Need Tally
for Clients?

Contact Us! Here

  Tally Auditor

License (Renewal)
  Tally Gold

License Renewal

  Tally Silver

License Renewal
  Tally Silver

New Licence
  Tally Gold

New Licence
 
Open DEMAT Account with in 24 Hrs and start investing now!
« Auditing »
Open DEMAT Account in 24 hrs
 NFRA issues Draft Procedure for Submission of Audit Files
 Auditors barred from putting a value on companies they are auditing
 Standard on Internal Audit (SIA) 18, Related Parties
 Standard on Internal Audit (SIA) 17, Consideration of Laws and Regulations in an Internal Audit
 Standard on Internal Audit (SIA) 16, Using the Work of an Expert
 Standard on Internal Audit (SIA) 14, Internal Audit in an Information Technology Environment
 Standard on Internal Audit (SIA) 13, Enterprise Risk Management
 Standard on Internal Audit (SIA) 12, Internal Control Evaluation
 Standard on Internal Audit (SIA) 11, Consideration of Fraud in an Internal Audit
  Standard on Internal Audit (SIA) 9, Communication with Management
  Standard on Internal Audit (SIA) 8, Terms of Internal Audit Engagement

Auditing India: What, why, who are we?
May, 10th 2010

Its census time and were standing up to be counted. But legions of writers, thinkers and travellers continue to argue over the idea of India and Indianness.

If youve travelled on the Himsagar Express, you know the pull of the idea of traversing India from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. The actual journey is dusty, unromantic and unremarkable, but the idea is attractive discovering India, snaking down her spinal cord, and the music of that phrase: Kashmir se Kanyakumari tak. As writers, thinkers and travellers have discovered over the centuries, going in search of the idea of India is both frustrating and compelling.

Pawan Verma, chronicler of the great Indian middle class, is the most recent in a long line of authors to do an audit of the idea of India. For him, Becoming Indian is an ongoing project. The impact of colonialism on a peoples sensibilities does not disappear with political freedom, he writes. The Empire continues to exercise its sway at the psychological level. The formerly ruled deny this, and yet their mental servitude is apparent in so many ways. We are still, he argues, Macaulays grandchildren, in constant danger of forgetting our own past and culture which he identifies, unfortunately, as primarily north Indian and Hindi-speaking.

But with that, he joins a grand tradition of arguing over India. Historian Irfan Habib has pointed out that it wasnt until the late 14th century that the Hindus began calling India Hindustan Ind or Sindh-stan was a chiefly Greek and Persian construct before this time. Much before that, though, Alberuni (973-1078 CE) and other travellers would comfortably refer to the inhabitants as Hindus: The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs. And many centuries later, Veer Savarkar would take this to an extreme, demanding that India must be a Hindu land, reserved for the Hindus. India is such a huge concept, like Europe, observes the historian and writer William Dalrymple, Its something you encounter only when actually thinking about it.

A bookshelf devoted to ideas of India would have to be large, roomy and argumentative, with space for Vivekananda, Gandhi, Naipaul, Sunil Khilnani, Amartya Sen, Ramachandra Guha, Tagore, Savarkar, and many others. Verma and Naipaul would agree that India is a wounded civilisation locked in a willed amnesia over its past of multiple invasions, home now to a million shifting mutinies. They might find some overlapping, though not entirely common, ground with Vivekananda, who argued over a century ago that India had been ruled in turn by Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas, and that British rule had reduced us all to shudras (untouchables) in our own country.

For the historian Sunil Khilnani, India inherited a history of thinking in terms of villages and varnam (caste), but overlaying this and shaping our modern India is the overarching concept of democracy. Amartya Sen argues for a more fluid identity, saying that beyond the simplicities of caste and religion, we all inhabit far more complex identities.

How far back does the idea of India go?
India, if one were to go by the BJP manifesto, is perhaps the most ancient and continuing civilisation of the world. But this harking back to the glories of a past that must be resurrected can lead to extremist movements, and not everyone agrees. Historian Ramachandra Guha is blunt: As a political entity, India is a modern construct. The British, accidentally and for their own motives, created an artificial territorial unity; and then Gandhi and the national movement fostered a political unity and shared moral purpose to the people who lived in that territory. The search for ancient or medieval progenitors of the idea of India is unhistorical, and also dangerous, since it tends to end with a narrowly Hindu idea of Indian nationhood.

Dalrymple might agree that [until 1947] there is almost no point in Indian history where the whole of India is united not under the Cholas, or Akbar, or the British. But he also points to the fact that there has been a continuous, historical notion of India as a geographical entity: There is at least a concept of India.

What shapes our personal ideas of India?
Nehru found his history in jail during the national movement, through a series of letters to his daughter; and then through the project of writing about the history of the country he was fighting for. Gandhi found his through the age-old Indian tradition of the padayatra, the personal pilgrimage around his country.

For todays authors, the discovery of India is almost always a slow, cumulative progress. Mukul Kesavan, scholar and professor at Jamia Millia Islamia, says, I knew that Indian secularism was meant to be different from the Western sort (not a rigorous separation of the public realm from religion, but a state that was equally intimate with all religions, etc.) but it hadnt occurred to me that Indian nationalism was singular or original or odd. Not only was secularism in India a species of pluralism, but so was nationalism.

For the journalist Sadanand Dhume, author of My Friend the Fanatic, ideas of India were shaped by lived experience-neighbourhood cricket, Hindi films on Doordarshan. Naipaul was an early and lasting influence, but as an adult, it was the view from elsewhere in what he calls two major dislocations that would be useful. The first shift was conventional, a move from New Delhi to New York: The Indian goes to the West and sees his country anew from a distance. But equally important, and less usual, was the four years I spent living in Jakarta, and the experience of writing about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Indonesia.

For Dilip Simeon, author and chairperson of the Aman Trust, it was his time as a student travelling to famine-stricken Bihar, and time spent in so-called revolutionary activity that would be key. But theres an image that stays with him, from the research he did on the history of labour in Jamshedpur and Jharia: Among my most horrifying and fascinating sensations was the sight of the flames of the Jharia underground fire, emanating from vast fissures in the earth; and the vast swathes of subsidence. It began in 1930, and still rages.

Dalrymple speaks about growing up in Britain on an early 80s diet of Jewel-in-the-Crown-infused Raj nostalgia: Im the last generation brought up with the Eric Newby/ Rudyard Kipling reading list. The man who would make his name as an indefatigable traveller had visited very few countries before he made his first visit to India, completely unprepared for the reality he would encounter. The first culture shock was massive, he says.

What is at the core of the idea of India?
Indian nationalism fetishises both equality and difference, Kesavan observes. Diversity and pluralism arent optional extras with Indian nationalism: they are the whole deal; take those away and the project collapses.

For Dalrymple, the sacred map of India is essential. I dont think democracy is the idea of India Hinduism, Bollywood, cricket, these are all important elements in the construction of our identity. You cant escape the fact that this is a strongly Hindu country, and that the various forms of Hinduism do provide a cohesion. The rightwing may have exploited this idea, but despite the deep hesitations, theres no question that the network of sacred sites and the sacred map of India is a very important part of most peoples conception of India, predating the modern nation and the birth of democracy.

Ramachandra Guha suggests that you look closely at five of the key figures in pre-Independence India Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore, Ambedkar and Rajagopalachari.

Gandhi and Tagore together fostered an idea of India that promoted an open-minded engagement with other nations and cultures. Gandhi and Nehru fostered an idea of India which was inclusive within its borders, and afforded equal citizenship to all regardless of class or gender, while respecting religious and linguistic pluralism.

Gandhi and Ambedkar, working in parallel and sometimes in opposition, together ensured that in free India there would be special rights for the most historically disadvantaged, namely, the former untouchables. Gandhi and Rajagopalachari, working together, opened the way for the protection of individual liberties and the encouragement of individual creativity (whether in entrepreneurship, literature, or the arts).

Perhaps theres still a need, 60 years after Independence, to become Indian, as Pavan Verma argues. But the more interesting question, given the choices, is: What kind of Indian would that be?

Home | About Us | Terms and Conditions | Contact Us
Copyright 2024 CAinINDIA All Right Reserved.
Designed and Developed by Ritz Consulting