J Sai Deepak writes: 2024 — Bharat and Decolonisation

“Dear Shri Mehta,

Thank you for reading the book and for taking the time out to share your feedback. While politics is important, I am more interested in the framework within which it plays out and the end goals. Once again, thank you for writing (sic) and for your wishes.

Best Regards,
J Sai Deepak”

Within two years, this is what Dr Mehta wrote in a piece that appeared this publication (‘We the decolonialists’, September 1, 2023): “‘Decolonise!’ This imperative seems to be the ideological flavour of the moment. It is behind the calls to restructure education, to rewrite laws, reconceptualise history, reimagine public spaces, reclaim Indic consciousness, and even junk the Constitution. It is a loose intellectual movement, captured in big and widely circulated books such as J Sai Deepak’s India that is Bharat or shorter polemics like Ambika Dutt Sharma’s recent Bharatiya Manas ka Vi-Upniveshikaran (The Decolonising of Indian Consciousness)…”

In stark contrast to his email of 2021, Dr Mehta also unequivocally labelled the decolonisation movement in Bharat an “insidious” project with an “exclusionary political agenda”. What explains this change of position when barely two years earlier he had claimed to agree with me on history? Importantly, why is this significant in the backdrop of the elections of 2024? It is significant, not because of the individuals involved, but because of the deeper ideological divide that undergirds the political differences in Bharat. Critically, to me, and people like me, politics is not and will never be an end in itself — it is but a means to an end. It is part of a larger societal churn wherein there are, indeed, some on all sides who are interested in civilisational or ideological outcomes (as the case may be), with politics merely serving as a medium or conduit for delivery of their respective larger goals. This comes with the acknowledgement of the reality that not every direct political stakeholder is necessarily committed or even remotely interested in worldviews or ideologies. The meeting of minds between the two categories of stakeholders, the non-political and the political, is typically a matter of finding the maximum possible common ground, even if it is not the ideal for either. Given this real world position, I find it both amusing and convenient on the part of well-read and informed individuals such as Shri Mehta to take the position that while their movements are broad-minded, purely academic, neutral and ideological, the counterviews are frenzied and parochial political movements driven by a cynical lust for power.

At least now, one must accept that there has always been a clear ideological bias in pre- and post-Independence Bharat, which has been passed off as a neutral benchmark for others to live by. Almost no sphere or institution is an exception to this. If anything, the last decade has thrown this reality into sharp relief and perhaps for the first time, the lack of ideological diversity in policy-making institutions and opinion-shaping spheres was there for the public to see. This led to hitherto unknown and fairly scathing public criticism of an entrenched “establishment” whose foundations were laid in 1947 and strengthened since 1952. The last decade finally saw the emergence of a vocal and confident alternative viewpoint, namely the native perspective, which was previously denied access to spaces and platforms, and whose existence was either denied or decried.

While political battles will occupy mindspace in the here and now, the larger, long-term and all-important canvas is consciousness, and hence civilisation and culture. Although some progress (not enough) has been made on this front in the last decade, thanks to diversity of thought being made possible by a “non-establishment” political vision, it remains to be seen whether “2024” enables or stifles the journey of the Bharatiya decolonisation movement. As a continuing student of history, I believe that those movements which depend primarily on society are bound to achieve their goals, compared to those which place all their eggs in the political basket. After all, society is not Plan B. It is the Plan A that creates and shapes the future. This holds good as much for those who wish to see a safer, more prosperous and stronger Bharat, as it does for those who wish to see the idea of Bharat disintegrate mentally and physically. The unrest created between 2019 and 2024 is a case in point for the latter. I, for one, will remain committed to the idea and reality of Bharat.

The writer is a commercial and constitutional litigator who practises as a counsel before the Supreme Court of India, the High Court of Delhi, the NCLAT and the CCI, and author of India that is Bharat: Coloniality, Civilisation, Constitution and India, Bharat and Pakistan: The Constitutional Journey of a Sandwiched Civilisation