I60th anniversary: time to revisit history

This is an occasion for re-examination of past times and values, without political colour, so that we can finally know who we are., says C Uday Bhaskar

The 60th anniversary of August 15, 1947 is upon us. It is an event whose recall will be varied and largely determined by one's individual location on the temporal spectrum. The number of people who can still remember the triumphs, tribulations and trauma of that eventful month has shrunk from the time when the 50th anniversary was observed in 1997. This is true of the entire subcontinent. It would be fair to aver that everyone who is 60 years old and less would relate to this historic event only through what they have either read or heard.

India and Pakistan became independent states in August 1947 and the British Raj was interred. Some deep faultlines were discernible even at that moment of attaining that much sought after political freedom—azaadi—and much blood was spilt along the new political borders that had been created, particularly in the ‘undivided’ Punjab and Bengal.

However, the political geography of the troubled region was dramatically altered again in December 1971 with the creation of Bangladesh: 60 years later, the many states that now punctuate South Asia are still groping to find that degree of internal and external equipoise that one would associate with a self-confident state and its diverse peoples.
History and contemporary literature offer instructive points of departure to reflect over the vicissitudes of the past 60 years. The subcontinent is home to one of the oldest, unbroken civilisational experiences that go back to antiquity, and the ethos of the region has a distinctive quality to it that combines the inheritance of Mohenjodaro-Harappa and the Vedic impress to the advent of Buddhism to the mediaeval period that leavens the arrival of Islam and its Central Asian adherents with other sub-regional rhythms.
Technology and the inexorable compulsions of imperial avarice altered the political
contours of the sub-continent with the arrival of the European powers. It took the single
minded vision and determination of Mahatma Gandhi and his constituency to make August 15, 1947 a reality.

The historical recall that comes to mind is an apocryphal story about a visiting Chinese traveler who arrives at the Mauryan court in the BC period and seeks an appointment with Chanakya, the fabled minister of the Emperor. He is made to wait for what seems a very long time; it is nightfall when he is ushered into the chamber of the author of the Arthashastra. However, instead of attending to his visitor, Chanakya is more occupied with carefully blowing out one oil lamp and lighting another before turning to his Chinese interlocutor.

The intrigued visitor enquires about this lamp-lighting exercise and is told that the first lamp contained oil that belonged to the Emperor's treasury and was used for discharging his official duties; the second was filled with oil personally paid for by Chanakya himself. The rationale for the elaborate ritual was that since the meeting was not official, the minister was obliged not to use the resources of the state—however modest! Returning to China, the itinerant traveler recorded the prosperity he saw in India and observed that this was inevitable in a state where the highest paid official of the Emperor conducted himself with such rectitude and probity.

History also tells us that up to the mid-18th century, China and India accounted for more than half the world's wealth, but after the relentless march of colonisation, both the civilisational states slipped to the lower end of the global ladder by the time we came to mid-20th century.

Their sovereignty trampled and internal sinews weakened, their political resurrection was accompanied by greatly weakened internal structures. At one level, it is remarkable that India and its extended regions have cohered in the manner they have. Yet, their profile in the current global order in terms of human security is cause for deep concern. The causal factors merit deep introspection today.

While India can take justifiable pride in its commitment to the normative, democratic
experience, barring the interregnum of the Emergency under Indira Gandhi, the glaring socioeconomic asymmetries in its one billion plus human resource base is cause for deep shame. Six decades after Independence, stark poverty and deprivation is an abiding feature of the Indian experience, and much of this is due to the venality and corruption that now endemic in the state and its myriad representatives.

The metaphoric inversion that has taken place from the days of Chanakya is that today, not only is the oil of the state pilfered for personal use but the lamp is also stolen and resold to the state for personal profit. From Rajiv Gandhi's public statement in the mid-1980s that only 15 paisa of the Indian rupee actually went towards the stated objectives of public expenditure, the Indian track record for public integrity has only plummeted. In its most pristine form, realpolitik, as this column has maintained in the past, must be based on ethical norms with ethics being defined as enlightened self-interest. India's fabled tryst with destiny, first articulated with elegant panache by Pandit Nehru on the eve of August 15, 1947 can be realised only if there is an equitable distribution of justice and prosperity—and these were rhythms once associated with the
sub-continent at different points in the long cycle of history.

This is a vision that has animated the most creative minds of the subcontinent, and it may help to recall that Faiz Ahmed Faiz, among the most gifted poets of his time, wrote:
We shall live to see
So it is writ,
We shall live to see,
The day that's been promised,
The day that's been ordained;
The day when mountains of oppression,
Will blow away like wisps of cotton;
And truth shall ring in every ear,
Truth which is you and I,
We, the people will rule the earth
Which means you, which means I.

The poet's words should not have been written in vain.

( Uday Bhaskar is a senior defence and strategic affairs analyst).