Perhaps it has something to do with our intellectual
failure to evolve a democratic consciousness in the realm of culture.

It is an irony that although some of the best social science works in
contemporary India have been produced in the disciplines of history
and cultural studies, they may have unwittingly provided an
intellectual ladder to what has emerged as communal fascism in
present day India. In our country one stream of thought promoted
modern, rational and secular viewpoint in such a way that the
practices of popular culture were pushed to an inferior place. The
counter trend was the critique of modernity which celebrated
indigenous culture in a monolithic way paving the way for the rise of
Hindutva.

Interestingly, both the trends acquired State patronage at various
points of time, and what is more, both had the backing of global
forces throughout. The outcome today is a virulent form of cultural
fundamentalism operating a modern State and a global communication
system.

Nehru's strategy of building a secular, democratic society was a
carefully balanced initiative. It put in force an Indian model of
modernity that introduced advances in sciences and technology in the
cultural settings of India.

It allowed a thorough critique of those elements of India's culture
which did not conform to the values of equality and justice. Thus,
several social reform measures were initiated under the Indian
Constitution to uphold the rights of Dalits and adivasis. Respect for
autonomy and dignity of all cultural, linguistic, religious and
ethnic groups was part of the Indian democratic experiment. Nehru
translated them into practice in the early years of the republic.

As electoral politics acquired a new calculus in the Seventies, the
Nehru model underwent serious alterations. During the late Sixties
and early Seventies, State policy lost the balance of the Nehru years
and we saw the emergence of authoritarian methods of promoting
secularism. The imposition of the Emergency couldn't be justified
either in terms of a pro-poor economic agenda or secular education.
This is when secular historians and social scientists played a major
role under State patronage.

Interest in the study of culture and religion has taken a back seat
in the Indian educational curriculum. Not only that, most Indians
were ill-informed about the course of Indian history, they knew very
little about their own region's history. Study of religion was almost
a taboo. We all grew up with prejudices about various religions.
Every educated Indian knew more about European history than about
Indian history.

At a time when this lacuna in the Indian education system was
discovered and debated in the Seventies, the educational
establishments defended the existing education system as a secular
and scientific programme. Thus, Nehru's modern democratic agenda gave
way to a new agenda of State-sponsored secularism, which became the
target of severe criticism.

Meantime, a critique of modernity emerged as a worldwide intellectual
trend in the Seventies. It was partly grounded in the crisis that
capitalist countries in the West faced during that period. As they
began to recover in the late Seventies, both trends - assertion of
the rational modernist path of development and its critique -
continued to flourish.

In India, it took contrasting forms - a secular viewpoint was upheld
by those intellectuals and political forces who were determined to
fight Hindu communalism. In the Eighties, with the rise of the BJP,
the campaign against communalism acquired urgency.

So, it became difficult to provide a critique of this brand of
secularism while defending democratic secularism. Simultaneously, the
critique of modernity emerged as a powerful intellectual trend
patronised by western foundations which occupied increasing space in
India's intellectual map.

Critics of modernity became the intellectual supporters of most of
the people's movements. The development projects of the Indian State,
especially the big dams, steel plants and mining projects, which
caused massive displacement of people and destroyed the environment,
became the targets of many social movements. Thus, modernity was
equated with a notion of development associated with a centralised,
authoritarian State. It is this milieu which asserted the right to
culture and right to seek alternative paradigms of development.

The movement for alternatives had enormous democratic significance
just as rational and secular education had laid foundations for a
democratic outlook. But the critique of modernity and development
presented a perspective on indigenous culture in nearly glorious
terms. These intellectuals pursued a methodology that did not
differentiate between democratic and undemocratic practices in the
indigenous culture. In the quest for 'cultural confidence' and
'authenticity' of indigenous culture a trend of homogenisation and
monolithic construction took shape. Hindutva, the contemporary
ideology of communalism, is a product of that process.

While the modernist enterprise degenerated into mechanical
rationality and authoritarian politics, the cultural reaction built
the image of a grand Indian tradition obliterating pluralities of
cultures. While the former put European enlightenment as its model,
the latter created a Vedic parallel. Those who attributed the
modernist project to the Indian State under Nehru and Indira Gandhi
have now to reckon with the fact that the same State promotes the
project of Hindu rashtra. Perhaps the State was amenable to both.

Both Gandhi and Nehru have been used to promote the hegemonic
projects of different groups. Gandhi, for an uncompromising
commitment to the values of Indian civilisation and religious
harmony, and Nehru, for an uncompromising commitment to secularism
and modernity. What is however forgotten is their uncompromising
commitment to democracy, to equality and freedom of individual and
cultural groups.

Nehru constructed the history of India from this vantage point of
diversity of cultures and religions constituting a dynamic
civilisation that continued to evolve. Gandhi emphasised the periodic
upheavals which churned Indian civilisation from Buddha to
Vaishnavism to the cults and reform campaigns of the 19th century.

It is a dynamic concept of history characterised by the struggle over
interests and values, which informed the thinking of both Gandhi and
Nehru. Both continued to evolve their perspectives during their
lifetime and were creative thinkers and leaders of the first order.

The post-Independence intellectual generation has been guilty of
either turning their ideas into dogmas or ignoring them altogether.
The modernists' appropriation of Nehru and culturalists'
appropriation of Gandhi have prevented us from creative intellectual
endeavours which could relate rationality with culture, recover
democratic legacies of the civilisation, and relate people's
traditions of one region with people's traditions in other regions of
the world and subject them all to critical tests.

Our intellectual failure lies in falling into either the trap of
mechanical modernism or monolithic culturalism. It's not enough to
talk about scientific temper if you do not talk about democratic
rights and plurality of people's traditions. Building a just and
egalitarian India as a multicultural, multilingual, multireligious
society has to be a part of a democratic process involving struggles,
constructive work and dialogue and not an authoritarian imposition
through agencies of the State. Such an imposition has now backfired
with the Hindutva forces imposing a Hindu rashtra perspective through
the same agencies.

What we need at this moment of agony is to introspect as to why
India's intellectual agenda has slipped into either mechanical
modernity or monolithic culturalism producing authoritarian and
fascist forces now creating a havoc in our society.

Manoranjan Mohanty
(The writer is Professor of Political Science at Delhi University)