The End of India by Khushwant Singh

Book Review of The End of India by Khushwant Singh

Khushwant Singh, in his book The End of India, foretold the rise of Hindu fundamentalists to power. This he said would be the beginning of the decline of a nation. We can see by the natural order of things that most of his predictions had already come true. The grim future that he showed would be the inevitable result of allowing religion into the arena of national politics. There’d be a time, Singh remarks, when all our secular values would be thrown out of the window. The present state of the Islamic countries, where religion was once allowed to take control of politics, should serve as a good warning to us. These nations remained backward and largely undemocratic. There is little or no freedom of speech. Women are treated like properties. A voice of dissent is first declared blasphemy and then hushed up with extreme cruelty. The eminent leaders in Europe foresaw this grim future. They summoned all the forces they had to wrestle away the political control from the church, just in time.

Some people are of the opinion that it was the British who sowed the seeds of communalism into our land. Such things only came out of our efforts of denying our own diversity. The culture of ours was never a perfect monolith. There were divisions based on castes, creeds and even on linguistic levels. 

To be perfectly honest, we were hardly ever united. The communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims became more pronounced during the Mughal era. The British were mostly indifferent of these things as long as they didn’t interfere with the administration.

The British followed a policy of divide and rule, but in India it was never difficult to divide. There were Hindu-Muslim riots every now and then and that suited the British fine as long as there was no threat to their empire.

After the Independence, the communal politics only turned more intense. The more conspicuous it became, the more we threw ourselves in denial. Pt. Nehru knew that the real threat to India’s secular democracy would be the resurgence of fundamentalism among Hindus who formed more than 80 percent of the population. He was able to oppose it as long as he lived.

... when Dr. Rajendra Prasad agreed to inaugurate the newly rebuilt temple at Somnath, Nehru sent a strong note protesting that the President of a secular State had no business to involve himself in religious matters.

Nehru never encouraged sants, mullahs or priests to enter into mainstream politics. The post-Nehruvian politicians were not so scrupulous.

The slide began with his daughter Indira Gandhi. With her, people like Dhirendra Brahmachari became formidable figures. Astrologers and tantrics were included in decision-making circles.

Today we blame organizations like Vishwa Hindu Parisad, RSS, Bajrang Dal, Bharatiya Janata Party, Shiv Sena for radicalising our youths. But the so called ‘secular’ Congress missed no opportunities to exploit the communalism in Indian politics. These leaders were never interested in nation building. These politicians ensured that Muslims and Dalits remained poor and uneducated so that they may be fooled and used conveniently when it suited them.

Khushwant Singh, a witness to several major incidents in history, had been a reliable narrator. In his book The End of India he remembers the Partition, the Gujrat riot and the assassination of Indira Gandhi. All these were blots of shame in our history with some communal colours attached to each of them. During Partition innocent bloods have been spilled on both sides of the border. In his book, Terrorism: History and Facts in the Worldand in India, N. S. Saksena, a retired Director General of Police, wrote about the anti-Sikh riots that broke out after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Most of these riots were led by Congress leaders. ‘The police in Delhi, Kanpur, Gaziabad, etc,’ he said, ‘was under the impression that anti-Sikh riots had the approval of the government.’

Ninety-nine percent of the accused charged with these unbailable offences were released on bail and they terrorized relatives of the very people they killed and molested from giving evidence against them.

Saksena, in his book, remarks, ‘terrorism has largely been a public sector enterprise.’ Instead of condemning it, the then prime minister commented, ‘When a big tree falls, the earth about it shakes’ referring to the assassination of Indira Gandhi. In the election campaign that followed its posters came with rhetoric of hatred – ‘Do you feel safe in a taxi driven by a member of another community?’ The reference to Sikhs was unmistakable. In Amethi the slogan that the Congress party chanted was: Beti hai Sardar ki, qaum hai ghaddar ki – she is the daughter of a Sikh, she belongs to a community of traitors. This referred to Rajiv’s Sikh sister-in-law Maneka. Surprisingly, this anti-Sikh sentiment actually worked for them. The Congress Party had a landslide victory.

So, when BJP took over the political climate was already communally charged. The Congress had been immensely successful in estranging Muslims from the mainstream society. They have closed their minds and withdrew into their social ghettos, just like a tortoise withdrawing into its shell.

We did not do enough after 1947 to rehabilitate them in the national mainstream. The non-Muslim has always had it deeply embedded in his mind that Muslims are bigots, fanatics and treacherous.

Khushwant Singh observed, ‘All our heroes were non-Muslims who had fought Muslims.’ Even Akbar was a token figure in our text books. The gist of these texts was modified to suit the need of our leaders. All that the Muslims rulers ever did, we were told, was to desecrate our temples and to impose humiliating taxes on non-Muslims. Our nation was already rife with such prejudices that the Hindutva elements capitalised to their political needs. In fact, they took a policy akin to that of the British, to rule over us. This helped the fundamentalists to sell their lies to us. This also helped them to distract us from more important socio-economic problems that they miserably failed to solve. They were also quick to place the ‘anti-national’, ‘communist’, and ‘pseudo-secular’ tag to anyone who protested. This was quite a popular method among politicians to mobilise public support. Any violence therefore is justified as long it is buttressed by the state and the majority of its people. This sentiment was so strong that under its influence we could conveniently ignore the facts and figures that went against our beliefs.

Judge Madon’s report, delivered after the Bhiwandi riots when the Congress was in power at the Centre and in Maharashtra. Although the Muslims were the victims (of 121 killed, well over 100 were Muslims; of the property destroyed or looted, ninety percent belonged to the Muslims), the vast majority of those arrested were Muslims.

During this time even the Maharashtra police showed pro-Hindu bias as they beat Muslims prisoners and deprived them of food and water. Even in the Home Ministry circular that comprised of instructions on how to deal with communal riots, the assumption was that it was the Muslims who were behind the riots.

The rapidly increasing number of uneducated and unemployed youths, observed Khushwant Singh, adds to the problem. In absence of sense of direction, they are easily caught up in the wave of propagandas, communalism and hatred. It is important to understand that we, the Hindus are as foreigners as the Muslims. It is the adivasis who are actually the indigenous people of India. Them, we have successfully pushed towards extinction. We, the disillusioned and dissatisfied lots, are made to believe that it is the ‘other’ people and not our incompetent leaders behind all this. The media had been playing crucial role by continuously thumping the common man with propaganda materials. Today they serve no other purpose than to put the clock of scientific progress backwards.

Khushwant Singh in his book, The End of India, painted a portrait of India that we have been pushing into our subconscious mind with a pious denial.  The future indeed looks grim. The freedom of speech curtailed,  the words ‘Hindutva’ and ‘Nationalism’ becoming synonymous, mobs lynching men with impunity, and the state and its legal machinery playing the roles of mute spectators – all these indicate in which direction the nation is moving. Khushwant Singh, an author whom we greatly respected for his uncompromising honesty, minces no words to predict the fate. And I couldn’t help but agree with him. It probably is the beginning of The End of India.

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