India, you've come a long way because you’ve survived as a nation for over six decades on the strength of a massive myth, a colossal con, a humungous hoax: Unity in Diversity.

 

Yes, my school, like all good schools, did a terrific job of brainwashing me into believing this fabrication for many years by making me wear funny costumes and parading me on a stage on Annual Day along with my friends who also wore funny costumes. But much as I would like to agree with the aphorism, I do not see any evidence of Unity in Diversity when, as a grown-up citizen nervously clutching my one sacred vote, I look around me today.

 

Yes, I know, you’re outraged by my abject pessimism on this glorious day of yours. You want to know what’s come over me. I’ll tell you. But before I begin, let me just abbreviate ‘Unity in Diversity’ to UniDy in the interest of word-economy. Now, now, don’t raise your eyebrow like that, dear India. We Indians have already abbreviated that concept in spirit; so what’s the big deal if I take the liberty to compress it semantically now? ‘Unity in Diversity’ can be quite a word-hog if it’s repeated a dozen times within the space of 1400 odd words, you know.

 

Coming back to the crux of the matter, here’s what I’m saying: UniDy is a sham you’ve perpetrated upon us, dear Mother. The dictum might have had some usage as an anesthetic at the time India was being delivered through a bloody cesarean section sixty years ago. But like all anesthetics, its effect on We the People wore off soon after.

 

How? Here’s how…

 

Take a small test. In the next 10 seconds try to recall one instance in current times where we Indians have risen above our narrow selfish motivations and spoken and acted in the larger interests of our nation. Ummmm….difficult? You bet.

 

Now take 5 seconds and recall some traumatic moments in the last couple of decades when Indians turned against Indians and your blood flowed in the streets and in gutters. Yes, I know, you don’t want to remember them. Those assassinations, those riots, the demolitions of places of worship, the terrorist violence, your own limbs Punjab, Kashmir and the North East turning against you, your vital organs Delhi and Mumbai hemorrhaging, the Meeruts, the Bhagalpurs, the Godhras... Considering that the singular cause of all these afflictions was competing religious denominations in a so-called secular nation, would it be too impolite for me to ask you a cryptic question?

 

Where is UniDy?

The Unity of shared human values in your frightening Diversity of faith and religion?

 

Was this example too violent for your tastes? OK, how about the revanchist politics in the name of social justice that has come to be the order of the day? The engineered rifts between caste grouping, the zero-sum game played by depraved politicians with willing participation from sections of the electorate where artificially scarce college seats and criminally abundant government jobs are sought to be redistributed among the populace based on fuzzy caste-based census data and super-precise electoral calculations. See how we react to these divisive policies. Those who stand to gain express their vindictive glee and unconcealed greed at the prospect of shutting the door on millions of their deserving fellow citizens who’d lose out on quality education and a livelihood for no fault of theirs. As for those who stand to lose, they react with indignation and try to stonewall any discussion on social justice using the Brahmastra of meritocracy. The real issue of how we can come up with a win-win formula to bridge the disparities between the haves and the have-nots gets smothered to death in the unbridled acrimony that is let loose.

 

Where is UniDy?

The Unity of a shared commitment to social justice with fair play in your mind-numbing Diversity of Caste and Creed?

 

Take water disputes. Agreed, the waters that flow in your rivers are today grossly inadequate to cater to the needs of our exploding population. But does that have to mean a shameful win-lose contest between citizens of contiguous states for grabbing the lion’s share of a river’s water resources? Do the citizens of State A not realise that if they are indeed able to hoard most of the water for themselves, it would mean immense hardships and scarcities for millions of their fellow-Indians living in state B? Even when the dispute is resolved by the courts, there is more bad blood between the peoples of the warring states than the amount of water over which it is generated.   

 

Where is UniDy?

The Unity of shared compassion for all fellow Indians in the tyrannical Diversity of your geography?

 

Come to SEZs. Here we have the Government playing middleman and doling out large tracts of rural land to enterprising entities to set up industries and townships in hitherto undeveloped regions of our hinterland. Perfectly noble intentions. But then? Hordes of protestors, including those from rival political outfits, sundry NGOs and activists suddenly materialize out of thin air and carry out violent protests against the ‘evil Capitalists.’ Then the state hits back. Harder. And the larger question as to how we should go about bringing the fruits of India Shining to the vast areas where India is truly Whining without making farmers and land-owners feel cheated in the process is a non-starter.

 

Where is UniDy?

The Unity of shared aspirations for a better future in the inevitable Diversity between your India and your Bharat?

 

River valley projects? Similar story. An ambitious project with immense benefits both for rural and urban folks suffers from interminable delays and astronomical cost-overruns because of hair-splitting on the part of well-meaning but frustratingly cussed NGOs and social activists over relief and rehabilitation packages offered to project-affected families. What is lost in the process? Hundreds of crores of tax-payers’ money and time that could have been better utilized to build a stronger nation.

 

Where is UniDy?

The Unity of your people’s shared commitment to building a self-sufficient nation in the understandable Diversity of their conflicting interests?

 

Just look at yourself in the mirror and you’ll see a so-called nation state that is riven with religious, sectarian, social, economic, regional and linguistic faultlines. Faultlines that crisscross each other so densely that they literally granulate the population into thousands of tiny self-seeking interest groups that cannot look beyond the myopic objectives of garnering maximum benefits for themselves in the short term with scant regard for the effect this could have on those outside their circle.

 

And then there is hatred. An all-pervasive, persistent, malodorous smog of hatred for the Other hangs over our national psyche. Just look at the sheer number of Others you’ve provided each single citizen of yours to hate.

 

UniDy?

 

For heaven’s sake, for almost two decades now we haven’t been united enough to give a simple majority to a single political party and allow it to rule us without having one hand tied behind its back by the exigencies of coalition dharma.

 

Now you’re baffled, aren’t you? How did things come to such a pass? Let me provide a simplistic explanation.

 

Dear India, it is a trait peculiar to humans that the more progress they make, the more self-centered they get. UniDy worked in the first few decades of your existence because then, each Indian felt too weak to be able to discharge the onerous burden of nation-building on his or her own. Those were scary days when Indians found it safer to subsume their parochial interests into the greater good of the nation. Not any more. With fast-growing economies, all too visible disparities, and galloping aspirations, an Indian either feels so empowered that he does not need his fellow-citizens anymore of so angry that he does not want them anymore. And the only time we think as one nation, one people, is at the time of a national calamity when once again we all become individually helpless and find safety in mass jingoism. Remember Kargil? Remember anything like that after Kargil?

 

The cliché of Unity in Diversity worked so well for six decades that the diversities of language, food and culture have been all but obliterated today.

 

Alas! They’ve been replaced with diversities of the heart and made each Indian a mobile republic of one. Today you are one nation and a billion plus republics. Indeed you’ve come a long way, India.

 

Happy Republic Day!