In speech after speech both in Parliament and outside, PM Modi in the last 10 years has never missed seizing upon any opportunity to denigrate the general culture of the Anglicised Hindus of India who PM Jawaharlal Nehru in his own time did so much to nurture and groom as the nation-builders of what was “Vikshith Bharath” in his own vision in that era .
Often Modi latched on to two very convenient metaphors every time he wished to describe entire two or three generations of Anglicised Hindus who he snidely called the “Lutyens and Khan Market gangs of India“.
With devastating rhetorical effect, Modi in his speeches, often contrasted the values and lifestyles of these elite groups with those of the common people of India, suggesting that they continue — even today as they were in Nehru’s times — to be out of touch with the realities and concerns of ordinary Indians. He said repeatedly that these groups are often more influenced by Western culture and values than by Indian traditions and heritage.
In a famous 2019 interview with a news channel, Modi spoke about the “Khan Market gang” and how it was savagely critical of his government’s policies, suggesting the “gang’s” disconnect from the aspirations and needs of the common people. This class or group of English-worshipping Indians, he said, was more interested in promoting Western-style liberalism and secularism than in understanding and addressing the concerns of ordinary Indians.
Similarly, in a 2018 speech inside Parliament, Modi referred to the “Lutyens’ Delhi” elite, suggesting that they were responsible for perpetuating a culture of entitlement and privilege, and that they were out of touch with the realities of rural India.
Countering PM Modi’s derisive narratives about the Lutyens Club, were those like Mani Shankar Aiyar and Ramachandra Guha who even today are not squeamish about presenting themselves as prominent public figures proud to be associated with the Nehruvian legacy equated with India’s default secular and liberal traditions.
Mani Shankar Aiyar, a former Congress MP and minister, has been a vocal defender of the Nehruvian era and its values. In a 2018 article in The Hindu, he wrote:
“The Lutyens’ Delhi that I knew was a city of refined culture, where the arts and literature thrived, and where the pursuit of knowledge and intellectual curiosity were valued… It was a city that was open to the world, and yet deeply rooted in Indian traditions and values.”
In another article in 2020, Aiyar wrote:
“The Khan Market gang, as they are derisively referred to by the BJP, are not just a bunch of elitist intellectuals, but represent a tradition of public service, intellectual curiosity, and cultural refinement that has been the hallmark of Indian democracy… They are the inheritors of the Nehruvian legacy, which valued reason, science, and humanism over superstition, dogma, and xenophobia.”
Ramachandra Guha, a historian and public intellectual, has also written extensively about the importance of preserving India’s secular and liberal traditions. In a 2019 article in The Telegraph, he wrote:
“Lutyens’ Delhi, with all its flaws and follies, represented a certain idea of India – an idea that was cosmopolitan, plural, and inclusive… It was a city that was home to people of all faiths, castes, and communities, and where the arts, literature, and music thrived… The BJP’s attack on Lutyens’ Delhi is an attack on this idea of India, and on the values of tolerance, diversity, and intellectual freedom that it represents.”
In another article in 2020, Guha wrote:
“The Lutyens’ Delhi elite, for all their privileges and prejudices, have historically been the guardians of Indian democracy… They have been the ones who have fought to preserve the freedoms and rights that are enshrined in our Constitution, and who have spoken out against the forces of intolerance and bigotry that threaten our democracy… The BJP’s attempt to dismantle this elite, and to replace it with a new elite of Hindutva ideologues, is a threat not just to Indian democracy, but to the very idea of India itself.”
What did RSS (Rashtriya Swayam Sevak), the institution that provides ideological and the cultural identity to the BJP, have to say about these two diametrically opposed views on Indian culture, on one hand voiced by the PM and by the defenders of Lutyen India and its Anglicised Hindus, on the other?
Although not as outspoken on the subject as Modi has been, it can’t however be said that Mohan Bhagwath, RSS Chief, has nothing against the Nehruvian legacy or the Lutyens Club anglophilia. Mohan Bhagwat and the RSS too have been critical of the Nehruvian legacy and the Lutyens’ Delhi elite, which they see as being out of touch with India’s cultural and national heritage. The RSS has long been a critic of the Congress party’s secularism and its perceived appeasement of minority communities, which they see as being contrary to the interests of the Hindu majority.
Bhagwat has repeatedly, at many of his RSS urbi et orbi, spoken about the need to promote Indian culture and values, and to move away from the Westernized elite culture that he sees as being dominant in Lutyens’ India. He has also emphasized the importance of promoting Hindi and other Indian languages, and of preserving India’s cultural heritage. In fact, the RSS has blamed Nehruvian legacy for many of India’s problems, including its economic underdevelopment and its cultural decline. Bhagwath’s ideologue-brigades in the media have often argued that Nehru’s policies were overly influenced by Western ideas and values, and that they failed to promote India’s national interests. So, while Bhagwat may not have directly criticized the Lutyens’ Club anglophilia as aggressively as PM Modi, the RSS’s broader ideology is certainly critical of the Westernized elite culture associated with Anglicised Hindu-dom.
So, given these two severely divergent views on the Nehruvian vision of India, today we might ask ourselves these types of questions:
A. Has Nehruvium ended and with it is the Anglicised-Hindu Class in India too dead?
B. Given today’s rise of Hindu nationalism in India , do Nehruvian ideals stand a chance of survival say in 2047?
C. Will “Vikshith Bharath” in 2047 bear any resemblance to the Nehruvian “scheme of things entire”?
***************
The Nehruvian vision of India, which emphasized secularism, socialism, and a strong centralized state, has indeed undergone significant changes and challenges in the past decade. It’s clear that the Indian political landscape has shifted considerably since Nehru’s time. Under Modi’s two terms as Prime Minister, a redefinition of Indian identity and a shift away from the secular, socialist ideals that Nehru espoused, has been attempted and policies that prioritize Hindu nationalism, economic liberalization, and a more assertive foreign policy are very much evident.
Moreover, the cultural and social fabric of India has also undergone significant changes, with a growing emphasis on Hindu nationalism and a decline in the influence of secular, liberal values. The rise of social media and the proliferation of fake news have also contributed to a polarized and divisive public discourse, which is far removed indeed from what once used to be vaunted and vaulting Nehruvium. Given this trajectory, it’s difficult to say whether Nehruvian ideals will survive in their original form by 2047.
***************
It is not the intention of this essay of mine to delve into historiographical debates of whether it is Nehru’s legacy of the last 50 years or Modi’s legacy of the next 50 years that shall shape the destiny of India. That debate is for historians, present and future. What I am interested however is a historiographical question of another sort:
When did the decline and death of Nehruvium and that of an entire generation of Anglicised-Hindus who worshipped him really begin? And how? And why?
The death of Nehruvium has been slow and protracted over the last 60-odd years of history. But its moribundity had actually become very evident even during the last days of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru…. except that not many in the intellectual community or academia were truly aware of it for well over the following 35-30 years until the beginning of the newe millennium. The political, journalistic and academic cognoscenti of those times was so busy writing Nehru’s hagiography that it miserably failed in tasseography.
The decline, fall and death of the Anglicised-Hindu Class had been clearly predicted so presciently, in fact, as early as 1965 by a rather irascible but intrepid intellectual and social commentator in India who, ironically, was himself an inveterate Europhile… and a writer par excellence in the English language.
The doughty intellectual, if he had lived today, might have been either pilloried as a pre-eminent Lutyen Crowd demogogue of the first order by Hindu nationalists or else, perhaps he might have been denounced by today’s Khan Market denizens as a traitor to their cause! One thing for sure, however, would be that whatever invectives either side might have hurled at him, the writer himself would have simply outshadowed, outshone and outdone the likes of Mani Shankar Aiyer and Ramachandra Guha or a Sudanshu Trivedi or S.Gurumurthy. Such was the razor-sharpness and percipience of observation that this slightly cranky but formidable intellectual possess… of India as a nation and Indians as its peoples. The only difference, however, between this writer-intellectual of 1965 and the present-day Mani Shankar Iyers and Ramachandra Guhas is this: Nirad C Chaudhuri was not a hypocrite; in calling out Nehru and his Anglicised legionnaires — and indeed all of Nehruvium even — he was always honest enough to call a spade a bloody shovel.
In his famous but hardly popular masterpiece of social commentary titled “The Continent of Circe: An Essay on the Peoples of India” written soon after Jawaharlal Nehru died, Nirad Chaudhury accurately predicted the inevitable fall and demise of the Anglicised Hindu-class of India and the rise of Hindu nationalism. Full sixty-years ago, this rather eccentric and unabashed Anglophile penned what seems today to have been a grand requiem for Nehruvium and its diehard, awestruck Anglicised fan-following. But he did it minus the airs, pretentions, faked nostalgia or grandstanding defense on its behalf that — by great contrast — present-day Mani Shankar Aiyars and Ramachandra Guhas put up in their writings and published books….
In the next part I am going to reproduce a few of those honest-to-God extracts from that remarkable book of Nirad Chaudhury in which he had long ago before PM Modi or the RSS had even conceived fashioning a political strategy to not only dishonour, deny and discredit the great Nehruvian legacy but also to bury it … he, Nirad Babu, had already indeed done it.
(to be continued)
Sudarshan Madabushi