‘Independence’
At
the turn of the 20th century, when Indian politics was led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak (the ‘Father of the
Indian Unrest’), its raison d’etre shifted
from achieving social reform as espoused by Phule, Sir Syed and Ranade, to
achieving political reform. Achieving social reform as an objective, by completely
cooperating with the imperial government, was replaced by the goal of attaining
of self-rule or ‘Swaraj’ (according to Ambedkar at the cost of the former). Since then, ‘Swaraj’ would end up defining the country’s
political trajectory. Subsequently, Gandhi and Nehru also made ‘Independence’
their life’s objective, so much so that Nehru, during his 1937 election
campaign, called for people to vote for the Congress ‘only if they believed in
Swaraj’. Tilak, Gandhi and Nehru were all convinced that British rule was the
root of all evils plaguing the country, and that only in its removal lied the
country’s salvation.
Then,
as it happened, legislation after legislation, through Morley-Minto,
Montague-Chelmsford and the Cabinet Mission, the colonial enterprise came to an
end. Now that the ‘natives’ began to rule the roost, and every successive
government with their complacency and ineptness ended up making the British
look good, the need to demonize the European ruler was increasingly felt. Soon
enough, the Congress Party propaganda machine with unabashed use of state
machinery began eulogizing the ‘Independence Movement’ while idolizing its
leaders. The country’s history textbooks in their anti-Anglo Saxon zeal not
only erased pro-imperial narratives, but also the legacy of intensely patriotic
yet pro-British leaders such as TB Sapru and MR Jayakar from public memory. An
entire generation grew up believing that before the Battle of Plassey, India
was a ‘Sone Ki Chidhiya’, some sort of celestial Dwarka, Atlantis,
Neverland or Utopia; and that the British ‘looted it all’. And obviously, that
the spectacular and immaculate representative governments since 1947 have only
had their problems because of the ‘colonial past’.
Another evil to accompany the first
While
the anti-British propaganda machine ran unabated for 70 long years, India witnessed
the rise and then domination of another very similar rhetoric in the same
timeframe: Hindu nationalism. They are indeed quite similar as they are both
rooted in hatred, the former of the European, and the latter of anyone but the
Hindu. The world got to see how comfortably they could work together in
Maharashtra of the 1990’s, during the heyday of the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena
in the state politics. The first domino to fall was the name Bombay, to be
replaced by the Marathi equivalent ‘Mumbai’. As Suketu Mehta points out in
‘Maximum City’, all major cities in the world are called differently in
different languages. London is called so in English, while in French and
Spanish it is Londres. Cairo is called so in English, while in Arabic it is Al
Kahira. Bombay similarly was called so in English, in Hindi as Bambai, and in
Marathi and Gujarati as Mumbai.
Yet,
we saw the combination of anti-European and communal rhetoric trump common
sense, and the city was renamed. Following this was the rampant renaming of
streets earlier named after Europeans. The more prominent roads were renamed
after Hindu or Marathi leaders, and the other smaller streets after the
grandparents of the highest bidder. Never mind the historical or cultural
significance that these old names bore. After all, Europeans are monsters;
there is no question of them having done anything good for India.
Cadell vs Savarkar
The
road outside my apartment in Mumbai is one of the city’s principal arteries
since British times. When built during the first two decades after 1900, after
the Bombay Municipal Corporation decided to commission the suburbs Dadar, Sion,
Matunga and Wadala, the road was named after the British army officer Thomas
Cadell. Cadell was a war veteran who had played a key role in suppressing the
Sepoy Mutiny in 1857. Now, the Sepoy Mutiny was a revolt waged against the
British authorities of the time, not by the common populace, but by the
princes, landed aristocracy and feudal families whose inheritance was
threatened by a legal instrument called the Doctrine of Lapse. These rulers had
no love for the populace, and they called off the revolt the moment Queen
Victoria declared the safety of their fiefdoms in 1858. Social reformers of the
time including Sir Syed Ahmed and Jyotiba Phule had thanked the country’s lucky
stars that British rule was restored.
Then
in 1909, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar wrote the book ‘The Indian War of
Independence’, painting the rebellion as if it were something momentous like
the Fall of Bastille or the Russian Revolution. The Sena government, which
regarded Savarkar as one of its sources of inspiration, had found a golden
opportunity to correct a ‘historical injustice’.
And hence as fate would have it, Cadell Road was
renamed Veer Savarkar Marg.
To
pay homage to the imaginary ‘War of Independence’ perhaps. Also, never mind the fact that a
large portion of the Cadell road houses the Kapad Bazar, a large Muslim ghetto,
whose residents now are forced to write in their home address the name of a man
who hated their existence. Oh, maybe that part was deliberate. (Savarkar
fervently hated the British and the Muslims both; calling for the removal of
Urdu, Farsi and English loan words from Marathi.)
It
is a known fact that hatred is brilliant vote-catcher. But it is also
unquestionably true that hatred as a public policy inflicts deep wounds on the
society, which are very difficult to heal. Such anti-social ideologies must be
countered for the good of the nation. But while in opposition, the true liberal
must understand and accept that not all those who adhere to hatred in their
lives or politics are essentially evil. The objective of the liberal movement
should be to convince its opponents of the virtues of pluralism, equality, and
tolerance, while exposing the ugly face of communalism. The true victory of
liberal thought in India will be the day we as a country look at our experience
with the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals and the British from a dispassionate
standpoint, not through a jaundiced and partisan lens.
