India: Whose country is it anyway?
For centuries India stood as a geographical entity loosely held together by the string of common history and religion of its people. It was never a strong state — just a self forming federal convenience of constantly emerging and collapsing empires, principalities, fiefdoms and emirates that numbered over 250 at the time of independence from British in 1947. That so many parts could be sewed and held together is a political anomaly not seen in any other part of the world — a bewildering diversity of 300 million people that has managed to grow to over 1.2 billion over 68 years.
That is India. The credit for building that India should go to Congress and its crop of earlier leaders — from Jawahar Lal Nehru to Sardar Patel to Rajendra Prasad and to some extent Indira Gandhi, Narsimha Rao, Vajpayee and now Modi. The making of Modern India — the country that we have received in inheritance from our parents, was achieved against a constant threat of subversion — both external and internal and continues to remain so — even today. This is called geopolitics. So much of our time is consumed on useless public discourse around domestic issues that the persistent threat to very idea of India is often ignored.
We should never loose sight of the fact that our neighbors such as China and Pakistan are constantly engaged in a covert mission to destabilize India. The Left movements in India’s East — that produced our own brand of democratic communism particularly in states bordering China — Arunanchal Pradesh, Mizoram, Meghalya, Assam, West Bengal and Bihar are extensively supported by China. The Naxalites who claim allegiance to the Maoist faction of the Communist Party have a history of being funded by the Chinese. If Congress had not ruled the states of West Bengal and Bihar in their formative years — they could well be parts of China today. Of all those self proclaimed leftist in West Bengal and Bihar who opposed Congress in the past and oppose BJP now — having seen the Communist Party destroy their state in between — in front of their open eyes- I am not sure how many would like to go live in Communist China.
Kanhaiya Kumar — JNU’s hero, whose speech is running viral — is a leader of the All India Student Federation — a student wing of the Communist Party of India. Is it a mere coincidence that he comes from a state with half of its districts dominated by the Maoists and the other by criminal feudal lords — Bihar? A close scrutiny of that speech will reveal that it is entirely a political speech rather than a well considered discourse on national issues — mostly against BJP and ABVP. He is so inconsistent, at times, that In the sentence he speaks against casteism — he speaks for reservation.
The idea of communism stands against the very idea of state — whose abolition it seeks. In the years to come India’s rapid rise, its growing clout and and its legitimate place in the world will be challenged by its enemies — both from across the border and from within. While the Congress put the Indian nation together — it allowed it subsequently to fall into the hands of the left and the anti-national — allowing them to receive idealogical and financial support from India’s enemies overseas often through questionable NGOs. That is a weakness that BJP’s nationalist leaders are trying to correct. They must do so — if required even against the noises made by the media that many foreign governments support.
The country’s fight against its enemies — irrespective of whether BJP or Congress is in power deserves unqualified support from the public. I would have been sympathetic to Kanhaiya Kumar if he had left out the BJP and ABVP from his speech and addressed issues of poverty, nepotism, casteism, lawlessness and state intimidation on their own merit.
Sadly for Kanhaiya, if there is a political battle he is trying to fight — it is clear that he has chosen a wrong party to be with. Communist Party leaders is India are ideologically bereft, spineless, suckers- stooges of the Congress party drawn from the very class he is trying to fight.
Left is not an answer to the Right. India has always been somewhere in the middle — it must remain there in the future too. For that it must fight its enemies on both sides of political spectrum.
