Sons
Of The Soil: Unravelling
The Idea Of India
By Dilip D'souza
Times Of India
27 November, 2003
Patrick Harker, dean of Wharton Business
School , told The Times of India recently that he finds in India an
incredible sense of optimism and self-confidence.
Its a very
exciting time, he said, because of the feel-good factor
he senses here. But I wonder if dean Harker, or anyone, asked some other
Indians how they feel about the economy, or anything. Indians, for example,
whose family and friends have perished in Assam recently. Its
our various sons of the soil, of course, hard at work soiling their
hands. In Mumbai, they not only stop a railway recruitment exam, they
even vandalise a railway office.
In Assam , they
prevent Biharis from taking a railway recruitment exam. In Bihar , they
retaliate by beating up Assamese students in trains. Back
in Assam again, they retaliate for this retaliation
by killing Biharis: 50 and counting as I write.
Whats left
thats Indian? In nearly 60 years, the spirit of Indianness we
have found the strongest expression for is hostility towards other Indians.
We become sons of some map-drawn tracts of soil when it suits us, sons
who seem to have been brought up only to assault other sons.
Yet this Indian
soil has nurtured each of us, made us all what we are. Indian soil,
I want to emphasise. The perversity only starts there. In Assam , some
sons of that soil call themselves ULFA; in Maharashtra , other sons
of this soil call themselves the Shiv Sena. Both speak the identical
language of outsiders taking away jobs that rightfully
belong to locals. But ULFA is a banned outfit,
regularly called anti-national. The Shiv Sena, we are told, is filled
with fervent patriots. So fervent that they are an important part of
the coalition that runs the country today: A feel-good thought if there
ever was one.
In Maharashtra ,
the Congress chief minister and his NCP deputy also speak the same language.
Actually, politicians in every state find it politically lucrative to
do so. Sometimes they even do it outside their states. In 1994, the
Senas Bal Thackeray went to Goa and urged audiences to keep
non-Goans out of Goa by implementing a permit system. The irony
of this advice coming from a non-Goan seems to have escaped both Mr
Thackeray and his listeners. Where is this logic, if it is logic, going
to leave us? Will we pursue it even if it means more lives lost? Will
we hold to it until it breaks us? What happened to those constitutional
guarantees that any Indian can settle and work anywhere in India ?
The Constitution
urged us to turn ourselves into an educated whole by instituting primary
education for all, and that by 1960. Has that urging translated into
reality? The Constitution guarantees justice to every Indian, unqualified
by caste, wealth or religion. Would the victims of Delhi 1984, Bombay
1992-93, or Gujarat 2002, picking just three great Indian tragedies,
agree that that promise has been fulfilled?
The truth is, the
madness weve seen in Assam , Bihar and Maharashtra of late is
hardly a matter the Constitution can solve. So what if Article 19 gives
us the freedom to move anywhere in our country? More persuasive by far
is the logic a son of the soil mouths. Logic like that, a son like that,
has contempt for a document written half a century ago. Indeed: The
theory of sons of the soil is pernicious, wrong, foolish and several
other adjectives I could come up with. But not because it violates the
spirit of a solemn public document. It is so because it destroys us:
You, me, Assamese, Biharis, Maharashtrians. Indians. Sons of the soil.
Humans. I mean more than 50 Indian corpses across Assam , this thing
called retaliation. With their recent cycle of retaliation,
Bihar and Assam have lived once more through the mayhem that is the
only thing sons of the soil ever produce.
Tamil Nadu and Karna-taka
have seen some of the same, instigated by the dispute over the Cauvery.
How long before Maharashtrians are beaten up in the north, in retaliation
for what their brothers of the soil did in Mumbai? Does all this qualify
as protecting the interests of sons of the soil?
There is no fault
line among us Indians that we are not avidly exploring today. Maybe
we must, maybe every nation has to endure such exploration as it matures;
I dont know. I do know that I am now afraid it will tear us apart
before it wears itself out. In a real sense, the fissures put fear in
me every day. I am frightened, as a non-Assamese, to enter Assam . (As
frightened, Im sure, as an Assamese must feel to enter Bihar ,
or a Bihari must feel as he travels to Mumbai to take exams.) Frightened
to speak my mother-tongue, Tamil, in Bangalore . Frightened to speak
Hindi in Gujarat , where a friend and I, college kids at the time, were
once man- handled for doing so.
The hatred that
builds on either side of all those fault lines, that arcs too often
across the lines, can have only one result: Murder. Bear witness, Delhi
. Bear witness, Gujarat . Bihar . Mumbai. Assam . Bear witness to this
beast that is leaving a nation, even the idea of a nation, in tatters.