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Rage, Reconciliation
and Security: Managing India’s Diversities The moulding of Bharat into modern day India even as its countless diversities continue to buffet the social and moral fabric of the country, form the framework of Varghese’s definitive and comprehensive report card on the six decades of our journey on the road that leads to democracy. Whether all this diversity was really a blessing for a democratic political order that our elders had ordained for us, whether we as a people were educated and broad-minded enough to sustain this kind of governance, and whether Tagore’s dream of an India "where the mind is without fear or insecurity" has been realised to some extent, is of course for the reader to judge based on his own experience and reading of the national sight picture. While the anger has diminished somewhat over the years, the reconciliation and eventual sense of security which each and every citizen of this country irrespective of his caste, religion, culture or language should have attained by now seems to be still alluding us in large measure. The government’s efforts at restoring the lost linkages in the north east and its Northeast Vision 2020 can only succeed once there is internal and external security in the region, and Verghese has rightly pointed this out when he writes, "This calls for fashioning a border policy as much as settling outstanding boundary disputes with China and Bangladesh". The complicated Naga issue, where our interlocutors are still groping about, the hit and run insurgency in Tripura or the ever simmering ULFA unrest, all events that one witnessed at close range while in service are headaches that may outlive the settling of our boundaries with foreign powers in this poorly surface- connected frontier of the country. And while Verghese has given much weight to the ‘Look East’ policy that the government is spending liberally on, possibly a similar ‘Look West’ doctrine where states like J&K, Punjab and Rajasthan are similarly financially assisted by the Centre to progress materially, could pay our policy planners rich dividends. On the question of community and culture an issue that Verghese has handled admirably with utmost deliberation and a sense of fairness, many burning topics have been examined and viable suggestions for improvement offered. On Hinduism he opines: "It too is in need of reform to end outworn and ritualistic practice and caste oppression". On the question of religious minorities, Verghese has this to say: "To describe 140 million Indian Muslims, possibly the second largest concentration of Islamic followers anywhere in the world, as a minority, is to strain meaning". On conversions he makes the point, "Regrettably, the Church has been unable to shake off caste and has in some ways been instrumental in upholding it by petitioning for continuing reservations for SC Christians, a contradiction in terms". On the question of the importance given to Urdu language in present day India Verghese echoes this reviewer’s own experience in the national Sahitya Akademi over recent years, "It (Urdu) is in every sense an Indian tongue, spoken by Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains and others alike, and not a ‘Muslim’ language per se as it was perceived to be through communally –tinted lenses. The language has declined". Language continues to divide Indians as it happened in the case of the Punjab bifurcation in 1966 where much of its Punjabi speaking population declared Hindi and not Punjabi as their mother tongue. Verghese also homes on to ‘homeland security’ (post 9/11 the Americans have set up this kind of organization) for the ordinary Indians, who in my view will continue to suffer because of an indifferent police force and tardy dispensation of justice prevailing within the country. On the plus side technological advances and the spread of education and literacy at the grass root level has certainly made the average Indian conscious of what he has been missing out so far. All our rights and entitlements have been enshrined in the Fundamental Rights in the Constitution which Verghese calls a ‘very liberal document’, and what now remains is for the State is to be able to enforce these rights expeditiously and without let or hindrance or pressures of any kind. Verghese is hopeful and sanguine about India’s future and rounds off writing, "Sixty years from Independence is not a long time in the life of a nation. Given half as much time again we could truly make that tryst with destiny". The point, however, is that do we have the time and will the destructive forces that continue to raise their head let all this happen. A well researched, systematically laid out and bluntly frank book which our politicians and policy planners would do well to read with due diligence and a sense of introspection so that they can remedy matters.
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