people with a British ancestor, would Gandhi or Bose or Nehru been satisfied? Of course not. They wanted power for themselves. They pretended that their objection to the Brits was that they were mere sojourners, but ignored the fact that there was a sizable Eurasian and 'country bottled' British community.

As the Mahatma wrote, “Hindustan belongs to all those who are born and bred here and who have no other country to look to. Therefore, it belongs to Parsis, Beni Israels, to Indian Christians, Muslims and other non-Hindus as much as to Hindus.

Why no mention of country bottled Brits and Eurasians?  They were greater in number than either Parsis or Jews. Suppose Britain had sent over a hundred thousand of their poorer class to settle in India, would Gandhi have been content to live under their rule? No. He wanted power and influence and the only way he could get it is if the majority community- the Hindus- had the lion's share of political representation.

Gandhi said-

'Free India will not be a Hindu raj; it will be an Indian raj based not on the majority of any religious sect or community, but on the representatives of the whole people without distinction of religion...”

But the 'representatives of the whole people' would be mainly Hindu. If it were Muslim, Gandhi would have no influence.

“Religion,” he believed, “is a personal matter which should have no place in politics.”

Jinnah said the same thing. But then Queen Victoria too had talked about her Empire in India as non discriminatory. Such platitudes are worthless. Why does Pillai bring up the matter?

Naturally, the idea of nationalism as a commodity designed only for Hindus was as abhorrent to him as the notion that Muslims constituted a separate nation and could seek, for that reason, an exclusive territory on which to live.

What was abhorrent to him was the notion that he was a stupid old man.

Nehru, too, articulated nationalism in similar terms where diversity was not an impediment to love for one’s country, and inclusiveness and tolerance were, in fact, an ancestral principle once again elevated to the forefront as India reclaimed its destiny in modern times.

But repeating such platitudes ad nauseam doesn't change anything. Anyway, Vajpayee and Modi have shown they too can play this game.

He, too, pointed to a certain civilisational unity. “Some kind of a dream of unity,” he argued in The Discovery of India, “has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilisation. That unity,” however, “was not conceived as something imposed from outside”, as the British had done. “It was something deeper, and within its fold the widest tolerance of belief and custom was practised, and every variety acknowledged and even encouraged.”

Nehru, who called Allahabad Prayag long before Yogi Adityanath came to power, could only have been referring to Hinduism. After all, there had been large Islamic Empires in India which had a unifying tendency, but these Empires came from outside.

Various races, religions and ethnicities had co-existed from the dawn of time in India, and difference was accommodated within a larger tradition rather than subjugated or rejected.

That larger tradition was Hinduism.

There was, in other words, room for everyone in India in the past, and the India of the future would reinforce such inclusive national ideals in order to make its way in the twentieth century and beyond.

This 'inclusivism' was what the German indologist Paul Hacker derided and castigated as the Original Sin of 'neo-Hinduism'.

To quote Tharoor again in this context, “The singular thing about India is that you can only speak of it in the plural.

But he is speaking of it in the singular. How stupid is he?

'This pluralism emerged from the very nature of the country; it was made inevitable by India’s geography and affirmed by its history. There was simply too much of both to permit a single exclusionist nationalism” that was based on narrow parameters.

Fuck is wrong with Tharoor? Did he not notice that India does not permit you to have dual citizenship? It has a highly exclusionary conception of who is or isn't a citizen.

Nothing was made inevitable by India's geography. Switzerland and Belgium and the UK have more than one language. The USA has far greater genetic diversity. So what?

Instead, Indian nationalism was birthed consciously by its leaders, in whose mind democracy, a liberal order, and enough space for coexistence would forge a unique nation in which everyone could thrive, and disagree, in liberty and peace.

It was only 'birthed consciously' because they went to English medium schools or were affected by those who had been to such schools because they wanted to advance themselves under the Raj. Since some people, belonging to different religions, were able to thrive in British India, they thought the same thing would continue once the British minority had been chased out of the country. The problem was that the next smallest minority would then be in the firing line. Thus the Muslims created their own state so as to get away from the Hindus and then the Sikhs wanted their own state to get away from the Hindus and Christian Nagas wanted their own state and so on and so forth. Hindus, by contrast, don't want their own state. Why? They already have it. A Hindu 'chai-wallah' can become P.M and, what's more, get re-elected. It is now clear that poor Hindus who go to RSS schools can dream of rising all the way to the top. They don't have to go to Harvard. Hard work will suffice.

If a nation was, as Marcel Mauss noted in L’Anee Sociologique, a society “where there is a relative moral, mental, and cultural unity between the inhabitants”, in India that unity was exemplified in the mature understanding among its peoples to preserve and cherish diversity.

Which is why there is no such thing as Pakistan or a Khalistan movement or Naga rebels or a Naxal insurgency.

This vision of nationalism was not without its challengers. VD Savarkar articulated in what is now a founding text of the Hindutva vision of India an ideology where “Hinduness” rather than a celebration of unity in diversity becomes the cornerstone of the nation.
This was not originally a religious argument, offering instead several political criteria. After all, Hindus themselves were hardly a united force. The 1911 census of India found, for example, that “a quarter of the persons classed as Hindus deny the supremacy of Brahmans, a quarter do not worship the great Hindu gods...a half do not regard cremation as obligatory, and two-fifths eat beef”. There was, in other words, no perfect way to define who was a Hindu and who was not on account of the sheer divergence of custom and practice within Hindu communities – ie, Hindus, too, could only be understood in the plural rather than the singular.

But this was equally true of the UK. More than a quarter of the population denied the supremacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury and refused Communion with the Established Church. Half did not regard burial as obligatory despite the Christian doctrine of resurrection. Two fifths ate horse meat if nothing better was affordable.  There still isn't a perfect way to define who is a Man as opposed to a Woman. But there is a good enough way to define who is or isn't an Indian citizen. By contrast, it is more difficult to say who is a British citizen because those with dual citizenship may have their British nationality taken away. We don't yet know whether of not this is wholly legal.

Savarkar offered an explanation for this state of affairs. The Hindus, soon after the Aryans arrived, had formed themselves into a nation. Over time, however, this was “first overshadowed and then almost forgotten” as culture and identity became fragmented. Lord Rama, who is treated by Savarkar as a historical figure, rejuvenated the nation, only for its unity to be crushed by the advent of Muslim invaders.
Leaving aside the lack of historicity in this argument, the point ultimately made was that what bound together the Hindu nation was the “blood of the mighty race” of the Aryans, so that “no people in the world can more justly claim to get recognised as a racial unit than the Hindus and perhaps the Jews.” That is why, he claimed, “the Nayars of Malabar weep over the sufferings of the brahmins of Kashmir” (when in fact the Nairs had little knowledge of where precisely Kashmir was or what its brahmins were doing).

Pillai knows that Nairs knew all about Brahmans because many of them were descended from Namboothri younger sons. They also knew about Kashmir because Sankaracharya had established a Mutt there which continued to be staffed by Namboothri Brahmans. Thus, Nairs were more, not less invested, in Kashmiri Brahmans- more particularly if their persecutors were Muslim- than they would be in the fate of Tamil Brahmans. Savarkar knew what he was talking about. Pillai doesn't.

Meanwhile, though Muslims and Christians in India were converts from Hindus of yore, they were, nonetheless, disqualified from membership of the nation.
Why was this so? Hindus, according to Savarkar, were members of a single nation because no matter the countless diversities they counted within their ranks, no matter how fragmented they were, they saw India not only as their motherland (mathrubhumi) and fatherland (pitrubhumi, the land of their ancestors), but also as their holy land (punyabhumi).
Muslim and Christian converts might fulfil the first two criteria but they did not envision the subcontinent, defined since antiquity as the land between the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean, as sacred – it was in Mecca and Rome and other foreign lands that their sacred sites were located. The Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, and others whose religions were born in India were all eligible to be members of the Hindu nation, but Christians and Muslims, whose faiths emerged in lands beyond India’s historical limits, were at best second-class citizens.

Savarkar was wrong. India belongs to the proletariat who will rise up and massacre all class enemies and class traitors and everybody else till the country belongs to our Great and Glorious Comrade Chairman.

Savarkar’s heir, MS Golwalkar, built on this idea and rejected the notion of territorial nationalism, as promoted by Gandhi, Nehru and the freedom fighters from the very start. “In this land,” he declared, “Hindus have been the owners, Parsis and Jews the guests, and Muslims and Christian the dacoits.”

Golwalkar was grievously in error. India belonged to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty under strict primogeniture. So tough titty Varun.

Religious resentment was pronounced in Golwalkar, who was suspicious of minorities. “They are born in this land, no doubt,” he wrote. “But are they true to its salt? Are they grateful...? Do they feel that they are the children of this land...Do they feel it a duty to serve her? No! Together with the change in faith, gone are the spirit of love and devotion for the nation.”

Mani Shankar Aiyar held a similar sentiment towards 'neech' fellows like Modi- 'They are born in this land, no doubt. But are they true to its salt upon which Mahatmaji took out monopoly at Dandi and then passed it on to Jawaharji and his posterity in saecula saeculorum?'

In essence, then, the Hindutva vision of the nation was perched on the twin notions of Hindu pride as well as an antagonism towards the ominous, disloyal “other” – nationalism, according to Golwalkar, was not “a mere bundle of political and economic rights”, it was a cultural idea in which some were included and some had necessarily to be left out.

But this is every political party's vision of the nation. We own everything. Everybody else is anti-national.

But this predictably controversial Hindutva vision existed largely on the fringes of society. While the inclusive nationalism of Gandhi, Nehru and assorted political leaders came from direct experience of fighting for freedom, from a personal interaction with the people, Hindutva was constructed by thinkers who were not active participants in the struggle against imperialism and therefore could fabricate theories divorced from the lived experience and reality of the masses.

Which, however, was very intimately known to Rajivji & Soniaji.

In actual fact, most Hindus hardly saw themselves as a fixed, united group who could transform that identity into a rock-solid sense of nationalism.

Because they were shit at seeing anything- let alone any hope of not being utterly shite.

Even the question of who exactly a Hindu was, in practical terms, remained frustratingly unresolved. In 1871, for example, a “committee of native gentlemen” defined as Hindu all those who believed in caste. But caste appeared among Muslims and Christians also. In the 1891 census, then, the Hindu was defined by exclusion, as “the large residuum that is not Sikh, or Jain, or Buddhist, or professedly Animistic, or included in one of the foreign religions, such as Islam, Mazdaism, Christianity, or Hebraism”.

In 1891 an atom was defined as an indivisible elementary particle. So what? Definitions don't matter.

Sir M Monier-Williams felt that the notion of a pan-Indian Hindu identity was “wholly arbitrary and confessedly unsatisfactory” for the simple reason that in practice, Hinduism was amorphous.

And we should care about this guy coz he was a Hindu pundit and thus knew what he was talking about. What's that? He was British? And got his professorship, in rivalry with Max Mueller, coz people thought he was the more fanatical Christian evangelist?

Why the fuck is Pillai quoting this cunt? How deracinated is he?

Some, such as a census commissioner in princely Travancore, argued that Hindus were those who accepted the faith of the brahmins, which, however, ran into trouble when one considers the words of JW Massie, who as early as 1840 pointed out that to consider the brahmin as representative of all Hindus was as bewildering a statement as saying that the Italians represented all Europeans – there was too much diversity for simplistic statements to be true.

Very true. But recall that WB Curtis, or some such person, said JW Massie had shit for brains, or words to that effect, as early as 1829.

Moreover, Colonel Q.R. Blimp- or some similar official- pointed out that all Pillais and other such darkies are stupid, ignorant and monuments of mendacity. Thus we should disregard all they say.

This is the problem that Indians who quote Western authorities face. Equally authoritative Westerners long ago decided that Indians have shit for brains and can't understand anything or make any sort of logical argument.