Presenting the Past Anxious History and Ancient Future in Hindutva India

(^28) "Presenting" the Past
had no alternative but to become a multireligious state, and yet others
pleaded for a secular state. By secular state, some meant sarvadharmasam-
abhava (equal respect for all religions), others dharmanirapeksha (indiffer-
ence to religion), and yet others suggested outright hostility to religion.
Although Nehru, the most ardent secular nationalist, did not see any
political role for religion for the ideological and institutional apparatus,
he did welcome spirituality in politics, like Gokhale and Gandhi.^41
In sum, all through the history of the search for Indianness, the spiritual
side of nationalism has been quite predominant. Stressed by the renais-
sance leaders and movements, it was taken up earnestly not just by the
extremists such as Lai, Bal, Pal, and Ghose, but also by the moderates,
including Rajagopalachari, C.R. Das, Rajendra Prasad, Radhakrishnan,
the Patel brothers, and others who were staunch adherents of religious
and idealistic philosophies. The braiding together of reform and revival-
ism in individual leaders and the Indian National Congress as a whole
was a significant factor in the nascent Indian nationalism. Even in inde-
pendent India, the revivalist tendencies could be discerned in the choice of
the country's name (Bharat), national symbols (Dharma Chakra), national
language (Sanskritized Hindi), and so forth.^42 With the demise of Neh-
ruvian social democracy and the loss of ardent official patronage for the
secular vision, Indian nationalism slowly degenerated into blatant com-
munalism with the ambivalent stance of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi
and the consolidated resurgence of the Hindutva forces, who were not
major political actors right before or after independence.
"INDIA": NARRATORS AND NARRATIVES
What matters for our purposes here, however, is how the travails of
Indian nationalism get recorded and come to be retold for the political
purposes of the present. Writing history, as Dipesh Chakrabarty asserts, is
"neither a 'natural' nor an ancient activity in India."^43 The focus of early
history writing in India was the doings of kings and courtiers. Irfan Habib
quotes Zia Barani, the historian of the fourteenth-century Delhi Sultanate,
explaining that "the science of history consists of (the account of) great-
ness and the description of merits and virtues and glories of the great men
of the Faith and State."^44
The modern writing of Indian history and culture began in the eigh-
teenth century, and one could discern three major trends, namely the Ori-
entalists, the utilitarians, and the nationalists, until the twentieth century.
Having been extremely suspicious of the historical changes in Europe,
especially as a result of industrialization, and alienated from their own
society, the Orientalists were searching for Utopias elsewhere and found
India quite helpful. The utilitarians, on the other hand, were a group of
philosophers dominant in the nineteenth century and were convinced that