India after Gandhi - Redux

For those who haven't had a chance to read Ramachandra Guha's India after Gandhi, here is a great opportunity to sample the essential ideas. Guha's long article in The Outlook [link via Confused] captures much of the flavor of the book.

What is spread thinly over an almost 800-page long book is presented in highly concentrated doses in the article, which, although quite long for an op/ed piece, doesn't quite mask the toxic fumes coming out of the author's brain.

Here is a sample:

The real hate figure for the Sangh parivar is the Muslim. But, as my late teacher, the historian Dharma Kumar, once pointed out, they actually secretly admire and even wish to emulate their historic enemies. What the BJP wanted for India, she said, was to construct "an Islamic State—for Hindus". In medieval Muslim states, there was a category known as dhimmi, consisting of Jews and Christians who, as people of the book, were treated somewhat more leniently than the kaffirs, the unbelievers.The dhimmi were barred from the top positions in the state and in the army. However, so long as they paid their taxes and did not challenge the ruler, they could live in peace and security. The kaffirs, on the other hand, were seen always and invariably as adversaries. In the same manner, if the RSS were to get its way, the Muslims and Christians in modern India would live undisturbed, so long as they acknowledged their theological and political inferiority to the dominant Hindus. But if they sought equal rights of citizenship, they would be punished as the kaffirs had once been.

It is funny how the embedded irony of the above passage completely eludes Guha. Can you really fault a group of people for being paranoiac about a faith which designates the group least favorable and whose central tenet practically mandates its annihilation?

It also appears that Guha has gone centrist with a vengeance.

The political history of the modern world can be written in terms of a three-way contest. On the left, there are varieties of socialist or communist extremism. On the right, there are varieties of national or religious fanaticism. Placed in the middle are the forces of liberal, constitutional democracy. When the centre is fragile, as in Russia in 1917 or in Germany in 1933, one or the other form of extremism will triumph. When the centre is resolute, as in India in 1948, liberal democracy can consolidate itself.

Yet he provides no yardstick, no objective measure for how to get to the exact centrist position. In practical terms the only people who are allowed to walk the middle of the road are the leftists, or Gujjars, to take a more recent example.

Guha remains completely enamored by the process which created India. He just can't stop talking about how difficult it was to create a unified nation out of a multitude of nation states, how logistically challenging was our first general elections etc. This is merely ex post admiration for an image we have grown comfortable to see. Just as an example, what if the partition didn't happen?

The other major theme consists of a nostalgic reverence for the "Nehru" era, which according to this retro-liberal was the most perfect period in India's modern history. There were patriots galore, as were tireless workers who selflessly toiled hard to create a great country (only to be undone later by - guess who?). Guha laments:

Indians less than 70 years of age—that is to say, 98 Indians out of 100—are insufficiently aware of, and possibly insufficiently grateful to, the great democracts and patriots who, back in the late 1940s, successfully stood their ground against the challenges of revolutionary communism and religious fundamentalism.

The logical fallacy of this almost jumps out of that passage. What happened earlier must have an indelible effect on what came next. If the previous state was so perfect and the previous actors so noble, how come the present day reality is so fucked up?

Guha also laments how we don't read the constitution. This can't be naivete, so we presume this is merely elitism. These days we are better off betting on the future state of the Schroedinger's cat than trying to get a fix on what the constitution says at any given moment.

To follow the Naxalites is to plunge India into decades of civil war; to follow the Hindu right is to persecute and demonise large numbers of one’s own countrymen; to follow the market fundamentalists is to intensify the divisions between the consuming and the surviving classes (and to destroy the global environment in the process). Rather than nurture or act upon these utopian fantasies, the Indian patriot must focus instead on the tasks of gradual and piecemeal reform. We need to repair, one by one, the institutions that have safeguarded our unity amidst diversity, and to forge, also one by one, the new institutions that can help us meet the fresh challenges of the 21st century. It will be hard, patient, slow work—that is to say, the only kind of work that is ever worth it.

Essentially what blowhard secularists like Guha mean by the centrist position is merely this: why derail the gravy train while the going is good? The "gradual and piecemeal reform", "repair, one by one" etc. are mere code words for status quo. Guha doesn't even register a feeble show of protest against the various constitutional amendments, which has left the book beyond recognition from the time he considers the golden age of India. Yet he talks about repairing the institutions. This is a dead giveaway.