The Yamuna used to flow westward through the dry bed of the Chautang River previously. It started to flow eastward through its present course around 1500 BCE. The Western Yamuna dried up. Grand cities like Rakhigarhi and Kalibangan located on its banks no longer got the life sustaining waters and died. Those people met this challenge with alacrity. They gathered their tools and moved eastward to the Ganges Basin. They cut the dense forests there and created a brand new civilization. The Mauryan and Gupta Empires grew here.
We faced another challenge about 1000 years ago at the beginning of the second millennium. Number of invaders attacked us from the west, but our people sided with the attackers against their own rulers. A story I heard from the tribal people of Dungarpur expresses this discontentment among our people wonderfully. A farmer was carrying a pot of ghee across the forest to give to his daughter. He plucked a leaf to protect the ghee from the drizzle. The forest guard reported the matter to the king. The king ordered that guards chop off the hands of the fellow for this theft. The poor man fled to the British province of Ajmer to save his life. Tribal people of the area told many stories of escaping the wrath of the Indian rulers by escaping to the areas controlled by the British. Such atrocities committed by our rulers led to our people siding with the British and to the decline of India.
Historian Arnold J Toynbee has highlighted the importance of securing willing allegiance of the people in his seminal book A Study of History. Civilizations grow, says Toynbee, if the rulers are able to secure allegiance of their people willingly. The rulers of Kalibangan secured the allegiance of their people in migrating to the Ganga Basin. They established a new civilization successfully. The rulers of Princely India could not secure the allegiance of their people. They lost to the British invaders.
We face a similar challenge today. The technologies of the internet, nuclear warfare, remote sensing, drones, and others are creating a new paradigm of international discourse. We may succeed in meeting this challenge if our leaders are able to secure the willing allegiance of our people. Youth may hack the website of our enemies and provide the information to the Government of India, or they may hack the website of the Government of India and provide the information to our enemies. The direction taken by them will determine the fate of India. To take another example, we are facing a trade deficit with China. We can face this challenge if our people refuse to buy Chinese goods at the calling of our leaders. On the other hand, we will lose if people smuggle goods from China despite the call to reject them given by our leaders. To take yet another example, the infiltrators would be caught easily if the people of Kashmir inform the Indian army. On the other hand, Indian army will be in trouble if the people of Kashmir inform about them to the infiltrators. Our success in facing the present day challenges depends upon our ability to secure willing allegiance of our people.
This is a daunting challenge today. Muslims constitute about 18 percent, and Dalits constitute about 16 percent of our population. These are largely alienated today. I was travelling by train recently. The Haji sitting next to me had contested an election on BJP ticket during the reign of Vajpayee. He had confidence on the leadership then. He was unwilling to touch the same BJP with a barge pole today. Editors of the Muslim newspapers that I write for routinely express alienation with the current leadership. The Indian civilization cannot grow if these large numbers do not join in the Great Indian Journey. The shrinking of the Indian civilization that started about a thousand years ago will then continue unabated.
Toynbee says that we need to secure the allegiance of the people across our borders as well. The Great Roman Empire secured the allegiance of the citizens within its borders but failed to secure allegiance of the Berbers living across the borders. It collapsed. On the other hand, the Mongols were able to secure the allegiance of the people living across their borders in India. They won. Similarly, we were able to secure the allegiance of the people of Bangladesh in 1971. We won. This question will decide the standoff between India and Pakistan. Pakistan will win if it can secure the allegiance of the people of India. India will win if we can secure the allegiance of the people of Pakistan. The ground reality is not so favourable. Pakistani jihadists are willing to intrude and die in India. Indian jihadists are not willing to intrude into Pakistan and die. They expect the paid soldiers of the army to make surgical strikes.
Toynbee argues that leaderships are not able to secure allegiance of their people because they begin to live in the past, rather than solve the problems faced by the people today. They begin to worship their “former self,” he says. I was attending a meeting of monks at Rishikesh sometime ago. At the end of the meeting, I asked the monk why Hinduism had been declining in the last millennium. The monk, in return, asked if I wore a janeyu and whether I kept a choti. I replied in the negative on both counts. Then he said, “I don’t wish to speak with you since you are not a true Hindu.” Such glorification of rituals of the past has been the cause of decline of India in the last millennium. The challenge before us is to secure willing allegiance of the Muslims and Dalits within the country and Pakistani people living across the borders, rather than singing glory of janeyu and choti. This, in turn, depends upon whether our leadership can present a game plan that binds all the people in a common web. The Muslims and Dalits also constitute the poorer sections of our society. The present policies are leading to the stagnation of the wages of this majority while profits of the rich continue to increase. Such a policy will not integrate the society. We need to face the true problems of the people instead of distracting from them by focusing on temple- and cow protection.
The author was formerly Professor of Economics at IIM Bangalore.
