[Reader-list] India & My conception of development

[Rakesh Iyer]

Dear all

This is part-I of a series of  mails, where I wish to look at claims of what
Bipin jee has mentioned regarding Muslims, as well as what my conception of
development and nation is. This mail would deal with my conceptions of
development and nation-state (or state-nation as India is one).

Before writing something here, let me clarify one thing. None of my ideas
are original. It's all there in the books to read and articles to find. I am
not a great human being to think about an original idea. Nor am I innovative
like journalists who thought of shoe-throwing to protest in a legitimate yet
innovative manner.

*Diversity & India*

India is a country/state-nation which has a lot of diversity. I call India
as a state-nation, because for me, a nation is a territory which has a
common culture, a common language and a common religion. By and large, even
the provinces in India don't have a common religion, though by and large
they do have a majority religion(Kashmir has Muslim, generally most
provinces have Hinduism, and North-East provinces have Christianity). And
hence, Tamil culture is quite different from say, Punjabi culture. Hence,
India is actually a combination of nations which have been united together
by means of a statist apparatus, which consists of the three organs:
legislature, executive and judiciary.

India has huge diversity even in terms of religions, and within religions
too, it has huge diversities. If we look at Hinduism, there are different
kinds of Hindus. To begin with, the word 'Hindu' itself was derived from the
word 'Sindhu' which was given by Arabs to the people living to the east of
the river Indus. Hence, it's ironical that we all use a word to describe a
religion, a word which was developed by the so-called invaders who looted
us. May be we should have developed a common word which doesn't remind us of
these invaders.

Anyways, coming back to our diversity. We have different kinds of texts
which can be treated as foundation of Hindus: the Vedas, the Upanishads, the
Gita, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and even others. Moreover, many lower
castes and tribals haven't read these texts; they have only heard these in
folklore form. And there are different versions of these texts as well in
different regions. Tulsidas' Ramayana is different from Kamban's Ramayana.
So do the tribals have different versions of Ramayana as well. Infact, in
some Ramayana versions, Sita is the sister of Ram, not his wife!

Similarly, even Islam and Christianity have huge diversity in India. India
is the only nation in the world where you can have Scheduled Caste Muslims
and Scheduled Caste Christians. Islam and Christians don't accept the caste
system or any system which creates inequality among their believers, as they
believe all human beings are equal. In our Hinduism, the caste system was
created, and while its' creation may have been for other purposes, it
degenerated into a system which discriminated against the today's SC's and
ST's and favored the rule of the elitist brahmans and kshatriyas on the
majority of the people who didn't belong to either of the varnas.

There are also linguistic and regional differences among people in this
country. A North-Indian Muslim has different language skills, different
customs and even different food to eat when compared with a South Indian
Muslim. Similar is the case for Hindus and Christians of either regions as
well. Also, within a state too, diversitites can be found. Eastern UP people
are very different from western UP people as well. So is the case for
Telengana when compared to coastal Andhra Pradesh.

Because of this diversity, India is very difficult to maintain as a state.
There are various diversities, and what is acceptable in one region of India
may not be acceptable in some other region. In a brahmanic household,
drinking of women would be barred. In Chhatisgarh and Karnataka, tribals
actually encourage their women to drink on festival occasions, and even
generally as it forms a part of their diet. Infact, it is supposed to give
them protein! Hence, to govern such a large state has its' own problems and
own complexities, which have to be maintained very carefully.

So now I dwell upon what aspect a state should take. Any state should accept
these diversities and hence ensure that they combine as a strength to help
in improving the lots of the people. As in Sarkaar film, Amitabh Bachchan
says 'taakat logon ko jodhne se badhti hai, unhein khilaaf karne mein nahi'.
Any state can be strong only when its people are united and willing to
remain together for a common cause. In case of India, inspite of our
differences and diversities, all the provinces of India remain together
because of the experiment of democracy, and the hope attached to it that
through this, our development is possible, our livelihoods can be better
off, and finally our lives would be much better off. And the reason this
development is necessary is that it is one of the major requirements for the
people to be happy.

India is certainly in a unique position. It has people belonging to
different religions and castes. Many people came from other countries to
India, right from the Aryans, to the Arabs, to the Mughals and even the
British. Many people from India converted to other religions, either by
fraud, force, allurement or even themselves with consent to improve their
own lives. Who converted why is something I can't answer, nor do I think
anybody else can. The fact is that perceptions have been created to ensure
that people view at it from fixed perspective instead of being flexible
about it.

And these perceptions strike at the very cause of unity. Why is unity
important? Not necessarily for the state to survive only. Unity can achieve
many things. At the village level, unity can force the panchayat system to
work properly. Various governments at various levels can be forced to bring
about development schemes and making them work at the grassroot level. Unity
can ensure that people engage themselves in sports and leisure activities
with a spirit of constructivism and team-spirit, which ultimately also
ensures development of personality, of body, spirit and mind. And ultimately
this is what makes a person happy. And happiness is the ultimate aim of
development according to me. Probably I am imagining utopia, but my goal
doesn't rest with economic betterment of a person, it is to ensure every
person is happy with his/her own life.

Unity is important as it supports people at times of despair. Unity can
achieve any action which has good purpose behind it. (Of course even bad
purpose based actions can be conducted with unity, but they ultimately will
hurt someone). Unity thereby helps us. And by dividing society like the
Congress sometimes or the BJP mainly has done, we won't achieve anything.
Social trust of the society will break. And this will result in various
problems of their own.

Disunity creates mistrust. And this ensures our politicians can get away by
fooling us in the name of religion. They can ask us to vote in the name of
religion and their security, but do nothing for us in return, in the field
of development. It can ensure we always remain in fear and anxiety for our
own lives instead of doing something constructive to improve our lives and
also the lives of others. It ensures states spend their resources tackling
discontent and terrorism. It creates bias amongst people and makes them
commit all kinds of horrendous crimes, as witnessed in Delhi 1984 and
Gujarat 2002. It ensures people are fooled at the base while those at the
top can easily enjoy the hard-earned money and resources at the cost of the
poor.

Our elites set the agenda, and we fall for it. Or probably, we also join the
elite as our interests are in resonance with them, and we collude with them
to deprive the vast poor majority of our population to satisfy our gains at
their cost. And we also go on mistrusting our people, with no communication
between us and them. And such a state will be destroyed one day or the
other, however much one tries the opposite way.

Hence, I won't say we are a state which exemplifies unity in diversity. But
yes, we should exemplify one. In the next article, I would talk about where
to unite and where not to. Also, I will deal with some part of nationalism
to a certain extent.

I would be very happy if people can put their points across, as at least I
can discuss and clarify points as well as improve my own understanding of
what India is and how can it be made better. I also feel people can put up
articles like me and hence we can debate and discuss many issues of India.

Regards

Rakesh