In Light of India – III

The project of nationhood

Octavio Paz was deeply aware of the rise of the right-wing Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, and the renewed Hindu-Muslim divide. While he acknowledges the inherently secular and moderate nature of Hindu traditions, he observes that radicalization began with Tilak and was later consolidated by Savarkar. The result was the by-product of neo-Hinduism (Hindutva): ): a monolithic vision of Hindu identity, territorially united and stripped of caste divisions—something unknown to Hinduism’s historically fluid, “history-less” culture. Drawing on his own experience of Mexican nationalism, Paz cautions against such rigid identity-making, where society is divided into the acceptable and the abominable:

“All this would be funny were it not frightening. Nationalism is not a jovial god: it is Moloch drunk with blood…In India, many nations live together and they are all fighting with one another. One of them, Hindu nationalism, wants to dominate the others and subject them to its law – like an Aurangzeb in reverse. Another, in Kashmir, wants the state to unite with a hostile nation, Pakistan – thus ignoring the lesson of Bangladesh.”

For Paz, the weakness of secular politics was equally troubling. He cites the Shah Bano case, when Rajiv Gandhi overturned a court ruling to appease conservative clerics, defying the constitution. He also points to Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian centralization of power as another example of expediency corrupting democracy. Having seen the disasters of socialist totalitarian regimes in Latin America, and the hollow triumphs of military nationalism, Paz insists that India’s national project must remain grounded in secularism and democracy, guarded by constant vigilance.

Contraptions of Time

Beyond politics, Paz also turned to India’s ancient philosophies, searching for deeper explanations of its society and history. He dwells on medieval and Vedic literature: its erotic art, its strict metrical forms, and its striking absence of sin when compared to Western traditions. He lingers on the Atharva Veda:

“Time created the Lord of creatures, Prajapati.”

“Desire (Kama) was the first to be born. Desire arose in the beginning which was the first seed of thought.”

In Indian thought, sex is not sinful but vital, a regenerative energy at the core of life. Tantric traditions treated pleasure as a goal, though finite; the enlightened path required abstinence and meditation to break the chain of rebirth. Chastity, in this view, was strength for the great battle: liberation from time itself.

Paz turns to the Bhagavad Gita and the Buddha to contrast two visions of life’s purpose—one active, one renunciatory—yet both converging toward transcendence. His reflections culminate in a phrase he once used in his Nobel lecture:

“Every civilization is a vision of time.”

For India, that vision was cyclical. The Maya of linear time was illusion; the real was Brahman (Absolute Being) and, at its depth, Atman (Self). Thus man was impermanent as the cosmos, and unreal as an apparition. Paz saw this metaphysical and social “negation of time” as having two consequences: first, it prevented the birth of history as a literary or scientific genre; second, it immobilized society in the form of caste. Invasions and upheavals were seen only as dissonances in a larger cyclical flow. This equilibrium, centuries old, was now being shaken by modernity—first among the elites, and increasingly among India’s middle class.

Conclusion

Paz ends In the light of India still seeking answers to the questions the country posed him. Along the way, he launches a scathing attack on the capitalist model of development, and revisits Gandhi’s forgotten alternative: Gram Swaraj. . Gandhi had envisioned a billion villages of farmers and artisans, bound by nonviolence and Dharma as the covenant between civilizations. Yet population growth and Soviet-style industrialization thwarted this dream, turning villages into pits of misery and despair.

For Paz, the reformation of civilization must begin with a reflection on time itself. India had offered him that vision—cosmic, cyclical, inexhaustible—even as its politics and society wrestled with modernity.

I would not have known how deeply personal India was to him, or how profoundly she inspired one of the finest thinkers and writers of our time to tell us what the people of India, seem to have irretrievably lost.