The nation as a 'continuous conversation'

Through a series of essays, Rajeev Bhargava reflects on our times, what is good and bad, right and wrong. His book is a treatise to the inquiry: Have we lost our way?

Between Hope and Despair: 100 Ethical Reflections on Contemporary India
Author: Rajeev Bhargava
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: 352
Price: Rs 699

Writers can be conscience keepers. Some conscience keepers are novelists, like George Orwell. Others, politicians like C Rajagopalachari. The commentary and clarity of their essays make them relevant even today. In a collection of hundred essays, Rajeev Bhargava’s book Between Hope and Despair: 100 Ethical Reflections on Contemporary India, brings out the jurist in him who can guide India’s conscience.

Contemporary India is in a struggle. On prosperity, it hopes to become an economy that is developed and no longer developing. On governance, it hopes to become a full democracy, no longer flawed. India’s struggles are hers alone. They are unique for a nation soon to be with the largest population, co-existing with the most diverse religions, evolving with a culture that goes back to some of the oldest traditions in humanity.

Essays in the book reflect our times, on what is good and bad, and on what is right and wrong. The book is powered by the author’s core belief that:  “A nation exists only as long as there is a continuous conversation among its members about what it was, is, will, and should be. “These reflections can add many layers to a conversation on nation-building. The discourse on four subjects stands out: The constitution, religion, institutions, and culture.

Jawaharlal Nehru remarked that “the Constituent Assembly is a nation on the move, throwing away the shell of its past political and possibly social structure, and fashioning for itself a new garment of its own making”. The result of those conversations, our constitution, was a masterful effort. A complex nation with complex value systems, balanced to arrive at the virtues of freedom, equality and justice. At no point can its relevance be undermined. The book brings out the full power of the constitution as a charter of rights, composed through a series of conversations far ahead of its time. Instances when it is overlooked lead to instances when citizens protest to bring it back.

Religion is the centrepiece of this book. Religion is also a centrepiece of India and its politics. The value of secularism and its approach in the constitution sets us apart from any other nation. In India, caste hierarchies come before religion. What exists of religion in the West, as an organised system, does not in India. Their histories are in opposite directions of a line stretching into centuries. Religion as a code of ethics is separate from a prescription of practices and norms in India. Both these separations come together in many forms of multi-religions that are loose sheets of paper bound together by the caste system. So much so that even the Abrahamic religions of Islam and Christianity have caste hierarchies in India. The Indian state, unlike the European states of the past, never fought against centralised religious institutions like the church. Instead, the state embraced and promoted religion and its institutions. And so, separation of state and religion never existed. It takes this complexity to fully understand the ideas of Indian secularism and how to improve it. These essays offer the author’s clear understanding of institutions, a concept made less abstract throughout the book and especially in the essay on why institutions matter. Education and medicine are practices, and universities and hospitals are institutions. They are made of norms, rules and systems to sustain social practices valued in society. Their care, condition and continuity give a sense of a nation’s progress. India’s institutions are performing poorly on all three criteria.

India’s culture is down a slide too. Moral values are no longer shared and have become individual preferences. Our sense of what is moral and our reasoning towards it has shrunk. India’s culture will stagnate if the idea of exclusive belonging catches up more than it has. Identities in India in the past were more multi-layered than they are now. Our norms, institutions and practices are closing down on traditions of multi-plurality, especially the unique sense of religious plurality that Mahatma Gandhi stood for. The result is that we live in times of ideological violence, where one group dominates their ideas of moral truths and goodness, “making non-adherents, enemies who must be fought, conquered or decimated”. The cultural slide downward is accompanied by toxic masculinity. These views are a treatise to the inquiry: Have we lost our way?

Other essays on the pandemic, federalism, and liberalism stand out. The essay on the politics of everyday life is a rare book in this bookshelf of a hundred books. They make the reader realise that Mr Bhargava is an essayist who made an effort not to be an ivory tower academic. Gandhi, Ambedkar, Ashoka and cricket lend themselves as references throughout the book.       

Though all essays in this book are equal, inevitably some essays are more equal than others. Essays featured were also newspaper columns but this compilation emphasises the breadth of thinking that makes the book worthwhile. 

The reviewer is an associate at Artha Global, a policy-research organisation based in Mumbai. The views are personal