Greetings,
This week, on the occasion of the 73rd anniversary of Indian independence, I have four articles to share with you.
In Whose India?, for Project Syndicate’s 88 newspapers around the world, I write on attempts to reshape the soul of our republic. During its reign, the present government has done a great deal to erode the established norms and values of India. In its attempts to transform India into a country that fits its narrow, sectarian politics, it has eroded the liberty of the people of Kashmir, passed explicitly anti-Muslim citizenship legislation, and conducted grand gestures to flaunt its exclusionary Hindutva ideology. Coupled with the relentless repression of dissent and the failure of independent institutions, some commentators are writing the obituary of the first Indian republic. This is premature. The struggle to defend the ideals of August 15 over those of August 5 continues. Victory is the only path to an India that includes and defends all its citizens.
In Congress accommodates all, published in The Week, I respond to those who characterise the Congress party’s ideology as merely being a watered-down version of the BJP’s Hindutva. The Congress has repeatedly made clear its opposition to any sort of exclusionary religious worldview, whether “soft” or “hard”, and draws a very distinct line between the progressive, personal Hindu faith and the narrow-minded politics of Hindutva. We in the Congress will continue to reject and combat the BJP’s attempts to mutilate and communalise a religion rooted in diversity and pluralism, and will continue fighting that battle on the national stage.
For my article in the Times of India, I borrow Tagore’s phrase: The Idea of India. Democracy is India’s greatest strength, giving a voice to the oppressed and a binding connection to the laws of our land. It has, however, failed to deal with, and in many ways strengthened, poisonous and divisive identity-based politics, built around caste and religious identity rather than any sense of national belonging. The idea of India is rooted in an immense diversity of language, belief, race, and cuisine. This is threatened today not just by narrow-minded extremist groups, but by the exclusionary views of those in power. We must overcome any attempt to alter the glorious pluralism of India.
Last but not least, another momentous event took place this week: the retirement of former Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni, one of history’s greatest cricketers. In The Quint, I publish a paean to his greatness on the field and his momentous influence off it: Dhoni made us believe in India – because he believed in himself. Captain Cool lived up to his name: unflappable, a true leader, able to inspire India to victory time and time again. He leaves now, on his own terms, leaving legions of adoring fans and prospective cricketers with the knowledge that humble origins and small towns are no barrier to greatness.
As always, if these are getting too much, feel free to unsubscribe below.
With warm regards,
Shashi Tharoor
1. Whose India?; Project Syndicate; August 10, 2020.
The battle to define the Indian state is not yet over. Today, the ideals of India’s founders are challenged not only by Modi and the BJP, who prefer their idea of India as a Hindu Rashtra to the diversity and pluralism enshrined in the constitution. They are also contested by stone-throwing youths in the streets of Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir’s largest city, and rifle-wielding Maoists in the forests of Chhattisgarh. A narrow-minded, sectarian India will never appeal to these alienated young people. Only an India that ensures full rights and dignity for all – the promise of liberal democracy – can do that.
2. Congress accommodates all; The Week; August 23, 2020.
The Congress has traditionally furthered a brand of secularism that recognises India’s pluralism. It acknowledges a profusion of religions and beliefs, where all are equally respected and can peacefully co-exist. This is compatible with people being practising Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, whatever. But this does not mean we will accept a weaponised political version of any religion, as the BJP has done by reducing the complex diversities of Hindu beliefs to the narrow-minded and exclusionary tenets of hindutva. As a party we will continue to resist any attempts by the ruling dispensation to promote such chauvinistic and divisive beliefs in the country, and we will stand by anyone who becomes a victim of their narrow-minded philosophy.
3. The idea of India; Times of India; August 16, 2020.
Another Independence Day is upon us. As we celebrate our 73rd birthday, it is again time to reflect on what kind of country we are. India, I have long argued, is more than the sum of its contradictions. It is a country held together, in the words of Nehru, “by strong but invisible threads … a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive”. That nebulous quality is what the analyst of Indian nationalism is ultimately left with; to borrow a phrase from Amartya Sen, it is an idea — the idea of India.
4. Dhoni Made Us Believe in India – Because He Believed In Himself; The Quint; August 17, 2020.
Perhaps his most important contribution lay in just being MS Dhoni. By rising from humble origins in the backward state of Jharkhand, including working as a railway ticket-collector in order to afford to pursue the sport, he ushered in a democratisation of India’s big-city elite cricketing culture. Today, if an ever-larger number of Indian players are hailing from small towns and obscure backwater states, it is because MS Dhoni opened the doors for them – and showed them the way. He made us all believe in India, because he believed in himself.
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Whose India?,
August 10, 2020,
Project Syndicate.
As India prepares to celebrate the 73rd anniversary of its independence on August 15, a growing number of Indians are coming to believe that the battle to preserve the essence of the country born in 1947 is already lost. Many commentators have concluded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has already, in effect, inaugurated a “second republic” by upending the key assumptions of the first.
According to these despairing analysts, this “refounding” began on August 5, 2019, when Article 370 of the Constitution was abrogated and Jammu and Kashmir was stripped of its autonomy, and was completed in Ayodhya earlier this month, exactly one year later. There, in an hours-long grand ceremony televised to adoring millions, Modi performed a bhoomi poojan (worship of the Earth) and laid a 40-kilogram (88 pounds) silver brick into the foundation of a future temple to the Hindu god Rama, on the site of the demolished Babri mosque.
Even before the construction of the temple had begun, this ceremony (and Modi’s participation in it) set the seal on the grand Hindutva project of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Many feared that India, which from its foundation has been a secular state, had turned a corner to becoming a Hindu Rashtra, a state of and for its Hindu majority.
From the moment of its electoral victory in 2014, Modi’s government embarked on its project of transforming the polity, consolidating its hold on the state machinery during its first term. Meanwhile, it sought to keep its supporters mobilized through re-conversion to the mother faith, vigilantism and lynching of non-Hindus for supposed transgressions against cows, and outrage over minority appeasement and the allegedly anti-national statements and actions of dissenters, ranging from students to secularists to Kashmiris to Pakistani terrorists.
With the groundwork laid, BJP’s bigger electoral victory of 2019 launched the next stage of the national project. It started with the criminalization of the Muslim divorce practice known as triple talaq (an unmistakable warning shot across the bows of the Muslim community). It continued with the stripping of Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy (a clear signal that constitutional assurances were also up for grabs and that federalism could be overridden) and the passage of the amendment to the Citizenship Act (a direct challenge to the secular, non-religious assumptions of the Constitution).
Next came the temple in Ayodhya, by which Modi’s government signaled that it was dismantling another relic of the first republic – inter-faith accommodation. As the political scientist Suhas Palshikar put it, “The Supreme Court ruling in the Ayodhya case, ordering that Muslims be given an ‘alternative’ site, formalized the peripheralization of the Muslims both spatially and politically, while the celebrations openly involving state machinery underscore the officialization of the status of Hindu religion as the basis of the new republic.” If secularism, pluralism, and diversity had been the catechism of the first republic, the BJP’s Hindutva is the liturgy of the second.
The BJP has been able to do all this because it has the necessary legislative majority. But, as Palshikar points out, it has gone well beyond such formalities through “the transformation of the Indian state into a repository of repression” through “a politicized and poisonous administration – particularly in the case of the enforcement and investigation machineries.” Since 2014, the government has delegitimized dissent and criticism as hostile to the national interest, and every liberal thought and contrarian idea as undermining national pride and unity. The equation of opposition to the government – indeed, of liberal democracy itself – with “anti-national” behavior has inevitably followed.
There has clearly been a failure on the part of India’s independent institutions – the judiciary, opposition political parties, the media, the Election Commission, and universities – to stanch the tide of militant majoritarianism. The Supreme Court’s Ayodhya judgment, condemning the destruction of the mosque but nonetheless awarding the disputed site to Hindus, was in many ways emblematic of the judiciary’s complicity in enabling this surrender.
In many other cases, the Court has obligingly declined to hear challenges to government actions (including on habeas corpus petitions, the constitutionality of the Article 370 abrogation, and the detention of political leaders) or acquiesced in them (like the prolonged Internet cutoff in Kashmir) with scarcely a murmur. The opposition, while articulate, particularly on social media, has been widely, if not always fairly, derided for its tameness. It has also been divided – sometimes even within parties – on such vital issues as Kashmir and Ayodhya.
But the battle to define the Indian state is not yet over. Today, the ideals of India’s founders are challenged not only by Modi and the BJP, who prefer their idea of India as a Hindu Rashtra to the diversity and pluralism enshrined in the constitution. They are also contested by stone-throwing youths in the streets of Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir’s largest city, and rifle-wielding Maoists in the forests of Chhattisgarh. A narrow-minded, sectarian India will never appeal to these alienated young people. Only an India that ensures full rights and dignity for all – the promise of liberal democracy – can do that.
Over the last six years, the votaries of Hindu nationalism have savored the illusion of victory, but the struggle for India’s soul is still being waged. A divided India – the India of August 5 – can never fulfill the promise of the united India of August 15. To succeed in the twenty-first century, India must remain faithful to its founding values.
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Congress accommodates all,
August 23, 2020,
The Week.
In the wake of the consecration of the Ram Mandir on August 5, critics have been suggesting that the Congress has caved in to the forces of hindutva, and that the minorities no longer have the Congress to speak for them. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
The Congress has traditionally furthered a brand of secularism that recognises India’s pluralism. It acknowledges a profusion of religions and beliefs, where all are equally respected and can peacefully co-exist. This is compatible with people being practising Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, whatever. But this does not mean we will accept a weaponised political version of any religion, as the BJP has done by reducing the complex diversities of Hindu beliefs to the narrow-minded and exclusionary tenets of hindutva. As a party we will continue to resist any attempts by the ruling dispensation to promote such chauvinistic and divisive beliefs in the country, and we will stand by anyone who becomes a victim of their narrow-minded philosophy.
I believe that those who look at the Congress as a ‘BJP-lite’or ‘hindutva-lite’ do not take the Congress’s own assurances at face value—that it remains a party for all, the safest refuge for the minorities, the weak and the marginalised, and fundamentally committed to secularism. The BJP does not even bother to pretend that it has the interests of any of these sections at heart.
Our critics see the Congress’s distinction between Hinduism and hindutva as specious. They reject its leaders’ arguments that the Hinduism, respected by Congress leaders, is inclusive and non-judgmental, whereas hindutva is a political doctrine based on exclusion. They are quick to conclude that what the Congress offers is merely a watered-down version of the BJP’s political messaging.
That is both inaccurate and unjust. Rahul Gandhi has made it explicitly clear that, for all his willingness to avow his personal Hinduism, he does not support any form of hindutva, neither soft nor hard. The Congress understands that whereas Hinduism is a religion, hindutva is a political doctrine that departs fundamentally from the principal tenets of the Hindu faith. While Hinduism is inclusive of all ways of worship, hindutva is indifferent to devotion and cares only about identity. Hinduism is open to reform and progress, which is why it has flourished for 4,000 years; hindutva is regressive, with its roots in the ‘racial pride’ ethos that spawned fascism in the 1920s, which is why it is unlikely to outlast its current peak.
There are more fundamental differences. Congress leaders profess a Hinduism that accommodates a vast amount of diversity and respects the individual and his/her relationship with the divine; the BJP’s hindutva prefers communal identity politics and seeks to Semitise the faith into something it is not—a uniform monolithic religion. Congress leaders’ Hinduism rests on Gandhiji’s and Swami Vivekananda’s ideas of the acceptance of difference; the BJP’s hindutva seeks to erase differences by assaulting, intimidating and subjugating those with other views.
I am not saying this as a party spokesman; I am not one. I am in politics because of my convictions. I genuinely and passionately believe that what the Congress stands for and offers the nation is fundamentally indispensable to the future of the country. We represent an alternate vision of the idea of India, an inclusive and pluralist vision that reflects truly the heart and soul of the country. The ideology of an inclusive and progressive party, liberal and centrist in its orientation, committed to social justice and individual freedoms, patriotic in its determination to protect national security and promote human security, still has great appeal if it is projected properly. We must not leave the national field uncontested for the BJP’s distorted, bigoted and narrow-minded version of what India stands for.
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The idea of India,
August 16, 2020,
Times of India.
The significant changes in the social composition of India’s ruling class since Independence, both in politics and in the bureaucracy, are proof of democracy at work. Amid India’s myriad problems, it is democracy that has given Indians of every imaginable caste, creed, culture, and cause the chance to break free of their lot.
Another Independence Day is upon us. As we celebrate our 73rd birthday, it is again time to reflect on what kind of country we are.
India, I have long argued, is more than the sum of its contradictions. It is a country held together, in the words of Nehru, “by strong but invisible threads … a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive”. That nebulous quality is what the analyst of Indian nationalism is ultimately left with; to borrow a phrase from Amartya Sen, it is an idea — the idea of India.
But what is that idea? Jawaharlal Nehru articulated it as pluralism vindicated by history, seeing the country as an “ancient palimpsest” on which successive rulers and subjects had inscribed their visions without erasing what had been asserted previously. A generation of secular nationalists echoed him, making “unity in diversity” the most hallowed of independent India’s self-defining slogans. Their secularism is questioned today by a new ruling dispensation that has sought to redefine nationalism in more sectarian terms.
How did India preserve and protect a viable idea of itself in the course of the last 73 years, while it grew from 370 million people to 1.2 billion, reorganised its State structures, and sought to defend itself from internal and external dangers, all the while remaining democratic? I have tried to answer this question at length in my books. Certainly, the accomplishment is extraordinary, and worthy of celebration.
Amid India’s myriad problems, it is democracy that has given Indians of every imaginable caste, creed, culture, and cause the chance to break free of their lot. There is social oppression and caste tyranny, particularly in rural India, but Indian democracy offers the victims a means of escape, and often — thanks to the determination with which the poor and oppressed exercise their franchise — of triumph.
The significant changes in the social composition of India’s ruling class since Independence, both in politics and in the bureaucracy, are proof of democracy at work, but the poor quality of our country’s politics in general offers less cause for celebration.
In the seven decades since Independence, democracy has failed to create a single political community. Instead, we have become more conscious than ever of what divides us: religion, region, caste, language, and ethnicity. Despite having a one-party majority in the Lok Sabha, our political system has in fact become more fragmented: politicians mobilise support along ever-narrower lines of political identity. It has become more important to be a “backward caste”, a “tribal”, a Muslim, a gau rakshak, than to be an Indian; and of course, to some, it is more important to be a “proud” Hindu than to be an Indian.
Caste, which Nehru and his ilk abhorred and believed would disappear from the social matrix of modern India, has not merely survived and thrived, but has become an instrument for highly effective political mobilisation. Candidates are picked by their parties with an eye toward the caste loyalties they can call upon; often their appeal is overtly to voters of their own caste or sub-caste, urging them to elect one of their own. The result has been the growth of caste-consciousness and casteism throughout society. In many States, caste determines educational opportunities, job prospects, and governmental promotions; all too often, people say you cannot go forward unless you’re a “backward”.
Ironically, a distinctive feature of the Nehruvian legacy was its visionary rejection of India’s assorted bigotries and particularisms. Today their secularism is sneered at. Whether through elections or quotas, political mobilisation in contemporary India has asserted the power of old identities, habits, faiths, and prejudices.
What makes India, then, a nation?
When an Italian nation was created in the second half of the 19th century out of a mosaic of principalities and statelets, one Italian nationalist wrote: “We have created Italy. Now all we need to do is to create Italians.” It is striking that, a few decades later, no Indian nationalist succumbed to the temptation to express a similar thought. The prime exponent of modern Indian nationalism, Nehru, would never have spoken of “creating Indians”, because he believed that India and Indians had existed for millennia before he articulated their political aspirations in the 20th century.
Nonetheless, the India that was born in 1947 was in a very real sense a new creation: a state that made fellow citizens of the Ladakhi and the Laccadivian, divided Punjabi from Punjabi and asked a Keralite peasant to feel allegiance to a Kashmiri Pandit ruling in Delhi, all for the first time.
So Indian nationalism was not based on any of the conventional indices of national identity. Not language, since our constitution now recognises 23 official languages, and as many as 35 languages spoken by more than a million people each. Not ethnicity, since the “Indian” accommodates a diversity of racial types in which many Indians (Punjabis and Bengalis, in particular) have more ethnically in common with foreigners than with their other compatriots. Not religion, since India is a secular pluralist state that is home to every religion known to mankind, with the possible exception of Shintoism. Not geography, since the natural geography of the subcontinent – framed by the mountains and the sea – was hacked by the partition of 1947. And not even territory, since, by law, anyone with one grandparent born in pre-partition India – outside the territorial boundaries of today’s state – is eligible for citizenship. Indian nationalism has therefore always been the nationalism of an idea.
It is the idea of an ever-ever land – emerging from an ancient civilisation, united by a shared history, sustained by pluralist democracy. India’s democracy imposes no narrow conformities on its citizens. The whole point of Indian pluralism is you can be many things and one thing: you can be a good Muslim, a good Keralite and a good Indian all at once. The Indian idea is the opposite of what Freudians call “the narcissism of minor differences”; in India we celebrate the commonality of major differences. If America is famously a “melting-pot”, then to me India is a thali, a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast.
So the idea of India is of one land embracing many. The Indian idea is that a nation may endure differences of caste, creed, colour, conviction, culture, cuisine, costume and custom, and still rally around a consensus. And that consensus is around the simple idea that in a democracy you don’t really need to agree – except on the ground rules of how you will disagree.
India’s founding fathers wrote a constitution for their dreams; we have given passports to their ideals. Today these ideals are contested by stone-throwing young men in the streets of Srinagar and rifle-wielding Maoists in the forests of Chhattisgarh. But they are also challenged by the majoritarian triumphalism of those in power, who prefer to discard diversity and pluralism as relics of the past and to affirm instead an alternative idea of India as a “Hindu Rashtra”.The struggle for India’s soul is still being waged. A divided India – the India of August 5 – can never fulfil the promise of a united India – the India of August 15. We must remain faithful to our founding values of the 20th century if we are to conquer the 21st.
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Dhoni Made Us Believe In India – Because He Believed in Himself,
August 17, 2020,
The Quint.
On the evening of Independence Day, a much-loved national figure declared his own independence. Mahinder Singh Dhoni, 39, the iconic ‘Captain Cool’, India’s greatest-ever wicket-keeper batsman and arguably its finest and most successful captain, announced his retirement from international cricket.
Sharing a video on Instagram, of great moments from his sixteen-year career, accompanied by the Hindi playback singer Mukesh’s classic song, ‘Pal do Pal Ka Shayar Hoon’ (‘I am a poet of one moment or two’), he wrote blandly, “Thanks a lot for your love and support throughout. From 1929 hrs consider me as Retired.”
The departure was typical of the man — abrupt, understated, brooking no discussion. Just as he had, with no fuss, announced his retirement from Test cricket in the course of a tour of Australia through an email from the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India), and similarly tossed off his decision to give up the captaincy in One-Day cricket, so too he had left the international stage in his own way, and on his own terms.
He had hoped, friends claimed, to play one final international tournament in the 2020 Twenty20 World Cup which was to be held in Australia in October, but which has been deferred in view of COVID. It would have marked a fitting coda to a career embellished by his leading the Indian cricket team to victory in the first-ever Twenty20 World Cup held in South Africa in 2007. But it was not to be, and Dhoni decided he wasn’t going to hang around.
Dhoni burst onto the Indian scene when I was still at the United Nations and not watching much international cricket. I saw him in action for the first time when he blazed an unforgettable 183 not out in the 3rd ODI against Sri Lanka in Jaipur in 2005.
It was an astonishing performance. The Sri Lankans had made a formidable 298 for 5, with opener Sangakkara carrying his bat for 138 not out. When India replied, Tendulkar was dismissed for 2 in the first over, and then Dhoni walked in to a hushed reception. He dominated the ground like some giant gladiator in a Coliseum, wielding his bat as rapier, scalpel and bludgeon, clouting a match-winning 183 not out that enabled India to win with four overs to spare. 120 of his runs came in just 25 balls, with 15 searing fours and ten immense sixes. I was going back to the UN but I knew I would follow this young man for ever.
Dhoni presided over a major revival of Indian cricket – a team of talents who could compete well but only rarely win were welded by him into world-beaters. His record as player and captain is formidable. Under his leadership, India won every single ICC (International Cricket Council) trophy at least once: the Twenty20 World Cup, the 50-over Cricket World Cup, two Asia Cups and a Champion’s Trophy.
In 2011, the Dhoni-led Indian team won its second World Cup, with the captain powering a six into the delirious stands of the Wankhede Stadium. Under his captaincy, it seemed India was capable of winning any match it played, against any opponent. He also found success in the Indian Premier League, leading Chennai Super Kings to victory three times and becoming a hero of Chennaiyins who adopted him as their own.
Apart from his leadership skills, marked by his unflappable demeanour and calm disposition – his face never betrayed the slightest anxiety even when disaster seemed to be staring his team in the face – MS Dhoni was also known as one of the best wicket-keepers India had ever had. His twinkle-toed presence behind the crease kept every opposing batsman on guard; he would stump them in a flash if they so much as strayed out of their crease.
He managed the most astonishing run-outs, often saving precious seconds by not waiting to collect a fielder’s throw before knocking off the bails: instead he would parry the throw directly onto the wicket, sometimes without being able to see the stumps.
Dhoni was also a powerful and destructive batsman, famed for his ‘helicopter shot’ in which his wrist, after completing a stroke, would whirl the bat around like the blades of a helicopter. There were few better finishers in limited-overs cricket; he kept his head till the end, often taking the match into its last over before blasting a pair of remarkable sixes in the closing deliveries to pull off an unlikely victory. Not only did he lead the team to several unlikely wins through his batting, he ended with an ODI average above 50, something that only a handful have been able to achieve, and none in as many matches as he played. Sadly he ended his career as he had begun it, with a run-out, after making 50 in the 2019 World Cup semi-final defeat by New Zealand.
On the field, MS Dhoni was known for his mercurial batting, his agile ‘keeping’, his exemplary leadership, and his cool temperament. Off the field, as one of India’s most loved sportspersons, he was a familiar face on television and print advertisements, endorsing a range of products and starting some lucrative businesses.
But perhaps his most important contribution lay in just being MS Dhoni. By rising from humble origins in the backward state of Jharkhand, including working as a railway ticket-collector in order to afford to pursue the sport, he ushered in a democratisation of India’s big-city elite cricketing culture.
Today, if an ever-larger number of Indian players are hailing from small towns and obscure backwater states, it is because MS Dhoni opened the doors for them – and showed them the way. He made us all believe in India, because he believed in himself.
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