A national book for India?

The idea that there is ‘one book’ for all India leaves the substantial Indian minority groups somewhat out in the cold

India is a self-proclaimed secular democracy, but it might be difficult to divine that from some recent comments by the Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. On December 7, she urged that the Bhagwad Gita be dubbed as “Rashtriya Granth” and only a formal announcement to that end was pending. She claimed that it de facto already had this status as a copy had been handed to President Barack Obama by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She advised psychiatrists to read the book and prescribe it to patients suffering from depressive illnesses. In the same week, another Indian government member, Ramesh Pokhriyal, started controversy when he declared astrology to be superior to hard science, and that it dwarfs all other sciences. Even the most devoted astrologer might find that something of a stretch, and equally lacking in credulity as the assertion by the same parliamentarian that plastic surgery and genetic engineering explain the creation of at least two Hindu gods. His views appear to be shared by Prime Minister Modi.

Leaving aside the incongruity of the suggestion that the Bhagwad Gita become India’s national book, the idea that there is ‘one book’ for all India leaves the very substantial Indian minority groups somewhat out in the cold. The Muslim population of India is around 14.2 per cent (2011 data) and it constitutes the single-largest minority population in the world. Then there are the Christians, Sikhs and Buddhists to say nothing of the various animist religions to be found on the subcontinent, which are unlikely to welcome finding the Bhagwad Gita as their national book. In short, the suggestion is fraught with pitfalls, and if adopted, likely to become parent to any number of disputes and considerable anger at least on the part of minorities as well as secular Hindus who view with unease the lurch to the right in India being driven by the Hindutva brigade. The election of Prime Minister Modi seems to have created a space in which extremist views are going to thrive, and the extremists have quickly risen to the bait, a rise we view with concern.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 9^th,  2014.

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