NEW DELHI: Utpal Kumar’s new book, ‘Bharat Rising’, is an insightful work that addresses the story of new India in overcoming dharmic, democratic and diplomatic challenges.
The book “Bharat Rising: Dharma, Democracy, Diplomacy” by Utpal Kumar mirrors the contemporary social-political and geopolitical questions with great ease and passion. The juxtaposition of what went wrong in the past and what is set right at present in India and the roadmap ahead systematically makes it a compelling read. It gives the reader a 360-degree view of Indian politics since Independence. The crafting of a new India since 2014 with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the helm of Indian politics piloting the nation for Viksit Bharat and making Bharat an impactful nation with international relevance finds its best articulations in the book.
The book’s title aptly captures Bharat’s ascendancy to the height of a recognisable player while standing rooted on the unshakable civilisational foundation. Though long suppressed, Bharat’s rising dimension finds a decisive utterance and ensures global visibility. It is trying to revive its glorious antiquity, shrugging off the layers of ineffectiveness imposed by Islamic imperialism, European colonialism and Nehruvian political myopia. Therefore, this book captures the rising aspect of Bharat and its civilisational reawakening. It covers three important areas—dharma, democracy and diplomacy. The logic of this collocation in the context of Bharat is that they aptly define the interdependence and the quintessential character of Bharat’s rise and self-expression. The dharmic essence of Bharat and its unceasing continuity constitute its uniqueness and exceptionality and explain its civilisational character.
Bharat is a dharma-centric nation. Wherever adharma takes place, justice becomes imperative. The Hindu sense of justice is so ingrained in the collective unconscious that its persistence is extraordinary—five hundred years of resistance and legal recourse finally led to the building of the temple at Ayodhya. The legal battle for Kashi and Mathura continues with the uncompromising optimism of recovery of the Hindu sacred space. The historical awakening this pursuit of justice leads to has changed the political topography of Bharat.
The cultural and the political are inseparable in India. The historical awakening on cultural grounds for the injustices done to Bharat’s dharmic essence constitutes the core of Kumar’s argument in the dharma part of the book. He argues that a sense of political consciousness emerged from this churning that felt the urgency of securing the cultural constituents of a civilisational Rashtra. Therefore, the vision of new India focused on revisiting the civilisational roots and seeking strengths from them. The colonial and post-colonial historiography ensured cultural deracination and erasure of Hindu coordinates of history.
Therefore, ideology became the handmaiden of history and distortions its natural corollary.
The book then mentions the silent warfare weaponising ideology, religion and demography.
India’s diversity, which is assumed to be its strength, is used by certain interest groups to weaken it internally. Apart from the external issues that Kumar mentions in the diplomacy part of his book, internal issues are equally serious. The logic of numbers through asymmetric demographic growth can pose a serious challenge to the institution of democracy in India. This apprehension has been explored in the book. In addition, giving one religion the passport to extremism and criticising the other for even a small excusable error and hence nit-picking indicate the inherence of bias. The history of this bias is phenomenal. Since Independence, even though the Constitution ought to be objective, the Hindu majority has experienced all litmus tests. It has been singularly identified as a people that needs the maximum reform while keeping some other community untouched for fear of hurting the sentiment.
The book argues that this is not constitutional morality or democratic practice. The Uniform Civil Code (UCC) case is quite relevant in this context. The civil code of the country is not uniform. Certain religious community is given the right to practice their civil matter as per theologically sanctioned practices, whereas the same freedom is not given to the Hindus. A series of legislations were enacted and constitutionally ensured the streamlining of Hindus and their social practices. When some social customs are allowed to be practised, and no derailment of law is found, the same set of social practices resorted to for other communities invites the ire of the law. This open injustice raises questions about democracy as an institution of equality. Kumar has most clearly articulated this in the chapter “Code, Commandments and Natural Law”.
Moreover, the politics of Brahmin and Dalit have taken the most visceral forms. The book covers this politics in the chapter “Brahmins, Dalits, and the Curse of Whisperers”. While highlighting the plight of the Dalits historically, the Brahmins have been singularly accused of all vices. This attitude subtly shifted to the level of a common perception, has caused more trouble for the Brahmins. They have experienced deprivation and demonisation in a social space. This has led to their repression and migration, both internal and external, in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Kashmir, and so on. This has been deliberately downplayed, and a layer of silence has been allowed to develop. It is reduced to mere whispers, or if spoken loudly, they are construed as lies denying even the truth of history. This precarity has been keenly articulated in “Bharat Rising”.
The author also exposes the double standards of some political parties, which claim that they work for the poor, minorities, Dalits, etc. He mentions the Marichjhapi genocide of Namasudras in the Sundarbans by the Left government in West Bengal. Therefore, this book tells the truth about specific historical events which were conveniently silenced and never revisited. This conspiracy of silence tactically exercised is not limited numerically to just one or two events. Several such cases were allowed to pass in silence. Kumar presents them systematically and exposes the hypocrisies of certain political parties and their history of silencing anything that does not fall in the scope of their projected narratives.
The book’s second part discusses diplomacy and international relations, especially with India’s neighbourhood. In Kumar’s critical assessment, the vision of a new India that has taken a definitive shape since 2014 is an epiphenomenon of the consistency of Brave New Diplomacy. The nature and features of India’s diplomacy have been staggeringly transformed by PM Modi and Minister of External Affairs (MEA) S. Jaishankar’s combination.
Both understand the nerve of the uncertain multipolar world after the Covid-19 pandemic, the US-China rivalry, the Ukraine War, the US exit from Afghanistan, etc. They act accordingly to protect India’s interests. The diplomatic heft India has gained, given the rising global geopolitical complexity and multipolar world order, is an epiphenomenon of an astute calibration. Understanding different dynamics and divergence of interests on a global platform, the Modi-Jaishankar combined efforts have been to safeguard and push India’s interest without unsettling the global scheme of things.
In the wake of the US-China increasing rivalry, India’s geography becomes a strategic asset. The Quad formation and India’s significant presence in the diplomatic high table that determines issues extremely urgent and have a greater sense of immediacy define, Kumar argues, India’s rise and its Brave New Diplomacy. The book discusses the troubled Sino-Indian relationship, its chequered history, and the former’s unreliability. He refers to the Nehruvian blunder in giving China the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) membership in 1955. India’s decoupling from the US’ sphere of influence, the annexation of Tibet by China, the Sino-Indian war in 1962, Dragon’s border bullying obsession, etc., are the areas the book dwells upon to present the most interesting observations about the historicity of India-China relationship and its future. This is an exciting read, given the geopolitical gravity along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Kumar covers the most fascinating aspects of the futurity of this relationship.
The book calls Pakistan in the immediate neighbourhood of Bharat a chimaera where certitude is a casualty. Pakistan is currently a client state of China. Its position as a puppet is no longer a secret. China’s CPEC, which runs through PoK, establishes its camaraderie with Pakistan and an expressive hatred against India. Pakistan is simply untrustworthy, and its crocodile tears are mere opportunism. Any act of erasure cannot clean its permanent hatred against India. Therefore, the new India, under the leadership of PM Modi, has decided its course of action against Pakistan if it indulges in any misadventure. This determinacy to punish has coiled Pakistan to its normal form. But, with China’s cooperation, it might do something notorious. Therefore, Kumar calls it a chimaera.
The optimism in Kumar’s narrative is perceived in the penultimate chapter, which expresses the scope of a most enduring friendship between India and Japan. Shinzo Abe has laid a solid foundation for this friendship with India. India and Japan, given the historicity of this friendship, are currently working in tandem to take this friendship to a different height.
Their partnership is essential to restrict China’s brinkmanship in the region. Japan’s decision to increase its defence spending indicates its preparedness to tackle the tense geopolitics in the region under Chinese expansionism. The India-Japan friendship will give China the required checkmate. Kumar is at his best in explaining the present and future of this friendship.
Finally, the book explains the so-called liberal media in the West and their historicity of hatred vis-a-vis India. The anti-India obsession is not new for the majority of Western media. This has been in practice since India’s independence. Anything that India does is portrayed negatively or convoluted to expose its failings. This negativity continues, and they use gender, caste, minority, religion, ethnicity, geography, etc, cards to invent a narrative that depicts every noble effort of India in a sinister way. By doing so, they contribute to derailing India’s path to progress.
This illiberalism, however, does not work any longer now. Their perpetuity of lying has been exposed. Responses given now to those lies are swift and effective. Therefore, the book, “Bharat Rising”, is an insightful work that addresses the story of India’s rise in overcoming challenges.
Dr Jajati K. Pattnaik teaches at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Dr Chandan K. Panda teaches at Rajiv Gandhi University (A Central University), Itanagar.