Hindus first? Or India
Since independence, many of the debates that have troubled Indians have revolved around the subject of identity. Whether it was the issue of language and region as reflected in the formation of various states, or the three language formula, Indians seemed to be fairly desperate to find and attach to themselves some formulaic identifier. After all Bengali, Punjabi or Tamil surely reflected some piece of yourself was a common understanding. This one, based on region and language, was not so difficult to resolve given the existence of a federal structure of government that could be and was adopted. But the matter did not end there. More serious was the debate over the Civil Code for India. Dealing with marriage, adoption and inheritance, the only reason that particular bill got passed was that Jawaharlal Nehru put his entire political career on stake and threatened to resign if it was not. The opposition caved in but only after it was specified that the Code will apply only to Hindus and none else. Hence its new name, the Hindu Code Bill. Nehru even allegedly threatened the Right-wing Rajendra Prasad, then president of India, should he fail to approve of the measure. But the matter of personal law remained and would come back to haunt India in the 1980s, in the Shah Bano matter. Today, once again the Supreme Court has raised the issue of a Uniform Civil Code.
So what are all these debates about? After all there are multiple layers to individual identity: caste, language, region, religion, country. Different layers express themselves at different times. So why should this be such a contentious issue? Here we need to look at not only how Indians look at each other but also how others look at us. Do they look at us as Indians or as Hindus? Why have had so many people questioned the idea of nation within the short history of independent India, whether it be the idea of Khalistan, or an independent Kashmir or an abortive Nagalim? Yet we need to note that even while the idea of nation has been questioned, all these movements have merely submerged themselves within the idea of India over the years thereby strengthening India so much more. Few recall today that Tamil Nadu and Orissa too have at different times expressed their pique against India by demanding that they be recognised as independent nations.
So if India merely subsumes most identities, why does the word Indian remain such a question mark as to what it means? After all, two thousand years ago, the inhabitants of this country were known as residents of Jambudwipa and a thousand years ago, it was called al Hind. Either way, these people were regarded as the people of Hindustan. So why did the Indians remain such a confused lot?
One possible explanation could be that while the Hindustani identity did remain in the background, it was the geographical location within a specific community that defined human beings far more than any other layer in ancient India. Of all the thousands of inscriptions we find in ancient India from places like Sanchi, Bharhut and Kanheri, people are often defined in terms of profession and in terms of place of residence. Interestingly, in the most ancient inscriptions, there are almost no references to caste. We also find collective donations made by village groups. The regional identity was a stronger identifier of who a person was.
Local laws were respected by all including the king. And this is clearly stated not just in the Manusmriti but in many other texts. We even find an ancient charter called the Charter of Visnusena written around the sixth century AD in which the community of the merchants of Lohata (a village in the Gujarat area) persuaded the king to recognise the conventions by which they live. This aachar sthiti patra as it is called records customary laws which range from tax laws to immunities the villagers could enjoy. The immunities granted are very interesting: that the king could not confiscate the property of someone who died without an heir; that villagers who were participating in a yajna or in a marriage ceremony could not be summoned to a court of law in cases in which they were parties; that a debtor who was able to furnish a security was not to be handcuffed but allowed to go free and most interestingly that villagers could not be forced to provide board and lodging to royal officials visiting the village.
Evidently village was all. The king was a distant creature whose only interface with citizens seemed to be tax collection. And for tax collection too, responsibility was devolved to some local headman. And the communities that inhabited India were very diverse.
It is difficult to find any grand norm or unifying principle that organised living in India. Rather there were so many strands of thought and behaviour that diversity itself became an article of faith.
For the fact of the matter is that in India all strands of thought, religion and dietary practices existed. If Maharishi Apastamba could write in the sixth century BCE that the meat of the cow should be offered to the dead ancestors in sacrifice, precisely the opposite viewpoint could be found in another writer on the sacred texts a thousand years later. The Manusmriti could instruct the householder to offer meat to a guest in the beginning of a set of instructions and a few passages later, talk of abstaining from meat being a very good thing.
The point is not whether one view is correct or not. The point is that in India such boundaries of behaviour were never deemed important. You could do pretty much what you liked so long as you practised it within the bounds of your community.
Communities did fight with each other but we find few instances of sustained and prolonged violence between communities on the basis of what people believed or ate.
Today it is that layer of local community which has vanished and there seems to be nothing to take its place so the search for identity becomes that much more acute with people ranging here and there in a seemingly mad search, fighting with each other.