New Delhi: On a day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the Lok Sabha on the 75th anniversary of the Indian Constitution, an unlikely group of people gathered at the Constitution Club of India: poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar, former finance minister P. Chidambaram, former MP and columnist Swapan Dasgupta, former MP KC Tyagi, and journalist Neerja Chowdhury.
The panel — stretched wide and tight across the political spectrum — had gathered to celebrate the launch of the book, India on the Move: When Jai Shree Ram met Bharat Mata ki Jai, by journalists Marya Shakil and Narendra Nath Mishra. The theme of the discussion was how India has changed over the last 10 years, and why.
The discussion echoed an India of the past: a group of politicians from different parties and ideological backgrounds — the Congress, BJP, and JD(U) — engaged in civil conversation without crumbling into chaos, poking fun at each other and making jokes, all in front of an audience. While Shakil and Mishra moderated and asked their panelists questions, Akhtar injected much-needed levity and wit while making his criticisms. Journalist Chowdhury tied the panel together with her own political insights built over 40 years of reporting.
“I’ve never seen so much contention, bitterness, deadlock and complete breakdown of communication between the ruling party and the opposition as today. It’s painful,” said Chowdhury, adding that she wishes there were people who could help both sides work together.
Turning to Chidambaram, she spoke of how she remembers him reaching out to Arun Jaitley in the opposite camp and the debates they would have in the old Parliament’s Central Hall. The panel — of which Chidambaram, Tyagi, Dasgupta and Akhtar, were members of — murmured that the Central Hall no longer exists.
“Yes, today there’s no Central Hall,” continued Chowdhury. “But it’s not just a place, it’s that grey space. A space that allows for conversation.”
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Right vs Left, Congress vs BJP
The gloves came off between the politicians when stalwart Congress leader Chidambaram began speaking. Quoting from Shakil and Mishra’s book, Chidambaram talked of the correlation between economic prosperity, the rise of the middle class, and the rekindling of Hindu identity. This, he said, was the best summary of the past 10 years.
“Neither rising economic prosperity nor the rise of the middle class is unusual to me. What’s unusual, and in my point of view, unacceptable, is the rekindling of Hindu identity. All three go together,” said Chidambaram. “And I’ve drawn the conclusion that the political center has shifted to the Right.”
This shift to the Right is the most prominent feature of the past decade of Indian politics, according to Chidambaram.
Dasgupta, BJP national executive member and former journalist, had no qualms about attributing economic prosperity to the Congress’ 1991 reforms under PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh. The middle class too, he said, grew after that. The growth led to a “greater degree of aspiration” and an “impatience with the shortage economy” and a culture of “jugaad”. And as those material needs were being met, the physical landscape of India also changed.
“We’re far more prosperous and confident as a nation. And along with that self-confidence has come a cultural self-confidence, which is manifested sometimes passively, sometimes aggressively, and sometimes unfortunately,” said Dasgupta. “But every facet of this Hindu assertion is not welcome,” he added.
Dasgupta said as someone who’s “been in the Right-wing when no one was on the Right,” he doesn’t think “Right-wing” is a curse word and should be looked at as such.
“Being on the Right means recognising things that are unique to India,” said Dasgupta, adding that many Right-wing governments across the world are also rediscovering and highlighting their cultural roots. “India is following global trends.”
Shakil then asked Tyagi — whose politics have socialist roots and whose JD(U) is now part of the NDA coalition — if it was too simplistic to reduce politics to Right vs Left, and how he balances the two.
Tyagi, instead, took the opportunity to lay into Chidambaram and the Congress — all in good humour, which the audience appreciated.
“We used to think that the root of all of India’s illnesses was the Congress, and the world’s illnesses was the US!” said Tyagi, to laughter. Chidambaram said that Congress-bashing can’t be the cure to the various illnesses India faces today.
Tyagi’s point was that politics is more often about power than ideology, taking the INDIA bloc as an example. He talked of the frictions between the various parties in the alliance, and why Nitish Kumar and the JD(U) — who played a key role in the formation of the INDIA bloc — went with the NDA instead.
“You can never say with certainty whether Indian politics is going this way or that way,” said Chowdhury. “And that’s the exciting bit!”
Rediscovering Indian ‘culture’
The other theme of the evening was what Indian culture really stands for.
“I reject this notion of Hindu nation. India must forge a new identity,” said Chidambaram. “After Independence we tried — we failed sometimes, succeeded sometimes. But forging a Hindu nation is unacceptable to me.”
But while Chidambaram and Dasgupta skirted around the topic, Akhtar addressed it head-on, earning the loudest rounds of applause that evening.
He started by declaring himself an atheist, and thanked Tyagi for informing him that fewer Muslims died under this political regime when compared to previous political regimes.
When people talk of championing Hindutva, they want to maintain a “status quo,” said Akhtar, adding that the only choices the political world — across parties — offers Indians today is a choice between communalism and casteism.
“My name is Javed Akhtar, and that is a problem,” he said, adding the only thing that makes him a Muslim is his name. “I wasn’t born into this religion out of choice. I can’t change my name and religion because I’m an atheist and don’t believe in any other religion. So what should I do about my name? What should I change it to, X2MA?” he joked.
He went on to give the audience a quick crash course on India’s plural history, and the ongoing effort to edit history into fitting a certain narrative. He said that Muslims have been excluded from the Indian historical narrative — not just by the establishment, but by Muslims themselves, and he disapproves of both.
“Culture belongs to regions, not to religions,” said Akhtar, saying that there’s nothing like Muslim or Hindu culture — there’s Pathan, Punjabi, Sindhi, Bengali, Gujarati culture. “I’m an Indian and as an Indian, I don’t like what I see today.”
(Edited by Ratan Priya)