India that is Bharat: Coloniality, Civilisation, Constitution

by J. Sai Deepak

Propagating the gospel was affirmed as a purpose at the very outset in 1614 and subsequently repeated unequivocally, and the East India Company was specifically authorised to make war on ‘heathen nations’ by a Charter in 1683.

history seemed to teach us that the survival of the Indic civilisation as a civilisation depended on the flourishing of its sub-identities, with each of the sub-identities realising that they were part of a federal symbiotic whole and that it was in their own existential interest to remain part of the whole.

I started reading the works of Pandurang Vaman Kane, Jadunath Sarkar, Radhakumud Mookerji, R.C. Majumdar, K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, K.S. Ramaswami Sastri, S.L. Bhyrappa, R. Nagaswamy, Ram Swarup, Sitaram Goel, Dharampal, Kapil Kapoor, Koenraad Elst, Michel Danino, Shrikant G. Talageri, Meenakshi Jain and Sandeep Balakrishna, apart from the publications of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture and Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.

To romanticise and venerate the Constitution, I argued, was to conflate the means with the end to the detriment of the civilisation. In a nutshell, I took the position that the Constitution must be alive to history to serve its intended purpose.

Barring a handful of scholars, such as Ram Swarup, Sitaram Goel, Dharampal, Koenraad Elst, Dr. S.N. Balagangadhara and Dr. Jakob De Roover, very few seemed interested in challenging the Western-normative framework which informed these so-called universal standards.

Colonisation, as understood by scholars, refers to a process or phenomenon by which people belonging to a nation establish colonies in other societies while retaining their bonds with the parent nation, and exploit the colonised societies to benefit the parent nation and themselves.

At least four forms of colonialism are recognised, namely exploitation colonialism, settler colonialism, surrogate colonialism and internal colonialism,

‘Coloniality’ refers to the fundamental element or thought process that informs the policy of colonialism and advances the subtler end goal of colonisation, namely colonisation of the mind through complete domination of the culture and worldview of the colonised society.

Decolonial scholars have gone a step further to claim that while postcolonialism is a state of affairs, decoloniality is a state of mind just as coloniality is.

In other words, colonisation is the process, colonialism is the policy and coloniality is the mindset or the thought that underpins or drives colonialism.

I consciously use the words ‘sophisticated’ and ‘systematic’, since Middle Eastern colonialism’s predominant use of force inspired a similar response, which made it possible for Bharat’s indigeneity to offer fierce resistance and survive where other cultures and civilisations were wiped out for eternity. The expression of contempt and the intention to annihilate the other was worn on the sleeve by Middle Eastern coloniality, and therefore, the other (Bharat’s indigeneity) was acutely aware of the need to defend itself.

From the perspective of ascertaining a ‘cut-off’ period to determine Bharat’s indigeneity by expanding Bharat’s version of colonialities to include both forms, one may tentatively arrive at the eighth century when the first wave of recorded Muslim Arab invasions of Bharat began. This is similar to European colonialism being traced by the decolonial school to the fifteenth century when the Age of Discovery began.

Following are a few relevant extracts from his book Pakistan or the Partition of India wherein Dr. Ambedkar charts the Islamic invasion of Bharat on a timeline beginning from the invasion of Sindh by Muhammad Bin Qasim in 711 ce (close to 80 years after the Islamic Prophet’s passing) to the Third Battle of Panipat between Ahmad Shah Abdali and the Maratha empire in 176116:

How far is it open to the Hindus to say that Northern India is part of Aryavarta? How far is it open to the Hindus to say because once it belonged to them, therefore, it must remain for ever an integral part of India? Those who oppose separation and hold to the ‘historic sentiment’ arising out of an ancient fact that Northern India including Afghanistan was once part of India and that the people of that area were either Buddhist or Hindus, must be asked whether the events of these 762 years of incessant Muslim invasions, the object with which they were launched and the methods adopted by these invaders to give effect to their object, are to be treated as though they were matters of no account?

Apart from other consequences which have flowed from them these invasions have, in my opinion, so profoundly altered the culture and character of the northern areas, which it is now proposed to be included in a Pakistan, that there is not only no unity between that area and the rest of India but that there is as a matter of fact a real antipathy between the two.

Given the clear and express belief of the proponents of Middle Eastern coloniality that their consciousness is mandated and enjoined by the scripture they believe in, it is certainly not unreasonable or baseless to conclude that Indic consciousness has as much incentive to protect itself from Middle Eastern coloniality as it does from European coloniality.20 Rather, it has an existential disincentive to not protect itself from either. This cannot be branded as fear-mongering given the irrefutable history of both colonialities in this part of the world. After all, facts cannot be replaced with wishful secularised thinking.

The Hindu religion is the knowledge and comprehension of those eternal principles which govern nature and man, those immutable laws which in one sphere are called ‘science’, in another, ‘true philosophy’. It concerns itself not with things true under certain conditions or at certain times: its precepts are ever true, true in the past, true in the present, true in the future. True knowledge being one, it takes, without any distinction, into its fold, Indians, Arabs, Europeans, Americans, Africans and Chinese. Its principles circumscribe the globe and govern all humanity.

India, encircled as she is by seas and mountains, is indisputably a geographical unit, and as such is rightly designated by one name. … There is no part of the world better marked out by Nature as a region by itself than India, exclusive of Burma. It is a region indeed full of contrasts in physical features and in climate, but the features that divide it as a whole from surrounding regions are too clear to be overlooked.

Sir, I am enamoured of the historic name of ‘Bharat’. Even the mere uttering of this word, conjures before us by a stroke of magic the picture of cultured life of the centuries that have gone by. In my opinion there is no other country in the world which has such a history, such a culture, and such a name, whose age is counted in milleniums as our country has. There is no country in the world which has been able to preserve its name and its genius even after undergoing the amount of repression, the insults and prolonged slavery which our country had to pass through. Even after thousands of years our country is still known as ‘Bharat’. Since Vedic times, this name has been appearing in our literature. Our Puranas have all through eulogised the name of Bharat. The gods have been remembering the name of this country in the heavens. The gods have a keen desire to be born in the sacred land of Bharat and to achieve their supreme goal after passing their lives here. For us, this name is full of sacred remembrances. The moment we pronounce this name, the pictures of our ancient history and ancient glory and our ancient culture come to our minds. We are reminded that this is the country where in past ages great men and great Maharishis gave birth to a great culture. That culture not only spread over all the different areas of this land, but crossing its borders, reached every corner of the Far East too. We are reminded that on the one hand, this culture reached the Mediterranean a...

The ‘Hindu Code’ legislations passed between 1955 and 1956, which resulted in the Hindu Marriage Act, Hindu Succession Act, Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, and Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, are cases in point. In the process of this codification, the Indian State, which presides over a civilisational society that values context, subjectivity and custom, has stifled the evolution of custom at the altar of uniformity, homogeneity and codification.

What do we mean by a nation? Do the English, the French, the Poles severally constitute a nation? Then the Bengalis, the Punjabis, the Rajputs and the Mahrattas do also form a nation. The Bengalis inhabit the same region with a distinct name. Ethnologically they are descended from the same race. They have the same blood, the same language, the same civilization, literature, customs and traditions. These are the essential elements that constitute nationality in the popular sense. Castes do not divide a nation any more than classes do in England. Creeds do not rend a nation in two. If they did religious toleration would be impossible. There is less antagonism between the creeds of India than there is between the various sects of Christianity in England.