August 15th: Remembering the builders of modern India

By Prasenjit K. Basu

For citizens of India, August 15th provides an annual opportunity to commemorate the sacrifices of those pioneers whose struggle made freedom possible and whose vision laid the foundation of a successful modern nation-state from the rubble of a supine subcontinent wracked by poverty and ignorance.

Two centuries of British rule had left India as the poorest nation on earth, with barely a tenth of her people able to read or write in any language. The imperial creed of Divide & Rule had culminated in a bitter partition of the subcontinent, creating "facts on the ground" of inter-religious conflict far more vicious than anything in India's long history.

Only a few years before Independence, a horrendous famine had killed at least 3 million Indians in 1943 – continuing a grim tradition that went all the way back to 1770, when the first famine resulting from British rule wiped out more than a third of the entire population of British India's eastern dominions.

From such unpromising material, and in the face of the greatest empire in human history, India's pioneers created the basis of a constitutional, federated democracy in which the competing interests of 26 linguistic groups, numerous religions and thousands of castes and sub-nationalities were melded, mediated and accommodated, forging the basis of a durable nation-state that has gradually addressed the economic needs of more than a sixth of humanity.

Above all, we remember Mahatma Gandhi, the extraordinary leader of our independence campaign, who united the masses behind the small elite of exceptionally able leaders who had laid the groundwork of modern nationhood. The Mahatma's unyielding commitment to non-violence was often too difficult for his compatriots to follow unquestioningly. But the moral strength of his message made it impossible for an empire supposedly committed to legality and fair play to combat.

From Champaran and Bardoli, to Dandi and Gowalia Tank (or August Kranti Maidan), the venues of Gandhiji's journey of mobilization are emblazoned in the nation's collective soul.

The poet of our national awakening, Rabindranath Tagore, ironically came to believe that nationalism was a divisive, westernized notion. Instead, his humanism and the lyrical splendour of his poetry, songs, novels and art invite us to aspire toward beauty while committing ourselves to opening the minds and sensibilities of all our fellow beings.

Both Gandhiji and Tagore shared a commitment to making a new India that would widen the horizons and opportunities for all her people. It was a vision nicely encapsulated in Jawaharlal Nehru's exhortation to "wipe every tear from every eye". That is a lofty aspiration that modern India has not quite accomplished. But, 63 years on, India has raised its literacy rate to over 80% (from 14% in 1950), and the life expectancy of the average Indian is approaching 65 years (more than double what it was at Independence).

The British had ensured there would be no engineering and medical schools of note in India. The visionary Madan Mohan Malviya subverted British designs by creating in Benares a university that would turn out engineers who would help to build the new India. Nehru took it further with the creation of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and Management (IIMs) that have become paragons of excellence in engineering and business-skills that the rest of the world seeks to emulate.

When Jamsetji Tata decided to clear the swamps of rural Bihar (now Jharkhand) to create Tata Steel 103 years ago, the company had to import engineers from America and Germany. Nearly a century later, when LN Mittal was acquiring Arcelor to create the world's largest steel company, his company was vilified in Europe for being "full of Indians".

It was a characterization that the makers of modern India could take quiet pride in, since Mittal's engineers and managers around the world were indeed largely Indian. The pioneering investment in tertiary education has paid rich dividends – unmatched elsewhere in the developing world.

We remember, too, Swami Vivekananda, who electrified the Parliament of Religions in 1893 with his message of love, tolerance and empathy for all humans – and whose robust re-definition of Karma Yoga sowed the seeds of a syncretic nationalism based on forward-looking action, rather than wallowing merely in slavish self-pity.

Young Indians of the next generation like Bhagat Singh, Surya Sen and Chandrasekhar Azad decided that such action required considered use of violence to combat the claws of an empire that eschewed no foul means in holding onto power. They made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom, holding fast to their ideals even as their young lives were snuffed out.

Their ideals (and those of Nana Saheb, Rani Laxmibai, Bakht Khan and Tantia Tope from 1857) animated Subhas Bose in building an Indian National Army (INA) based in Singapore (and later Rangoon) to fight for India's freedom. Although American air power and monsoon rains defeated the INA's Imphal campaign (after they had taken Kohima and Moirang), the subsequent INA trials in 1946 lit the spark that led to the mutiny of almost the entire Royal Indian Navy (RIN), half the Royal Indian Air Force (RIAF) and two regiments of the British Indian army in February 1946.

With the loyalty of their armed forces tottering for the first time since 1857, Attlee hurriedly announced in late-February 1946 that a Cabinet Mission would go to India to negotiate India's freedom. The sacrifices of the 30,000 Indians from Singapore and Malaya (and 50,000 prisoners of war) who had joined the INA to obtain India's freedom did not go in vain. They too must never be forgotten.

And we remember Vallabhbhai Patel, whose statesmanship and dexterity ensured that the new India was a genuinely federated Republic rather than a congeries of medieval kingships. And we never forget Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who sought tirelessly to ensure that Muslims and Hindus would struggle shoulder-to-shoulder against the might of empire, and Chakravarty Rajagopalachari, who kept alight the flame of economic reason amid a rising chorus of socialist folly. We commemorate Indira Gandhi, whose perspicacity in foreign relations helped consolidate the gains of nationhood and negotiate the treacherous shoals of superpower rivalry in the decades after India's Himalayan defeat in 1962. And we are grateful for the realism of Narasimha Rao and Atal Behari Vajpayee in liberalizing the Indian economy, and unshackling the enormous potential of Indian entrepreneurship.

The collective legacy of these visionaries has built the edifice of modernity on which the 60-year-old Republic now stands, ready to finally take its rightful place as an emerging leader in the comity of nations. We have not yet redeemed all the pledges of our Independence generation, but are well on the way to fulfilling them not only "very substantially", but "wholly and in full measure" too.