Author: Kanchan Gupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: March 1, 2009
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/159535/India's-crisis-of-leadership.html
For the past couple of years we had been putting
off the distressing task of getting our apartment repainted. Besides the hassle
of coping with temporary dislocation and eating out of soggy paper plates,
what would scare us was the prospect of dealing with the junk that invariably
accumulates under the bed, in cupboards and between file covers. In 2002 we
had to leave India on short notice and since there was no place of our own
where we could have dumped our papers, books and everything else that crams
our house, we lugged all of it with us to Cairo, neatly packed in cartons,
which travelled back with us to India when we returned home, both metaphorically
and literally. This time we had an apartment of our own, but not big enough
to keep the stuff packed in cartons. So out came everything and in they went
into whatever space that was available, which was not much. Over the last
few years, with more stuff moving in, some of the old stuff had to go, among
them stacks of yellowing, fraying, dusty notesheets, stacked in a corner of
our study.
Finally when we got around to braving the
hazards of getting our apartment repainted recently, we also decided to get
rid of the junk. The stack of notesheets, caringly preserved for years, had
to go, too. Before dumping the papers into a garbage bag, I thought of flipping
through them. And stumbled across notes I had prepared for an article on Netaji
Subhas Chandra Bose, which had been commissioned by a newspaper after the
BJP appropriated him as a mascot of 'cultural nationalism' during Mr LK Advani's
Swarna Jayanti Yatra. Was Bose indifferent to religion and spiritualism? Did
he believe there was a link between religion and nationalism? Bits and pieces
which I could gather from material that was easily available (no, there was
no Google those days and access to the Internet was a privilege, not a right!)
by way of books appeared to suggest that Bose believed that rashtrabhakti
was a synthesis of religion and nationalism, of the spiritual and the political.
When others were looking up to Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi for inspiration, Bose was exploring the teachings of Swami Vivekananda
and the writings of Aurobindo Ghosh. The latter made a lasting impression
on his mind. Years later, Bose would record in his unfinished autobiography,
"In my undergraduate days, Aurobindo Ghosh was easily the most popular
leader in Bengal... a mixture of spirituality and politics had given him a
halo of mysticism and made his personality more fascinating to those who were
religiously inclined... We felt convinced that spiritual enlightenment was
necessary for effective national service...". He was equally influenced
by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's construction of nationalism, which raised the
nation from the geographical to the devotional plane. He wrote of "impoverished
Mother India"; the "picture of (the) real India" that he painted
was "the India of the villlages where poverty stalks the land, men die
like flies, and illiteracy is the prevailing order". Six decades after
independence, much of that picture remains unchanged; five years of Congress
rule have served to highlight its gut-wrenching features. As MJ Akbar pointed
out in his column last Sunday, "The number of people living below the
poverty line has increased by a horrifying 20 per cent. India had some 270
million people below the poverty line in 2004-5, when the present Government
took office. That number has gone up by 55 million." Strangely, as media
agonises over the debilitating impact of the economic slowdown on the middle
class and politicians mouth clichés, this shocking statistical detail
remains unmentioned in our public discourse.
But we digress from the notes that were eventually
consigned to the garbage bin. In his book, Brothers Against the Raj, Leonard
A Gordon writes about Bose's quest for a religious philosophy to sustain his
politics: "Inner religious explorations continued to be a part of his
adult life. This set him apart from the slowly growing number of atheistic
socialists and communists who dotted the Indian landscape." Bose was
never explicit about it, but he remained firm in his belief that "Hinduism
was an essential part of his Indianness". In his celebrated memoir, Thy
Hand! Great Anarch!, Nirad C Chaudhuri refers to the "definite Hindu
streak in Bose's dislike for Gandhi" -- "He was in no sense a bigoted
or even orthodox Hindu. But he had grown up in the first two decades of the
twentieth century in Bengal,where, owing to the influence of Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee and Swami Vivekananda, there was a fusion of religion and nationalism,
so that the nationalist feeling had a pronounced Hindu complexion and Hinduism
a pronounced political character."
This "fusion of religion and nationalism"
and Hinduism with a "pronounced political character" came into play
in 1925 when during his incarceration at Mandalay prison, Bose, along with
the other Bengali prisoners, organised Durga Puja on the jail premises and
demanded that the expenses be borne by the authorities. When the latter refused,
Bose converted his 'spiritual quest' into a 'political campaign' by launching
a hunger strike. Years later, in his Poona speech after being elected president
of the Maharashtra Provincial Conference, Bose would articulate his perception
of nation and nationalism: "Indian nationalism is inspired by the highest
ideals of the human race, Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. Nationalism in India has...
roused the creative faculties which for centuries had been lying dormant in
our people...".
In a sense, it still lies dormant as we look
Westward for 'change' and 'hope', instead of looking within. The real challenge
for those who wish to lead India, a nation of Hindus, Muslims, Christians,
Buddhists, Sikhs, Parsis and many other faiths, as well as those who do not
subscribe to any faith, lies in awakening our latent nationalism, in kindling
our national pride. Yes, we have seen the unleashing of the creative faculties
of Indians, but we hitched our success, our prosperity, to that of the West,
namely the US, by allowing globalisation to get the better of us. As a result,
with the American economy foundering on the twin rocks of unrestricted greed
and plastic money driven prosperity, our national economy has begun to flounder.
To get us out of this mess, we need a netaji, not a neta.
- kanchangupta@rocketmail.com
