India's Weekly Outlook Magazine in its 31 January issue published Historian Ramachandra Guha's 12-page article "The Enemies of the Idea of India". According to the author, the idea of India, which is 'plural, inclusive', and is based on dialogue, compromise, reciprocity and accommodation, has got three enemies since the time of independence in 1947. The first is Hundutva, the extreme Hindu ideology, which was most intense from 1998, when they were returned to power in New Delhi and conducted nuclear tests, to 2004 when they were defeated by the Congress and its allies. The second is the armed Maoist uprising in central India. It is based upon the 'dispossession of the tribals' in India. The tribals have no viable representatives, but, Guha says, the Maoists are not really defending their interests as they are not a democratic force and their violence is targeted not only against the state violence but at the same time is 'highly focused' against the local leaders who would be very much in need for building a new social order. 'In the medium and long term, they provide no real solution'. Thirdly there is separatism still to be seen in three states of India. Guha says 'the Government of India must do far more to reach out to the people of Kashmir, Nagaland and Manipur'. On the most important of them, Kashmir, he adds that 'an independent Kashmir will most likely become a receptacle for Al Qaeda'. He does not say anything on the possibility of dividing Kashmir. There was a time when some of the well informed Indians would have agreed to the idea, in spite of the Lok Sabha resolution concerning the whole of Kashmir. But after so much has happened in and around Pakistan, particularly after 9/11, it would be difficult for many to buy it now. But then what would be the alternative?
In the second half of the article, Guha discusses the three more recent challenges to the idea of India. They are all closely related. First, 'there are gross and apparently growing inequalities of income, wealth, consumption, property, access to quality education and health care, and avenues for dignified employment' along caste, religion, ethnicity, region, rural versus urban and gender. Second, there is the worsening situation concerning corruption after Lal Bahadur Shastri's Prime Ministership in the mid-1960s, particularly 'over the past three decades'. Third, environmental degradation, especially as the result of mining, and this is the worst in states like Karnataka, Orissa, Goa and Maharashtra. The 'fetish' of 9% annual growth is a dangerous inducement behind the process.
So 'perhaps the most powerful enemy of the idea of India now is the Indian State'. Guha follows up this statement, the only part in the article in italic' by a brief critical comment on major Congress leaders like Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, and refers to some other parties. He believes, however, that in India today the civil society is performing very well with its 'hundreds of hard-working and selfless social activists'. His 'one final vignette' was what he saw on 'One Independence Day'. He met three young boys who had apparently played the role of B.R.Ambedkar, the leader of the former untouchables, M.Visvesvaraya, the Premier of the former Mysore Princely State in the British time and an industrialist, and Mahatma Gandhi, respectively, in a function. According to Guha, the boys 'knew and revered' all these three, they knew that 'our country today needs all three', and that was 'a spontaneous, magnificent illustration of the idea of India'.
This writer also knows and revers all those three, but is not sure if he should respect them to the same extent. He once spoke on 'Gandhi offers 50% of the solution to today's problems'(Prabhat-Khabar, Ranchi, 16 December 2007). Was he wrong?
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