Prof. Suresh Chander
Tarana-e-Hindi
Saare jahan se achchha hindostan hamara
ham bulbulen hain iski ye gulsitan hamara
(Better than the entire world, is our Hind,
We are its nightingales, and it (is) our garden abode)
Yonan o misr o ruuma sab mit gae jahan se
ab tak magar hai baaqi nam-o-nishan hamara
(In a world in which ancient Greece, Egypt, and Rome have all vanished Our own attributes (name and sign) live on today.)
Kuchh baat hai ki hasti mitti nahin hamari
sadiyon raha hai dushman daur-e-zaman hamara
(There is something about our existence for it
doesn’t get wiped Even though, for centuries,
the time-cycle of the world has been our enemy.)
‘Iqbal koi mahram apna nahin jahan men
malum kya kisi ko dard-e-nihan hamra
(Iqbal! We have no confidant in this world
What does anyone know of our hidden pain)
Ever since I read this poem by Iqbal in my school days, I have been in search of that “kuchh baat or something” that our existence has not been wiped even though, for centuries, the time-cycle of the world has been our enemy.
I got the answer in an interview of Late Jaswant Singh, a man of exceptional qualities who had the distinction of holding the charge of defence, finance and external affairs under Vajpayee at different times.
Unfortunately our thinking was coloured by the British education. This education told us that India became a country only after the arrival of the British. In this we forgot the existence of the soul of India.
The concept of state, nation and country for a layman are synonyms. There is a mistaken belief that the British gave us the broad concept of the Indian country.
Mr. Jaswant Singh distinguishes between the concepts of state, nation and country.
He further questioned as to which of these three concepts is the core of India?
Very briefly, the concept of state is alien to India. And the concept of a nation-state is a European construct, post-Industrial Revolution, and in a sense a consequence of the turmoil within what was earlier North Germany. It began to be effective only from the seventeenth century. India on the other hand, is a non-territorial nation. It is a civilisation. It has never been bound in the sense of territory.
Jaswant Singh rejected Indian civilization bound in the sense of territory, but under British school of thought we coined the term Akhand Bharat and gave it a territorial meaning.
* The original preamble of our constitution described the Indian state as a “sovereign democratic republic”, to which the terms “Secular” and “Socialist” were later added. But it failed to refer to the Indian nation or society, a civilization in continuum that in words of Iqbal had ‘something’ that preserved our existence over ages.
Surprisingly there was no map of India till British made a map of India that had British India and the princely states. Since sub Himalayan areas did not have any states large enough to be treated as one that resulted in undefined borders in the north. The area was ruled by small principalities. Perhaps there did not exist a concept of territory. Zorwar Singh was the first one to venture outside these areas and went up to Lhasa.
Indians used to go to Mansarovar without knowing about whose territory it was. That was true about the rest of India as well where people moved freely without knowing the master of the territory – it was irrelevant for them. Many times the territories changed hands during their sojourn without affecting their journey.
Jaswant Singh was amazed to note that India is perhaps the only country of its size that had an undefined land border almost all along its northern frontiers. He was shocked to know in the Post-Kargil era in 2001 that we didn’t know how many island territories India had. We now know that we have 1208 islands.
Some are: The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are a group of 572 islands of Bengal and Andaman Sea, seven in Andhra Pradesh, three in Assam, one in Bihar, one in Daman and Diu, ten in Goa, eleven in Gujarat, two in Jammu Kashmir, eight in Karnataka, twenty-three in Kerala, thirty-nine in Lakshadweep, one in Madhya Pradesh, eighteen in Maharashtra plus seven in Mumbai, two in Manipur, one in Meghalaya, seven in Odisha, twelve in Tamil Nadu and twenty in West Bengal.
“There had been periods in India’s history when there was no state, and for hundreds of years the concept of an Indian nation has gone along. Then there have been different states. Often those states have been at conflict with one another. But the nation was intact and inviolable. Without knowing these fundamentals we jumped into European thought and over-centralised everything. What we suffer today is a consequence of that fundamental error”, observed Jaswant Singh.
Jaswant Singh questions: What is at the core of Indian nationhood. He himself answers “The central living molecular core. That is Indian society. Indian society-no matter whether there was a functioning state, or there was anarchy-kept the wheels turning. It is amazing. There is no other country like it. That is why India survives and shall survive whether there is a state”.
According to Jaswant Singh, in 1947 we just straight away-perhaps there was a need-centralised it. And we are still learning what the fundamentals of a state are. It was the first time we attempted a centralised Indian state ever…without knowing the fundamentals of the functioning of a state.
Most of the conflicts in India we are facing today, according to Jaswant Singh, “It was a patchwork situation, from Dravidian parties here, to the East-Nagaland is still turbulent, so is Manipur, and there is ULFA and to J&K and there is all the struggle with the Maoists. It’s an amazing capacity that this nation has-what strings it together? He did not elaborate on the mould of a guru. Preserving, that is the principal national interest. That is the core of India’s national interest.
Describing the concept of India in the modern terminology is difficult. It is like defining a human without knowing the soul that exists between him or her.
It is difficult to believe that Iqbal, who called Ram – Imam-e Hind, did not know what that “something” was while saying: kuchh baat hai ki hasti mitti nahin hamari (There is something about our existence for it doesn’t get wiped). He remembered his ancestors thus:
ai ab-rud-e-ganga vo din hai yaad tujh ko
utra tire kinare jab karvan hamara
(O the flowing waters of the Ganges, do you remember that day
When our caravan first disembarked on your waterfront?)
In the above couplet, Iqbal is heriditor of the heritage of India since time immemorial. He didn’t even say the common heritage of people of India. He was no votary of Hindutva – the term didn’t exist at his time. Unfortunately his vision changed after his visit to England. A classic example, in my opinion, of changing the perspective of a man of the calibre of Alama Iqbal, under the British influence.
Reference to Ram and Ganga by Iqbal is not a reference to a person or a river but to the Aatman of India. Symbolism is well known in poetry. When a bard sings, “mein us desh ka wasi hoon, jis desh mein Ganga behti hai”, he does not refer to the territory of Ganga’s basin but to the concept of India.
I implore everyone in India to read and reread Tarana-e-Hindi by Alama Iqbal. It may cool down the TV debates.
(The author is former Head of Computer Engineering Department in G B Pant University of Agriculture & Technology)
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