Madhu Limaye was a true nationalist and patriot in the real sense of the word. My respect for him stems from the meaning of his concept of Indian nationalism and his tireless efforts to protect it.
In an article written in 1993, Limaye said:
“For centuries, Indians have lacked the tendency to achieve and maintain the great ideals of national unity by establishing a strong and permanent state. The idea of a state or a unified political society has never been well understood. The scope of thinking of Indians rarely extended beyond family, caste, sub-caste, village or locality and that is why in the known history of 2,500 years, except for 500 years, India has always been divided into large, medium and small states fighting among themselves.”
“The Indian National Congress created the consciousness of national unity for the first time in 1919-1922, and replaced the foreign imperialist bureaucratic structure with a state run by the will of the people.”
Further, he elaborated:
“The modern Indian state was surrounded by chaos and anarchic forces from its very birth. The situation at the time of partition of the country and the dreams of becoming sovereign as soon as the British rule was removed by more than five hundred native princely states had created the danger of India being disintegrated. But it was only due to the moral strength of Mahatma Gandhi and the network of the Congress organisation spread across the country that the anarchic forces could be controlled and a democratic constitutional structure with an administrative system was prepared. And this legacy is being destroyed.”
This very pain of his forces us to think about his attitude towards nationalism and patriotism.
Limaye started his political life with the freedom struggle movement, which naturally had a deep impact on his thinking. Due to the influence of Pune’s Sane Guruji, he always opposed communal politics and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS’s) ideology. Hence, he waged a war against it till the last days of his life.
After the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya and the subsequent bomb blasts in Mumbai in 1993, Limaye wrote an article titled, ‘The enemies of nationalism are narrow-minded and sellable Hindus and fanatic Muslims’.
In this article, he wrote that the Sangh Parivar promotes the ideal of a Hindu nation based on five unities: ethnic, religious, geographical, cultural, and linguistic. However, despite this, the organisation has failed to foster responsible citizenship and patriotism among Hindus, instead only succeeding in inciting anti-Muslim sentiments.
Quoting M.S.Golwalkar’s book We And Our Nationhood Defined, Madhu Limaye wrote:
“His opinion about the non-Hindus of the country was that they should stop living like foreigners, otherwise they will have to live in this country completely under the subordination and subjugation of the Hindu community. We are an ancient nation and we should treat the foreign races living in this country in the same way as all ancient nations do.”
In this article, while linking the events of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya and the subsequent Mumbai bomb blasts, Limaye said:
“Dawood Ibrahim had told his close associates in the crime world that something should be done to take revenge for this and then seven thousand kilograms of RDX was landed on the western coast of the country, which was later used in the Mumbai bomb blasts.”
Limaye explained that the people who brought this explosive material by sea were not Pakistani Muslims but Indian Muslims, but their actions were as inappropriate and bad as they were, but they were inspired by the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the riots that followed and they had become religious fanatics. However, he added:
“What about the people who helped unload this material, deposit it, clear it through customs checkpoints and transport it to Mumbai? The people arrested in this case were Hindus and belonged to various castes. What was the motivation for these people other than pure greed and self-interest?”
In his public and political life spanning more than half a century, Limaye held on to his political principles firmly without compromise, and kept expressing his opinion boldly. He was against the two-nation theory of the Muslim League and always opposed its communal politics, holding them, as well as the Congress party and Jawaharlal Nehru responsible for the partition of India.
He firmly believed that if the Congress had chosen Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman as its chief minister in Uttar Pradesh in the elections of the provincial assemblies held in 1937, the foundation of Pakistan and the seeds of partition of the country would never have been sown. In his three-volume book, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru: A Historical Partnership, Limaye has analysed in detail the national movement, the politics of the Congress and the Muslim League and the manipulations of the British government. It provides a comprehensive review of the politics before the partition of the country, which will serve as a major reference book for the students of history.
Like his leader and comrade Rammanohar Lohia, Limaye was also not in favour of the Socialists leaving the Congress in 1948. But when Jayaprakash Narayan decided to leave the Congress party, he followed suit, and played the role of a constructive and responsible Opposition.
In expressing his opinion on the policy of the government in national and international politics by organiSing mass movements in and outside the parliament and through newspaper articles, he sought to show the mirror to the ruling Congress party.
Very few people know that former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, despite considering Limaye as her political rival, used to consult him on international issues and foreign policy. If the President of the former Soviet Union Brezhnev met a non-government person during his visit to India, then this credit also goes to Limaye.
The Janata Party split
I had many discussions with him on the Socialists’ politics of ‘non-Congressism’ due to which the Sangh Parivar and its political branch, first the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and later the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), gained power. He called it a strategy to remove the autocratic Congress government from power, but never ignored the dangerous politics of the Sangh Parivar and repeatedly raised questions about this politics and dual membership, which is why some people see him as the breaker of the Janata Party.
During the Janata Party’s rule, communal riots took place in Aligarh and Jamshedpur. Limaye, despite being the general secretary of the ruling party, strongly condemned its members for their involvement in these riots. When he felt that he would not be able to counter the politics of the Sangh Parivar by staying in the Janata Party, he called the breakup of the Janata Party a ‘historic necessity’ thus forming the Janata Party (Secular). The ideology and policy of this new party was the same as that of the former Samyukta Socialist Party.
Also read: When Hate is on the Rise, Remembering Mahatma Gandhi’s Quest for Hindu-Muslim Unity
But it is also a fact that the people whom Limaye promoted later started doubting his intentions. Dismayed by this and seeing his deteriorating health, he retired from active politics in 1982, spending his time reading and writing in a small room in Delhi’s Western Court. Apart from writing regular articles in newspapers and magazines, he wrote more than two dozen books highlighting the problems faced by the nation and their solutions.
An ‘encyclopaedia’ of the Indian constitution
After Rajiv Gandhi became the prime minister in 1985, along with complex problems like Punjab and Assam, the Shah Bano case also gained momentum, shaking the politics of the whole country. Limaye was a critic of the decision given by the Supreme Court in this case. He believed that while deciding to give alimony to a Muslim woman, a judge does not have the right to comment on the Holy Quran.
But at the same time, he was also against the passing of the Constitutional Amendment Bill related to Muslim women by the Rajiv Gandhi administration. He was of the thought that there should be an initiative to make a Uniform Civil Code in the country, but only if efforts were made to create such an environment that a demand for making such a code is made on behalf of all religions and communities.
Limaye was an expert in constitutional matters, and he is called the ‘encyclopedia’ of the Indian constitution. Whenever a journalist like myself got stuck in constitutional matters during reporting, there was no problem that could not be solved by talking to Limaye for five minutes.
I would like to mention an incident as an example of how Limaye worked at a training college for journalists and how he gave them information. Around March-April 1992, I was working for the Hindi Sunday Observer, when the biennial elections of the Rajya Sabha were around the corner.
In these elections, many political parties were getting such people elected from those states where they were not natives. I had to write a report on this subject and expose how almost all the major political parties, except the Left, were engaging in this unethical exercise.
I went straight to Limaye and wanted to know his opinion on this subject, and also reminded him of the uproar created by the Janata Party members in 1978 when Pranab Mukherjee of the Congress party was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat.
His response was that it is not only unethical but also illegal for a person to go to the Rajya Sabha from another state and become a voter by going from one state to another and an affidavit is given that he is no longer a resident of the other state. But usually people who enter the Rajya Sabha through the backdoor do not follow this process properly and become voters by giving the address through any chief minister.
The next day Limaye ordered me to accompany him to the parliament library. He reached the parliament in a three-wheeler scooter despite his poor health. He made me sit and started showing me the biographies of the people who were Rajya Sabha members from 1952 to 1992 and asked me to prepare a complete list of those who became Rajya Sabha members from other states besides their native ones. I was surprised to see there were many such cases, flouting the basic spirit of the constitution. Limaye told me that no party in India is free from this crime.
Also read: Super Chat: How YouTube and YouTubers Are Making Money Out of Hate
I last saw Limaye giving a speech in January 1990. The occasion was the election of Mitrasen Yadav of Communist Party of India (CPI) from Faizabad Lok Sabha and Jaishankar Pandey of Janata Dal from Ayodhya legislative assembly seats in the December 1989 Lok Sabha and Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly elections, respectively. These two were honoured by an organisation called ‘Hindustani Biradari’ because they had defeated communal forces in the elections at a place which they considered their biggest stronghold.
While speaking on this occasion, Limaye said that the unity and integrity of this country can be strengthened only by destroying the intentions of such forces. In his speech, he questioned the Sangh Parivar, saying that it accuses other political parties of appeasing Muslims. Does it have even a single example of this?
In the words of Limaye, can the Sangh Parivar tell where the Muslims have been appeased? Have they risen socially? Have they risen educationally or have they become very strong economically? And if this is not so, then this false propaganda should be stopped.
After the presentation of the Sachar Committee report in parliament in 2005, it has now been officially confirmed that what Limaye was saying was correct. My humble tribute to the late, great Madhu Limaye.
Qurban Ali is a tri-lingual journalist, who has covered some of modern India’s major political, social and economic developments. He has keenly followed India’s freedom struggle and is now documenting the history of the socialist movement in the country. He can be contacted at qurban100@gmail.com