The Challenge of Intolerance, the Future of Indian Democracy, and South India s Role: Some Reflections

Transcription

1 The Challenge of Intolerance, the Future of Indian Democracy, and South India s Role: Some Reflections by Professor Rajmohan Gandhi University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Eighth P. K. Gopalakrishnan Memorial Lecture 19 December 2018 Centre for Development Studies Thiruvananthapuram 1

2 Lectures at a Glance 1 Ethics in Clinical Research Dr. M.S.Valiathan 6-Dec Middle class in India Dr. Andre Beteille 18-Jun Challenges in the 12th Plan Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia 23-Jan Towards Comprehensive Understanding of Development: Situating Contemporary Kerala Prof. T.K.Oommen 9-Apr Ethics of Intellectual Practices in Higher Education Prof. Gopal Guru 14-Aug Women s Rights to Land and the Challenge of the Commons Prof. Nivedita Menon 18-Feb Inter-Group Inequality in India: Insight from the Economic Theories of Discrimination Prof.Sukhadeo Thorat 28-Feb

3 The challenge of intolerance, the future of Indian democracy, and South India s role: Some reflections The 2018 P. K. Gopalakrishnan Annual Lecture, Wednesday 19 December 2018, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram By Rajmohan Gandhi Director Dr. Sunil Mani, Dr. Latha, and friends: I naturally recall my last time at CDS, which was also my first time here, about two years ago, in February-March 2017, when I sought material and insights for my study of the history of modern South India. I used the phrase modern in that title to indicate the period that began with the arrival of warships from European countries: Portugal, Holland, England and France. My South India is the peninsular region south of Maharashtra and Odisha different from the Deccan in other studies, which included the Marathi country. These interpretations are hardly perfect, but some boundaries have to be drawn, and you should be aware of the boundaries I have worked with. I am lucky to be speaking in an auditorium named after the extraordinary Laurie Baker, who not only pioneered an architecture friendly to its habitat and low in cost, but who also showed with his life that our world s races, castes and communities are meant to lead connected lives, not kept apart by thick walls. Sitting here, I draw pride from the fact that sixty-plus years ago between 1954 & I was a Masters student at Delhi University of the initiator of CDS, Dr. K. N. Raj. I therefore had the privilege of knowing Professor Raj when he was in his thirties, long before he returned to Kerala and started CDS. In my memory, Professor Raj s utterances were never loud, but they always carried a clear and firm meaning; and vibrations in his gentle voice conveyed an inner passion for fairness, for freedom from oppression, and for the rights of the weak. You will agree with me that today s India can do with the penetrating, independent and fearless mind of K N Raj. Delivering this P K Gopalakrishnan Lecture is an honour for which I feel thankful to CDS. Sri Gopalakrishnan s role in strengthening one scientific institution after another in Kerala, 3

4 including CDS, was unique, and I feel fortunate that his daughter Dr. Latha and her husband are present this afternoon. Delivering this P K Gopalakrishnan Lecture gives me the chance to publicly recall some of the wonderful Malayalis I have had the good luck of knowing. I grew up, in the 1940s and 1950s, in a flat in New Delhi which had a round-the-clock connection, in the same building, with the offices and printing press of the Hindustan Times, of which my father Devadas Gandhi was the editor for over 20 years, until his death in I therefore got to know, while entering my teens and later, Malayalis like K. Shankar Pillai, the great cartoonist, who drew his satires for the Hindustan Times before starting his own Shankar s Weekly, as also the gifted journalist E. Narayanan, later the editor of Link and Patriot, and another Hindustan Times writer, Poonen Abraham, whose witty editorials seldom failed to hit their mark. Another early Malayali friend was Nair-ji, as we called him, C. Krishnan Nair, who served the poor people of Delhi, including for a while as an MP in the early Lok Sabhas. When needing to visit New Delhi from his base in rural Delhi, Nair-ji often stayed in our Connaught Circus flat. Then there was Shankar Mama, who was also Shankar or Sankaran Pillai, like the great cartoonist, and like a few thousand other Shankar Pillais I am sure. For a few years in the 1940s, in a city once called Madras, Shankar Mama, assisted my maternal grandfather, C Rajagopalachari, as a secretary. I recall the eminent G. Ramachandran, close to both Gandhi and Tagore, whose niece married my cousin Kanti Gandhi, son of Gandhi s eldest son, Harilal. In the 1950, 1960s and 1970s, my visits to Kerala for the work and sometimes the plays of MRA, as it used to be called, Moral Re-Armament, brought friendships that have lasted for decades. Friendships with wonderful persons in many places on this beautiful green strip that runs from south of here up to Kannur and further north: a stretch where one village or town joins the next village or town with not a single unpopulated acre or quarter-acre anywhere in between. Since I cannot name all the Malayalis who became friends, I will mention two unforgettable ones, who have both passed on. V. C. Viswanathan, who hailed from the Thalassery area but spent his life across India, including in Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi, was more than a life-long colleague; he was like a brother. At the end of 1979, his sons volunteered to form my weaponless bodyguard in the first of four Lok Sabha elections that I was brash enough to contest. Let me add in full disclosure that I lost all four. The other Malayali name I cannot refrain from mentioning belongs to the exceptionally warm, farseeing, and wise K. M. Cherian, for decades the father of Kottayam s Malayala Manorama family. 4

5 * The word intolerance can invite different reactions. One response is that intolerance is too mild a term for our current climate of intimidation. Another reaction is that not intolerance, but excessive tolerance has been India s weakness. Since much of the heat in our national conversation is spent on who is, and who is not, a real, legal and rightful Indian, let me start with a document not yet rejected as un-indian or antinational. I speak of the Indian Constitution. Here s what Article 5 states, under the heading, Citizenship: At the commencement of this Constitution, every person who has his domicile in the territory of India and (a) who was born in the territory of India; or (b) either of whose parents was born in the territory of India; or (c) who has been ordinarily resident in the territory of India for not less than five years immediately preceding such commencement, shall be a citizen of India. Please mark that in these words there is no gender test. There is no religious test. There s no skin-colour test. There s no genes test -- no requirement of birth in a continuing line of original inhabitants. There s no cultural test. There is no demand that an Indian citizen must believe, pray, eat, or speak in a prescribed way. In essence, Article 5 says that India belongs to all who live in it. In essence, he or she who lives in India is an Indian. She may worship a deity in Greenland, Hawaii or Papua New Guinea. Or in Palestine, Arabia, or Nepal. That does not diminish her Indian-ness. Even if she was not born in India, if one of her parents was born in India, and India is where she is domiciled, she is an Indian citizen. When, on 26 November 1949, the Constitution was adopted 69 years ago, that is --, Nehru and Patel, who had both played major roles in the discussions that produced its text, walked together arm in arm towards the chair of the Constituent Assembly s president, Rajendra Prasad, and shook hands with him. Ambedkar, the Constitution s chief architect, followed Nehru and Patel and repeated the act. Then the three, Nehru, Patel and Ambedkar, walked down the aisle, together. It was a proud moment, and also a decisive one. Through their representatives in the Constituent Assembly, the people of India had decided that above everything else, being an Indian was a matter of birth and residence in the territory of India, of which, allow me to say, Kerala is such a priceless part. Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar and Rajendra Prasad were all trained lawyers. So, let us remember, was Gandhi, who was not a member of the Constituent Assembly. Gandhi had always been clear that India was not the property of any one group. In 1909, he wrote this in Hind Swaraj: 5

6 If the Hindus believe that India should be peopled only by Hindus, they are living in dreamland. The Hindus, the Muslims, the Parsis and the Christians who have made India their country are fellow-countrymen, and they will have to live in unity, if only for their own interest. Is the God of the Muslim (Gandhi continued) different from the God of the Hindu?... There are deadly proverbs as between the followers of Siva and those of Vishnu, yet nobody suggests that these two do not belong to the same nation In no part of the world (added Gandhi in Hind Swaraj in 1909) are one nationality and one religion synonymous terms; nor has it ever been so in India Until his death four decades later, these remained Gandhi s steadfast views. At important milestones in the freedom movement, including 1931, when the Karachi Congress passed its fundamental rights resolution, and in 1942, when Gandhi gave his Quit India call, commitments were solemnly proclaimed that in the free India of the future no one would be higher or lower before the law than anyone else. Three months after freedom, in November 1947, a resolution drafted by Gandhi re-committed the Congress Working Committee and the AICC to a democratic secular State where all citizens enjoy full rights and are equally entitled to the protection of the State, irrespective of the religion to which they belong (Collected Works 97: 476-7). * These noble promises of democracy and equality were not easy to live up to. All know that the promises were betrayed indelibly during the 19-month emergency that lasted from the middle of 1975 to February Following 2014, however, India has seen attacks on democracy and equality that in some ways are worse than what was witnessed during the 19-month emergency. For the last four or more years, in many parts of India, the state and the street appear to have joined hands to coerce the citizen. In these deeply troubling exercises, the state has usually enacted its deplorable role by remaining a silent onlooker while attackers do their job. The silence reassures attackers and terrifies victims. Cheering this state-street nexus is the drum-roll of television s high-decibel warriors who seem to have captured the airwaves and destroyed India s reputation for tolerance and debate. Also energetic in backing the intimidators is a new army of soldiers of the social media. These soldiers, anonymous much of the time, seem ready round the clock to abuse, bully and threaten anyone who speaks out in defence of a dissenter, whether an artist, a writer, a poet, a singer, a cartoonist, anyone. 6

7 We should recognize that this present-day climate where dissenters are bullied, and the state refuses to protect those attacked, is not confined to India. Strikingly, moreover, bullies everywhere present themselves as victims even as they dominate in resources, numbers and weapons of attack. Some incidents enter the light of day. Other episodes remain unknown, even when they involve famous persons. On 27 October, less than two months ago, I received this message from Mr. Arun Shourie, the eminent journalist, author and economist who was the Minister for Communications and IT in the Vajpayee cabinet. Quote Read your article on Sardar Patel in the Express this morning. By coincidence, I had gone through your biography of him just a few weeks ago. You will be amused by the reason [for my doing so], and the outcome. To my surprise, I received an invitation from the National Police Academy, Hyderabad, to deliver their annual Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture, and a series of follow-up s about travel, etc. I was surprised because the NPA is a Government institution through and through. So, I read your book. I prepared the lecture. And just days before I was to deliver it, I got an saying that the Lecture had been postponed for "unavoidable administrative reasons"! Unquote This cancellation, only days before its delivery, of a Sardar Patel memorial lecture by Arun Shourie at Hyderabad s National Police Academy has remained hidden from the public. What was the logic behind the cancellation? Was it that the mammoth new Patel statue makes Patel memorial lectures redundant? More likely it was a timely realization that Arun Shourie writes his own non-conformist scripts. Another well-known personality who has suffered from intolerance is Ramachandra Guha, who very recently felt obliged to withdraw from a prestigious position he had just been offered at the private Ahmedabad University. In Guha s case, the damage became known, for he tweeted about it himself and at least some newspapers covered the incident. On 1 November 1, the Ahmedabad Mirror wrote that at least six academicians told the newspaper that Guha s withdrawal was connected to pressure from Right Wing. i One teacher interviewed by the Ahmedabad Mirror pointed out, Just yesterday Guha had criticised the Narendra Modi government indirectly. Indirect criticism of the central government is thus sufficient reason for pressurizing Guha to opt out of his newly-agreed-upon Ahmedabad University role. What was to be that role? Among other things it was to direct a winter course on Gandhi, on whom Guha has just written an immense new biography. 7

8 The result of the successful pressure was that a Gandhi scholar was unable to teach Gandhi in Gandhi s Ahmedabad. Ninety-nine years ago, in March and April 1919, Gandhi had called for a nationwide protest against restrictions on free speech under the Rowlatt Act. The response was huge, but violence also occurred, including in Ahmedabad. Suspending his campaign, here is what a 50-year-old Gandhi said to a 10,000-strong gathering outside his Ahmedabad Ashram in April 1919: Brothers, I am ashamed of the events of the last few days In the name of satyagraha, we burnt down buildings, forcibly captured weapons, extorted money, stopped trains, cut off telegraph wires, killed innocent people, and plundered shops and homes. A most brutal rumour was set afloat (Gandhi continued) that Anasuyaben was arrested. Anasuya Sarabhai, educated in England, was Gandhi s close colleague. Organizing the city s textile workers, she was greatly loved in the city. Gandhi went on to say: Under the cloak of her arrest, heinous deeds have been done. We should repent and do penance. I would also advise you, if it is possible for you, to fast for twenty-four hours in slight expiation of these sins My responsibility is a million times greater than yours I will therefore fast for seventy-two hours. If a redress of grievances is only possible by means of slaughter of Englishmen, I for one would do without Swaraj and without redress. ii Speaking the blunt truth to your own side is bravery. Abusing dissenters is bullying. Almost a century ago, Indians displayed a brave spirit in Ahmedabad and elsewhere. That brave spirit enabled India to capture the moral high ground from where the battle for Indian independence was waged until victory in Now, as the year 2018 draws to a close, are we, in some ways, witnessing a moral low ground? * Some here are probably familiar with the website thequint.in which among other things updates a grim map. This is a map of cases of lynching in India in the last three years, with dates, locations, names and pictures. The first name on the map is of Muhammad Akhlaq, who was lynched on 28 Sept 2015 in Dadri in western UP, not very far from Delhi. The latest name is of 82-year-old Zainul Ansari, who was killed on 20 October 2018 as he was pedaling his bicycle towards his home in Sitamarhi, Bihar. Among those mentioned between September 2015 and October 2018 are women and men, Hindus and Muslims, Dalits and adivasis. On 30 June 2016, six Dalits including Kunvarben and Vashram were lynched in Una in Gujarat. 8

9 Eighty-five cases of persons lynched are marked on this map, some of whom were killed in the name of the cow. In 27 of these cases, the names of the lynched are not known. Perhaps collecting or identifying a body was too much of a risk. * Sadly, much more can be said on our climate of intimidation, but I must turn to the possibility that history may offer tips for remedying the climate. When, more than four years ago, I began my exploration of what I understood as Modern South India, or the South India following the arrival of Europe s East India trading companies, my major aim above all was to obtain if I could an integrated or cohesive picture of what happened over a four-century period across a large area. It was perhaps an impossible or absurd wish, but crazy explorations have their pull. There was of course no chance, in a few years, of my learning more about a South Indian place than what its inhabitants already knew. But there was a possibility that the research I was undertaking might yield information about another South Indian place that South Indians might find fresh. And there was the certainty that those outside South India, whether Indian or non-indian, might find some of the findings new, interesting, or surprising. New facts might emerge for empty slates, and, with luck, some common misconceptions might be corrected. Moreover, those who saw themselves as South Indian, as well as those who didn t, might glimpse a unified picture of South Indian history. Everyone knows that after Vasco da Gama arrived on your Malabar coast in the 1490s, other Europeans landed on both of the peninsula s coasts over the next three hundred years. More Portuguese came, and then the Dutch, the English, the French, and the Danes too. Fort St George of the English East India Company was established in 1639 on the Coromandel Coast. The South India these Europeans encountered in the 16 th and 17 th centuries was an unstable mosaic of multiple chiefdoms. This South India saw wars, and it contained many forts. Travelling in South India in the first half of the 17 th century, the Jesuit Manuel Barradas noticed, close to the city of Thanjavur, shade-giving trees, strong walls, and a moat. He also wrote of a war occurring in the Trichy region in 1616 or 1617 which according to him was fought by as many as a million soldiers. iii Barradas may have exaggerated, but war among even a tenth of that number would have swallowed a good deal of blood and grain. 9

10 In 1639, the English East India Company started Fort St George on a strip of land obtained from the Raja of Chandragiri, whose forebears were linked to the Vijayanagara Empire. In 1673, the French acquired what would become Pondicherry from an agent of the Adilshahi Sultan of Bijapur. Soon thereafter, between 1676 and 1693, four different authorities leased lands in South India to the East India Company. One was the Sultan of Golconda, whose Sultanate ancestors had fought Bijpaur. Another was the Mughal Prince Kam Baksh -- Aurangzeb s son and a foe of Golconda. The Marathas who had overthrown the Adilshahis in Thanjavur were a third authority, and Emperor Aurangzeb himself was the fourth. In a 54-year-period, accordingly, Europeans desiring coastal lands in South India had to negotiate with six different authorities, including Delhi s Mughals. For account-keeping, the situation was challenging. But for conquest it was promising. The promise was fulfilled. Conquest occurred. In 1760, the British eliminated the French as rivals by defeating the French in the Battle of Wandiwash in the Tamil country. When Tipu fell in 1799, British conquest of South India was sealed. The fact is that South India s native chiefs saw one another as the enemy, and the British East India Company as an ally. Soon the alien supplicant who was enlisted as an ally became lord and master. The French priest, Jean-Antoine Dubois ( ), better known as Abbe Dubois, lived from 1792 to 1823 in different parts of southern India, among speakers of Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada. He adopted the clothing of the people amidst whom he lived, observed their condition and customs, and wrote a well-known book. His assessment was that the people of the southern tracts hate and despise their [white] rulers from the bottom of their hearts. The Abbe does not write of direct experience of life in the Telugu world, but there is little evidence to suggest that British conquest was welcomed there. While British rulers were disliked, the South s native rulers or chiefs some Hindu, some Muslim were, according to this eye-witness, Abbe Dubois, cherished by the people. In Travancore, Rama Varma and Balarama Varma ruled. In Mysore, Tipu. Nizam Asaf Jah II was on the Hyderabad throne. The Nawab of Arcot held much of the Tamil country. Another major force in the peninsula were the Marathas, who made repeated incursions into South India. In each political and cultural domain in the South, Europeans were seen as polluters by Muslim as well as Hindu chiefs. Whether a chief was Hindu or Muslim, his soldiers, we may mark, were usually a Hindu-Muslim mix. The power of the Europeans was known to these native chiefs in South India, and the threat of conquest was instinctively understood, but the logical next step, a united front, was not attempted. No Indian proposed mutual give-and-take for a common front against a common foe. 10

11 Some Frenchmen, however, thought in the 1780s of a united Indian front. Charles Bussy, the French soldier who had intimately known the Tamil, Kannada and Telugu countries, wondered in 1783 if the French could not unite the three Indian powers against the English without compromising ourselves. iv Bussy had the Marathas, Hyderabad and Mysore in mind but Travancore should be added to the list. However, Indians in the last quarter of the 18 th century were not interested in allying with one another. The Nizam had in fact influenced the Mughal emperor at this time, the feeble Shah Alam II, against recognizing Tipu as Mysore s ruler. As Bussy himself noted, The Marathas and the Nizam have made an alliance to destroy Tipu Sultan. This plan marvellously suits the English. v It is not as if no ground existed for a pan-south Indian bid. The short, ten-year period between 1799, when Tipu was killed, and 1809, when a cornered Velu Thampi chose to kill himself rather than surrender to the British, saw several mutually sympathetic rebellions across the South. These risings included the famous and popular rebellion, sustained for five years, that Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja led in the Wayanad region; rebellions mounted in the Tamil country by Kattabomman and the Marudu brothers; and the Vellore Mutiny by the East India Company s Indian soldiers in These rebellions, and the battles of Velu Thampi and Tipu, live and will live as legends, but they could not push back the tide of imperial conquest. Lesson: if they wish to succeed, foes of domination or intimidation must learn to come together and stay together. * When troubled by today s climate of intimidation, lovers of free speech and free beliefs can take heart from the extraordinary examples of two men both born near Thiruvananthapuram: Sri Narayana Guru ( ) and Ayyankali ( ). Each bore the weight of social oppression as he fought for elementary rights. Neither was daunted by the crushing weight. I don t have to remind this Thiruvananthapuram audience of how in his harsh times Ayyankali dared to advocate noncooperation with the upper castes when they refused to concede the primary right merely to walk along public roads, to wear ornaments of their choice and not to be kicked and beaten. vi Nor need I mention here the revolutionary significance of Sri Narayana Guru s life and teaching. I touch on Ayyankali and Sri Narayana Guru because their examples strengthen the morale of those who are wounded today by intimidation, whether from a government or from the street. 11

12 But I may be allowed to recall two short, witty and pragmatic statements by Sri Narayana Guru that I came across. You are all perhaps familiar with them. One of them is this: Whatever be [his] religion, it is enough if the man improves. vii The second is his explanation of why campaigns against conversion did not enthuse him. Said Sri Narayana Guru: One leaves one s religion as he loses belief in it, and his leaving it gives that religion the benefit of getting rid of one non-believer, whereas the other religion gets the benefit of gaining one more believer. viii Also heartening from the 1920s is the story of the disciplined, year-long Vaikom satyagraha of to open, for the first time in its history, the gates of that hoary temple, about 175 km north of here, to so-called lower castes and so-called untouchables. As all of you know, only partial success was immediately seen by the bold Ezhavas, Nairs and Nambudiris who joined hands to carry out the satyagraha. Yet that satyagraha took Kerala and its struggles to the all-india stage. It also restored spirits in the nationwide noncooperation movement that were flagging at the time. Let me offer three vignettes from the Vaikom satyagraha. Forming part of the satyagraha were two large multi-caste marches -- one going north, the other going south, the two to meet in Thiruvananthapuram. The marchers proceeding south from Vaikom were welcomed on their route by Ezhava women. Untouchable Pulayas offered them rice, which the satyagrahis gratefully consumed. On their route, the satyagrahis paid their respects, in his Sivagiri ashram, to Sri Narayana Guru, who blessed the satyagrahis bid. ix Narayana Guru would die three years later. The second vignette is of Mahatma Gandhi, accompanied by Periyar Ramaswami and Rajaji, also calling on Sri Narayana Guru in his Sivagiri Ashram. Sri Narayana Guru reaffirmed his backing for the satyagraha. Some months later, Periyar Ramaswami would end his association with Gandhi, C.R. and the Congress, a fact that lends historic importance to the Gandhi-Periyar- Rajaji partnership over Vaikom. Here s my last Vaikom vignette. During his stay in the Malayalam country in March 1925, Gandhi confronted the head of the orthodox priests in a three-hour conversation. Before journeying to Vaikom, he had written in Young India (19 Feb 1925): The Vykom satyagrahis are fighting a battle of no less consequence than that of Swaraj (26: 159). But so far as the chief priest was concerned, since Gandhi had touched several untouchable satyagrahis in Kerala following his arrival, he had become polluted. The chief priest therefore kept himself at a safe distance from Gandhi throughout the long conversation. x * During my study of the South s political history, I was often provoked to wonder about the South s desire to lead India as a whole. Armies always seemed to move north to south rather than south to north. Kanya Kumari seemed a stronger magnet than the Himalayas. 12

13 Yet leadership may be a question more of responsibility than of control, and perhaps the South should ask why in history its talented daughters and sons have not tried harder to take care of -- take charge of, lead -- India as a whole. Since independence, the South has given India no fewer than seven constitutional heads -- one governor general, C. Rajagopalachari, and six presidents, Radhakrishnan, V. V. Giri, Sanjiva Reddy, R. Venkataraman, K. R. Narayanan and A. P. J. Abdul Kalam --, but only two prime ministers, Narasimha Rao in 1991 and Deve Gowda in 1996, in each case an unexpected choice. Perhaps the fact that the South was seldom if ever a solid bloc came in the way, although it might be argued that an exceptional person might have turned the South into a unified bloc while bidding for national leadership. In any case, today s water disputes between the south s neighbouring states are reminiscent of the 18 th -century clashes between adjacent chieftains that I ran into in my study, like, for instance, the battle between Muhammad Ali and Chanda Sahib in what used to be called the Carnatic, even when it was the Tamil country. The impossible neighbour, an oft-recurring phrase in current political discourse in Chennai or Bengaluru, may have been a standard refrain even three hundred years ago, on each side of a southern quarrel. The kind of recent political empires I confronted in my study -- those, for instance, of N.T.R. and Jayalalithaa resembled the dominant if also unstable principalities of 18 th century South India. Enmity among descendants of political empires, or among claimants to their legacies, also seemed to take after an old pattern. At this point of time, about two decades into the 21 st century, there aren t many signs of a joint southern effort for India s leadership. Remarks from individual leaders may occasionally suggest a wish for larger roles, or indicate alertness to opportunities, and impressive qualities may at times be seen in individuals in authority, but we should ask whether a hunger for national leadership exists in the South. Do we see a passion to summon the Indian people for great pursuits? A zeal to enlist partners, in the South and beyond it, for overcoming India s challenges? An eager search for India s global role? From the 1930s, Periyar E. V. Ramasami and his followers articulated the notion that all of the south could unite under a Dravida banner. Nowadays that notion is rarely articulated. Moreover, personal goals seem to have left ideology behind in branches of the Dravidian movement, and superstition seems at times to be expelling rationalism. xi Still, the widely accepted and rationally argued belief in a common origin for almost all the languages spoken in the South may possess both meaning and energy. 13

14 Linguistic affinity may not overcome strains when scarce resources have to be divided. Yet that affinity may prove a useful element in a future geopolitical calculus. And the advantages of physical proximity are all too real. Then there is the radical idea, nursed for long in the South, that the people, all of them, beyond every barrier of language, dialect, caste, tribe, and class, constitute an equal and single community. In some ways, this idea is distinctive to India s South. While social and political realities have repeatedly taunted this notion, it refuses to be extinguished. From time to time, reformers and poets in different parts of South India have offered fresh fuel to the idea. Around the time that O. Chandu Menon wrote his Indulekha in Malayalam, the Telugu playwright, Gurujada Apparao, wrote his Kanyasulkam or Bride-price. I felt thrilled when I came across these lines translated from Apparao s Telugu by Srirangam Srinivas Rao or Sri Sri ( ): Never does land Mean clay and sand The people, the people, they are the land. xii Lasting until 1956 and taking in pieces from each of the South s principal linguistic areas, Madras Presidency under C.R. and Kamaraj was an influential player on the all-india scene. When the presidency was broken up in 1956, and new linguistic states created, the predominant reaction was positive, not negative. The sense was of spontaneity and creativity being freed, not of curtailment or of new walls. However, enemies being useful in politics, the focus shifted from new opportunities to the supposed obstinacy of those across a linguistic border in the south. Chennai ceased to be a hub of Telugu literature. Bengaluru saw anti-tamil demonstrations. Bilingual areas lying along new borders gradually moved towards becoming unilingual. Nagercoil turned predominantly Tamil while Palakkad seemed to lose some Tamil. Fortunately, as I have written in my book, reality has frequently been larger than friction. The Malayali M.G.R. was and is loved in the Tamil country. His Tamil fans would like the Maratha Rajinikanth to run Tamil Nadu. South Indians may in fact be far more charitable than may be suggested by demagogues in their ranks. Many southerners are proudly multilingual, or interested in the neighbour s language, and have been so for centuries. We may recall the 18 th -century statement of Abbe Dubois that he had come across Poet Vemana s verses, originally written in Telugu, translated in several other [South Indian] languages, xiii as well as the East India Company s dependence, in different parts of South India, on flocks of multilingual dubashis. 14

15 Unity, however, is unlikely to come from osmosis, or from precedents alone. It was to be worked for, and it needs champions. Like others thrown together elsewhere in the world, South Indians tend to possess opinions rather than knowledge about their immediate neighbours, and they have but rarely recognized the blessings of solidarity. Or the power of the native vision of the people, all the people, as a single community. One of the last times when the South s political leaders acted together in a significant way was way back in 1969, when Kamaraj, Sanjiva Reddy and Nijalingappa tried to apply a brake on Indira Gandhi. Although she outsmarted them, at least they joined hands across provincial borders in a bid to give India a lead. Another example of leadership from the South occurred in 1996, when leaders from different parties and linguistic areas in the South came together and proposed the name of Deve Gowda, who became Prime Minister. A more recent example occurred three years ago during Chennai s deluge of December 2015, when, ignoring hardship, Malayalis, Kannadigas and Telugus of different faiths brought food and medicines for strangers marooned in that city. Three years later, Chennai folk can still tear up while recalling the gestures. This year the people of Kerala heroically faced the immense ordeal that was sent by nature. Let me conclude. All of today s India, we may agree, can do with initiatives for mutual concern, for respect and reconciliation between cultures and communities, for stopping intimidators, and for empowering the vulnerable. (end) i ii Mahadev Desai, Day-to-day with Gandhi, vol. 2 (Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh), pp iii V. Narayana Rao, David Shulman and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka Period Tamilnadu (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp and p iv Bussy s letter of August 1784 in Mohibbul Hasan, History of Tipu Sultan (Calcutta: The World Press, 1971), p v Hasan, History of Tipu Sultan, p vi Chopra, Ravindran and Subrahmanian, History of South India (New Delhi: S. Chand, 1979), vol. 3, p vii Chopra, Ravindran and Subrahmanian, History of South India, p viii V. Jayakumar, Sree Narayana Guru (New Delhi: DK Printworld, 1991), p. xii & p. 75. ix Mary King, Gandhian Nonviolent Struggle and Untouchability in South India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015), p x Mary King, Gandhian Nonviolent Struggle and Untouchability in South India, p. 168fn. xi See, for instance, this comment by Cho Ramaswamy on Periyar in E.V. Ramaswami Naicker and C.N. Annadurai, India Today, millennium issue, January 2000: 15

16 He broke the idols of Vinayaka; today the Vinayaka procession is a gala event in Tamil Nadu. He tore pictures of Rama and applied the chappal to it; a few years ago, Tamil Nadu sent a strong contingent of devotees of Rama carrying bricks for the shilanyas at Ayodhya. He fought superstitions; his followers in the AIADMK tonsured their heads for the good health of their leader, J. Jayalalitha. xii From Gurujada s Desabhakti, tr by Srirangam Srinivasa Rao, printed on p. xvi in Pennepalli Gopala Krishna (ed.), Diaries of Gurujada (Hyderabad: Oriental Manuscripts Library and Research Institute, 2009). xiii Abbe Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies (London, 1816; Oxford 1953; New York: Cosimo, 2007). pp , footnote. 16