Skip to main content

The Indian Spirit


The real question is not whether the original Preamble to the Indian Constitution contained the words ‘secularist’ and ‘socialist’ but what the present India really wants to be.  It is not a matter of words as much as about intentions and motives.

A flashback from history

Delhi, June 1947

Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of the British Raj, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and a few others are giving the final touches to the governments of independent India and Pakistan. 

“You be the first Governor-General of independent India,” says Nehru to Mountbatten who is visibly dismayed.

It is a gesture of gratitude and appreciation from the magnanimous people of India to a person who has been working heart and soul for the past four months keeping in mind the welfare of both the countries that are being created.

Jinnah has already declared himself the Governor-General of Pakistan.

“According to the Constitution,” points out Mountbatten, “it is the Prime Minister who will have all the power; the Governor’s role is a symbolic one with no real power attached to it.”

Jinnah takes a deep puff on his pipe and declares as solemnly as a king, “I will be Governor-General and the Prime Minister will do what I tell him to do.”

Should I accept this new role?  Mountbatten asks himself.  His wife is totally against it; she has already communicated her intention to him: leave India to the Indians. 

Mountbatten says, “The Mahatma will take the decision.”

In spite of the numerous arguments and disagreements that they have had in the past four months, Mountbatten and Gandhi have grown to like each other.  Gandhi never hates anyone.  It is the British rule in India that he hated, and not the British people, Mountbatten knows that too well. 

Gandhi is happy to have Mountbatten as the first Governor-General of independent India.  It is symbolic of India’s tolerance and magnanimity.

Mountbatten is flattered by the tribute of the Mahatma.  “We’ve jailed him, we’ve humiliated him, we’ve scorned him, and he still has the greatness of spirit to do this.”  A miasma of moisture rises to Mountbatten’s eyes in spite of himself.

Flashback ends

Delhi, January 2015

The  President of America is the guest at the Republic Day celebrations.  He is aware of the intolerance that has gripped the Indian society.  So he is compelled to speak words such as: “India will succeed so long as it is not splintered on religious lines. Every person has the right to practice their religion how they choose,” and “Our nations are strongest when we see we are all God's children, all equal in his eyes.  Sometimes I have been discriminated against on the basis of the colour of my skin.”

India has a Prime Minister who may not agree.  His government erases or wishes to erase the concept of secularism from the Constitution.  The Prime Minister knows how to create magic with words.  And he has an invisible army of volunteers transmuting his magic into protean shapes of reality, into kaleidoscopic patterns that dazzle a nation’s fancy.

Jai Hind.


Labels:

Comments

  1. Anita SabatJanuary 29, 2015 at 11:47 AM

    Intentions & motives are important. Actions speak louder than words.
    But the 2 words have a lot of weight and cannot be ignored. That'll threaten our India.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 29, 2015 at 1:09 PM

      Especially since people always see through the leader's motives and intentions. Let the PM not do anything for the minority communities. He hates them and let him do that. But let him not allow strife to be sown in the country if he is incapable of appreciating cultural and religious diversity as the American President did.

      Delete
  2. Amrita SabatJanuary 29, 2015 at 5:34 PM

    Well said Sir.but secularism is d basic structure of d constitution so suppose d 'majority' removes it from preamble,it'll alwez remain at heart of d constitution n judiciary-d upholder of our Constitution.
    Similarly socialism.same PM who sez dat nation's wealth (tijori) is for d poorest n excluded sectns cannot disown d concept of socialist nation!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 29, 2015 at 6:51 PM

      There's no alternative but accept secularism especially in a globalised world and also because India is going out asking other countries, none of which is a Hindu Rashtra, to invest in India.

      Socialism may be an outdated concept for today's world which is run by ultra capitalism. But India should not neglect the millions of its population who are still living on the edge.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Bihar Election

Satish Acharya's Cartoon on how votes were bought in Bihar My wife has been stripped of her voting rights in the revised electoral roll. She has always been a conscientious voter unlike me. I refused to vote in the last Lok Sabha election though I stood outside the polling booth for Maggie to perform what she claimed was her duty as a citizen. The irony now is that she, the dutiful citizen, has been stripped of the right, while I, the ostensible renegade gets the right that I don’t care for. Since the Booth Level Officer [BLO] was my neighbour, he went out of his way to ring up some higher officer, sitting in my house, to enquire about Maggie’s exclusion. As a result, I was given the assurance that he, the BLO, would do whatever was in his power to get my wife her voting right. More than the voting right, what really bothered me was whether the Modi government was going to strip my wife of her Indian citizenship. Anything is possible in Modi’s India: Modi hai to Mumkin hai .   ...
16 comments
Read more

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...
16 comments
Read more

The music of an ageing man

Having entered the latter half of my sixties, I view each day as a bonus. People much younger become obituaries these days around me. That awareness helps me to sober down in spite of the youthful rush of blood in my indignant veins. Age hasn’t withered my indignation against injustice, fraudulence, and blatant human folly, much as I would like to withdraw from the ringside and watch the pugilism from a balcony seat with mellowed amusement. But my genes rage against my will. The one who warned me in my folly-ridden youth to be wary of my (anyone’s, for that matter) destiny-shaping character was farsighted. I failed to subdue the rages of my veins. I still fail. That’s how some people are, I console myself. So, at the crossroads of my sixties, I confess to a dismal lack of emotional maturity that should rightfully belong to my age. The problem is that the sociopolitical reality around me doesn’t help anyway to soothe my nerves. On the contrary, that reality is almost entirely re...
14 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more