Keeping the promise..

I came across this elaborate, informative and beautiful exposition of one of the foremost issues that is raling the world today - religion in politics.

Politics of God by Mark Lilla.

The article traces the origins of the philosophy of separation of the Church and State - one of the modern West's pillars of strength. Liberal Democracy, as it is revealed, did not pop out of Alladin's magic lamp, but evolved as a compromise architected by some clever philosophers a few hundred years ago. It it also interesting to note that although the idea of a liberal democracy was born in a pre-industrial revolution world, it only caught on and morphed into what it is today when the Bolsheviks, Nazis and Fascists began messing with the world in the early 20th century.

Lilla has got me to think of the religious and theological aspirations of the Indian independence movement. We have read plenty about who all were there and what all they did - but I never saw anything in my textbooks that talked about the theological moorings of Gandhi, Nehru or Bose.

Was it fait accompli that India would choose Democracy given that Britain was one? Or did our leaders of 1947 consciously avoid or discourage any discourse on what the theological aspirations of the Indian people would be, given that India was a geographical patchwork of 500 odd princely states which they planned to unite into a single nation-state?

We know for a fact that theology and not just politics was Jinnah's motivation to seek for a sister-state to India. The politics behind partition we know, but it would be doubly interesting to know why Gandhi, Jinnah and Nehru thought that all the Muslims of undivided India had similar theological leaning or bonding that sufficient reason to create an sister-state. And why they thought that the historical Aryan-Dravidian divide was not similar, on an epistemological scale, to the Hindu-Muslim divide.

These are questions worth pondering over. I think India is Democratic, for the lack of any other alternative. At the risk of sounding like a right-winger, I suspect that Sanatana Dharma inspired most of the Hindu leaders of 1947. Learning from history that the Hindus would acquiesce to a rule of law as long as it espoused, if not in letter, but alteast in spirit, the lofty principles of the Brahman and the Atman, and coupling it with their own belief in Sanatana Dharma, our leaders cleverly chose Democracy as the way of governing the Indian state. Any other system could fracture the fledgling nation, they would have thought.

60 years down the line, it is as important to look back on this thought - the one that created India - as it is to look ahead. For this thought aimed to keep the peoples together, bound them in a quest for life and freedom, tantalizingly describing it as a tryst with destiny. The India we bequeath to our children must keep this promise, and it's our job to ensure that we give unto them an India that is more united in this cause than it was when we arrived.

Let's not divide India and the Indian anymore.