Purushottam Agrawal - Nehru's Spectacularly Indian Vision and the Wrath of the RSS
The Modi
government's efforts to 'democratise' the Nehru Memorial and Museum and Library
(NMML) by embarking on, among other things, building a 'Museum of Prime
Ministers' on the Teen Murti premises is seen by many as an effort to
"dilute" the memory of India's first Prime Minister in popular
consciousness. In this essay, former Chairperson, Centre of Indian
Languages, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Nehru scholar Purushottam
Agrawal explains why the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the
ideological mentor of the current government, bears such a deep hatred for
Nehru.... Fundamentally uncomfortable with democratic institutions and intellectuals, the
RSS, he says, would like to obliterate the memory of Nehru who was a great
institution-builder and intellectual himself. Not just that, the first Prime
Minister of India, though a rationalist and moderniser, was also deeply rooted
in his tradition, which helped him connect with the people: this connect later
became "the greatest hurdle in the way of the emergence of any politics of
religion, including political Hindutva" for many years.
see also
Nothing requires
greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of
non-thought.
Milan Kundera [Czech-born French
writer]
Kundera's
philosophical generalisation of his own anguished experience of the Communist
regime repeatedly re-validates itself in diverse places, with the Nehru
Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) being the latest such instance. The current
government and its supporters are making vigorous ‘thought efforts’ to convince
the academic community and others of the innocence of their intentions and the
nobility of their designs.
But the facts indicate
otherwise. Their stated 'intention' is to rectify the imbalance by giving
leaders and public figures of the national movement, other than Nehru, their
'due'. The implication here is obvious. And yet, NMML Director Shakti Sinha
recently told journalist Sheela Bhatt in an interview that as of now, 'Nehru
occupies only 25, may be 35 per cent, of the museum'.
The NMML has seen controversies earlier as
well, but those did not involve subjecting the institution to a sort of 'de-Nehruisation'.
A mature government would have drawn the right lessons from these episodes
which preceded 2014, when a government with an unambiguous mandate for change
was voted to power. For the NMML was on the right track when the Modi
government took charge.
Seminars and talks were being held regularly,
papers were being published. Most importantly, a number of young scholars were
being invited to present their research and were being encouraged to do so in
Indian languages. The new regime could have taken this initiative further, even
if it did not want the incumbent Director to continue. But its intentions
became quite clear from the way the appointment of the next Director was
ensured by tweaking the advertisement issued for the purpose after the then
director Mahesh Rangarajan had resigned in 2015. Well-known academic and now
Vice Chancellor of Ashoka University Pratap Bhanu Mehta who was appointed to
NMML's executive council by the Modi government resigned in protest and called
the exercise an attempt to "marginalise academic
considerations".
The response to
Mehta's anguish has been typical of the present regime—it recently replaced him
with Republic TV's Arnab Goswami, who helps amplify the current government’s
propaganda on his channel. Mehta's apprehensions were vindicated further when
another appointee, journalist Ram Bahadur Rai, came on board. In an interview
to 'Outlook' in June, 2016, Rai had bluntly described the Constitution of India
as "a new testament of our gulaami (slavery)". Rai
was only reiterating the age-old RSS discomfort with the Indian Constitution.
It is now quite clear
that the present regime and its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak
Sangh (RSS), took the 2014 mandate as a signal to push their Hindutva agenda in
an aggressive manner. Their confrontationist posture may come as a surprise to
some liberals who had been taken in by the "development for all"
rhetoric, but all those familiar with the RSS worldview and its long-term
project were not surprised at all by the way things unfolded not only at the
NMML, but in general.
Disrupting
democratic governance
In the subtle, and not
so subtle, manner in which the character of the NMML is sought to be changed,
and the 'effort of thought' being made to provide supporting 'arguments', there
is a deliberate attempt to disrupt the institutional arrangement of democratic
governance. This can be seen not just at the NMML, but also in the case of the
judiciary, the Election Commission of India (ECI), the Central Information
Commission (CIC), the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), at Jawaharlal
Nehru University (JNU) and other universities, the University Grants
Commission — even the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Central Bureau of
Investigation (CBI). Clearly, the idea is to reduce democracy to a mere numbers
game without any respect for the various institutions; democracy has
willy-nilly been replaced by an authoritarian, whimsical regime headed by the
'Supreme Leader'.
Secondly, there is a
deliberate and concerted effort to demonise intellectuals and their vocation.
For the first time, the expression, 'Intellectual Terrorism' can be heard not
just on TV debates and in public speeches, but also in Parliament. Refer to the
speech by Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Jitender Singh
in August 2016.
Anti-intellectualism
is fundamentally violative of the Indian ethos. Ravana, despite being a great
scholar himself, is perceived negatively in the epic imagination of India as he
persistently persecuted the rishis (the scholars and
intellectuals). The relatively less known story of Nachiketa speaks of the
courage to speak truth to power and its appreciation by Yama, the death god
himself.
Even in historical
times, barring the occasional cases of persecution, the general trend has been
of respecting intellectuals and scholars. Kings like Akbar and Krishnadeva Rai
enjoy a revered position in the popular imagination because of their respect
for scholars, sants, poets and intellectuals. Anti-intellectualism
is a natural corollary of authoritarian ideologies and regimes—left or
right—claiming to speak on behalf of the people and deciding the history of the
nation and its destiny. Dissenting intellectuals are labelled as the 'enemies
of the people' or 'anti-nationals', depending on the ideological inclination of
the regime.
And, despite all its
claims to being authentically Hindu/ Indian, the RSS's idea of the nation,
along with its hatred for intellectuals, is an Indian adaptation of western
right wing nationalism. The attempt to privilege 'sentiments' and 'feelings'
over rational discourse; to exonerate verbal and physical violence are integral
to right wing mobilisations the world over, so is aggressive misogyny. In the
right wing 'nationalist' imagination, women must remain within their limits and
if they don't, they must be brought to their senses. That is the psychology
which drives right wing trolls on the social media to use filthy abuse to teach
women the 'necessary lessons'. These two features — discomfort with
institutions and hatred for intellectuals — are at the root of the RSS's
deep, helpless discomfort, rather hatred for Nehru, the great builder of
democratic institutions and an intellectual himself.
They have tried to
appropriate Gandhi, Patel, and Bose; but Nehru has always been an anathema to
them. Why? It is because he was a rationalist and a moderniser but also deeply
rooted in his tradition, and hence very effective with the people. Despite his
'atheism' and 'westernism' - two attributes over-emphasised by friends and
foes alike - Nehru could connect with the Indian people magnificently: he could
describe dams and industries as the 'temples of modern India' without leading
to any hurt sentiments. He was stridently opposed to the mystification of the
political process and to the politics of religious identity. He earned his
connect with his people the hard way. This connect reached magical proportions
during the national movement and later, became the greatest hurdle in the way
of the emergence of any politics of religion, including political Hindutva.
The Hindutva forces
have been aware of this Nehru Magic and have been trying hard to defeat it by
means fair and foul, mostly the latter. One of the tricks has been to attribute
a very crude statement (‘Englishman by education, Muslim by culture, Hindu
merely by accident’ ) to him. Nehru never said
anything of the kind. This 'quote' was imposed on him in the 1950s by Hindu
Mahasabha leader N. B. Khare, a fact duly noted by M.J. Akbar amongst others.
The motive for this spurious quote and other such troll attacks is clearly to
discredit Nehru amongst Hindus. Nehru had written, ".. (that) the Muslim
organisations have shown themselves to be quite extraordinarily communal has
been patent to everybody. The (Hindu) Mahasabha’s communalism has not
been so obvious, as it masquerades under a nationalist cloak." …read
more:
see also
For
RSS, VHP, target is Supreme Court, goal is temple
RSS presents most lethal internal danger to democratic-secular Indian polity
RSS presents most lethal internal danger to democratic-secular Indian polity
