THIS was about five decades back in the mid-seventies. I was then a student at Jadavpur University. It was a time of internal emergency in the country. We on our campus had quite a few students from Palestine. They were not just progressive, but also active participants in the Palestine liberation struggle. One day some of them informed us that an important leader of the PLO was in Kolkata. The PLO operatives urged that progressive student activists meet him to discuss and exchange views and experiences.

Naturally, we were excited. On a specific day, some of us went to the meeting. Near the famous Nakhoda Masjid, we climbed a dark stairway to reach the semi-lit dingy where the meeting was supposed to take place. Few Palestinian students and some of us from Kolkata was part of the interaction.

The youthful PLO leader was contextualising the major features of the liberation struggle in the contemporary international and national situation; the machinations of imperialist powers and the inalienable legitimacy and rights of the Palestinian people to their homeland and independent State. But what was striking was the insight he shared, that the principal site of the liberation struggle was on the historicity of the two sides. It was evident that despite the illegitimate imposition of Israel on the Palestinian people, this exercise had no historical validity. The unreal contention of the ‘Old Testament' cannot gain legitimacy on historical evidence. Therefore, he asserted the inescapable conclusion, that history happened to be the principal site of the Palestinian struggle.

The major ground for the liberation struggle to resist the religious identity-driven nationalism and claim for a nation-State based on that was indeed historical evidence. It remained so then and continues to be so now. This five decades-old experience is equally relevant in contemporary India.

CONTEMPORARY INDIA

We are seventy-five years in celebrating our independence, and seventy-two years of our Republic. At the dawn of our independence throughout the world including the country which had held us in servitude for two centuries, there was palpable curiosity and of course, interest. What would free India be like? Because whether India with such a humongous population and great diversity can create a symphony in the polyphonic environment that this context presented? That India was embarking on a very ambitious experimental trajectory to build its nationhood and the consequent nation State was clear. But the fact that undaunted as it was in taking up the challenge did inspire a positive response from even the former British prime minister, Anthony Eden.

That democratic, secular India has remained on course for a considerable amount of time has established its credentials in rising to the expectations of those well-wishers. During this protracted period, Indian democracy has remained unsullied by breaches of military and civil dictatorship. The principal factor has been the vitality of the Constitution marking the formation of the Republic. The Constitution has truly invested itself in dealing with pluralism reconciling with contradictory tendencies and evolving the basis for conciliation.

The dawn of Indian independence was preceded by the British colonial attempts repeatedly to create the colonial divide which had eventually led to the partition. However, the Indian national movement stayed clear from falling for a religious identity-based nation State. After all these years and the disastrous experience of Pakistan, it is absolutely clear that the religious State could neither guarantee democracy nor stop its disruption and disintegration. It could not stop the emergence of Bangladesh.

Notwithstanding the pernicious historiography of British colonial historians, the past in this Indian land is not ridden by conflicts. It is a history of integration, assimilation. Enmity, division and mutual hate is exclusively British colonial contribution to our rich civilisational past.

Indian nationalism emerged by embracing the essence of the Indian people’s anti-imperial struggle against British rule. In that sense, this nationalism is distinct from the nationalism of the West. This anti-imperialist struggle has been the bedrock of unity, democracy and modernism; a democratic secular Constitution and the Republic. The idea of common and equal citizenship informed the fundamentals of this idea of India through unity in diversity. This citizen rights’ based Republic’s firm vitality has enabled it to sustain. This has provided stability for the seven decades old Republic. This is in sharp contrast to the brittle nature of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and its disastrous outcome. This is the enduring lesson of contemporary history.

But, the experience of the last eight years is forcing this history to face a big question mark. This new assault has assumed greater aggression after the Modi government’s assumption of power for the second time. The government-driven by the RSS ideology is trying to substitute the anti-imperialist Indian nationalism with brahmanism inspired by narrow, communal, caste-based Hindu nationalism. It is working overtime for wrenching out the soul of the democratic secular Republic and engaged in the crudest attempt to legitimise the narrow fascistic Hindu Rashtra. It is because of this history has emerged as a central site in the defence of the Constitution and its democratic secular soul.

HISTORY IS UNDER ASSAULT

History is a science and no myth. Faith-based on mythological epics cannot provide the basis for governing a nation on modern scientific lines. But it is precisely this approach that is guiding the current course of governance. The history of the Indian landmass is now far more objective based on new scientific discoveries and applications. The reality of migration and assimilation during the century after century is now based on scientific evidence. However, the top institutions of science and research organisations are being used by the government to legitimise the completely mythical imaginations in explaining our past.

The British colonial historiography of the Indian past which sowed the seeds of a communal narrative is currently acting as the spearhead for the government-sponsored efforts to reconstruct our past. The varna ashram inspired brahmanism is being used to stifle the polyphonic tendencies within the Hindu philosophical traditions.

The recent effort is focused on distorting the very idea and experience of the Indian freedom struggle against British colonial rule. Not just the BJP-RSS but even the ministers of the government are dishing out bizarre facts on an everyday basis. For example, Swami Vivekananda inspired the rebellion of 1857 is the latest addition to this concerted effort. There is a distinct attempt to usurp the legacy of leaders of the national movement who were in fact strident against Hindutva and communal hate; all this is designed to conceal the total absence of RSS in the freedom struggle and their unconcealed collaboration with the British government.

The latest campaign to celebrate the diamond jubilee of Indian independence naming it as amrit mahotsav is inverting and trivialising the very significance of the struggle against British colonial rule. As part of this design, all spiritual and social tendencies in the Indian past is being sought to be established as an integral part of the freedom struggle.

This campaign is aimed at challenging the basic democratic and secular foundations of the Constitution. Clearly, without delegitimising the foundations of the Republican Constitution, Hindu Rashtra cannot gain legitimacy.

THE TRIAD

 The experience of the last seven and a half years has clearly shown that the Indian people, particularly the working have been under assault from a vicious triad. The intensity of the impact of this assault is conditioned by the degree of economic and social injustice that different sections of our people suffer.

This was inevitable. The lethal mix of corporate power and Hindutva has raised the neoliberal aggressive to an unprecedented level qualitatively different from its earlier avatar. The second element is the vicious authoritarian assault on the Republican Constitution and law-based independent institutions and fundamental rights. And thirdly the design to provoke polarisation based on diverse identity-based politics in the Indian context has also witnessed the most nauseating intensification of mutual hate; not to mention its disastrous impact on the unity of our people. Corporate Hindutva has been engaged constantly to harmonise these three elements and fronts to sustain this obnoxious dispensation. Obviously, targeting the freedom struggle inspired Republican Constitution and its foundations is a central objective of this project.

PEOPLES’ UNITY AND MOBILISATION IS THE WAY FORWARD

It is the people who create history. It is also the people who collectively safeguard the attempts to overcome its regression. The triad of attack on our Republic is being led by the corporate Hindutva alliance.

The key to ensuring resistance lies with the people. But the consciousness which can fire this resistance to attain full effectiveness will have to ensure integration of struggles on all these three fronts, not just isolated ones on any of them. This is imperative for defeating the ideological project of Hindutva and protecting the essence of the democratic, secular Republic.

Obviously, to elevate people's consciousness to a level where this complex integration has to be initiated is on an issue that is in keeping with the natural urge of the people and will have the potential to ensure the broadest possible mobilisation. Right to life and livelihood is definitely one such issue.

The recent experience of the kisan struggle validates this understanding. The struggle for the withdrawal of the farm laws over one and a half years is an extremely successful example. In the initial point of the struggle, this outcome was unthinkable. Corporate Hindutva was hell-bent on establishing complete hegemony and control over the entire agriculture sector. In trying to achieve its goal there was an obnoxious attempt to undermine the constitutional rights of the Parliament and its members to push the farm laws through the backdoor by disabling any scrutiny. This was notwithstanding the fact that the legislation which now stands withdrawn are in fact, still under the examination of the supreme court on grounds of constitutionality. That on a question where the government was so desperate to have its way, the eventual success of the united kisan movement in forcing the government to withdraw is in no way less than unbelievable.

This was possible because of the consciousness and comprehension of a significant section of the peasantry over the farm laws and the truly momentous and sustained struggle that managed to emerge. Not only that this movement could also rally around it have other democratic sectioned particularly that of the working people. It is the support and solidarity of these sections that contributed handsomely towards the final outcome. But, what is more, significant is that in course of this long drawn struggle the extent to which consciousness has been elevated that the way to go ahead is to build the unity surmounting differences of political and ideological orientation based on a common understanding of the question of livelihood. This conscious conclusion has galvanised the understanding that the foundations of the Republican Constitution can be the rallying point for counterposing an alternative to the offensive of the government. That the national tricolour came to be the banner of this successful resistance which has witnessed more than seven hundred farmers embracing martyrdom is not a chance coincidence. Neither are images of the Constitution’s Preamble or Ambedkar’s photographs doting the barricades on the Delhi borders a chance incidence. What more successful example could be there in the struggle for the defence of the Republic!