|
COPYRIGHT 2003 Indiana University, Purdue University of Fort Wayne
In The Discovery of India, written on the threshold of that country's independence, Jawaharlal Nehru sought to create "a public vocabulary through which Indians could talk to one another as Indians" through the medium of a shared history. (1) In this he treaded what has become a well-worn path. What makes The Discovery exceptional, however, in terms of nationalist historiography, is its teleology--the end, and essence of India, for Nehru, is multiculturalism. Though India's current political and social difficulties have often provoked criticism of Nehru and his policies, scant attention has been paid to the terms of Nehru's seminal work, perhaps one of the earliest works of national history to overtly privilege cultural diversity and tolerance as national values.
There are three key terms through which Nehru attemptsto reconcile the demands of diversity and an urgent, anticolonial nationalism: indigenization, Indianization, and, what has now become a catchphrase, "unity in diversity," all three of which will be explored in this paper. The last is a state of being, which the former two processes help bring about. Indigenization and Indianization are thus located as historically recognizable (though natural) events, while unity in diversity acquires an air of transcendence. Religious harmony is posited as the natural state which characterizes the past and under which Indian civilization ought to exist. The hybrid Indian culture is both a result of and an aspect of the "environment." (2) Indeed, Nehru launches The Discovery of India from the premise that India's diversity is "obvious" (61)--it is the subcontinent's unity which he undertakes to define and defend. In this, he turns first to the civilization of the Indus valley, which is arguably the very beginning of Indian history, since it is the earliest period for which there is significant archeological evidence. In locating the origin of the modern nation in this ancient enclave of advanced civilization, Nehru implicitly places India on an equal footing with western culture, the heir of ancient Greece and Rome, indicating from the outset that he intends to reclaim the history of the subcontinent.
Much more is clearly at stake, however; Nehru's references to the Indus Valley civilization also raise a number of issues of more direct interest to his own political agenda. Not only does the author ground his endorsement of multiculturalism in his reading of Mohenjodaro, but he also locates the justification for socialism there as well. Unlike the other civilizations of the ancient world, the Indus valley is shown to have privileged the common man over the elite, and "the finest structures" among the ruins "are those erected for the convenience of the citizens" (71). This is surely a fortuitous coincidence for Nehru, as it transforms his beloved socialism from a foreign, western concept into an indigenous one.
Far more problematic are Nehru's attempts to portray Mohenjodaro as multicultural. Almost by definition, cultural attitudes and practices leave less evidence than public works projects, and so there is greater room for, and need of, speculation in discussing these issues. The author states that Mohenjodaro was, "surprisingly enough, a predominantly secular civilization," without either offering any evidence, or elaborating on this claim (70). It is important, in order to contextualize Nehru's argument, to define and distinguish between the terms secular, secularism, and secularization. (3) The secular refers simply to that which is of the world; traditionally, it is that which is not sacred. Originally, as a term, it denoted life outside the walls of the monastery, that which was not enveloped in religious seclusion. As such, it includes art and literature, as well as the mundane affairs of everyday life. Secularism, on the other hand, is a much more modern term, and refers to the belief that the sacred and profane are and ought to be distinct and separate. As such, it is different from the original sense of the secular, which held that the realm of the spiritual extended beyond the monastery walls, and did not recognize a sharp dividing line between the spiritual and the material.
Secularism usually entails the belief that religion (and hence spirituality) is an essentially private matter, apart from other earthly concerns, and ought to be kept out of the public domain. This separation is seen as an intrinsic good. Secularization is the process whereby the detachment of the spiritual from the public is achieved, and it is implicitly progressive, with the secularized society existing at a more advanced state of evolution than the nonsecularized. Secularism and secularization are much more recent concepts, and not without their Eurocentric overtones, for it is in western nations that secularism is usually seen to have originated and been achieved. This is constructed as part of their inherent superiority. Unlike the secular, then, which is a far more universal concept, shades of Orientalism haunt secularism and its processes. (4)
Nehru's claim that Mohenjodaro was secular is not thus unexpected, since a concern for worldly affairs is neither at odds with conventional understandings of the ancient world nor foreign to the ancient Hindu texts. (5) What limited archeological evidence there is suggests that Mohenjodaro was a center for trade and the arts, and not a monastic settlement. At the time of Nehru's writing, however, the term secular had become firmly associated with the twin ideologies of secularism and secularization. As such, secularism does seem out of place in Mohenjodaro, and the author (and the reader) might well be astonished to find it there. The surprise Nehru feigns is thus a verbal slight of hand, a skillful manipulation of meaning designed to insinuate his own ideology into the very beginnings of Indian history, implicitly laying the foundations for his vision of a modern, social democratic nation.
Nehru's penchant for classicism is very much in keeping with the nationalist project, which needed to both justify and historicize its own political ambitions. (6) Nationalist classicism opposes colonial classicizing discourses, however, in that it seeks to conceive of ancient civilizations as alive, rather than dead, in emphasizing the connection between the land's ancient and contemporary inhabitants. (7) Nehru supports his argument by quoting a noted British scholar of Sanskrit, Sir John Marshall, who also sees this continuity. (8) Yet his assertion is double-edged--the proximity of ancient and modern Hinduism might point just as convincingly to the backwardness of the modern form as to the enlightened nature of the ancient.
A reliance on classicism also can lead to a distortion of history that privileges certain kinds of identity. In India, the consequences of this are particularly problematic. Though Nehru rejects the British periodization of Indian history (237) and its creation of distinct Hindu and Muslim eras, there can be no doubt that he is especially interested in ancient India. The classical period precludes not only Indian Muslims per se, but Islam itself, and thus their entire way of life. Any insistence on continuity between the Indus Valley civilization and contemporary South Asia inevitably made non-Hindus uneasy. It seems only natural that Indian Muslims began constructing their own classical past, which of necessity looked beyond the boundaries of South Asia and toward a specifically Muslim community.
This is not to say, however, that Nehru engages in an unabashed nationalist appropriation of historical material or is unconscious of the possibility that distorted readings can be undertaken. Indeed, he is aware of and subtly critiques such readings. His discussion of...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
