Out of 380 million residents of this subcontinent 220 happen to be Hindus. Foreseeing the application of majority rule, one of the principles of representative democracy, to political life in free India, Hindus could visualize with prophetic exactitude that the political power coming to Indian hands would have the only implication of its falling into their hands, the hands of the majority nation. Consequently they have very persistenly, even to the point of ludicrous absurdity, put forward through every device known to publicity and propaganda, the hypothesis of Indian unity and Indian nationality. That it is a travesty of facts is clear even to a cursory and casual observer of India. The stress on Indian unity has invariably come from Hindu side, originating for their desire to make political capital out of it the desire to build Hindu Raj.
Let us begin with the most ardent exponent of Indian unity, viz, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru a very respectable and brilliant son of the Hindu community, He writes? ‘the idea of political i unity of India always persisted (its existence is { presupposed),? and kings and emperors sought f to realize it. Ashoka indeed achieved unity two thousand years ago and built up an empire far greater than that of Britain in India today.” Needless to add that Ashoka’s empire proved not Indian unity but her common subjection as does Britain’s of to-day. Unity is a i feeling, a consciousness, not a state or condition occasioned by similarity of circumstances. We) never speak of unity between rupee coins because all carry the face of the same emperor Or are issued by the same Master of His Majesty’s. Mine. A police man may lock up Pandit Nehru and a social criminal together in the same room. It will be insulting as well as wrong to speak of any unity between the two gaol birds, The learned author of the “Unity of India”, however, hastens to remedy the wrong statement in the next paragraph when he adds that “the desire for political unity in India as in other countries before the advent of nationalism was as usual the desire of the ruler or the conqueror and not of the people as a whole.”
1 The Unity of India. By Jawahar Lal Nehru p. 13.
4 Parenthesis mine.
An all-India political unity thus was not possible in the past. The Pandit goes on to caution that “superficial observers of India, accustomed to the standardization which modern industry has brought about in the West, are apt to be impressed too much by the variety and diversity of India.” Want of depth of insight on the part of observer, in the opinion of Nehru, is responsible for their missing the unity of India. What baffles the reader is the conspicuous absence of any positive aspect of Indian unity in the whole of the essay written to make clear to him what he obviously cannot and does nor see that supposed unity of India. One requires ‘ mystic vision to be able to have a glance art that metaphysical unity to which ordinary mortals are blind. This may be called uniry-blindness from which every impartial observer suffered. In the same essay the author quotes with obvious fervour. Sir Frederick Whyte who in The Future of East and West writes that the greatest of all the contradictions in India is “that over this diversity (discernible to one and all)? is spread a greater unity which is not immediately evident ‘ because it failed historically to find expression in any political cohesion to make the country
Parenthesis mine one.” Sir Whyte has been contradicted by Nehru himself who has given the example of political unity achieved under Ashoka. I leave it to readers to judge if the above quotation gives any support to the fiction of Indian unity which even in the opinion of its own exponents ;: has not been evident to any one except gifted seers who can see things which do not even exist. Such writers rely more on the credulity of their readers than on the strength of what’ they write.
A little further in the same essay Mr. Nehru asserts that “There is no religious or cultural, problem in India.” He must be a very bold man who considers the country whose past-history is replete with religious persecution of one community by the other, which registered year in and year out a wave after wave of invaders not only to found empires but to exterminate infidels or to convert them to their own faith, where not a year passes without a visitation of communal riots under which lurks some slaughtered cow or some music played before mosque, as are devoid of religious problem ; where bitter Hindu rulers shoulder with aggressive Muslim and a virile Sikh as one without any cultural problem.
Language problem is dismissed by creating-a dichotomy, out of the 222 languages as the-census reports mention of two groups—the Indian Aryans and the Dravidians. This dichotomy is further watered by saying that 50 % words-of Sanskrit are common to both the groups which are closely allied. This may give food for thought to a philologist. Does it make any difference between the situation as it exists today that language ceases to serve as a connecting link between people inhabiting different parts of the country, a Punjabi and a Bengalee. We could as well say that all the languages of the world have originated from the same human voice while words have been assigned different meanings owing to local conditions, tastes and prejudices. Does common origin obliterate or-explain away the present differences. Human beings, and other anthropoid apes had a common, origin. Does this common biology breed any unity between the two now.
How seriously and passionately people feel attached to their national languages can be judged by the Herculian efforts of the Hindus to inflict Hindi on the Muslim in the Province where Congress reigned supreme matched only with efforts of the Muslim in the Punjab and the N.W.F. Province directed against ‘Hindi and Gurmukhi out of love for Urdu which they regard as their national language.
The Indian National Congress, a predominantly and at present almost exclusively a Hindu organisacion, so much so, that the Hindu: Mahasabha, the only professedly communal political organisation of the Hindus has at last, abdicated in the favour of the Congress, did of course enjoy some following from non-Hindu communities, for all had the yearning to be free from British subjection. But that, community of interest strong as it was did not drown every other group-consciousness and, never give birth to Indian Nation. That has been unmistaken history of the sixty years of the joint struggle against the common foe. The Congress tri-colour, the so called national flag of the supposed Indian Nation represents trinity rather than unity. The national anthem viz, the Vande-Matram is unmistakably Hindu’
It will be worthwhile to give a running description of some of the relief features of diversity of social life in India. If the Congressite Hindu preacher considers it as 3 vicious assault on the supposed Indian unity, it -is his concern.
India is the geographical Jabel given to the sub-continent exceeding 1,750,000 square miles in area with extremities nearly 2,000 miles apart housing one-fifth of the human race. The vast region naturally encounters a very wide range of climate which consequential diverse effects on the nature and productivity of soil and the social life of peoples dwelling thereon. A bewildering Babel of tongues as it is, it has been aptly called an ethnological museum judging from the number of different races that go to form its peoples. European peoples who are considered to belong to one big branch of mankind—the Great White Family—constitute now over two dozen native states. India was invaded by three different stocks of humanity, the White, the Yellow and the Black families, The result is that Indian peoples are more heterogeneous than the peoples of any other tract of this size. Most of the nations in Europe belong to the common racial stock yet obstinacy alone will dispute their different nationalities now. One simply laughs at the attempts of those who are out to prove Indian peoples as one nation. To trace geneological history of nations is a fruitless task, for what matters is not the original common stock, dead
