The quest for an inclusive idea of Republicanism

The Republic Day of 2018 stunned the people of India when news surfaced from Kasganj in Uttar Pradesh about the killing of a young man called Chandan Gupta in a feud over flag, colour and slogans. When any incident takes place, allegations and counter-allegations are not farfetched but the undeniable fact is that this is the first incident outside the Kashmir Valley when a citizen of India was killed for honouring Tiranga and raising slogans of Vande Mataram and Bharat Mata Ki Jai.  However, one must wait till the final investigation report is submitted and made public. This practice, however, has been breached by pseudo-secular intellectuals and political actors who have shown impatience in reacting to incidents concerning non-Hindu or Left-leaning people. When Gauri Lankesh, a leftist journalist, was killed, they took not a second more to blame ‘rightists’ for her assassination. When they use ‘right’ they precisely mean none other than Hindutva activists. This trend is not new. A few years ago when an elderly Christian nun was raped in West Bengal, a TMC leader immediately blamed the RSS. However, a probe agency found a Bangladeshi infiltrator guilty of it. The killing of Pehlu Khan, a cow smuggler, also led to a campaign by the same class of intellectuals blaming the Bajrang Dal.

But on the question of Kasganj, they are not even ready to believe the testimony of Chandan’s father. According to him, his son was pressed to raise the slogan of ‘Pakistan Long live’. Does it not mean that the Indian Republic has a threat from an internal enemy more than external forces? This reminds us of Dr BR Ambedkar’s last speech in the Constituent Assembly when he cautioned that if our freedom and sovereignty would face any danger, the reason would be traitors from within the nation in the form of Mir Zafar and Jaichand.

Therefore, a larger question is to understand reasons for lack of emotional integration which has been causing mistrust, contempt and sometimes dividing us into warring parties. It happened in Kasganj. Indianness is not a product of merely Constitutional or post-independent history of India. Our long civilisational trajectory, cultural life, philosophy and intellectual legacies contribute in establishing our distinct Republican identity. Unless we consider ourselves trustees of our past and sharers of intellectual legacies, we cannot claim ourselves to be complete Indians. Citizenship is merely a legal identity, however, some people consider it as a sine qua none. India owes secularism not to the Constituent Assembly or due to the inclusion of the term secularism in 1976 but because of our unbound faith in spiritual diversities as the core of human life. However, religion had been used as a means of coercion of emotionalism during 1940s leading to a narrative of Pakistani nationalism based on religion. It created a binary of Hindus and Muslims and we failed to wipe out this colonial legacy from our national life.

Some intellectuals blamed youths for carrying Bhagva as a reason for the dispute. It is a truism that the sanctity of the Republic day should be maintained but the contempt for Bhagva flag shows declaiming our both recent and ancient past.  The colour has been part of our cultural and nationalistic tradition from time immemorial and inspired people for renouncement, sacrifice and humanism. But there is another history which has remained excluded from our textbooks. A meeting of the Congress Working Committee which held on April 2, 1931, in Karachi appointed a committee of seven persons to examine the colour of the flag. The committee included Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Pattabhi Sitaramayya, Master Tara Singh, Abul Kalam Azad, Principal DB Kalelkar and Dr NS Hardikar.

It was authorised to collect evidence considered necessary and to send the report to the Working Committee before July 31, 1931. A questionnaire was circulated by Pattabhi Sitaramayya from Masulipatnam on April 4, 1931, on behalf of the Committee to various Provincial Congress Committees, and the public through the press. It was intended to understand the response of communities in provinces on the design of the National Flag, and inviting their suggestions. Eight Provincial Committees, 50 individuals and the Executive Committee of the Central Sikh League sent the memoranda. At the meeting of the Flag Committee in Bombay, there was a unanimous opinion that “If there is one colour wholeheartedly accepted by the Indians in the context of its ancient tradition, it is the Kesari or saffron colour. 

Once Tricolour became the national flag, it embodied our emotions, history and valour but those who degrade saffron as a sign of communalism or majoritarianism are either ignorant about cultural history or unprepared to accept the idea of inclusive Republicanism.

The author is founding Honorary Director of India Policy Foundation, a Delhi-based think tank. Views expressed are personal