Shri Giriraj Singh is a master at making controversial statements. He has now said something which has further added to his record of offending the famous. Even so, there is a kernel of truth to what he said which should not be missed.

I read Giriraj Singh as saying that Indians are racist, when it comes to people Indians think are dark. He conjectured that had Rajiv Gandhi married a Nigerian woman rather than a white European, the Congress may not have elected such a woman to be president.

Apparently Sonia Gandhi and the rest of the Congress are incensed. Lalu Prasad Yadav has made a counter statement that is insulting to women, especially dark women. Even so, the truth is that when Rajiv Gandhi married Sonia Manio, the Delhi elite was incredibly snooty. White she was, but was she not beneath Rajiv in status? They said he had married an au pair!

Later the BJP had a lot of difficulty accepting the idea of Sonia as PM and threatened dire acts of self-mutilation if that came about. So even though she was not a Nigerian or black, she was not accepted as an Indian even after 35 years of living in India.

Indians have a versatile, though asymmetric, racism. Scratch an Indian at home or even among the diaspora in the West and you will discover contempt for black Africans when Indians speak to each other in languages others can’t understand. Indians don’t think they are black.

Indeed looking at any marriage website or newspaper adverts will convince the ‘Man from Mars’ that Indians think of themselves as fair-skinned people, at least in the North Indian imagination. Indian consciousness is such that while located in Asia, our sights are firmly fixed Westwards; our imagination is European.

Even so, when a white European tries to join Indian public life, xenophobia kicks in. Indians may envy the white Westerner, but at home they would want to register their superiority. Hence the prejudice against Sonia all these years within the extended Nehru family as much as in the Congress. Recall that Sharad Pawar walked out of the Congress because he did not want a foreigner to head the party. Senior leaders in the Congress stayed snooty until she became their “salvation”.

Bollywood has reflected this attitude. Over the years, the white woman has been an exotic character seducing the local hero from his path of virtue. No one today would recall Kishore Sahu’s Mayurpankh with Odette Ferguson, or Shakespeare Wallah with the Kendal sisters and Shashi Kapoor. But you would never find a black African heroine or a Sub-Saharan African country used as location. Indeed even a dark Indian heroine is a rarity. V Shantaram tried casting Sandhya as a dark heroine in his Teen Batti Chaar Raasta, but the audience would not buy it. In mythology, Krishna can be a dark god, but Radha must be fair-skinned.

Even so, there is every reason for Indians to take Africa seriously. Nigeria has just had a transformative democratic election. It is the first peaceful change of government in Nigeria’s 55-year history as an independent country. Nigeria is not just the most populous African nation, but it also has the potential to be the first prosperous economy in Sub-Saharan Africa. It has oil reserves. It has come through years of misrule, including a civil war and many corrupt military dictators.

Nigeria’s struggle to be a democratic country resembles that of Pakistan. Military rulers have done it no favours and democracy needs constant reinforcement. The country is large and is divided between a Muslim north and a Christian south. Just as Taliban troubles Pakistan, Boko Haram terrorises Muslims in Nigeria. Muhammadu Buhari, the newly-elected President, faces many challenges. He was briefly a military dictator 30 plus years ago. He has refurbished his image and persuaded Nigerians to vote him in as a new-born democrat. Nigerians have decided to ignore his past and put faith in his promises of reform and anti-corruption crusade for the future. That should sound familiar to Indians.

Nigeria needs India’s attention and respect. Giriraj Singh notwithstanding.

courtesy : ‘Out of My Mind’, “The Indian Express”, 05 April 2015

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/out-of-my-mind-speaking-of-nigeria/

It was during the first days of January 100 years ago that Mohandas Gandhi returned to India.

He had first left his native country when not even 19 to train to become a barrister. He did not stay a day beyond the call to the bar. The ‘English Barrister’, as he called himself, did not settle down back at home. The years he spent abroad in England and then in South Africa — 26 in all — made the callow youth who had left Porbandar into a Mahatma.

Mahatma Gandhi is that rare example in modern history of a truly global person. Even while coming back to stay permanently in India, he came via London where he recruited soldiers for the Ambulance Corps to fight the War that had just begun. He was 45 by then and biographers had been already writing about him.

Over the next 33 years of his life, he never lost sight of the fact that India’s struggle for independence was part of a global movement against imperialism. The Khilafat movement, which he launched with a coalition of Hindus and Muslims, was part of his way of confronting the severe consequences of bringing Khilafat to an end after 1,200 years.

The Khilafat movement failed. Many attempts to cope with the absence of the Khilafat are still with us as ISIS has shown. What Gandhi accomplished instead was the peaceful dismantling of the British Empire. If there is a Commonwealth today and a thriving Indian diaspora in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, it is thanks to the revolutionary non-violent way in which he secured the surrender of the most powerful empire of his times.

He did his best to reform his own people. He could be a hard taskmaster, especially to those nearest to him, as Harilal found out. He tried to inculcate a sense of cleanliness and of the dignity of labour, the virtues of a simple life and dedication to the welfare of the least fortunate. He tried to simplify his own religion making it free of ritual, with ecumenical prayers rather than visits to huge temples. He had absorbed the best of Christianity and Judaism from his many friends in England and South Africa.

He expanded his understanding of his own religion by taking the best of Jain philosophy on board. He built bridges to incorporate the spirit of Islam as he saw it.

He did not proselytise his brand of the Sanatana Dharma. He believed that his own life would be the message which would disseminate his faith.

He triumphed over the empire thanks to his unrelenting and yet non-antagonistic battle. He used to speak out to the British soldiers posted at his large public meetings that his quarrel was not with them but with the empire. He explained to the textile workers of Lancashire that his boycott of foreign cloth was not directed against them but the system which oppressed them as well as his own people.

And yet it was his own people he failed with. Untouchability did not disappear as he thought it would using his peaceful methods. The caste system did not weaken. Only a handful went along with his idea of a simple life. The party he led for 30 years paid lip service but never signed up to his philosophy of non-violence.

It ignored his plea that the Congress should cease to be a political party and become a social reform movement. Indeed when the British Raj ended, the Congress Raj smoothly moved into power. There was no change in the power system, only in the colour of the rulers.

Finally his devoted disciples abandoned him at the last hurdle and accepted Partition. Later they disowned all responsibility, blaming it on Jinnah and the perfidious Albion. But they kept him out of the loop till after they had signed up.

He then did what came best to him. He laid down his life trying to correct the injustice of the Partition. To this day, many of his own people have not forgiven him for fighting for Pakistan’s rights. This is why he was killed and why they worship his killer.

See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/out-of-my-mind-the-man-who-came-back/99/#sthash.2iWW0glD.dpuf

courtesy : "The Sunday Express", Out of my mind; Posted: January 4, 2015 

This idea of a secular, democratic, left-of-centre polity was very much the brainchild of Jawaharlal Nehru.

There is no doubt about it now. The 2014 election will be the most significant one since 1977. The ideology of the Congress, which the party has very cleverly made the ideology of India, is going to be fundamentally challenged. The idea of India is at issue.

This idea of a secular, democratic, left-of-centre polity was very much the brainchild of Jawaharlal Nehru. It had Gandhian lineaments, but as Nehru believed in planning and industrialisation, as well as having a strong army ready to preserve territorial integrity (though he did not quite succeed in this), it was not a Gandhian ideal. Nehru argued for a caste-less, class-less society, modern and rational, not subject to religious superstitions, tolerant of diverse views and open to arguments. Above all, he led a party which was very broad-based and would get into many arguments at AICC meetings, some of which he lost.

This idea was taken up in universities and discussed by intellectuals. It was burnished and given historical foundations, so that the story of a syncretic India became a standard one in Indian historiography. An alternative Hindu nationalist account of Indian history, published by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, was never rewarded by being prescribed in universities. Indian history was as designed by the Congress hegemony. Martyrs of the Independence movement who had chosen the path of violence were downgraded, principally Subhas Chandra Bose.

For the first 20-odd years after Independence, this idea was the basis of national consciousness. I grew up under the umbrella of this idea. The Congress was more than a party. It was a system. Information flowed from the grassroots to the central level and orders flowed downstream from the top to reach the smallest village. There was one Congress, one India, and one idea of India.

In the upcoming battle, the Congress is defending this idea of India. But the idea has been eroding steadily since Nehru's death. While he was PM, no communal riots took place once the aftermath of the Partition had been dealt with. Since 1965, India has witnessed a series of communal riots and around 7,500 people had died because of them by 1995, before the BJP came to power. The break-up of the Congress in 1969 meant that it was no longer a broad-based party which tolerated diverse views in a multi-polar power structure. It became the personal fiefdom of its leader and all dissent and debate ceased.

Secularism became not so much sarva dharma nirapekshata—indifference to all religions—but sarva dharma samabhava—equal respect for all religions. Secularism was made into an anti-Jan Sangh ideology and a protective regard for the Muslim vote bank.

It was the Emergency which fractured this version of the idea of India. It became identified with Fascist rule. Jan Sangh and old Congress leaders were sent to jail and became martyrs for freedom. When the Emergency ended, the Jan Sangh/BJP became a respectable part of Indian polity. When Indira Gandhi returned to power, her secularism acquired a Hindu colouring. It was then that Rajiv Gandhi allowed the installation of 'Ram Lalla' at Ayodhya and went against the Shah Bano decision, thus balancing Hindu orthodoxy with Muslim orthodoxy. Secularism was used for the Muslim vote, which was further subcontracted to faith leaders. This has not, alas, helped raise the Muslim masses from their backward and deprived state. Secularism is for the creamy layer, the ashrafi section which receives patronage.

The time may have come to challenge this corroded idea of India openly. Is it not better to uphold the Constitution and treat all Indians as citizens who have their rights, which it is the duty of the State to uphold, and treat all as equal before the law? Should we not defend the freedom of speech and expression of a Salman Rushdie or M F Husain regardless of whether it offends Muslim or Hindu orthodoxy? Should everyone not be entitled to affirmative action depending on their social and economic status rather than jati or religion?

As Mahatma Gandhi said of European civilisation, an idea of India would be a good thing.

courtesy : ‘Out of my MIND’, “The Sunday Express” 22.09.2013