On 'The NDTV Dialogues' today, Lord Bhikhu Parekh, Professor Rajeev Bhargava, Professor Naman Ahuja, Arif Mohammad Khan, and Swapan Dasgupta debate about religion and democracy. With the Delhi elections turning out to be a historic one, we delve into the idea of 'Nehru, and Today's India'.
Here is the full transcript:
NDTV: Hello and welcome to The NDTV Dialogues, a conversation of ideas, which this week is coming to you from the Symposium on Nehru and Today's India, brought to you by the University of Cambridge. Thank you all very much for joining me, I have a panel of guests with me this afternoon, Lord Bhikhu Parekh, Prof Rajeev Bhargava, Prof Naman Ahuja, Arif Mohammad Khan and Swapan Dasgupta. As we debate religion and democracy an interesting time to debate of course; in Delhi we have just seen a landmark election. And Lord Parekh perhaps I could bring you in on that when we talk about Nehru and Today's India. It is an election, perhaps, which Nehru would have been happy with because it stayed completely away from the dialogue, the campaigning, the rhetoric of majority and minority politics; and we know that Nehru in some sense was very disillusioned with organised religion. This election stayed away from religious campaigning in a way that we haven't seen in a while whether it is majority politics or minority politics?
Lord Parekh: Yes I think he would say, would be happy with both the way in which the election was conducted and the outcome of the election. I think it is not just the question of religion not being involved or communal sentiments not being involved. It is also a question of the way in which ordinary people at the grass root level decided to take charge of their own destiny and challenge the government of the day and produce certain results, which were absolutely fascinating. And there is also been, I think over the last few months, a certain kind of ideological vacuum. The Congress has been routed and the Nehruvian consensus has increasingly been chipped away, sadly in my view in certain areas. Perhaps, happily in other areas because of its legacy, BJP has not been able to provide any kind of alternative, bits of ideas here and there, but if you are looking for a coherent alternative, a comprehensive vision, a national philosophy that Nehru had offered that is not on offer. There has been a certain kind of ideological vacuum and in that kind of ideological vacuum people have been asking where do we go from here? What direction India shall be taking? And I think what AAP has done in its own limited way is not a well-concerned alternative, is limited to Delhi. It has no national application as yet; we don't know what kind of country they would like to see. But at least it has shown that in terms of political strategy there is an alternative, in terms of vision of involving people and creating a participatory democracy. There are possibilities so I think it has thrown some certain ideas, which can provide the material for well-considered alternative to a kind of ideological vacuum that we haven't inherited.
NDTV: Swapan Dasgupta, the ideological vacuum Lord Parekh referred to when we talked about the Idea of India and the whole resentment that many commentators, many lapse historians have written about, the fact that India had been bought by A certain bunch of Nehru ideologues, but is it time to rewrite or revisit what the idea of India is in today's context and we are looking at Nehru, Today's India, how would you look at today's Idea of India?
Swapan Dasgupta: Well firstly I will contest the very notion that there should be an Idea of India. I think I have always maintained there are various Ideas of India and that you cannot just regiment. For instance Prof. Parekh was talking about a national philosophy. I think that is a really dangerous idea to have a national philosophy and I think Nehru in fact was part of the problem in trying to forge a uniform consensus based on his ideas. If you look and Rudrangshu Mukherjee has written a fascinating book, well among the various books which have been written of late, which talks about how many diverse currents there were in the Congress prior to 1947 and how gradually, with the death of Sardar Patel, with the death of Mahatma Gandhi, with the kicking up stairs of Rajendra Prasad, etc. one idea of Congress came to dominate and that was Nehru's. And that inheritance was exaggerated and we got the Nehruvian consensus, which had a remote resemblance to perhaps what Nehru believed. And part of that problem is that it is not that religion and politics should be kept out of public life. It is not a pure vision as that, it is that one religion should be kept out of public life and others can organize in another way; that is those who believe in the majority, that majority should not be a community, but minorities are communities. In fact that perversion if I might say so is enshrined in Article 25. If you read the Article 25 which Barack Obama invoked in his Town Hall speech, you will find that among the clauses, the final clause there is, this does not apply to Hindus by which they also mean Buddhists, Sikhs, etc, etc. So there is not a free market, there is a regulated market, which is very Nehruvian again in its own way. Should we have a free market? I am not very sure, but the moment you have double standards institutionalized you are going to create resentments and I think part of the problem today, that we had in this churning process, is a series of resentments that 'look, we have been ignored, our role is being deliberately marginalized'. It may be a false consciousness as the Marxist put it, but that consciousness is very much real, I think part of the AAP's success also, little bit, depends on the fact that common consent participation people have been overlooked. So it is one of the series of resentments, which make India very difficult place to govern.
NDTV: Arif Mohammad Khan, since Mr Dasgupta has referred to so much the perversion perhaps of what the Congress has actually done in many, has pointed of course to turning points in the inheritance and the Congress tradition that included Shah Bano judgement. I remember when you spoke very vocally, actually supporting the Supreme Court judgment
Arif Mohammad Khan: It is not Congress' interpretation, the Constitution, the values, which are enshrined in the Constitution of India. I don't think what Mr. Swapan Dasgupta has said, Article 25 says that this section is excluded or that section is excluded. In fact it says that as far as social reforms are concerned there Hindus, Jains and Sikhs will be included in the term Hindu. It does not exclude anybody, what Pandit ji was, in fact Pandit ji was totally opposed to organised religion and Pandit ji did not say something new. If you refer to his many biographies they say that Pandit ji was not only a great author he was an avid reader and he himself has said that he was very, he liked to read Gita and works of Swami Vivekananda and Swami Vivekananda has used most, he has used very strong words against organised religion. He says, if you want to be religious don't enter the gates of an organised religion. It is much better to be without religion than become part of an organised religion. but I would like to quote exact words of Pandit ji. Pandit ji, I don't think that Pandit ji had this idea that any particular community or religion, they have the right to organise themselves while others don't have the right to organise themselves. In fact he was against mixing of religion with politics. He was against organizing, using religion as a constituency because he always insisted that this organised religion always leads to hatred. It leads to preservation of wasted interest. Therefore I think our actions may be faulty, the actions of the Government may be faulty. But as far as the basic ideas, basic ideals rather, basic principles are concerned I think they are very sound and healthy and since you have referred to Shah Bano, I do not know whom to criticize and whom not to criticize. Many times an impression is created, in fact as you may allow me 2 minutes, that Advani ji wrote his book then I got some message and I then went to see Advani ji. He was very kind, he had a signed book ready for me, I told him, I said 'Sir very kind of you, there are so many people who have rang me up and said Advani ji has praised you very high, I said thank you very much for using all those kind words but the facts which you have given of the case are" totally wrong". He was surprised. I said you have tried to project as if in the Congress, I was representing one viewpoint and Zia ur Rahman Ansari was representing one viewpoint. I said that position is not correct. If you recall the media reports it was Najma Heptullah who was representing the other side. Really, Chairman of the Muslim Personal Law Board has showered full some praises on her, for her role and that same middle person, I can't call her middle man. Same middle person who was bringing in her house all these meetings of the Personal Law Board were taking place. It was she who was arranging meetings with the Prime Minister. Today she is even in this Government, she is the star person, 'Wo kehte hain na Raja to chahe Raavan rahe ya Vibhishan rahe, Rani Mandodari ko rehna hai'. So I don't know whom to criticize.
NDTV: Prof. Bhargava coming on this question, perhaps not the specifics of the Shah Bano case, but I think he made an interesting point; Swapan did as well about the different perceptions. Now when you look at Nehru and his legacy and in today's India, in today's politics, because some sense religion is playing much more prominent role in democracy than it has in a while.
Prof Bhargava: Yes I will talk about Nehru's views on religion and on secularism, but before that I want to make it clear that there is no country which can survive, let alone flourish without there being commonly agreed programme of or commonly agreed values which be could by referred to as national philosophy. Doesn't mean that all the other philosophical viewpoints have to be excluded and they don't have to be debated and there is no reasonable disagreement among them. Nonetheless we do agree on certain fundamentals and we have that is what the Constitution does. We all abide by the Constitution and the preamble of the Constitution says that and this is something that we all agree on. So I think we do have a national philosophy, there are alternate national philosophies which want to change the Constitution, which want to change the character of the political system, character of the state, have greater sorts of alignments between the State and religion and so on. That is competing and you know it is because of our great democracy, it is because we have freedom of expression, freedom to associate and so on that these groups also they are as articulate and they can be as in some ways as significant as other groups. That is my first point. I think it certainly is not true that one group has been excluded from politics as a community. I mean the Jansangha has been around since the 1950's and the Jansangha has never made any bones, you know, about being a representative of the Hindu. The Akali's have been around from a long time and the Muslim League has been around some places, although it's not been very substantial. So in politics a whole lot of groups have got in, which proposedly take care of the interest of various communities. On the issue of politics and religion and mixing or not I think that's a very complicated question and I think I would like to begin by talking about Nehru's view about religion. And I think Nehru clearly worked with two conceptions of religion, one was the idea that we are all, we all need an interest in and cannot do without transcendence, which is to say that we can critically examine our life our existence our world; see what are its limitations and strive and aspire to rise beyond them. You can call this self-development, self-perfection, self-realisation, self-fulfillment. We all strive to do that and for this we need to be, self-development is not a lonely thing. It is something that we do together with others, so there is a certain sense of community and it cannot be done without the teaching of somebody to look up to. So you have some kind of a Guru. It can even be the Prophet something like that. And Nehru was very, very happy with this conception of religion. He revered this conception of religion. However over a period of time, certainly in many other parts of the world, many other steps were taken by this idea, the community became institutionally bureaucratized. It was enmeshed in power relations. It was, it was, there were hierarchy's based on status, people developed intellectual doctrine out of these teachings and they became dogmatic. These communities became bounded, there were gatekeeper's having strict sort of control on whose going to enter, who's going to exit and very often they also, in some ways, started to compete with one another for the exclusive allegiance of individuals. and they defined themselves as an opposition to one another and they were even prepared to break each others heads. Now this also something, which is religion, sometimes you know we use the word communal for it, but for Nehru this is also religion.
NDTV: Perhaps that is exactly why the whole legacy of Nehru in his vision is being re-interpreted and questioned in a way that it has not been in the 125th Anniversary of his birth. Prof Ahuja, come in because we talk about democracy. Lets not just look at elections and verdicts. Lets also look at the whole debate that we are currently seeing on freedom of expression, whether it is the Hebdo cartoons, whether it is the issue of Shirin Dahlvi being hounded by Mumbai for her paper printing it; whether its other, whether it is the late M.F. Hussain and his right to show art depicting Goddesses in A certain way. That is something you have looked at and have you seen a shrinking of that freedom of expression in what is being called the name of religious or political correctness
Prof Ahuja: Certainly the effort has been rife for the last few years where more than a few years to be able to sense the artworks that might tell a parallel history. Now I am not going to comment on the pettiness of the majoritarian views and security, what causes the majorities insecurities, since that is the standard trope of majoritarian governments all over the world, which tend to feel insecure for whatever reasons. It's a long argument on that, but the issue is to be able to look at perceptions and how images, which create a particular perception of a religion should be controlled and orchestrated, to be able to tell a particular description of history at the exclusion of the plurality that exist within the view. So majoritarianism in itself is a construct of a certain perception. There is no singular Muslim ideology, nor a singular Hindu ideology and I think the extraordinary thing was when I was put to the test, to be able to take a massive exhibition of Indian civilization to Europe, to showcase the whole history of India, there could not be any one Hindu, Muslim perspective, from the storehouses, the archives, the gardens of museums all over India were found extraordinary objects, that told a completely parallel and sometimes a very challenging discourse to the dominant discourse of what we regard as Hindu or what we regard as Islamic or whatever. I have a few pictures, which I have brought just to be able to show you those things and they are probably going to come on them, all those are a sort of tales from the crypt, because our museums in India have basements filled with such extraordinary subjects and these are tell completely parallel points of view. One of the images that we have is a double-sided image that has a Tara or perhaps a Lakshmi on one side and an Ardhanareshwar on the other side. It comes from the Kannauj Museum. It was on display over here in Delhi. It was not sent to Europe for exhibition. Now interestingly as the public saw this image " why would a Buddhist deity be converted into a Hindu deity on the other side, what kind of history dies it tell? Is it because the Buddhist monument fell out of use? Is it because it was appropriate? If you perceive it as a image of Lakshmi, not Tara, is it a case where it is a Vaishnav deity turned into the Ardhanarishwara, which is a Shaiva deity, is it a show of sectarian rivalry? Either which way it is an extraordinary art object that tells an entire history of what was going on in Kannauj in 7th century and either which way this evidence needs to be out there. I mean one of the things that has always upset people, is the power of the erotic in religion and whenever an artist tries to do something which expresses full frontal nudity or an erotic embrace we cant talk about it in secular terms, unless we cloak it in religion. So Bhakti poetry, the Geet Govind etc become spaces in which we can talk about eroticism but we cannot talk about it otherwise. And even that space, to be able to talk about eroticism in religion, is now being censored and that's being blocked as well, because there is a sort of a puritanism that is coming into the religious discourse. So this extraordinary Shivling, for instance, which is rather anatomically correct and on display in the Bharatpur Museum, is one of the oldest and largest known Shivling. It's six feet tall, made of sandstone. It's Pre-Kushan. It's extraordinary. It was not sent for exhibition to Europe, but there is another image over here, which if we can see the next one, is this beautiful Lakshmi of the Kushan period, used to be in the rotunda, in the pride of place as soon as you entered the National Museum of India you saw this beautiful Lakshmi. And unfortunately this image is not on display anymore, perhaps for conservation reasons, I don't know, but it has been a very long time that it hasn't been on display.
NDTV: Oh conservative reasons, it's just...
Prof Ahuja: Or lets just say for, lets call the conservative reasons, good one. Absolutely now because she is pressing her breast, it was perhaps not considered appropriate, but that's a very petty view of understanding the spirit of what Lakshmi is all about and why she should not be shown. There are other images. If we move, for instance, the National Museum of India has these extraordinary Geet Govinda pages, which I could not borrow for my exhibition because they were considered too licentious,
NDTV: Well this the same hypocrisy....
Prof Ahuja: Exactly, that when you start actually looking at what the so called majoritarian problem with the majoritarian insecurity is, the insecurity is actually coming from a uniform telling of the history of that religion, where the plurality of that religion is not actually being reflected adequately, and if that has to be brought out, for instance now within Islam, there is a beautiful Massanabi of Rumy's lying in the National Museum Collection, that was perhaps collected by one of the Sultans of Delhi. And it was painted probably in Herat. It has a color font that dates at very clearly to that period and when you open the, on the facing page, in front of the color font, the very first folio has a painting of the Prophet. It is a mirage and it shows the Prophet on Buraq riding into the night sky, it was fairly common practice, it wasn't unique in India. It was done, in it was there, in collection and manuscripts all over the world, the mirage always has the scene of Gabriel and other Farishta's surrounding the Prophet while he rises into the heaven. Now this is a history that we find deeply controversial today, it perhaps was not as controversial in the 15th and 16th century. There are mosques, which have representations of the Prophet in Iran, but these are from today's point of view. We are not a museum going people, we are a temple, mosque and Madarsa and other, you know, we go to seminaries and churches, we learn the history of our religions from places which espouse those histories from religious institutions. Today the secular pace of a museum is not really being adequately protected, to be able to tell the diverse histories of the religions we have come through. Now if the museum is empowered to be able to display the kind of things it has, the public perception, which we have been talking about, would be a little more tempered and the majoritarian view might become a little more knowledgeable, rather than being insecure perpetually.
NDTV: Lord Parekh do you want to come in on this, on the insecurity of the majority because that is an interesting phrase?
Lord Parekh: In wanting to distinguish between two different senses of religion that we have in Nehru, as we have in Gandhi. Gandhi used to say religion with capital R is common to all religion. Religion with small r is some thing, which differs from community to community. Pandit ji talks about advaita, and what Nehru is doing is to form part of this long traditional of spiritualization of politics, which go back to Gokhale and lots of other people. So spiritualisation of politics is alright but religionisation of the State is not. That is the first point to bear in mind. And now this majority and minority bit, I think needs to be explored. Much as I agree with what you said I think it needs to be explored with some sensitivity. You simply saying, oh look majority, majority didn't do, it's either acceptable or not acceptable, it can be pluralized. The question is how does it, why does it appear? What are its psychological underpinings? And I think if you look at the Constitution of India in the way in which the whole secularist discourse appears, it's very important to bear in mind that it appears in two contexts. It is not about the relation between the State and religion, which is a western problem. It is a question about the relation between the State and its organised religious communities, very different kinds of question. And what the Constitution may state was to say, look we have different communities, collectively self-conscious, very keen to maintain their identity, how do we create a state out of these communities? Now Nehru's secularism was a part of nation building, very important to bear in mind, Nehru said that these various communities have to be understood at two levels, prescriptive identities like caste and others should go. Religious identities as a citizen should rise above. They should not matter. They should be left alone. So as citizens we have only one identity, national identity, common identity as a citizen. There is no secularism about it. So for him secularism did not involve rejecting religion but it does involve transcending religion in this organised sense. Now if you are thinking in terms of various religious communities, there arises the question, and that is the elephant in the room or the hidden premise of the Constitution. If you look at all the premises in the Constitution you will find one underlined assumption. In independent India the Hindus are going to be in a majority, in a democracy the majority rules, that majority is going to present a threat to religious minorities, what do we do? If you take that assumption away, the Constitution doesn't make sense. So the Constitution underpinned by... call the hope on the part of the BJP, or the fear on the part of rest of us, that the Hindus will dominate the State, against that minorities have to be protected. Therefore all these provisions are like the protective provisions, and therefore what you have is an asymmetrical secularism. Nehru had no hesitation in wanting to reform the Hindu Court bill, in reforming the Hindu social practices and so on, and they are not doing wrong, and rightly so, in the historical context, with minority communities. What does that mean? Hindus could trust him because they felt they were the dominant party and they don't have a reason to fear the State. Precisely for the same reason minorities had begun to fear the State. In that kind of situation you cannot talk about equal treatment of all communities in the State. Because you already have certain weight in an asymmetric, it's in that sense that Nehru had a situation where majority's practices were being systematically reformed. So if you want to put it in this way, you might say that the Hindus are made to carry the torch of secularism.
NDTV: What is interesting when we talk about the Constitution, we know it's not been frozen in stone that it has been amended numerous times in the past years, in fact the term secular and socialist were only added by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, which was raised by Ravi Shankar Prasad, perhaps a valid question. But it was pounced upon, perhaps being seen as some thing, which is almost blasphemous in saying that this is a word that should be questioned. Do you think we need to get rid of these taboos?
Swapan Dasgupta: You know, firstly, I think I would rather question, to begin with, the fundamental assertion with Rajeev Bhargava was that the Idea of India today stems from the Constitution. It's a very appealing sort of hypothesis, and its also a workable one, one directly borrowed from Germany, post war Germany, which devised the term Constitutional Patriotism, partly because for some reason they wanted to brush their history under the carpet, the basis of making the Constitution, which I consider to be the document that defines the rules of business in India. These are the rules on which public life; political life basically is governed by. If you want to make that the defining document of Indian identity, you implicitly negate our prehistory. The entire complexities of Indian identity, the way our belief systems evolved over the years, which Prof Ahuja spoke about, are not something, which you brush aside. It's something you internalize, you digest, may be you interpreted them differently because these are not prone to singular interpretation. But the importance is that the history of India treated in different ways becomes part of our nationhood. You cannot have an a-historical nationhood. Nehru for instance very interestingly, after Chandigarh was built and this is a point which I often make - at the inauguration of Chandigarh, he spoke glowingly about how glad he was that there is nothing of the old in this Le Corbusier, some would say, monstrosity, some would say creation, at this spread, because had there been anything of the old it would have hindered the progress of Punjab. Now to my mind this is half the problem of today. Our inheritance and by no means is it a uniform inheritance, which I would readily agree with that, that is why I say there cannot be one idea of India. There are various facets. Now these have to be incorporated, these are definitely contested all the time, these are challenged; these are debated.
Arif Mohammad Khan: I think the idiom, the terminology we are using and we are used to is 'legacy of colonialism'. There is nothing like majority and minority, no community is identified as minority, no community is identified as majority as far as the Constitution of India is concerned. The whole government was running on the principle of divide and rule, naturally the colonial powers used every instrument, whether it was religion; it was language, it was community, it was caste. In fact what Dr. Karan Singh referred to early in the morning, they refused to recognize India as a nation, they said this is a conglomeration of various religious communities and social groups. Our problem is, you know it happens everywhere not just us, that we can change the law, it's very difficult to change the habits, so we are still using minority-majority. Who has been identified, by the way, I tell you, this I am not saying in this gathering, I have said so many times in exclusive gatherings also, because I am the one who even opposed the creation of Minority Finance Corporation, I am against all that because I feel Human Rights must be respected and Human Rights Institution must be strengthened. What is minority? You are telling me I am less than others? The day I am convinced you are treating me like that, Mr Swapan Dasgupta is treating me like that, but the day I am convinced that the law of my land treats me like that I will leave this country. No, this country is not going to treat me less than others. The Constitution of India tells me in emphatic terms that my personal faith, whether I believe in God, I do not believe in God, I belong to this community or I belong to this as far as the citizens and rights, they are equal. When you talk of, Prof Ahuja was talking about majoritarian insecurity. All communal politics is nurtured by creating fear in the mind of the people. You are under threat! I mean like we see in the films, the Damsel in Distress, the man will organize the attack on the girl and when the attack is organised then he will reach on the spot he will give him few punches and make him runaway. although this was something agreed to earlier. India's religion is not religion since time immemorial. India's religion is religion of spirituality. It is not formal religion. And this is very important. In fact we many times confuse, we try to sanitise the Indian. You know like every individual is unique, likewise every nation has unique traditions. Indian traditions are traditions of inclusion. Indian traditions are traditions in the words of Swami Vivekananda, "They are traditions of acceptance, not tolerance". "Tolerance", Swami Vivekananda said, "I find the term insulting, patronising". We have the tradition of acceptance, pluralism. What is majority and who is majority? I am a citizen of this country.
NDTV: Where has, where has the tradition actually gone? I know there are many views I'll just come back. But just to ask you on that because you often see these, these strange controversies about issues like yoga, about Suryanamaskar in schools. Should there be Sanskrit taught as an Indian language?
Arif Mohammad Khan: I don't find anything wrong with that. Why, why? Is that worship?
NDTV: So do you find this sanitisation which Arif Mohammad Khan Ji just mentioned, that in this strange sanitisation we often, throw out the best of what is pluralist India and why should students not be taught yoga, not be taught Sanskrit? Why do you think? Why is it that as India has become more progressive, we've has become much more conservative?
Prof Ahuja: Well I think it's because of our narrow definition of, it's, of the way in which you perceive that faith of all that, what a civilization stands for. And when you start putting a lot of civilisational practices only into the garb of something merely religious, that's when you have problems. Which is why holding onto a non-religious space seems to make political sense continuously in this country. Having a left of centre position that allows for secular to exist becomes mandatory. We don't have an alternative really.
NDTV: In that sense AAP turning down support from an Imam is quite strange because you've seen that has become, for so called secular parties had become common. So that was quite unusual in a sense.
Arif Mohammad Khan: Hats off to him for doing that.
Lord Parekh: Can I come in here? I think there are two reasons for this. One, there is a tendency to periodize Indian history in terms Hindu, Muslim, with the result that anything before the arrival of Islam becomes Hindu. So three and a half thousand years of history, very varied, multiple, all kinds of groups, suddenly gets described as Hindu, which really doesn't emerge until the Puranic period, which is around the 11th or 12th century. Prior to that it would have been very difficult to call people Hindu. Precisely because of this misguided periodization, there is a tendency to think that Yoga, Sanskrit, everything that happened before or originated before the arrival of Islam, is Hindu. That's the first mistake. The second mistake is to think that, is to confuse religion and culture, which of course is a very difficult distinction to make in our kind of tradition, because the word religion itself, as I have argued on many occasions, is deeply problematic. Does it apply to Hindus? Does it apply to Hindus? What is religion? Religion implies creator God, systematic beliefs, mediator and so on. None of this applies to the Dharmic tradition. Now in the Dharmic tradition, the distinction between religion and culture becomes deeply problematic. And precisely because of that there is a systematic Western tendency, which is why I don't use the word Hinduism, to turn all this into Hinduism. What is ism? Buddhism? Jainism? Sikhism, but not Mohammadanism? Although they did say that 100 years ago. Not Christism. Ism is a suffix invented after the French revolution. Is an attempt to turn Hindu dharma into a kind of dogmatic internally cohesive ideology, which is what Hinduism is? So Hindu is somebody who subscribes to Hinduism, means a Hindu is a Hinduist. So the whole language, in terms of which we think, creates such mental fog and confusion. Which is why a discussion on the word secularism becomes so important.
Swapan Dasgupta: Maybe there is another word, which is equally problematic which is linked to this definition of secularism, which is something, which has been bandied about of late, called the "scientific temper". Now, that is a very, very problematic statement because it assumes, I mean there's a model. Enlightenment, French Revolution, that is the glorious ideal and everything must fit into it. A lot of this scepticism, the disavowal of Sanskrit, the disavowal of history, the taking up of inheritance as something not worth talking about, is a consequence of a very perverse idea of what constitutes ideal rationalism. Everything is rational. Now I describe myself as an anti-enlightenment creature, with a very, and I'm proud to be that.
Lord Parekh: No, no you are very enlightened.
Swapan Dasgupta: That may well be. But enlightenment is not the monopoly of the enlightened. And therefore it fits into what Prof Parekh says that we are burdened with certain categories and I think that there is a debate going on in India, it's a very interesting debate. And I think that that debate has to be approached in terms of our trying to grapple with ourselves and periodically we do that. And therefore if you discover certain things a taboo, and certain, and you start attributing labels, this man is communal, this man is secular, this man is this, I don't think we'll get very much.
NDTV: You have controversially drawn parallels between Pandit Nehru and Mr Modi. And you've said that there are some, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is like Pandit Nehru in a way. Because many people have said that the Modi jacket is the only resemblance between the two.
Lord Parekh: There are resemblances, not substantial ones, in terms. the Prime Minister who comes to power, there is a tendency to think he is going to transform the country. So Pandit ji had this tremendous revolutionary, radical zeal. Modi has been showing the same sort of thing. Right or wrong, I'm simply saying, or Pandit ji went on quoting Gandhi. And a very important question is why is Modi invoking Gandhi so extensively? Almost turning him into the patron saint of the BJP.
NDTV: And not Pandit Nehru, because that's, Pandit Nehru is a Congress icon.
Swapan Dasgupta: I thought the contest was between Swami Vivekananda and Gandhi.
NDTV: Just a final thought for all of you, the question I asked which I would like everyone in the panel to comment about. I said has Pandit Nehru., has the current discourse reduced him to just a Congress icon? Are we guilty of doing that with many others, whether it's Mahatma Gandhi, him being claimed almost as it was, by the current Prime Minister Mr. Modi, invoking him all the time. Whether it's Sardar Patel, whether it's the pantheon of great leaders who actually set up India? It's not just Nehru, today's India. It's a pantheon of greats who set this up. They are all taken. Dr. BR Ambedkar reduced to a Dalit icon. Why are we reducing today's India by doing this? Quickly final words, I'll just start with you.
Prof Ahuja: I can't agree more. It's this need for this point form, putting everything down into a single point agenda and reducing a rich history into a single Ism. I can't agree more.
NDTV: Arif Mohammad Khan Ji.
Arif Mohammad Khan: I am a great admirer of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, but there are two things where, and he was a human being, so I think these are two major lapses. One neglect of the primary and secondary education, which has allowed the politicians to take advantage of the ignorance of the people and exploit them on religious and caste lines and second, the regret which he himself had expressed in his interview to Taya Zinkin, the wife of a senior ICS officer. He said, she asked him what you consider your greatest achievement? He said Hindu code bank. I have been able to secure rights for my Hindu sisters. And what is your greatest regret? Not being able to do the same thing for my Muslim sisters.
NDTV: Final thoughts, Swapan of course interestingly Prime Minister Modi now heads the committee to honour Prime Minister Nehru in 125th year, are you in that committee?
Swapan Dasgupta: Yes I am actually on the committee, I mean....
NDTV: Because that's the last we heard of it was the...
Swapan Dasgupta: Well ironies never cease. You know the 11th century....
NDTV: What are you doing in the 125th year?
Swapan Dasgupta: I will tell you, the 11th century Arab traveler Al-Barouni, once famously said that Hindus have no sense of history and I think that is one of the most prescient comments because we tend to transform everything into theology, if not worship, and the classic example would be to dissect Nehru. Nehru was a functioning, practicing politician. In the course of 70 years he said a lot of things depending on the context, not all of which are internally consistent depending on the circumstances. Therefore to treat Nehru as a person who one day saw the light and revealed it all is perhaps, it is a bit of an exaggeration. Today Nehru has uses to certain people, he is the principal symbol of defence of what I call the anciente regime, but which others view differently.
NDTV: And what are you doing when that committee is not...
Swapan Dasgupta: Number one, I think it is precisely the point, to me Nehru is very important, he is very important because he was the Prime Minister of India for 17 years and therefore he was certainly a foundational figure of the Republic, but personally to me he will always strike out as a great aesthete and a great stylist.
NDTV: I hope that is not the only contribution...
Prof Bhargava: And Modi is trying to get that from him, to become a great stylist
Prof Ahuja: Well I hope we are not reducing it into a cardboard cutout, to about just style in aesthetic sense....
NDTV: Final words, Lord Parekh, make any suggestions of Prime Minister of how to perhaps remember the legacy of India's first Prime Minister because lets not get into I think partisanship on this issue...
Lord Parekh: If I want my suggestions to be effective, they will have to be conveyed privately. But on the question of Nehru I think we haven't really fully appreciated his importance. In my view he remains the architect of modern Indian state and not just modern Indian state but modern India, for four important reasons. First is he stood up to Gandhi, ideologically, never politically, he could have, all the Gandhian ideas about sexuality, family planning, industrialisation. He stood up to him and said no we don't want to go that way. No other individual at the time could have done that. Secondly he gave India's most coherent statement you can imagine, partial maybe, of India's identity. To be an Indian is to become what he called 5 ways or goals, some became his national philosophy. Three he nurtured Parliamentary statements, democracy. All that has been said. And fourth, in a highly unequal, caste minded society, which Vivekananda said Stamps upon the necks of the poor', he introduced the notion of equity and said that has to be a part any society that you would create, not the social reform, but the basic elementary sense of equality. These things are absolutely crucial. As for the secularism lets remember one thing, he proposed a particular model of secularism in the historiral context. Partition had taken place, minorities were deeply afraid, Hindus and many of these things will come out very shortly, there are many groups of Hindus, who at that point thought the country belonged to them. There were conspiracies of all kinds, what we saw in relation to Gandhi's assassination was just tip of the iceberg. There were major attempts to assassinate a lot of other people and as these documents come out we will come to see. Now in that kind of context he advanced one particular form of secularism. As that model of secularism begins to deliver results, India changes and a new model begins to take its place without discarding its fundamental elements. State should not be identified with religion, citizenship is independent of what religion you belong to, all are equal and so on. In other words secularism has to be identified (a) in terms of core values, which are never to be jettisoned and a particular form, legal and others, historically never changes. So even in Modi's time those forms might change. Even if Swapan Dasgupta or any other comes to power - those forms will change, but those fundamental commitments, State not to institutionalize a religion, citizenship not to depend on religion. All those sorts of core values I don't know how you can do without them. And the day India did, it is finished.
NDTV: Thank you very much all of you and it is a great note to end