The concept of an Indian "Grand Narrative" came up again in a recent social media discussion, and I was amazed at how the Hindu Right wing (or the relatively intellectual sections of it) have both monopolised discussion of the concept and got it so wrong at the same time.
The incipient glimmerings of what the Hindu Right calls the "Indian Grand Narrative" is actually a pretty petty one. I will analyse this in detail in this post and conclude it with my own version (which is arguably far grander!)
[Update February 2022: I have written up a "civilisational narrative" for India, which is available both
online and as a
downloadable PDF.]
But first, what is a Grand Narrative, and is it important at all?
1. A Grand Narrative - its nature and relevance
A Grand Narrative is a fancy way of saying that a people have a clear view of who they are, their unique history and culture, and of what their place is in the world. Further, they are able to communicate this to other people with pride. Provided this is accomplished in a spirit of mutual respect, such a cultural Grand Narrative is something positive to aspire for.
1.1 An unfortunate (and unfortunately common) example
The example commonly given in this context is the American Grand Narrative, which also goes by the terms "American Exceptionalism" or "America's Manifest Destiny". To my mind, this is a particularly unfortunate example if one is trying to argue for an Indian version.
American Exceptionalism is the notion, held almost unanimously by Americans, that their nation is the greatest of all, that it is based on the noblest of virtues, that whatever America does in the world is to the world's benefit, and further, that while it may make occasional mistakes, those are well-intentioned, and that in the main, America can do no wrong. The sentiment is often succinctly expressed in the phrase heard nowhere else, "I believe in America", as though America were not a nation but an idea. It is taught to children from a very young age in all American schools, public and private, and is therefore unconsciously internalised even by those who consider themselves skeptical in other matters. It is a pervasive and insidious example of indoctrination in a supposedly open and critically introspective society. The works of Noam Chomsky and others explain how this systemic indoctrination works, in chilling detail.
Those fortunate enough to be born elsewhere can see with crystal clarity that this hagiographic imagery of American Exceptionalism is dangerously incorrect. America is no doubt a rich and powerful country, its society has many inherent strengths, it provides a progressive example to older societies in many respects, but as a nation-state in the comity of nation-states, its behaviour has been far from infallible or noble. On the contrary, the moral certainty conferred by its universally accepted Grand Narrative compounds the evil that its deep state cynically practises. Everything that the American establishment does in the world is for its own interests, not the good of the world. And it is not even in the interests of the American people in whose name it is done, but in the interests of the military-industrial complex, of which much has already been written. The fact that a country like Iraq can be subject to a veritable holocaust of over a million deaths, and reduced to utter ruin, on a basis of an American lie, and that no one responsible has paid any kind of price for it, is just the most recent evidence. Nothing else but moral certainty can enable a nation to wreak such suffering on the rest of the world with a perfectly clear conscience.
Therefore, the call for India to adopt a Grand Narrative using the US as an example seems like Kafkaesque humour. Heaven forbid that India become a nation of indoctrinated zombies, supremely convinced in "the idea of India" against all evidence.
1.2 Confusion through conflation
The roots of the Hindu Right's confusion about an Indian Grand Narrative, right off the starting blocks, is its failure to distinguish between four very different entities. This is probably deliberate, since the ideology of the Hindu Right is crucially dependent on a conflation of the four.
Those four entities are:
- The Indic civilisation
- The Indian nation-state
- The Hindu religion
- The Hindi language
Notice that I have deliberately chosen different adjectives (Indic, Indian, and Hindu) to distinguish the first three concepts. The Hindu Right avoids mention of the emotionally neutral term "Indic", slyly preferring to use the more emotive words "Hindu" and "Indian" (interchangeably!) to describe all three ideas. This, as I will argue, is deliberate sleight-of-hand to further a certain majoritarian agenda. Further, the literal meaning of the word "Hindi" as being the language of Hind (India) plays to the same theme.
1.3 A rational critique
In evaluating the suitability of each of these elements towards forging an Indian Grand Narrative, I will rely on rationalism. The most successful societies in history have been led by reason, and a Grand Narrative needs to make its society successful, otherwise it is nothing but a waste of time.
2. The Hindu religion
The easiest to dispatch is the Hindu religion, and I will deal with it first.
As an atheist, I see no merit in any religion or "spiritual" tradition. These have held humankind back from progress in a myriad of ways, with the only thing to be said in their favour is that they may provide comfort to those in distress.
Much is made of the Hindu religion by its adherents, who make many claims:
- its superiority over the collective set of Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), which are considered "desert religions" and hence needlessly harsh and puritanical
- the notion that Hinduism subsumes atheism (i.e., that one can be an atheist and still be a "Hindu", simply because some ancient Indian philosophers were atheists)
- that "Hindu philosophy" is a distinct and rationally arguable set of ideas distinct from blind religious beliefs or ritual
I consider all of these arguments facetious.
There is no meaningful difference between different sets of metaphysical truth claims, when all of them are ultimately based on the hubris (in the complete absence of evidence) that human consciousness can somehow outlive the physical body. This, after all, is the concept represented by the "soul", "atman", or whatever term a religious adherent might choose to use. In spite of all the talk of "Near-Death Experiences", with their tunnels and Beings of Light, everything is ultimately explained quite adequately by Dr Susan Blackmore's
Dying Brain Hypothesis. There is therefore nothing "superior" about the Hindu religion. I consider it a collection of fairytales like any other.
The desire to claim atheists as Hindu is more a wistful reluctance to let go than a rational argument. Atheists cannot simultaneously be Hindu, otherwise the term "Hindu" ceases to stand for any unique ideas at all.
Finally, any philosophies that could legitimately be considered distinct from metaphysical beliefs, such as the
Samkhya philosophy, are more correctly described as "Indic" than as "Hindu". There is nothing particularly Hindu or even theistic about such philosophies, but they are the unique contribution of the Indic civilisation to the set of world philosophies.
For all these reasons, I would keep the Hindu religion entirely out of any "Indian Grand Narrative". It would not just be an embarrassment but (as with anything irrational) would cripple its chances of practical success.
3. The Hindi language
The next item that can be dispatched is the question of language. There are a couple of spurious arguments made in favour of Hindi being India's national language:
- "Just like the Germans have German as their national language and the Japanese have Japanese as their national language, we should have our own language as our national language, and Hindi is the one spoken by the largest number of Indians."
- "We are no longer a British colony or slaves of the British, so we should throw off the colonial yoke and stop speaking the language of our colonial oppressors."
As always, these emotive arguments fail the logic test.
3.1 What is a "national" language?
Germany, Japan, and for that matter, all countries with a single language, have it easy. There is no question over what their national language should be. However, India has over 25 major languages. All of them are authentically Indian, and so all of them are in a sense "national" languages. None of them is more equal than the others. Promoting one regional language above all others is unwarranted, and historically unwise.
A linguistic map of India shows that Hindi is nothing but a regional language, although the region that speaks it is larger than any other single region in the country.
There are very few countries in the world that have this extent of linguistic diversity, and even the most advanced countries find it very hard to manage the fractious nature of linguistic identity.
Canada has a hard time containing the secessionist tendencies of its French-speaking province Quebec, as Spain does with its Catalan and Basque regions. Belgium's French and Flemish speakers cordially dislike each other. Multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union broke up in very short order once the iron fist of their erstwhile communist regimes collapsed.
There is no multilingual country in the world that has peacefully imposed one language on all of its people. [We have yet to see what will happen to China in the future, if the iron grip of the Communist Party should ever weaken. Will the speakers of the Yue (Cantonese), Min, Wu and Hakka dialects reassert themselves and reject Mandarin?]
Linguistic identity is a powerful and primal instinct, and any government ignores this at its peril. The anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu in the 1960s was handled relatively wisely by the Nehru government. Nehru gave an undertaking that "English would continue as long as the non-Hindi-speaking people of India wanted it". Tamil Nadu bought the rest of the country a breather, as it turned out, because the second emotive argument has also turned out false.
3.2 To whom does the English language belong today?
At one time, English was the language of England. But today, English has become the lingua franca of the world. Anyone who has done business internationally knows that English is the language of business. A corporate meeting room will see business conducted only in English, even if none of the participants is a native speaker of English.
English is therefore an aspirational language for those who wish to raise their standard of living. It opens doors to employment in the formal sectors of the economy, and helps fluent speakers negotiate their way through higher and higher corridors of influence and power.
The English language no longer belongs to England, and thinking of it as an instrument of colonial oppression is outdated.
For both these reasons, the promotion of Hindi as the natural "national" language of India is tenuous and in need of review.
I believe that linguistic integration of the people of India is best achieved through
a combination of languages, and that Indians must each learn more than one language. Further, this choice of languages must not be imposed by the state, but be selected by citizens by their own free will.
4. The Indic civilisation
If one looks at the term "civilisation" as a combination of genetics, geography and cultural elements, the Indic civilisation is unique among world civilisations. A telltale sign is that the eminently insightful Samuel Huntington, in his seminal book "
The Clash of Civilizations", confesses to being unable to adequately describe the Indic (or as he called it, the Indian) civilisation. This difficulty is not surprising. Both genetics and culture in the South Asian region have undergone cataclysmic change - genetics over the course of a few millennia, and culture over the course of a few centuries. Their lingering effects on present-day society are yet to be fully processed and absorbed, and hence reactionary, denialist movements like the Hindu Right are inevitable as part of this painful adjustment process.
4.1 Genetics
Genetically, the people inhabiting the region identified loosely as "India" (whether it be the Indian nation-state alone, or all the nation-states of South Asia), have arisen as a result of intermixing between three distinct chromosomal groups:
- South Asian hunter-gatherers
- Iranian agriculturists
- Steppe pastoralists
The
latest genetic evidence supports the theory that Steppe pastoralists ("Aryans") invaded the land (the Indus Valley) occupied by a people ("Dravidians") who were themselves descendents of the two earlier groups of people.
In simple terms, the mixing of Iranian agriculturists and South Asian hunter-gatherers first created the Indus Valley population.
Then around the 2nd millennium BCE, Steppe pastoralists moved south towards the subcontinent encountering the Indus Valley population in a manner that was likely to have caused some amount of upheaval.
What appears to happen afterwards is that some of the Indus Valley population moves further south, mixing more with South Asian hunter-gatherers to create the Ancestral South Indian population
Meanwhile, in the north, the Steppe pastoralists are mixing with the Indus Valley population to create the Ancestral North Indian grouping.
Most subsequent South Asian populations are then a result of further mixing between Ancestral North Indians and Ancestral South Indians.
[As an amusing aside, the Hindu Right vehemently rejects this model even in the face of mounting evidence of its validity, and I will explain the reason for this opposition shortly.]
As I mentioned, the waves of genetic influx and intermixing occurred over the course of millennia, but they remain a source of potential friction to this day. As a hint, this is why the term "Dravidian" is so emotive and controversial.
4.2 Culture
Culturally, after the fairly fundamental influence of the Aryans' invasion in 2000 BCE, with their pantheon of gods and their Vedic-Sanskritic rules and rituals of society, the South Asian region next received influences from two other civilisational groups, and this mainly occurred over the last millennium (more pronounced in the latter six centuries of the last millennium).
In broad civilisational terms, these three cultural influences have been
- Autochthonous developments from within the native Indic civilisation itself (which includes secular cultural traditions like tribal, pastoral, urban, mercantile, as well as religious ones - Hinduism and its various sects, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism)
- The collective set of cultures called Islam that began in force about 6 centuries ago (which includes Arab, Persian, Mongol and Turkic influences)
- The multiple strands of Western influence that began about 2 centuries ago (which includes the Christian religion, rational-humanist thought arising from the Western Enlightenment, commercial exploitation in the form of colonialism, technology from the Industrial revolution, new political and administrative ideas and structures, etc.)
[Alexander the Great's brief foray into the subcontinent around 330 BCE did not bring about as significant a change in Indic culture as the latter two, and so it can be ignored after this brief mention. Indian Ocean trade had its own set of influences on every trading nation (Read "
The Ocean of Churn" by Sanjeev Sanyal), but these were gentler and therefore relatively non-controversial. Certainly Indian cuisine was one of the areas most impacted by trade.]
These latter two cultural inputs into the Indic civilisation (Islam and Westernisation), being much more recent than the genetic inputs, have an understandably greater impact on current-day discourse. The tectonic plates representing each of these cultural influences continue to cause tremors in the polity, not just in India but also in other South Asian countries.
An important element of cultural influence has been the
outward flow of ideas from the Indic civilisation to geographies beyond South Asia. Countries of East Africa and Southeast Asia to this day exhibit influences of the Indic civilisation, whether these be Sanskritic roots of words in their languages, or variants of Hindu epics in their culture, or temples to Hindu deities, such as Angkor Vat in Cambodia. While these are not controversial within India, they must be taken into account when formulating an Indian Grand Narrative.
4.3 Geography
Having dealt with the cataclysmic influences of genetics and culture, what is left is the relatively stable aspect of geography. Unlike some other countries (such as Poland) that have been unfortunate enough to have their very geographical boundaries rewritten more than once during their history, the geographical outlines of the Indic civilisation have necessarily remained stable since its earliest beginnings. The impact of this is clearly explained in StratFor analyst George Friedman's insightful article "
The Geopolitics of India - A Shifting, Self-Contained World".
Indeed, the only geographical event of significance in this region occurred in the last century, when the colony of India ruled by Great Britain was split into India and Pakistan (and later further divided to form Bangladesh). Extrapolating from Friedman's writing, the long-term viability of Pakistan (and Bangladesh) as independent political entities is in doubt, since civilisations tend to extend outwards until they meet hard geographical boundaries like impassable mountains, dense forests, or seas. The Indic civilisation must therefore prevail within Friedman's "island" that is South Asia, regardless of Pakistan's attempts to forge an alternative narrative based on supposed Arab cultural roots.
[An interesting aspect of Friedman's analysis is the relative isolation of the Indic and Sinic civilisations, and by extrapolation, the modern nation-states of India and China ("China and India might as well be on different planets"). This, as we will see, must have a significant impact on the formulation of an Indian Grand Narrative.]
5. The Indian nation-state
And so, after dealing with the Hindu religion, the Hindi language, and the Indic civilisation, we come to the modern Indian nation-state. The attempt by the Hindu Right to craft what they consider an Indian Grand Narrative is an attempt to define the soul of the Indian nation-state, since that is after all the only practical manifestation of any religio-cultural interpretation that they may give to the Indic civilisation.
The relationship between the Indian nation-state and the other three entities that it is sought to be conflated with (i.e., the Hindu religion, the Hindi language, and the Indic civilisation) needs to be understood.
5.1 The Indian nation-state vis-a-vis the Hindu religion
The constitution of the Indian nation-state has dealt with religion in the wisest and most practical way, by consciously separating church and state in the manner inspired by the Western Enlightenment. This wisdom is obvious in retrospect when one looks at neighbouring countries in the region that have adopted a "state religion" (Buddhism in the case of Sri Lanka, Islam in the case of Pakistan). The immediate and practical impact this has had on the lives of religious minorities in these countries has been borne out quite dramatically. Even a nominally secular country like Bangladesh has seen its religious minorities persecuted because of tacit support to the notion of a "state religion". The resulting civil strife impacts every citizen, even those belonging to the majority, who may have initially thought of themselves as winners. There are in fact no winners in this game of one-upmanship, and it is best avoided altogether.
The takeaway from this is that when a nation-state has citizens professing more than one religion, any attempt to elevate one above the others will lead to the creation of second-class citizens and eventual civil strife. India must learn from the mistakes of its neighbours and be grateful for historical circumstances that endowed it with a saner constitution at the start of its journey as an independent nation-state. If India changes its constitution in future to favour the Hindu religion, it will do so at the cost of its own unity and prosperity. This will of course not be obvious at all to the adherents of the Hindu Right, which is why we are constantly admonished to learn from history and from the mistakes of others. It is not "hyphenation" to warn of a "Hindu Pakistan", for example.
5.2 The Indian nation-state vis-a-vis the Hindi language
The wisdom of India's early governments is on evidence again, viz., the creation of states on the basis of language. Language is a fault-line in any society, and India's early leadership showed wisdom in
allowing the nation to crack naturally along those fault-lines, instead of trying to weld the nation together with a single "national" language imposed by fiat. Granting linguistic states the autonomy to use and propagate their own languages within their borders has cooled the fissiparous tendencies of a heterogeneous society.
What India has not done so well is in regard to the teaching of English. The English language is a force of nature that is foolish to resist. Rather than attempting to replace English with Indian languages (either a putative
rashtrabhasha ("national language") like Hindi, or a person's
maatrubhasha (mother-tongue)), policymakers should have emphasised the need to learn more than one language.
The takeaway from this is that autonomy and equal treatment of all languages is the way to keep a nation together. Elevating a single language above all others is a way to create resentment. Further, since humans can learn more than one language, Indian policy should have been even more assertively multi-lingual than it is.
5.3 The Indian nation-state vis-a-vis the Indic civilisation
Similarly, the many civilisational influences on the modern Indian nation-state must be acknowledged and graciously incorporated where suitable, not resentfully denied and expunged. The Indic civilisation is a hybrid one, and the inward flow of cultural influences from other civilisations has enriched and informed it. They are not pollutants to be eradicated, but ideas to be entertained, debated and judiciously adopted without prejudice based on their origin.
It's interesting to observe the markedly different ways in which
inward and
outward cultural influences are received. A report of schoolchildren in Scotland singing Sanskrit hymns is welcomed and forwarded on social media, while the teaching of English nursery rhymes in Indian schools is criticised. The success of Yoga and "Bollywood dancing" classes in Western countries is welcomed, but the recent popularity of Salsa and ballroom dancing classes in India is frowned upon. A Western woman who wears a sari is praised for her appreciation of Indian culture, but Indian girls who wear jeans are criticised and sometimes physically assaulted. A temple to the Hindu god Vishnu in Angkor Vat, Cambodia, is a matter of great cultural pride, but the Islamic architecture of the Taj Mahal in India is a source of perceived humiliation.
Part of what constitutes the Hindu Right's ideas for a Grand Narrative is the notion that India will take its "rightful place" as a "Vishwaguru" (teacher to the world). It is a peculiar combination of insecurity and hubris that values cultural exports over imports. A realistic assessment of history is that human society progresses through cultural cross-pollination and the exchange, including the conflict, of ideas. No civilisation is inherently superior to any other for all time. Civilisations rise and fall. At different times in history, one or another civilisation becomes relatively dominant. It is a way by which the human race collectively progresses, by passing the baton to one or another representative culture that leads the rest for a time. A so-called Grand Narrative based on an idealised one-way flow of influence from one's own civilisation to all others is not just unrealistic but betrays deep cultural insecurity.
India has been lucky to receive external influences that shaped its society. If only the
native Indic cultural influences are to be acknowledged as legitimate, it would be a net loss to society. Countries that remained insular throughout their history struggle to cope in a more connected world. Why would a nation gifted in this regard voluntarily eschew its advantages?
5.3 A simplistic model of what it means to be "Indian" in modern India
The Hindu Right betrays the simplistic thinking of conservative and right-wing movements everywhere, in that it pursues idealistic notions of "purity" in preference to richer and more nuanced cultures. A prime indicator of such simplistic thinking is the desire for a single cultural narrative as opposed to many coexisting ones.
The Grand Narrative sought by the Hindu Right seeks to elevate one set of cultural values above others, and therefore seeks to privilege one set of citizens over others. Although the movement also receives support from outside of this privileged group, those others deny to themselves the fact that they are de facto second-class citizens in this model. For political expediency, they have voluntarily denied aspects of their own identity and willingly subjugated themselves to the identity of the favoured group.
Specifically, what could be called the Hindutva Grand Narrative (which is actually a pretty
petty narrative), privileges people who happen to be:
- Upper-caste
- North Indian
- Hindi-speaking
- Hindu
- Male
They are also straight by sexual orientation, cisgendered and able-bodied to boot. People belonging to so-called "lower" castes, South Indians, Northeast Indians, people who speak a language other than Hindi, people who practise a religion other than Hinduism (or even more heterodox denominations like some tribal groups), women, LGBTQI people, etc., willy-nilly become second-class citizens whether they are willing to admit it or not.
Any assertion of hyphenated identities in this model is labelled "Breaking India" (often abbreviated in Right-wing circles to "BI forces"). But why so? One can be proud to be Dravidian and Indian at the same time. One can be proud to be Muslim and Indian at the same time. One identity does not need to be subservient to the other. Identities can coexist, and only right-wingers lack the nuance to understand this.
Trevor Noah explains the legitimacy of hyphenated identities in the context of African migrants in France
Interestingly, Hindu Right-wing sympathisers can readily accept Trevor Noah's argument when it comes to France, but will still refer to a Dalit caste identity, a Dravidian cultural-regional identity, or a Muslim or Christian religious identity as inherently divisive with regard to the "Indian" identity. If one is to be Indian, one cannot be anything else. Or rather, one can only belong to another identity after acknowledging its subservience to the "Indian" one. A Tamil can be a Tamil as long they do not refuse to learn Hindi. If they do, they're anti-national. A Muslim can be Muslim as long as they accept that they are "culturally Hindu". If they do not, they are anti-national.
That's why the Hindu Right's attempt to define a Grand Narrative is a non-starter. It's very petty in its insecure bullying and one-upmanship.
A true Indian Grand Narrative
Here is my simple approach to an Indian Grand Narrative.
1. Leave religion out of it entirely. Religions are fairytales that do nothing to advance the human condition. If it is not possible to explicitly repudiate religious thinking, at least confine religion to the private sphere. The state must be scrupulously secular.
2. Adopt a sensible language policy that does not unfairly promote one regional language (Hindi) over all others, or reject the most useful language in the world (English). Fortunately, human beings have the ability to learn more than one language. So adopt a 3-language formula, and leave it to citizens to decide what those three languages should be. Judging by the popularity of English-medium schools in India (especially in the Hindi-speaking states!), English will almost certainly be one of the three, for an overwhelming majority of Indians. A very large number of Indians will also choose Hindi to be one of the three. For those who do not have Hindi as their mother-tongue, the third language chosen will almost certainly be their mother-tongue. Hindi-speakers may choose some other language (Indian or foreign) as their third language. This is the only democratic way forward.
3. For the Indian nation-state, the most important elements are economics and geopolitics. It will require a separate blog post to elaborate, but the implications of this are that India will need to grow at its fastest and most sustainable rate possible, to achieve the heft it desires. It will also need to be extremely hard-headed in its assessment of what it wants to achieve for itself in geopolitical terms. Secure land borders? An end to rival power centres within the Indian subcontinent? Control of the Indian Ocean? Whatever it is, India has to think rationally and strategically about these, in order to achieve them over the course of the next few decades.
