The year, 1963 — a Bollywood film could be made on it with the title, Saath Saal Pehle — was a droll sort of year. Recovering from the lashing received by us from the Sino-Indian war in the dying months of the previous year, India amounted to little for itself and accounted for less in the world that year.
It had one major accomplishment to its credit, though, and one major embarrassment to its debit that year.
The accomplishment was technological: it launched its first ever rocket from a small fishing village near Trivandrum, as the town was then called. Sharp-brained and sharp-eyed technologists and rocket engineers, including A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, accomplished the successful launch with the help of three persons whose knowledge of rocket technology was zero but whose minds and hearts were as pioneering as those who had chosen the site for its atmospheric and ionospheric suitability (as well as its ideal distance from both China and Pakistan). Of these, two were bishops — the ‘local’ bishop, Rev. Peter Bernard Periera, and the bishop of Trivandrum, Vincent Victor Dereere, incidentally, a Belgian. The third was an administrator, the district collector, Madhavan Nair. These three busied themselves in acquiring 600 acres from the coastal community for the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station. India hailed the launch and the technologists behind it, as it should have done. But the two priests and the collector are not remembered quite as much as they deserve to be for what they did to make India the space major it is today.
The embarrassment was part-religious, part-political, for it took place in Kashmir where those two — religion and politics — are inextricably wound together. On December 27, 1963, news broke out that the Moi-e-Muqqadas, believed to be a strand from the beard of the Holy Prophet, had gone missing — stolen, it was said — from the Hazratbal shrine around 2 am when the custodians of the shrine were, like anyone else at that hour of the night, asleep. The chief minister of the state at the time was the little-known Khwaja Shamsuddin: he announced an award of 100,000 rupees to anyone providing information regarding the theft. Communal tension rose like a freak fever. Three days later, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru sent the head of the Intelligence Bureau, B.N. Mullik, to Kashmir to investigate the crime. Much more than a theft was at stake. On January 4, 1964, Mullik informed Nehru that the relic had been recovered. A relieved prime minister said to Mullik, “You have saved Kashmir for India.” Not much or everything is known about the details of the recovery but after Kashani, a Sufi poet and Sunni leader, identified it as the original and genuine relic, matters quietened down. A few arrests were made but some people we do not know of need to be thanked for having averted a major communal catastrophe in India that year. Like the two priests and the collector in Trivandrum, they are not remembered or even known very clearly.
A sophisticated space probe and a crude crime made news that year for India. The first soon passed out of public memory, but the second has stayed.
What is it about events that makes some of them liable to be forgotten and some not? I am unsure.
Saath saal baad, I must confess I did not recall the space launch. It is only recourse to the marvels of digital sources and resources that refreshed the event for me.
But I remember the theft of the relic vividly and the relief that its recovery brought. Is it because it was, after all, a crime and, like all crimes of note, was something of a thriller for an eighteen-year-old? Or because it was about religious belief, religious bonds, and religious susceptibilities? News of refugees fleeing what was then East Pakistan into West Bengal, as a direct result of the Hazratbal theft, worried us to no end at that time.
Fast forwarding to saath saal baad, India has, just the other day, announced the Indian Space Policy 2023 with the “Vision” to “enable, encourage and develop a flourishing commercial presence in space” and it speaks of its role in India’s “socio-economic development and security, protection of environment and lives, pursuing peaceful exploration of outer space, stimulation of public awareness and scientific quest.” This is no ordinary venture, no simple plan, but an audacious strategy that will make the Indian Space Research Organisation propel us towards what may be called the Chandrayaan and Gaganyaan age. Are there equivalents of Bishops Periera and Dereere and Collector Madhavan today, somewhere, to thank for this great stride? They have to be there, for there is no such thing as a space programme without ground support.
But there is another, bigger, issue.
While we have zoomed ahead in space, we still lack public awareness and public interest in the subject, not just to know and appreciate but also to ask, interrogate, the space programme and the policy. How much of the programme is beneficial to the quality of life in India? How much of it is just clubbist — designed to keep us in the high company of space majors? How much of it is actuated by supremacist pride?
And, parallelly, we need to know that the hold of religion in India, the grip of totems, taboos and tradition, is exactly where it was, if it is not even more menacing. India in 1963 saw a pioneering venture into space take place as also, alongside it, a religion-related theft that brought us to the brink of a communal meltdown. India in 2023, which has just seen a major Space Policy launched, is as prone as it was saath saal pehle to traumas caused by religious frenzies unleashed by terrorist crimes and reactions to those. And, in the ‘normal’ rhythms of life, religious icons are invoked with fervour in election campaigns.
The sacral and the secular co-exist co-extensively in India. Ironies have been India’s signature.
The present occupant of B.N. Mullik’s position in the IB is, I am sure, aware that saving communal peace for India will have to be a priority. And that Mullik-type swiftness and intelligence need to be his aim and accomplishment. And just as a Sufi poet and spiritual leader in Kashmir joined in the process of normalisation saath saal pehle, so too now it will be essential for lawmakers and law enforcers to work in tandem with civil society to ensure that religious suspicion, intolerance, and bigotry are not allowed to stymie us as a modern nation. A policy for India’s skies will have little meaning if India’s cities, towns and villages remain the playground of religious sensitivities, caste and community strife and, worse, the plaything of sectarian crime. Manipur’s example is there for all to see.
Every region in India has places of worship, objects of reverence, relics. Which means every place in India needs to be, in Nehru’s words to Mullik used for the Hazratbal relic, “saved for India.” An onerous task, yes. But less expensive perhaps than our space missions. And more directly connected to the quality of our life. While Chandrayaan and Gaganyaan are launched for India, Jivanyaan has to be saved for India.
This is the lesson 1963 holds for India in 2023.
