Purushottam Agrawal - Who Is Bharat Mata? On History, Culture and the Idea of India: Writings by and on Jawaharlal Nehru

Born in 1955, Purushottam Agrawal served as member, Union Public Service Commission of India from 2007 to 2013. Before this, he was Chairperson, Centre of Indian Languages, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has also been Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Cambridge University (UK) and at El Colegio de Mexico. His book Akath Kahani Prem Ki: Kabir Ki Kavita Aur Unka Samay (2009) has been widely acclaimed as a path-breaking study of Kabir and his work. His other books include Hindi Serai: Astrakhan via Yerevan (2013), a travelogue which traces the history of Indian traders who settled in the Russian city of Astrakhan between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries; and Padmavat: An Epic Love Story (2018), an English translation of and commentary on Malik Muhammad Jayasis epic poem. In 2016

he published his first novel, NACOHUS , which constructs a Kafkaesque fantasy around the politics of hurt sentiments. Its English and Marathi translations will be published in late 2019.

A well-known panelist on TV debates, Agrawal hosted a unique show on books called Kitab on Rajya Sabha TV. He has also delivered several talks across the country. One of the most celebrated of these, also published as a monograph, was his Gandhi Peace Foundation lecture Majbooti ka naam Mahatma Gandhi (2005), which throws new light on the issues of violence and power.

Contents

Introduction

NEHRU ON I NDIA AND THE W ORLD

The Idea and the Making of India

Understanding India

The Search for India

The Indian Philosophical Approach

India Old and New

The Culture of the Masses

Ends and Means

Indian History and Icons

Ashoka, the Beloved of the Gods

The Influence of Indian Art Abroad Mathematics in Ancient India

South India Colonizes

Akbar

Ranjit Singh and Jai Singh

Vivekananda, Tagore and Gandhi

Making a New India

Address to the Prayag Mahila Vidyapitha Hindu and Muslim Communalism

Reality and Myth

Paradoxes

The Importance of the National Idea; Changes Necessary in India On Hyderabad and Kashmir: Forging a Nation Radio Address to the Nation Ahead of the 1951 General Election The Tribal Folk

The Dignity of Labour

The Middle Way

Defining Foreign Policy

Freedom and Licence

Children of the World

Interview with the Prime Minister

The National Movement

Inquilab Zindabad

How Britain Ruled India

The Dual Policy of the British Government The Record of British Rule

Contradictions of British Rule in India: Ram Mohan Roy, The Press, Sir William Jones, English Education in Bengal Experience of Lathi Charges

In Bareilly and Dehradun Gaols Communalism and Reaction

Struggle

The Karachi Resolution: 1931

Earthquake

A Visit to Gandhi Ji

The Last Phase: Nationalism Versus Imperialism, Helplessness of the Middle Classes, Gandhi Comes

Religion and Spirituality

Coconada and M. Mohamad Ali

What Is Religion?

What Is Hinduism?

The Acceptance and the Negation of Life Orthodox of All Religions Unite!

Religion, Philosophy and Science

On Religion

Jesus and Christianity

The Upanishads

Buddhas Teaching

Culture, Literature and Science

What Is Culture?

Foreword to Rajatarangini

The Epics: History, Tradition and Myth The Mahabharata

Literature in Hindi and in Other Languages Time in Prison: The Urge to Action

Supporting Writers and Poets

The Spirit of Science

ON N EHRU

Nehru on Nehru

We Want No Caesars

India and the World on Nehru

Jawahar Will be My Successor

Mahatma Gandhi

New Leaders and Their Different Ideologies Bhagat Singh

Maulana Azad on Nehru

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad

Leader of Our Legions

Vallabhbhai Patel

My Discovery of Jawaharlal

Aruna Asaf Ali

Nehru and Indian Science

Baldev Singh

Nehru, Press and Parliament

Nikhil Chakravartty

The Nehru Legacy in Planning

Sukhamoy Chakravarty

Growing Up in the Nehru Era

Kartar Singh Duggal

Some Early Memories

Ali Sardar Jafri

Mahatma ji and Pundit Ji are Great Souls of Our Times

Bhagwadacharya

Nehru and the Making of the Constitution Subhash C. Kashyap

Nehru and the Tribals B.K. Roy Burman

Nehru as Seen by an Economist

Jan Tinbergen

Poet, Thinker and Man of Action

Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah

The Will to Peace

Martin Luther King, Jr

Ever Human

Anu Bandyopadhyaya

Remembering Nehru

Amritlal Nagar

The Genius of Nehru

John Grigg

Dinkar on Nehru

Ramdhari Singh Dinkar

Man and Symbol, A Fragmentary Appreciation Norman Cousins

Memories of the Making of Gandhi

Richard Attenborough

First of the Afro-Asians

Lee Kuan Yew

A.B. Vajpayees Tribute to Nehru

Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Select Bibliography

Editors Note and Acknowledgements

Discarding Extremes in Favour of the Enlightened Middle Way

I write this introduction in May 2019, just days after the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was voted back to power with an impressive majority. Jawaharlal Nehru, the countrys first prime minister, passed away exactly fifty-five years ago. But if you were a dispassionate observer from another world covering the recently concluded elections, you would likely have come to the conclusion that Nehru was leading the opposition. He continues to be so alive to his detractors that he

his persona, his legacy, his worldviewwas attacked day in and day out during the political campaign, and even more assiduously in apolitical propaganda spread by every means of communication. Now that the most tireless and vocal of these detractors have emerged victorious in the national elections, you would expect the propaganda, abuse and hatred to recede. But it will not. Indeed, it cannot, for as long as any trace of Nehrus legacy remains, the victors will continue to feel defeated.

The renewed mandate for Narendra Modi, with an increased vote share despite indifferent performance, cannot be made light of by saying that he has not won the battle of ideas. That would be ignorance at best, delusion at worsteither way, it would be missing the thick woods for the trees. Narendra Modi, ubiquitous and larger-than-life today, is only a part of a far larger machine. The fact is, many commentators had failed to comprehend the real significance of the 2014 election result. It was not a mere regime change, it wasas PM Modi himself put it back then

the culmination of five generations of sustained work by the Rashtriya Swaymasevak Sangh (RSS). Since then, all government institutions and a pliant media have been enlisted to carry on the sustained workthrough institutional subversion, silencing or shouting down of dissent and an ideological blitzkrieg through electronic and social media, of which the demonization of Nehru is a crucial component. The 2014 election verdict, which gave the BJP a full majority on its own, was an important stage in the journey towards the Hinduization of all politics, to quote the

father of Hindutva, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. For Savarkar,

Hindutva is not identical with that vague, more limited, sectarian term Hinduism. What Savarkar desired and what the RSS

and the entire Sangh-parivar has been attempting for five generations is not to make people more religious or more nationalistic, but to make them Hindu nationalists . Their true cause has been neither Hinduism nor nationalism, but Hindutvaand their aim is to use the state apparatus to consolidate the Hindutva idea of India, which is necessarily opposed to a democratic Indian nationalism. This is where Nehru becomes a problem: his idea of Bharat Mata is a powerful challenge to the idea of Bharat Mata that the Sangh-parivar has used to try and claim India for itself, and itself alone.