Realizing the Great Indian Dream: multi-pronged approach needed

By

Amar Nath Wadehra and Randeep Wadehra

India’s economic restructuring has started the process of integrating the economy with the international economic order, unleashing indigenous genius in diverse fields of economic endeavor. So much so that, driven by its success in the IT industry, our economy’s traditional primary, secondary and tertiary sectors have perked up too.

However, even as the country strides towards economic superpower status it faces several challenges that can be broadly classified into socio-economic and sectarian. Spiraling social unrest, epitomized by Naxalism, caste wars, sub-cultural turmoil and sectarian violence threaten to subvert India’s tryst with destiny. In order to counter these threats effectively there is an urgent need to develop institutions and instruments, not to mention political will.

Since independence, our collective national psyche has been suffering from schizophrenia of sorts. On the one hand we unstintingly approved a secular constitution sans state religion and, on the other hand, the body politic is being wracked by partisan unrest of the worst possible kind. And let us not forget the sense of alienation that our compatriots in the Northeast feel vis-à-vis the rest of India, leading to insidious insurgency. Over the years, India’s secular-social fabric hasn’t just frayed at the edges, but has developed gaping holes all over it. Terrorism and group conflicts have become endemic. Forces of obscurantism are doing their worst to subvert the emergence of a genuinely liberal postmodern and democratic milieu. The Gandhian vision of a truly tolerant polity has been reduced to a pathetic platitude.

Aware of the extremely complex social stratifications in India, the makers of our constitution made every effort to give it a cast iron secular character. Through a series of steps, which protect the rights of various minorities and other vulnerable groups, they sought to separate religion from the state and keep the former confined to ecclesiastical sphere so that it doesn’t acquire a militant theocratic form. Nehruvian secularism, inspired by the atheist Soviet system, ensured that India didn’t have a state religion.

It exemplified the majority community’s self-confidence when it repeatedly kept the Jana Sangh – and its later day incarnations – out of power for more than four decades after the blood-spattered partition. That self-confidence appears to have been dented subsequently, especially during the previous century’s last two decades. Over the decades Hindus have been becoming increasingly susceptible to the propaganda that they are second class citizens in their own country. Gradually, successive generations of Hindus have begun to feel that their secular outlook is being taken as a sign of timidity; aggressive posturing by minority communities only added to the growth of this sentiment. Aggression by minority communal groups appears to have tacit support from assorted political parties, which cynically treat different strata of the society as their respective vote banks. The Sangh Parivar too doesn’t miss any opportunity to exploit the ‘appeasement of minorities by the centre’ to broaden its base among educated middle-class Hindus. Sections of Hindu community – buffeted by the crosscurrents of antagonistic attitudinizing of minorities and the Hindutva propaganda – are losing poise, giving militancy a fillip. Conversely, the minorities feel threatened by the renascent Hindu assertiveness.

Is it possible to untangle the conundrum that is slowly asphyxiating the potentially healthy organism called Indian polity? The answer is an unequivocal “yes”. A multipronged approach to resolve the problem would be needed making it essential to factor in economic, political as well as sub-cultural aspects. Like India’s mind boggling ethnic-linguist-religious pluralism its present problems too are nerve-wracking in complexity, encompassing economic and political ideologies, and contending aspirations of different ethnic, religious and regional groupings.

When Socialism was the path taken for economic nirvana our polity was confronted with several socioeconomic contradictions. We had a highly talented and strong mercantile community that needed to be unshackle

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