JNU: India’s Unity And Division In The Name Of Jawaharlal Nehru

On the night of 9 February, when JNU students carrying posters of Afzal Guru raised slogans for the ‘Azadi’ of Kashmir, the visuals shocked the nation and the government was pressurized to take action.

Then on 11 February, the slogans for the Azadi of Kashmir were transformed into slogans for Azadi “from Brahmanism, feudalism” etc. Many educated Indians, naïve in their political orientations, may have been taken in by the argument that these students are secular humanists. Perhaps, they thought, the students are showing a form of dissent arising from a genuine concern for human rights trampled by State machinery. Perhaps the slogans advocating the secession of Kashmir from India were only aberrations uttered by misguided youths?

Stalin’s comrades & Jinnah’s accomplices

History gives an emphatic ‘no’ as answer. This form of thinking has been repeatedly attempted by the Marxists, right from the crucial years of the freedom struggle.

This is the Stalinist theory of nationalities. Parroting Stalinist views, Communist Party of India ideologues had come to the conclusion that “any section of the Indian people having a contiguous territory as its homeland, common historical tradition, common language, culture, psychological makeup and common life” formed a separate nationality”.

In August 1942, at the Bombay AICC session, S.G. Sardesai a Communist member of the AICC moved a resolution demanding “self-determination” for the so-called linguistic nationalities claiming that it “would not necessarily lead to actual separation”. Such a theoretical framework allowed comrades to project Jinnah’s Pakistan demand as “progressive”.

As the Muslim League became more and more communal, Indian Communists started praising it with the choicest of progressive jargon. It was “no longer feudal-reactionary...no more an adjunct of imperialism but one which plays an oppositional role vis-a-vis imperialism”. The Communists even made the momentous discovery that “the progressive essence” of the demand for Pakistan “is in reality the demand for self-determination.”

Jinnah welcomed this act of the comrades. He wanted them to make the Congress accept their demands and sternly warned them not to cede any ground to the Congress. Communists eagerly obliged Jinnah so much so that even Nehru, who was sympathetic to progressives, conceded that the Communists “have become full-blooded supporters of Jinnah’s demands” “ and that in the garb of advocating Congress-League unity they demanded “a complete surrender by Congress to Jinnah” . Nehru concluded that the Communists had “worsened the communal problems”.

Marxist theoreticians were not content with supporting the demand for Pakistan. They started sowing the seeds for later secessionist movements which would result in immense human tragedies in India. Communist leader Dr. G. Adhikari brought out a book in support of a Sikh homeland. The party’s People Publishing House published this in 1945.

In 1946, the CPI submitted a memorandum to the British Cabinet Mission in which they provided what can be considered the theoretical blueprint for the balkanization of India. The Marxist memorandum requested the British Cabinet Mission to make the “provisional government” set up a “boundary commission to redraw boundaries on the basis of natural ancient homelands of every people” each with “unfettered right of self-determination” as to join the Indian Union or “form a separate sovereign state by themselves or join another Indian union”.

It envisaged not just Pakistan but also twelve such sovereign states within India apart from “Hindi-speaking Hindustan”. As independence neared, the Communist Central Committee started demanding that independent India should grant “national determination on the basis of linguistically demarcated provinces.” In virulent versions of this ideological framework, India is viewed as a “prison house of nationalities” created by colonialism and continued by Brahmanism.

Dr. Ambedkar on Linguistic Separatism, Unity of India and Partition

Interestingly, the founding fathers of modern India have consistently rejected the idea of linguistic nationalities. Dr BR Ambedkar saw merit in small states and advocated one state having one language for administrative efficiency. But while considering linguistic states, he observed that the idea “all people speaking one language should be brought under one Government” as an “absurd formula”. While he was all for “one state one language” he rejected the basic axiom of linguistic states “one language one state”.

Convinced of the unitary cultural matrix of India, Dr Ambedkar was convinced that India had to be a united, strong, modern State. Towards this end, he even said that it is “the bounden duty of all Indians to own up Hindi as their language” and if one “does not accept this proposal as part and parcel of a linguistic state one has no right to be an Indian.”

The theme of fundamental cultural unity of India has been remarkably consistent in Dr Ambedkar’s thoughts from the very beginning (1916), to the end of his life (1955-56). He held that India “has not only a geographic unity, but it has over and above all a deeper and a much more fundamental unity—the indubitable cultural unity that covers the land from end to end.”

Even his acceptance of partition was from the point of view of cultural nationalism rather than the territorial nationalism of the Nehru-school. He thought that the partition was better because Pakistan was “politically detachable from, socially hostile and spiritually alien to the rest of India.”

In 1955, he made it explicitly clear why he supported partition: “I advocated partition because I felt that it was only by partition that Hindus would not only be independent but free. If India and Pakistan had remained united in one State, Hindus though independent would have been at the mercy of the Muslims.”

Clearly the reasons Dr. Ambedkar had for supporting partition, were diametrically opposite to those of the Communists.

Jawaharlal Nehru and the Nature of Indian Unity

Though not a scholar of Dr Ambedkar’s caliber, Jawaharlal Nehru also accepted this fundamental unity of India and described India as “a geographical and economic entity, a cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads.” Such “invisible threads” would have been seen today by the radicals of JNU as perhaps mystic Hindutva mumbo jumbo. JNU radicals would have even Nehru a monstrous dictator for dismissing the Dravidian political discourse as “nonsense’’.

Kashmir angle

Despite his prejudices against Hindutvaites, Nehru desired Patel “to solicit the help of RSS leader MS Golwalkar to persuade the Maharaja [of Kashmir]to join India”. The Indian army made tremendous sacrifices to save Kashmiris –Hindus and Muslims—from the rapacious raiders unleashed by Pakistan in 1948. In the face of that danger not only the king but also Shekih Abdullah had agreed to make Kashmir part of India.

Yet in 1949, Communists started whipping up separatist sentiments once again. The CPI magazine “Cross Road” started batting for independent Kashmir, saying that it reflected “the innermost desire of the Kashmiri people.” Communists called for Kashmir to become “a people’s democratic state” with “friendly relations with the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China and other neighboring countries.”

The official party magazine regretted that India was forcing the Kashmiri delegation to accept their conditions on Kashmir’s constitutional position in the Union. It was only when Kashmiri separatism started hobnobbing with Anglo-American forces that the Marxists stopped fanning the embers of separatism.

Today what we are witnessing in JNU is a resurrection of this Stalinist ghost. Once, the comrades of Stalin collaborated with Jinnah in his communal orgy for Pakistan. In both cases, they give a deceptive secular progressive gloss to a fundamentalist communal movement.

This then is the clash of two fundamentally different world views—one steeped in the history of this ancient nation and held up by the founding fathers of modern Indian democracy, and the other a blueprint for the balkanization of India derived from the debunked worldview of a Marxist dictator who butchered millions of people in Soviet Union.

So what would have Nehru done?

Jawaharlal Nehru was not content with his famous “nonsense” remarks against the Dravidian separatists. His government constituted the committee on “National Integration and Regionalism.” His cabinet accepted the recommendations of the committee that an amendment be made to the Indian Constitution to ban secessionist propaganda and activity.

It was under Nehru that the Parliament passed the Anti-Secession Bill in the face of bitter opposition from DMK ideologue CN Annadurai.Will the Modi government do to JNU and campus politics what Nehru’s government did for national politics?