A wide canvas of thoughts

This book is a collection of papers presented at a seminar on The Idea of India organised by the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies (RGICS).

So was the title of the book changed to The India Mosaic, because practically all the writers have rejected the idea that there can be a single idea of India? The editors' introduction doesn't explain the title change, but it's a reasonable guess to arrive at.

As Rudrangshu Mukherjee puts it, "India cannot be taken over by one idea of itself or even represented by one idea." The essay traces the history of the concept to the national movement when the vision of a united India was important.

However, he notes, there could be a different perspective of the national movement if one studies documents in the regional languages. The ideas about India, he further points out, will always be in conflict with the Idea of India.

He even warns against the danger of putting forward a notion like an Idea of India, especially in the current political climate where India's cultural diversity is under threat.

Editor Bibek Debroy, goes into ancient Indian texts and ancient Indian history, to see if there is any way of defining modern India, but draws a blank.

He then attempts to see if the values enshrined in the Preamble of the Constitution provide a unifying thread, but comes to the conclusion that it lacks any "immediately identifiable national identity".

Sovereignty, for example, only unites the country when it is under external threat. The meaning of secularism and socialism is still unclear.

There is a lack of identification with the democratic ideal, which provides the unifying thread only when it is threatened.

He then looks at other provisions of the Constitution and argues that, far from fostering unity in diversity, they further fragment any feeble Indian-ness that exists.

Whatever national identity that exists, he says, comes from free movement of people within the country, mixed marriages and Hindi films.

He perhaps forgot to add satellite television (especially MTV and Channel V) and the call centres, both of which are producing twenty-something Americanised clones all over the country!

This essay would have gained from a translation of the slokas Debroy refers to in the essay and in the notes section, as well as a one-line explanation of the various Constitutional articles he mentions.

Otherwise the reader will have to sit down with a copy of the Constitution and constantly refer to it. Not a very practical solution.

No seminar/volume on ideas of or about India can be complete without a contribution by Sunil Khilnani, of course. His essay touches upon the issue of various conflicts in Indian society and argues that conflict is built into the Idea of India.

This, he says, is because those who fought for the nation's independence valued freedom and choice and gave the people the freedom to make choices about their economic livelihood, personal relations and values and their rulers.

Khilnani, however, is silent about the denial of freedom and choice in the economic realm, which has been responsible for India lagging behind in the social and economic fields.

Khilnani argues that though choice invariably creates conflict, not all conflict is weakening; some can also give strength by helping us to understand what we value and defend it better.

Democracy, he goes on to say, is not only about arriving at a consensus; it is equally about sustaining disagreement. Violence stems from the desire to get rid of disagreement and he is quite suspicious about any ideology that promises to abolish conflict.

In the Indian context, Khilnani lists two kinds of conflict "" conflicts of interest, which can be negotiated, and conflicts of identity (religion, caste, community, region), which do not have any scope for compromise and are more difficult to manage. The essay, however, provides no pointers on how these are to be managed.

Justice M N Venkatachaliah seems to be the only person who believes that there should be an Idea of India. Referring to Will Hutton's exposition about the Idea of Europe, he says India must also believe in the Idea of India which will comprise humanism in international relations and one in which pluralism,democracy, justice, equality, peace and development are indivisible and inter-dependent.

The problem with compilations of seminar proceedings is that the essays often tend to be long and boring.

Fortunately this isn't the case in The India Mosaic. The essays are extremely readable and some are quite short and sweet. Yes, there are some duds but they don't detract from the book.

THE INDIA MOSAIC
Searching for an identity...

Edited by Bibek Debroy and D. Shyam Babu
Academic Foundation/RGICS
Pages: 285
Price: Rs 495