“Hindu sentiments were deeply hurt in September 2007, when, in the ongoing dispute over ‘Ram Setu’ in the Setusamudram Ship Canal Project near Tamil Nadu, the UPA government claimed in an affidavit before the Supreme Court that Lord Ram did not exist and that the Ramayana had no historical basis. To add insult to injury, a leader of one of the parties in the ruling coalition made certain derogatory remarks about Lord Ram, which were nothing less than libelous. About the government’s stand, which drew all-round condemnation, I was constrained to say: ‘It is clear that the Congress party’s pseudo-secularism has degenerated into sadist-secularism. By filing this shocking affidavit before the country’s highest court, the leadership of the Congress party and the UPA government has poured contempt on the religious sentiments of crores of Hindus all over the world. It is blasphemous and arrogant at worst, and insensitivity and recklessness at best, for a government claiming to be “secular” to trash the deepest and noblest sensibilities of the Hindus. In one stroke of its legal pen, the government has sought to negate all that the Hindus consider sacred in their faith.’

‘I would like to point out,’ I continued, ‘that the Ramayana, along with the Mahabharata, is considered the bedrock of India’s national culture and identity by all the great leaders of India’s freedom movement—from Mahatma Gandhi to Lokmanya Tilak, and from Jawaharlal Nehru to Sardar Patel. By describing it as a pure myth and a work of fiction, the government has wounded the very Idea of India and sought to rewrite the civilisational identity of our ancient nation.’

Why Hindu society needs reform

“A subject of utmost importance for India’s all-round development and national resurgence is the reform and self-renewal of the Hindu society. Hinduism is the repository of the most exalted teachings about human evolution and realisation of God. Its philosophy is profound and the relevance of its principles is both universal and eternal. Its distinguishing feature is its lack of dogma, its readiness to accept truth in all its manifestations, without putting the seal of finality on any of them, and its emphasis on the need to climb higher on the ladder of human evolution through righteous living. The freedom of thought and expression that it provides in all intellectual, theological and philosophical matters is unmatched. So much so that even Charvaka, who denied the existence of God, was respected as a rishi (seer) because of his erudition. Since Hinduism teaches us to see the divine in every animate and inanimate creation of God, the concept of equality of human beings is in-built in its belief system. The Bhagavad Gita states emphatically that a man’s greatness is determined by his karma and not by his birth.

Nevertheless, due to many historical factors the Hindu society acquired certain negative, regressive and thoroughly indefensible features, which it has still not fully got rid of. The concept of high and low among castes and, in particular, the practice of treating certain castes as ‘untouchables’ is the most debilitating among these drawbacks. The injustice in many forms that is often meted to women is another. These cannot be tolerated or rationalised on any grounds. They violate the ideals enshrined in the Indian Constitution and run contrary to the spiritual principles that have guided the Hindu way of life for several millennia. Hindu society cannot regain its full vigour or progress to its full potential unless it fights the ills within.”

Equating Lord Ram and Babar

“Closely linked to the politics of minorityism, indeed providing a justification, is the distortion and perversion that has taken place in the concept of secularism. Increasingly, it is being interpreted and practiced in terms that negate the essential cultural and civilisational personality of India. In the context of the Ayodhya movement, Lord Ram and Babur were sought to be equated in the name of secularism, disdainfully ignoring the sentiments of crores of Hindus. ‘Can you prove that Ram was born exactly at this site?’ asked Communist intellectuals disparagingly, something they would never do in the case of a dispute concerning a non-Hindu community.

In an interview to a Hindi journal Vama in 1987, I had said that for any section of Indian Muslims to identify themselves with Babur ‘is like the Christians of Delhi picking up a quarrel over the replacement of a statue of George V with that of Mahatma Gandhi on the ground that George V was a Christian. Now, Gandhiji may have been a Hindu by faith, but he belongs to this country and George V does not. Similarly, Ram belongs to this country whether you call him a mythical hero or a historical personage. Even on the issue of history and culture, I would plead with the Muslim leadership of this country that if the Muslims in Indonesia can feel proud about Ram and Ramayana, why cannot the Indian Muslims?’ ”

For the BJP, Congress is an adversary, and not an ‘enemy’

“We are a thriving multi-party democracy. The diversity of our political system is a source of strength as well as vibrancy. Since the era of the Congress party’s pan-Indian hegemony is long over, the configuration of India’s contemporary politics has become essentially bipolar at the national level with the BJP and Congress as the two principal and stable poles. Apart from these two main national parties, there are many that identify themselves with specific regional or social aspirations. Coalitions have become the order of the day both at the Centre and in many states. Some of the coalition partners are also known to switch their allegiance from time to time.

This development in the last two decades has created a major challenge before our polity: how to ensure that a fragmented multi-party system, despite its inevitable pulls and pushes, can still maintain a core unity and continuity of purpose? Naturally, national parties have a greater responsibility in this regard than regional or sectional parties. Therefore, the need for a basic level of consensus amongst all parties, and especially between the two main national parties, has become paramount. Differences between the BJP and the Congress—as also between other parties—are bound to remain, since they profess different ideologies and have traversed different paths of evolution. Nevertheless, it is both possible and necessary for them to explore and expand the area of cooperation on issues of overriding national importance. For this, it is imperative that all parties inculcate the ethos of cooperation rather than confrontation, and maintain a basic level of dialogue which is not jettisoned for narrow considerations of competitive electoral politics.

For the BJP and the Congress to adopt a stance of consensus on critical national issues, it is essential for each to not look at the other as an ‘enemy’. As far as the BJP is concerned, we view the Congress as an adversary, and not as an ‘enemy’. Indeed, the very concept of ‘enemy’ in a democracy is unhealthy. Unfortunately, the Congress party’s attitude to the BJP is far from healthy. The Congress leadership thinks the BJP is evil.

I earnestly appeal to Congress leaders to shun such an approach.”

Two sides of the contemporary Indian reality

“As India stands poised for a quantum leap forward in global rankings for economic performance, one of the toughest challenges it faces is the removal of abject poverty and provision of a decent standard of living for all its billion-plus citizens. In recognising this truth, one cannot, of course, overlook the fact that our country has indeed made considerable progress in recent decades in lifting large numbers of people above the poverty line. It will not do to only paint a bleak picture of the socio-economic reality of India in the beginning of the twenty-first century. Economic reforms have, indeed, put India on the path of prosperity through speedier economic growth in certain sectors and certain areas.

At the same time, we must not overlook the other, negative, side of the current Indian reality. Large sections of our population continue to be victims of poverty. Equally distressing is the rapidly growing divide between the rich and the poor, on one hand and between cities and villages, on the other, the latter having caused the largest ever migration of people from rural to urban areas since the onset of economic reforms in the 1990s. The problem is aggravated by regional disparities in development, with the northern and eastern states lagging considerably behind their counterparts in the South and the West.

Human resource is the most precious wealth that India has. However, human resource becomes resourceful only if the basic necessities of life—food, clothing, housing, health, clean water, education, productive employment, and good natural and social environment—are met. No nation can become rich if the bulk of its human resources are poor. I have always wondered: If India has achieved so much with only a third of its population living reasonably well, how much more could it achieve when all its enviable resources are optimally utilised? Therefore, in my recent communications I have been repeatedly emphasising one point: For me, India Rising means the rise of every Indian and India’s emergence as a developed nation means the opportunity of all-round development for every Indian.

Is this possible? Yes, it is. Can we make poverty history in India? Yes, we can. According to me, the key to success in this endeavour is not so much well-designed policies and programmes, which are no doubt important, but good governance. True, we must have policies that promote entrepreneurship and people’s initiatives in a fairly regulated competitive environment; we must build good physical and social infrastructure; we must, especially, take necessary measures to rejuvenate our agriculture and rural economy; we must bring vibrancy to the informal sector that employs the largest number of people after agriculture; we must ensure quality education for all; we must appropriately employ scientific and technological resources, and create indigenous capabilities in frontier areas of knowledge and its applications; we must arrest the degradation of our environment, towards which our culture exhorts us to have a reverential attitude; and we must fully seize the opportunities that a rapidly changing world brings while protecting ourselves from the negative effects of globalisation.

It is equally true that we must not only achieve holistic development, but also ensure holistic security. Our concept of security should encompass India’s external and internal security—namely, security of the country and the common man. Without reliable and comprehensive security, not only our developmental gains but also our very survival as a nation would be threatened.”

“The concept of ‘cultural nationalism’ enjoins upon the adherents of different faiths in India to respect, and take pride in, the common unifying culture of our ancient land while celebrating its many diversities; not to have extra-territorial loyalty; not to denigrate other faiths as false or inferior, but rather to learn from the best that each faith has to offer; not to misuse freedom of religion to expand one’s religious population through fraudulent conversions; and not to try to gain political dominance for the purpose of advocating separatism or establishing theocracy. It means nothing more, nothing less.”

“My reason for referring to Samuel Huntington’s book Who Are We? is simply to suggest that all of us in India should ask ourselves the same question: ‘Who Are We?’ Unlike the United States, ours is an ancient nation with a history that begins with the dawn of human civilisation. Again, unlike in the case of America, an overwhelming majority of our population has been living in India for centuries. Change of the religious identity of a section of the population cannot change their national identity. India has no history of exterminating any native population either. Therefore, if a common, unifying sense of ‘Americanness’ can be forged in 400 years, certainly there is a case for insisting that a far more robust and intrinsically more humanistic sense of ‘Indianness’ has unified India’s diverse religious, ethnic, linguistic and caste groups for thousands of years. Since the word ‘Indian’ itself is of recent vintage, this unifying principle is Hindu-ness or Hindutva, the name given to a broad-minded, tolerant, pluralistic and inclusive tradition. If India is de-Hinduised, there will be no India left anymore.”

“It is against this background that I wish to present a few salient aspects of India ’s democratic tradition and our approach to conflict-resolution. This tradition and approach have been fundamentally influenced by Hindu philosophy and cultural ethos. Hindu philosophy since the dawn of our civilization has been pluralistic in its outlook and teachings. As a result, India is inherently a rare state in the international system, insofar as it is unwilling to impose a set of ideals and principles on other equally proud nations. Which is why, throughout her millennial history, India never sent out her armies to conquer other lands and exterminate or coerce the native populations or cultures.

It is because of this faith in pluralism and respect for the other’s viewpoint that India , after independence, naturally accepted democracy and secularism. We did not import these from the West. Ask yourselves a simple question: Why is it that there has never been a military coup in a vast and diverse country like India, where a large section of the population is poor and less-literate? Never a violent change of power? How did India succeed in having regular elections, which are free and fair, and whose outcome has always been accepted by all political parties?

Yes, there was a brief eclipse of democracy during the Emergency. But the people voted against the Emergency regime so angrily, that even a leader as tall as Indira Gandhi was defeated.”

Netritva is different from netagiri

‘Leadership’ is a very commonly used word, but also one which has many meanings that depend on the context and type of leadership. Leadership or ‘netritva’ in our society, especially in modern times, is generally understood as ‘political leadership’. Thus, neta is almost invariably a political neta.

Netagiri is a widely prevalent phenomenon in the political process in today’s India. However, it is quite different from netritva. The latter connotes a combination of positive attributes such as vision, determination, and ability to accomplish a formidable task by mobilising a community of supporters.

In contrast, the common perception of netas, which obtains in the public mind, is not a very positive one. At the same time, political leaders in India get far more attention and importance than they intrinsically deserve. The disproportionately high attention and importance that political leaders get is, in fact, at the cost what is due to leaders in other fields of national life.

Leadership is a general concept, which is not specific to politics, and that leadership is needed in practically every sphere of human endeavour to achieve social progress, nation-building and welfare of the human race.

“I urge all the right-minded people in the country, including silent but concerned Congressmen, to raise their voice against the politics of minorityism. Since India is not a theocratic state, the religious rights and the identities of the various faith-based communities that constitute the Great Indian Family must indeed be protected. But notions of ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ should have no place in the politics and statecraft of our nation much less be manipulated for vote-bank considerations. This divisive mindset jeopardises India as one united, integral and harmonious nation. The Congress party is trying to divide the nation by continuously harping on ‘minority protection’ in the same way that the British rulers did for their own ulterior motives. ”

“Let me make it clear: my party is neither against minorities—Muslims or others—nor against any minority faith in India. We respect all faiths, including Islam. India belongs equally to all Indians, irrespective of their caste or creed. Our ideology of nationalism is inclusive and nondiscriminatory. I appeal to the Muslim community to introspect: ‘Has your present negative outlook towards my party helped either your own community or the nation at large? Does the Congress party really deserve your support after its irrefutable record of betrayal and its contribution to keeping a large section of your community poor and backward even after nearly sixty years of Independence? The progress, welfare and security of all sections of India’s diverse society are inter-related and indivisible. Therefore, come out of the trap of the minority mindset and join the national mainstream with equal rights and responsibilities to build a strong, prosperous and just India.’”