National Integration and Such Other Words

The Occasion of Republic Day is perhaps a fit occasion to take stock of issues which transcend the routine. That in the mature adulthood of our independent existence we continue to feel the need for exhortations on the subject of national integration, is surely sufficient proof that this cherished objective is yet realized. But is the yearning for it real or is it merely half digested rhetoric which we periodically eructate? Have we perhaps not emptied out all the various concepts like ‘emotional integration’, ‘unity in diversity’, ‘secularism’ of all their true essence and rendered them into merely ‘such other hollow words’?

What is the Indian Nation? Of course it has a territorial identify. What beyond that? What was and is our dream for it and what is the reality? Also, what is the face of this ‘India’ and this ‘Indian’? With what central idea do we wish whom to ‘integrate’? And who are this we? Then, is this India a static concept or has this Indian an historical identify and a recognizable wholeness that has evolved over the years and appears to have a future? Are we stuck in the mire of the immobility of our thoughts or is the collectivity of our national identity dynamic, impelled by the force of an ennobling vision? What are the ‘new’ generations of Indians to aspire to? To what great endeavour are the children of today and tomorrow to be drawn? One could well suggest that it is neither possible nor healthy for an entire people to be constantly living at the white-hot pitch of emotional striving. That nations, like individuals, need periods of quiet, near immobile consolidation before they can undertake fresh effort, reaching beyond themselves? So are we consolidating and if so what? Or are we mistaking our presently manifest cynical apathy as a positive virtue?

These are many other questions arise. Not only cannot all the answers be found immediately, it is not possible to ask all the questions either. Only an outline of our concerns can be drawn, for which I cannot improve upon P.N.Haksar’s articulation of it from Reflections on our Times:

“If the post-independent generation in India could somehow come round to having a vision of India as a whole and relate it to a comprehensive view of inter-relationship between politics, economics, social structure, cultural pattern and value system, the clouds would begin to disappear. Without such an effort, we can have no future of which we can be proud. India is too large to be moved by short-cuts and over-simplifications. Clay has a tendency to be molded but it requires a potter’s hand to take shape and form”.

The Indian concept of ‘nationhood’ was, and continues to be, amorphous; an almost intangible, near philosophical, sub-conscious acceptance, rotted in a mythical past. Whenever an attempt has been made to give it shape, it has invariably been in the imagery of what has been, a re-creation and a recapturing. Some indefinable threads of barely recognized consciousness string all this together. These threads, in the past, were largely the bindings of religious faith and a cultural continuity, which, in itself, had its roots in belief. The strength and the weakness, both, lay precisely in this. Strength, because being an all-pervading, shapeless, whole, it defied both definition and capture. It, therefore, survived all the many centuries of foreign domination, largely intact but also mainly in an introverted form. The ease with which we were periodically made subject was also because the consciousness of ‘nationhood’ was so loose. This was and continues to be the weakness. Because, when the central idea is cloud-like, the constituent ‘droplets’ of that ‘cloud’ would, for sheer preservation, have to have a stronger cellular structure.