Kaleidoscopic journey
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`The time spanned by these scintillating essays, written between 1952 and 2002 covers a most critical and significant period in both Indian and world history.'
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AND now has come the second collection from the celebrated writer's outpourings of somewhat epigrammatic but deeply thought-out comments on a vast array of themes. From theories on Marx to the collapse of Stalinism, no less than 106 essays, grouped together in seven sections including art, literature, aesthetics, with several essays on a number of very eminent personalities. The time spanned by these scintillating essays, written between 1952 and 2002 covers a most critical and significant period in both Indian and world history.
The same publisher had brought out an earlier selection One Hundred Encounters two years ago, dealing with a similar wide range of subjects. Thus, we now have Sham Lal's running commentary on developments covering the last half century. Columnist, editor, critic, Sham Lal has been on a learning mission all his long life which shows up not only in his deep interest in but his great command over such a wide range of subjects. Now in his 92nd year, he stands as a scholar supreme on the Indian intellectual scene. In reviewing and commenting on various theories and works of individual authors, Sham Lal honours them duly, but, like the Upanishad Seer, his response is Neti, Neti; not by this, nor by that alone. Even when greatly appreciating the works, he deftly pinpoints the internal inconsistencies (if any) or the insufficiencies of their arguments or presentations.
The collection begins with a complimentary review of An Introduction to the Study of Indian History by D.D. Kosambi in which the discussion on theory is on the paramount base-superstructure relationship in social evolution. Sham Lal's critique is based mainly on a well-known quotation of Engels: "Marx and I are ourselves to blame for the fact that younger writers sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasise this main principle in opposition to our adversaries who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to allow the other elements involved in the interaction to come into their rights... " Sham Lal concludes: "Any attempt to establish a simple cause-effect or condition-reflection equation between ideas and economic forces can only do violence to the inner logic of events." Other reviews of major works on ancient Indian history cover books by Professors R.S. Sharma and Romila Thapar.
As for politics and the making of new India, Sham Lal is categorical that "the real test of leadership lies not in drawing up grandiose plans but in the grit and vim with which they are carried out". He recalls that in this "Nehru faltered all too often", not paying sufficient heed to the niggling details which, however, were essential. As early as in May 1948 Nehru wrote to the Chief Ministers that there were complaints from the public about "our inefficiency, inaccessibility, delays and, above all, corruption". Sham Lal adds: "But he did not bother to spell out what his government should do to scotch the evils before they could strike roots". This, however, was in character with a younger Nehru who, landed with the Mayoralty of Allahabad, his native city and the hub of UP, left it in fairly short time in a total mess. Did he really believe that he was destined for the biggest jobs only and could not be bound by smaller responsibilities?
Even though Nehru was seen to have done the maximum to advance the cause of scientific research and technological education and exhort the people in favour of a scientific temper, that did not detract from the simplistic nature of his faith in science and technology as saviours. Like many radicals, Nehru greatly underrated the hold of religion on people's mind and the limits of economic or political action in taking care of the individual's existential problems. That is why he could write, as late as in 1937 in Foreign Affairs, that "there is no religious or communal problem in India" and that "what is called the religious or communal problem is really a dispute among upper class people for a division of the spoils of office". The partition of the country 10 years later showed how hopelessly out of touch with the ground realities this statement was, concludes Sham Lal.
On the core subject of the processes of nation-formation and/or national integration in India, Sham Lal underlines Professor Ravinder Kumar: "The very challenge which the nationalists faced here was in a way the opposite of what confronted them in Europe. While the nationalists there had often to work for the splitting up of multiracial empires into culturally or ethically homogenous states, in India they had to create a homogenous state out of a very large number of communities divided by language, religion, culture and ethnicity". Sham Lal agrees that "the partition of the country and the aftermath of the orgy of communal riots accompanying it painfully brought home to people here that, whatever else the national movement did, it miserably failed to weld the different religious communities into a nation". Kumar argues that in "focussing on Gandhi's failure to heal the religious cleavages which bedevilled the country, we would do well to remember the exploitation of these by the British government, most of all through the constitutional devices which it foisted upon India".
Looking for the social origins of dictatorship and democracy in diverse parts of the world, Sham Lal is largely affirmative of the findings of Barrington Moore but pays passing references and due attention to D.P. Mukherjee, Rajni Kothari, Sunil Khilnani, Achin Vanaik et al with regard to the issues at stake in India. Myron Weiner and Paul Brass are praise for a number of in-depth ideas including the causes of the wide diversity of levels in regional development in the country. He is much in sympathy with the sociological insights of M.N. Srinivas and Andre Beteille but critiques T.R. Madan for hastily certifying Marx's conclusions about the results of British rule in India, the surmise that the disruption of the old village society, the development of the railway and the eventual growth of industry would dissolve all caste bonds. Sham Lal quotes Louis Dumont, "the anticipated links between techno-economic change and social change" have not materialised and Indian society has "managed to digest what was thought must make it burst asunder". In contrast Max Weber searches for the source of stagnation in Indian society entirely in the prevailing religious beliefs which nurtured an attitude of otherworldliness ignoring altogether the colonial context. Madan, however, underlines that more than the so-called otherworldliness, it is the attitude of resignation to fate, in the belief of karma, which has been the greater deterrent to progress. Sham Lal takes us through this kaleidoscopic journey for the ongoing discovery of the mystery of India in these highly interesting bits and pieces.
BAREN RAY
Indian Realities in Bits and Pieces, Sham Lal, Rupa, 2003, p.517, Rs. 395.
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