HT Archive: A call to forge a sense of national identity

Hindustan Times

a day ago

I propose to speak bluntly and sincerely about the state of the nation 50 years after Independence. I would be dishonouring the memory of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and of his mentor, Mahatma Gandhi, if I try to be economical with the truth. Citizens celebrate India's independence from British rule in the streets of erstwhile Calcutta. (Getty Images)
Those of us who have lived through the earlier days of free India, when the entire nation was looking forward with zeal and fervour and with a sense of national pride, cannot but look upon the present times with deep anguish and distress. The only achievement of Indian democracy has been that it has survived unfractured for 50 years. The achievement is all the more creditable, since no other democracy has had such diversity in unity, or was such a mosaic of humanity. All the great religions in the world have flourished in India. We have 15 major languages written in different alphabets and derived from different roots and for good measure, our people whom you can never call taciturn express themselves in 250 dialects.
In 1950, we started as a Republic with three inestimable advantages.
First, we had 5,000 years of civilisation behind us –– a civilisation which had reached 'the summit of human thought' in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson. We had a superb entrepreneurial spirit, honed over a century of obstacles.
Secondly, whereas before 1858, India was never a united political entity, in that year, the accident of British rule welded us into one country, one nation; and when Independence came, we had been in unified nationality for almost a century under one head of state.
Thirdly, our founding fathers, after two long years of laborious and painful toil, gave us a Constitution which a former Chief Justice of India rightly described as 'substance'.
Unfortunately, over the years we dissipated every advantage we started with, like a compulsive gambler bent upon squandering an invaluable legacy.
For the first 40 years, successive governments imposed mindless socialism on the nation, which held in thrall the people's endeavour and enterprise. They respected the shells of socialism state control and state ownership while the kernel, the spirit of social justice, was left with no chance of coming to life. We shut our eyes to the act that socialism is to social justice what ritual is to religion and dogma is to truth.
The most persistent tendency in India has been to have too much government and too little administration, too many laws and too little justice, too many public servants and too little public service; too many controls and too little welfare.
The picture that emerges is that of a great nation in a state of moral decay, of which corruption and indiscipline are two of the several facets. In the land of Mahatma Gandhi, violence is on the throne today. Mobocracy has too often displaced democracy. The contribution of modern India to sociology has been Bandh –– the closure of an entire city by militant rowdies.
If I am asked to name one curse which deserves to be regarded as the greatest curse of India, I would say it is casteism.
Unfortunately, divisiveness has become the Indian disease: Communal hatred, linguistic fanaticism, regional fealty, and caste loyalty are gnawing at the vitals of the unity and integrity of the country. To the growing army of terrorists and professional hooligans, caste or clan, creed or tongue, is a sufficient ground to kill their fellow citizens.
National integration is born in the hearts of the citizens. When it dies there, no army, no government can save it. Interfaith harmony and consciousness of the essential unity of all religions is the very heart of our national integration.
The soul of India aspires to integration and assimilation. The day will come when the 26 states of India will realise that in a profound sense they are culturally akin, ethnically identical, linguistically knit and historically related. The major task before India today is to acquire a keener sense of national identity, to gain the wisdom to cherish its priceless heritage, and to create a cohesive society with the cement of Indian culture.
Edited excerpts of an article written by eminent jurist and author Nani A Palkhiwala that appeared on August 15, 1997.