That vision thing is missing

It is evident in other areas, too: in the Vande Mataram war cry that cuts through the dial tone, the national integration website inaugurated by Sushma Swaraj, and in the colonisation of Indian science by Atal Behari Vajpayee.

But most importantly, when Murli Manohar Joshi, asked what the 50th anniversary celebrations had achieved, said one hopes only in jest that the India 50 logo was now recognised from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

It is only to be expected that a party, which before coming to power spent half its energy in monitoring what the media said about it and the other half in denying it, should spend so much time dwelling on how it is being perceived.

It is a function of having been on the loony fringefor so long, despite having many supporters in the elite media. Having developed a persecution complex about its projection in the largely liberal, sometimes left-wing media, it now feels compelled to help us shed our received wisdom.

Unfortunately, it needs to do more than make pots out of Pokharan clay. Or make it mandatory for gram sabhas to meet after hoisting the flag on August 15. Or even make us believe that the scientific temper which preceded the quot;greatest achievementquot; of our golden jubilee, the nuclear tests, sits cheek by jowl with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh8217;s notion of rural, cultural nationalism. It needs a whole new vision for India, a radical shift of our innately Congress culture.

By that one means not Congress as in the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, but the centrist ideology which has dominated our discourse. It would need what historians fondly call a paradigm shift, which as Joshiji knows well by now, is not achieved by appointing historians sympathetic to their cause to theIndian Council of Historical Research.

It will also require more than replacing a former Janata Dal media cell convener as Prasar Bharati CEO with one more amenable to their point of view. Just as it will take more than knocking Mahatma Gandhi down to rehabilitate Nathuram Godse.

The theory of inversion is not enough to build a new framework. What one needs is a new underpinning, which all the Pradeep Dalvis of the world cannot provide. The nation is spinning out its history, literature, society and cinema quite independently of who governs.

Look at Doordarshan, which is somewhat like the Congress catch-all political agenda: on August 15, it has not just the golden jubileewallahs constituency but many others to satisfy. It will be showing the Prime Minister8217;s speech, the President8217;s speech, a programme on Swami Vivekananda, one on the 125th anniversary of Sri Aurobindo, and even one celebrating Janmashthami.

We don8217;t have to be like our neighbours who see the world in black and white andpropagate it as such 8212; Pakistan television does not even deserve to be jammed. For them, if Jinnah is a patriot, Gandhi is a British Government stooge. If the Indian state is the aggressor, militant goons are freedom fighters. The complexity of this country requires a complex language, which no amount of websites can achieve.

Take Panchjanya editor Tarun Vijay8217;s Sindhu Darshan Abhiyan, which the national integration site incorporates 8212; with its attempt to portray the Indus river almost entirely in Pakistan as the evolution of a new pilgrimage and as a quot;unique expression of the dynamic civilisationquot; we belong to, the neo-Harappan terminology doesn8217;t ring true in this age of hi-tech rivalry.

India has a way of defining itself which doesn8217;t require a BJP to hijack its lexicon. Look at Bharat Bala8217;s Vande Mataram or Mani Ratnam8217;s Dil Se. Both manage to fly the flag of India8217;s independence in the stark landscape of Ladakh, to the music of a recent convert to Islam, A. R. Rahman,whose music is strongly influenced by Western rhythms.

In history, culture is acquiring centrality, even as the BJP lies imprisoned in its Marxist-haunted mindset. In literature, the regions are being given voice to as never before, from Arundhati Roy8217;s Kerala to Manju Kapur8217;s Punjab.

Let the BJP unleash their equals, before demanding that we be convinced.