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obvious connection between the stance of the leadership and the
popular mood at the time of independence is not generally
appreciated. This is rather surprising. After all, Nehru could not
have survived for 17 long years in the office of prime minister with
ease if the dominant sentiment among Hindus had not been generally
favourable towards him and his broad policies. Independent India saw
itself, and defined itself, in Western secular terms as a
nation-state and not explicitly in civilizational terms as a Hindu
rastra for a variety of reasons. The Muslim factor was only one and
not critically important to them at the deeper level of the Hindu
psyche. At that level, Hindus have never seen any basic conflict
between their heritage and Western science and technology and
therefore the Western emphasis on rationality. The speed with which
so many of them took to Western education and mores speaks for
itself.
Till the eve of independence, Hindu
thinkers emphasized the contrast between their spiritual heritage
and Western materialism as part of the process of recovering their
self-esteem. But in reality they needed to overcome the lopsidedness
which an undue emphasis on piety at the cost of two of the central
Hindu goals of artha and kama (prosperity and enjoyment) had
produced in their lives in the period of their decline when they did
not have a state of their own. They had to bury the maya (illusion)
concept in its vulgar form in fact, if not the theory.
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