The Hindu Phenomenon – Girilal Jain, UBSPD  1994

Communalism – A Primer by Bipan Chandra, National Book Trust, 2008

These are two different books, espousing diametrically opposite view points on one of the most pressing issue of contemporary India, namely the question of Indian national identity.  Girilal Jain’s  little book published in 1994 was a defence of  the attempt at reinvention of the Hindu civilizational identity and its embracing. More particularly, Jain emphasises the need to embrace the country’s Kshatriya values.  Along the way, he points out how the country was enslaved at different times by the inability of its rulers to bring to the fore its Kshtriya values.

Jain refers to the inability of India to offer the kind of vigorous resistance to Mahmud Ghaznavi and subsequent invaders that was offered by Chandragupta Maurya against Alexander the Great. The reason, in his opinion was that political power had already moved down to the South as exemplified by the presence of Rashtrakuta, Satvahan, Chola and Vijaynagar empires. Perhaps this was also the reason why even the great Mughals could not fully conquer the South as they did the North. 

When did the Hindus begin the process the consolidation and self-affirmation after the traumatic invasion and subsequent conquest by the Muslim armies?  Early eighteenth century when Mughal empire collapsed and there was a stalemate when the British entered India.  The fact that the British did not come on a proselytizing enterprise also helped in this process.  In fact, Hinduism could come to terms with the Graeco-Roman heritage of western Christianity, which provided for a plurality in every sphere of human activity, a value close to the Hindu view of life whereas the same value system posed a challenge to Islam.

Partition, in the opinion of Jain did not affect this process of Hindu consolidation and affirmation and it provided the Hindus with a well-armed modern state of their own, which they did not have at any point of time in their History.  This echoes the cynical remark of  someone who noted that Partition of the sub-continent was perhaps the best  that could have happened to the Hindus as it got rid of a highly troublesome and problematic populace.

How would the phenomenon of ‘communalism’ of post-partition India fit in this narrative of Hindu evolution and assertion?  Jain views it essentially as difference in the conception of the Indian State by secularists and the Hindu religionists.  In the words of Jain, “the secularist-national position is that the Indian State embodies an ideal, and is there to serve it, that while it is a creature of the Constitution, it is above the people; that in our multi-religious society, there is no other choice.  In the Hindu view, the state has to be an expression of the Hindu ethos and personality.  Such a state cannot either discriminate against any religious group or seek to impose a uniform pattern on the inhabitants.”

This postulate  begs the question, what is intrinsic to Hindu civilization which prompts its intellectuals to assert that Hindus – and by derivation a ‘state expressing Hindu ethos and personality’ – would be non-discriminatory and protective of other religious followers?  Look at similar assumptions underlying the concept of the ‘Islamic State’ of our next door neighbour, Pakistan.  The Islamic State there was also projected to express Islamic ethos and personality and for this reason alone, non-discriminatory of minorities.  Look where it had travelled.  Leave alone its religious minorities, Pakistan has not been able to protect the sub-religious Islamic sects such as Shias and  Ahmadiyas.

While it is true that the secularist ideal of the Indian state  lies outside the religious  ethos  of its people,   for that reason alone it need not be divorced from the personality of the Indian people.  It is not an ideal to which the people of India cannot relate to and cannot uphold.  Even the Hindu religious notion of a personal god and the presence of diverse gods across castes, communities and even families encourage tolerance and forbearance of other communities, thus lending a helpful hand to the Indian State in upholding the ideal of non-discrimination.

While the book of Jain is provocative, “Communalism – A Primer” is a dull propagandist material which is also devoid of any kind of  analysis of what the left often  calls, ‘the ideology of communalism’.  There is nothing in this Primer which cannot be found in magazine such as “Frontline” and “Communalism Combat”.