Partition And The Indian Project.

To no one’s surprise, Arun Shourie has boldly gone where no Indian politician has ventured before, namely finding something to commend about Partition, a sentiment, which though will find many supporter among the riff raff of the nets, hardly finds any taker in the respectable society.

The justification is something like this, since idea of Ummah conflicts with the idea of India (a premise I agree with), it would have been impossible for an un-partitioned India to exist as a stable political entity much less emerge as a prosperous and influential nation, the partition prevented this from happening by containing Ummah to manageable level.

My own thoughts about Partition are far from settled. While I more or less agree with the idea of containing Ummah, I am not satisfied with the results. While Ummah in divided India is not as strong force as it would have been in united India, it is still a significant, and to be frank, a corrosive force. This dilemma has no easy answers.

One can of course concoct scheme for transferring Muslim population to Pakistan and Bangladesh (as was suggested by Dr. Amberdkar during partition) but as much as some people might like it, the scheme is less than impracticable.

This leaves us with only two options, one let Ummah fester within the host body and resign ourselves to inevitable results which is disintegration of India. Or if this is not acceptable then assimilate Ummah within India. Therein lays the problem. The reason it is more or less impossible to assimilate Ummah is the same behind the facts that Ummah manages to be a corrosive force even in post partition India, and Indian polity is getting increasingly fragmented along lingual, regional and caste lines, viz. abysmal failure of Hindus/Indians to define their identity. Sure there have been instances in democratic India where a non trivial percentage of the Hindus/Indian have voted as Hindus/Indians, but these instances always been sporadic and almost as emotional, whereas for Hindu/Indian identity to have a meaning, such a political project must anchored in philosophical thought and executed with intellectual vigor.

The process by which such an identity can be formed is too complicated either to be covered in a single post, or to be expounded by a single person (that is I).

However it is possible to describe what minimal conditions end result of such a project must satisfy. I will expand upon this in later posts (Hint: It has to do with the fact I have used “Hindu” along with “India”)