Ramchandra Guha, historian. Wikicommons/Pushkarv. Some rights reserved.When the 'fascist' Modi was verging on becoming India's Prime Minister, intellectuals told us that he would be a threat to the very idea of an inclusive and democratic India. Amartya Sen declared that he could not be part of an India which had Modi as its PM. Modi is now PM, but nowhere does it seem that he has to abandon the idea of India in order to pursue his agenda. Instead many proponents of the idea of India have become Modi-supporters. Sen himself now says that Modi is no reason to leave the country!
One major votary of 'the idea of India', Ramchandra Guha, informs us that Rabindranath Tagore used the phrase in a letter to a friend in 1921, writing that “the idea of India is against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one’s own people from others, which inevitably leads to ceaseless conflicts”. Be that as it may, the point I want to make here is this: if ever there was any hegemonic claim which is enormously difficult, almost impossible, to expose or unpack, then 'the idea of India' is that claim. The Thatcherite idea of 'There is no alternative' (TINA), for example, would pale in terms of its hegemonic effects and vice-like grip by comparison. The idea of India is indeed part of what Perry Anderson called the 'Indian ideology', even though his critique of this ideology proved woefully inadequate.
The idea of India performs a remarkable feat with utmost dexterity: pushing a right-wing agenda (like the defence of private property) through progressive, left-wing values and proposals. The Indian constitution, on which the idea of India largely rests, is so replete with values like democracy and even social transformation that it needs enormous critical acumen to cut through its many radical-sounding layers. Large sections of the left pathetically compete with each other and render liberals jobless in trying to don the mantle of being the true defenders of this idea and the Indian constitution.
