The 70th year of independence has seen the appearance of a good number of books commenting on the events that took place from shortly before Partition to the present era. One of the more recent is Left, Right and Centre: The Idea of India, edited by well-known television personality Nidhi Razdan, who hosts a popular programme that has lent its name to the title of the book. Commercially a clever move, one can say.

The contents and the contributors are as varied as the people and cultures of India. The editor’s introduction highlights the plight of Kashmiri Pandits, about which an average Pakistani is unaware. They are caught in the crossfire between the Indian army and the Kashmiri militants (as Indians term them) or freedom fighters (as Kashmiris call them). Razdan raises a thought provoking point when she says, “They are not a big vote bank, so no government has really seriously commented on their concerns or acted on them.”

The editor, belonging to the same community, goes on to add: “The tragedy of Kashmir is that the violence has affected all the communities. From Pandits to Muslims. Most hardliners on either side sneer at any equivalence. Nevertheless, the fact is that weighing one community’s pain over another’s has helped no one.” Razdan criticises the Indian media for being hysterical — something one can say about most of our TV channels as well — and says that the army of her country cannot be questioned, a situation we are not unfamiliar with either.

A collection of diverse ideas on India shows that common ground between India and Pakistan is still very substantial

Another piece by a Kashmiri Pandit is by journalist Rahul Pandita, who recalls his family’s escape to Jammu, the Hindu-majority part of Jammu and Kashmir. He laments the apathy shown towards the Kashmiri Pandits and encapsulates it in a comment overheard by him: “Ah, well. They were [the] elites. They became collateral damage in [the] revolution. Our sympathies are with them, but these things happen.”

Preceding this essay is one penned by Shah Faesal, a Kashmiri Muslim and son of an ordinary schoolteacher, who topped the Indian civil service exams much to everyone’s — including his own — surprise. Faesal writes on matters pertaining to Kashmiri culture and heritage with as much knowledge as about the conflict raging in his homeland.

“We would have our ears to the ground all the time, and every howl, every hiss had a meaning. Those were the initial days of militancy and fear of gunmen loomed large. Distant footfalls of soldiers would immediately make our hearts pound and even a friendly knock at the door or a hallucinatory cry in the dark would loosen our bowels.” It was on one such night that two militants barged into Faesal’s house and mistaking his father, a fence-sitter, to be a collaborator, pumped two bullets into the widely respected schoolteacher’s body and ended his life.

The cautiously worded essay ends on a provocative note: “Non-violence has been our creed. And non-violence doesn’t mean compromising on the pursuit of genuine political aspirations.”

Another essay that merits mention is ‘Through the Past into the Present’ by Yashwant Sinha, former minister for external affairs and a senior leader of the BJP, who argues that nothing has really changed in the last 70 years, particularly in the villages. “We lead the rest of the world in information technology. Yet there are hundreds if not thousands of villages which lack the basic amenities of life [such as] an all-weather road, potable drinking water, proper sanitation and health facilities or proper schools,” asserts Sinha.

Elsewhere in his piece, Sinha rues that the media is not interested in villages and is excessively preoccupied with the main urban centres.

What has changed immensely is the character of the politicians. After independence, ministerial positions, both at the centre and in the states, were held by people who had made sacrifices, given up the comforts of life, fought for freedom and spent years in jail. They were a far cry from the ones who are currently into politics for just one reason: personal gain. Sinha points out that corrupt businessmen and criminals have been contesting elections and adopting foul means to achieve their goals.

Sounding very much like the state of affairs in our country, millions of cases are pending in courts and jails are full of prisoners under trial, many of whom have already spent the maximum jail term that their crimes may have merited.

Chandan Mitra, former member of the Rajya Sabha [Upper House] and currently the editor and managing director of the daily newspaper The Pioneer, chronicles the rise of religiosity and the global decline of the left. He stresses the fact that in just about a quarter of a century, a right-wing party rose from being a virtual pariah to becoming the predominant political force in India.

Mitra claims that the Nehruvian style of socialist economy stunted annual growth to around 3.5 percent. He also lists the errors committed by Indira Gandhi. The short-sighted vasectomy drive launched by her son Sanjay Gandhi contributed to her unpopularity. Her declaration of Emergency and her fatal mistake of patronising the ultra-right Sikh party of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, which led to the attack on the Golden Temple and ultimately became the cause of her death, are also referred to in some detail. Mitra’s chapter, in short, is fair and highly informative.

Mukul Kesavan, who teaches history at Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi, points out in his essay that people such as Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta, Badruddin Tyabji, M.G. Ranade and G.K. Gokhale gave an unmistakable pluralistic touch to the Indian National Congress. It ran parallel to the Gandhian non-violence philosophy. “One reason for the Moderate-controlled Congress’s success in resisting this temptation was its keenness on Muslim support; and the other was the Congress’s great good fortune in being led both intellectually and organisationally by Parsis in the first 20 years of its existence,” maintains Kesavan.

As a Pakistani, on reading Sunita Narain’s piece on environmental issues, this reviewer feels it is not just culture (North Indian) and a craving for Bollywood films that is common between us and the writer’s country; pollution is a stronger bond, if one may use the word. Walking through Indian streets, we find garbage in almost every nook and corner in much the same way as it is littered on our side of the Wagah Border.

Likewise, feminist Aruna Roy’s well-researched piece on the injustices suffered over the years by women in India shows that their predicaments are not different from their counterparts’ in Pakistan.

Not surprisingly, Shashi Tharoor’s essay ‘The Idea of an Ever-ever Land’ raises some valid points. There are contradictions about India, something which is the opposite of true is also true, he says. He gives the example of a Hindu from Uttar Pradesh who may be part of the 81 percent Hindu population, but his religion would be different from other Hindus. He may speak Hindi, the country’s national language, but the majority in South India would not understand his mother tongue. One may go on and on.

Tharoor also succinctly proves that the British followed the divide and rule policy, thus creating a gulf between the two major religious groups. The divisive feeling has, over the decades, become almost unbridgeable. One doesn’t see the cleft disappearing in the foreseeable future.

The concluding chapter written by Shabana Azmi raises an irrefutable point when she says, “India lives in several centuries simultaneously”, as she gives the example of her father’s village — Mijwan in eastern UP — in comparison with the megacity of Mumbai. She works in both these places and finds the contrast quite baffling.

The one big blot in the book is the essay contributed by Anglo-Indian Derek O’Brien who, in order to prove his patriotism, makes out of context, derogatory remarks about Pakistan. He says his community is better off in India than in Pakistan. He seems to forget that a large number of Anglo-Indians (and Anglo-Pakistanis) have migrated to Australia, which opened its doors to them. His own brother Andy O’Brien is just one of them.

Andy was in Karachi sometime in the mid-1980s to cover a hockey tournament and this reviewer was asked by a common friend to ‘look after him.’ Over a plate of mouth-watering gola kabab in a dhaba on Burnes Road, Andy said, “Muslims being a formidable minority in India were safer than Christians.” Was it his feeling of being unsafe that made him migrate to the land down under is a question one might like to ask his brother Derek.

The reviewer is a senior journalist and author of four books, including Tales of Two Cities

Left, Right and Centre: The Idea of India
By Nidhi Razdan
Penguin Random House, India
ISBN: 978-0670089703
269pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, September 17th, 2017