Crossroads: India's Tryst with the Future

(Originally appeared in the 1990s in the Times of India, as published in M. D. Nalapat's book "Indutva", Har-Anand Publications, 1999)

Across Asia, there are two broad tendencies. The first is the West

Asian model, the second the East Asian. Afghanistan and Pakistan

reflect the first, while Indonesia and (as yet) Malaysia practise

the second.

The West Asian model postulates a society where one

community is supreme, the others being given inferior status.

Women are part of the underprivileged group, and the use of

violence to achieve political and foreign policy objectives is

encouraged. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, one segment of society

has been given the monopoly of power, with the rest condemned

to servitude. In Saudi Arabia there are no churches or Buddhist

viharas. In Pakistan, Shias, Sindhis, Baluchis and the religious

minorities are discriminated against. As an Islamabad satellite,

the Taliban-controlled regime follows its master’s model in its

own country.

The West Asian model promotes feuds and confrontations,

and allocates a low score to orderly economic development. It

rejects the concept of a plural society that slowly evolves a

composite culture. Within India, its most ardent followers are

the activists of the Viswa Hindu Parishad and the Jamaat-I-

Islami, which would like to adapt the Pakistani model to this

country by relegating ”unbelievers” to second-class status. The

VHP would like to destroy places of worship the way temples

have got demolished in Pakistan. Those who promote caste and

regional divisions also fall within this category.

The East Asian model puts the highest premium on economic

growth, and on the development of private initiative as a means

of ensuring this. Progress requires social - as distinct from

political - stability, and this means a polity where no group feels

discriminated against. In both Indonesia and Malaysia the

minorities are treated on a par with Muslims, though in both

countries certain politicians are now trying to promote the

Pakistan model against their own. However, till today they have

not succeeded, with the result that communal harmony still

prevails.

Rather than the West Asia model conquering South and East

Asia, there is need for the Eastern model to spread to the other

parts of the continent, so that societies there can avoid the

bloodshed that sectarian policies generate. An example is Sri

Lanka, where the 1950s-1960s attempt to make the Sinhalas

dominate over the Tamils led to the rise of the LTTE. Today there

is an effort to reverse anti-Tamil policies to damp down the roots

of the rebellion. In India, despite pressures from Hindu, Muslim,

Sikh and Christian extremists, the East Asian composite culture

has prevailed, as illustrated by M. F. Husain, a Muslim painter

proudly depicting scenes from the Rumuyana and the Mahabharata.

As an Indian, Husain has as much proprietorship over these

epics as Uma Bharati has. Sadly, however Homer’s epics are

given more prominence in Indian classrooms than home-grown

epics. An example of West Asian thinking where epics too are

given religious connotations rather than historical ones.

There are numerous individuals in India who follow the

West Asian model while parading as liberals. These are the

people who ban the teaching of Indian epics and who downgrade

most manifestations of local culture. Thanks to them, the word

"secular" has acquired an anti-religion character, when in fact

the truly religious are the most secular. The phoneys are the

individuals who seek to banish international languages from

Indian classrooms and who are opposed to large-scale industrial

projects allegedly on environmental grounds. At the same time,

they claim they want to abolish poverty. Presumably this will be

done the Stalin way—by finishing off the wealthy. The "Left"

and the "Right" appear to share the common goal of diverting

public attention from the need to focus on economic development

by throwing up red herrings in the shape of demolition of

minority houses of worship or the banning of investment even

from friendly Asian countries.

The battle for establishing the East Asian model - while

harmonising it with the imperatives of political democracy -

needs to be won in India. Thereafter, this country has to serve as

a disseminator of a development-friendly and moderate cultural

paradigm to the region, especially the western and central

reaches, where fanaticism reigns. One way of helping this task

would be the beaming of more Indian programmes to the region,

through strategic alliances with Asian programmers. If there is

an improved constituency within Pakistan for better relations

with India, some of the credit must go to the numerous Indian

television programmes that are getting aired within that country.

These sitcoms show that people of other regions and faiths are

not monsters but very similar to oneself.

Lal Krishna Advani is a politician this writer admires, hence

the sorrow when he gives the impression of believing that the

destruction of places of worship in Varanasi and Mathura are of

greater importance to the 900 million dirt-poor Indians than

orderly development that can change their lives the way it has

happened in Korea or Malaysia. Why does the BJP look towards

Pakistan and Afghanistan for inspiration, rather than to these

two countries? As for the "secularists", should they keep putting

roadblocks in the efforts of the Gujrals and the Chidambarams

to free the economy from Nehruvian chains, the people of this

country will remain poverty-stricken. The country has yet to

forget Pranab Mukherjee demanding higher taxes from the

middle class or Sitaram Yechury opposing foreign investment in

any Indian state except of course Bengal, or any move to inject

competition into key sectors such as banking and insurance. Of

course, funds from well-off businessmen profiting from their

monopoly positions may dry up if sensible policies get pursued.

But surely Mukherjee and Yechury want the rest of us to enjoy

the standard of living that they themselves are used to.

Unfortunately, the Gujrals and the Chidambarams are not

doing much to checkmate the Mukherjees and the Yechurys.

Rather than expose their double-talk, the politically correct path

these days is to play along with the fiction that the Mughal-

British-Nehru framework was good for India. By down-grading

the importance of economic issues this school focused attention

away and on to regional, caste and communal issues.

India has the ingredients in place to become a world power.

However, it lacks a political class that has confidence in its own

people. Hence the pussyfooting on developing a nuclear deterrent

or the avoiding of policies that would increase investment from

Asia and from those EU members not dominated by US-UK

perceptions about the subcontinent. Jaswant Singh, Madhavrao

Scindia and Palaniappan Chidambaram step forward. It's your

turn to try and free the Indian people from the colonial web of

restrictive laws fused to a legal system that takes a hundred

years to decide on cases. Do that, and your fellow-countrymen

will do the rest.