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| The Hindu Phenomenon |
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THE NEHRUVIAN FRAMEWORK |
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am not unaware of the fact that this is not the popular
interpretation of Nehru. And I cannot possible insist that this is
more valid than the popular one. Indeed I could not have put it
forward if I had not become sensitive to concept of the power of the
time spirit in recent months. This has led me to the conclusion that
much more could not have been successfully attempted by way of
reaffirmation of Hindu civilization in the period in question.
It is not particularly relevant to speculate on the ifs and buts of history. So, I would not wish to speculate on what turn India could have taken if Sardar Patel, or C. Rajagopalachari, or Rajendra Prasad had taken over as prime minister in place of Nehru, except to say that each of them would have been out of tune with the dominant sentiment in the Third World and among the Indian intelligentsia. The real, as Hegel said, is rational. Things are what they are because in the given interplay of forces, they could not possibly have shaped differently. And it is the correlation of forces that shapes history not ideology. On the contrary, an ideology itself is a product of those forces. On this reckoning, our cultural-civilizational reaffirmation had to await the collapse of communism and its Third World expressions such as Arab nationalism, and the acquisition of a certain measure of scientific, technological, economic and military strength by us. Islamic revivalism-fundamentalism is, of course, not a direct offshoot of communism; it antedates the latter by centuries. But in the post-war era it has been as critically dependent on Soviet power as has been pan- Arabian.
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