UNDAMMING THE FLOW

DHARAMPAL

Friends, I have been attending these meetings. And I have learnt

quite a bit. But, let me begin by sharing something that deeply af-
fected me. I heard some days ago that after the meeting addressed
by Abdus Samad Sahib there was a discussion between two persons
among the audience. One was a Muslim and the other a Hindu. And
the Hindu, I think, asked the Muslim that this demolition in
Ayodhya must have hurt him. The other said: Yes, but nothing hap-
pens that is not willed by Allah. And, anyway it has provided us a
chance to talk to each other, we never have such chances!
What sort of society is this? One of the greatest Indian journalists
of recent times, Girilal Jain, wrote in one of his articles that he knew
very few modern Muslims. Girilal Jain, in his 50 years of journalism,
must have met tens of thousands of people. And he said that he knew
hardly any modern Muslims! Not that he would have known many
traditional Muslims either. That was in any case difficult. But he
could not come in close contact with even modern Muslims.
Girilal Jain was frank enough to say that. I think most of us also
do not know any Muslims. We just don’t know other people. We
have a sort of study group here in Madras. It is a group of very
bright high science people, sociologists, and so on. They have
friends and colleagues in 8 or 10 places in India. But, as far as deal-
ing with different people is concerned, their contact does not go
very far. They are limited to mostly the Brahminical type. They have
no contact with the peasants, with the craftsmen, or with any other
people. There is very little contact with the Muslims. Maybe one or
two of them know a Muslim friend or a colleague here and there, no
more. And, this is true of all of us.

If you allow me to go on in this vein, I shall like to tell you an

incident I recall. There is a place called Atiranji Khera in Uttar

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Pradesh. This is one of our ancient sites, where artifacts of about

1500 B.C. have been found. I had occasion to visit this place a few
times some years ago. It is a big mound, about a mile long and half
a mile wide. I went there with other people, the collector and some
other district officers, and later I went on my own, alone.
There is a person there who keeps a lonely watch on the mound.
And he began to tell me some stories. He told Pauranic stories about
some Raja, one of the earliest Rajas of India, who ruled when there
was no taxation in the country. And then at some point he said in
Hindi, “Mein to Akela hun, ji!” “I am all alone!” I said, “What do
you mean? How are you alone?” He said, “Mein to Isai hun ji, Isai.
Aur Isai ka to ek hi ghar hai is gaon mein.” “I am a Christian, and
there is only one Christian house in this village.”
I wondered, what is this? This man is well-versed in Pauranic
lore. And, yet he feels alone in this village. How is it? Not that the
local people would not talk to him. But he does not feel as if he
belongs. The people have not adopted him. They have not made him
one of themselves. I think this is the general condition we are get-
ting reduced to. In many ways we are shrinking, splitting, frac-
turing. This is the sort of society, we have come to. And it is no
wonder that this sort of society has problems like Ayodhya.
I think this splitting and fracturing of the society must have been
going on for some time. This is not recent. This is not a post-inde-
pendence phenomenon. This is not even post-1850, as Professor
Guhan tried to say the other day: as if the problem arose only in
1850!1 And, this may not only be because of the Muslim rule. This
may be a problem which is somehow intrinsic to the Hindu society,
which comes from Hindu thought, Hindu ways, Hindu institutions,
etc. Or, it may be the result of a certain defensive interaction be-
tween the Hindu society and other societies. But this is a situation
that I cannot understand.

I will tell you another episode. Some years ago, about 1960, I met
some people, and I think in a way that meeting gave me a view of
India, the larger India, not my India or our India, or India of the
people sitting here. I was travelling from Gwalior to Delhi; and, got

1[S. Guhan, ‘Dark Forebodings’, in this volume, pp.78.--ed.]

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into a day-train around 10 o’clock in the morning. I think it was a 6

or 7 hours journey in a third class compartment. And I got in.
It was crowded. Then some people made a seat for me.
Somebody moved down on the floor and I sat on the seat. And there
was this group of people, about 12 of them, some 3 or 4 women and
7 or 8 men. I asked them where were they coming from. They said
that they had been on a pilgrimage, three months long pilgrimage.
They had been up to Rameswaram and to various other places. We
got talking.
They had various bundles of things, and some earthen pots with
them. I asked what they had in those pots. They said they had taken
their own food from home. They came from two different villages,
somewhere towards the north of Lucknow. And they had taken all
the necessities for their food --atta, ghee, sugar --with them, and
some of these were still left.
The women were sitting on the floor, not above on the seats, and
people were passing by. And the people, in their attempt to move
around in that crowded compartment, sometimes sort of trampled
over them. The women didn’t seem to mind that, but they did mind
if someone touched their bundles and pots of food with the feet.
So we began talking. And then I said they must be all from one
jati, from a single caste group. They said, “No, no! We are not from
one jati -- we are from several jatis.” I said but how could that be?
They said that there was no jati on yatra, not on a pilgrimage. I did-
n’t know that. I was around 38 years old, and I suppose I was like
other people like myself, who know little about the ways of the
Indian people.
So it went on. And then I said, “Did you go to Madras? Did you
go to Bombay?” “Yes! We passed through those places.” ‘Did you
see anything there?” “No, we didn’t have any time!” It went on like
that. I mentioned various important places of modern India. They
had passed through most, but had not cared to visit any. Then I said,
“You’re going to Delhi now?” “Yes!” “You will stop in Delhi?”
“No, we only have to change trains there. We’re going to
Haridwar!” I said, “This is the capital of free India. Won’t you see
it?” I meant it, I was not joking. They said, “No! We don’t have
time. May be some other day. Not now. We have to go to Haridwar.
And then we have to reach back home.”
We talked for perhaps 5 or 6 hours. And at the end of it I was

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wondering, who is going to look after this India? What India are we
talking about? This India, the glorious India of the modern age, built
by Jawaharlal Nehru and other people, these modern temples, uni-
versities, places of scholarship! For whom are we building them?
Those people on their pilgrimage were not interested in any of this.
And they were representatives of India. They were more representa-
tive of India than Jawaharlal Nehru ever was. Or, I and most of us
ever could be.

About the same time Queen Elizabeth II of England was visiting

India. She probably came within one month of my meeting with
the pilgrims in the train. And there was a write-up about her visit
in the Economist of London. The London Economist, describing
the visit of the Queen to India, said that she was bringing her own
food from England, she was bringing her own chefs, she was not
going to visit any temples, or any traditional places of India, she was
only going to certain other places, modern places, Europeanised
places, etc.
And I said, how similar! How similar were the ways of the
Queen of England and those of the people of India I had met on their
way to Haridwar? Those pilgrims were real royalty. And, they rep-
resent the Indian people. All of them, all of the Indian people, in
their minds and at least to themselves, are royalty. It is not a matter
of the Muslims and the Hindus. The Muslims of India would be sim-
ilar; the Christians of India would also be similar.
The world of the people of India, it seems, is a different world.
The world we are talking about is not theirs. Even the Hindutva we
are talking about is not theirs. I think, their Hindutva and our
Hindutva are entirely different. Or, for that matter the Islam we talk
about, or the Islam Sri Shahabuddin talks about, or the great Imam
Sahib of Jama Masjid talks about, is also not the Islam of the Indian
people. We, the elite of India, and the people are living in different
worlds.

What is the Shahi Imam anyway? And why do we keep calling

him Shahi Imam? Why not just the Imam of Jama Masjid? I think
that we, over the past few centuries, have got too much attached

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to royalty, royal ways, royal manners --not the royal ways of the
people, but to those of the alien despots. So we keep talking about
the Islamic royalty, the Sultanate, or the Lodhis, or the Mughals, and
so on. What kind of royal rulers were they anyway? They were tot-
tering, most of them, and most of the time! And they were not the
rulers of the whole of India. I think the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangha and the Bharatiya Janata Party must partly be held respon-
sible for exaggerating the extent of Muslim rule. The historians of
course are responsible for originating such conceptions. But the his-
torians do not matter, these people do.
What was Muslim rule in India? What were its dimensions? At
no particular time Muslim rule extended to more than half of India.
And, what is the period? I would say from about 1200 to around
1700, around 1690, in fact, because the power of Aurangzeb is bro-
ken by then. The British keep the myth of ruling in the name of the
Mughal rulers of Delhi till 1857. But the British did it in the name
of the Nawab of Arcot too! The Nawab of Arcot is a camp follower
of the British. He is a boy of 16, when he joins them around 1748
and he lives till 1790. Then his son, or some kin, becomes the suc-
cessor. And till 1799, when Karnataka is taken over by the British
formally and legally, till then he is only the Nawab of Arcot. The
day they take over Karnataka, he is turned out, and then termed as
the Nawab of Karnataka.
This is the British way of doing things, of establishing legiti-
macy. And we have fallen for that. We have rejoiced in it. Ram
Manohar Lohia used to say that if only Jawaharlal Nehru could have
admitted that he was only the son of a Thanedar, not of a great aris-
tocrat, it would have been better for him and the country. Because,
what is this matter of being descended from great aristocracy? A few
thousand Muslim families, perhaps most of them direct descendants
of Arabs, Turks, Afghans, Iranians, etc., also unfortunately seem to
feel the way Jawaharlal Nehru did. Whether he acquired this attitude
from them, or they from him, may be worth enquiring.
Why can’t we say we are descendants of ordinary men? Or, say
that we are all descended from Srirama, Srikrishna, or some other
great epic hero. And if we do that, then all of us, not only a select
few, must trace our descent to such a great hero. This whole busi-
ness of splitting the society into a few and the rest is wrong. We
do such splitting and naturally the larger component of the society

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has no interest in what the few do. And then nothing happens in the
society any more.
Look at what has been happening in India for the last 45 years.
Nothing has moved. I don’t mean that the last 45 years are wasted.
Nothing is wasted. But nothing very much has come out of it, except
that we have survived those 45 years! That is all that we have done.

When I talk of these matters, people say, “But then we cannot give
up centralism! Centralism is so precious, the world wants central-
ism. How can we give up centralism?” But what do we have to do
with the world? If centralism does not suit us, if it is not according
to our capacities, then how can we keep it going? What will it de-
liver for us? And, if we are keeping centralism only to be protected
from Bangladesh or Pakistan, it is not really worth keeping.
We must have a system that delivers what we want, and we must
know what we want. Or, let us say that we have become protected
territories. Perhaps for 20 years we were, in a way, the protected
territories of the Russians, now we may become the protected
territories of western Europe or the United States of America. If that
is what we want then let us say so. At least it would be clear, it
would be in the open, and at some stage we would probably come
out of it honourably.

In this kind of situation a society, a nation, begins to splinter. It is no

wonder that in this situation the ordinary people of India have their
grievances, some ancient, some of them more recent. From time to
time they try to join together to redress one grievance or the other.
For example, for the last six months a major movement is going on
against liquor in Andhra Pradesh. Women are leading it. Probably
tens of thousands of women are involved. Maybe lakhs are involved.
It is indeed a great event that these women of India, or of Andhra
Pradesh, have stood up and have given this fight and are still at it.
And if they can give a fight against arrack today, they can fight
against other issues tomorrow. They can fight for India, for her free-
dom and her honour.
It is in this sense of the people of India getting together to give
a fight to redress some grievance of theirs that I look at Ayodhya.

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Of course one could ignore Ayodhya, ignore the Babri Masjid.

One need not even see it. One doesn’t have to see everything. After
all about 50 lakh people visit Varanasi every year, maybe more than
50 lakhs. I suppose most of them also visit the Visvanatha temple.
And my feeling is that most of these people who visit the
Visvanatha temple are not aware of the mosque there. Unless, of
course, somebody tells them. They by themselves are not likely to
be aware of the mosque. Because what have they got to do with
that mosque?
The other day someone mentioned that there is no mention of
Babri Masjid in the Ramacharitamanas of Goswami Tulasidas.2
Why should there be a mention of Babri Masjid in the
Ramacharitamanas? The Ramacharitamanas is not a historical
record of that time. Tulasidas is not recounting what is happening
from year to year in the 16th century. He is concerned about some-
thing larger, something precious to him. What he is concerned about
possibly may not seem larger than the events of his time to some of
us, but it certainly is precious to him. So he may not be bothered
about the Babri Masjid.
Similarly these people, who come to pray at the Visvanatha
temple, come there and are not bothered to notice the mosque.
But if their attention is drawn then they are indeed disturbed.
And their attention is drawn from time to time by various people.
It has not begun to happen only in the last 45 years, and this draw-
ing of attention has been done not only by the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangha or the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or even the
Bharatiya Janata Party. A whole lot of sanyasis go around India,
telling about what has happened to our country in the past and what
is happening in it at present. People listen, most of it they ignore.
But then at some stage something becomes an issue, it becomes an
issue of honour.
And we know that there is so much dishonour, which we try to
digest the best we can. But there are limits. And when the limits are
crossed we simply remove ourselves from public activity, we detach
ourselves from certain parts of public life, and become more private,
more and more private, more and more shrunk within ourselves.

2[S. Guhan, referred to earlier, pp.77-8.--ed.]

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This process has gone on in our society for a very long time, espe-
cially during the last one hundred and fifty years, but perhaps since
much earlier. Perhaps we have been shrinking like this for the last
3 or 4 hundred years, at least in north India, though not so much
in the south. But there must have been repercussions of it in the
south also.

When a feeling arises that one is being particularly dishonoured by

some structure or the other, some left-over of the past or the other,
then there is no way to stop it. Because, what is the test that we
have attained freedom since 1947? How do I know as a craftsman,
or as a villager, or as a Chamar, or whatever, that I am free? Where
is that freedom? What is the test? Am I listened to more? Does the
collector stand up and shake hands with me? Does a member of
the planning commission meet me on equal terms? But he doesn’t;
neither the collector, nor the member of the planning commission.
And, I am not talking only of the present members of the planning
commission. I am talking of the members of the first planning
commission itself, who were supposed to have been much more
patriotic and who were brought up in the traditions of the freedom
struggle. Even they would not have stood up for an ordinary
Indian, and talked with him like an equal. Even they were con-
temptuous of the people.
So what does the ordinary man do? How does he know that he
is living in a free country? Some test has to be there. Then he would
say that they have not been able to do much about his food, his
clothing, his housing and so on. He may say that it is alright, but that
he must express his sensibilities, his sensitivities, in some form.

There is a note of the late 18th century, of around 1770, about the
Indian peasant. It is written by one of the then judges of the Calcutta
high court, Le Maistre, and he recounts how in his view the mind of
the Indian peasant works. It is about one page note, where the Indian
peasant recounts what has happened to him over a long period. The
peasant recounts what his rent was in the beginning, how it was
increased, and he remembers that it was increased some ten times.
And, he keeps on reminding himself of many other similar

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misfortunes. And then he says, perhaps a day will come, when all
this will disappear.3
So these are the people who constitute India. They are waiting
for the day when all these alien constructs will disappear from their
life. Then, their attention is drawn to places like Ayodhya, or to
Varanasi, or to what my friend Sita Ram Goel says about the 3,000
mosques which have been built over temples in India.4 When their
attention is drawn to such and similar things a time comes when
they say, “But at least we should do something about this!” There is
of course lethargy. There is the Indian indolence. But still people get
mobilised. And they say let us do something about this.
So they go to such a place one year. Not much happens. Only
ceremonial rituals take place, ceremonials of all sorts are performed.
They go there the next year, they go the third year. And then people
begin saying that these people, who had drawn their attention to it,
don’t mean business, they are just tricking us. They used to say that
even in 1977-78. Of course, people were very happy then that the
Janata government had come in Delhi. But within a year a large
number of people had begun saying, we wish Indira Gandhi were
back. And she was back within another year and a half.

It is possible that on the 6th of December, 1992 some big conspiracy

was hatched by the prime minister of India, or by the Indian police
forces, or by the Indian army, or by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the
Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha,
or by the Bajarang Dal, or the Siva Sena -- by all of them together,
or perhaps separately -- to demolish this mosque. It is possible. But,
it is also possible that none of these parties themselves were capa-
ble of doing this, or had even thought of this. Because, these people,
those of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad,
etc., they probably wanted to prolong the whole affair. They perhaps

3[The note of Le Maistre on the Indian peasant is reproduced as the

Supplementary Note 7, pp.258.--ed]
4[Sita Ram Goel, ‘Let the Mute Witnesses Speak: First List of around 2000
Masjids, Mazars, Maqbaras, Dargahs and other Muslim monuments which stand
on the site and/or are built from materials of deliberately demolished Hindu
Temples’, in Sita Ram Goel and others, Hindu Temples: What happened to them:
A Preliminary Survey, Voice of India, Delhi, 1990, pp. 62-181.--ed]

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222 DHARAMPAL

merely wanted to have a big tamasha, a grand show, year after year.
Because, we live on such tamashas. We have had threats from
Pakistan for 45 years, we live on that. We move from crisis to crisis,
so that we don’t have to do anything in India for the people of India.
So this could have dragged on. I’m sure the Bharatiya Janata
Party would have happily allowed it to drag on for some more time.
I do not mean that Lal Krishna Advani or anybody else in particu-
lar wanted it to drag on. But as a party the Bharatiya Janata Party
would have preferred that. The Congress has been playing this
game of keeping various tamashas going for decades now, and the
Bharatiya Janata Party is no different from the Congress, or the
Janata Dal, or the leftist parties. All of them are about the same.
Even Devilal behaves similarly, though he claims to be a great
peasant leader.
But, either because of a conspiracy or because of the initiative
of the people, the structure crumbled. They demolished the struc-
ture. And, when they demolished it, and when I read about it next
morning or perhaps heard about it from somebody, I really did feel
relieved. My feeling is that most of the people sitting here also
would have felt the same. There of course are people here who are
secular, who are not affected by the Bharatiya Janata Party or the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha, etc. But even they I believe
would have felt relieved in a way. You know the kind of feeling one
has at the end of a prolonged illness of an old man. There is sorrow,
but there is also relief. And I think most Indians would have had
this feeling of relief in this case. The feeling of relief could have
also been accompanied by great happiness or great anger. These
emotions can all go together.
Later, of course people had to strike different poses; they had to
adopt public postures. And, there was rioting, there was police ac-
tion, and there were police atrocities, perhaps. But our police is
highly over-stretched, and we have to deploy the army to back the
police system. Because we don’t have that much police. I think for
every one thousand citizens we have much fewer policemen than
what are there in Britain, or in the United States of America.
Therefore, perhaps half our army was posted at three or four hun-
dred different places within the country. There was rioting, there
was police action, and there were police atrocities, and people got
killed, and a few thousands died.

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But supposing the structure were not demolished. What would

have happened? The frustration that it would have generated around
the country would have been unbearable. I don’t think anybody
could have controlled the consequences of such frustration. Even if
the great Indira Gandhi or the great Jawaharlal Nehru were to come
back, they couldn’t have done it. Jawaharlal Nehru couldn’t do any-
thing even in 1949, when the murtis, the idols, were installed at
Ayodhya. Because, after all he knew the mood of the people.
And a political leader has to act according to the mood of the
people. He can only do what is possible, what is acceptable. He can
do no more. May be a Stalin could do more. But even that is not cer-
tain. Because whatever Stalin did crumbled at some stage. And,
Stalin must have achieved certain things for the Soviet Union or for
Russia. We cannot probably achieve that much, because we are not
Stalins. We are not structured that way. We are not like Europeans.
We are Indians. We are indolent. We move slowly. We want rest
after every little step we take. We couldn’t have done what Stalin
did. We couldn’t have crushed the people.
And so I would say that it was the best possible thing for India
that this demolition came on that day, whatever the later
consequences. Of course the killings that took place subsequent to
the demolition are very unfortunate. But killings have been going
on almost routinely in India. Such killing have been taking place
not only between the Hindus and the Muslims, or between the
Muslims and the police. All sorts of killings have been going on. I
do not say that the amount of killing that has been routinely
happening in India is more than what it used to be before 1947.
Perhaps not. Because the amount of killing which went on in India
in the 19th century is colossal. And, of course, we do not have so
many starvation deaths now as we had in the late 18th and the
whole of the 19th century, though we are still largely underfed,
under-nourished and under-clothed.

The Ayodhya events have to some extent made us reflect on our

problems. The amount that has been written and talked about
Ayodhya is enormous. There are probably hundreds and thousands
of forums, where this issue is being discussed. Various positions
are being taken, long cherished positions are being altered, and

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so on. In the midst of such intense retrospection and discussion

there is a possibility that from this issue, we shall move to other
issues.
Of course it is possible that we won’t move to any other issues
concerning Indian polity. We shall stick to Ayodhya and maybe
build the temple, and then put a seal of approval on Sri Advani’s
statement of 2 or 3 years ago, when he offered to close all disputes
if only the Muslims would agree on Ayodhya. Incidentally, I hap-
pened to be there when Sri Advani made his famous statement. I
heard him. And, he said that if the Muslims were to accept the mov-
ing of the Babri Masjid --there was no question of demolition at that
time -- then he would try to persuade his people and his party that
they should not demand any other moving or demolition, at Varanasi
or Mathura, or anywhere else.
I was even then surprised at Sri Advani’s statement. Maybe as
a political leader he has to say such things. Though at that time
there didn’t seem to be any particular occasion or urgency for his
statement. It was not a very important event that he was participat-
ing in while he made that statement. He was probably releasing
two books at that time in the Himachal Bhavan, Delhi. It was no
great event. But he made that statement. And many other people
made similar statements. Some people said that the restoration of
three historical temples would be enough, and others proposed
other formulas.
But how can anybody decide on such issues? For that matter
how can anybody decide that certain temples won’t have to be de-
molished? Or, certain churches won’t have to be demolished? In any
case we seem to have too many of the churches, and also in many
parts large numbers of ancient and later temples, which have no re-
sources or persons to look after them, and there are also no ideas or
plans of using them as centres of culture, education or crafts.
I was recently looking at the 1981 census data for Uttar Pradesh.
Uttar Pradesh has only about one and a half lakh Christians. And
there are some 58 to 60 districts in Uttar Pradesh. This would
amount to some 3 to 5 thousands Christians on the average per
district. But the number of churches, and the number of Christian
educational institutions, etc., in most districts seems to be fairly
large. It would seem that many of these churches and other Christian
institutions probably have nobody to attend to.

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The same would be true of Hindu temples in many areas. There

would be many temples that have no devotees. For what do we
keep having these temples? We even keep on saying that Hindu
temples in Pakistan should be preserved. For what? There are no
Hindus there, except a few in Sindh. Why do we want the preser-
vation of things which are of no interest to anybody? We would
probably have to enact municipal laws and evolve policies so that
these issues can be handled in a reasonable manner. After all we
have to live as reasonable people and reasonable beings. And we
have to interlink amongst ourselves and with the places around us
in a reasonable manner.

And why have we begun to create this picture of monoliths? Who

are these monolithic Muslims and monolithic Hindus? Have they no
other connections? Does a Hindu have no other identity except as a
Hindu? But he is so many other things at the same time. He belongs
to a locality, he is part of a kinship system, he is part of a profes-
sional system. And a professional system need not mean only theo-
retical physics, or engineering or some similarly high and esoteric
activity. It could be carpentry, it could be shoe-making, or leather-
working, or anything else. Similarly the Muslims are Muslims in
only one sense. They are half a dozen other things also. Why are we
clubbing people like that? Why are we making them shrink into
only one identity?
I think our whole outlook would have to change. And if Ayodhya
symbolises such a movement in one way or the other, then it is a wel-
come development. It doesn’t matter what the leaders of the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad want, or their opponents want, or the various editors
of newspapers want. Because all these leaders of political and other
opinion do not matter. They would all fade away in another 10 years.
These are largely residues of the British period. These are all people
born in the early decades of the 20th century. They would end by the
end of this century. So, they don’t matter. But others, the younger
people, those born after independence, they matter.

And this world of which we are so scared! Why are we so scared

of the world? The world has always been like the way it is today.

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The world is violent. The world has self-interests. Nobody is there

for charity. We have had experience of the great civilising mission
of Europe. It had a great mission. It conquered the world. It tried to
change the face of man. This would go on. It would happen again
and again. They can do it again, perhaps in the name of environ-
ment, or in the name of human rights, or something else.
Islam also has been fighting. Islam started conquest soon after
the death of Mohammed in the 7th century A.D. And, within 50
years Islam had reached Spain in the west and Sindh in the east.
And this vast conquest was not achieved through modernism. It
was not done through modern technology produced in the great
Institutes of Technology, or through the great discoveries of mod-
ern science. That conquest was achieved through sheer spirit, de-
termination and will. They did it. Now this can happen again. And
the people who did it, had very little in terms of material advan-
tage. Europe, when it started on its world conquest, did not pos-
sess much more than the people whom it conquered. Similar was
the case with Islam.
There are people in the world today who possess great machin-
ery and means. They have a higher standard of living, and more eco-
nomic goods, and so on. But, I don’t think this is to the point. The
point is, what is our spirit? What do we want? Do we have ingenu-
ity? Can we make our point? Do we have a point to make as
Indians? If we do not have a point to make as Indians, we should re-
tire. We should give up. Because the world is not for those who have
nothing to achieve of their own, who have nothing special to aspire
to, who only wish to be allowed to follow the leaders.

I am amazed at ourselves, and the way we react to any assertion of

Indian identity and Indian sensitivity. One can say that the ordinary
people are ignorant, that they are moved by passions and emotions.
But even Mahatma Gandhi -- perhaps we should stop taking his
name for the next 10 or 20 years -- even he reacts to events that im-
pinge on our identity and sensitivity as Indians. There is a temple
desecrated in Gulbarga in 1924 or 1925, and he reacts to the dese-
cration within a few months. And then two years later he goes to
Gulbarga and makes a speech about the events. It is about one and

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a half page speech as reported in the Collected Works of Mahatma

Gandhi. I shall read you a passage from it:5

“Much as I would like to pour out my agony before

you, I know that it will be a cry in the wilderness. I there-
fore daily send out my prayer to God: ‘Lord, do somehow
deliver us from this conflagration.’ But I should be untrue
to my creed if as a believing and satyagrahi Hindu I dis-
guise from you the feelings within me. When I went into
the temple I was shown the spot where the idol was re-
moved and the Nandi was desecrated. I tell you the sight
pained me. You may call me an idolator if you will. I see
God everywhere and in everything. I tell you God will
never approve of these acts of desecration. Whilst in
Yervada Jail, I read Maulana Shibli’s Life of the Prophet, I
also read Usva-e-Sahaba and can say that those who did the
acts were wrong, that Islam never sanctioned such things
and they were guilty before God and man…”

Now if a man like him, who is so restrained, who uses so few words,
who does not ever expend emotion without reason, if this man can
say this, then how much more, thousand times more, would other
people feel? One would say that he was reacting to something which
had happened two years previously, and these people are reacting
to something which happened 500 years ago. But if people feel
concerned about things which are not only two years old, but sev-
eral hundred years old, what is wrong about it? Human beings are
like that. They feel concerned about old things, and new things.
And, we have to treat human beings as human beings, they are not
gods, they are not sanyasis, they are ordinary grihasthas, ordinary
householders, who are irrational, rational, angry, quiet, indolent, and

5[The desecration of the Sharana Basappa Tempele at Gulbarga took place

in August 1924. Mahatma Gandhi reacted almost immediately and with great
sadness. For his detailed reaction, see, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi,
vol. 25, pp.45-48. More than two years later during his visit to Gulbarga he
again took up the issue in a speech he made on February 22, 1927 in the court-
yard of the temple. The quotation is from that speech. See, The Collected
Works, vol. 33, pp. 114.--ed.]

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so on. And they react in various ways. And, when the emotion is
spent, they also settle down.

In any case, of what use would this argument be about history hav-
ing gone stale, when the Rashtrapati Bhavan is demolished or the
buildings of the planning commission; or if the south block, or the
north block are brought down. And these will be brought down. I
don’t think this will take very long, another 50 years perhaps.
Tughalakabad has gone, other places have gone. The British colo-
nial structures will go the same way.
These things happen in societies oft and again. And these have
to happen here. Unless they happen, all this debris which we have
accumulated in ourselves, in our spirit, in our body politic, in our in-
stitutions, etc., would not disappear. And, I think the task really is
that the debris which has accumulated has to be washed away. And,
it is not only the Muslim and the Christian debris, it is also a lot of
Hindu debris that needs to be removed. We have been probably ac-
cumulating this debris from the very ancient period, perhaps since
the last great cleansing that the gods undertook for us in the form of
the Mahabharata war.
Unless this house cleaning is done, I do not think that we would
reach anywhere. We can of course keep on as we are going on
now -- as a stagnant society in which about a million families can
have a living which in a minor way is similar to living in Britain,
Europe or the United States of America. And a fraction of these one
million have some sense of power, they have some authority. There
are perhaps some fifty thousand officers in India, or a hundred thou-
sand at the most, who can order other people around. It is, of course,
possible to continue like this.

But if we think this is enough, then we should say so. And we

should say that the others, the 800 million or more of Indians, don’t
matter. Let them die. Or, we should say that we will be responsible
for them, as Europeans were responsible for their populations.
Because Europeans did take responsibility for their people: both for
looking after them and for eliminating them. Europe did both, and
it does both even today, all over the world, and within itself. Europe

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 AYODHYA AND THE FUTURE INDIA 229

did not start cruelty abroad, it started cruelty at home, at least from
the time of Plato, and probably from much earlier. This fancy liberal
picture of Europe that many of us have is just not true. There is no
such picture. Jawaharlal Nehru may have believed in this picture,
Mahatma Gandhi did not. Mahatma Gandhi may have erred in many
other things; he did not err on this point.
Let us be clear. Do we want a European type of society, and do
we have the capacity to enforce it and keep it going? I don’t think
we have the capacity. We are too comfort-loving, we are too indo-
lent. We cannot do this. And so we will have to come to terms with
ourselves. We shall have to come to terms with what our people can
do and carry forward. They cannot carry impossible loads. And we
have been making them carry impossible loads. We have been liv-
ing in an impossible situation.

My feeling is that these women in Andhra who are agitating against

arrack, and also the people who assembled in Ayodhya on the 6th of
December, 1992, and many other people who are now stirring them-
selves to take care of many other things, are harbingers of something.
If what they are doing, and what they have done, reflects their inner-
most feelings -- rational or irrational, reasonable or unreasonable --
then there is a chance that we would be on the road to recovery and
to a different polity. Otherwise we would keep stumbling along.

DISCUSSION

Groupings of the people and the centralised state

RADHA RAJAN: Sir, your talk has been very disturbing. In the first
place, I don’t think you are much in favour of centralism. And, you
must have obviously thought of an alternative to centralism. I would
like to know what is this alternative?
From your talk I also gather that you find many of the
institutions and public places that we have accumulated to be
offensive to good sense. And therefore you find the demolition of

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the structure at Ayodhya to be justified. The structure, according to

you, had to come down because it was one of the more offensive
examples of the way we have messed up our public spaces. But the
perception of what is evil, what is unaesthetic and what is offensive
differs from person to person, from group to group. If groups of
people were to begin removing objects that seem offensive to them
for some reason, then there is going to be no end to the demolition
of institutions and structures that are causing us concern -- whether it
is the planning commission, or the Rashtrapati Bhavan, or the
mosques at Mathura and Kasi. I feel very strongly about this kind of
destruction. Because, for some other group of people some other
institutions or structures may be offensive. How do we settle what
is really offensive to good sense, and what merely seems offensive
because of the deviant perception of a particular group? How many
institutions and structures do we destroy? And where do we stop?
DHARAMPAL: I do not really understand what the centralism that we
keep talking about is. What we inherited from the British as the
centralised administration, and that we are so attached to, was a tot-
tering structure. It was tottering already in 1900, by the British
standards. It was unusable. They tried to patch it up by bringing in
some reforms here and there. But the patchwork didn’t work.
We inherited that tottering structure, we took it over, we tried to
plaster over the cracks, we got some stray experts from here and
there to help us with strutting up the structure. Such stray experts
had begun to arrive in India from different lands of the world al-
ready in 1948 and perhaps from even earlier, and we made much of
them. They helped us with this plan and that plan. There were also
some old plans about irrigation, power generation, engineering, and
technical education, etc., lying around since the 1920’s. We dusted
up those plans, and began to build structures like the Bhakra Dam
and institutions like the IIT’s of which we seem to be so proud.
But this tottering British frame, pasted over by stray institutions
and structures built according to long forgotten plans conceived by
the British for different times, and according to the advice received
from sundry experts invited from different parts of the world, does
not constitute any kind of centralised polity. What we have in the
name of centralised institutions are merely the tottering residues of
the British Empire. Some parts of these residues the British had in-
herited from the earlier Delhi rulers, or what the British pretended

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 AYODHYA AND THE FUTURE INDIA 231

were the earlier Delhi rulers and their institutions. These residues
do not work. And these kinds of institutions and structures hardly
constitute centralism of any sort.
We should have created our own centralism, if we wanted to. We
did not. We did nothing, either about institutions, or about laws, or
about rules of office procedures. We have about 300 manuals left
behind by the British, which govern the working of the departments
of government, and of different offices, police stations, treasuries
and so on. Most of the regulations were created between 1770 and
1830, in the Boards of Revenue, Military Boards, and other impe-
rial structures, and later put together in these manuals with some
modifications here and there. But, even our constitution was con-
structed similarly from old imperial regulations and acts, selections
from which were brought together in a voluminous text with some
minor modifications and additions picked up from different consti-
tutions of the world.
Your other worry is about what would happen if groups begin to
do things their way. But the people of India, joined together in
groups formed around their communities, their localities, their
castes, their professions and so on, will do things in their own ways.
Who are we to tell them not to do this or that?
I remember having been in a party in Moradabad some five or
six year ago, where a number of police officers of the level of DIG’s
and SSP’s were present. It was around the time of Holi, and the
police officers were talking about the people of a dominantly
Muslim locality nearby. They were saying that the Muslims of that
place and other towns around Moradabad were objecting to the
invasion of television into their lives, they were worried that it was
having a bad influence on their people and was spoiling their
children. And the very responsible police officers in that party were
wondering how the Muslims could dare to say such things? They
were agreed that the television programmes were indeed bad, but
they could not understand what right the Muslims had to object to
them. The Muslims, they were certain, could not be allowed to stop
their children from watching television. In fact, they felt that they,
as high police officers of the area, could issue orders proscribing
such objections to the television on the part of the Muslims.
What is this? We should sort out our minds and our information.
Who is to run this country, the officers of this decrepit system

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inherited from the imperial masters, or the people of India? We can-

not keep this game of imperial governance going. This game has
been played out. It has become purposeless. It doesn’t even give any
enjoyment to the players, not even to the officers of the Indian ad-
ministrative and police services who run the country.
We should remember that the people have their ways of bending
the strongest of the systems. They removed the statues of Lenin
from all over Russia, and it happened much before Yeltsin came into
the picture. At that time the Moscow News came up with the advice
that only one statue of Lenin, erected at his birthplace, would be
enough. If this could happen in Russia, it can happen anywhere.
Somebody here mentioned that our people should have been ed-
ucated to make them appreciate the virtues of democracy. But, we
know what the educated of India are doing. The money making is
being done by the educated. Large moneys, in crores or hundreds of
crores -- everything is in hundreds of crores in India somehow -- are
being made by the educated people, by the ones who have been to
Oxford and Cambridge, and the current counterparts of such institu-
tions in the United States of America and elsewhere.
RADHA RAJAN: Sir, do we then transfer our hatred or objections from
institutions to people?
DHARAMPAL: No, I am not saying that. What I am saying is that the
Indian situation today is one of chaos and disorder. It is a situation
in which nothing functions. Because, this is what the British system
was structured for. The system was created so that all tensions, all
resistance, all initiative of the people could be absorbed and aborted,
so that control would become easier. They tried various other means
of controlling the Indian people. They tried Christianisation, they
tried westernisation, they tried these queer ideas of Indo-European
Brotherhood. Nothing worked. None of this could subdue the Indian
people. Ultimately the only thing that they could do was to make a
system that would absorb everything and squelch all initiative. In
that sense it is a well devised system. It can deliver order. But it can-
not deliver dignity and prosperity. If we want only order, then let us
say so. Let us not then talk of progress, advance, economic better-
ment and similar other things. Those cannot be delivered by what
the British created. Order can be. If we cherish such order of the
grave, we should continue to have this system. And we should pro-
tect it to the best of our abilities.

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 AYODHYA AND THE FUTURE INDIA 233

Religion and politics

SOUNDARARAJAN: Sir, there is no place of worship in India today

that is free from the taint of money, or some vested interest or the
other. The next stage of this mixing up of gross material interests
with religion is the politics of religion that we are witnessing today.
What happened in Ayodhya on December 6 was the culmination of
a series of steps that flowed from the rampant political abuse of re-
ligion. Should we not keep religion as a completely private affair, so
that such conflicts around religion are avoided?
DHARAMPAL: Who are we to decide this? If human beings are other-
wise, if they want to mix up politics and religion, and various other
things, as they have been doing for thousands of years, do you think
we shall change it? We have had great prophets and great saints, not
only we in India but in other lands also. They could not change
human nature. So, let us only talk of what is possible and reason-
able, not the impossible.
This earth is not meant for the gods. It is for ordinary human be-
ings, with their human passions and human emotions. These pas-
sions and emotions are of all kinds, good and bad are all mixed up
there. Human nature is a mixed business. And in this mixed up
business, the arrangements have to be such that most things keep
going on in a satisfactory manner. This functionality is all that is re-
quired, this is what social life is all about, and this is all that the
state can deliver.
The state cannot revolutionise human nature. This whole busi-
ness of imagining that artificial structures created by man would
revolutionise human life is meaningless. About 50 years ago we
used to hear that man will be completely changed by the Soviet ex-
periment. It was said that there would be a different man by the end
of the twentieth century. There were great books written about it in
the 1930’s and 1940’s. What happened? Where has that new man
gone? And what happened of that great Soviet experiment?
Or take Europe. It has been a Christian area, at least formally,
for 1700 years. I am told that the reality was somewhat different.
Some areas of Germany could be fully Christianised only by the
end of the 15th century. Even then it is around 500 years of Chris-
tian living that Europe has experienced. How much violence has
been perpetrated by the Christian Europe in these 500 years? Their

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234 DHARAMPAL

saviour is a messenger of peace, isn’t He? But in spite of the saviour

there was no peace. It was probably not possible.
Why don’t we reflect on what has happened in history and
recognise the limitations that man has been subject to even in the
best of societies? We have to have a pragmatic attitude. Our sights
must be lowered. Because by keeping our sights so high, we’ll fail
much more.

Hindutva and Harijans

VAIRAVAN: Sir, I have a doubt that the appeal of the Hindutva
ideology is confined only to the so-called upper sections of Hindu
society. It seems that the Harijans and other so-called lower castes
will never be attracted by Hindutva. The obstacles in the path of
resurgence of Hinduism thus come not from the Muslims or other
minorities, but from within the Hindu fold, from the groups and
castes that have been defined to be low within the Hindu hierarchy.
Gaining their support, I believe, is more important than building the
temple for Srirama.
DHARAMPAL: I don’t know if the Harijans have the kind of feelings
we are attributing to them. If Hindutva is defined in some peculiar
manner, it may be that they would not appreciate that. But if
Hindutva means being Hindu, then I don’t think the Harijans will
keep out. I do not believe that the Harijans are any less Hindu. They
are perhaps more Hindu than most of us. Their faith is greater, oth-
erwise they would have left Hinduism ages ago. They haven’t left
it. They are there. They are attached to it much more than I would
be, or many of us sitting here would be. We have escape-routes, we
can run away from Hinduism, we can become moderners, we can
become westerners; and we have become westerners. They, the
Harijans and others, have not. They have stuck to Hinduism. They
don’t even have rights of entry to the great temples despite the con-
stitutional provisions, but they have their little temples and they
have preserved the faith. I don’t think they are a problem. The way
we define Hindutva may of course be a problem.
Let me tell you of an experience I recently had in a village
near here. It is in the Chengalpattu district, about 50 kilometers
from Madras. I have gone there a few times. It is an old village.
There are still some Brahman families there. And the habitation

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is divided into the main village, the OOr, and what you call the
Chery, the Harijan hamlet. It is a large hamlet. And, there is a man
there, who is a school teacher. I don’t know any Tamil, he knows
some English. And, through a little English and a little translation, I
was able to converse with him a bit. We went through many
subjects. I asked whether they happened to go to the village temple.
Incidentally, there is a beautiful temple in the Oor. It is ancient,
perhaps about 800 years old. So I asked, “Do your people go to the
village temple?” He said, “We can go, nobody would stop us. But
the people of the Oor would not like it. So we don’t go.”
Then the talk went a bit further. And he just mentioned that his
daughter got married to somebody who set up house in the Oor, in
the lane where the Karnam, the village accountant, lived. It is one of
the major lanes of the village, and every year the rathayatra of the
temple deity used to pass through this lane. But the year the daugh-
ter of this school teacher in the Chery and her husband began living
in that lane, the rathayatra stopped entering the lane!
He was telling me this story without much emotion. And when
he told me about the rathayatra avoiding the lane where her daugh-
ter lived, I looked at him and wondered what would happen to that
beautiful, ancient temple. The Brahmans cannot look after it. There
are only 15 or 16 of the Brahman families left there. There were
many more about 200 years ago, but they have left. And those who
are still there in the village are mostly older people. They too would
disappear in another 10 or 20 years. What will happen to the temple
then? If the Harijans are to be kept away from the temple, who
would look after it? Who would protect it?
The Harijans, who could have looked after that great temple,
have created their own little temple near where they live, and they
have their own fairly grand temple festival every year.
So now, how does one define Hindutva? And who is for it and
who is against? It is very difficult to say. There are different images
of Hindutva that different people have. And because we have had a
bad time for 200 years, or for much longer in some areas, we are in
a bad shape. We are probably accustoming ourselves to breathe in
the fresh air of freedom after those centuries of slavery. And may
be one day we’ll be able to reflect on these issues and find solu-
tions. But it could also be that we are usually somewhat slow in
these matters, and by the time we are ready to solve a problem

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236 DHARAMPAL

we find that the problem is gone, and we have got into some other
difficulty. This has been happening to us in history. This perhaps is
the Indian tragedy. I don’t know.

Gandhiji’s way
SEKHAR RAGHAVAN: Sir, I would like to know what would have
been Mahatma Gandhi’s reaction if he had survived to see this
demolition.
DHARAMPAl: He wouldn’t have been too happy, I think. But, he
would have had a different attitude towards the event. Or, if he had
felt as disturbed as most of the vocal sections of India claim that
they have been, if he had felt that such an event would be a national
shame as many of our commentators have described it, then he
would have staked his life to avert the event. That is the kind of man
he was. I don’t think he would have gone the way we are going
about it. He would probably have said that we must sit down and
sort it out, but he would have done that much earlier, in 1948, 1949
or 1950 itself. He would not have allowed it to fester, the way we
have done.
RADHA RAJAN: When they did not heed the Mahatma on the ques-
tion of partition, do you think they would have heeded him on this?
DHARAMPAL: You are right that he was bypassed at that stage. My
feeling is that he is on the losing side from around 1944, and he
senses it, and other people sense it, too. And because other people
sense it, they take advantage of the situation. In any case the world
is encouraging these other people, the world wants them. For exam-
ple, in Roosevelt papers there is abundant evidence of Roosevelt’s
insistence that everything should be done to ensure that India stays
within the western orbit. Obviously, Mahatma Gandhi was not the
man who would keep India within the western orbit. So they wanted
other people to take over. And thus the events happened, the way
they happened.
But if this man had lived longer and if he still had the spirit in
him, he would have thought of ways of once again mobilising the
Indian people, who were his source of power and authority. And
then perhaps nobody in India could have challenged him. Because,
after all, he had a close association of 30 years with the Indian peo-
ple. Then certainly things in India would have moved differently.

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 AYODHYA AND THE FUTURE INDIA 237

They would not have moved in an ideal, utopian way --I wouldn’t
say that. But many things, which have remained unsorted and ig-
nored under the illusion that we are now entering the modern world
and these things do not matter, would have been attended to.
After independence we did not attend to matters that needed at-
tention. We were swept off our feet by the idea of modernity and
progress; we were carried away by the magic of these words. And,
for about 5 to 10 years we lived on the basis of that magic. Then
these foreign experts, like Rostov, came and pronounced that we
were about to reach the “take-off point”. And my feeling is that the
day Rostov pronounced the take-off of modernity in India, the
whole thing began to collapse the next day.
So modernism did not work; the older problems remained unat-
tended; and our political situation became more and more compli-
cated. The complications arose not because of the outside world
alone; we also had more problems within ourselves, within our so-
ciety. The splintering and the fracturing of the society became more
and more acute.
And then we began to look at politics in a manner that, though
seen as normal in the world outside India, was new to us. We began
to look upon politics as the game of power, as the means to ill-
gotten riches, as the means for acquiring control over men, and so
on. The older purpose of Indian politics, the purpose that had made
politics in India one of the noblest forms of service to the nation, the
purpose that had prevailed in Indian politics from 1920 to 1950,
disappeared. A new type of politician emerged on the scene, new
values began to rule the world of politics. And from around 1970 the
new culture became supreme. From then onwards everybody in
public life came to be seen as corrupt. Probably, the real extent of
corruption was not that large, but the way it was talked about,
everything, even if it was not corrupt, became corrupt. The mind got
obsessed with this.
We, the ruling elite, were thus further cut off from our people.
And since we were cut off from the world of the ordinary Indian, we
began living in a different world. We began cultivating people like
ourselves in the rest of the world. We have about half a million
Indian doctors, engineers, etc., outside the country. Thus we began
to belong to a world fraternity. We became some sort of universal
men, and universal women, who had no stakes in this country. And

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238 DHARAMPAL

this fraternity of the alienated now includes almost every Indian

who has some little access to resources and thus some possibility of
exhibiting some initiative.

I think the problem of India is very complicated. It is not easy to

handle. And it is perhaps not fair to blame any individual or any
group of people for this condition. There is so much accumulation
of the past, which we are unable to understand, interpret and link to-
gether. And, we also do not have the courage to throw it away. So
we feel stuck in the mire. And, therefore, those of us who find the
opportunity run away from this sticky business, and try to find
refuge in the world and its ways, that seem relatively simpler and
easier to grasp.
We the elite seem to have given up on the problem of India. We
have no clue how to solve it, and how to make India come into her-
self again. We are merely surviving; and that too at a rather low
level of existence, at the mercy of the rest of the world. It is no won-
der that in this situation the people of India take things into their
own hands once in a while and try to show us the way.

Centre for Policy Studies, Madras, 1993 www.cpsindia.org