BY BURRA V. SUBRAHMANYAM

This part of the argument on behalf of the status quo is based upon a false notion that the political life of a territorial group can be completely divorced from its general cultural life. It is true that, in discouraging the permanent political segregation of the Muslims or the Non-brahmins as a group, we are trying to dissociate their political life from their group-feeling, but the Muslims or the Non-brahmins are not a territorial group; and the creation of separate political States for them, whether desirable or not desirable, is certainly impossible. It is as if the Catholics, the Protestants and the Methodists of Great Britain should each demand a separate political State in the country. But in Great Britain itself, we notice, the demand for separate Parliaments for Scotland and Wales does not sound so inherently absurd. The nature and the position of groups are similar in our own country. And in any case, it is absurd to say that Politics has nothing to do with Culture and that the State is not even remotely concerned with cultural affairs. Modern theories of the State, whether Fascist or Liberal, do not commit the error of dissociating politics from the general current of life within a State. The Fascist may seek refuge in Hegel and maintain the corollary from the ‘Idealist Theory,’ that the governmental authority of the State must control every movement of life within the State. The Liberal may seek to reinterpret the ‘Utilitarian Theory,’ and maintain as a modern Benthamite that the purpose of the State is the positive duty to secure the possible maximum of genuine self-expression for all the individuals and all the groups within the State. But in neither theory is the State intended merely to collect taxes and maintain constables. We may not agree with the Fascist that the general life of the people within a State should be so ruthlessly controlled by the men in power. But we have to agree with the Liberal that the purpose of political organisation is itself to increase the scope of genuine self-expression in this world by removing obstacles and preventing the clash of selves.

There is also a general tendency in this country to mistake politics purely for administration. It is not so strange a mistake, considering that for a long period there was only administration in India but no politics. We were in that helpless state almost till the era of Mahatma Gandhi. To this day there are Indians to whom political freedom means little more than the Indianisation of the Services. We were content to be administered because we had not developed that self-consciousness which, in turn, requires us to control and direct the administration. It is that self-consciousness of the people which makes all the difference between administration and politics in a civilised State. All men are alike to an administrative machinery. It is the beginnings of political life which reveal the differences between various groups of men and necessitate political adjustments to suit the differences. "It is in general a necessary condition of free-institutions," said Mill in his Representative Government, "that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities." Political life in India instead of acquiring ‘free-institutions’ will degenerate into the acquiescence and the apathy which we associate with a people who are only administered, unless the political Constitution itself provides for the special needs and the genius of the different linguistic groups of the country by the creation of linguistic Provinces. Political independence is worth nothing unless it is followed on the one side by economic amelioration and on the other by the release of all the creative forces in the country. A politician whose sole concern is to get rid of alien domination in India, and who will find his occupation gone when self-government is achieved, is an incomplete thinker. No less incomplete as a thinker will the politician of a self-governing India be, in whose opinion the sole purpose of political life is the administrative business of collecting taxes, balancing budgets, and maintaining peace. Political thought which does not consciously aim at helping the cultural regeneration of India, and which does not accept that the final goal is neither the country’s political freedom nor even its economic uplift (for these alone do not go far enough) but the consequent fullness of life to all individuals and all groups within the country, betrays a deplorable narrowness of vision. Politics is the servant of Culture, and he is a bad servant who knows not that he has a master.

If Indian political thought cannot take its stand on the false theory that politics has nothing to do with Culture, should it not see the danger to the cultural integrity of the different linguistic groups in the continued existence of the present administrative Provinces? The fact is that this danger exists in political life no less than in the other departments of life. It is agreed that the linguistic groups differ temperamentally from one another. Political life in a mixed Province cannot but be affected by this difference in temperament. One group may be very cautious by nature, another may be quite daring. The former, dominated by its own conservative character, may contemplate reforming the entire Province only by slow degrees. The latter, conscious of its own abundant enthusiasm for reform, may contemplate moving forward very boldly with respect to the whole Province. The cautious nature of the former group may appear as cowardice to the latter. The enthusiasm of the latter group may strike the former as mere want of balance. When the moment comes to decide and to act, what is in reality the virtue of one group-mind will be put down as an undesirable quality by the other group-mind. And the clash of temperaments will end in a feeling of frustration, because, whether there is a compromise or there is not, at least one of the groups is bound to resent the imposition of another temperament on its own. It will not do to argue that everywhere the basis of political life is one’s capacity for compromise, or to point out that the clash of political parties in every country does, to some extent, result in a similar feeling of frustration. We must notice the difference between political parties all the world over and linguistic groups in our own country. Firstly, the clash of political parties is mostly the clash of creeds, of economic doctrines and of political ideas. The clash of the linguistic groups is almost entirely the clash of temperaments. This is a valid distinction, because two people may subscribe to the same economic doctrine, but because of difference in temperament, differ as to the mode and speed of putting the doctrine into action; similarly two people may be alike in temperament and yet hold widely different political opinions. Secondly, a political party is permanent neither in its creed and character nor in its numerical strength in the Legislature and in the country. On the other hand, the essential nature of each linguistic group, the share of seats it has in the mixed Legislature of the Province, and the area it occupies are permanent

features. Thirdly, a political minority having failed to be the majority at, a General Election has no right to complain against government by the majority, because any scheme but one of majority rule for the whole country will end in chaos. But allowing each linguistic group to work out its own destiny will bring order and contentment, not chaos, into the land. Daily compromise and submission are inevitable where political parties are concerned. Daily compromise and submission are dangerous to the cultural integrity of the linguistic groups. The result in their case would be the undermining of self-confidence and the killing of initiative in all the groups concerned. There can be compromise of creeds, not of temperaments.

That the continued existence of the present administrative Provinces will be a danger to the cultural integrity of the linguistic groups is even more obvious when we take leave of the political aspect and consider other matters. The danger here flows mainly from two causes. One is that the capital of a mixed Province naturally tends to draw to itself the more intellectual and enterprising elements from each linguistic area, and many a linguistic group is thereby substantially deprived of these elements of leadership, because the capital cannot be in the heart of more than one linguistic area, and actually capitals like Bombay and Madras succeed in being impartially remote from nearly all the linguistic areas within the Province. The second cause is that the capital of each of these mixed Provinces, instead of being a centre of culture which directs many currents of life into the countryside and is sensitive to every impulse and movement issuing therefrom, is itself a veritable Babel of many tongues and many peoples, and the cultural possibilities of such a capital can be little more than those of a prosperous English sea-side resort or a crowded Continental watering-place. Both these causes deserve to be understood a little more elaborately. Though mentioned separately they are actually the components of a single fact, namely, the absence in each linguistic area of a homogeneou capital such as can be the focus of the cultural life of each linguistic group.

When the average reader of a newspaper in India thinks of the city of London, he probably thinks first of 10, Downing Street, and of the Houses of Parliament; and then of that powerful institution called the Bank of England; and then perhaps of Piccadilly Circus, wondering what it really is; and of Strand and Regent Street and big West End shops. But there is one thing which he is not likely to think of, and that is that, if it were possible suddenly to scoop out altogether from the map of England the city of London with all that it contains in men, movements and institutions, England is culturally as good as dead. For London is the heart of England, not merely in the narrow political sense, not merely in the narrower economic or commercial sense, but in the broadest cultural sense. London’s theatres, art-exhibitions, music-halls, literary clubs, journals and publishing firms are legion, and to London come the most enterprising and the most intellectual of the English people from all over the country, and in London they find every facility to pursue their individual activities. By belonging to London, they are not lost to England. On the other hand, they become more potent atoms of English culture. English culture takes its very shape in London by the impact of English intellect against English intellect. There is no vague cultural cosmopolitanism, no perpetual and therefore corrosive contact with alien minds, no shrinking of one’s personality with the need daily to accommodate strangers. It is all England and all English. And what is true of London in the cultural life of England is true of Paris in France, of Berlin in Germany, of Rome in Italy, and of almost every other capital in every other State.

The capitals of our mixed administrative Provinces present a sorry contrast. Here is an attempt at ineffectual cosmopolitanism among all the linguistic groups without any attempt first to develop the individuality of the groups themselves; which, indeed, is trying to cultivate the more impossible virtues without first cultivating the elementary ones–like the prayer in Chesterton’s poem which runs,

This cosmopolitanism is helping the natural degeneration of a subject country in breeding hybrid generations with no back-ground of culture whatsoever, whose only craving is to live in comfort, and who, granted that comfort, will be just as much at home in the wilds of Borneo or in the sands of the Sahara. Or if some people are a little better than the rest, they will know everything about Greek civilisation without knowing anything of their own country’s history before the advent of the British. They will know a lot about the Parthenon Frieze, but Ellora and Elephanta will be unknown to them. They will eagerly discuss the Pre-Raphaelites or the Cubist School. The wonders of Ajanta are a sealed book to them.

This very cosmopolitanism is again greatly responsible for the preposterous importance which still attaches to the English language in the affairs of this country, and for the consequent disuse and decay of our own languages. If the present administrative Provinces are perpetuated, journalism must continue to be in the English language–or the other linguistic groups cannot understand us. All political debates will have to be in the English language–or, even in our Provincial politics we cannot know each other’s mind to make common decisions. And, most painful of all, even creative literary efforts will tend to be yet in the English language, partly as a matter of course in the general habit of writing in English, and partly too because the entire heterogeneous mass that surrounds us will not otherwise have a chance to admire our literary talent! To those who can think aright this is the greatest tragedy of it all, that instead of exploring the possibilities of our own languages, instead of attempting to make them perfect vehicles of modern thought in creative literature, in journalism, in politics and in science, instead of enriching them in every way, we are almost letting them die without a thought for them. It is not that our languages are decadent and cannot cope with modern ideas. They cannot certainly be less rich than was the German language before the advent of Lessing and Goethe or the Russian language before the coming of Pushkin and Gogol. Both Germany and Russia were at one time slaves to the prestige of the French language, and treated their own languages as decadent, with a contempt which was undeserved in the light of present experience. In a similar way, the fault is not with our languages at all. It is we, the decadent, who are wanting in the necessary vision and enthusiasm. And the vision and enthusiasm will remain wanting in the required measure till the creation of linguistic Provinces gives the much-needed impetus to journalism in the Indian languages, to political discussion in the Indian languages, and to creation of literatures in the Indian languages. It is doubtless true that for the complete disappearance of the domination of the English language we require, firstly, a free India that can think of her own needs before the needs of Englishmen; secondly, vernaculars that have evolved into perfect media for higher education; and, thirdly, a common Indian language for the affairs of the Central Government, for the conduct of business, and for inter-provincial intercourse. But mixed Provinces, wherever they exist, are anyhow the first impediment to the growth of Indian language. And, therefore, linguistic Provinces should first be created.

The danger is not to the development of the languages alone. A people who have in essence ceased to think and write in their own language will be queer cultural specimens in every way. Even the artistic life of the different groups is imperilled. With the disappearance of royal patronage, art today depends for its very existence on the sympathetic understanding and goodwill of the general public. In every country the general public whose opinion and goodwill really matter is the public of the country’s capital, and in the mixed Provinces of our country this body of people is the multi-coloured mass whose cultural sensibilities amount to nothing or to utter confusion. The only type of art that can succeed with such a public is a spurious mixture of East and West, or an equally spurious mixture of the different tastes in our own country, They will place Ravi Varma above Nandalal Bose, ‘talkie-hits’ above Thyagaraja, and vulgar imitations of Parisian ballet dances above the beauty of Bharatanatya, To give a substantial illustration within the experience of one who lives in the city of Madras, let us consider the deplorable state of our theatre. The public of our mixed capitals will enjoy any dramatic performance in any language, provided it gives them plenty of music on the stage, because music is something which all the groups can simultaneously appreciate, and any performance which does not attract and please all the groups at once will not be a financial success. Nobody appreciates the fact that the true development of the theatre requires plays without music, which can really thrive only in the homogeneous capitals of linguistic Provinces. And in the need to cater to these mixed audiences in our capital cities the theatre languishes as an ancient and outworn institution, priding itself on its universal appeal to a debased heterogeneous public. As a matter of hard fact, we the linguistic groups in these Provinces can never hope to be culturally self-reliant or to rediscover the artistic soul of our peoples as long as we are denied the feeling of being intensely ourselves, and no group can be intensely itself in an everlasting crowd of groups. Our major problem is to rid this country of its cultural servitude to the West, for cultural servitude is a far deeper ill than political servitude. And the truth is that in the establishing of a cultural ‘Swaraj’ one can be truly Indian only by first being true to one’s linguistic group. Only political segregation from the other groups can make possible all those inward processes of cultural consciousness, without which there is no growth of culture. In the absence of linguistic Provinces, therefore, we must be content to remain a people without a culture of our own, drawing such cultural sustenance as we can mainly from Hollywood, cheap humorous periodicals, detective fiction, P. G. Wodehouse and Ethel M. Dell.

And, meanwhile, capitals like Madras and Bombay will continue to draw to themselves the enterprising intellects of the various linguistic areas as journalists, lawyers, business men and officers, victimise them to a purposeless cosmopolitanism which is strangely not inconsistent with bitter jealousies, destroy the genuineness of their group-spirit and make colourless tax-payers of them. And they are lost to their linguistic groups which, in a happier country, might have looked to them for leadership in cultural matters.

Nor is the advantage culturally of creating linguistic Provinces merely that all these disadvantages are got rid of. There is also a more positive aspect to consider. In the world’s history, the cultural awakening (or re-awakening) of a group has mostly either been the result of a resurgent sense of political unity in the group, or coincided with it in point of time. Whether we take the Englishmen of Elizabethan England, or the Hindus of the Empire of Vijayanagara, or the Germans of the period of Fichte and post-Napoleonic nationalism, or the Irish of Republican Ireland, there is ample evidence to show the intimate connection between political unity and cultural achievement. It is immaterial in what way the sense of political unity arises, but if the unity is rooted in spirit and not in expediency it is the beginning of a new era for the culture of the group. The political unity of a group helps the conservation of its culture, and from genuine conservation to fresh creative power is but a step. The sense of political unity where the whole of India is concerned, while being sufficient for the purposes of our national struggle and for future federation, is by itself in-capable of calling into existence a country-wide renaissance of culture, and has indeed proved itself so incapable. But it is altogether likely that the political unity of each linguistic group, made real by the creation of a linguistic Province, can truly stimulate a cultural awakening.

Thus, the second half of the argument on behalf of the status quo, namely, that a linguistic redistribution of the Provinces is unnecessary for cultural advancement, also fails.

But there are those who believe that between the status quo and the creation of linguistic Provinces there is another alternative–the creation of a University for each linguistic area. While the idea of being satisfied with only a linguistic University must commend itself wherever the creation of a linguistic Province is impossible, as in the case of British Malabar, either on account of the smallness of area or the insufficiency of revenue, it is impossible in other cases to be so easily satisfied, because obviously a linguistic Province helps cultural integrity to a much greater extent than a University. For one thing, a University alone cannot supply all those advantages of a separate Province which we enumerated in considering the purely political aspect of the need for linguistic Provinces. And these advantages, it must be remembered, are considerable. Also, in the narrower sphere of culture which excludes politics, a University centre, in the Very nature of things, cannot be an adequate substitute for a proper capital of the linguistic area, and such a capital is very essential as the focal point of the cultural life of each linguistic group. There is, for instance, an Andhra University in the Madras Presidency although the Andhras have no separate Province. It may be interesting to observe by the way that today a considerable part of the Andhra country within British India is outside the pale of the Andhra University. But, that apart, Waltair, where the headquarters of the Andhra University are situated, has not in any sense become their centre of activities for the Andhras. Except for the business-like existence of the University itself, there are few other signs of cultural life in the city, and Madras still remains the old luring centre that it was. The Andhra publishing firms, the Andhra journals and the Andhra newspapers that were in Madras before the creation of the Andhra University, still continue to be in Madras. This is inevitable because a group cannot attempt to have its political centre in one part of its territory and a cultural centre in another. It is in fact the nature of a political centre (although a Federal centre is perhaps an exception) that it becomes in course of time the commercial centre, the cultural centre, and the centre of almost every important activity. The political and cultural centres have got to be one, or the political centre will throw the attempted cultural centre into the utter background, than which there can be no graver danger to the culture of a group. A political centre can become the cultural centre too without being a University centre, but a University centre cannot become the cultural centre without being the political centre as well.

And, therefore, both true political instinct and the desire to create order out of the cultural chaos of our country dictate the creation of linguistic Provinces. An India that attains her full stature and takes her rightful place among the nations of the world will be the cultural counterpart of the continent of Europe, and the political counterpart of Canada or the United States of America. It is as if something very strikingly like the French statesman’s great dream of a United States of Europe can come true–but in another continent, combining a cultural history as great and varied as Europe’s with a revitalising political energy no less than that of America’s. The more clearly we realise this fact, the simpler will our political ideals become. And therefore it is, we say, that in rejecting the idea of linguistic Provinces one strikes at the very root of India's great destiny. And therefore, also, did Mr. Lionel Curtis exclaim as early as in 1917:

"Can we really look forward to a United States of India within the British Commonwealth under which Sind and the Canarese-speaking people are tied and bound in the same self-governing unit as the Marathas? Are not the Marathas themselves entitled to a State such as will perpetuate the traditions of that famous community? Are the Tamil and Telugu peoples of Madras to be given no separate institutions of their own? Are the Oriyas to be left dispersed amongst three Provinces, the largest section being left under the permanent domination of the people of Bihar? To base responsible government on such units is not only to ignore the experience of the other Dominions, but to violate principles for which we are fighting in this war. You cannot base responsible government on units evolved on principles which are the antithesis of that system. You cannot graft figs on thorns, or grapes on thistles."

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