‘Ghar mein ghuske marenge’ is the new ‘script’ that a number of Indians are saying loud and clear, replacing an old script that seems to have been in place for most of the time in its history. The new script presents a new paradigm and challenge to a nation and its people. It also presents a departure from its civilizational narrative, history, and legacy for thousands of years. The slogan ‘ghar mein ghuske marenge’ was an alien notion for India as a whole and for one to be an Indian. To us, we were never amongst those who violated or crossed people’s boundaries or domains or went there to beat them. We waited for others to attack or invade us, and only when our patience was exhausted would we hit back. Never did we decide to strike pre-emptively. That was our ‘lakshman rekha’, we never imagined crossing.
Does the present slogan and its implementation take us away from being a victim who is trying forever to bring attention to the wrong done to us, into something else, someone who no longer needs so and is developing a newfound ability to defend themselves? Perhaps only time has the answer. Is the slogan a call for self-determination as if it doesn’t look at any external agency for help, least of all the rest of the world, to rescue India?
In the life of every nation, the decisions by its leaders taken at its major turning points, the roles they play, rehearse, and act are determined by a few core beliefs that are rehearsed and played again. It is called a ‘script’ according to the script theory in psychology.
According to this theory, every nation has a psychological script that plays out in the nation’s history again and again and is the nation’s ongoing script. It is a construct that dictates which direction the nation is going, which path it will take in the future, and how it will reach there. Going by the slogan and the way the ‘Operation Sindoor’ is unfolding, India may be said to be forging an altogether new script. Like every new path that a nation needs to forge at its critical times, and for it to have a deep impact, it needs discussions, debates, and intellectual deliberations, to involve everyone, both intellectuals and laymen.
A nation’s script is often created at the dawn of its civilization. It is drawn from sources, including but not limited to its history, its mythology, and is buried behind layers. Like for America and European nations, it was derived from Moses’ cry for ‘going to the promised land’, something that many a American President found inspiration from. From the founding of the nation to its present, everyone has mentioned and sworn by it. The same script in the past also led many European leaders to start colonization because the world beyond their boundaries was the promised land of Moses that they could inhabit, meant for them by god’s will and command.
Script themes differ from one nation to another. Some contain themes of suffering, persecution, and hardship, while others contain themes of building empires and making conquests like Britain and France. It is said that America’s space program could go so far only because of the allure of a promised land, the word ‘land’ replaced by ‘space’.
What has caused Indians to change to this new script of ‘ghar mein ghuske marenge’ when the old script was never as much to cross or enter someone’s home? Where ‘atithi devo bhava’ and ‘satyamev jayate’ ruled and saw no difference between the refugee and the invader, the rogue and the saint.
For centuries, it was a foregone conclusion that India would never cross anyone’s boundary or borders, no matter what the provocation. But today it may be said to be no more. In this author’s opinion, it may be for three reasons. One the last skin of slavery is peeling off, there is a growing and rising collectivism in Indians, and they are emerging out of humiliation and grief, whether real or imaginary. It is perhaps what Naipaul called ‘A Wounded Civilization’, where a grieving nation is looking for answers, one that needs a healing touch from the unresolved wounds it carries, a reconciliation with the new awareness that is emerging from its historical legacy and weight.
What has been India’s script? Without doubt, if not the whole, a key element of that has been self-abnegation, not allowing yourself to have what you like or want, sacrificing it for others so that other people can have it. It is to sacrifice one’s best for others, believing that by giving to others our best, we follow dharma and become truly ourselves. It is that in almost every leader, every Prime Minister who has ruled us to the present. India’s partition, the giving away of everything again and again in the name of goodwill, our treaties, to say that minorities have the first right of the land, refer to that script.
Should India now review its script that it has held on to for centuries? Shouldn’t she ask herself what its old script has delivered and if a new one is needed to define her future identity? Will the script work for a people who have believed in self-sacrifice and self-abnegation?
It depends upon its people to understand and grasp the strengths and weaknesses of its script through understanding its civilizational past, accept and reject from the old narrative, and look for a new script that maintains not only a civilizational continuity of its strengths, but an understanding of the pragmatic reality of the new world order. The new script, as some are saying, does not make us persecutors but ones who preserve their identity, something that we haven’t witnessed in our history.
We owe it to future generations, sooner rather than later, to leave them with a script that absorbs the best of our civilization journey and merges it with a new one that is pragmatic, not based on rhetoric, but addresses the survival, safety, and continuity of a great nation.
Dr Rajat Mitra
Psychologist, Speaker, Author