From Nehru’s writings

The panorama of India’s past*

AS I grew up and became engaged in activities which promised to lead to India’s freedom, I became obsessed with the thought of India. What was this India that possessed me and beckoned to me continually, urging me to action so that we might realize some vague but deeply-felt desire of our hearts? The initial urge came to me, I suppose, through pride, both individual and national, and the desire, common to all men, to resist another’s domination and have freedom to live the life of our choice. It seemed monstrous to me that a great county like India, with a rich and immemorial past, should be bound hand and foot to a far-away island which imposed its will upon her. It was still more monstrous that this forcible union had resulted in poverty and degradation beyond measure. That was reason enough for me and others to act.

But it was not enough to satisfy the questioning that arose within me. What is this India, apart from her physical and geographical aspects? What did she represent in the past? What gave strength to her then? How did she lose that old strength? And has she lost it completely? Does she represent anything vital now, apart from being the home of a vast number of human beings? How does she fit into the modern world?

This wider international aspect of the problem grew upon me as I realized more and more how isolation was both undesirable and impossible. The future that took shape in my mind was one of intimate cooperation, politically, economically, and culturally, between India and the other countries of the world. But before the future came there was the present, and behind the present lay the long and tangled past, out of which the present had grown. So to the past I looked for understanding.

India was in my blood and there was much in her that instinctively thrilled me. And yet I approached her almost as an alien critic, full of dislike for the present as well as for many of the relics of the past that I saw. To some extent I came to her via the West, and looked at her as a friendly westerner might have done. I was eager and anxious to change her outlook and appearances and give her the garb of modernity. And yet doubts arose within me. Did I know India? – I who presumed to scrap much of her past heritage? There was a great deal that had to be scrapped, that must be scrapped; but surely India could not have continued a cultured existence for thousands of years, if she had not possessed something very vital and enduring, something that was worthwhile. What was this something?

I stood on a mound of Mohenjodaro in the Indus Valley in the north-west of India, and all around me lay the houses and streets of this ancient city that is said to have existed over five thousand years ago; and even then it was an old and well-developed civilization. ‘The Indus civilization,’ writes Professor Childe,¹ ‘represents a very perfect adjustment of human life to a specific environment that can only have resulted from years of patient effort. And it has endured; it is already specifically Indian and forms the basis of modern Indian culture.’ Astonishing thought: that any culture or civilization should have this continuity for five or six thousand years or more; and not in a static, unchanging sense, for India was changing and progressing all the time. She was coming into intimate contact with the Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Arabs, the Central Asians, and the peoples of the Mediterranean. But though she influenced them and was influenced by them, her cultural basis was strong enough to endure. What was the secret of this strength? Where did it come from?

I read her history and read also a part of her abundant ancient literature, and was powerfully impressed by the vigour of the thought, the clarity of the language, and the richness of the mind that lay behind it. I journeyed through India in the company of mighty travellers from China and Western and Central Asia who came here in the remote past and left records of their travels. I though of what India had accomplished in Eastern Asia, in Angkor, Borobodur, and many other places. I wandered over the Himalayas, which are closely connected with old myth and legend, and which have influenced so much our thought and literature. My love of the mountains and my kinship with Kashmir especially drew me to them, and I saw there not only the life and vigour and beauty of the present, but also the memoried loveliness of ages past. The mighty rivers of India that flow from this great mountain barrier into the plains of India attracted me and reminded me of innumerable phases of our history. The Indus or Sindhu, from which our country came to be called India and Hindustan, and across which races and tribes and caravans and armies have come for thousands of years; the Brahmaputra, rather cut off from the main current of history, but living in old story, forcing its way into India through deep chasms cut in the heart of the north-eastern mountains, and then flowing calmly in a gracious sweep between mountain and wooded plain; the Jumna, around which cluster so many legends of dance and fun and play; and the Ganges, above all the river of India, which has held India’s heart captive and drawn uncounted millions to her banks since the dawn of history. The story of the Ganges, from her source to the sea, from old time to new, is the story of India’s civilization and culture, of the rise and fall of empires, of great and proud cities, of the adventure of man and the quest of the mind which has so occupied India’s thinkers, of the richness and fulfilment of life as well as its denial and renunciation, of ups and downs, of growth and decay, of life and death.

I visited old monuments and ruins and ancient sculptures and frescoes – Ajanta, Ellora, the Elephanta Caves, and other places – and I also saw the lovely buildings of a later age in Agra and Delhi, where every stone told its story of India’s past.

In my own city of Allahabad or in Hardwar I would go to the great bathing festivals, the Kumbh Mela, and see hundreds of thousands of people come, as their forebears had come for thousands of years from all over India, to bathe in the Ganges. I would remember descriptions of these festivals written thirteen hundred years ago by Chinese pilgrims and others, and even then these melas were ancient and lost in an unknown antiquity. What was the tremendous faith, I wondered, that had drawn our people for untold generations to this famous river of India?

These journeys and visits of mine, with the background of my reading, gave me an insight into the past. To a somewhat bare intellectual understanding was added an emotional appreciation, and gradually a sense of reality began to creep into my mental picture of India, and the land of my forefathers became peopled with living beings, who laughed and wept, loved and suffered; and among them were men who seemed to know life and understand it, and out of their wisdom they had built a structure which gave India a cultural stability which lasted for thousands of years. Hundreds of vivid pictures of this past filled my mind, and they would stand out as soon as I visited a particular place associated with them. At Sarnath, near Benares, I would almost see the Buddha preaching his first sermon, and some of his recorded words would come like a distant echo to me through two thousands five hundred years. Ashoka’s pillars of stone with their inscriptions would speak to me in their magnificent language and tell me of a man who, though an emperor, was greater than any king or emperor. At Fatehpur-Sikri, Akbar, forgetful of his empire, was seated holding converse and debate with the learned of all faiths, curious to learn something new seeking an answer to the eternal problem of man.

Thus slowly the long panorama of India’s history unfolded itself before me, with its ups and downs, its triumphs and defeats. There seemed to me something unique about the continuity of a cultural tradition through five thousand years of history, of invasion and upheaval, a tradition which was widespread among the masses and powerfully influenced them. Only China has had such a continuity of tradition and cultural life. And this panorama of the past gradually merged into the unhappy present, when India, for all her past greatness and stability, was a slave country, an appendage of Britain, and all over the world terrible and devastating war was raging and brutalizing humanity. But that vision of five thousand years gave me a new perspective, and the burden of the present years seemed to grow lighter.

 

* From The Discovery of India, pp. 49-52.

1. V. Gordon Childe (1892-1957), Australian born British historian.

 

The basis of society*

THE basis of society is some measure of security and stability. Without security and stability there could be no society or social life, but how many today in our present-day society have this security and stability? You know that the millions have it not; they have hardly enough to keep body and soul together. And it is a mockery to speak to them of security. So long as the masses do not share in this security, you can have no stable society. And so you see in the history of the world, revolution after revolution, not because any group or person is a lover of bloodshed, anarchy and disorder, but because of this desire for greater security for larger number of persons. We shall have real security and stability in this world only when it has come to signify the well-being of the vast majority of the people, if not all, and not of small groups only. That time may not be near, but society is continually, sometimes it may even be a little blindly, struggling towards it. And the greater the struggle, the greater the urge to that end, the healthier and more vital the society. If this urge is wholly absent, society becomes static and lifeless and gradually withers away.

So long therefore as the world is not perfect, a healthy society must have the seeds of revolt in it. It must alternate between revolution and consolidation. It is the function of youth to supply this dynamic element in society; to be the standard-bearers of revolt against all that is evil and to prevent older people from suppressing all social progress and movement by the mere weight of their inertia. …

What do we find in this world of ours today? Utter misery is the lot of vast numbers of people and while a few live in luxury, many lack even bread and clothing and have no opportunity for development. Wars and conflicts ravage the world and the energy that should go to build up a better order of society is spent largely in mutual competition and destruction. If that is the condition of the world at large, what of our own unhappy country? Foreign rule has reduced her to utmost poverty and misery and a rigid adherence to outworn customs and ideas has sapped the life out of her.

There is obviously something radically wrong with the world and one is led to doubt if there is any ultimate purpose behind this chaos and unhappiness. Two thousand and five hundred years ago the prince Siddhartha, who later because the Great Buddha, saw this misery and in agony of spirit put to himself the same question:

How can it be that Brahma

Would make a world and keep it miserable?

Since if all powerful He leaves it so,

He is not good, and if not powerful,

He is not God!

But whether there is any ultimate purpose or not, the immediate purpose of every human being should be to reduce this misery and to help in building up a better society, and a better society must necessarily aim at the elimination of all domination of one nation over another or of man over man. It must replace competition by cooperation. …

Before we approach our ideal, we have to combat two sets of opponents – political and social. We have to overcome our alien rulers as well as the social reactionaries of India. In the past we have seen the curious phenomenon in India of the political extremist sometimes being a reactionary in social matters, and not unoften the political moderate has been socially more advanced. But it is impossible to separate the political life of the country from its social and economic life and you cannot cure the social organism by treating one part of it only. The infection from one affected part continually spreads to other parts and the disease takes firmer root. Your political and social philosophy must, therefore, be a complete whole and your programme must comprise every department of national activity. …

Religion has in the past often been used as an opiate to dull men’s desire for freedom. Kings and emperors have exploited it for their own benefit and led people to believe in their divine right to rule. Priests and other privileged classes have claimed a divine sanction for their privileges. And with the aid of religion the masses have been told that their miseries are due to kismat or the sins of a former age. Women have been and are still kept down and in the name of religion in many places are made to submit to that barbarous relic of an earlier age – the purdah system. The depressed or the suppressed classes cry out to the world how infamously religion has been exploited to keep them down and prevent them from rising. Religion has been the fountainhead of authoritarianism and meek submission and it is because our rulers realize this and because their own rule is based on this ideology of authoritarianism that they seek to bolster up its cruder manifestations in India. If the spirit of intellectual revolt spreads to ancient custom and tradition, then the very basis of authoritarianism crumbles and takes with it the foundation of British rule. …

The freedom of India is dear to all of us here. But there may be many here who have the ordinary conveniences of life and are not hard put to it to find their daily bread. Our desire for freedom is a thing more of the mind than of the body, although even our bodies often suffer for the lack of freedom. But to the vast masses of our fellow-countrymen present conditions spell hunger and deepest poverty, an empty stomach and a bare back. For them freedom is a vital bodily necessity, and it is primarily to give them food and clothing and the ordinary amenities of life that we should strive for freedom. The most amazing and terrible thing about India is her poverty. It is not a dispensation from Providence or an inevitable condition of society. India has enough or can have enough for all her children if an alien government and some of her own sons did not corner the good things and so deprive the masses of their dues. ‘Poverty’, said Ruskin,¹ ‘is not due to natural inferiority of the poor or the inscrutable laws of God, or drink, but because others have picked their pockets.’ And the control of wealth by the few not only means the unhappiness of many, but it exercises a power over men’s minds so that they do not wish for freedom. It is this mental outlook which paralyses the poor and the oppressed and it is this mentality of defeatism that you will have to fight.

 

* Presidential address, Bombay Presidency Youth Conference, Poona, 12 December 1928. JN Collection, NMML. Excerpts.

1. John Ruskin (1819-1900); English writer and art critic.

 

The past and the present*

I am but a student, a seeker after knowledge, whose great regret is that the business of politics does not encourage this quest. George III of England once defined politics as a trade for a rascal and not for a gentleman. If that is a correct definition, then indeed I am specially rascally and have wandered far from the ways of gentle folk.

But sometimes the fates are kind and little opportunities occur of dipping into the past and reading of the doings of the giants of old. It is an absorbing study. The more I read of the Aryans of old, the more I wonder at their many-sided excellence. Fresh from their cradle in Central Asia they came down to India and swept over western Asia and Europe. They were full of life and the joy of life, and the burden of the world sat lightly upon them. It was indeed the Satyayuga, the dawn of history and the long ages of sin and sorrow had yet to come. Warriors they were who rejoiced in battle and yet bowed down to knowledge and virtue. They love to fight and conquer but the greatest quest for them was the search for knowledge. They loved freedom and honour and preferred death to dishonour of the Aryan name. ‘Never shall an Arya be subjected to slavery’ was their proud charter. And so they marched into India singing songs in praise of the high gods, with faith in themselves and, like the Saracens thousands of years later, in the firm belief that heaven was guiding them in their divine mission.

It is good to think of the past and to gather strength and courage from the example of the great men of old. But it is also dangerous, and in India we are specially liable to this danger. We are prone to think too much of it and to endow the ancients with every virtue under the sun. And instead of any desire to emulate them and to gird up our loins for the purpose, we sink further into apathy and bemoan our miserable lot. We have vague ideas of past splendour and a golden age when the land flowed with milk and honey, and sorrow and suffering hid themselves away from the haunts of men. We do not analyse the springs of past greatness or try to find out what qualities we lack which our ancestors possessed. I think that we can learn a great deal from them; none the less let us remember that the world has not remained stationary during the last few thousand years. The world progresses and advances in knowledge and culture even though there are occasional lapses and retrogression. All history teaches us this lesson of general progress, and indeed life would be a burden difficult to carry if we did not believe that a better order of things is gradually evolving itself in this world of sorrow. To that order our ancient civilization can contribute a great deal, but only if we understand its essentials and live up to them and not lose ourselves in a forest of empty forms and symbols, forgetting the core and the essence.

I shall not venture to enumerate the essentials of that ancient civilization. I am not competent to do that. But I shall touch briefly on some obvious points. It seems to me that the old Aryans were a very ‘positive’ people. They were active and inquisitive and adaptable. They loved freedom and would suffer no restrictions on their physical or mental liberty. They were not afraid of thinking, of ‘looking down into the pit of hell’, if necessary, and of arriving at novel and disconcerting conclusions. They looked forward in the realms of thought, as well as towards the countries of the earth, for fresh advances and conquests. They had the spirit of adventure in them and life was to them a wonderful game, a quest after the knowledge of this world and the next.

And we, their puny descendants, who pride ourselves in our high ancestry, what are we? A passive, inactive and indolent race forgetful of the idea of freedom or honour. Our guiding principles in life are a number of restrictions. Thou shalt not eat or drink with another, thou shalt not touch such and such, thou shalt not cross the seas, and so on and so forth. The one great restriction of old we have forgotten: ‘Thou shalt not be subjected to slavery.’ We have little time to think of it, I suppose, for we are too busy with our cooking and our other ceremonial practices. Like the frog of old we sit in our stagnant pool and imagine that it is the centre of the universe and all knowledge and virtue are in us and there is nothing more to seek or discover. And nature has had its revenge on us. The world has marched on and left us far behind immersed in our superstitions and observances which we do not even understand. Like our old architecture, our faith has lost its ancient purity and simplicity and has been covered up with a mass of abuses and crude symbols and orientation. Today the keepers of our consciences are men, narrow and bigoted and with no knowledge of anything except empty forms and ceremonials. There is nothing more frightful, said Goethe, than a teacher who only knows what the scholars are intended to know. But here the teacher is far more ignorant than the scholar.

We must get rid of this inertia and woodenness and recover some elasticity of thought and movement. We must honour reason more and test everything by the light of that reason, however feeble it may be. There is no room for bigots in the modern world. We must cultivate the sprit of enquiry and welcome all knowledge whether the source of it is the East or the West. Above all, we must get rid of the gross abuses that have crept into us and threaten to poison our whole system. If we cannot conquer these weaknesses of ours then we sink deeper and deeper into the morass and perish.

But I feel that we can and will survive. A great deal is being said now about the strengthening and purification of Hinduism as practiced today. Every person, whether he is a Hindu or not, must welcome any such movement in the interests of a wider culture and human progress. Much more must a Hindu welcome it. Everything that removes the barriers that keep apart one man from another and make a common humanity possible; everything that raises large numbers of human beings and makes life more endurable for them; everything that substitutes reason for ignorant and blind bigotry is ever welcome. We must therefore, welcome the movement to broaden the basis of Hinduism and to rid it of its abuses. But I have noted with sorrow that the motive force behind it is not so much the good of Hinduism as the distrust and fear of the Mussulmans. I have come back from the Hindu Mahasabha meeting in Benares¹ with this conviction strengthened. The motive is almost entirely political. With this, I cannot agree, for it can end in only one thing, and that is disaster for all the communities in India. No great movement of reform ever flourished if it was based on fear and fed on hatred. Logically a movement of this kind can end in only one way. Fear and distrust will multiply and will call out their sister qualities in the other community. Gradually India will be converted into armed camps and every man’s hand will be raised against his brother. That can end only in a terrible catastrophe. That is a prospect which cannot be tolerated and which we must avoid at all cost.

This is the reason why I ventured to question the appropriateness of carrying on the shuddhi movement on a mass scale. I believe in giving full liberty to every man to adopt the faith of his choice. I also believe that it should be open to anyone, whoever he may be, to join the Hindu fold, should he desire to do so. But the present shuddhi movement,² so far as I understand it, is based on different reasons and is proceeding on undesirable lines. And instead of peace and harmony, it has created hatred and distrust and bitterness. Tolerance has almost ceased to exist and the best of us are not free from ignoble suspicion.

Hinduism has ever prided itself on its toleration. But today it stands in need of a reminder. ‘All sects deserve reverence for one reason or another,’ said the great Asoka. ‘By thus acting a man exalts his own sect, and at the same time does service to the sects of other people. … His Majesty cares not for donations or external reverence as that there should be a growth of the essence of the matter in all sects.’

There is a common belief among the Hindus that Islam is an intolerant religion and that it has spread by means of the sword. Most of them would mention the names of Chenghiz Khan and Timur and Mahmud of Ghazni as examples of Muslim tyrants. I wonder how many know that Chenghiz Khan was not even a Mohammedan? Or that Timur was as fond of erecting his favourite pyramids of heads in western Asia where Islam flourished as in India? Or that Mahmud of Ghazni threatened the Khalif at Baghdad with dire penalties? No great religion has prospered on forced conversion and the history of Islam shows that its tremendous initial success was due to its toleration as compared to the intolerance of the Christian sects which flourished then in western Asia and Africa. It may surprise many that one of the main charges actually brought forward in Spain against the Saracens by the Christian King Philip III³ was their spirit of toleration. Among the ‘apostacies and treasons’ of the Saracens in Spain, wrote the Archbishop of Valencia in 1602, was ‘that they commended nothing so much as that liberty of conscience, in all matters of religion, which the Turks, and all other Mohammedans, suffer their subjects to enjoy’, and on this ground, among others, he recommended that they be expelled from Spain. The recommendation was accepted and vast numbers were brutally expelled.⁴ It is most interesting to read of a Spanish Moulvi, being driven out of the country more than 300 years ago, speak thus to his tormentors of the Inquisition:

Did our victorious ancestors ever once attempt to extirpate Christianity out of Spain when it was in their power? Did they not suffer your forefathers to enjoy the free use of their rites at the same time that they wore their chains? If there have been some examples of forced conversions, they are so rare and scarce to deserve mentioning, and only attempted by men who had not the fear of God and the Prophet before their eyes, and who in so doing have acted directly and diametrically contrary to the holy precepts and ordinances of Islam which cannot, without sacrilege, be violated by any who would be held worthy of the honourable epithet of Mussulman. You can never produce, among us, any bloodthirsty, formal tribunal, on account of different persuasions in points of faiths, that anywise approaches your execrable Inquisition. Our arms, it is true, are ever open to receive all who are disposed to embrace our religion; but we are not allowed by our sacred Quran to tyrannise over consciences.

These are the traditions of toleration in Hinduism and Islam. But now, in the twentieth century, when Europe after centuries of slaughter and persecution has established religious toleration, our unhappy country is going backwards and forgetting the very lesson it taught to the world in the olden time. Intolerance is always due to want of understanding and ignorance of each other. Let us therefore try to learn each other’s history and understand each other’s past culture. The future can only hold out its promise to us if we learn to march together. Our chief enemy today is absence of reason, and its necessary consequences – bigotry. Let those therefore who believe in reason, and in freedom for this country and in human progress fight and conquer this enemy wherever and whenever it is found. There will then be few obstacles to unity and progress.

 

* JN Papers, NMML. Excerpts. Presumably written in August 1934. This article does not seem to have been published in Jawaharlal Nehru’s lifetime.

1. Jawaharlal Nehru probably had in mind the meeting at Varanasi in November 1933 when he criticized the Mahasabha severely.

2. On 16 October 1933, the Hindu Mahasabha resolved to take steps to prevent the conversion of Hindus to Christianity.

3. (1578-1621); King of Spain, Naples, and Sicily.

4. On 22 September 1609, it was decreed that, with the exception of six of the oldest and most Christian Moriscos in each village who were to be retained to teach their system of cultivation, every Morisco man and woman was to be expelled.

 

Before India is reborn*

IT is quite extraordinary how ignorant English people, outside some experts and others, are about India. If facts elude them, how much more is the spirit of India beyond their reach? They seized her body and possessed her, but it was the possession of violence. They did not know her or try to know her. They never looked into her eyes; for theirs were averted and hers downcast through shame and humiliation. After centuries of contact they face each other, strangers still, full of dislike for each other.

And yet India with all her poverty and degradation had enough of nobility and greatness about her, and though she was overburdened with ancient tradition and present misery, and her eyelids were a little weary, she had ‘a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions’. Behind and within her battered body one could still glimpse a majesty of soul. Through long ages she had travelled and gathered much wisdom on the way, and trafficked with strangers and added them to her own big family, and witnessed days of glory and of decay, and suffered humiliation and terrible sorrow, and seen many a strange sight; but throughout her long journey she had clung to her immemorial culture, drawn strength and vitality from it, and shared it with other lands. Like a pendulum she had swing up and down; she had ventured with the daring of her thought to reach up to the heavens and unravel their mystery, and she had also had bitter experience of the pit of hell. Despite the woeful accumulations of superstition and degrading customs that had clung to her and borne her down, she had never wholly forgotten the inspiration that some of the wisest of her children, at the dawn of history, had given her in the Upanishads. The keen minds, ever restless and ever striving and exploring, had not sought refuge in blind dogma or grown complacent in the routine observance of dead forms or ritual and creed. They had demanded not a personal relief from suffering in the present or a place in a paradise to come, but light and understanding: ‘Lead me from the unreal to the real, lead me from darkness to light, lead me from death to immortality,’ as the Brihadaranyak Upanishad¹ expresses it. In the most famous of the prayers recited daily even today by millions, the Gayatri mantra,² the call is for knowledge, for enlightenment.

Though often up politically, India’s spirit always guarded a common heritage, and in her diversity there was ever an amazing unity. Like all ancient lands she was a curious mixture of the good and bad, but the good was hidden and had to be sought after, while the odour of decay was evident and her hot, pitiless sun gave full publicity to the bad. …

It is curious how one cannot resist the tendency to given an anthropomorphic form to a country. Such is the force of habit and early associations. India becomes Bharat Mata, Mother India, a beautiful lady, very old but ever youthful in appearance, sad-eyed and forlorn, cruelly treated by aliens and outsiders, and calling upon her children to protect her. Some such picture rouses the emotions of hundreds of thousands and drives them to action and sacrifice. And yet India is in the main the peasant and the worker, not beautiful to look at, for poverty is not beautiful. Does the beautiful lady of our imaginations represent the bare-bodied and bent workers in the fields and factories? Or the small group of those who have from ages past crushed the masses and exploited them, imposed cruel customs on them and made many of them even untouchable? We seek to cover truth by the creatures of our imaginations and endeavour to escape from reality to a world of dreams.

And yet, despite these different classes and their mutual conflicts there was a common bond which united them in India, and one is amazed at its persistence and tenacity and enduring vitality. What was this strength due to? Not merely the passive strength and weight of inertia and tradition, great as these always are. There was an active sustaining principle; for it resisted successfully powerful outside influences and absorbed internal forces that rose to combat it. And yet with all its strength it could not preserve political freedom or endeavour to bring about political unity. It did not seem to think them worth taking much trouble about. Very foolishly it ignored their importance and suffered for this neglect. Right through history the old Indian ideal did not glorify political and military triumph, and it looked down upon money and the class that made money-making its profession. Honour and wealth did not go together, and honour was meant to go, at least in theory to the men who served the community with little in the shape of financial reward.

The old culture managed to live through many a fierce storm and tempest, but, though it kept its outer form, it lost its real content. Today it is fighting silently and desperately against a new and all-powerful opponent – the bania or money-lender civilization of the capitalist West. It will succumb to this newcomer; for the West brings science, and science brings food for the hungry millions. But the West also brings an antidote to the evils of this cut-throat civilization – the principles of socialism, of cooperation, and service to the community for the common good. This is not so unlike the old Brahmin ideal of service, but it means the brahminization (not in the religious sense, of course) of all classes and groups and the abolition of class distinctions. It may be that when India puts on her new garment – as she must, for the old is torn and tattered – she will have it cut in this fashion, so as to make it conform both to present conditions and to her old thought. The ideas she adopts must become racy to her soil.

What has been the record of British rule in India? I doubt if it is possible for any Indian or Englishman to take an objective and dispassionate view of this long record. And, even if this were possible, it would be still more difficult to weigh and measure the psychological and other immaterial factors. We are told that British rule ‘has given to India that which throughout the centuries she never possessed, a government whose authority is unquestioned in any part of the subcontinent’; it has established the rule of law and a just and efficient administration; it has brought to India western conceptions of parliamentary government and personal liberties; and ‘by transforming British India into a single unitary state, it has engendered amongst Indians a sense of political unity’ and thus fostered the first beginning of nationalism. That is the British case, and there is much truth in it, though the rule of law and personal liberties have not been evident for many years.

The Indian survey of this period lays stress on many other factors, and points out the injury, material and spiritual, that foreign rule has brought us. The point of view is so different that sometime the very thing that is commended by the British is condemned by Indians. …

The British conception of ruling India was the police conception of the state. Government’s job was to protect the state and leave the rest to others. Public finance dealt with military expenditure, police, civil administration, interest on debt. The economic needs of the citizens were not looked after, and were sacrificed to British interests. The cultural and other needs of the people, except for a tiny handful, were entirely neglected. The changing conceptions of public finance which brought free and universal education, improvement of public health, care of the poor and feeble-minded, insurance of workers against illness, old age and unemployment and the like in other countries, were almost entirely beyond the ken of the government. It could not indulge in these spending activities; for its tax system was most regressive, taking a much larger proportion of small incomes than of the larger ones, and its expenditure on its protective and administrative functions was terribly heavy and swallowed up most of the revenue.

The outstanding feature of rule by the British was their concentration on everything that went to strengthen their political and economic hold on the country. Everything else was incidental. If they built up a powerful central government and an efficient police force, that was an achievement for which they can take credit, but the Indian people can hardly congratulate themselves on it. Unity is a good thing, but unity in subjection is hardly a thing to be proud of. The very strength of a despotic government may become a greater burden for a people and a police force, no doubt useful in many ways, can be, and has been often enough, turned against the very people it is supposed to protect. Bertrand Russell, comparing modern civilization with the old Greek, has recently written: ‘The only serious superiority of Greek civilization as compared to ours was the inefficiency of the police, which enabled a larger proportion of decent people to escape.’

Britain’s supremacy in India brought us peace, and India was certainly in need of peace after the troubles and misfortunes that followed the break-up of the Moghul Empire. Peace is a precious commodity, necessary for any progress, and it was welcome to us when it came. But even peace can be purchased at too great a price, and we can have the perfect peace of the grave, and the absolute safety of a cage or of prison. Or peace may be the sodden despair of men unable to better themselves. The peace which is imposed by an alien conqueror has hardly the restful and soothing qualities of the real article. War is a terrible thing and to be avoided, but it does encourage some virtues, which, according to William James,³ the psychologist, are: fidelity, cohesiveness, tenacity, heroism, conscience, education, inventiveness, economy, and physical health and vigour. Because of this James sought for a moral equivalent of war which, without the horrors of war, would encourage these virtues in a community. Perhaps if he had learned of noncooperation and civil disobedience, he would have found something after his own heart, a moral and peaceful equivalent of war.

It is a futile task to consider the ‘ifs’ and possibilities of history. I feel sure that it was a good thing for India to come in contact with the scientific and industrial West. Science was the great gift of the West, and India lacked this, and without it she was doomed to decay. The manner of our contacts was unfortunate and yet, perhaps, only a succession of violent shocks could shake us out of our torpor. From this point of view, the Protestant, individualistic, Anglo-Saxon English were suitable; for they were more different from us than most other westerners and could give us greater shocks.

They gave us political unity and that was a desirable thing, but, whether we had it or not, Indian nationalism would have grown and demanded that unity. The Arab world is today split up into a large number of separate states – independent, protected, mandatory and the like – but throughout all of them runs the desire for Arab unity. There can be no doubt that Arab nationalism would largely achieve this unity if western imperialist powers did not stand in the way. But, as in India, it is the purpose of these powers to encourage disruptive tendencies and create minority problems which weaken and partly counteract the nationalist urge and give an excuse to the imperialist powers to stay on and pose as the impartial arbitrator. The political unity of India was achieved incidentally as a side-product of the empire’s advance. In later years, when that unity allied itself to nationalism and challenged alien rule, we witnessed the deliberate promotion of disunity and sectarianism, formidable obstacles to progress.

What a long time it is since the British came here, a century and three quarters since they became dominant! They had a free hand, as despotic governments have, and a magnificent opportunity to mould India according to their desire. During these years the world has changed out of all recognition – England, Europe, America, Japan. The insignificant American colonies bordering the Atlantic in the eighteenth century constitute today the wealthiest, the most powerful and technically the most advanced nation; Japan, within a brief span, has undergone amazing changes; the vast territories of the USSR, where till only yesterday the dead hand of the Czar’s government suppressed and stifled all growth, now pulsate with a new life and build a new world before our eyes. There have been big changes in India also, and the country is very different from what it was in the eighteenth century – railways, irrigation works, factories, schools and colleges, huge government offices, and so forth.

And yet, in spite of these changes, what is India like today? A servile state, with its splendid strength caged up, hardly daring to breathe freely, governed by strangers from afar; her people poor beyond compare, short-lived and incapable of resisting disease and epidemic; illiteracy rampant, vast areas devoid of all sanitary or medical provision; unemployment on a prodigious scale both among the middle classes and the masses. Freedom, democracy, socialism, communism are, we are told, the slogans of unpractical idealists, doctrinaires or knaves; the test must be one of the well-being of the people as a whole. That is indeed a vital test, and by that test India makes a terribly poor showing today. We read of great schemes of unemployment relief and the alleviation of distress in other countries; what of our scores of millions of unemployed and the distress that is widespread and permanent? We read also of housing schemes elsewhere; where are the houses of hundreds of millions of our people, who live in mud huts or have no shelter at all? May we not envy the lot of other countries where education, sanitation, medical relief, cultural facilities, and production proceed rapidly ahead, while we remain where we were or plod wearily along at the pace of a snail? Russia in a brief dozen years of wonderful effort has almost ended illiteracy in her vast territories, and has evolved a fine and up-to-date system of education, in touch with the life of the masses. Backward Turkey, under the Ataturk Mustapha Kemal’s leadership, has also made giant strides toward widespread literacy. Fascist Italy, on the very threshold of its career, attacked illiteracy with vigour. Gentile,⁴ the Education Minister, called for ‘a frontal attack on illiteracy. That gangrenous plague, which is rotting our body politic, must be extirpated with a hot iron.’ Hard words, unseemly for a drawing-room, but they show the conviction and energy behind the thought. We are politer here and use more rounded phrases. We move warily and exhaust our energies in commissions and committees: Indians have been accused of talking too much and doing little. It is a just change. But may we not express our wonder at the inexhaustible capacity of the British for committees and commissions, each of which, after long labour, produces a learned report – ‘a great state document’ – which is duly praised and pigeon-holed? And so we get the sensation of moving ahead, of progress, and yet have the advantage of remaining where we were. Honour is satisfied, and vested interests remain untouched and secure. Other countries discuss how to get on; we discuss checks and brakes and safeguards lest we go too fast.

‘The imperial splendour became the measure of the people’s poverty’, so we are told by the Joint Parliamentary Committee, 1934, with reference to the Moghul times. It is a just observation, but may we not apply the same measure today? What of New Delhi today with its Viceregal pomp and pageantry, and the provincial Governors with all their ostentation? And all this with a background of abject and astonishing poverty. The contrast hurts, and it is a little difficult to imagine how sensitive men can put up with it. India today is a poor and dismal sight behind all the splendours of the imperial frontage. There is a great deal of patchwork and superficiality, and behind it the unhappy petty bourgeoisie, crushed more and more by modern conditions. Further back come the workers, living miserably in grinding poverty, and then the peasant, that symbol of India, whose lot is like that of Edwin Markham’s⁵ Man with the Hoe, to be ‘born to Endless Night’.

It would be absurd to cast the blame for all India’s ills on the British. That responsibility must be shouldered by us, and we may not shirk it; it is unseemly to blame others for the inevitable consequences of our own weaknesses. An authoritarian system of government, and especially one that is foreign, must encourage a psychology of subservience and try to limit the mental outlook and horizon of the people. It must crush much that is finest in youth – enterprise, spirit of adventure, originality, ‘pep’ – and encourage sneakishness, rigid conformity, and a desire to cringe and please the bosses. Such a system does not bring out the mentality of real service, the devotion to public service or to ideals; it picks out the least public-spirited persons whose sole objective is to get on in life. We see what a class the British attract to themselves in India! Some of them are intellectually keen and capable of good work. They drift to government service or semi-government service because of lack of opportunity elsewhere, and gradually they tone down and become just parts of the big machine, their minds imprisoned by the dull routine of work. They develop the qualities of a bureaucracy – ‘a competent knowledge of clerkship and the diplomatic art of keeping office’. At the highest they have a passive devotion to the public service. There is, or can be, no flaming enthusiasm. That is not possible under a foreign government.

But, apart from these, the majority of petty officials are not an admirable lot; for they have only learned to cringe to their superiors and bully their inferiors. The fault is not theirs. That is the training the system gives them. And if sycophancy and nepotism flourish, as they often do, is to be wondered at? They have no ideals in service, the haunting fear of unemployment and consequent starvation pursues them, and their chief concern is to hold on to their jobs and get other jobs for their relatives and friends. Where the spy and that most odious of creatures, the informer, always hover in the background, it is not easy to develop the more desirable virtues in a people.

Recent developments have made it even more difficult for sensitive, public-spirited men to join government service. The government does not want them, and they do not wish to associate with it too closely, unless compelled by economic circumstance.

But, as all the world know, it is the White Man who bears the burden of empire, not the Brown. We have various imperial services to carry on the imperial tradition, and a sufficiency of safeguards to protect their special privileges, all, we are told, in the interests of India. It is remarkable how the good of India seems to be tied up with the personal interests and advancement of these services. If any privilege or prize post of the Indian Civil Service is taken away, we are told that inefficiency and corruption will result. If the reserved jobs for the Indian Medical Service are reduced, this becomes a ‘menace to India’s health’. And of course, if the British element in the army is touched, all manner of terrible perils confront us.

I think there is some truth in this: that if the superior officials suddenly went away and left their departments in charge of their subordinates there would be a fall in efficiency. But that is because the whole system has been built this way, and the subordinates are not by any means the best men, nor have they ever been made to shoulder responsibility. I feel convinced that there is abundant good material in India, and it could be available within a fairly short period if proper steps were taken. But that means a complete change in our governmental and social outlook. It means a new state.

But of one thing I am quite sure, that no new order can be built up in India so long as the spirit of the Indian Civil Services pervades our administration and our public service. That spirit of authoritarianism is the ally of imperialism, and it cannot coexist with freedom. It will either succeed in crushing freedom or will be swept away itself. Only with one type of state is it likely to fit in, and that is the fascist type. Therefore, it seems to me quite essential that the Indian Civil Services and similar services must disappear completely, as such, before we can start real work on a new order. Individual members of these services, if they are willing and competent for the new job, will be welcome, but only on new conditions. It is quite inconceivable that they will get the absurdly high salaries and allowances that are paid to them today. The new India must be served by earnest, efficient workers who have an ardent faith in the cause they serve and are bent on achievement, and who work for the joy and glory of it, and not for the attraction of high salaries. The money motive must be reduced to a minimum. This is a vital matter on which it is impossible to give in; for Indian freedom is bound up not only with the withdrawal of British forces and services, but also with the elimination of the authoritarian spirit that inspired them, and a levelling down of their salaries and privileges. The need for foreign helpers will be considerable, but I imagine that the least wanted will be civil administrators who have no technical knowledge. There will be no lack of such people in India.

What has been the record of British rule in India? Who are we to complain of its deficiencies when they were but the consequences of our own failings? If we lost touch with the river of change and enter a backwater, become self-centred and self-satisfied and, ostrich-like, ignore what happens elsewhere, we do so at our peril. The British came to us on the crest of a wave of new impulse in the world, and represented mighty historic forces which they themselves hardly realized. Are we to complain of the cyclone that uproots us and hurls us about, or the cold wind that makes us shiver? Let us have done with the past and its bickering, and face the future. To the British we must be grateful for one splendid gift of which they were the bearers, the gift of science and its rich offspring. It is difficult, however, to forget or view with equanimity the efforts of the British Government to encourage the disruptive, obscurantist, reactionary, sectarian and opportunist elements in India. Perhaps that too is a needed test and challenge for us, and before India is reborn it will have to go through again and again the fire that cleanses and tempers and burns up the weak, the impure and corrupt.

 

* Article published in Asia (New York), June 1936. SWJN, Vol. 3, pp. 631-44. Excerpts.

1. One of the 18 prominent Upanishads.

2. An English rendering of this Vedic hymn, transcribed by Jawaharlal in his notebook, is: ‘Om! Hail to the regions of the earth, air, and the heavens! We meditate on the glorious effulgence of the divine sun. May he stimulate and direct our intelligence!’

3. (1842-1910); an American psychologist and philosopher; founder of the pragmatist movement; his works include The Will to Believe, Principles of Psychology, and The Varieties of Religious Experience.

4. Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944); Italian philosopher and theorist of fascism.

5. (1852-1940); American poet, whose poem The Man with the Hoe, written in 1898, was a protest against the debasing drudgery and exploitation of labour.

 

Hindu and Muslim cultures*

Hindu and Muslim ‘cultures’ and the ‘Muslim nation’ – how these words open out fascinating vistas of past history and present and future speculation! The Muslim nation in India – a nation within a nation, and not even compact, but vague, spread out, indeterminate. Politically, the idea is absurd, economically, it is fantastic; it is hardly worth considering. And yet it helps us a little to understand the mentality behind it. Some such separate and unmixable ‘nations’ existed together in the Middle Ages and afterwards. In the Constantinople of the early days of the Ottoman Sultans, each such ‘nation’ lived separately and had a measure of autonomy – Latin Christians, Orthodox Christians, Jews, etc. This was the beginning of extra-territoriality which, in more recent times, became such a nightmare to many eastern countries. To talk of a ‘Muslim nation’, therefore, means that there is no nation at all but a religious bond; it means that no nation in the modern sense must be allowed to grow; it means that modern civilization should be discarded and we should go back to the medieval ways; it means either autocratic government or a foreign government; it means, finally, just nothing at all except an emotional state of mind and a conscious or unconscious desire not to face realities, especially economic realities. Emotions have a way of upsetting logic, and we may not ignore them simply because they seem so unreasonable. But this idea of a Muslim nation is the figment of a few imaginations only, and, but for the publicity given to it by the Press, few people would have heard of it. And even if many people believed in it, it would still vanish at the touch of reality.

So also the ideas of Hindu and Muslim ‘culture’. The day of even national cultures is rapidly passing and the world is becoming one cultural unit. Nations may retain, and will retain for a long time much that is peculiar to them – language, habits, ways of thought, etc. – but the machine age and science, with swift travel, constant supply of world news, radio, cinema, etc., will make them more and more uniform. No one can fight against this inevitable tendency, and only a world catastrophe which shatters modern civilization can really check it. There are certainly many differences between the traditional Hindu and Muslim philosophies of life. But these differences are hardly noticeable when both of them are compared to the modern scientific and industrial outlook on life, for between this latter and the former two there is a vast gulf. The real struggle today in India is not between Hindu culture and Muslim culture, but between these two and the conquering scientific culture of modern civilization. Those who are desirous of preserving ‘Muslim culture’, whatever that may be, need not worry about Hindu culture, but should withstand the giant from the West. I have no doubt, personally, that all efforts, Hindu or Muslim, to oppose modern scientific and industrial civilization are doomed to failure, and I shall watch this failure without regret. Our choice was unconsciously and involuntarily made when railways and the like came here. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan made his choice on behalf of the Indian Muslims when he started the Aligarh College. But none of us had really any choice in the matter, except the choice which a drowning man has to clutch at something which might save him.

But what is this ‘Muslim culture’? Is it a kind of racial memory of the great deeds of the Arabs, Persians, Turks, etc.? Or language? Or art and music? Or customs? I do not remember anyone referring to present-day Muslim art or Muslim music. The two languages which have influenced Muslim thought in India are Arabic and Persian, and especially the latter. But the influence of Persian has no element of religion about it. The Persian language and many Persian customs and traditions came to India in the course of thousands of years and impressed themselves powerfully all over north India. Persia was the France of the East, sending its language and culture to all its neighbours. That is a common and a precious heritage for all of us in India.

Pride in the past achievements of Islamic races and countries is probably one of the strongest of Islamic bonds. Does anyone grudge the Muslims this noble record of various races? No one can take it away from them so long as they choose to remember it and cherish it. As a matter of fact, this past record is also to a large extent a common heritage for all of us, perhaps because we feel as Asiatics a common bond uniting us against the aggression of Europe. I know that whenever I have read of the conflicts of the Arabs in Spain or during the Crusades, my sympathies have always been with them. I try to be impartial and objective, but, try as I will, the Asiatic in me influences my judgement when an Asiatic people are concerned.

I have tried hard to understand what this ‘Muslim culture’ is, but I confess that I have not succeeded. I find a tiny handful of middle-class Muslims as well as Hindus in north India influenced by the Persian language and traditions. And looking to the masses the most obvious symbols of ‘Muslim culture’ seem to be: a particular type of pyjamas, not too long and not too short, a particular way of shaving or clipping the moustache but allowing the beard to grow, and a lota with a special kind of snout, just as the corresponding Hindu customs are the wearing of a dhoti, the possession of a topknot, and a lota of a different kind. As a matter of fact, even these distinctions are largely urban and they tend to disappear. The Muslim peasantry and industrial workers are hardly distinguishable from the Hindu. The Muslim intelligentsia seldom sports a beard, though Aligarh still fancies a red Turkish cap with a fez (Turkish it is called, although Turkey will have none of it). Muslim women have taken to the sari and are emerging rather slowly from the purdah. My own tastes do not harmonize with some of those habits, and I do not fancy beards or moustaches or topknot, but I must confess, in regard to beards, that I rejoiced when Amanullah began to deal with them in a summary fashion in Kabul.

I must say that those Hindus and Muslims who are always looking backward, always clutching at things which are slipping away from their grasp, are a singularly pathetic sight. I do not wish to damn the past or to reject it, for there is so much that is singularly beautiful in our past. That will endure I have no doubt. But it is not the beautiful that these people clutch at, but something that is seldom worthwhile and is often harmful.

In recent years Indian Muslims have had repeated shocks, and many of their deeply cherished notions have been shattered. Turkey, that champion of Islam, has not only ended the Khilafat, for which India put up such a brave fight in 1920, but has taken step after step away from religion. In the new Turkish Constitution an article stated that Turkey was a Moslem State, but, lest there be any mistake, Kemal Pasha said in 1927: ‘The provision in the Constitution that Turkey is a Moslem State is a compromise destined to be done away with at the first opportunity.’ And I believe he acted up to this hint later on. Egypt, though much more cautiously, is going the same way and keeping her politics quite apart from religion. So also the Arab countries, except Arabia itself, which is more backward. Persia is looking back to pre-Islamic days for her cultural inspiration. Everywhere religion recedes into the background and nationalism appears in aggressive garbs, and behind nationalism other isms which talk in social and economic terms. What of the ‘Muslim nation’ and ‘Muslim culture’? Are they to be found in the future only in northern India, rejoicing under the benign rule of the British?

If progress consists in the individual taking a broader view of what constitutes politics, our communalists as well as our Government have deliberately and consistently aimed at the opposite of this – the narrowing of this view.

 

* From An Autobiography, pp. 469-72.

 

Culture and wisdom*

I have come here with pleasure and yet with a great deal of confusion in my mind. The pleasure is that I have always looked forward to furthering the cause of cultural association of India with not only the neighbouring countries to the east and west, but with the wider world outside. It is not merely a question of wanting such cultural association, or considering it good, but rather one of the necessities of the situation which compel one to do it or else the result is infinitely worse. I earnestly hope that the formation of this India Council of Cultural Relations will lead to a better understanding between our people and the peoples of other countries.

Having said that, let me state quite frankly the confusion that arises in my mind. All kinds of questions crop up, rather basic questions, questions which arise from what one sees going on in the world around us. We talk of understanding each other, nations, individuals and groups, and it seems an obvious thing that people should try to understand each other and to learn from one another. Yet, whether we look through the pages of history or study current events, I sometimes find that people who know each other most quarrel most. Countries which are next door to each other in Europe or in Asia somehow rub each other up most and while knowing each other very thoroughly, that knowledge itself does not lead to great cooperation or friendship. So what is wrong about our method or this procedure? That is not a new thing. Even the long pages of history show that. Has there been something wrong in individual nations or in the approach to this question or something else that has not worked as it should have done? Then again, we talk about cultural relations and immediately the question arises in my mind as to what exactly is this thing culture about which people talk so much. I remember when I was younger in years reading about German kultur and of the German people of those days trying to spread it by conquest and otherwise, and there was a big war to spread this kultur and to resist it. Every country and every individual seems to have a peculiar idea of culture and so when there is talk about cultural relations, while in theory that is very good, actually what happens is that those peculiar ideas come into conflict and instead of leading to friendship they lead to more estrangements. It is a basic question – what is culture? And I am certainly not competent to give you a definition of it because I have not found it. At any rate, I do not know.

One can see each nation, each separate civilization developing its own culture, and civilization having some roots in generations past, hundreds and thousands of years past, and being intimately moulded by that initial conception which started the civilization going along its long path. One sees that conception affected by other conceptions, action and interaction between slightly varying conceptions. There is, I suppose, no so-called culture in the world which is absolutely pristine and pure and unaffected by any other culture. It simply cannot happen, just as no person can say that he belongs one hundred per cent to a particular racial type, because in the course of hundreds and thousands of years, changes and mixtures have occurred, more or less.

So culture will get a little mixed up and the basic element of a particular national culture possibly remaining dominant and yet being affected by and affecting other cultures. If that kind of thing goes on peacefully there is no harm in it. But it leads often enough to conflicts. It leads sometime to a fear on the part of one group of what they consider their culture being rather overwhelmed by an outside or alien influence and then drawing themselves into a shell which isolates them, which prevent other thoughts and their ideas going out. That is an unhealthy situation because in any matter, and much more so in what might be called a cultural matter, stagnation is the worst. Culture, if it has any value, must have a certain depth, but it must also have a certain dynamic character. After all, culture depends on a vast number of factors. If we leave out what might be called, perhaps the basic mould that was given to it in the early stages of a nation’s or a people’s growth, it is affected by geography, by climate, by all kinds of events that have happened. The culture of Arabia is intimately governed by the geography and the deserts of Arabia. It grew up in that. Obviously the culture of India in the old days was affected greatly, as we see it in our literature, by the Himalayan mountains and the forests and the great rivers and other things in India. It was a natural growth from the soil. The two may mix together and produce a happy combination as they often did in various domains of culture, architecture, music, literature, etc. But where there is an attempt to impose something on the other which does not naturally grow or which does not naturally mould itself, uprooting itself, then comes conflict. Then unfortunately something also comes which is basically opposed to my mind, to all ideas of culture. And that is the isolation of the mind, the deliberate shutting up of the mind to other influences. My own view of India’s history is that we can almost measure the growth and the advance of India and the decline of India from the point of view of when India had her mind open to the outside world and when it wanted to close it up. The more it closed up the more it became static. Life, whether of the individual or of a group or a nation or of a society, is essentially a dynamic, changing, growing thing. Whatever stops that dynamic idea of growth injures it and makes it deteriorate.

If I may with all respect say so and without meaning any ill to any person, we have had great religions and they have had an enormous effect on humanity. Yet those very religions, in the measure that they made the mind of man static, dogmatic, and bigoted have had an evil effect according to my thinking. The things they said may be good, but the effect of saying anything and adding on to it that there you stop as the last word has been said, makes society static and therefore it stops the growth of culture.

How are you to balance these two essential factors? One is that the human being, individual or race or nation, must necessarily have a certain depth and a certain root somewhere. Otherwise if the individual is just superficial, he may be outwardly cultured in that superficial sense, but does not count for much. A race or a group does not count for much unless it has roots in the past, which past after all is the accumulation of generations of experience and some type of wisdom. It is essential that you have that. Otherwise you become just pale copies of something else which has no real meaning to you as an individual or as a group. On the other hand one cannot live in the roots alone. The roots even wither unless they come out in the sun and the free air and then the roots give you the sustenance, and they branch out and flower. And then one might say that you have achieved balance. It is very difficult to balance because some people think a great deal about the flowers and the leaves in the branches, forgetting that they only flourish because there is a stout root behind them. Others think so much of the roots that no flowers or leaves or branches are left, only a thick stem somewhere. So how is one to balance that and which part of it is real culture and which is not?

Does culture mean some inner growth of the person? Of course, it must. Does it means the capacity to understand the other person? I suppose so. Does it mean the capacity to make yourself understood by the other person? I suppose so. It means all that. A person, who cannot understand another’s viewpoint, is to that extent limited in mind and culture because nobody, barring may be some very extraordinary human beings, can presume to have the fullest knowledge and wisdom; the other party or the other group may also have some inkling of knowledge or wisdom or truth and if we shut our minds to that, then we not only deprive ourselves of it, but we cultivate an attitude of mind which I would beg to say is opposed to that of a cultured man, because the cultured mind, having roots in itself, should have its doors and windows open, imbibing other things. It should have the capacity to understand the other’s viewpoint fully even though it cannot agree with it always. It may sometimes agree, sometimes not. The question of agreement or disagreement only arises when you understand a thing. Otherwise it is a blind negation which is not a cultured approach to any question.

I may use another word, say, science. What is the scientific approach to life’s problems – one of examining everything, of seeking truth by trial and error, by experiment, never saying that this thing must be so, but trying to understand why it is so and if one is convinced of it, accepting it, and the moment some other proof comes, changing one’s notions, to have an open mind, not a mind which is floating about with every gust of wind, nevertheless an open mind trying to imbibe the truth wherever one finds that. If that is culture, how far is it represented in the modern world and in the nations of today? Obviously, if it was represented more than it is, many of our problems, national and international, would be far easier of solution.

Almost every country in the world thinks that it has some special dispensation from Providence that it is of the chosen people or race and others may be good or bad but secondary, somewhat inferior human beings. It is extraordinary how this human feeling persists in all nations without any exception, whether of the East or the West. The nations of the East are strongly entrenched in their own ideas and convictions and sometimes in their own sense of superiority in regard to certain matters in life. Anyhow in the course of the last two or three hundred years they got many knocks on the head and they were humiliated and they were debased, they were exploited. And so, in spite of sometimes thinking that they were rather superior in many ways, they were forced to admit in other ways that they could be knocked about and be exploited. To some extent this knocking about process brought a sense of realism. There was a slight attempt to escape from that realism. Oh, yes, it was said, maybe we are not so advanced in the material things of life, in the technical things, in the superficial things; nevertheless we are superior in the essential things, in the spritual things, in moral values. I have no doubt that spiritual things and moral values are more important ultimately than other things, but the way one finds escape in the thought that one is spiritually superior simply because one happens to be in the material and physical sense inferior is surprising and is not easy to follow. It is a mere way of escape from really finding out the causes of one’s deterioration.

Nationalism, of course, is a curious phenomenon which at a certain stage in a country’s history gives life and growth and strength and unity; and at the same time it has a tendency to limit one because one thinks of one’s country as something rather out of proportion with the rest of the world. The perspective changes, and one is continuously thinking of one’s own struggle and virtues and failings to the exclusion of other thoughts with the result that the very same thing, that is nationalism, which is the symbol of growth for a people becomes a symbol of stopping that growth of the mind. Sometimes, again, nationalism when it becomes successful goes on spreading in an aggressive way and it becomes internationally a danger.

So whatever line of thought you follow, you arrive at the conclusion that you must find a certain balance between these things. Otherwise something that was good turns into evil. Culture that is essentially good looked at from a wrong point of view becomes essentially not only static but aggressive and something breeding conflict and hatred. How you are to find a balance, I do not know. And perhaps that is the problem of today apart from the great political and economic problems of the age, because behind it there seems to be a tremendous conflict in the spirit of man today, some search for something which it cannot find. They go to economic theories and those economic theories have an undoubted importance because it is just folly to talk of culture or even to talk of God, when human beings starve and die. The first thing that one has to do is to provide the normal essentials of life to human beings before you can talk about anything else and there economics comes in, and human beings today are not in a mood to put up with this suffering and starvation and inequality when they see that the burden is not equally shared. Others profit while they only have to bear the burden.

So inevitably we have to deal with these problems economically and in other ways, but I do think that behind it all there is this tremendous psychological problem and question in the minds of people. It may be that some people think about it consciously and deliberately, and others rather unconsciously and dimly, but there is this conflict in the spirit of man. How it will be resolved, I do not know. One thing that troubles me is that often enough people who understand each other more and more begin to quarrel more and more. Nevertheless, you cannot say from that that we should not try to understand each other because that will be completely limiting one-self and that is something which really cannot be done in the modern context of the world. Therefore, it becomes essential that we must try to understand each other in the right way. The right way is important. The right approach, the friendly approach, is important, because a friendly approach brings a friendly response. I have not a shadow of a doubt that it is a fundamental rule of human life that if the approach is good the response is good. If the approach is bad, the response is likely to be bad too. So if we approach our fellow human beings or other countries in the right way, not in any sense of surrendering anything that we consider of essential value to truth or to our own genius, but nevertheless in a friendly way with our minds and hearts open and prepared to accept whatever good comes to them, then that will lead not only to understanding, but the right type of understanding. …

So I shall leave you to your own labours and to determine what is culture and what is wisdom. We grow in learning, in knowledge, in experience, till we have such an enormous accumulation of them that it becomes impossible to know exactly what we know. We are overwhelmed by this and at the same time somehow or other one has a feeling that all those put together do no necessarily represent a growth in wisdom of the human race. I have a feeling that it may be that some people who did not have all the advantages of modern life and modern science were wiser perhaps in the essentials than most of us are. Whether we shall be able, in later times, to combine all this knowledge and scientific growth and betterment of the human species with true wisdom or not, I do not know. It is a race between various forces. I am reminded of a famous Greek poet, the saying of a very wise man:

What else is Wisdom? What of man’s endeavour,

Or God’s high grace, So lovely and so great?

 

* Speech at the inauguration of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations, New Delhi, 9 April 1950. File No. 40 (86)/49-PMS.

 

Communalism and casteism*

Politically, we are now a well-knit country. We have, if I may say so, a strong and stable government at the centre which itself represents an integrated India. There are also many forces which help in this unifying process. But there are other forces also which tend to disintegrate and weaken this unity. Some of the people who encourage these disintegrating tendencies may do so intentionally, others perhaps unintentionally and not realizing the consequences of what they are doing. So far as the Congress is concerned, and indeed others also, we can never grow complacent, for complacency means a static position which leads to stagnation and decay. It means also an unawareness of these various forces at play, some good and some bad.

We call our state a secular one. The word ‘secular’ perhaps is not a very happy one. And yet, for want of a better, we have used it. What exactly does it mean? It does not obviously mean a state where religion as such is discouraged. It means freedom of religion and conscience, including freedom for those who may have no religion. It means free play for all religions, subject only to their not interfering with each other or with the basic conceptions of our state. It means that the minority communities, from the religious point of view, should accept this position. It means, even more, that the majority community, from this point of view, should fully realize it. For, by virtue of numbers as well as in other ways, it is the dominant community and it is its responsibility not to use its position in any way which might prejudice our secular ideal.

The word ‘secular’, however, conveys something much more to me, although that might not be its dictionary meaning. It conveys the idea of social and political equality. Thus, a caste-ridden society is not properly secular. I have no desire to interfere with any person’s belief, but when those beliefs become petrified in caste divisions, undoubtedly they affect the social structure of the state. They prevent us from realizing the idea of equality which we claim to place before ourselves. They interfere in political matters, just as communalism interferes. We have opposed communalism and continue to be stoutly opposed to it. It is, in fact, a negation of nationalism and of the national state. Communalism means the dominance of one religious community. If that community is in a minority, this is opposed to all ideas of democracy. But if that community is in a majority, even so its dominance over others as a religious community would be wholly undemocratic.

… Therefore, we have opposed communalism not only in minority communities, but also in the majority community. This argument applies to caste divisions and their functioning on the political plane. …It exists and encourages fissiparous tendencies and maintains divisions in our society, which undoubtedly weaken and prevent the growth of a real democratic spirit. Many of us perhaps do not attach enough importance to this. But I have no doubt that casteism is as dangerous as communalism and both are effective barriers, if they are strong enough, to the development of true democracy and equality.

We are apt to take pride in our tradition of tolerance. It is always dangerous to have this complacent attitude about oneself because it hides the truth from us. Few people can see their own weaknesses and failings although they are wide awake to the failings of others.

Our constitution is based on this secular conception and gives freedom to all religions, even freedom to proselytize. Personally, I do not appreciate attempts at proselytization. But that is a personal opinion of my own, and I have no business to thrust it on others. I can understand attempts at mass conversions, which can have no business with individual or personal conviction and which have often behind them some political urge.

 

* Circular to the Pradesh Congress Committees, 5 August 1954. JN Papers, NMML.

 

Amir Khusrau – symbol of India’s composite culture*

Pir Saheb,¹ Hazraat,

As you heard, this Urs has been held here for the last 650 years which is a very long period. But what has always amazed and impressed me is the kind of man that Amir Khusrau² was. There have been other great men who are remembered to this day. But there is no doubt about it that Amir Khusrau was an extraordinary man. He was a Sufi poet and knew Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Sanskrit, Hindi, and Urdu very well. But, what impressed me even more is that a man who lived in the district of Etah, six or seven hundred years ago, should have had such a great hold on the people of rural India. The folk songs written by him are sung to this day in the villages. Perhaps, there is no other example anywhere else. Great scholars have read his works and written in a simple dialect 650 years ago, they have found a niche in the heart of India and are sung by boys and girls in the rainy season as well as Basant Panchami.

Amir Khusrau is also famous for our riddles. Many children come to me, nephews and nieces, and tease me with the riddles of Amri Khusrau and I do not know the answers. I do not know where they learn them from. They have not even heard of Amir Khusrau – I tell them about him – but they are familiar with his riddles. So, this way of getting a hold on the hearts of a people is something which is greater than knowledge. His works have come to us down the centuries. I think that Amir Khusrau belongs to the select coterie of the greatest men of India and is a symbol of the things which India has always been seeking.

For a long, long time India has been after a dream, which has been realized at times and then slipped away. What is that dream? Many streams and rivers of ideas and languages and cultures have flowed into India from other countries and joined her vast cultural bloodstream. What was their place here? Were they to be assimilated into one or were they going to remain as separate little ponds?

For thousands of years, I would say, it has always been India’s consistent effort to synthesize and adopt the thoughts and ideas that flowed in, and to change and be changed a little by them. The culture and civilization of India evolved in this way by a gradual process of synthesis, and continued to change because the doors of a living and growing nation should never be shut to outside influences. They should be wide open to let in the fresh breeze of ideas and culture. What you adopt or assimilate from them is in your hands. But the moment you shut the doors, the nation stops growing and the air within, however good it may be, does not remain fresh if the doors and windows are not open.

This has always been India’s effort. It is a vast country and has a myriad differences in language and habits and way of life. In some parts of the country, it is extremely cold while others are very hot. The weather and climate are different in different parts of the country and they affect people’s dress, food, habits and way of life. In spite of such tremendous diversities, there has been an underlying unity which India has succeeded in maintaining, except on a few unfortunate occasions. The question of unity is still before us and we must understand it and make an effort to solve it.

In this context, I do not know if there has been a greater symbol of India’s unity than Amir Khusrau. It was not merely because he was a great scholar, which as I said, he was, in many languages like Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, etc. But I feel that his greatness lay more in the fact that he reached the people of the rural areas and caught their imagination by writing in their simple dialect, so much so that his memory continues to live even today, six to seven centuries later, in the folk songs and riddles of the people. This is the real sign of greatness and I can find very few instances in India’s history of such men who have made an effort to transform India’s age-old dream into reality and succeeded to such a large extent.

Every year this Urs is held here. I would like that every child in India should be familiar with Amir Khusrau’s name and story because it teaches us some very valuable lessons. So when you invited me, I came with great alacrity because I have had the opportunity of paying homage to the memory of Amir Khusrau and to listen to his songs and quawalis, for which I am very grateful to you.

 

* Speech at the six hundred and fiftieth Urs (death anniversary) of Amir Khusrau, New Delhi, 28 May 1956. AIR tapes, NMML. Original in Hindi.

1. Zamir Nizami, the head priest of Dargah Nizumuddin Auliya.

2. Amir Khusrau alias Abul Hassan (1253-1325); born in Patiali village, Etah district of Uttar Pradesh; a close disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya; an outstanding poet who wrote in very simple Hindi akin to Khadi Boli; musician with great skills; a symbol of India’s composite culture, author of many books.

 

Synthesis is our tradition*

TO endeavour to understand and describe the India of today would be the task of a brave man. To describe tomorrow’s India would verge on rashness.

What is India? That is a question which has come back again and again to my mind. The early beginnings of our history filled me with wonder. It was the past of a virile and vigorous race with a questing spirit and an urge for free inquiry and, even in its earliest known period, giving evidence of a mature and tolerant civilization. Accepting life and its joys and burdens, it was ever searching for the ultimate and the universal. It built up a magnificent language, Sanskrit, and through this language, its arts and architecture, it sent its vibrate message to far countries. It produced the Upanishads, the Gita, and the Buddha.

Hardly any language in the world has probably played that vital part in the history of a race which Sanskrit has. It was not only the vehicle of the highest thought and some of the finest literature, but it became the uniting bond for India, in spite of its political division. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata were woven into the texture of millions of lives in every generation for thousands of years. I have often wondered, if our race forgot the Buddha, the Upanishads and the great epics, what then would it be like! It would be uprooted and would lose the basic characteristics which have clung to it and given it distinction throughout these long ages. India would cease to be India. …

Gradually deterioration set in. Thought lost its freshness and became stale, and the vitality and exuberance of youth gave place to crabbed age. Instead of the spirit of adventure there came lifeless routine, and the broad and exciting vision of the world was cabined and confined and lost in caste divisions, narrow social customs, and ceremonials. Even so, India was vital enough to absorb the streams of people that flowed into her mighty ocean of humanity and she never quite forgot the thoughts that had stirred her in the days of her youthful vigour.

Subsequently, India was powerfully influenced by the coming of Islam and Muslim invasions. Western colonial powers followed, bringing a new type of domination and a new colonialism and, at the same time, the impact of fresh ideas and of the industrial civilization that was growing up in Europe. This period culminated, after a long struggle, in independence and now we face the future with all this burden of the past upon us and the confused dreams and stirrings of the future that we seek to build. We have all these ages represented in us and our country today. We have the growth of nuclear science and atomic energy in India, and we also have the cow-dung age.

In the tumult and confusion of our time, we stand facing both ways, forward to the future and backwards to the past, being pulled in both directions. How can we resolve this conflict and evolve a structure for living which fulfils our material needs and, at the same time, sustains our mind and spirit? What new ideals or old ideals varied and adapted to the new world can we place before our people, and how can we galvanize the people into wakefulness and action?

For the present, in India we are rightly absorbed in the Five-Year Plans¹ and in a tremendous effort to raise our people’s living standards. Economic progress is essential and a prerequisite for any other type of advance. But a doubt creeps into our minds. Is this by itself enough or is something else to be added on to it? The Welfare State is a worthwhile ideal, but it may well be rather drab. The examples of states which have achieved that objective bring our new problems and difficulties, which are not solved by material advance alone or by a mechanical civilization. Whether religion is necessary or not, a certain faith in a worthwhile ideal is essential to give substance to our lives and to hold us together.

Change is essential but continuity is also necessary. The future has to be built on the foundations laid in the past and in the present. To deny the past and break with it completely is to uproot ourselves and, sapless, dry up. It was the virtue of Gandhiji to keep his feet firmly planted in the rich traditions of our race and our soil and, at the same time, to function on the revolutionary plane. Above all, he laid stress on truth and peaceful means. Thus he built on old foundations, and at the same time, oriented the structure towards the future.

When Islam came to India in the form of political conquest it brought conflict. It had a twofold effect. On the one hand, it encouraged the tendency of Hindu society to shrink still further within its shell; on the other, it brought a breath of fresh air and fresh ideals, and thus had a certain rejuvenating influence. Hindu society had become a closed system. The Muslims who came from outside brought their own closed system with them. Hence the great problem that faced India during the medieval period was how these two closed systems, each with its strong roots, could develop a healthy relationship. Wise rulers like Akbar and others realized that the only hope for the future lay in some kind of harmony being established.

The philosophy and the world outlook of the old Hindus were amazingly tolerant; and yet they had divided themselves up into numerous separate caste group and hierarchies. The Muslims had to face a new problem, namely how to live with others as equals. In other countries where they had gone, their success was so great that this problem did not really arise. They came into conflict with Christendom and through hundreds of years the problem was never solved. In India, slowly a synthesis was developed. But before this could be completed, other influences came into play. …

The new liberal thought of the West and industrial processes began to affect the mind and life of India. A new nationalism developed, which was inevitably against colonialism and sought independence, and yet which was being progressively affected by the new industrial civilization as well as the language, literature and ways of the West. …

Rammohun Roy came, seeking some kind of a synthesis between old India and modern trends. Vivekananda brought back something of the vigour of old Indian thought and dressed it in a modern garb. Political and cultural movements grew up and culminated in Gandhiji and Rabindranath Tagore.

In Europe there had been a fierce conflict between science and traditional religion, and the cosmology of Christianity did not fit in at all with scientific theories. Science did not produce that sense of conflict in India and Indian philosophy could easily accept it without doing any vital injury to its basic conceptions. …

In India, as elsewhere, two forces developed – the growth of nationalism and the urge for social justice. Socialism and Marxism became the symbol of this urge for social justice and, apart from their scientific content, had a tremendous emotional appeal for the masses.

Living is a continual adjustment to changing conditions. The rapidity of technological change in the last half century has made the necessity of social change greater than ever, and there is a continual maladjustment. The advance of science and technology makes it definitely possible to solve most of the economic problems of the world and, in particular, to provide the primary necessities of life to everyone all over the world. The methods adopted will have to depend upon the background and cultural development of a country or a community.

Internationally, the major question today is that of world peace. The only course open is for us to accept the world as it is and develop toleration for each other. It should be open to each country to develop in its own way, learning from others, and not being imposed on by them. Essentially, this calls for a new mental approach. The Panchsheel, or the Five Principles, offer that approach.²

There are conflicts within a nation. In a democratic apparatus with adult suffrage, those conflicts can be solved by normal constitutional methods.

In India we have had most distressing spectacles of conflict based on provincialism or linguism. In the main, it is conflict of class interests that poses problems today, and in such cases vested interests are not easy to displace. Yet, we have seen in India powerful vested interests like those of the old princes and of the big jagirdars, talukdars and zamindars being removed by peaceful methods, even though that meant a break-up of a well-established system which favoured a privileged few. While, therefore, we must recognize that there is class conflict, there is no reason why we should not deal with it through these peaceful methods. They will only succeed, however, if we have a proper objective in view clearly understood by the people.

We have deliberately laid down as our objective a socialist pattern of society. Personally I think that the acquisitive society, which is the base of capitalism, is no longer suited to the present age. We have accepted socialism as our goal not only because it seems to us right and beneficial but because there is no other way for the solution of our economic problems. It is sometimes said that rapid progress cannot take place by peaceful and democratic methods. I do not accept this proposition. Indeed, in India today any attempt to discard democratic methods would lead to disruption and would thus put an end to any immediate prospect of progress.

The mighty task that we have undertaken demands the fullest cooperation from the masses of our people. The change we seek necessitates burdens on our people, even on those who can least bear them; unless they realize that they are partners in the building of a society which will bring them benefits, they will not accept these burdens or give their full cooperation.

Whether in land or industry, or in the governmental apparatus, institutional changes become necessary from time to time as functions change. A new set of values will replace those that have governed the old acquisitive society based on the profit motive. The problem before us is ultimately to change the thinking and activities of hundreds of millions of people, and to do this democratically by their consent.

India today presents a very mixed picture of hope and anguish, of remarkable advances and at the same time of inertia, of a new spirit and also the dead hand of the past and of privilege, of an overall and growing unity and many disruptive tendencies. Withal there is a great vitality and a ferment in people’s mind and activities.

It is a remarkable thing that a country and a people rooted in the remote past, who have shown so much resistance to change in the past, should now be marching forward rapidly and with resolute steps.

What will emerge from the labour and the tumult of the present generation? I cannot say what tomorrow’s India will be like. I can only express my hopes and wishes. I want India to advance on the material plane – to fulfil her Five-Year Plans to raise the standards of living of her vast population. I want the narrow conflicts of today in the name of religion or caste, language or province, to cease, and a classless and casteless society to be built up where every individual has full opportunity to grow according to his worth and ability. In particular, I hope that the curse of caste will be ended, for there cannot be either democracy or socialism on the basis of caste.

Four great religions have influenced India – two emerging from her own thought, Hinduism and Buddhism, and two coming from abroad but establishing themselves firmly in India, Christianity and Islam. Science today challenges the old concept of religion. But if religion deals not with dogmas and ceremonials, but rather with the higher things of life, there should be no conflict with science or inter se between religions. It might be the high privilege of India to help in bringing about this synthesis. That would be in India’s ancient tradition inscribed on Asoka’s edicts.

Tomorrow’s India will be what we make it by today’s labours. We have started on this pilgrimage with strong purpose and good heart, and we shall reach the end of the journey, however long that might be.

What I am concerned with is not merely our material progress, but the quality and depth of our people. Gaining power through industrial processes, will they lose themselves in the quest of individual wealth and soft living? That would be a tragedy, for that would be a negation of what India has stood for in the past and, I hope, in the present time also as exemplified by Gandhiji.

Can we combine the progress of science and technology with this progress of the mind and spirit also? We cannot be untrue to science, because that represents the basic fact of life today. Still less can we be untrue to those essential principles for which India has stood in the past throughout the ages.

 

* From India Today and Tomorrow, Azad Memorial Lectures, New Delhi (February 1959). Excerpts. An expanded essay was carried in the AICC Economic Review, Vol. X, no. 22, 15 March 1959.

1. The first Five-Year Plan extended from 1 April 1951 to 1 April 1956, and the second from 1956 to 1961.

2. The Five Principles are (1) mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty; (2) non-aggression; (3) non-interference in each other’s internal affairs; (4) equality and mutual advantage; and (5) peaceful coexistence and economic cooperation.

The principles of the Panchsheel Pact were enunciated in the Sino-Indian Agreement on trade with Tibet in April 1954.

 

Social fabric of a nation*

INDIA is rapidly approaching the crossroads of its destiny, and we shall have to make a vital choice.

...Right action can only follow dispassionate thinking and some knowledge of the forces that are shaping the modern world. We have today a great number of people prescribing remedies for the diseases that afflict India. Nearly all lay stress on mass organization and many talk of unity among the various political groups. But there is seldom a consideration of principle, of ultimate ideals, of the place of India in the world. What are we aiming at? What manner of county should we like India to be?

Before we answer these questions, it is worthwhile taking a larger view of world events. We all know the great changes which have followed the Industrial Revolution, although they have not affected India as much as other countries. Industrialism has resulted in the concentration of wealth in a few countries and a few individuals, in a struggle for raw material and markets, and it has brought into existence the imperialism of the last century. It has caused wars and has laid the seed of future wars. Latterly, it has taken the shape of an economic imperialism, which without the possession of territory is as potent in exploiting other countries as any colonial empire of yesterday.

All this is known, but what perhaps is not sufficiently realized is the international character of industrialism. It has broken down national boundaries and has made each nation dependent on others. The idea of nationalism is almost as strong today as it was in the past, and in its holy name wars are still fought and millions slaughtered. But it is a myth which is not in keeping with reality. The world has become internationalized. Production is international, markets are international and transport is international. Only men’s ideas continue to be governed by a dogma which has no real meaning.

Many of us, regardless of what is happening all around us, still live in the ancient past. Some want the Vedic age, others a reproduction of the early days of Islam. We forget that our ancient civilizations were meant for different conditions. Many of our traditions, habits and customs, our social laws, our class system, the position we give to women, and the dogmas which religion has imposed on us, are the relics of a past utterly out of joint with modern conditions. India will only progress, as Turkey and Russia have progressed, when she discards the myths and dogmas of yesterday in favour of the reality of today.

Many of us who denounce British imperialism in India do not realize that it is not a phenomenon peculiar to the British race or to India, or that it is the consequence of industrial development on capitalist lines. Capitalism necessarily leads to exploitation of one man by another, one group by another, and one country by another. If, therefore, we are opposed to this imperialism and exploitation, we must also be opposed to capitalism. The only alternative that is offered to us is some form of socialism.

As a necessary result of this decision, we must fight British dominion in India, not only on nationalistic grounds, but also on social and international grounds. Britain may well permit us to have a large measure of political liberty, but this will be worth little if she holds economic dominion over us. Another consequence of the socialistic view is that we must change all customs which are based on privilege of birth and caste. We must cast out all parasites and drones, so that the many who lack the good things of life may share in them. Poverty and want are not economic necessities. The world and our country produce enough (or can produce enough) for the masses to attain a high standard of well-being, but unhappily the good things are cornered by a few and the millions live in want. In India, the classic land of famine, famines are not caused by want of food, but by the want among the masses of the money to buy food. We may demand freedom for our country on many grounds, but ultimately it is the economic one that matters.

Our educated classes have so far taken the lead in the fight for swaraj, but in doing so they have seldom paid heed to the needs of the masses. And so the demand has taken the form of the ‘Indianization of the services’, of higher posts being thrown open to Indians. Whenever vital questions affecting the masses have arisen, they have been postponed till swaraj has been attained. But what shall it profit the masses of India – the peasantry, the landless labourers, the workers, the shopkeepers, the artisans – if every one of the offices held by Englishmen in India today is held by an Indian? It may benefit them a little, because they will be able bring more pressure to bear on an Indian than on an alien government but fundamentally their conditions cannot improve until the social fabric is changed.

Even from a narrow point of view it is now recognized that no effective pressure can be brought to bear on the British Government without mass support but there is fear of the masses and little is done. Mass support cannot come from vague ideals of swaraj. It is essential that we must clearly lay down an economic programme for the masses, with socialism as its ideal. We must cultivate a revolutionary outlook. Everything that goes towards creating a revolutionary atmosphere helps; everything that lessens it, hinders. I use the word ‘revolutionary’ without any necessary connection with violence. Indeed violence may be the very reverse of revolution. Acts of terrorism often have a counter-revolutionary effect and are injurious to the national cause.

 

* Article in The New Leader, 11 August 1928. Jawaharlal Nehru Collection, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (henceforth JN Collection, NMML)

 

The role of women*

IF our nation is to rise, how can it do so if half the nation, our womankind, lag behind and remain ignorant and uneducated? How can our children grow up into self-reliant and efficient citizens of India if their mothers are not themselves self-reliant and efficient? Our history tells us of many wise women and many that were true and brave even unto death. We treasure their examples and are inspired by them, and yet we know that the lot of women in India and elsewhere has been an unhappy one. Our civilization, our customs, our laws, have all been made by man and he has taken good care to keep himself in a superior position and to treat the woman as a chattel and a plaything to be exploited for his own advantage and amusement. Under this continuous pressure, the woman has been unable to grow and to develop her capacities to her fullest, and then man has blamed her for her backwardness.

Gradually, in some of the countries of the West, women have succeeded in getting a measure of freedom, but in India we are still backward, although the urge to progress has come here too. We have to fight many social evils; we have to break many an inherited custom that enchains us and drags us down. Men and women, like plants and flowers, can only grow in the sunlight and fresh air of freedom; they wilt and stunt themselves in the dark shadow and suffocating atmosphere of alien domination.

For all of us, therefore, the first problem that presents itself is how to free India and remove the many burdens of the Indian masses. But the women of India have an additional task and that is to free themselves from the tyranny of man-made customs and laws. They will have to carry on this second struggle by themselves, for man is not likely to help them.

Many of the girls and young women present at the convocation will have finished their courses, taken their degrees, and prepared themselves for activities in a large sphere. What ideals will they carry with them to this wide world, what inner urge will fashion them and govern their actions? Many of them, I am afraid, will relapse into the humdrum day-to-day activities of the household and seldom think of ideals or other obligations; many will think only of earning a livelihood. Both these are no doubt necessary, but if this is all that the Mahila Vidyapitha has taught its students, it has failed in its purpose. For a university that wishes to justify itself must train and send out into the world knighterrants in the cause of truth and freedom and justice, who will battle fearlessly against oppression and evil. I hope there are some such amongst you, some who prefer to climb the mountains, facing risk and danger, to remaining in the misty and unhealthy valleys below.

But our universities do not encourage the climbing of mountains; they prefer the safety of the lowlands and valleys. They do not encourage initiative and freedom; like true children of our foreign rulers, they prefer the rule of authority and a discipline imposed from above. Is it any wonder that their products are disappointing and ineffective and stunted, and misfits in this changing world of ours?

...What will you do, graduates and others of the Vidyapitha, when you go out? Will you just drift and accept things as they are, however bad they may be? Will you be content with pious and ineffective expressions of sympathy for what is good and desirable and do nothing more? Or will you justify your education and prove your mettle by hurling defiance at the evils that encompass you? The purdah, that evil relic of a barbarous age, which impressions the body and mind of so many of our sisters – will you not tear it to bits and burn the fragments? Untouchability and caste, which degrade humanity and help in the exploitation of one class by another – will you not fight them and end them and thus help in bringing a measure of equality in this country? Our marriage laws and many of our out-of-date customs which hold us back and especially crush our womenfolk – will you not combat them and bring them in line with modern conditions? Will you not also fight with energy and determination for the physical improvement of our women by games in the open air and athletics and sane living so that India may be full of strong and healthy and beautiful women and happy children? And, above all, will you not play a gallant part in the struggle for national and social freedom that is convulsing our county today?

 

* Address at the Prayag Mahila Vidyapitha, Allahabad, 20 January 1934. JN Papers, NMML, Excepts.

 

Can Indians get together?*

‘Can Indians get together?’ It is an odd title yet a significant one, for it tells us much in four words. It gives us an intimate and revealing glimpse into the minds of those who framed it. It reveals to us the premises and assumptions on which they base their consideration of the Indian problem. It displays that patronizing superiority of outlook which we have come to associate with westerners when they deal with eastern nations. It has something of the white man’s burden about it. Because of all this I was disinclined to write on the subject, for there is little room for argument or reasoning when premises differ. Our minds function in set grooves, and if even the impact of a World War with its attendant revolutionary changes does not pull them out from those deep hollows, how much can we expect from an appeal to reason?

This war is [a] stupendous military spectacle, and all over the world armies, navies and air forces clash with each other and seek to gain the mastery…¹ These mighty conflicts already have changed the shape of the world and will undoubtedly still further change the shape of things to come. And yet greater changes are happening in the minds of men, possibly none so great as those invisible things that are affecting Asia and gradually but surely putting an end to the relations between Asia and Europe that subsisted for two hundred years. However this War may develop, whatever the end may be, no matter what the peace is going to be, it is certain that the western world can no longer dominate over Asia. If this is not realized and if the attempt is made to continue the old relationship in any form, this means the end of peace and another disastrous conflict.

Yet this is not realized by those who shape the policies of western nations, least of all by Britain. The France of Vichy, grovelling before Germany, still talks of the French Empire,² the Netherlands, having lost already many of her vast possessions, will speaks the offensive language of Empire³ and endeavours to cling to what is left. The nineteenth century is dead and gone but the minds of Britain’s rulers still think in terms of that past. That way lies no hope for the war or for the peace that must inevitably come some time or the other. Unless London and Washington begin to think in terms of today and of a free and equal Asia they will never reach a solution of the problems that confront them.

That solution lies in accepting the fact of full and equal freedom for all the countries of Asia, of giving up the doctrine of racial superiority, which is no monopoly of the Nazis and which we in India have known in its most intense form for many generations. It lies in the recognition of Indian independence, which will not only release the suppressed and pent-up energies of a great nation but will be symbolic of a new freedom all over the world.

What a mess the nations of Europe made of this world with their perpetual conflicts, their eternal hates, their grabbing violence and cut-throat opportunism, with the misery they brought to their colonial territories, with two World Wars in the course of a single generation!

Not being able to look after their own houses, they presume to dominate over others and pose as their mentors. But no one values them for their achievements in science, literature or the application of science. Behind all this there is a lack of something which brings their achievements periodically to nought. Asia has looked at this changing scene with the strength of ages behind her, and the past 200 years, with all their suffering and mortification, are but a brief interlude in her long history.

That interlude is over. A new chapter must begin. Asia is learning rapidly what the West has to teach of science and its applications and is trying to harmonize them with her old-time genius. She has little to learn, much to teach about the philosophy of life and the art of living.

Can the Indians get together? Yes, certainly, if impediments in their way created by foreign authority are removed, if they can face their problems without external interference. Every problem finally will be solved either by peaceful means or by conflict, through this may give rise to new problems. Independent India will solve her problems or cease to be. The past history of India shows us how she has successfully tackled her problems and out of every conflict of opposing forces has produced a new synthesis. Synthesis is a dominant trait of India’s civilization and history.

Except for China, there is no great country in the world which has shown such powerful unity throughout the ages as India. That unity took political shape only recently as it could not be stabilized until relatively recent developments in transport and communications made this easy. If these developments had not taken place it is possible that the United States of America might not have been a single nation.

Britain’s rule over India led to political unity and also was a means to bring the Industrial Revolution to India. Development of that revolution was however, hindered by the British, who encouraged feudal elements and prevented industrial growth. The continuing process of synthesis also was stopped by this rule and disruptive forces were encouraged.

For the first time in India’s history, here was the rule of a foreign people who had their political, financial, industrial and cultural roots elsewhere and who could only remain as foreigners exploiting the country for their own advantage. There could be no synthesis with them, and perpetual conflict was inevitable. Yet out of this very conflict rose the powerful all-India nationalist movement, which became and is the symbol of political unity.

Independence, democracy and unity were the pillars of this movement. In accordance with old Indian traditions, toleration, fullest protection and autonomy were promised to all minorities, subject only to the essential unity of the country and to the democratic basis of its constitution. Independence meant severance from the British Empire, but in the new world it was realized that isolated national existence was not possible or desirable. So India was prepared to join any international federation on an equal basis. But that could come only after recognition of her independence and through her free will. There could be no compulsion. In particular, India wanted to associate herself closely with China.

There is now a demand on the part of some Muslims, represented by the Muslim League, for partition of India, and it must be remembered that this demand is a very recent one, hardly four years old. It must also be remembered that there is a large section of Muslims in India who oppose it. Few people take it seriously, as it has no political or economic background. Americans who fought the Civil War to keep their Union together can appreciate how a proposal to divide the country is resented by vast numbers of the Indian people.

Thirty years ago the British Government introduced the principle of separate religious electorates in India, a fatal thing which has come in the way of development of political parties. Now they have tried to introduce the idea of partitioning India, not only into two but possibly many separate parts. This was one of the reasons which led to bitter resentment of the Cripps proposals. The All India Congress could not agree to this, yet it went far and said if any territorial unit clearly declared its desire to break away, the Congress could not think in terms of compelling it to stay in the Union.

So far as minorities are concerned, it is accepted and common ground that they should be given fullest constitutional protection, religious, cultural, linguistic and in every other way. Backward minorities or classes should in addition be given special educational and other privileges to bring them rapidly to the general level.

The real problem so often referred to is that of the Muslims. They are hardly a minority, as they number about 90,000,000, and it is difficult to see how even a majority can oppress them. As it happens, they are largely concentrated in particular provinces. It is proposed to give full provincial autonomy to every province, reserving only certain all-India subjects for the central government, and this will give every opportunity for self-development in each cultural area. Indeed, there may even by similar autonomous cultural areas within the province.

It is possible to devise many ways to give satisfaction to every conceivable minority claim. The Congress has said this must be done by agreement, not by a majority vote. If agreement is not possible on any point, then impartial arbitration should be accepted. Finally, if any territorial unit insists on breaking away after the experience of working in the Union, there is going to be no compulsion to force it to stay, provided such severance is geographically possible.

It must be remembered that the problem of Indian minorities is entirely different from nationalities with entirely different racial, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. This is not so in India where, except for a small handful of persons, there is no difference between Hindu and Muslim in race, culture or language. The vast majority of Muslims belong to the same stock as the Hindus and were converted to Islam.

Few problems in the world today are basically so simple of solution as the Indian minority problem. For various reasons it is important today and comes in the way of progress, yet it is essentially a superficial problem without deep roots. The real problems of India are economic, the poverty and low standards. As soon as these are tackled aggressively, as they should be, and modern industry grows, bringing higher standards in its train, the minority problem fades away. It has been a product of unemployment of the middle classes who had few avenues of work open to them and looked for employment to the state. As state jobs were limited, demand rose for reservation of these for particular communities.

Every attempt to solve the problem thus far has failed because there was always a third party – the British Government. If that government fades away, the whole background of this problem changes when Indians have to look to themselves. Compulsion of events forces them to face reality and to come to agreement. The only alternative is conflict, which everyone is anxious to avoid, over a relatively trivial issue. But even if there is conflict, that is preferable to the present stalemate, and it will produce a solution.

The All India Congress proposal has been that this and other problems should be considered and finally decided by a constituent assembly elected by adult franchise. The widest franchise is considered necessary, for the consideration of these question should rest on those vast numbers of people who are far more interested in economic problems and who do not look for state employment.

Such economic problems cut across religious boundaries and are common to the Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Buddhist. If such an assembly could not come to an agreement on any particular minority matters they could be referred to international arbitration. We are perfectly prepared to abide by the decision of such an international tribunal in such matters. But the question of arbitration does not arise over the question of independence. That and the allied questions of self-determination must be recognized and accepted before there is a possibility of arbitration over minor matters. On independence we cannot compromise.

Can the Indians get together? I have no doubt that they can and they will. Even today there is an amazing unity of outlook among them and whatever their internal differences might be they stand for independence. The real obstacle in the way of real unity and progress is foreign domination. From every point of view it has become an urgent and immediate necessity that Britain should relinquish her hold in India and recognize Indian independence. There is no other way and it is certain, whether Britain likes it or not, that India must be given complete independence.

The approach of war to India has made this an even more vital question. Independent India would treat America and Britain as allies in a common enterprise to release her vast energy and resources against every aggressor who invaded her territory. But Indians can no longer function as slaves and underlings in their own country or outside or tolerate being treated as chattels by dominant foreign authority. Submission to this is for them the worst kind of spiritual degradation.

The East will put up with it no longer. Asia will come back to her own through whatever travail and suffering fate may have in store for her. China has poured out her heart’s blood in defence of her freedom. India would do likewise if the opportunity came to her to fight for her freedom. She seeks no dominion over others, but she will put up with no dominion over herself. Only independence will release her from long bondage and allow her to play her part fittingly in the terrible drama of the world today.

 

* Article printed in The New York Times Magazine, 19 July 1942. SWJN, Vol. 12, pp. 518-23.

1. As in the original.

2. On 17 February 1941, an Imperial Committee was formed by the Vichy Government whose purpose was ‘to make known to all Frenchmen the grandeur of the Empire.’ In 1942 the Vichy Government from time to time claimed its Empire. In March 1942, it assured the Americans that the fate of Madagascar would not be the same as that of Indo-China.

3. The exiled Netherlands Government in London appointed, on 21 May 1942, Dr. H.J. Van Hook as Minister of Colonies.

 

The role of the prime minister*

The Prime Minister’s role is, and should be, an important role. He is not only a figurehead but a person who should be more responsible than anyone else for the general trend of policy and for the coordination of the work of various Government departments. The final authority necessarily is the Cabinet itself. But in the type of democratic set-up we have adopted, the Prime Minister is supposed to play an outstanding role. This, I think, is important (again quite apart from personal factors), as otherwise there will be no cohesion in the Cabinet and the Government and disruptive tendencies will be at work.

Speaking for myself, I have at present two functions to perform in Government. As Minister of External Affairs, I function like any other minister and my ministry is like any other ministry. As Prime Minister, however, I have a special function to perform which covers all the ministries and departments and indeed every aspect of governmental authority. This function cannot be easily defined and the proper discharge of it depends a great deal on the spirit of cooperation animating all the parties concerned. Inevitably, in discharging this function of Prime Minister I have to deal with every ministry not as head of one particular ministry, but as a coordinator and a kind of supervisor. Naturally, this can only be done effectively with tact and goodwill and without in any way diminishing the prestige of other ministers. Other ministers must not normally be interfered with and should have freedom to carry out their work without unnecessary interference.¹

If this position is recognized, then no present difficulty arises, and if at any time a difficulty does arise, it can be resolved by personal contact and discussion between the parties concerned. Because of this I have endeavoured in almost every matter of importance to confer with Sardar Patel.

The immediate issue arose out of my sending Iengar to Ajmer.² I think that my sending him was not only completely within my competence but also it was an eminently desirable thing to do in the circumstances and that undoubtedly it did some good. This opinion of mine has been strengthened by my visit to Ajmer. Iengar had nothing to do with holding any kind of inquiry or sitting in judgement in any way on the officials in Ajmer.³ He was sent as the eyes and ears of the Prime Minister and to convey the Prime Minister’s regret for his having had to cancel his visit to Ajmer previously. In Ajmer and elsewhere, we have to deal with psychological problems and mental states. The approach to the people direct is always important when dealing with such problems. The importance of Ajmer had induced me to pay a visit there even at inconvenience. I could not go then because of a death in the family. My not going was variously interpreted in Ajmer and gave rise to all manner of suspicions and rumours. Iengar’s going helped to lessen these suspicions somewhat among the people by making them realize that the Government was greatly interested in their peace and welfare. My subsequent visit, of course, did much more good. It did not, as it was not meant to, affect the position of the Chief Commissioner, whom indeed I praised publicly for his ability and impartiality. But apart from these facts the question remains: Is the Prime Minister entitled to take such a step and who is to be the judge of this? If the Prime Minister cannot even take this step and is not himself to be the judge of what is proper and what is not in such matters, then he cannot function properly or fulfil his functions.⁴ Indeed, he does not function at all as the Prime Minister should. The mere fact that he is Prime Minister presumably leads to the conclusion that he is capable of judging aright and carrying out the policy laid down. If he is not capable of this, then he should cease to be Prime Minister. Indeed, this means abdication of his functions and he cannot in future function with any effectiveness. There will be no proper coordination of governmental authority and, in such circumstances, the administrative machinery weakens and there are rival pulls.

If this view is correct, then the Prime Minister should have full freedom to act when and how he chooses, though of course such action must not be an undue interference with local authorities who are immediately responsible. The Prime Minister obviously is as much interested as anyone else in having loyalty and cooperation of the services.

In the event of the Prime Minister not functioning in this way, then he can hardly carry on as a mere figurehead and much harm may be done to the services as well as to the public at large by the enunciation of contradictory policies by ministers.

This is the background. But whatever the theory may be, practical difficulties continually arise. Normally speaking, the best way out of these difficulties would be for some rearrangement in the Cabinet to be made which would cast the responsibility on one person more than anyone else. In the present set-up this means that either I should go out or that Sardar Patel should go out. For my part, I would greatly prefer my going out.⁵ Of course, this going out of either of us need not and should not mean any kind of subsequent opposition. Whether we are in or out of government we remain, I hope, not only loyal Congressmen but loyal colleagues, and we will still try to pull together in our respective spheres of activity.

Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that if either of us goes out at the present juncture it would create a sensation both nationally and internationally, and the consequences may not be good. At any time this position would have to be faced; but at the present juncture, with the Kashmir issue and the great problem of rehabilitation facing us, not to mention the states and the growth of communal organizations in India, any such parting of ways may well have very serious consequences affecting the good of India. None of us wants to do anything which may be at all injurious to the national good, even though our views of the national good may differ somewhat. After having given very serious thought to this matter during the last fortnight I have come to the conclusion that as far as possible we must avoid, at this particular juncture, any parting of ways in Government. We are too much in the transitional stage and a serious shake-up of government may well lead to an upsetting of the apple cart. I think that we should carry on for some months more till the Kashmir issue is more clarified and other problems have also been tackled to some extent. The way to do this must be the fullest consultation about every important matter. At the same time I do feel that the Prime Minister’s function, as defined above, must be appreciated ...

 

* Note to Mahatma Gandhi, 6 January 1948. Sardar Patel’s Correspondence 1945-50, Vol. 6. pp. 17-21. SWJN, Vol. 5 (II Series) pp. 471-5. Excerpts.

1. In his note of 12 January 1948, Patel questioned Nehru’s interpretation of the Prime Minister’s role as inconsistent with a democratic system of government, for it would raise him ‘to the positions of a virtual dictator’. The Prime Minister was no doubt ‘first among equals’, but he had no overriding powers over his colleagues ‘as responsibility for implementing policy decisions rested with the ministry concerned and on the minister in charge.’

2. Patel said that the immediate issue was not H.V.R. Iengar’s visit to Ajmer but Gopalaswami Ayyangar’s direct correspondence with the East Punjab Government.

3. Patel reiterated that ‘Iengar went to Ajmer, inspected various places, received deputations… the public mind is bound to associate it with an inquisition. The Chief Commissioner took it in that light and stated that the public also felt it as such.’

4. Patel felt ‘the question is not whether the Prime Minister was entitled to take this step or not or whether he is not to be the judge of the propriety of the action, but whether I, as a Minister, was wrong in pointing out to him the inadvisability of the course he had taken and the probable consequences it entailed.’

5. Patel replied: ‘…if anybody has to go, it should be myself. I have long passed the age of active service. The Prime Minister is the acknowledged leader of the country and is comparatively young; he has established an international position of pre-eminence for himself.’

 

A national state*

For every sensitive human being in India the last six months have brought pain and sorrow, and what is worst of all, a humiliation of the spirit. It has been bad enough for those who are old in years and experienced, but I often wonder how the young feel who, at the threshold of their lives, have seen and experienced catastrophe and disaster. They will, no doubt, survive it, for youth is resilient; but it may well be that they will carry the mark of it for the rest of their days. Perhaps if we are wise and strong enough to think and act rightly even now, we may succeed in erasing the mark.

For my part I wish to say that, in spite of everything, I have a firm faith in India’s future. Indeed, if I did not have it, it would not have been possible for me to work effectively. Although many of my old dreams have been shattered by recent events, yet the basic objective still holds and I see no reason to change it. That objective is to build a free India of high ideals and noble endeavour where there is equality of opportunity for all and where many variegated streams of thought and culture meet together to form a mighty river of progress and advancement for her people.

I am proud of India, not only because of her ancient, magnificent heritage, but also because of her remarkable capacity to add to it by keeping the doors and windows of her mind and spirit open to fresh and invigorating winds from distant lands. India’s strength has been twofold; her own innate culture which flowered through the ages, and her capacity to draw from other sources and thus add to her own. She was far too strong to be submerged by outside streams, and she was too wise to isolate herself from them, and so there is a continuing synthesis in India’s real history and the many political changes which have taken place have had little effect on the growth of this variegated and yet essential unified culture.

I have said that I am proud of our inheritance and our ancestors who gave an intellectual and cultural pre-eminence to India. How do you feel about this past? Do you feel that you are also shearers in it and inheritors of it and, therefore proud of something that belongs to you as much as to me? Or do you feel alien to it and pass it by without understanding it or feeling that strange thrill which comes from the realization that we are the trustees and inheritors of this vast treasure? I ask you these questions, because in recent years many forces have been at play diverting people’s minds into wrong channels and trying to pervert the course of history. You are Muslims and I am a Hindu. We may adhere to different religious faiths or even to none; but that does not take away from that cultural inheritance that is yours as well as mine. The past holds us together; why should the present or the future divide us in spirit?

Political changes produce certain results, but the essential changes are in the spirit and outlook of a nation. What has troubled me very greatly during these past months and years is not the political changes, but rather the creeping sense of a change of spirit which has created enormous barriers between us. The attempt to change the spirit of India was a reversal of the historical process through which we had been passing for long ages past and it is because we tried to reverse the current of history that disaster overwhelmed us. We cannot easily play about with geography or with the powerful trends which make history. And it is infinitely worse if we make hatred and violence the springs of action.

Pakistan has come into being, rather unnaturally I think. Nevertheless, it represents the urges of a large number of persons. I believe that this development has been a throwback we accepted in good faith. I want you to understand clearly what our present view is. We have been charged with desiring to strangle and crush Pakistan and to force it into a reunion with India. That charge, as many others, is based on fear and a complete misunderstanding of our attitude. I believe that, for a variety of reasons, it is inevitable that India and Pakistan should draw closer to each other, or else they will come into conflict. There is no middle way, for we have known each other too long to be indifferent neighbours. I believe indeed that in the present context of the world India must develop a closer union with many other neighbouring countries. But all this does not mean any desire to strangle or compel Pakistan. Compulsion there can never be, and an attempt to disrupt Pakistan would recoil to India’s disadvantage. If we had wanted to break Pakistan, why did we agree to the partition? It was easier to prevent it then than to try to do so now after all that has happened. There is no going back in history. As a matter of fact it is to India’s advantage that Pakistan should be a secure and prosperous state with which we can develop close and friendly relations. If today by any chance I were offered the reunion of India and Pakistan, I would decline it for obvious reasons. I do not want to carry the burden of Pakistan’s great problems. I have enough of my own. Any closer association must come out of a normal process and in a friendly way which does not end Pakistan as a state, but makes it an equal part of a large union in which several countries might be associated.

I have spoken of Pakistan because that subject must be in your minds and you would like to know what our attitude towards it is. Your minds are probably in a fluid state at present, not knowing which way to look and what to do. All of us have to be clear about out basic allegiance to certain ideas. Do we believe in a national state which includes people of all religions and shades of opinion and is essentially secular as a state, or do we believe in the religious, theocratic conception of a state which regards people of other faiths as somebody beyond the pale? That is an odd question to ask, for the idea of a religious or theocratic state was given up by the world some centuries ago and has no place in the mind of the modern man. And yet the question has to be put in India today, for many of us have tried to jump back to a past age. I have no doubt that whatever our individual answers may be, it is not possible for us to go back to a conception that the world has outlived and that is completely out of tune with modern conceptions. As far as India is concerned, I can speak with some certainty. We shall proceed on secular and national lines in keeping with the powerful trends towards internationalism. Whatever confusion the present may contain, in the future, India will be a land, as in the past, of many faiths equally honoured and respected, but of one national outlook, not, I hope, a narrow nationalism living in its own shell, but rather the tolerant creative nationalism which, believing in itself and the genius of its people, takes full part in the establishment of an international order. The only ultimate aim we can have is that of one world. That seems a far cry today with warring groups and preparations for and shouting of world war three. Yet, despite all this shouting, that is the only aim that we can keep in view, for the alternative to world cooperation is world disaster.

We must cultivate this broad outlook and not be led away by the narrowness of others into becoming narrow in spirit and outlook ourselves. We have had enough of what has been called communalism in this country and we have tasted of its bitter and poisonous fruit. It is time that we put an end to it. For my part I do not like the intrusion of this communal spirit anywhere, and least of all in educational institutions. Education is meant to free the spirit of man and not to imprison it in set frames. I do not like this university being called the Muslim University just as I do not like the Benares University to be called the Hindu University. This does not mean that a university should not specialize in particular cultural subjects and studies. I think it is right that this university should lay special stress on certain aspects of Islamic thought and culture.

I want you to think about these problems and come to your conclusions. These conclusions cannot be forced upon you except to some extent, of course, by the compulsion of events which none of us can ignore. Do not think that you are outsiders here, for you are as much flesh and blood of India as anyone else, and you have every right to share in what India has to offer. But those who seek rights must share in the obligations also. Indeed, if the duties and obligations are accepted, then rights follow by themselves. I invite you as free citizens of free India to play your role in the building of this great country and to be shearers, in common with others, in the triumphs and setbacks alike that may come our way. The present with all its unhappiness and misery will pass. It is the future that counts. More especially to the young, and it is that future that beckons to you. How will you answer that call?

 

* Address, Aligarh Muslim University, 24 January 1948. JN Papers, NMML. Excepts.

 

Hindu code bill

New Delhi, 15 September 1951

My dear Mr. President,

I have received today your letter of the 15th September, and with it your note on the Hindu Code Bill. I have read this note with care.¹ As desired by you, I shall place it before the Cabinet.² The legal and constitutional questions you raise are important. In the last paragraph of your note you have mentioned that it may be necessary for you to inform Parliament of your viewpoint. You also refer to your right to examine the Bill on its merits when it is passed by Parliament before giving your assent to it.³

These are serious matters of great constitutional importance. They might involve a conflict between the President on the one side and the Government and Parliament on the other. They would inevitably raise the question of the President’s authority and powers to challenge the decision of Government and of Parliament. The consequence would obviously be serious.

I do not wish to say much on this subject except that, in our view, the President has no power or authority to go against the will of Parliament in regard to a Bill that has been well considered by it and passed. The whole conception of constitutional government is against any exercise by the President of any such authority.

You have been good enough to mention to me, on several occasions, your disapproval of the Hindu Code Bill. I pointed out on each occasion that the Government had given the most earnest consideration to the principles underlying this Bill and were fully committed to them. This Bill is not a new measure and it has been before the country for a number of years. There has been a very great deal of discussion and argument about it outside and within Parliament. It is after the fullest consideration of all the factors that Government came to the conclusion to press this Bill forward in Parliament. It has already been discussed, in the earlier stages, at great length. There have been many informal committees, and noted public men, representing various viewpoints, have been consulted. As a result of such consultations, major changes have been made in the Bill. The object aimed at was to reduce controversy to a large extent and to gain as large a measure of approval of the Bill as possible.

The question of the competence of the present Parliament to enact such a measure was raised in Parliament itself, and after much discussion, the Speaker gave a ruling on the subject. The various grounds mentioned in paragraph 1 of your note⁴ were considered by Parliament and a decision taken thereon. It is hardly open to anyone, even the President, to challenge that decision. Otherwise, the question would arise as to whether Parliament is the supreme legislative authority in this country or not.

You refer to the revolutionary changes contemplated by the Bill. The Bill is now, in the opinion of many, a very moderate measure of social reform with very little, if any, of revolution about it. Indeed, it is very largely a codification of the existing law. In this codification even custom has often been accepted as a guiding factor. It was felt strongly by large numbers of people, of varying opinions, that some such codification was necessary to bring some certainty and uniformity in the law.

Certain changes have been introduced, but they can hardly be called far-reaching. Indeed, many of those persons who stood strongly in favour of this Bill are severely disappointed at it because of its very moderate character. The changes suggested are generally recognized by thinking people the world over as desirable and as being in consonance with modern conditions and the spirit of the time. Indeed, as you have pointed yourself,⁵ some of these changes have already been introduced in various states.⁶ No one, to my knowledge, has called them revolutionary changes there, nor has there been any marked reactions against them.

It is true that when any social or economic changes are proposed in an existing structure of society, there are always some elements which are strongly in favour of them and some opposed to them very strongly. No reform can take place if this opposition is considered to be an adequate bar to change. The mere fact of long-established static conditions can hardly be considered an argument for no change, even though facts otherwise warrant it.

I hardly think that it is correct to say that public opinion is overwhelmingly against the proposed measure. Parliament is supposed to represent public opinion in this and other matters, and even apart from this there has been a very widespread expression of opinion in the country in favour of the Bill.

Yours sincerely,

Jawaharlal Nehru

 

* To Rajendra Prased. File No. 48(4)(a)/ 48-PMS.

1. Rajendra Prasad’s note to Nehru expressing a desire to act solely on his own judgement, independently of the Council of Ministers, when giving assent to Bills to Parliament for reconsideration. He maintained that the Provisional Parliament did not have the authority to enact such major legislation as the Hindu Code Bill because it was indirectly elected and its members lacked the public ‘mandate’ of a general election. He desired to use the power of his office either to force the Provisional Parliament to shelve the measure or, failing that, to veto it even against the advice of his Cabinet.

2. Prasad had written: ‘I feel I owe it to you and to the Cabinet to put you in possession of my view so that you and the Cabinet may not be taken by surprise.’

3. Rajendra Prasad had also written: ‘But if I find that any action of mine at a later stage is likely to cause embarrassment to the Government, I may take such appropriate action as I may feel called upon to avoid such embarrassment consistent with the dictates of my own conscience.’

4. He found it inconceivable for any Government or Parliament to undertake legislation of such a fundamental character without obtaining an express mandate from the electorate at a general election where the question was specially raised.

5. Rajendra Prasad wrote: ‘It has been said that in some states polygamy has been prohibited by law while in others it still continues and it is considered necessary to enact the law to remove this anomaly.’

6. Monogamy had become a part of the law, in states like Madras, Bombay and Saurashtra and divorce was practised by a large number of people governed by the customary law, and it was statutorily recognized in Baroda.

 

Moulding our destiny*

WE have met here not to have academic debates about theoretical pro-positions but to face reality and to chalk out a programme of action. The world today is grim and cruel and the voice of calm and dispassionate reason has sunk to a whisper and is often drowned by strident and passionate cries. The proud culture and civilization, built up through ages of human effort, still endure in their outer semblance, but somehow they lose the inner content. The values and standards fade away. The quest for truth and beauty and goodness gives place to a race for unabashed power. The tenderness and graciousness, the sanctity and dignity of human life are replaced by callousness, vulgarity and naked force. Hate is propagated as a doctrine and politics and economics have assumed the form of dogmatic religion with all its fanaticism, which tolerates no heresies and persecutes those who differ from it.

This was the phase of fascism and authoritarianism as we knew them. A world war was fought against this degradation of the spirit of man. The war was won but the disease continued.

Communism, for all its triumphs in many fields, crushes the free spirit of man. Democracy itself gradually succumbs to the new cult of force and violence.

What then are we to do? The problem before us has to be viewed as an integrated whole, whether we think of the Congress, of our country or of the world. We cannot, to any large extent, affect the course of events in the world. We can mould our own destiny in some measure and thereby have some slight effect on world affairs. I want you to think of our problems in this perspective and on this broad canvas. We shall soon have general elections in this country on a colossal scale and already the fever of elections is raising the temperature of men’s minds. These elections have an importance, but they are of little significance unless we see them in this larger perspective. What do we aim at and whither do we go? These are difficult questions to answer, but of one thing I am sure, that we shall not function rightly if we lose our own freedom of spirit and the springs of action that come out of it. Those of my generation can never forget the breath of freedom that came to us when our great leader, Mahatma Gandhi, came into our ken. That was something more than political freedom, which came much latter. It was a freedom of the spirit that came to us, a fearlessness and a faith in our cause and in our country. Politically freedom has come to us and we are an independent country today, but I miss that fearlessness and that freedom of spirit. I miss these not only in our own country but elsewhere in the world. Indeed the predominant sensation in most countries, including the greatest, is that of fear, and fear is a bad companion and inevitably drives one to wrong action. Our Master taught us the ancient lesson of India, the lesson of abhaya and ahimsa, and even we, small men cast in a lesser mould, increased in status thereby.

He taught us also the importance of means and that means should not be subordinated to ends. Yet today nations encourage hatred and violence and prepare for the most terrible of wars. The lesson of history is forgotten, that these great wars have a way of following their own unpredictable courses and leading to results which were not desired or aimed at; that in fact wars do not solve any major problem.

We live in an age of science and that is supposed to be the moving spirit of the modern age. It is opposed to dogmatic religion. But, in spite of it, dogmas rule the world today, though they are not called religions. Science, which was a liberating force and which has brought untold benefits to humanity, threatens to destroy everything that it has built, including the mind of man.

Is this the ultimate result of the Industrial Revolution which began two hundred years ago or so and which has arrived at a stage when even the free mind and the spirit of man are becoming affected by the machine and are progressively incapable of that quest for truth and human happiness, which has distinguished humanity through millennia of painful effort?

I venture to place before you some of these ideas which trouble me and many others because I feel that we must find some answer to these questions before we can define our own objectives with clarity. Unless we have that answer, life becomes inactive and without meaning. The problem is a worldwide one. Culture and civilization are not the monopoly of any one or more nations and the hope of peace in the world is not just a pious aspiration but a vital necessity if civilized existence is to endure. We have a great deal to learn from other countries, but we have also to unlearn something and, in any event, I am convinced that if we lose our identity and the ideals that have inspired us in the past, then we cease to have any significance. We have served India not just because she is a geographical entity and the land of our birth, but because we thought that she represented certain ideals and objectives, the material and spiritual growth of man, and the unity of mankind. We have no desire to impose our ideas on others, but we were firmly convinced also that we would not allow any imposition on ourselves. If those ideals go and the service of India does not represent them, then our pride in India goes also and the urge to serve fades away.

We may be told that all this is impractical idealism, far removed from the cruel reality of today. It is this impractical idealism that brought success to us and it is the so-called reality that people talk about, that has brought great wars and might bring another and a greater one. This realism ignores the rise of great new historical forces which form the dynamics of revolution in the world today. Unless these forces are understood, there will be no correct appreciation of the situation. Gandhiji understood and represented in his own person these historical forces in the Indian context. That was why he was great and that was why he evoked a tremendous response from the millions of Indians. He understood also what India had stood for, her strength and weakness. His life was, therefore, devoted not only to the political freedom of India but also to the emancipation of suffering and downtrodden masses of people. He was a liberating force for these masses and for our womenfolk. But this mighty force for social justice and racial and economic equality was used without hatred and violence. It was his ambition to wipe every tear from every eye. It appears to be the ambition of many great men today to produce an ocean of tears and blood and in that way to try to solve the world’s problems.

Our policies, domestic or foreign, flow from each other or affect each other and have to be integrated to some extent. They cannot be viewed separately. It is not our desire to play an important role in the world or even in Asia. Some people vainly imagine that India aspires to leadership elsewhere. This is a completely wrong assumption. But, as the world is constituted today, international cooperation has become essential and there can be no isolated existence for a nation. Either there is international cooperation or international conflict. Therefore, we are driven to cooperation and to have our say when circumstances require it. We would greatly prefer not to interfere in any way in the problems of other countries, just as we would like no interference from outside in our own problems. But we would welcome cooperation and help and, where possible, we would like to give our help in the solution of any problem.

The United Nations Organization and the great Charter, which was its basis, attracted us because it represented an ideal for world cooperation which had always been our own aim. Indeed we believe that some time or other, if this world is to survive, the idea of One World must take shape. We have given our allegiance to the United Nations even when some of its decisions have surprised and pained us. We still believe that it contains, within itself, the germs of that world order, which is the hope of mankind. But it has seemed to us that the UNO has somewhat drifted away from what it was meant to be and the intentions of its great founders have not been realized. It was meant to be a universal organization; it is something less now. This is a serious development and, in considering this, it is immaterial whose fault has led to this change. If the UNO ceases to have that universal background and appeal, then it begins to represent only a part of the world, however big and important that part might be. Instead of a mighty instrument for peace, it would tend to develop into something different. It is, therefore, becoming necessary to reconsider this problem afresh and perhaps to reorganize the UNO on a new bases, keeping to the old moorings, reiterating the Charter, but giving it a wider appeal and making it more in touch with reality.

Perhaps the danger of a world war is somewhat less now than it was previously. Yet fear of that war consumes and paralyses nations and much of their strength and energy is devoted to rearmament. A hungry and impoverished world cries for food and development, but the world’s resources are directed not so much to development but to the production of weapons of destruction, and the mind of man is also turned away from constructive and cooperative effort. It is strange indeed that this should be so when the people of every country desire peace and everyone knows the terrible danger of war. Has something gone wrong with out thinking, and have we lost touch with the simple facts of life? Surely, it should be possible for the statesmen of the world to put a stop to this mighty race for rearmament and to divert this energy into more fruitful channels. The alternative is too dreadful to contemplate. Even if that final disaster is somehow avoided or delayed, this continuing process starves and degrades the world. Standards of life are lowered, frustration sets in, and the light of faith in the future, which has carried humanity through ages of suffering, grows dim. What shall we do when that light goes out?

There is aggression and fear of aggression and each feeds the other. Is it not possible to stop all aggression and interference by one country, so that each country can live according to its lights? We may not approve of the ways of another country and our ways might not be approved by others. But we are not likely to bring conviction by force and coercion. The only practical way is to accept that the world is various and diverse and that the people have different faiths and different ways of living. No doubt they will gradually approximate to each other because of modern conditions. To try to impose our system or our way of life on another is to provoke fierce resistance which defeats the very ends in view. There is plenty of evil in the world and evil has to be combated, but this will not be done by methods that are themselves evil, nor will it be achieved through hatred and violence.

If this is a correct approach, then India’s foreign policy must be fashioned to this end. It has to adapt itself to changing conditions, but basically it must hold to these objectives. Indeed, throughout our struggle for freedom, we held to this viewpoint and it is natural that we should continue to adhere to it. To say that India is neutral or passive is completely incorrect. We are humble enough to know that we cannot do much to change the world, but we have a definite and positive approach to world problems and we would be untrue to ourselves if we discard it. We are convinced that any control imposed by one country over another, by whatever name this might be called, is bad and is a danger to peace. We are convinced also that the propagation and practice of racial inequality is an evil and is opposed to the basic principles of democracy. Large parts of the world today are underdeveloped and lack the primary necessities of human existence. This imbalance has to be rectified, for otherwise it will continually lead to conflict.

The First World War ended the world of the nineteenth century and upset the balance of power which had existed for a long time. The Second World War brought further upsets an a new set of political, economic and financial conditions were produced. It has been difficult for countries to adjust themselves to these new conditions, to the fact that Asia is a changed continent, where there is a mental ferment in vast masses of people and revolutionary changes are taking place. There is a passion for social and economic change in the hope of betterment. The land problem is the primary one for most people in Asia, but there are others also almost as important. These problems are not going to be solved by wars and large-scale destruction. Nor can they be held up by vested interests, either domestic or foreign. Liberating forces are at work everywhere and if they are not given a chance for proper development, they go in wrong directions. These forces represent the powerful urges of millions of people. Any attempt, therefore, to influence a situation must be such as to keep these liberating forces in view and direct them into right channels. To suppress them or to support some out-of-date system or reactionary force, which opposes them, is to fight against the current of history.

In India, as elsewhere, we have these conflicts between reactionary and static elements and dynamic and progressive forces. Essentially it is on the economic plane, but it touches the social life of the people in many ways. Thus, the Hindu Code Bill, which has given rise to so much argument, became a symbol of the conflict between progress and reaction in the social domain. I do not refer to any particular clause in that Bill, which might or might not be changed, but rather to the spirit underlying that Bill. This was a spirit of liberation and of freeing out people, and more especially, our womenfolk, from outworn customs and shackles that bound them. We cannot progress along one front and remain tied up on other fronts. We have, therefore, to keep in view this idea of integrated progress on all fronts, political economic and social. That progress cannot be based on a rejection of our past, out of which we have grown, nor can it be a mere copying of what others do; it must be based on our own genius and cultural inheritance. But it has to reject many of the evils that have prevented social growth and it must take advantage of all that is good in the world.

…Communalism is a narrow and disrupting creed. It is completely out of place in the modern world. There can be no progress in India if we put up communal barriers amongst ourselves. This is not merely a question of Hindu and Muslim but of other religious and sectarian and caste groups also. Once this dangerous tendency spreads, we do not know where it will end and any dreams that we may have of rapid progress in this country will have to be given up.

We have seen communalism at work both in Pakistan and India in its different forms. It is based on hatred and violence and the narrowest bigotry. It attracts to its fold reactionary and anti-social elements who try to prevent social progress under cover of religion or some form of extreme nationalism, which really can only be applied to one community. Therefore, it is not merely communalism that we have to deal with, but social reaction in every form. It is because of this that I have laid great stress upon the danger or vague thinking on this vital issue. There are not many who openly profess unabashed communalism, but there are a large number who unconsciously adopt its modes of thought and action. Some organizations proclaim that they are not communal and yet, they have functioned in the narrowest and most dangerous communal way.

Communalism bears a striking resemblance to the various forms of fascism that we have seen in other countries. It is in fact the Indian version of fascism. We know the evils that have flowed from fascism. In India we have known also the evils and disasters that have resulted from communal conflict. A combination of these two is thus something that can only bring grave perils and disasters in its train. It is degrading and vulgarizing, it plays upon the basest instincts of man. If India were to listen to this pernicious cry, then indeed India would not only have continuous trouble within her own borders, but would be isolated from the rest of the world, which would look down upon her.

Therefore it is a matter of vital importance today that we must curb and check and put an end to both conscious and unconscious communal thought in India. There can be no compromise with that and no quarter can be given. Only then can we realize true freedom and make progress. Only then can we live up to the old traditions of our country and to the heritage of our great movement for freedom.

In a much lesser degree, we have to face the disrupting nature of provincialism. India is a vast country which has a varied culture. All of us have a rich and common inheritance. We have also, in different parts of the country, variations in that common culture. While unity is essential, an enforced uniformity is not only not necessary but, I think, is undesirable. Why should we not keep this great variety which enriches our lives in addition to our basic unity? Most people, living in their particular corner of India, think of India as if it was a mere extension of that corner, and, therefore, want to impose their way on others. But India is much bigger than that part and much richer and deeper. It would be doing great harm to our concept of India, if we tried to confine it in a straitjacket of a particular point of view or some special customs or ways of life to which some of us are accustomed. There is a vast difference between the people in the southern tip of India and the people living across the Himalayas in Ladakh. Yet they both belong to the infinite pattern of India. Are we going to try to regiment them and make them all of one pattern? We cannot do so, because geography, climate and cultural inheritance prevent this regimentation.

There is also the cry of having what is called one culture for India, whatever that might be. India has a basic cultural outlook of her own, but it has been enriched in the distant past by numerous streams coming from various parts of Asia, and in later years, from the western world. All these are intimate parts of India now and have been woven into her rich and intricate pattern. It is this composite culture which is our proud heritage and which we have to preserve and develop. If we try to deprive ourselves of something that has grown with us and is part of us, we grow the poorer for it and we start a process of disruption which is bad for us politically, culturally, and in the domain of the spirit.

 

* Presidential Address, 57th Session of Indian National Congress, New Delhi, 18 October 1951, JN Papers, NMML. Excerpts.

 

Building India*

ONCE I was asked, ‘What is your principal problem? How many problems have you got?’ I said, ‘We have got 360 million problems in India.’ Now that answer amused people, but it has an essential truth in it: that all our problems have to be viewed from the point of view of the 360 million individuals, not some statistical mass which you see drawn in curves and graphs on paper. Graphs are very useful to understand, but we must think in terms of individuals, individual happiness and individual misery.

We are starting planning for the 360 million human beings in India. We may sit down and argue about the theoretical approaches. We may argue about, let us say, whether we should have a socialistic approach or a private enterprise approach or a communist approach or a Gandhian approach. We may go on listing any number of approaches; and it is interesting to argue and to clarify our minds, because thinking is helped by the sharp exchange of ideas. But, unfortunately, all these words which at one time had some precise meaning have gradually tended to become debased and to lose their meaning by association with hosts of new ideas, new conflicts, new passions.

Words are tricky things always. In the final analysis the word is the biggest thing in the world. All the knowledge we have, everything we posses, is a collection of words which represent ideas of course. A simple word like table or chair, if it is simply that, the matter ends there; but as soon as we get out of that category of tables and chairs and get to concepts which have emotional significance attached to them, they become very tricky. When we think of such words we get roused up; a certain emotion fills us. An emotion may fill us with enthusiasm but we cease to think straight. And when two person meet whose emotions have been roused up in different ways by the same word, then it becomes quite impossible for them to have any reasonable discussion. In the international sphere today, there is so much emotion, passion and anger roused by words, and what the words are supposed to connote, that it is becoming very difficult to have consistent or reasonable discussion. Words are thrown at each other just as a bomb might be thrown at a person. Therefore, I say: Beware of words, great as they are. What do we want? Not words, even though words may signify much.

What do the 360 million people want? It is fairly easy to begin making a list – later there may be differences of opinion – but it is obvious enough that they want food; it is obvious enough that they want clothing, that they want shelter, that they want health. They want such things, regardless of the social or economic policies we may have in mind. I suggest that the only policy that we should have in mind is that we have to work for the 360 million people; not for a few, not for a group but the whole lot, and to bring them up on an equal basis….

We are now at a stage when we can go forward in our journey with greater assurance. We have to utilize the experience we have gained, pool our resources and prevent wastage…. We cannot allow the nation’s resources to be wasted. Democracy has many virtues, but one of its concomitants is wastage of time and energy. Nevertheless, for many reasons, we prefer democracy to other methods of government. That does not mean that we cannot avoid waste. We cannot afford waste, because the basic thing is that we should go ahead. The devil is at our heels, or as they say, ‘Shaitan peechhe ata hai, to bhagte hain’. I should like you to have this kind of feeling. To hell with the man who cannot walk fast. It serves him right if he gets out of the ranks and falls out. We want no sluggards. We want no slow people who always complain about their service conditions and their transfers and so on. I am fed up with such complaints. Service conditions and salary and status may be important. But I want work and work and work. I want achievement. I want men who work as crusaders. I want men who are going to fight for what they think is right and not submit humbly to wrong. I want you to do big things. I want you to build India. Can you conceive of a bigger thing than to build this immense country of ours? That is the spirit in which you have to undertake this job. And let the weak and the slow and lazy go to the wall. There should be no pity for them.

 

* Speech at a Meeting of the Coordination Board of Ministers for River Valley Projects, New Delhi, 13 October 1954. JN Papers, NMML. Excerpts.

 

Basic education*

Friends and Comrades,

Looked at purely from the educational point of view, any modern educationist I think is bound to accept this method – called the basic method of education – and yet unfortunately, and to my great surprise, some educationists in our country have criticized it and have said that this is a throwback to some primitive stage of education. I can only say that they have not taken the trouble to understand what basic education is. Further, they have not quite understood what India is aiming at today. The old style of education, it is well known, was originally started by the British and 150 years ago with the particular purpose of getting a number of Indians trained to help them in the administration of the country, in the lower grades. It is true that since then our education has progressed and it is also true that even under the old style of education India has produced some very fine specimens of humanity; very finely educated, cultured, trained great men and women have been produced by India. That is not an argument that that is a perfect type of education. For my part, I think that, given opportunities, India ought to produce a vast number of very high class persons, men and women.

I tell you nothing saddens me so much when I go abroad and when I see more especially little children who are denied education or proper education, sometimes denied even food or clothing. But if our children today are denied that, what is our India of tomorrow going to be?

It is the duty of the state to provide good education for every child in the country. That is true. And I would add that it is the duty of the state to provide free education to every child in the country, make proper provision for it. That is true. But unfortunately, we cannot do all these things quickly and suddenly because of our lack of resources, lack of finances, lack of trained personnel, lack of teachers, lack of many things. But we have to get going because after all whatever pattern of society we are looking forward to must contain trained human beings, not people who have just learned to read and write, but trained human beings whose character has been developed, whose minds have some elements of culture about it and whose hands can do something.

Unfortunately in our country there has been a tradition that manual labour is something bad and degrading and meant for the lower class people. I doubt if anything has done more harm to India than this peculiar and fantastic notion that manual labour is meant for some lower class people and that the high class person should not move his hand but should only do what is called mental, intellectual work. That idea still persists. I can only describe it not only as a wrong idea but as a pernicious idea. I do not think that any nation that thinks that way can really progress. Apart from everything else from the point of view even of physical development, manual work is essential….

This type of education which presumes to concern itself only with the reading of books, is, from any point of view incomplete. It is conceivable that you may become a high class mathematician or a high class something else as an individual but you will find you will be an even better mathematician if your body functions adequately and properly. Therefore it has become necessary in our country to lay the greatest stress on physical fitness. I do not like a person going about with a bent back. I want them to walk erect, ramrod straight. I want them to be quick in their walking, not loiter about, sauntering as many of us do. So it has become of extreme importance – this stress on two things, on physical culture, physical fitness, and the ability of their hands to do things. You can take it from me that if your hands can do things your minds will work more satisfactorily. I have no doubt about it ….

We say that we require ‘an education for the purpose of achieving the national aims and social objectives of free India and in particular to train the right type of personnel for the speedy execution of development plans.’ After all, you want to educate a person for something. What for? Well, perhaps previously it was to get a post or a job in government service. Well, government service is an honourable calling, there is nothing wrong about it, in free India certainly ….

There are hundreds of thousands and millions of ways of working. I do not confine you to this or that but you must, in some field of activity or other be a producer.

If that is our objective then our whole training must be aimed at that, ideological, intellectual as well as physical training. The whole concept of basic education is, as I understand it, that for a period of seven years everybody in India, boy and girl, between the ages of say 7 to 14 years, must go through this course of basic training and that training must give that person an adequate background to do something. He may at the later stage go to higher studies. Higher studies do not necessarily mean a degree like a B.A. or M.A. It will probably mean some kind of scientific or technical institute where he can specialize. But the first seven years of basic training will be common for all. That should give him I hope some cultural attainments, character, some capacity to work, that is fitness to carry on manual activity, and intellectual ability. Before that what I consider very very essential is pre-basic training, that is training of the child, from the moment almost of birth or at any rate, say after the child is a year or two old. Simple training but which is of the highest importance, more important than almost any training you may give afterwards, because the child’s character is largely formed in the first five or ten years.

 

* Address at the Avadi Session of the 60th Indian National Congress, 23 January 1955. AIR tape T.S. No. 12320 NM-181-Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speeches. NMML. Excerpts.

 

Public health*

THE pursuit of health or the raising of the health standards of the nation does not mean merely the curing of disease, but much more so the prevention of it. Thus, while hospitals and the like are necessary, what counts most is the public health approach as well as health education. Health today does not consist merely in the avoidance of bodily ailments, but comprises in its scope health of the mind, which has a direct effect on the body, just as bodily ill health often affects the mind.

I am sure that the very first consideration in raising the standards of health of the nation is to supply adequate food, properly balanced. Poverty and health do not go together. Therefore, it is really more important for the health of the individual as well as of the community that there should be adequate nutrition. To this, I should like to add that food habits should be encouraged which would ensure a balanced diet. Unfortunately, we in India suffer most of all from inadequate nutrition, and even those who can afford to have what food they like, have seldom a balanced diet. Then, there is the necessity of a pure water supply, which is still lacking in a great part of our rural areas, though some progress has been made.

A war on disease and ill health is, therefore, essentially a war on poverty and all its evil brood. In effect, it is the raising of the standards of the nation in every way, and we come back to our Five-Year Plans whose aim it is to do this.

But, while this is being done some special attention has necessarily to be paid to the curative aspect as well as to the elimination of various painful diseases which affect large numbers of our people and either kill them or disable them. Malaria, I suppose, is the biggest scourge of all. Then, there is tuberculosis, venereal diseases, leprosy, etc….

While our cities and towns require to be looked after much better than they are at present, it is really the village that has been terribly neglected and cries loudly for succour. Public health must, therefore, go to the village, and the village should not be compelled to come to the town in search of it. Our community development movement will, I am sure, play a very important part in this extension of public health services to our rural areas. I think that mobile vans should be increasingly used for this purpose.

I have no doubt that we should aim at a national health service which would supply free treatment and advice to all those who require it. But that is still a distant prospect, though we should keep it in view and endeavour to approach that objective.

One very important subject which affects the future of our country, is that of population and the control of population by family planning. I believe that our government is one of the very few governments in the world which have undertaken family planning in a scientific way. The progress made thus far may not be great, but it is commendable, and a basis for this has been laid.

…For us in India, it is of the utmost importance for the future of our country and our people that we should make this movement for population control by family planning a widespread and successful one….

There is much controversy often about the place of the Ayurvedic and Yunani systems. There can be no doubt that both these ancient systems of India have an honourable history and that they had a great reputation. Most people know also that even now they have some very effective remedies. It would be wrong and absurd for us to ignore this accumulation of past knowledge and experience. We should profit by them and not consider them as something outside the scope of modern knowledge. They are a part of modern knowledge. But, in many directions, modern science, as applied to both medicine and surgery, has made wonderful discoveries and, because of this, health standards in advanced countries have improved tremendously. We cannot expect to improve our standards unless we take full advantage of science and modern scientific methods. There is no reason why we should not bring about an alliance of old experience and knowledge, as exemplified in the Ayurvedic and Yunani systems, with the new knowledge that modern science has given us. It is necessary, however, that every approach to this problem should be made on the basis of the scientific method, and persons who are Ayurvedic and Yunani physicians should have also a full knowledge of modern methods. This means that there should be a basic training in scientific methods for all, including those who wish to practise Ayurvedic or Yunani systems. Having got that basic training, a person may practise either of these systems or homoeopathy.

The question is thus not of a conflict between various systems but of sound education in knowledge as it is today and then the freedom to apply it according to any system. It is the scientific approach that is important.

 

* Foreword to Health in Independent India by G. Borkar (1957).

 

A foreign policy for India*

TO some of us in India it may appear a foolish waste of time to indulge in fancies about a foreign policy for India. Our national movement is at an ebb and the country appears to be rent into many factions – religious, economic and political. Efforts are being made to bridge the gulf between the Hindu and the Muslim and to bring the various political groups under one banner. Laudable as these efforts are they seldom appear to take into consideration the fundamental causes of disunion or lay much stress on the underlying principles which only can form the basis of effective political action. Unity is good and worth striving for with all our might, but only if it is based on principles which matter and which are believed in. A patched-up unity at the cost of principles can only be followed by disruption at the moment of crisis and consequent disaster. It is bad ethics and worse policy. It is no waste of time, therefore, for us to consider some of these principles and the wider aspects of the India problem….

What are these problems? There are many but the four principal ones appear to be: the question of minorities, our future economic structure, our social problem, and our foreign relations.

A consideration of the minorities problem will include the Hindu-Muslim question, the Brahmana and the non-Brahmana, the Sikhs and the smaller minorities. We shall have to see how far the existing friction is due to economic causes and to what extent merely to religious intolerance and bigotry. The latter will involve a comparison with other countries and would lead us to the regrettable conclusion that our country, with its age-long reputation for religious tolerance, is today the worst example of intolerance and bigotry. It will be for us to consider whether this narrow outlook and religiosity can be eradicated by cautious compromises between rival superstitions or by a frontal attack on all superstition and bigotry, wherever it may be.

Our second problem – the future economic structure of our country – raises the vital issue which is convulsing Europe today. Are we to aim at a continuation of the capitalist regime in India, or some form of socialism, or something else which is different from either of these? This will largely influence our constitution and our methods of government. It will also necessitate a consideration of the causes of Indian poverty, of the terrible over-pressure on land, of land tenure and land revenue. We are apt to imagine that with the withdrawal of British political control the ‘drain’ of India’s wealth will cease. We forget that the amount that India pays in the shape of salaries and pensions and the bank charges and the like is only a small part of her tribute, and it is quite conceivable that even self-government may not stop the exploitation of the country, unless it is followed by a change in our economic structure.

The third problem deals with our social evils and raises vital issues which must be faced and boldly tackled. Katherine Mayo’s notorious book, Mother India,¹ has broadcast the most amazing generalizations and calumnies about our country. It would be easy enough for anyone so minded to write a similar book about France or England or America, and by picking out the most disgusting facts from the records of the police courts and the files of Sunday journals to point to the conclusion that it was a loathsome country, past all redemption. And yet everyone knows that this would be a false caricature and a calumny, and that France and England and America have a great deal that is admirable and noble and worth acquiring. It is difficult for an Indian to read Katherine Mayo’s book without anger and resentment. No person, Indian or foreigner, who has any knowledge of India, can read the vile charges brought against our people as a whole, without knowing from his personal experience that they are false. The book is a particularly mean and disgraceful effort at propaganda, and yet I should like as many Indians as possible to read it. We have our plague spots. Let us face them squarely and root them all out.

The fourth and the last problem for us to consider is that of foreign policy. I propose only to deal with this here and not with the other three, although it is difficult to separate questions which are so intimately connected. Our foreign relations will include our relations with England and her empire, now called the British Commonwealth of Nations.

Many attempts have been made in recent years to induce the Congress to take up foreign propaganda, and although some resolutions favouring it have been adopted, little has been done. It has been rightly felt that our energy and money can be better employed at home. But the questions we have now to consider is not one of propaganda to gain the sympathy of others but one of ending the isolation in which India has lived for generations and of developing contacts with other parts of the world. Whether we wish it or not India cannot remain, now or hereafter, cut off from the rest of the world. No country can do so. The modern world is too closely knit together to permit of such isolation….

India cannot keep apart from this tangled web, and her refusing to take heed of it may indeed lead her to disaster. We must understand world movements and politics and fashion our own movement accordingly. This cannot mean that we have to subordinate our interests or our methods of work to those of any other country or organization. Nor does it mean that we should expect any help from outside or slacken our efforts at home. It simply means that we must educate ourselves in problems of world polity so that we may be able to serve our country better. It means that whenever possible we may take part in international joint action when this is to our advantage. It means also that we should gradually train a body of men and women who can be relied upon to serve Indian interests abroad when the power for doing this comes into our hands. Let us remember that there are many countries and many peoples who suffer as India does today. They have to face the same problems as ours and it must be to the advantage of both of us to know more of each other and to cooperate where possible….

What is the position of the Indian in foreign countries today? Apart from a few students and others, he has gone either as a coolie or as a mercenary soldier on behalf of England. As a coolie he is looked down upon with contempt and as a hireling of the exploiters he is hated. Indian soldiers and the police have been used by the British Government to further its own interests in China, Egypt, Abyssinia, Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf, Arabia. Tibet, Syria, Afghanistan and Burma, and wherever they have gone they have made the name of India hated. In Burma one can understand the grievance of some people against their exploitation by the British and Indians and their desire to separate from India. In Mesopotamia our countrymen hold the country for the British and also join in the process of exploitation. Even in Annam, I am told by friends, the Indian community always sides with the French Government against the Annamese and, in the elections for a deputy for the French Chamber, cast their votes for the official nominee. In Shanghai the most hated are the Indian police who are made to do the dirty work of their imperial masters. It is not surprising, regrettable as it may be, that the Indian is not loved in those very countries which suffer a common fate with us and which should be our friends and allies. It is for the Congress to develop these contacts and to strive unceasingly for the withdrawal of all Indian armies and police from foreign countries. On the occasion of the despatch of Indian forces to Shanghai, the Viceroy declared that they were being sent to protect Indian interests in China. We have no interests there or anywhere which require the protection of armed force and even if we had such interests it is better for them to suffer than to be protected at the point of the bayonet. The only interests we wish to develop in any country are such as are acceptable to the people of that country….

In developing our foreign policy we shall naturally first cultivate friendly relations with the countries of the East which have so much in common with us. Nepal will be our neighbour and friend; with China and Japan, Indonesia, Annam, and Central Asia we shall have the closest contact. So also with Afghanistan, Persia, Turkey and Egypt. Some people, living in a world of their own creation, imagine that there is a pan-Islamic block which may threaten India. This is pure fancy. Every one of the Islamic countries is developing on intensely national lines and there is absolutely no room in them for an external policy based on religion. Indeed even their domestic policy has little to do with religious dogmas. The interests of these countries are and will continue to be our interests. With the European nations we are bound to develop further contacts. We have much to learn from them and closer intercourse will be to the advantage of both.

Russia offers a peculiar problem which requires special consideration. She has adopted an economic policy with the rigid faith of a new religion and she is continually trying to spread it to other countries. That policy even in Russia has undergone some change during the last few years and it is possible that it may further change. Whether a variant of that policy or some other form of socialism should be our aim is one of the problems which we have to solve. But even if we are wholly opposed to that policy we can have friendly relations with Russia….

India will also have to keep watch on the many Indians who are abroad and lay down a policy for their guidance. They should be free to go where they like for purposes of labour or business but only to countries where they are welcome and are treated honourably. We cannot thrust them down in other lands and win for them a privileged position by force as the imperialist powers have so often done with their nationals. An Indian who goes to other countries must cooperate with the people of that country and win for himself a position by friendship and service….

Many of these questions will only arise after we are free. We can hardy develop a foreign policy so long as we are dependent on a foreign government. We can do little now. But we can at least lay down the general lines of our future policy and try to keep in touch with movements in other countries. The League Against Imperialism offers us one way of doing so of which we should take full advantage. But we should not limit ourselves to it. There are many other ways also of our developing these contacts and it would be desirable for the Congress to open a foreign department to do so.

There is one vital issue, however, which we must face immediately. What will India do in case of a war in which England is involved? Thirteen years ago we were swept in before we knew what had happened and our manpower and resources were fully utilized for the benefit of England. Are we going to allow ourselves to be similarly exploited again? The danger of war coming in the near future is serious enough. All nations of Europe are making frenzied preparations for it, while their representatives spend pleasant days in Geneva discussing disarmament.² Russia is continually discussing the coming war. The whole of English policy seems to be based on it. And when nations prepare for war and expect it, it has a way of coming even though no country wants it. If war comes the East is sure to be involved and England is consequently strengthening her position in the Pacific and in India. The Singapore Base can be a challenge only to Japan and China. In India it is proposed to transfer the control of the army to the British War Office and to station a large part of the British Expeditionary Force within easy reach of the North-West Frontier. All this means a preparation for war with Russia. India has no quarrel with Russia; she has considerable sympathy for her, and there is much in her that she admires. Why then should we be dragged into a war against Russia for the benefit of British imperialism? But there is no doubt that we shall be dragged in if we patiently wait on and do nothing. The British dominions have established their right to join England in a war or not to do so as they choose, though it is difficult to imagine where the British Commonwealth will be if one part of it is at war and another at peace. India should also declare unequivocally that she will be no part to any war without her express consent, and if she is bullied or hustled into such a war, she will not help in any way. We must have this declaration made and repeatedly made and it should be made known to the people as widely as possible by press and platform. We have nothing to gain by being parties to such a conflict and we have a great deal to lose.

 

* Article written in Montana, Switzerland, 13 September 1927. AICC, File No. 8, 1927, pp. 1-27, NMML, Excerpts.

1. Katherine Mayo was an American author who sought to show that India was socially backward and therefore unfit for freedom. Her book was written with the active assistance of British officials in London and India.

2. Between 1919 and 1939, a series of bilateral and multilateral disarmament conferences were held under the aegis of the League of Nations.

 

The national language*

Mr. President.

There has been a great deal of debate here and elsewhere, and much argument over this question….¹

Now I am not going to talk about any of the various amendments that are before you or even analyse the amendments that I am supporting.² Rather I wish to draw your attention to certain other aspects, certain basic things which perhaps are presented by this conflict on the issue either in the House or in the country. After all it is not a conflict of words, though words may represent that conflict here. It is a conflict of different approaches, of looking perhaps in somewhat different direction.

We stand – it is a platitude to say it – on the threshold of a new age, for each age is always dying and giving birth to another. But in the present context of events all over the world and more so perhaps in India than elsewhere, we are participating both in a death and in a birth and when these two events are put together then great problems present themselves and those who have to solve them have to think of the basic issues and not be swept away by superficial considerations. Whether all the Honourable Members of this House have thought much of these basic issues or not I do not know. Surely many of them must have done so. But there are those basic issues. What is our objective? What are we going to do? Where do we want to go to?

Language is a most intimate thing. It is perhaps the most important thing which society has evolved, out of which other things have taken growth. Now language is a very big thing. It makes us aware of ourselves. First, when language is developed it makes us aware of our neighbour, it makes us aware of our society, it makes us aware of other societies also. It is [a] unifying factor and it is also a factor promoting disunity. It is an integrating factor and it is disintegrating factor as between two languages, as between two countries. So it has both those aspects and when therefore you think in terms of a common language here you have to think of both those facts.

All of us here, I have no doubt, wish to promote the integrity of India. There are no two opinions about it. Yet in the analysis of this very question of language and in the approaches to it one set of people may think that this is going to be a unifying factor, another may think that if approached wrongly it may be a disintegrating factor, and a disruptive one. So I want this House to consider this question and therefore it has become essential for us to view it in this larger context and not merely be swept away by our looking for this or that.

A very wise man, the Father of our Nation, thought of this question, as he thought of so many important questions affecting our national future. He paid a great deal of attention to it and throughout his career he went on repeating his advice in regard to it. Now that showed that, as with other things, he always chose the fundamentals of our national existence. Almost every thing he touched, you will remember, was a basic thing, was a fundamental thing….

Now the first thing he taught us was this: that while English is a great language – and I think it is perfectly right to say that English has done us a lot of good and we have learnt much from it and progressed much – nevertheless no nation can become great on the basis of a foreign language. Why? Because a foreign language can never be the language of the people, for you will have two strata or more – those who live in thought and action of a foreign tongue and those who live in another world. So he taught us that we must do our work more and more in our own language….

Secondly, he laid stress on the fact that language should be more a language of the people, not a language of a learned coterie – not that it is not valuable or is not to be respected – we must have learning, we must have poets, great writers and all that; nevertheless, in the modern context, even more than in the past, no language can be great which is divorced from the language of the people. Ultimately a language grows in greatness and strength if there is a proper marriage between those who are learned and the masses of the people….

The last thing in this matter to which the Father of the Nation drew our attention was this, that this language should represent the composite culture of India. Insofar as it was the Hindi language it should represent that composite culture which grew up in northern India where the Hindi language specially held sway; it should also represent that composite culture which it drew from other parts of India. Therefore he used the word ‘Hindustani’ not in any technical sense, but in that broad sense representing that composite language which is both the language of the people and the language of various groups and others in northern India, and to the last he drew the attention of the people and the nation to that…. For the last thirty years or so, in my own humble way, I stood by that creed in regard to language and it would be hard for me if this House asked me to reject that thing by which I have stood nearly all my political life.

Not only that, but I do think that in the interests of India, in the interests of the development of a powerful Indian nation, not an exclusive nation, not a nation trying to isolate itself from the rest of the world but nevertheless aware of itself, conscious of itself, living its own life in conformity and in cooperation with the rest of the world, that approach of Mahatmaji was the right approach….

Now, we stand on the threshold of many things and this Resolution itself is the beginning of what might be termed a linguistic revolution in India, a very big revolution of far-reaching effects, and we have to be careful that we give it the right direction, the right shape, the right mould lest it goes wrongly and betrays us in wrong directions. Men shape a language, but then that language itself shapes those men and society. It is a question of action and interaction and it may well be said that if a language is a feeble language or an imprecise language, if a language is just an ornate language, you will find those characteristics reflected in the people who use that language. If the language is feeble those people will be rather feeble; if it is just ornate and nothing else they will tend to ornateness. So it is important what direction you give to it. If a language is exclusive those people become exclusive in thought and mind and action.

That is what I meant when I said at the beginning that perhaps behind all this argument and debate there are these different approaches. Which way do you look? As you stand on the threshold of this new age, do you twist your neck back and look backwards all the time, or do you look forward? It is an important question for each one of us to answer because there is, inevitably perhaps, a tendency in this country today to look back far too much. There is no question of our cutting ourselves away from our past. That would be an absurdity and a disaster because all that we are we have been fashioned by that past. We have our roots in that past. If we pull ourselves out of that past, we are rootless. We cannot go far merely be imitating others, but there is such a thing as having your roots in the soil but growing up to the sky above and not always looking down to the soil where your roots are. There is such a thing as marching forward and not turning back all the time. In any event, whether you want it or not, world forces and currents will push you forward but if you are looking back, you will stumble and fall repeatedly.

Therefore, that is the fundamental thing in approaching this problem: which way are you looking, backward or forward? People talk about culture, about Sanskriti, etc., and rightly, because a nation must have a sound basis of culture to rest itself, and as I have said that culture must inevitably have its roots in the genius of the people and in their past….

Now, whatever might have been the case in the past, in the present – today – there can be no doubt whatever that there is a powerful international culture dominating the world. Call it, if you like, a culture emanating from the machine age, from industry and all the developments of science that have taken place. Is there any Honourable Member present here who thinks that if we do not accept that culture – adapt it if you like, but accept it fundamentally – that we can make such progress merely by repeating old creeds? If I may venture to say, it is because at a previous period of our history we cut ourselves off from the culture of the rest of the world and in this culture I include everything including the art of war – we became backward and we were overborne by others who were not better than us but who were more in step with the culture of the time. They came and swept us away and dominated us repeatedly. The British came and dominated over us. Why? Because in spite of our ancient Sanskriti and culture, they represented a higher culture of the day – not in those fundamental and basic things which may be considered eternal, if you like – but in other things, the culture of the age, they were superior to us. They came and swept us away and dominated over us for all this long period.

They have gone. Are we going to think of going back in mind, thought and action to that type of culture which once brought us to slavery?…

Again, look at this language problem from another point of view. Till very recently – in fact, I would say a generation ago – French was the recognized diplomatic and cultural language of Europe and large parts of the earth’s surface. There were other great languages – there was English, there was German, there was Italian, there was Spanish – in Europe alone, apart from the Asian languages. Yet French was the language in Europe, certainly of culture and diplomacy. Today it has not got that proud place. But even today, French is most important in diplomacy and public affairs. Nobody objected to French. No Englishman, or Russian, or German or Pole objected to French. So all those other languages were growing and today it might be said that English is perhaps replacing French from that proud place of diplomatic eminence.

Before French, in Europe, the language of diplomacy was Latin just as in India the language of culture and diplomacy for a vast period of time was Sanskrit, not the language of the common people but the language of the learned and the cultured and the language of diplomacy, etc. And not only in India, but the effect of that, if you go back to a thousand years, you find in almost all of South East Asia, not to the same extent as in India, but still Sanskrit was the language of the learned even in South East Asia and to some extent even in parts of Central Asia. The House probably knows that the most ancient Sanskrit plays that exist have been found not in India but in Turfan on the edge of the Gobi desert.

After Sanskrit, Persian became the language of culture and diplomacy in India and over large parts of Asia – in India due to the fact of changing rule but apart from that Persian was the diplomatic language of culture over vast parts of Asia. It was called – and it is still called – the ‘French of the East’ because of that. These changes took place while other languages were developing, because of the fact that French in Europe and Persian in Asia were peculiarly suited for this purpose. Therefore, they were adopted by other countries and nations too. India may have adopted it partly because of a certain dominating influence of the new ruler, but in other countries which were not dominated, they adopted Persian when it was not their language because it was considered as suitable for that purpose. Their language grew.

We took to English obviously because it was the conqueror’s language, not so much because at that time it was such an important language, although it was very importance even then – we took to it simply because we were dominated by the British here, and it opened the doors and windows of foreign thought, foreign science, etc., and we learnt much by it. And let us be grateful to the English language for what it has taught us. But at the same time, it created a great gulf between us who knew English and those who did not know English and that was fatal for the progress of a nation. That is a thing which certainly we cannot possibly tolerate today. Hence this problem.

However good, however important, English may be, we cannot tolerate that there should be an English knowing elite and a large mass of our people not knowing English. Therefore, we must have our language. But English – whether you call it official or whatever you please, it does not matter whether you mention it in the legislation or not – but English must continue to be a most important language in India which large numbers of people learn and perhaps learn compulsorily. Why? Well, English today is far more important in the world than it was when the British came here. It is undoubtedly today the nearest approach to an international language…

All these factors have been borne in mind in this amendment that Shri N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar has placed before the House. I do not know what the future will be for this language. But I am quite sure that if we proceed wisely with this Hindi language, if we proceed wisely in two ways, by making it an inclusive language and not an exclusive one, and include in it all the language elements in India which have gone to build up with a streak of Urdu or a mixture of Hindustani – not by the state, remember, but by allowing it to grow normally as it should grow and if, secondly, it is not, if I may say so, forced down upon an unwilling people, I have no doubt it will grow and become a very great language. How far it will push out the use of the English language I do not know; but even if it pushes out English completely from our normal work, nevertheless, English will remain important for us in our world contacts and in the international sphere.

So, to come back to the basic approach to this problem: Is your approach going to be a democratic approach or what might be termed an authoritarian approach? I venture to put this question to the enthusiasts for Hindi, because in some of the speeches I have listened here and elsewhere there is very much a tone of authoritarianism, very much a tone of the Hindi-speaking area being the centre of things in India, the centre of gravity, and others being just the fringes of India. That is not only an incorrect approach, but it is a dangerous approach. If you consider the question with wisdom, this approach will do more injury to the development of the Hindi language than the other approach. You just cannot force any language down the people or group who resist that. You cannot do it successfully. You know that it is conceivably possible that a foreign conqueror with the strength of the sword might try to do so, but history shows that even he has failed. Certainly in the democratic context of India it is an impossibility. You have to win through the goodwill of those people, those groups in India in the various provinces whose mother tongue is not Hindi. You have to win the goodwill of those groups who speak, let us say, some variation of Hindi, Urdu and Hindustani. If you try, whether you win or not, if you do something which appears to the others as an authoritarian attempt to dominate and to force down something then you will fail in your endeavour…

We stand on the threshold of a new age. Therefore it is important that we should have this picture of India clearly in our minds. What sort of India do we want? Do we want a modern India – with its roots steeped in the past certainly insofar as it inspires us – do we want a modern India with modern science and all the rest of it, or do we want to live in some ancient age, in some other age which has no relation to the present? You have to choose between the two. It is a question of approach. You have to choose whether you look forward or backward.

 

* Speech in the Constituent Assembly, 13 September 1949. Constituent Assembly of India Debates, Official Report, Vol. IX, 30 July 1949 to 18 September 1949, pp. 1409-16. Excerpts.

1. Since July 1949 there was opposition to the inclusion in the Draft Constitution of the Article which proposed Hindi and Devanagri as official language and script of India respectively and English as an additional language for ten years. The opposition came from (1) a group which did not want any official language to be prescribed by the Constitution; (2) a group which wanted adoption of Hindustani and not Hindi as official language; and (3) a group which wanted English to be the official language for 15 years to be replaced thereafter following a national debate. There was also a controversy on the adoption of the form for the use of numerals.

2. The amendment of Gopalaswami Ayyangar proposed that the official language of the Union should be Hindi in the Devanagari script, the numerals, English should continue to be used for all official purposes of the Union for a period of 15 years, the President be authorized during that period to sanction the use of Devanagari numerals in addition to international numerals for any of the official purposes of the Union, and that English should continue in the form of bills and laws and their interpretations in Courts for a period much longer than 15 years as Hindi lacked precision.

 

The spirit of the age*

MOST of us unhappily are too much engrossed in the business of politics to pay much attention to the finer and more important aspects of life. That is natural perhaps in a nation which struggles for national freedom and to rid itself of the bonds that prevent normal growth. Like a person in the grip of a disease it can think only of how to gain health again, and this obsession is a barrier to the growth of culture and science. We are entangled in our innumerable problems; we are opposed by the appalling poverty of our people. But if we had a true standard of values we would realize that the silver jubilee of the Indian Science Congress this year is an event of outstanding importance. For that Congress represents science, and science is the spirit of the age and the dominating factor of the modern world. Even more than the present, the future belongs to science and to those who make friends with science and seek its help for the advancement of humanity….

Though I have long been a slave driven in the chariot of Indian politics, with little leisure for other thoughts, my mind has often wandered to the days when, as a student, I haunted the laboratories of that home of science, Cambridge. And though circumstances made me part company with science, my thoughts turned to it with longing. In later years, through devious process, I arrived again at science, when I realized that science was not only a pleasant diversion and abstraction, but was of the very texture of life, without which our modern world would vanish away. Politics led me to economics and this led me inevitably to science and the scientific approach to all our problems and to life itself. It was science alone that could solve these problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving people….

If science is the dominating factor in modern life, then the social system and economic structure must fit in with science or it is doomed.

 

* Allahabad, 26 December 1937. Message for the silver jubilee celebrations of the Indian Science Congress at Calcutta, 3-9 January 1938. The Hindustan Times, 8 January 1938. Excerpts.

 

Technology and man*

TECHNOLOGICAL developments bring about huge changes. Today we take trains, aeroplanes, radio, etc., for granted. But we have not yet got what is called an industrial background. Whether it is good or bad, it is a fact. That background exists in America, which is the world’s most highly industrialized country. Its background is technological and industrial, so much so that the machine begins to become almost human in the way in which it works and while this happens, the human beings become more like machines. I am not considering the good and the evil of it. I am just trying to analyse what is happening.

The basic fact is that the tremendous pace of technological advance that has forced itself upon the people, whether they like it or not, because technological advance represents power. It represents military power. If you have not got it, well, you cannot protect yourself; you become a subject or a slave country. That is why Abdul Hamid of Turkey in spite of all hatred for the western civilization, adopted western military methods. Japan did it deliberately. It did not take western culture but it took western technology and western warfare methods and it became a great power. It is this technological development which has changed the entire face of the world.

Most of us are not conscious of this when we see the technological advances made by America and Europe; we do not realize what all this means. In a sense, our minds function in an agricultural or pre-industrial age. The pace of change is so great that we begin to wonder.

I want you to realize this extraordinary fact that while all these technological and other changes come out of the mind of man, nevertheless, the mind of man very often lags behind them. There was the French Revolution over 160 years ago with its war cries of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity and it was based on a generation or two of previous mental preparation of the people. The Industrial Revolution followed which was in fact a much bigger thing in the way in which it changed the entire outlook of the people; but even when the Industrial Revolution had advanced in Europe for 60 or 70 years, the minds of men were still concerned with the French Revolution, not realizing that the world was changing rapidly under the impact of the Industrial Revolution. I am pointing out how events were marching in those days and are now marching more swiftly than men’s minds. We have to be very wide awake about it. First of all we should try to understand them – not necessarily to accept everything, not necessarily to be blown off our feet but to try and understand them, because if we do not do so, whether we like it or not, we may be thrown off our feet, we may be submerged in some wave.

Perhaps these [words] are more than what is required to be said on this occasion, which has no direct relevance, but I am saying all this to make you think, to broaden your outlook. It amazes me that while mighty problems are cropping up in the world, mighty forces are at work and tremendous technological changes are talking place, change that I find in our country, is on the communal plane which is fantastic nonsense to me. It shows the utter immaturity of the individual or the group that talks and argues in that way. It has no relation to the present-day world, I mean the talks about Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communalism. It just shows that they are completely backward in their thinking, in their minds. They never grasp the march of events in the centuries past and in the era they live in. Our country as a whole will be doomed and will continue to be a backward country as in the past while other countries will go ahead.

Everybody will agree, even the rank communalist, that we must be technologically advanced, we must have a modern, up-to-date army, we must have the latest aeroplanes, even the atom bomb. But it is not realized that the latest types of aeroplane and armies are the outcome of certain mind, of a certain mental approach. You cannot have the medieval mind and have the latest type of aeroplanes too. You cannot have modern development, modern technology with a medieval mentality behind it, which is represented in many ways in India but which is represented more than in anything else, by what is called the communal outlook. Of course, any kind of narrow outlook is bad in itself.

 

* Speech at a meeting of State Development Commissioners, New Delhi, 18 April 1953. JN Collection. Excerpts.

 

Temper of science*

IN the old days, long long ago, I suppose that learned men and high priests used to gather, from time to time, to share experiences and to try to probe into the mysteries of nature. It may be that modern scientists, or some of them, may rather look down upon those ancient efforts, though I hope very few do so, because after all even those, what you might consider from your modern standpoint as unscientific efforts, were the basis for further advance, even though they might have dealt with alchemy or metaphysical research or something with a much broader basis, that is philosophy. Anyhow, the high priests of those days, presumably, dominated the scene, and they may sometimes have exploited their position and misled the multitude; they may have tried to instill the fear of certain mysteries in the multitude, so as to keep up their vested interests as high-priests. Nevertheless, basically, that was a search for truth, to understand the nature of things, the nature of the practical world, as well as to explore the nature of some other worlds, if there are such, or wherever they may be. Now, gradually those times led, through many steps, to the beginning of science as we see it today and science developed, and now it overshadows the world, not only in its external achievements but in men’s thinking, and the scientists of today now occupy the position of the high-priests of the mysteries. It is true that the true scientist does not function, and does not want to function, in a mysterious way and science and knowledge is largely an open secret to those who care to see and understand it, as it should be. Nevertheless, it becomes so complicated that few people, perhaps, have the capacity to understand it, or have the will to take the trouble to understand it, and for the most it becomes some kind of a mystery which is beyond their reach. Nevertheless they profit by it, of course, suffer from it, or both, and the world as we see it becomes, essentially, something that has grown out of science or its application, and science is likely to dominate us more and more in the future. Therefore, it is a thing of the highest importance, what scientists do, in what atmosphere and temper they work, how far scientists help a certain direction in the world’s development, in the world’s thinking, and how far they give it a wrong direction.

Scientists, presumably, are searchers after truth and truth is a difficult thing to aim at. And if you search after truth you must not be afraid of the consequences of that search, even though it may sometimes force you to look down into the pit of hell. If you are afraid of the consequences of your search then you cannot go too far. That is so. You search for it, whether it is good or bad. Nevertheless, I take it, that such a thing as pure objectivity in any individual, even in a scientist, is not quite possible or, if I may say so, desirable. You cannot isolate yourself from the life of the world, from the joys and sorrows, from the possible dangers to the world or the possible benefits that might come to the world from your activity. You must have some function in life, to aim somewhere, not merely to look with wide open eyes at what is happening, in fact, to give some turn to events where you can. The moment we become functionless, we become rather passive spectators of events than have any hand in directing them. I do not suppose that scientists would like to be called merely passive spectators, or anyone for that matter. Therefore, some kind of broad ideal has to be before us, apart from, of course, the search for truth. What is that broad ideal?

Well, there may be many ideals, but obviously that ideal must have some relation to the problems of today. Let us put it in the narrowest way, a problem that Indian scientists have to deal with is, the development of the Indian people, the betterment of the Indian people, raising their standards, increasing their wealth and removing inequality. Planning, if you like, in its widest sense to help in that process, to direct it properly, that is a big problem which takes all our time and energy, or ought to take. Or let us go a step further and think of certain world problems. Now, I am not going to discuss these great world problems, and I think all of us are too apt to express our opinions in regard to them with a measure of arrogance, as if we could solve the problems of the world, if only our views were accepted by the world. That is not a becoming attitude for any one however wise he might consider himself. Nevertheless, to surrender to the problems of the world and feel helpless is also not becoming. But without considering any particular problem, big as they are, we can, all of us, and more especially men and women of science, can perhaps consider the basic approach to those problems.

What do I mean by the basic approach? Shall I say, the basic temper in which those problems should be approached; the temper of science, the temper of reasonableness, the temper of finding out the truth or, whether that is a tempter of science or not I do not know, the temper of peace. I think that really is more important, the more I think of it, than any positive step that might be taken towards the solution of a problem.

 

* Address at the forty-third session of the Indian Science Congress, Agra, 2 January 1956. AIR tapes, NMML. Excerpts.