Whenever there is a hint of
terror in our great land- India, some historians and elite intellectuals start
beating the drum of “Hindu-Muslim unity”. They trace back to Akbar’s marriage
to Hindu princesses; the support and fight beside each other during the Great
Mutiny and how Gandhi created a secular front in the largest political forum of
pre-Independence- The Congress party. It is true that the common mass of India,
its teeming millions in rural areas have lived in harmony with each other.
However, if we look at even such minuscule societies with a magnifying glass,
the harmony at best can be termed as cohabitation and amicable relationship.
The Muslims of India have been, through the years, made to believe in a land- “
of milk and honey”, “of the most holiest of holy”- PAKISTAN.
Surprisingly, the land now
so geographically entwined in the world map is less than 100 years old. There
is no mention of Pakistan in any written religious or secular records. So the
question arises- Where did this land originate? This brings me to an
interesting concept- the geography of mind…or psychogeography.
Psychogeography as defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects
of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions
and behaviour of individuals." Quoting Karl Marx, Debord further says- “People can see nothing around them
that is not their own image; everything speaks to them of themselves. Their
very landscape is animated.”
The term is relatively new and deals with a
specific political and physical manifestation of post-colonial times.
The idea of a land is first implanted in the
minds of people and it creates such powerful imagery that the idea endures for
thousands and thousands of years until the political conditions favour towards
making it into a reality.
4000 years ago, a book proclaimed- “To you I will give you Canaan, as the portion you
will inherit” Psalm=105:7-Bible. With this began the pursuit of a nation to
strive against all odds to create and cut out a physical reality out of a dream
contained in a book- So powerful is the dream that at every Passover Seder, the
Jewish diaspora ends the feast with the prayer- saying "Next Year in Jerusalem!" The birth of the nation state
of Israel is a modern miracle. Never before or since there has been such a
history where the people inherit a land after being banished from it for 4000
years. It is a miracle due to the tenacity of
a people to hold on to a dream in the face of immense persecution through centuries- from
the days of Moses to the First Crusade, then through the banishing of English Jews,
to the days of Black death, and in recent times, the isolation of Jews in
Russia. In this respect at least, Hitler had nothing new to offer. He just
framed the old words of hatred in new literature and words and policies.
Throughout this time, the nation was kept alive only in the words, religious
practices and the customs…. Israel first resided in the minds of Jews long
before there was any semblance of it on world map. Then in 1882, the first
Jewish settlement was built in the land of “milk and honey”. On 14th
May, 1948, Israel became a land on the world map. It can be thus celebrated as
the first successful project of Psychogeography.
There is
another much closer instance of a land born from an image and an idea endured
in the minds of the people.
“Our brave but voiceless
nation is being sacrificed on the altar of Hindu Nationalism not only by the
non-Muslims, but also, to their lasting shame, by our own so-called leaders
with a reckless disregard of our protests and in utter contempt of the warnings
of history.” So begins the pamphlet that has shaken the history of South Asia
and still continues to play a vital role in world politics.
Choudhry Rahamat Ali was
born in a Gujjar family in undivided India. In 1933, far away from the “voiceless
nation” across kalapaani, he gave Indian Muslims a vision- a land most holy, carved
out from the oppressed land that they were forced now to share with the Hindus.
And he asked- “Are We to Live or Perish
Forever?".
Unlike the
fate of God’s chosen people in Bible, however, Muslims of India already had a
land to live in. So, the zeal and the seed of image of this land had to be
powerful enough to want to find fault and hate for the physical reality of the
land they were living in and henceforth covet the land of dream. To implement
this, Rahamat Ali focused on the politics of the land and the freedom struggle.
He gave the flesh and skin to this imagined land-
“Pakistan' is both a Persian and an
Urdu word. It is composed of letters taken from the names of all our South Asia
homelands; that is, Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh and Balochistan. It means
the land of the Paks – the spiritually pure and clean.”
“They (the Muslim
Delegates of the Round Table) have accepted, without any protest or demur and
without any reservation or qualification, a constitution based on the principle
of an All-India Federation. This acceptance amounts to nothing less than
signing the death-warrant of Islam and of Muslims in India.” From then onwards,
Indian freedom struggle had two characteristics- overthrow of the British Raj
and to find a way around the “death warrant”. And on 14th August,
1947, Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah successfully saw to this “unprecedented
cyclonic revolution which has brought about the plan of creating and
establishing two independent Sovereign Dominions in this sub-continent. As it
is, it has been unprecedented; there is no parallel in the history of the
world.”
The antiquity of Ramayana can be traced back to 4th
century BCE. It is thus much older than the
Bible. The story is well known not only in India but in the entire South Asian
subcontinent. The benevolent prince going to exile with his wife and brother,
the fighting with the demon king and the destruction of his land followed by
the banishment of the wife and creating a just kingdom.
Even in this age of Agni missiles and Bluetooth, there are
villages in India where the evening entertainment consists of the priest
reciting from and explaining the various chapters of this epic to the masses. According
to Hindu mythology, Rama is the incarnation of Lord Vishnu, whose specific task
was to kill the demon king Ravana and establish a kingdom where common people
would be living happily ever after. Whether the common people really lived
happily in these 11,000 years, there is not much evidence of. However, there
are quite a few references as to the description of this rule or Rama Rajya-
This was the time when people lived happily in harmony. There was absolute
peace as every other king had accepted Rama as their sovereign ruler; there was
no war or disease or hunger. Justice was true and dealt an honest deal. People,
moreover, were wealthy and lived a holy, pious life emulating Rama.
Such is the power of this imagery of the Prince and his almost
heaven like kingdom that it endured in one of the finest minds of our time.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born to the fourth wife of the
Diwan of the small princely state of Porbunder in 1869. The family deity worshiped in this household was Rama. There was one Rama temple where little
Gandhi used to visit with his mother. It was this petite, illiterate, nondescript woman who sowed the seed of nonviolence and endurance of the soul in
Gandhi. As Prof. Ramachandra Guha says- “Mohandas’s mother introduced him to
the mysteries- and beauties- of faith.” Gandhi believed in creating a nation
out of India based on the highest standard that can be reached by any nation- a
Rama Rajya where there would be no inequality of caste and wealth; where people
would live in small self-sufficient units without coveting others’ land and
people in perfect harmony with the natural flora and fauna. “My idea of Village Swaraj is that it is a complete republic… There
will be no castes such as we have today with their graded Untouchability….. Here
there is perfect democracy based upon individual freedom.”
So strong
was Gandhi’s belief in Rama, that he himself emulated Rama in several of his
acts. On 2nd March, 1930, Gandhi wrote to Viceroy Irwin about his
plan for civil disobedience movement- “If my letter makes no appeal to your heart, on the eleventh
day of this month I shall proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram as I can
take, to disregard the provisions of the Salt Laws.” This was exactly in
accordance to what is written in the epic- that Rama released Lanka’s spies and
even announced that he was going to attack Lanka the next morning.
In recent years, there has been a lot of
controversy over the true meaning of Rama Rajya. Without arguing for or against
any of those, it can be said that the idea of a peaceful, wealthy, happy and
just nation is the Utopia that is appealing to a Muslim illiterate farmer and a
Hindu college professor alike. So the idea of Rama Rajya lives on in the minds
of the people. However, whether we can see a physical manifestation of such a
land on the world map in future will depend largely on the way we wish to
create it. The ability to create and understand abstract ideas is unique to us
only. Hence our living space is both abstract and concrete. What we achieve is
what we dream of first. Thus if ever we wish to see a Rama Rajya will depend on
the path chosen to arrive at it- through violence and dogmatic persuasion or
through acts of benevolence for greater good.
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