The 2024 general elections in India says something about the Spirit of a national will. The dichotomy that surfaced with the loss of faith in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) raises the fundamental question of political being that has been disconcerting the world since the birth of the Westphalian nation-state system after the “Treaty of Westphalia” in 1648. 

In order to understand the philosophy that is steeped in the majestic rebirth of India’s spiritual will to opposition to non-secular religiosity and communal politics, it is worthy of taking note into the historicity of Westphalian remarkableness. The treaty ended the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) and brought peace to the Holy Roman Empire nay Europe. The tragic part of the peace is that it came after the loss of eight million people over the politics of ‘religious will to power’. On one side were the Habsburgs rulers of Austria and Spain and their Catholic allies; and on the other side, the Protestant powers (Sweden and certain Holy Roman principalities) allied with France (though Catholic, strongly anti-Habsburg under King Louis XIV). 

The peace wished to end the political power of the Holy Roman Empire on states, kingdoms and principalities in the name of Christian theodicaea. By inviting the will of God in the running of national entities, the Popes and Priests had subdued the Spirit of general mass into servitude, tolerance and indifference. The facts of the Holy Roman Empire were made unholy by the abject institution of an intolerant Papacy. 

So, the peace was the universal consciousness erected over the battlegrounds of the Catholics and the Protestants. The Thirty Years’ War is the deadliest of the European Wars of religion. It had almost decimated Europe, and the blood that was spilled on its soil still manures its earth to the disrespect of “conciliating spirit” of human dignity. The two Great Wars in the 20th Century raised testaments to the fallen spirit of human psychedelic passion for pristine purity in racial endowment. Hitler’s idea of Aryan blood in Germanic peoples to the exclusion of others was cultivated in the institutionalized megalomania of an awry national spirit. It was electrified by a religious fervor to give the populist sentiment a verdict of theocratic sanction. Secularism and nationalism which the Peace of Westphalia willed to liberate in the sanctum of absolute freedom of human existence was lost in the Mephistophelian domain of sovereignty for power and knowledge. 

At no other time of history, the importance of the Peace of Westphalia is felt more convincing than in the era of the post-Cold War era. It was the Magna Carta of international relations by its sheer indignation to the demolition of human freedom. It made the human choice of freedom its principle doctrine by giving religion and state their place of tolerant separation to live side by side in harmony. 

State must respect religion, and religion must guard against usurping state’s popular will. The treaty provided that Catholics in a Protestant region and the Protestants in a Catholic region should be allowed to practice their religion at home, to attend religious services, and to bring up their children according to their religion. To keep religion from debasing the state’s Being, it instilled four common features in the service of nationhood: (1) the people; (2) a territory in which people inhabit; (3) a ruler- a king or a sovereign prince who bears sovereignty; (4) the capability to engage in relations with other states. Thus, the Treaty provided people the right to protect their territory with sovereign power. But the sovereign power in the hands of the ruler, either authoritarian or democratic, is the only philosophical question that needs to be merited if we wish to survive the death knell of sectarian politics. We must do good to remember that the Treaty of Westphalia resulted from the corruption of the church. 

Globalization has brought the nations not only closer to each other because of the phenomenal growth in world economy, but it has also widened the spiritual distance between them by tugging into the Past of peoples’ histories. Russia-Ukraine War and the Palestine-Israeli War are the most gruesome recent examples of human passion steeped into the abject irrationality of sectarian philosophy. These internecine conflicts have already shown signs of spill-over into the Eurasian landmass. The most arsenic effect of such contagion in the dissemination of a fatalistic message to the world is that populist leader thriving on the deadly narrow mentality of High Politics may lead their regions to an unpredictable future by (de) engaging in relations with their neighbors, thereby cutting short on bi-lateral trust and mutual commitment to the spirit of win-win co-existence. For states to exist in peace and harmony, the essential criterion is one that reifies the essence of statehood into nation’s each other’s existential freedom. In that regard, state posited upon the particularity of a religion as its objective truth of survival and growth will always be a challenge for others to nurture a comely friendly attitude toward her. It is, in this light, the results of the last general elections in India have to be adjudicated. 

Indian constitutional spirit was embedded in its secular imperative at the time of its independence in 1947. India can glorify in the excellence of a nation-state which is not only pluralistic but is also the world’s largest democracy. Despite its trenchant poverty in which the British had left it struggling, Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues displayed a capable leadership in building her institutions. Even today, we witness the vitality of discursive debates in its parliaments, the meritocracy of high civil servants, and the archetypal rectitude of its Supreme Court. The world’s greatest democracy has been able to appropriate the spiritual realm of holistic national aspiration through its constitutional model written and sanctified by her founding fathers. 

It is only in recent years that BJP has upended that universal spirit to a more contingent one cast in epical formulation. Mahabharata is a most outstanding work in world literature. It is a massive book on India’s genesis of tradition, politics and sociology. Nehru says that Mahabharata is a timeless message of the essential unity of India. The epic tells us how the idea of India as a whole was conceived, and how the Great Bharat (Mahabarata) was ruled in ancient times rich in culture, art and poetry. The Bhagvat Gita is a part of the Mahabharata, but it has a distinct charcter because it celebrates its authencity as a moral scripture. The Bhagvad Gita’s appeal to justice, non-violence and brotherhood is timeless, and thus persuades societies to build a harmonized nationhood enticed to the morality of a universal Spirit (consciousness). 

Of lesser length but equal merit, the other epic to which Indian philosophy searches for its glorious past is the Ramayana. The protagonist, Rama is an incarnation of the God Vishnu. He represents a historical fact to the mythical reflection. He represents a moral that evil must be fought to enable good to prevail. It is a priceless document for a nation to transcribe its code of conduct. 

In recent politics, BJP derives its contingent rise to the creative act of invoking the past through the resurgence of myth-making. To BJP, both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana point up to the resurgence of ultra-nationalism not on racial but religious appropriation. While the Mahabharata is casting its spell about an “undivided Bharat”, it is the subjective reflection on Ramayana that lights fire in an otherwise secular and spritual past of ancient India. Rama’s living image finds provenance in a mosque built by Mughal emperor in Ayodhya. BJP’s political mandate seceded to its destruction to purify Rama’s Holy Land. It was an egregious showdown of Hindu xenophobia. It also ignited religious violence of the saffron-clad Hindu activists in 1992. This not only denuded the proud heritage of India’s secularism of its universal Spirit but also led to the incitement of sectarian insecurity in South Asia. 

The epical phenomenon of Hindu atavism sees the Muslim empires in India as mleccha (barbarians). Thus, ancient epical India is grand and is the essence of Indian culture, and is posited a “privileged sanctum” through its embodied resurrection. So, we see that BJP re-iterates that the History of India must be understood in terms of the historicity of bi-furcation, and this bi-furfication must be delineated along communal categories of “native” and “foreigner (also barbarians)”.

This attempt by the political revisionists in Indian politics to unify the forces of the state and the region into a single mold of national aspirations sprouts into national interest impacting regional politics. India’s neighbors, Bangladesh and Pakistan are Muslim states. The sad part of such obsessive reading of the Epics is that it ruptures “History” into a political chaos. What is shocking of the recent phenomenon with Rama story is its politically religious orientation. From the stature of a legendary hero, Rama has been transfigured into a political emblem of power and discord. For Bangladesh and Pakistan, India’s march into future as a rising Asian power is a strategic reality. If India’s national interest is solely driven by its epical myth-making, it will unnerve its neighbors. 

When scholars force upon India a grandiloquent textual character, the ancient civilization of India with all its glory emerges as a Sub-Continental geography that divides it from the rest of Asia and the world. Bangladesh and Pakistan, the modern nation-states, as the breakaway parts of the Indian Sub-Continent, are recent phenomena. This hard truth might have lost its historiographic balance on Indian politicians who think that the revival of India’s glorious past clothed in religious passion is not altogether an incomprehensible act of History. 

Notwithstanding all the bragadocio of Hindu India by its stalwarts, the people of India have proved that they have the resilience to come back to its Spiritual shrine. BJP’s loss of hope through the election results has demostrated the public will to challenge the destruction of democracy from within. In that sense, it is the victory of the people of India, and their ode to the joy of one secular nation. A noted Indian politician, Swapan Dasgupta reflects on it in a sombre but encouraging note, “The Indian voter has given a verdict that will be remembered for a long time. They have given the BJP and allies a victory that feels like a defeat. They have given the INDIA (the opposition) alliance a defeat that feels like a victory.” This is the most subtle and profound observation by way of empirical case provided by the elections that have dissented the path of political sectarianism, and yearned for the ideals of freedom, co-existence and moral justice because these are the requisites independent of the trappings of political chicanery. Nation and the State are the two very conditions in which Freedom of an individual is realized, and the first nature of democracy is to exercise this freedom in a society free of fear and untruth. 

What is most revealing in the Indian elections is the fact that the states where the drumbeats of Hindutva tolled sonorously, and Rama’s Raj was blatantly in orgiac display, BJP lost. Its defeat in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, the two bastions of Hindu politics, is an indictment to the merit of Hindutva for a country whose geographical extent is too large, and whose rich and colorful diversity of its native population embraced the outsiders who came and settled down here. In that sense, Bharat can still imagine herself in the distinction of the Great Indian Novel after the name of Shashi Tharoor’s famous oeuvre. Nehru had noticed India’s majesty in a brilliant introspection. Nehru thought of India as “an ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously”. The historicity of India is like a beautiful embroidered quilt marked by the assorted sewing of nations, religions, languages, arts and cultures.

Pakistan is a good lesson in History to reject the formation of nationhood on religion only. In 1947, the two provinces of Pakistan separated by 1000 miles coming together in the name of religion was a strange marriage of illusions. They made a most unlikely pair destined to crumble under stormy wind. The storm was raised by the Bengalis when they found that religious rhetorics were not good enough to substitute for their consolation in spiritual freedom. Bengali Spirit was rooted in something very pristine and unique. That Spirit was galvanized in its centuries-old tradition of daily lives that could only reconcile through its liberation in a free state. 1971 marks for Bangladesh its entry into the World-History whose past was constituted in the histories of her people in different milieus where subjection and exploitation formed the nemesis of her trials with destiny. The first authors of her constitution realized this problem at the time of independence. They felt that sectarianism is itself unworthy of a national spirit for the essence of nationhood is freedom. Secularism is therefore wiser and more equitable than its counterpart. But for this the state must be matured. 

Inspite of losing many providential seats in the elections, Modi’s victory by any account is impressive. More than congratulating Narendra Modi on his consecutive third term, we ought to congratulate India’s people and her institutions for upholding the spirit of democracy, and their unflinching steadfastness to hold on to human freedom through the realization of the highest form of Freedom, that is Nation-State. 

But if Narendra Modi takes lessons from the drift of election results, he will turn out to be a leader who will make Indian History something of a remarkable contribution to World History. The new parliament with strong opposition will present him with challenges, but it will also give him newer opportunities to exercise leadership brilliance in the likes of Nehru, Indira and Manmohan Singh who opened the doors of India’s economy to liberal ideas. Modi is a proven administrator, and has left an indelible mark of change to get his country through the difficult Indian bureaucracy with an astonishing speed of development. But economic growth and infra-structural development will just be a part of the overall story of India’s future. If India wishes to be a real challenger to other rising super-states, Modi needs to recalibrate his view of the things. The Spirit that he once animated through his speech, “With everyone, for everyone’s growth” (sabka sath, sabka bikas) is now for him to realize. This is the time when he can launch himself as the true leader of his people at home. But for that he must also give an impression of a Secular man free of the restraints of doctrine of Hindutva. His religious imagination must be divorced from the rational thought to give other states confidence in engaging with India. 

We are also witnessing elsewhere the tragic consequences of the murderous politics foisted on the petard of religious decadence. The mass murders of Palestinians, mostly women and children, spell the cowardice of a nation to which other nations, particularly of the West, having lost the sense of Spiritual wisdom, have joined in defending such deliberate genocide. The tragic thing about Palestinian issue is that the moral decadence of World Order has reached the threshold point of anarchy. What was Nazi Germany to the Jews, Netanyahu and his buddies are to the Palestinians. The Clash of Civilizations is not about civilizations but its imagined turf has turned into a playground of religious wars. India’s last elections have demonstrated that there can still be hope in the popular will to break through the moribund illness of gerontocracy. 

For Bangladesh, these happenings in the world leave a strong message. In the post-Cold War era under the influence of globalization, there has been a meteoric rise in global wealth. The progress in science and technology has been phenomenal. But morals instead of developing higher, have been steadily declining lower. It is as much true of states as it is of individual universal being. Religion, which is supposed to be a universal panacea of moral degradation, has lost its Reason because of its confinement within the limits of narrow parochial walls. The problem is not that the world leaders are geriatric, and are unable to give direction. The problem is that the State and the people have lost the urge for re-vitalization of moral Thought.