How India can become Bhārat.

Book Review

Bhārat: India 2.0: A Book Written by Gautam R Desiraju.

Govinda Bharatiya

One hears a lot about India and Bhārat these days. Do these terms refer to the same country? Based on which side of the political divide one is on, one might feel that India and Bhārat are entirely different, or may not even know what the term Bhārat means.

Constitutionally speaking, these terms are synonymous and our constitution begins with the phrase “India, that is Bhārat” which means that even the constitution is unclear about what these terms mean because if it did, it would have specified our country as being either India or Bhārat. This is where the conundrum lies. The term “India” hints that we are a nation-state modelled after European lines. The term “Bhārat” harks back to a more ancient time and to our civilisational ancestry.

“Bhārat: India 2.0” by Gautam R Desiraju (Vitasta Publishing, Delhi, 2022) addresses these questions even as it opens up the topic for further discussion and debate. This is a controversial book in that it asks questions even as it tries to provide answers. For example, it begins with the provocative question as to whether our history since 1947 would have been any different had our constitution begun with the phrase “Bhārat, that is India”? So, no matter what one’s political views might be, this book is worth reading because it will almost certainly alter one’s perception about things. For those who recognise only India and not Bhārat and view our constitution as an immutable document, the book might help in understanding how the other side thinks. For those who recognise only Bhārat and view India as a Macaulayist creation, this book will prompt new lines of thoughts that might help one achieve a brand new dharmic constitution and a functional economically powerful Hindu rashtra. The politically neutral will find the book educational, especially with regard to information regarding forms of democracy, our constitutional assembly debates, the creation of the nation state and the advantages of forming smaller states within the Union of India.

The book has five chapters. Chapter 1 traces the history of our constitution in our pre-independence days specifically from 1896 when the first attempt was made to draft a so-called Swaraj Constitution encouraged presumably by Annie Besant, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and others. Our 1950 constitution did not arise out of the blue. There was a lot of tug of war between our British rulers and the freedom fighters with regard to how India should be ruled. Memorable events like the formation of the All India Muslim League in 1906, the Motilal Nehru Plan of 1928, the Poona Agreement between Gandhi and Ambedkar of 1931 and the Government of India Act 1935 are described in detail. This last document is of special significance because one of the criticisms of our present constitution is that it is a nearly 60% cut and paste effort of this British document which describes the governance of a colonial subject country and not an independent nation. Did the British continue to rule India after 1947? This is one of the questions posed in this book.

Chapter 2, which is the longest chapter in the book, is an account of the discussions in the 165 days when the constituent assembly met to debate. These debates provide fascinating insights into the minds of the 300 ordinary people, albeit educated and some with a legal background, who became extraordinary because they were catapulted into extraordinary times. PM Modi has recently recounted the contributions of B. R. Ambedkar, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Rajendra Prasad to the debates in his recent Independence Day broadcast to the nation. Nehru and Patel introduced the important items and Ambedkar did the heavy lifting. The book hints that while the latter was chairman of the drafting committee, by no means can he be called the Father of the Constitution or any such fantastic epithet. I found this chapter to be educational to all categories of reader.

Chapter 3, the shortest in the book, is veritably its pivot because it takes the reader from the nation state to the civilisational state. These are utterly different entities and what we find today is that Bhārat, a civilisational state, finds itself trapped in the constitution of a nation-state called India. The European origin of the nation-state is described and also how this construct suited the era of colonial empires where a small group of nations in Western Europe controlled the destinies of most of the world, including formerly rich countries like India and China. Today, as the geostrategic calculations of the world are changing with the emergence of the new India-China-Russia axis that confronts the Amerisphere which consists of the so-called Five Eyes countries, this is a chapter that merits special attention.

Many books describe problems but few offer solutions. In going beyond enumerating problems, “Bhārat: India 2.0” goes beyond merely the chronological and historical genres. The author boldly suggests in Chapter 4 the remaking of the present 28 states and 8 Union Territories of a disunited India into 75 states of a united Bhārat. He argues that rather than cause Balkanisation, as might be popularly imagined, such a delimitation would encourage microdiversity and the emotional satisfaction that this brings while enhancing national level patriotism as implied by SanatanaDharma. This is a non-intuitive argument but as I have said before this book is nothing other than controversial. It invites the reader to refute and contest, and above all, to think, and in the end this is what all good books should be about.

Chapter 5 is a tour de force that takes the reader on a world tour and tells that stable and mature democracies, say the US, France, Germany have taken their time in evolving constitutions that have stood the test of time. In no case were they pleased with the first draft which is what our present 1950 constitution is. So one does not need to fear that calls for a brand new dharmic constitution will herald the break-up of our country. Finally it seems we are beginning to know who we are. It is high time our constitution expresses this clearly and distinctly. This I found to be the take home message of this interesting book.

There are too many books being published today in our country and the lover of books is at a loss to figure out what books to buy and read. It is like finding a needle in a haystack. I suggest you go out there and buy and read “Bhārat: India 2.0”. You will find your money well spent and your time well used.

The book is available in amazon. Writer of the book Gautam R  Desiraju, a Professor Emeritus, IISc Bangalore was also the past president of International Union of Crystallography.
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