So language divides. And this is compounded by the fact that, within a decade after independence, the government reorganized the states on linguistic lines, so most language groups have their own political entities to look toward to give expression to their linguistic identity. The people of Punjab speak Punjabi, of Bengal Bengali, of Tamil Nadu Tamil, and so on. So we have the twenty-five states in the Indian Union becoming ethnolinguistic entities, helping give rise to strong regional feeling going beyond the states themselves. The “Hindi belt” in the North — overpopulated, illiterate, poor and clamorous — is resented by many in the better-educated, more prosperous South. And both are seen as distant and self-obsessed by the neglected Northeast. There’s a real risk of disaffection here, especially as long as power remains concentrated in Delhi and the outlying states find themselves on the periphery, paying tribute to the north.
Next, caste. That’s basically a Hindu phenomenon, but caste is hardly unknown amongst converts to other faiths, including egalitarian ones like Sikhism, Christianity, and Islam. There are hundreds of castes and subcastes across the country, but they’re broadly grouped into four major castes — the Brahmins, who’re the priests and the men of learning (which in the old days was the same thing); the Kshatriyas, who were the warriors and kings; the Vaishyas, who were the farmers and merchants; and the Sudras, who were the artisans and manual workers. Outside the caste system were the untouchables, who did menial and polluting work, scavenging, sweeping streets, removing human waste, cleaning toilets, collecting the ashes from funeral pyres. Mahatma Gandhi tried to uplift them and called them Harijans, or children of God; they soon found that patronizing and now prefer to call themselves the Dalits, the oppressed. One interesting detail that’s often overlooked: the top three castes account for fewer than twenty percent of the population. There’s a source of division to think about.
Class comes next. It’s not the same as caste, because you can be a poor Brahmin or a rich Vaishya, but as with caste, the vast majority of Indians are in the underclass. The privileged elite is, at best, five percent of the country; the middle class accounts for perhaps another twenty percent of the population; the rest of India is lower class. You can understand why the communist parties thought the country was ripe for revolution. Of course they were wrong, and one of the main reasons they were wrong (I’ll come to the other main reason in a minute) was the extent to which they underestimated the fatalism of the Indian poor, their willingness to conform to millennia of social conditioning.
This was because of the fifth great source of division in India, religion. Hinduism is great for encouraging social peace, because everyone basically believes their suffering in this life is the result of misdeeds in a past one, and their miseries in this world will be addressed in the next if only they’d shut up and be good and accept things as they are, injustices included. So Hinduism is the best antidote to Marxism. It’s interesting, in fact, how many of the leading communists before Partition were Muslims, because of their natural predisposition to egalitarianism. And Brahmins, because they had a natural affinity for dictatorships, even of the proletariat. But religion also breeds what we in this country call “communalism” — the sense of religious chauvinism that transforms itself into bigotry, and sometimes violence, against the followers of other faiths. Now we have practically every religion on earth represented on Indian soil, with the possible exception of Shintoism. So we’ve seen various kinds of clashes in our history — Hindu-Muslim, Muslim-Sikh, Sikh-Hindu, Hindu-Christian.
Now, you might be forgiven for thinking that with so much dividing us, India was bound to fall apart on one or several of these cleavages. But in fact it hasn’t, and it’s belied every doomsayer who’s predicted its imminent disintegration. The main reason for that is the other thing I said the communists were wrong about. It was that they also underestimated the resilience of Indian democracy, which gave everyone, however underprivileged or disaffected, a chance to pursue his or her hopes and ambitions within the common system. In Tamil Nadu in the South, in Mizoram in the Northeast, yesterday’s secessionists are today’s chief ministers. Agitations in defense of specific languages or specific tribal groups? No problem, deal with them by creative federalism: give the agitators their own units to rule within the federal Indian state. Naxalites chopping off the heads of landlords in Bengal? No problem, encourage the commies to go to the polls instead, and today the pro-Chinese Communist party celebrates a dozen years in power in Bengal. The untouchables want to undo three thousand years of discrimination? Fine, give them the world’s first and farthest-reaching affirmative action program, guaranteeing not just opportunities but outcomes — with reserved places in universities, quotas for government jobs, and even eighty-five seats in Parliament. The Muslims feel like a threatened minority? Tsk tsk, allow them their own Personal Law, do not interfere in any way with their social customs, however retrograde they may be, and even have the state organize and subsidize an annual Haj pilgrimage to Mecca.
Do I make it sound too easy? Believe me, it isn’t. Skulls have been broken over each of these issues. But the basic principle is simple indeed. Let everyone feel they are as much Indian as everyone else: that’s the secret. Ensure that democracy protects the multiple identities of Indians, so that people feel you can be a good Muslim and a good Bihari and a good Indian all at once.
It’s worked, Priscilla. We have given passports to a dream, a dream of an extraordinary, polyglot, polychrome, polyconfessional country. Democracy will solve the problems we’re having with some disaffected Sikhs in Punjab; and democracy, more of it, is the only answer for the frustrations of India’s Muslims too.
But who, in all of this, allowed for militant Hinduism to arise, challenging the very basis of the Indianness I’ve just described to you?
from Priscilla Hart’s scrapbook
February 14, 1989
The car stopped where the road ended, at a rusting gate with a sign forbidding entry to unauthorized visitors. The driver took a long stainless steel flashlight out of his glove compartment and got out to open the gate. It creaked painfully. Ahead, there was an overgrown path heading toward the river.
“It’s okay,” Lakshman told the driver. “You wait at the car. We’ll be back soon. Give me the torch.” The driver looked relieved, even though Lakshman took the flashlight from him, leaving him alone amid the lengthening shadows.
“He’ll probably sleep until we get back,” Lakshman assured me cheerfully.
“Tell me more about this place,” I said. “Did you say Koti?”
“Kotli,” Lakshman replied. “No one quite knows where the term comes from. A ‘kot’ is a stronghold, a castle; a ‘kothi’ is a mansion. This wonderful old heap we are about to visit is something in between. People have been calling it the Kotli for generations. It’s been a ruin for somewhat longer than anything else that’s standing in the Zalilgarh area.”
“How old is it?”
“Who knows?” he replied disarmingly. “Some say it goes back to the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and there’s probably an Archaeological Survey of India finding that confirms that, though I haven’t seen it. But it’s old, all right. And deserted.”