Vishnu Purana's Outline on India

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The significance of India's independence (COMMENTARY)

 

 

"...Vishnu Purana of the Vedic Age: 'Uttaram yat

samudrasya/Himadreschaiva daskshinam,/Varsham tad Bharatam

nama/Bharati yatra santatih.' (The country that lies north of the

ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bharata; for there

dwell the descendants of Bharata.)"

 

By Amulya Ganguli

 

In his 'tryst with destiny' speech at midnight on Aug 14/15, 1947,

Jawaharlal Nehru used the phrase 'not wholly or in full measure' to

describe India's attainment of freedom.

'Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny,' said the first

prime minister of India, 'and now the time comes when we shall

redeem our pledge - not wholly or in full measure, but very

substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world

sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.'

 

Evidently, to Mahatma Gandhi's first lieutenant and one of the main

architects of the freedom movement, the divided India, which the

departing British had bequeathed to their successors, was a betrayal

of the dream of the nationalists.

 

Even a year earlier, virtually none of them and a vast majority in

what is today three nations - India, Pakistan and Bangladesh - could

have imagined that the Indian subcontinent will not remain united.

 

Nor could the British if only because they felt that the main

achievement of their imperial mission was to unite India as never

before since the time of the Mauryan empire in the pre-Christian

era.

 

Although their critics believed that the partition of India was the

inevitable consequence of the traditional 'divide and rule' policy

of the British, this sinister strategy was not reflected in the

speech of Prime Minister Clement Atlee during the House of Commons

debate on the Indian Independence Bill.

 

'For myself', he said, 'I earnestly hope that this severance may not

endure and that the two new Dominions ... may, in course of time,

come together again to form one great member state of the British

Commonwealth of Nations.' Harold Macmillan, the leader of the

opposition, echoed this opinion: 'We must hope ... that in this

partition are also the seeds of some form of future unity.'

 

Nehru too was 'convinced that our present decision (on partition) is

the right one ... it may be that in this way we shall reach that

united India sooner than otherwise and then she will have a stronger

and more secure foundation'.

 

And the founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, had articulated

his hope a few years earlier in these words: 'Let us, therefore,

live as good neighbours; let the Hindus guard the south and western

India and let the Muslims guard the north-west and eastern

frontiers. We will then stand together and say to the world: Hands

off India, India for the Indians.'

 

As these unrequited hopes and fervent expectations show, the

independence of India was not quite the joyous event because of the

end of colonial rule as the later generations have come to believe,

but one marked by uncertainty and sadness.

 

The reason is that partition negated the very concept of India, as

described in the Vishnu Purana of the Vedic Age: 'Uttaram yat

samudrasya/Himadreschaiva daskshinam,/Varsham tad Bharatam

nama/Bharati yatra santatih.' (The country that lies north of the

ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bharata; for there

dwell the descendants of Bharata.)

 

Rajendra Prasad, who was to be India's first president, reflected

this idea of India when he said: 'India, which was made by god and

nature to be one, which culture and tradition and history of

millenniums have made one, is divided today ... Let us hope and pray

that the day will come when even those who have insisted upon and

brought about this division will realize India's essential oneness

and we shall be united once again.'

 

Little wonder, therefore, that Mahatma Gandhi stayed away from the

official celebrations in New Delhi and spent the day fasting and

praying in a Calcutta (now Kolkata) suburb that was still recovering

from Hindu-Muslim riots which had devastated the city. And even

after winning the biggest prize of his political career, Jinnah

described the state he had created as 'moth-eaten'.

 

 

 

But even if the leaders of the two new countries felt that the real

fruits of victory they wanted from the long struggle for freedom had

eluded them, the significance of the day lay in the fact that it

heralded the beginning of the end of centuries of colonial

exploitation in Asia and Africa.

 

 

 

After India and Pakistan, both Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Burma (now

Myanmar) won their independence in 1948, followed by Indonesia in

1949 and Malaysia in 1957.

 

 

 

In Africa too, the 'winds of change', as mentioned by then British

prime minister Harold Macmillan in 1960, had started blowing. While

South Africa had to wait till the 1990s for the end of apartheid,

Ghana became independent in 1957, Nigeria in 1960, Uganda in 1962,

Kenya in 1963 and Tanganyika and Zanzibar (now Tanzania) in 1964.

 

 

 

In the West Indies, Jamaica as well as Trinidad and Tobago became

independent in 1962.

 

 

 

Undeniably, it is the Indian independence movement led by Mahatma

Gandhi and Nehru that had inspired people in all the other colonies

to fight for and secure their freedom from their European overlords.

As a British historian noted, 'more than any other single

individual, Gandhi brought about the fall of the British Empire'.

 

 

 

In South Africa, the African National Congress took its name from

the Indian National Congress though not the latter's policy of non-

violence because, as Nelson Mandela said, 'In India, Gandhi had been

dealing with a foreign power that ultimately was more realistic and

farsighted. That was not the case with the Afrikaners in South

Africa.'

 

 

 

Martin Luther King, however, adopted the Gandhian method to oppose

racial prejudice in the US. Inspired by Gandhi's words - 'through

our pain we will make them see their injustice' - Martin Luther King

launched his non-violent civil rights movement, saying that from his

background 'I gained my Christian ideals: from Gandhi I learned my

operational technique'.

 

 

 

India can be proud, therefore, that it acted as an agent of

monumental historical change in the last century. Now, its

multicultural democracy can act as a similar source of inspiration

to all as a model of governance.

 

(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. He can be reached at

aganguli (AT) mail (DOT) com)

 

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