New Delhi, Sept. 16 -- In his famous treatise "Swadeshi Samaj", written in the heyday of the Swadeshi era, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore spoke of awakening our "Atmashakti", or "Self-Power", for achieving self-reliance. Tagore lamented that India, which was once primarily a society- and people-driven polity, where initiative and self-help were the norm, had now lost that capacity. It was now dependent on petitions and representations.
The need was to reawaken energy, sincerity, self-reliance and courage. Gurudev advocated the need to concentrate all scattered national forces in one centre. For him, every external blow only paved the way for uniting all strength in a common centre and for a common goal.
It was only through serving the nation, "swadesher-seva", that genuine love of the nation, "swadesh-prem", could be awakened, Gurudev argued. It was through national seva that the vision of the nation, desh, could in itself emerge. Such a centre of seva would unite all sections of people in a common bond. "Atma-Shakti" can be awakened by discovering yourself in the larger national self. That identification with the larger national self can emerge by serving the country, "desher-seva".
Each time I return to the pages of "Swadeshi Samaj", I find a striking resemblance between its call to action and Narendra Modi's governance approach and actions in the last quarter-century that he has been in elected office.
Self-reliance, identification with the larger national self, seva of the nation and awakening the "self-power", "Atma-Shakti", have been intrinsic to Modi's vision and philosophy of governance. The swaraj for the swadeshi samaj, Tagore argued, would come about through swaraj of society, and that swaraj could only re-emerge through self-help.
In the last 25 years - as Chief Minister of Gujarat and later as Prime Minister of India - Modi's way of bringing about transformation has been to base it on the collective strength of the people and to awaken their Atma Shakti.
Modi appeals to India's civilisational capacity for self-renewal. That capacity had been sapped. For long decades after freedom, insufficient attention was paid to its reawakening. That capacity for self-renewal is India's civilisational strength; it can be sustained through Atma-Shakti.
Atma Shakti diminished under the onslaught of a foreign education system and foreign systems. They eventually overwhelmed our capacity for self-help. When Modi spoke of "Panch-Pran", five pledges for national and civilisational self-renewal, and when he spoke of de-Macaulayising the Indian polity, setting a decadal goal till 2035, Modi was working to reawaken Atma Shakti.
That awakening is seen through a confident cultural self-recovery. "Macaulay shattered our self-confidence," Modi observes. "He infused a sense of inferiority within us. With one stroke he threw thousands of years of our knowledge and science, our art and culture, and our entire way of life into the dustbin. It was at that moment that the seed was sown that if Indians wanted to progress, if they wanted to achieve something big, they would have to do so through foreign methods."
This feeling persisted after independence. It made us base our methods and models on foreign theories and systems. The pride of being ourselves was diminished and nearly lost. When he called for taking a pledge to free ourselves from Macaulay's mentality of slavery in the next ten years, Modi was speaking of the national prerogative and imperative of being ourselves. This was the second struggle for independence. No Prime Minister before him has spoken in that vein or has set such a target.
Philosopher K.C. Bhattacharya has termed this aspiration "Swaraj in Ideas", while Deendayal Upadhyaya, writing in 1949, spoke of "cultural freedom" being of paramount importance, minus which the nation's freedom "will not only be meaningless, but will also not last long." Modi's Panch Pran and de-Macaulayisation aim at ushering in an era of swaraj in ideas and of true and lasting cultural freedom. Such an era of cultural freedom will no longer see our languages, traditions, culture and literature being denigrated or ridiculed.
In the aftermath of independence, Sri Aurobindo spoke of the "vast subtleties of the collective being of a people" in which resides "a power of self-renewal with the help of its inner life-idea." This inner life-idea is "the key to a nation's psychology and is more tenacious than the outer form."
Modi's approach in the last 25 years has been to emphasise the necessity of connecting with this inner life-idea. He knows it is the key to a civilisational resurgence. A number of fields in which he has striven to bring about a transformation point to this.
Modi is connected to the soil and soul of Bharat. He has grown from it, unlike some of his predecessors, who were deracinated from Bharat's essence. That rootedness has led him to rise through struggles and trials, enabling him to create an entirely new age, catapulting Bharat towards a new future.
Views expressed are personal. The writer is member NEC, BJP & Chairman, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.