<p>André Malraux, the novelist and minister for cultural affairs in French President De Gaulle’s Cabinet (1959-69), starts his autobiography, famously called Anti-Memoirs, by recounting what a Catholic priest of a suburban parish told him: “I have heard the confessions of thousands of men in the last fifteen years, and it taught me one fundamental fact: that there is no such thing as a mature man.”</p>.<p>If that be the fate of us mortals, how can a nation be called mature? A nation, after all, is a collection of people who have a shared imagination of living together in and as a community. Can we measure the maturity of a nation? Can we justly and proudly say that we’ve matured as a nation at a given point in time?</p>.<p>Malraux’s insightful observation came to my mind as I heard Vikram Sampath say that “we have now matured as a nation to open up our past wounds”. He was speaking at the launch of his thousand-page tome, Tipu Sultan – the Saga of Mysore’s Interregnum (1760-1799)’ last week in Mysuru. </p>.<p>Sampath understands that historians should be sensitive to the problems of our fragmented past, divided as it was on religious grounds, and not rake up past wounds and show one community as victims and ‘the other’ as aggressors.</p>.<p>He added that we cannot hold the present generation of Muslims responsible for what happened 200 years ago or more. So far, perfectly reasonable and understandable.</p>.SC's 'no fresh suits' on shrines, a breather.<p>But then he asked the question: “Are we not mature enough today as a nation to open up our past wounds and know what exactly happened? Only when we examine our past closely will we be able to live in peace and harmony with one another.” That’s the nub of the matter. Are we mature enough today?</p>.<p>There is no need to go into details, but we can recall some of the familiar cases, such as the killings of Gauri Lankesh, Narendra Dhabolkar, Govind Pansare, and M M Kalburgi. In all these killings, the evidence pointed towards the Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Janjagruti Samiti. </p>.<p>Then there is the case of Union minister Jayant Sinha, who garlanded eight murderers convicted of lynching a Muslim but were released on bail<br> (July 2018).</p>.<p>BJP MP candidate Ajay Kumar Mishra Teni’s son mowed down four protesting farmers in western Uttar Pradesh, and soon after elections Teni was appointed the Minister of State for Home Affairs in the Union government (October 2021).</p>.<p>In Jan 2020 in Delhi, Union minister Anurag Thakur chanted ‘desh ke gaddaron ko’ and the crowds responded with ‘goli maro saalonko’; and in March 2020, a communal riot was let loose in north-eastern Delhi.</p>.<p>Along the Delhi border, farmers of Haryana and Western UP staged the longest protest in the country in 2020-2021. About 750 farmers died due to their exposure to severe winter in Delhi.</p>.Constitution debate reduced to mudslinging.<p>On August 15, 2022, the rapists of Bilkis Bano and the murderers of her children were released by the Gujarat government and they were quickly hailed as ‘Sanskari Brahmins’ by the BJP leaders. And in UP, ‘bulldozer law’ replaced the rule of law and the chief minister was hailed as a ‘Bulldozer Baba’.</p>.<p>State agencies such as the ED, CBI and IT departments have been weaponised against the members of Opposition parties. Lastly, demands are growing for surveying and digging up various mosques to explore the presence of Hindu temples or ‘Shivlings’ under the mosques in Kashi, Mathura, Sambhal, Ajmer Sharif and 20 more sites. Scholars of Sangh Parivar claim that the total number of such disputed sites is estimated at 30,000. </p>.<p>Are these signs of a mature nation? Is this the high point we’ve reached after 75 years of independence? </p>.<p>It is often said that ‘memory is an act of resistance against tyranny’. But can memory be also used to support tyranny? Tyranny of the majority against the minority?</p>.<p>The study of history is always an act of selective recall. If we are looking for death and destruction, we’ll find that aplenty. And if we are looking for reasons as to how the people survived and succeeded as a pluralistic nation, despite the evil inflicted upon them by different rulers over centuries, we will find plenty of ennobling examples of that as well. </p>.<p>The question is: What do you want to find in history and who benefits from what you unearth? Interestingly, in the same event, we were told by another speaker that this book on Tipu Sultan is a result of four years of intense work by Sampath, but it was interrupted in the middle as he was asked to do a book on Waiting for Shiva – Unearthing the Truth of Kashi’s Gyanvapi.</p>.<p>No prizes for guessing why that book had to be written in such a hurry and who asked him to write that book.</p>.<p>Our founding fathers, after independence and the horrors of partition, started to build a nation with three stirring words - ‘We, the People of India’ - and that itself was the covenant. It was an assertion of immutable unity in the face of a cruel division of the country. Today, we are building another nation. Neither Gandhi, Nehru, Patel nor Ambedkar would recognise it.</p>.<p><em>(The author was formerly in the Union Cabinet Secretariat)</em></p>
<p>André Malraux, the novelist and minister for cultural affairs in French President De Gaulle’s Cabinet (1959-69), starts his autobiography, famously called Anti-Memoirs, by recounting what a Catholic priest of a suburban parish told him: “I have heard the confessions of thousands of men in the last fifteen years, and it taught me one fundamental fact: that there is no such thing as a mature man.”</p>.<p>If that be the fate of us mortals, how can a nation be called mature? A nation, after all, is a collection of people who have a shared imagination of living together in and as a community. Can we measure the maturity of a nation? Can we justly and proudly say that we’ve matured as a nation at a given point in time?</p>.<p>Malraux’s insightful observation came to my mind as I heard Vikram Sampath say that “we have now matured as a nation to open up our past wounds”. He was speaking at the launch of his thousand-page tome, Tipu Sultan – the Saga of Mysore’s Interregnum (1760-1799)’ last week in Mysuru. </p>.<p>Sampath understands that historians should be sensitive to the problems of our fragmented past, divided as it was on religious grounds, and not rake up past wounds and show one community as victims and ‘the other’ as aggressors.</p>.<p>He added that we cannot hold the present generation of Muslims responsible for what happened 200 years ago or more. So far, perfectly reasonable and understandable.</p>.SC's 'no fresh suits' on shrines, a breather.<p>But then he asked the question: “Are we not mature enough today as a nation to open up our past wounds and know what exactly happened? Only when we examine our past closely will we be able to live in peace and harmony with one another.” That’s the nub of the matter. Are we mature enough today?</p>.<p>There is no need to go into details, but we can recall some of the familiar cases, such as the killings of Gauri Lankesh, Narendra Dhabolkar, Govind Pansare, and M M Kalburgi. In all these killings, the evidence pointed towards the Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Janjagruti Samiti. </p>.<p>Then there is the case of Union minister Jayant Sinha, who garlanded eight murderers convicted of lynching a Muslim but were released on bail<br> (July 2018).</p>.<p>BJP MP candidate Ajay Kumar Mishra Teni’s son mowed down four protesting farmers in western Uttar Pradesh, and soon after elections Teni was appointed the Minister of State for Home Affairs in the Union government (October 2021).</p>.<p>In Jan 2020 in Delhi, Union minister Anurag Thakur chanted ‘desh ke gaddaron ko’ and the crowds responded with ‘goli maro saalonko’; and in March 2020, a communal riot was let loose in north-eastern Delhi.</p>.<p>Along the Delhi border, farmers of Haryana and Western UP staged the longest protest in the country in 2020-2021. About 750 farmers died due to their exposure to severe winter in Delhi.</p>.Constitution debate reduced to mudslinging.<p>On August 15, 2022, the rapists of Bilkis Bano and the murderers of her children were released by the Gujarat government and they were quickly hailed as ‘Sanskari Brahmins’ by the BJP leaders. And in UP, ‘bulldozer law’ replaced the rule of law and the chief minister was hailed as a ‘Bulldozer Baba’.</p>.<p>State agencies such as the ED, CBI and IT departments have been weaponised against the members of Opposition parties. Lastly, demands are growing for surveying and digging up various mosques to explore the presence of Hindu temples or ‘Shivlings’ under the mosques in Kashi, Mathura, Sambhal, Ajmer Sharif and 20 more sites. Scholars of Sangh Parivar claim that the total number of such disputed sites is estimated at 30,000. </p>.<p>Are these signs of a mature nation? Is this the high point we’ve reached after 75 years of independence? </p>.<p>It is often said that ‘memory is an act of resistance against tyranny’. But can memory be also used to support tyranny? Tyranny of the majority against the minority?</p>.<p>The study of history is always an act of selective recall. If we are looking for death and destruction, we’ll find that aplenty. And if we are looking for reasons as to how the people survived and succeeded as a pluralistic nation, despite the evil inflicted upon them by different rulers over centuries, we will find plenty of ennobling examples of that as well. </p>.<p>The question is: What do you want to find in history and who benefits from what you unearth? Interestingly, in the same event, we were told by another speaker that this book on Tipu Sultan is a result of four years of intense work by Sampath, but it was interrupted in the middle as he was asked to do a book on Waiting for Shiva – Unearthing the Truth of Kashi’s Gyanvapi.</p>.<p>No prizes for guessing why that book had to be written in such a hurry and who asked him to write that book.</p>.<p>Our founding fathers, after independence and the horrors of partition, started to build a nation with three stirring words - ‘We, the People of India’ - and that itself was the covenant. It was an assertion of immutable unity in the face of a cruel division of the country. Today, we are building another nation. Neither Gandhi, Nehru, Patel nor Ambedkar would recognise it.</p>.<p><em>(The author was formerly in the Union Cabinet Secretariat)</em></p>
