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Diversity in Unity

Fashions change, so do clichés. They change, may be because of a shift in objective reality at the base, or on account of developments in society's superstructure. Jawaharlal Nehru used to get excited over the mystique packed in the aphorism unity in diversity.

Half a century later, the subject and the predicate have swapped places. India, it is currently being freely suggested, is a pristine example of diversity in unity. It is quite a party even without those who have no faith in the concept of the Indian nation.

Between J Jayalalitha and Laloo Prasad Yadav, between Bal Thackeray and the Bahjujan Samaj Party, between the Shiromani Akali Dal and the protagonists of Jharkhand, the stretch of attitudinal differences is truly remarkable. The diversity is overwhelming, the so-called unity is just formal.

The confusion in the political situation disgusts many honest citizens. Some amongst them indulge in reveries over a fabulously glorious past, when Indira Gandhi's authoritarianism reached its peak and thousands, placed behind the prison bars, learn the lesson of their lives.

At least one seasoned politician has dared to articulate in public his private thoughts in the matter; it would be mean-minded not to congratulate him on the courage of his conviction. The political uncertainties confronting the nation, he has put on record, can be resolved only if there is a return to a one-party regime. How a regime of this nature can be ushered in when people's minds are infested with diverse moods and hybrid thoughts, he has politely refused to dilate upon. Perhaps he has something akin to the promulgation of a national emergency, a la June 1975 in mind.

There are others who are contemplating, in the manner of the stalwarts of the Bharatiya Janata Party, a thoroughgoing overhaul of the Constitution itself; Hindutva for ever and for everybody, and let all dialectics be stilled. A few others are seemingly weighing the pros and cons of the emergence of a circumstance where a prince or a princess rushes centrestage majestically riding a noble looking horse.

Yet others will claim that what has eventuated is hardly a happenstance. India, according to them, was always a jigsaw puzzle of heterogeneity. The British for their own purpose tried to establish, within the format of the empire, a common, rigorous administrative structure, as if that would take care of the latent differences.

During the phase of the struggle for Independence, several coalitions reared their heads among the nationalists, creating the half illusion of a nation in the making. But the underlying reality refused to play a co-operative role. The early Nehru phase proved a false dawn. Of late, the background has been increasingly raucous. Non-believers have proliferated. And they have drawn attention to the existence of obstinate structural anomalies.

There is therefore frequent reference of the datum of a European civilisation, or of a European ethos, or of a European tradition of music, sculpture, art, architecture and literature, and yet there is no such thing as Europe as a politically unified homogeneous entity. Europe has been riven by nation states through the centuries. Current endeavours to construct a loosely linked European Union are a feeble homage to a long-lasting aspiration; the protagonists themselves are however anything but cocksure, every measure they decide upon is an elegy to caution. It took a while, but the lesson has finally struck home.

The British introduced the device of an empire so as to bind together the different linguistic and cultural entities dispersed over the vast expanse of the subcontinent. The initial post-1947 phase witnessed desperate efforts to stay loyal to the British inheritance. The empire was gone. Substituting the imperial mantle by the magic wrap-around of a democratic sanction was widely regarded as a credible next station; the best, it was assumed, was yet to be. The assumption has been just that. The diversities continued to dominate the objective reality. The learning curve of consciousness proceeded at its own pace.

Roughly two score decades constituted the time span before the implications of a democratic sanction sunk in. The psyche of India's hitherto dumb millions is at the moment experiencing a gala spree of awakenings. Grumblings will be of no avail at this juncture.

Tumultuous times are tumultuous times, heralded by boisterous, often flamboyant outbursts of consciousness here, there, everywhere, within this caste group, within that ethnic entity. High-minded discourses touching such themes as the destiny that awaits a unified integrated India will fall on deaf ears in the context of a situation where per capita income almost touches the fringe of poverty and, on top of that, income and assets distribution is horrendously uneven. Tension will threaten to tear asunder whatever remains of the administrative structure in different parts of the country.

The Hurriyat in Kashmir, the United Liberation Front of Asom and the Bodos, the countless categories of the insurgents in the rest of the North-East, the People's War in Andhra Pradesh, not to mention the Bal Thackeray and the Laloo Yadavs, each is donning a particular role delineated by history. To try to supplant the notion of democratic consent by alternative arrangements of the kind both the BJP and a handful of Indira Gandhi's acolytes are contemplating will only add fuel to the fire. Mischiefs, if you want to call it that, is afoot, it is determined to run its full course.

Accountants and economists, great believers in nit-picking, will continue to grumble: all this is a huge waste of resources. They could not be more right. Enough indications however already abound that riding roughshod over the sentiments of the hybrid elements that make up the uneasy conglomerate otherwise known as India will be no easy matter. Politeness has prevented the rest of the country from demanding a rough and ready estimate of how much the sustenance of the myth of Kashmir being an integral part of the nation has cost the Union of India.

Such estimates are not available with respect to the pacification programmes embarked upon in the North-East either. Uprisings are likely to multiply in number as well as intensity, in case the precarious communion between the Centre and the outlying areas gets snapped in some manner or other; should that happen, the burden on the exchequer of the Union of India could be intolerable.

Much vulgarity is in the air. Specimens like Laloo Yadav and Jayalalitha may be considered insufferable by many sophisticated members of society. Nothing can however be done in the matter. It is no longer possible to banish from the republic of India the Jayalalithas and the Laloo Yadavs along with their followers and admirers for the straightforward reason they constitute the bulwark of the republic.

The gentry who object to the existence of the boorish crowd have an option; they can choose to walk away from India. But here too there is a snag. Despite the high fault in the preamble of the World Trade Organisation, and non-stop pressure from the Western powers that such countries as India must allow the free entry of services from other shores, no reciprocal gesture will be forthcoming from the rich countries on the issue. Those Indians unhappy with the rude manifestation of gross heterogeneity in their native land will be refused entry into the United States beyond the boundary condition set by the immigration quota.

It is inevitable in this situation that diversities will continue to dominate India's objective reality. Whether this will in the ultimate round lead to the ruination of the country is an altogether different speculation. That particular outcome need not be a product of kismet, but a spin-off of the dictum of the historical process.

Besides, definitions do matter, one person's meat is another's poison, what is ruination for one class or group is liberation for another. Whose version of the objective reality should we then opt for? Even economists specialising in the theory of social choice do not have the answer. Smart, clever people, these economists, but even they cannot shove aside the tough datum of class or caste -- or the biases of sector ethnicity.

Ashok Mitra