The Idea of India - Sunil Khilnani [Book Review]

I finished reading Sunil Khilnani's book "The Idea of India" yesterday, although I felt there was scope for it to be renamed by prefacing the title with the word "Defending", and adding "Nehruvian" after the definite article.

In fact, I'd suggest a renaming of the chapters to succinctly capture their intent and message:

Chapter 1: Democracy A Portrait of Nehru as the Father of the Nation

Chapter 2: Temples of the Future How India's Economy Went bust

Chapter 3: Cities Erasing all of India's pasts to force Indians into Modernity

Chapter 4: Who is an Indian?  India is not Hindu.

As one would expect given the author's stature, the book is incredibly articulate and "combative" (in Amartya Sen's words) albeit ideologically narrow. It is a classic work from the liberal school which believes it is protecting everything by suffocating all individual things. I quote the author here:

Just at the English language placed all Indians, at least in principle, at a disadvantage of equal unfamiliarity, so, too Chandigarh could not be seized or possessed by any one group.

Throughout the book, one gets the sense that this ideological censor that the Nehruvian idea places on the citizens of this country (which the author seems to accept as essential) is what holds India together. Without it, there would be only anarchy and bloodlust, and a brutal suppression of human rights. But no evidence is provided to support such a flimsy theory.

In fact, the author contrasts India's abysmal average 3% annual growth (between 1950 and 1991) against the rapid advancement of the Asian Tigers - China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. That post-independence India's social, economic and political structures may be in disagreement with the needs of its people causing this slothfulness comes up momentarily, but the author is quick to pour cold water on any alternative ideas of India that may help aid the emancipation of the masses. "Liberal" democracy (of the colonial tradition) at all costs, with the state performing a missionary-like role of a societal reformer, is the only solution offered. Hundreds of millions of Indians have the wrong world view, a handful of experts have got it right.

The author however succeeds in painting a picture of the 1950s India in which Nehru found validation in the theories of expert economists like Mahalanobis, and tried to centrally plan India's growth - by making heavy industries and defence public sector undertakings, tightly controlling imports and exports, and regulating free-market capitalism in select sectors through a licence-raj. He also shows the limitations of the Congress in driving change at the local levels, and the futile history of land reforms in India. Later in the Indira Gandhi period, appeasement politics further drains India's money reserves, leaving it on the brink of bankruptcy in 1991. Apart from jokingly citing the disparaging phrase "Hindu rate of growth" as a cause of India's crawling development, the author refuses to put our leaders' erstwhile policies under further scrutiny. Instead, he moves on to speak about India's history and culture.

In this part, it is interesting how the author skips the Islamic period of Indian history completely while bringing out the three main "wrongs" in modern India: one from the pre-Islamic Hindu period - Caste; another created by colonialism - the great rift between urban and rural India; and the final one from post-Independence India - Hindu nationalism or Hindutva. The word "proselytization" doesn't occur once in the entire book. The author further goes on to explain how Muslims lost trust in India's ability to protect them, which in turn led to the creation of Pakistan. Can India protect Kashmir's muslims, he asks (the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits is not mentioned).

One understands the author's theory as follows: it is the duty of every citizen who identifies with a numerical majority to downplay their cultural distinctiveness and beliefs, and hold them as secondary to Nehru's (Khilnani's) Idea of India. Simultaneously, it is the right of all individuals who identify with a numerical minority of any kind to assert themselves and their cultural distinctiveness, so that the state can be perceived as pluralistic. And both these principles are embedded in the paternalistic attitude of a state that thinks it knows best.

This book could only have been written by someone of Indian (more specifically, Hindu elite) origin who is thoroughly educated in the western tradition, until those are the only filters through which their mind processes reality. 

The author is therefore able to assume the position of the "real Indian", re-describing processes and events until it supports their ideal of the world. Further, the position assumed by the author enables him to think of the "other" (SCs, Dalits, Muslims, Christians) like a saviour; it is precisely this position that allows the author to rationalize all actions, including acts of violent extremism, of the "other", and condemn majority Hindus whenever any self-assertion begins, an intellectual self-flagellation.

The book in its entirety is a masterpiece of intellectual colonialism. It is limited in its understanding of democracy (anything against the author's views is called "majoritarianism"), and of liberty (as it is only a specific type of freedom that the author supports). In some ways, it is similar to what James Mill may have written about India if he was living in 1998.

Mill's History of British India begins with a remarkable preface. He says that his never having been to India and knowing none of the native languages are an advantage, and a guarantee of his objectivity. But, far from being objective, his is, as he says, a 'critical, or judging history' whose judgements on Hindu customs and practices are particularly harsh. He denounces their 'rude' and 'backward' culture for its ignorance, superstition, and mistreatment of women, and leaves no doubt that he favours a thoroughgoing reform of Indian institutions and practices.

The few constructive points of the book are empirical, not ideological, in nature. India's transition from the first two decades after independence into the emergency under Indira Gandhi, and later into the caste- and regional- politics on the 80s and 90s is well brought out. The aspirations and limitations of the leaders at various points are also explained. In fact, the book has much to offer in terms of political and economic analysis, but sadly chooses to approach every aspect through a narrow ideological framework.

I understand that the book was written a few years after the Babri Masjid demolition, and the author may have intended this book as a rebuttal of certain ideas that were capturing Indian minds. But he goes to the extent of saying that "to Hindu nationalists, Ayodhya has telescoped into a single narrative otherwise unrelated events: the birth of Ram 9,00,000 years ago, the entry of the Mughals into India in 1526, and the rise of the BJP to correct wrongs of the past..." In 1998, there was no Supreme Court judgement on the Ram Mandir, but to say that there was no original temple in Ayodhya that was destroyed with so much conviction points to the fundamental dangers of the author's ideology.

I'd like to summarize the book in two lines: This is the author's limited understanding of India, that does little to help the reader understand the process or prepare a way forward into the future. It is a narrative of India that is confused, helpless and ashamed of itself.