Building a besieged India after Mumbai 26/11:
Re-discovering India’s Sangam Humanities

Once upon a time, a man tried to dig a well. After a while, some of his friends advised him not to proceed further, when they realized that it would not fetch any water. He refused to listen and continued digging more and more. Then, after sometime, his wife advised him to stop digging. He refused and told her that he would not stop now as the discontinuation of digging work would be seen as his failure. – A Zen story

I am afraid that our generation is behaving like the greedy hero of this Zen story. I would like to recall a Nehruvian dictum: nation building is an inter-generational activity. Each generation should contribute to nation building. In the process, each generation should provide a significant link between the past generation and the future generation. For, our future is watching us. They would like to ask what our contributions to them are. I am afraid our generations have no significant contributions to our posterity. There is no significant story of our won sacrifices, no proper recognition of the painful sacrifices of our past generation, no proper links between our achievements with their sacrifices. If this is scenario obtained today, Nehru’s worst fear has come true.

We are behaving as if we belong to the second generation of the Film BHAGBAN, proud of our achievements and scornful of the sacrifices of our parents (first generation) meant for our well-being. The result is that the next generation denounces their parents’ actions in the film. Our action resembles that of the second generation in this film. The generation that is watching us would disown us, just as we have disowned our parents, have forgotten their painful sacrifices, wonder what kind of sacrifices they made by partitioning India and so on. We blame them for their territorial sacrifices which are presumed to have troubled us, forgetting altogether that our development story is in a sense deeply connected with their territorial sacrifices. This is why I recall Nehru as above. This filmic story is a true reflection of our national generations.

If we do not wake up after Mumbai 26/11, our posterity is likely to inherit a nation torn between religious communities driven from away from each other, beset with terrorism and fundamentalism. Terrorism is growing like a wild fire from Dang to Kandhamal, from Kashmir to Kerala. It has involved youths from different religious communities. Would you like to gift this nation to our posterity? In which case, our posterity would realize that our generation did nothing to root out terrorism or fundamentalism, refused to rebuild a nascent nation further, enjoyed the fruits of the first generation nationalists (like the third scientific manpower, etc.,) and so on and made no sacrifice and therefore worth burying these people in the labyrinth of history. The next generation would realize that our generation did nothing to do solve three important conflicts that have cumulatively produced terrorism: the Kashmir issues; Mandir-Masjid disputes and conversion controversies.

Can we wake up at least now after Mumbai 26/11, learn from sacrifices of our forefathers, and give up “the digging of a well” which has already produced varieties of terrorism for several reasons which we shall examine here. I am afraid our national generations – from the Left to the Right to the Liberal - have become too greedy to give up anything. On the contrary, we have begun to pretend about truth and hide behind it in the name of the Idea of India. We feel truth generates a lot of heat and it is better not to talk about it. When we are afraid of truth (s), when we frown at people from abroad or from inside when they reveal our truth(s), how could we rebuild the Idea of India further? For, we must realize India’s story of Sangam humanities is in shambles shaken not merely by terrorist and fundamentalist assaults but also by our crony secularism. There is no point in simply blaming anti-secular forces for weakening India. How long do we blame the Other for our fate? Again, we tend to pretend that there is no problem with our secular practices. Unless we revamp our crony secularism, unless we reform ourselves, we cannot rebuild our story of Sangam humanities, which is the essential meaning of the idea of India. Recall Nehru’s dictum. Next generation is watching us. Our pains should not be theirs too. We should gift them a better revamped India. That should be our sacrifice – a series of sacrifices- for our future generation.