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The consecration of the Ram temple, in the presence of the PM and RSS chief, is a sign of the painful reality that the original values of the Indian Constitution have been decisively discarded by the Hindutva forces. The Secular State has been dumped. The Indian State has become an unabashed representative of the sectarian Hindutva paradigm
By Mubashir VP
Hey Ram to Jai Shri Ram: 20 dates that changed the course of India
Anand Vardhan Singh
Anamika
Pg: 394
Price: Rs 495
As a nation, India is in the throes of seminal, sweeping social changes. From the promised era of a Nehruvian, socialist India, its chequered evolution is currently undergoing a transition to a form of majoritarian, religious and Right-wing dictatorship, bankrolled by techno-capitalism in the neo-liberal era of globalisation. Indeed, ‘India after Gandhi’ seems to have truly become — ‘India without Gandhi’.
The ideals of Dr BR Ambedkar and the constitutional moralities of liberty and secularism are swiftly eroding, and, in its place, it seems, violent mobocracy with crass regard for pluralism and multiculturalism is taking popular sway. However, a moot question lingers on — how has the nation reached this stage?
Is this a failure of the idea of modern India, its essential vision as idealised in the freedom movement? Can India survive this savage attack on its foundational principles?
The book, Hey Ram to Jai Shri Ram: 20 dates that changed the course of India, authored by journalist Anand Vardhan Singh, is an insightful and well-researched account of a ‘nation in transition’. The book elucidates the phenomenal changes in post-Independent India and proffers rich insights into the current social and political imbroglio the nation is mired in. The book is a journey through the eyes of a concerned citizen and writer — from the shambles of colonialism, to the hegemony of Hindutva.
The book chronicles 20 epochal events that defined India in the contemporary era. While many studies have been done on the travails of Indian social and political problems, this book stands out by the dint of its narrative historiography, presenting the crucial changes as seen through important developments. Rather than finding fault in the colonial legacy, the book makes a bold attempt to situate contemporary India within the changes that swept the nation after Independence.
While certain scholars attribute the social polarization, and political fragmentation based on fissiparous identities, to the colonial baggage, the book untangles the events from the kaleidoscope of India’s journey, from State socialism to capitalist economy, from pluralistic, secular and inclusive politics, to militant, hegemonic and polarising Hindutva, which is instead a clear distortion of Hinduism.
The book starts with the assassination of Gandhi and how Indians were orphaned without a towering guiding light at a crucial stage of its Independence. The author is remarkably brusque when stating that Gandhi’s sacrifice was the maiden casualty for the portent dangers the nation awaited in its new, eventful and uncertain journey.
The assassination was not merely a heinous crime by a Hindutva fanatic, it was also the validation to use violence against an icon of peace with impunity. The blood spilled from the mortal remains of Gandhi is still splattered in the unwritten chapters on atrocities suffered by the hapless minorities, the poor, women and Dalits of this country.
The chapters on the inauguration of the Indian republic and the life of Lal Bahadur Shastri encapsulates the initial haggard growth of the nation modeled on State-commanded socialism. The author laments that the India represented by the anti-colonial struggle came to a halt with the tragic death of Shastri.
Echoing the feelings of social scientist Ramachandra Guha, the author concurs with the view that Indira Gandhi’s time saw a revamped India in more ways than easily discernible. The political ambivalence and naivete of Rajiv Gandhi undermined the foundation of the Indian Democratic State, he says.
The book analyses in detail these episodes and how these events contributed to the current political and social problems stalking the country.
Indira Gandhi took the nation to the command economy and started ‘token welfarism’, according to the author. This financial mismanagement and global events pushed the country to the brink of bankruptcy and the opening of the Indian economy could be rightly said as the single important economic reform in post-independent India, he believes.
The book traces this crisis and questions the success of economic liberalization with adequate statistics. At an abstract level, the country made a leap in economic indices, but the benefits accrued only to a miniscule population.
The book indicates that economic reforms further worsened the condition of the people in the margins as they were compelled to change from skill-based cottage industries, to a vast, informal labour market, where they had no permanent employment, job or social security. The unplanned opening of the Indian economy adversely affected the small scale industries as capital intensive monopolies and ruthless privatisation took hold over.
Through all these episodes, the poorest masses, the majority of the population in the urban and rural margins, continued to eke out a living without the enabling support of the State. The shock of demonetization still continues in the informal economy, with the small scale industries badly damaged as a result. The whimsical political action by the prime minister without any wider consultation or consensus, has deprived the country of the crucial services of MSMEs, employing lakhs of skilled professionals and workers, outside the capitalist market.
Indeed, one wonders how the government could tactically dodge its responsibility for rocking the nation’s economic boat with religious propaganda, and, more importantly, how most of the media, and Bollywood openly aligned with the ruling dispensation to hush up the starkly tragic stories of thousands of migrant workers, especially during and after the pandemic, and burning questions stalking the masses, such as huge unemployment, inflation, massive rise in inequality, while the wealth of a handful of billionaires, especially close to the regime, increased drastically. Organised State-sponsored corruption such as electoral bonds, crony capitalism, and relentless violence against the minorities continued unabated, among other issues.
At a political level, the book dovetails in depth other major developments in independent India from Indira Gandhi to JP and VP Singh, to the demolition of Babri Masjid, and the triumphalism of Hindutva. The defeat of an idealist JP and his ‘Total Revolution’, offered opportunities for the Sangh Parivar to appropriate the political vacuum, and the BJP was founded from the Jan Sangh, in 1980, after the Emergency. It is in power today in Delhi, though without a majority in Parliament.
This trajectory shows the inherent complexity of the Indian polity. Indian society, especially in the Hindi heartland, is divided on caste and religious identities; it has failed to coalesce into a solid national block and instead identities have got consolidated into polar singularities. The democracy of numbers aggravated these fault-lines without enough attempts to salvage this fraying solidification of identities.
The book effectively tracks how the phenomena of ‘Babri-Mandal’ politics rearranged Indian politics at granular level. It makes valuable insights into how the Babri Masjid issue was exploited by the Right-wing to socially engineer hate politics and polarisation, and diffuse the caste division among Hindu voters.
The Babri issue was expertly employed to diffuse the regional, ethnic and caste-based political mobilisation of voters. The author reminds of LK Advani’s famous quote, “Agar Mandal nahi hota, Kamandal bhi nahi hota.”
Around 52 per cent of the Indian population constitute the OBC, according to the 1931 census. The OBC reservation introduced by VP Singh via the Mandal Commission in 1990 was a game-changer in Indian politics. In Delhi and north India, the upper castes rallied against the reservation. This further consolidated the OBCs against the upper caste domination.
Picture this against the silent, consensual implementation of EWS reservation for the forward communities in 2019. This was taken for granted. This stark contradiction is a moving reminder of how casteism, with the upper caste narrative dominating, is till very much part and parcel of the Indian social fabric.
The Babri Masjid demolition and the consecration of Ram temple at Ayodhya, the last chapter of the book, summarizes the deplorable change in the secular orientation of Indian polity. The demolition was not only bricks and mortar of a medieval monument. It was a barbaric assault on the idea of India. The India of inclusive pluralism.
The consecration of the temple, in the very presence of the prime minister and RSS chief Mohan Bhagvat, is a sign of the painful reality that the original constitutional values have been decisively discarded by the Hindutva forces. The Secular State has been dumped. The Indian State has become an open and unabashed representative of the majoritarian and sectarian Hindutva paradigm.
The elegance of the book is that it also entails the interesting histories of culture and sports. It has devoted one section to India’s stunning win in the ICC World Cup 1983. Rather than limiting the soul of nations into political debates, the book has also studied sports and cultural landmarks.
Surely, the book could have included more cultural landmarks in the history of the nation while analyzing its journey. When politics becomes dry, shallow and without vision, it is the refinement of arts and culture that offers hope.
Anand Vardhan Singh’s path-breaking book is both an academic and journalistic study done with meticulous research. It is recommended reading for researchers, students, journalists, teachers and ordinary readers. Indeed, it is easy to read and understand.
As Shashi Tharoor mentioned in the foreword, “The book looks at a wide sweep of recent Indian history, examining both the soaring triumphs and crippling low points of our nearly 75 years of Independence.”