Efforts to unite around an imagined identity in the past will also heighten divisions among us in the present
Shashi Tharoor has stirred the pride of millions of Indians who watched him on video telling the British, in their own language, spoken with their “pukkah" accent, in the hallowed debating hall of the University of Oxford, that they were up to no good in India when they were here. Even the prime minister of India complimented him for putting the British down.
A great leader who inspired millions of young Indians passed away on 27 July. Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam exhorted them to dream of what they can become. India’s “missile man", as the scientist-president was often described, looked to the future. He urged all Indians to find innovative solutions to get from where India is to where India wants to be.
In a discussion with Tharoor on Indian TV channels, two Indian historians said they admired his debating skills and his mastery of a gift the British left us, i.e. their language. However, they felt the role of the British in India was not as black as Tharoor had made it out to be. They were concerned with what we Indians had been doing to each other while the British were here. Upper castes oppressed the lower castes everywhere; law and order was worse in those parts of India that had not come under British rule, etc.
Who we are and what we want to be are more important questions for us to engage ourselves with than what the British have done to us in the past. What do citizens living on India’s periphery, in the north-eastern states and Jammu and Kashmir, feel about the government today? What do tribal communities in India’s heartland feel? And what do Dalit and minority communities, who are present across the country, feel? And what about women? We must reflect honestly on our current reality. These vital matters should not be discussed in the “us-versus-you" format of an Oxford debate. We need other forms of dialogue in which the objective is not to win by demolishing the other’s case, but to understand each other, and share our aspirations of how we could improve our country together.
Indians are known to be argumentative. Amartya Sen has written about India’s long traditions of argumentation, going back to well before the British brought us their language and their ways of debating. An argument, according to Webster’s dictionary, is “a discussion involving different points of view". Webster’s defines debate as “a contest in which the affirmative and negative sides of a proposition are advocated by opposing speakers". Throughout the ages, the method of adversarial debate has been used in Western cultures to explore issues, whether in law courts, political assemblies or academic institutions. Western methods of enquiry are deeply rooted in the methods of the Greeks, of Aristotle and Socrates. Aristotelian philosophy, with its emphasis on formal logic, was based on the assumption that truth is gained by opposition.
Debates are conducted like wars. Listening to a great debater, we think: “He demolished the opponent’s position"; “His criticisms were right on target"; “Their claims were indefensible;" “He shot down all their arguments." A major problem with this approach of enquiring into issues is that when one side is shown to have lost, and perhaps been insulted in the bargain, it becomes very difficult to arrive at a consensus between the adversaries thereafter. The Navajo Indians in the US believe that if one ends a dispute by having a winner and a loser, one dispute may have ended, but another will surely have started, because harmony will not have been restored.
A dialogue is fundamentally different from a debate. At its core, it is about listening. And about understanding others, and learning together. Dialogue dispels stereotypes, builds trust and enables people to be open to perspectives that are very different from their own.
“God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference," was theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s prayer. Accepting that whatever was in the past cannot be changed now, is wisdom. Going down the slippery slope into the past, some go much further back than when the British were in India, to mythical times when we were a great Hindu nation. Dwelling in a mythical past can be an opiate to escape from painful current realities. Efforts to unite around an imagined identity in the past will also heighten divisions among us now.
We need courage to change what we are. The golden rule of all religions is: “Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself" and not as was done unto you. The sooner we begin to change what we think and do here and now, the sooner will we create a country which is good for all its citizens, with their own histories, who have come in diverse ways into the collective Indian fold.
We must engage in dialogues to learn, not in debates to win. The world is divided by many fault lines in peoples’ histories, and India is too. A better India (and a better world) will be created if people learn the skills of listening to those they may not agree with, to find shared insights and new solutions.
Let us listen deeply to our own aspirations, to what we want for our own children, and listen to what others, who we may not consider to be like us, want for their children, too. Let us build a country that is good for everybody’s children.