Opinion Ram Madhav writes on the new Parliament building: Dharmocracy, the Indian version of democracy

In the hyper-animated debate, too little attention was paid to what the prime minister, the prime mover of the project, had said at the inauguration. He did not dismiss the important contributions after Independence, nor did he proclaim that India was being taken back to any bygone era. He acknowledged that after losing so much during colonial rule, India began its new journey after Independence and that “journey has gone through many ups and downs, overcoming many challenges”, and now entered the “Amrit Kaal”. “Preserving the heritage and forging new dimensions of development” will be the leitmotif of Amrit Kaal, Modi said.

People plunged into the last 25 years of the freedom struggle with the aspiration of building a developed India. Modi surmised that the new Parliament will be the place to realise those aspirations in the next 25 years towards the centenary of Independence.

Seventy-five years ago, it was Jawaharlal Nehru who was at the wheels of independent India’s government. He led the country through the first 17 years, or “Six Thousand Days” as Amiya Rao and B G Rao, bureaucrats who served under him, called it. He too had a vision for building a developed India. Socialism was the path chosen by him to achieve that.

At the stroke of midnight on August 14-15 1947, standing in the Parliament building built by British architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker in 1927, Nehru delivered his historic address to the just-independent nation. He called the moment rare in history when the soul of a nation, “long suppressed, finds utterance”. He called it the end of an age and a nation stepping out “from the old to the new”.

Interestingly, Modi, too, called the moment of inauguration of the new Parliament a moment that was “immortal forever” and one that will “etch an indelible signature on the forehead of history”. If Nehru believed in democracy and constitutionalism, Modi too insisted that “democracy is our inspiration, our Constitution is our resolve”.

But Modi’s vision, irrespective of the idiomatic approximation with some Nehruvian ideals, markedly differs from that of Nehru. Many rightly see it as the demise of that Nehruvian vision. Some revel in it while others lament.

Nehru appreciated India’s age-old civilisation but abhorred its manifestation in its religion and culture. In objecting to the participation of President Rajendra Prasad in the consecration ceremony of the Somnath temple in 1951, Nehru insisted that a secular government cannot associate itself with such a ceremony, which was “revivalist in character”.

Modi and the ruling establishment — for that matter, a majority of the countrymen — do not see cultural and religious symbols of India as anti-secular or revivalist. In fact, secularism draws from the ancient Indian religious and cultural traditions, which upheld pluralism and celebrated diversity. Modi presented the new Parliament building as the “ideal representation of modern and ancient coexistence”. The sacred Sengol in the epicentre of a state-of-the-art Parliament marked that “ideal representation”.

Nehru called religion obsolete and saw a dichotomy in culture and modernity. Nehruvians detest the religion of the majority and endorse communalism of the minority. How else can one explain Rahul Gandhi’s ridiculing of “prostration” before the Sengol and declaration of Muslim League as secular?

But there was Mahatma Gandhi, for whom politics bereft of religion was a sin. He declared that his politics and “all other activities were derived from my religion”, and admonished Nehruvians that they “do not know what religion is”.

The Constituent Assembly witnessed intense debates between the so-called modernists and the Gandhians. At one point, looking at the draft Constitution, a member from south India indignantly asked, “where is Gandhi in it?”

After Independence, Gandhi was installed outside the Parliament while the inside was overwhelmed by the Nehruvian vision. Gandhi continues to be there outside the new Parliament building. But the Sengol — representing Gandhi’s Ram Rajya, the “Dharma Rajya” — is inside the Parliament now.

Having established post-Nehruvian symbolism, the government has to now establish those values in governance and national life. As Modi pointed out in his address, democracy is in the genes of this ancient society. It was never majoritarian. Gandhi described it as a system where “the weakest shall have as much power as the strongest”.

Deendayal Upadhyaya, eminent thinker and propounder of BJP’s political philosophy of Integral Humanism, insisted that democracy “is not merely the rule of the majority. Therefore, in any form of democracy in India, election, majority and minority… all must be combined and harmonised at one place. Anyone who has a different opinion from the majority, even if he is a single individual, his viewpoint must be respected and incorporated into the governance”. That is Dharmocracy, the Indian version of democracy.

The Sengol represents that Dharmocracy, or true spirit of our Constitution, where fundamentalisms of all hues are rejected and justice to every citizen and appeasement of none is the rule of law. Tolerating one form of fundamentalism, whether in the name of secularism or majoritarianism, will lead to the rise of the other.

One of the several definitions of Dharma is “Dhaarayati iti Dharmah” — meaning “Dharma is one that unites”. Nehruvian politics thrived on social divisions and minority-majority syndrome. The prime minister exhorted that achieving unity with the spirit of “Nation First” would be his priority.

By the way, 2023 BC was when the Indus Valley Civilisation thrived in India. It was the most advanced among its contemporaries like the Mesopotamian, Greek and Chinese civilisations.

Sometimes, leaning backwards, we actually surge forward.

The writer, President, India Foundation, is with the RSS