By Jawed Naqvi
WHEN unforgivable events happen in India such as the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992 or the massacre of innocent Sikhs in 1984 and the Gujarat pogrom of Muslims in 2002, they fortify the ideological underpinnings behind religious separatism, which resulted, for example, in Pakistan. Of course Pakistan’s detractors in India, on the other hand, are only too happy to exude perverse glee at the catastrophic challenge it faces today from Muslim zealots. You wanted a country for Muslims, now take that, they say mockingly.
I want to put light on a clutch of events from last week, all involving women of amazing brilliance and grit which made me miss some of my Pakistani friends – in the sense that I wished they were here in Delhi to share and savour the pleasures, the insights and the hope that ever so often spring up from the deep recesses of India. Let me start with a lecture on history and heritage Prof Romila Thapar gave on Saturday. You don’t get to hear Prof Thapar often these days, so it was a rare treat. She began with what is almost an invocation with her: Since the present is rooted in the past, the most reliable way to understand the present is by a better understanding of the past. She must have been very young when Gandhi and Jinnah and Nehru, all influenced by the rudimentary if erratic historiography available to them, had embarked on the interpretation of their past to decide the future of the subcontinent. Apart from the colonial nonsense about India’s past the leaders had inherited, Allama Iqbal too had promoted a static view of Indian civilisation, which Indian leaders have been parroting ever since. Greece, Egypt and Rome the great civilisations that they were had disappeared with the passage of time, the learned poet mused. But India was different. It had survived centuries of adversities.
In a second Prof Thapar put the questioner at ease. The Harrappan civilisation had disappeared completely and so had others that once straddled southern or northern India. So what are we talking about? Moreover, the concept of civilisations is a relatively new entrant. I checked that out separately. Oddly enough the word ‘civilisation’ only came into existence in the 18th century.