Secular intellectuals obfuscate the obvious, by which I mean, they use every intellectual argument to undermine what is pretty obvious to the common man. Of late, the idea of breaking India has been flaunted by the secular brigade under the cover of free speech.

Fortunately, the majority of Indians will not give much credence to this outright falsehood. Imagine what would have happened to the country if it was left to this band of berserk intellectuals! They would have shouted themselves hoarse, “To ensure human rights, give Kashmir to Pakistan, hand over Arunachal Pradesh to China, form a Dalitsthan for the backward caste, a Naxalsthan for the Red soldiers and carve out another mini Pakistan.”

Then they would have enthusiastically proceeded to redefine the borders of India according to the democratic aspirations of people.

But what does the common man think about it? He will say that this chorus for the disintegration of India is absurd, that India is one in spirit though diverse in language, one in culture though diverse in expression, that not only the rituals and celebrations but even food habits unite Indians from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

He will say that above all, there is a living spiritual unity which encompasses all Indians whatever religion they belong to, and this spiritual truth is addressed by all of them in their daily life.

Praying in mosques or offering flowers at the feet of the deity or chanting mantras or meditating at the appropriate time in the morning—it is in these acts that lies the essential unity of India, indefinable but very palpable to the common man, invisible but real to him. Of course, you would object saying that people in other countries also do the same. I say, nothing like the way it is in India! This is India’s forte and will keep it together in the long run despite the vicious politics that some political parties indulge in.

Coming to what Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP in the Lok Sabha, Sugata Bose said on the floor of the House. I was surprised when he quoted Sri Aurobindo to support what I would term as the disintegration of India. He was of course speaking against the ruling party in the Lok Sabha. He said Sri Aurobindo wrote (in the Foundations of Indian Culture) that the rishis of the Vedic Age had propounded “the ideal of the Chakravarti, a uniting imperial rule, uniting without destroying the autonomy of India’s many kingdoms and peoples from sea to sea.”

That the ancient ideal was “not an autocratic despotism but a universal monarchy supported by a free assembly of the city and provinces and of all the classes”. That, according to this ideal, unification “ought not to be secured at the expense of the free life of the regional people or of the communal liberties and not therefore by a centralised monarchy or a rigidly unitarian imperial state”. He then concluded, “We are a democracy, but the nationalism that is being talked about from the other side of the House represents centralised despotism.”

This is being quoted totally out of context. Sri Aurobindo was referring to the Rajasuya Yagna conducted by Yudhishthira in the Mahabharata. The practice in ancient India was to invite smaller kings to the Yagna in order to declare the sovereignty of the king who performed the Rajasuya Yagna. If the smaller kings participated in the sacrifice, it meant that they accepted the king’s sovereignty over them while retaining their regional autonomy; if they did not, they had to be vanquished by the king in order to prove his sovereignty.

How is this ancient practice relevant to the present-day political situation of India? When these Yagnas were conducted, India had not yet become a nation and this was only one among several other attempts in the history of India to achieve political unity, all of which failed to permanently unite it.

According to Sri Aurobindo, India could never achieve political unity in spite of it being spiritually and culturally one, because of the stress on the inner psychological union more than the outer. This is given as a reason by Sri Aurobindo to defend India from the criticism of not having attained political unity, not as a justification for it.

Why would he (who played such a leading role in the revolutionary movement of India), or for that matter anybody want his own nation to be disunited? This is the fundamental logical flaw in Sugata Bose’s argument. He is actually playing the politician and not speaking as a serious scholar when he makes such statements.

Secondly, the chapter on Indian Polity that Sugata Bose is quoting from was written by Sri Aurobindo in 1919-1921, long before the independence of India. It would be therefore interesting to quote from his famous Independence Day Message of 15 August, 1947:

Biography

Recent Posts