The process of realization of the ideas of India and Pakistan seems to have followed the path of it’s principal founders, Nehru and Jinnah. Both had a convincing idea of India and Pakistan. Both derived it from their family, their neighbourhoods, their education and most importantly the people they chose to call friends later in their lives. Jinnah’s idea of an equally secular Pakistan, but one primarily based on the undeniable right for Muslims to a majority was as convincing as Nehru’s idea of an undivided secular nation with a Hindu majority. Jinnah had to fight for his idea while Nehru appeared the dignified statesman, yielding. The realization of their ideas seem to have traced an unmistakable parallel with their lives. Jinnah’s idea died with him, soon after Pakistan’s conception. India was considerably lucky in receiving the stewardship of Nehru in further crystallizing this idea for 17 more years. His idea, after his passing, over cyclical iterations of selfish and ambivalent governance, is now indistinguishable.

This point is made using another parallel observed astutely by Jawed Naqvi in an article for The Dawn titled ‘The waning romance of an idea’^§. Here, he uses the treatment meted out to artists of either side by the political and social class in tracing the trajectory of the idea of each nation. After partition, India was enamoured by the Lata-Rafi partnership. Even other artistes found equal freedom and acceptance by society and all of them flourished in this environment. Pakistan on the other hand, without Jinnah, fumbled in their treatment to their artists. Qurutulain Haider, Sahir Ludhianvi and Bade Ghulam Ali chose to settle and breathe their last on Indian soil. Those who chose to stay back lived a stifled existence.

Since Nehru’s passing, India too has been burdened with the same bigotry by it’s political class. It is a sad legacy of Nehru that his daughter struck the first blow. Indira Gandhi’s Emergency era with it’s draconian censorship and the pseudo-autocratic rule which followed was the biggest and earliest blow to this idea. The future political rulers were awarded a precedence of how hard and how long they could wield this censorship whip on our cultural movement. A taste of so much power for our megalomaniac leaders is like the smell of blood to a shark.

The current state of the political interference in our cultural affairs is poignantly summed up in these verses by the Pakistani Fehmida Riaz –

Tum bilkul hum jaise nikle? Ab tak kahaan chhupe thay bhai?
Wo ghaamadpan wo jaahilpan jisme humne sadi gawaee
Ab pahonchi hai dwaar tumharey? Arey badhaee, bahot badhaee.

To state a few examples, Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses is still banned in India. Indian government refused to acknowledge Bandit Queen as it’s official entry to Oscar. Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday was wrung through a deblitating 3 years of censor review process before being released.

Nehru, an admirer of the arts and a writer himself, understood it’s value in a society. None of his successors have measured up to him in this aspect of a personality. Atal Bihari Vajpayee and V.P. Singh have been the closest, but they were also closet art aficionados. The future for such a leader to bless India in the near future looks bleak too. This is shameful!

19th August, 2010, Mumbai.

^§ The article by Jawed Naqvi can be found at http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/jawed-naqvi-the-waning-romance-of-an-idea-970