Bharat-India — one seems lifeless without the other

One of the great challenges of storytelling is to pick up the right thread of a story. One witnesses this particularly in the recent Bharat vs India controversy.

One must admit that the story has been lying around inert like an unused recipe for a long time. It read like the piece of a forgotten thesaurus, with synonyms and antonyms competing side by side for attention.

From one end it looked harmless, like a regime lazily playing around with two options — India as a secular lazy possibility, and Bharat as a fountain of myth, one which is everyday and present; and the other acting as the past with a possible future.

The scenario looked harmless, but suddenly turned sinister when Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, announced it as a unilateral decision. What once looked like a lazy set of options, a parade of alternatives, suddenly became macabre. Yet one has realised that options take time to electrify politics. It can easily turn gimmicky, as when it was declared as an invitation from President Droupadi Murmu. The immediacy of Bharat suddenly turned acrimonious.

Initially it was difficult to see Bharat and India as a stark dualism of oppositions. The set functioned more like a collection of complementarities. There was less an opposition than dualism of complementarity. The narrative was more like a presentation of romantic doubles. In fact, it is detective stories that provide a tale of doubles — Sherlock Holmes is never complete without his Watson, Father Brown would be lost without ex-criminal Flambeau; Poirot would be bereft without Hastings. The double creates the whole, the tension between the two halves eventually fabricates the story. The hero as detective is incomplete without the opposing half of actions and readings. It’s the tension between the two, and the amicability of the whole that makes the detective story such an inviting genre.

Bharat vs India has no such tantalising completeness. The oppositions are stark, more like a lazy spectacle from some forgotten political circus. It is more a gossip of possibilities. Facing each other, the oppositions look more like two moth eaten friends. The BJP’s unexpected act of issuing it as an imaginary invitation caught everyone by surprise. I wonder if President Murmu sensed the tension and embarrassment that would follow. At a more psychological level, the G20 invitation has a sense of second-rate fantasy.

When the announcement of Bharat came, it came starkly without the baggage of parties and legislature. It was meant to sound epic and historic, a heuristic for a future world. It was meant as a manifesto of change till Indians calculated the crores of rupees it would cost to change word into intention. A label does not create a nominal change. One must dig deep into the identity and character, into the very persona of a nation. Suddenly Bharat, instead of being a powerful myth, became careless civics.

The President’s silence added to the mystery. One was not sure she was party to the exercise. When the United Nations announced it was considering the idea, one sensed that the joke had gone too far. Suddenly the dualism looked stark and lonely from each side. It had lost its joint amiability, which was the true conceptual amiability, the organicity of Indian politics. Hybrids and hyphens need to coexist to make Indian politics syncretic. Ideological oppositions and dualism don’t create a fire. They often look like happy bedfellows.

What added electricity to the current act of politics was the unilateral declaration, the power of ambush and surprise. India creating the G20 era of Bharat was a political ambush, the decision lacked the ritual quality of politics. One realises that the Indian style of modernity, discard dualisms, and prefers encompassing oppositions into a lazy hybridity.

Even as a futuristic heuristic, where the past called Bhart becomes the present, there is little drama to it. In fact, it is not the conceptual content of the words, but the quality of a G20-inspired joke of an India muddled as ever, announcing a new utopia, which has been lying around for decades. It sounded more like a law and order declaration by a low level bureaucrat, and act of wishful thinking before the 2024 election. Sadly, while as a headline it was dramatic, as a script, there was little to unfold. The drama could not be provided by the oppositions which had gone stale, the few sparks of surprise came from the surreptitiousness of the act. It was like a Christmas surprise gone haywire.

The moral of the story, however, is not at that level, the fable is at the level of politics. Oppositions might look singular and stark, but they still do not provide the metaphysics of change. In fact, the message is the opposite. The politics of India needs the togetherness of options to create change. Bharat-India is an amiable dream as one seems lifeless without the other, while the other may lose its amiable playfulness, all that remains is a dismal politics as BJP’s gift to the nation.

Anyway, there is a consolation. The G20 for all its publicity, has hardly created anything memorable. There is little for the future. A farcical enactment of a future, at least created a sense of mnemonic or footnotes, the BJP’s politics promises much but delivers little. It’s merely a collection of promissory notes, empty invitations to an emptier future.

(Shiv Visvanathan is a social scientist and professor, OP Jindal Global University)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH