The Hindutva Hypocrisy By Bilal Shaheen

The Hindutva Hypocrisy

By Bilal Shaheen

31 August, 2014
Countercurrents.org

"Patriotism", Samuel Johnson said nearly 250 years ago, "is the last
refuge of a scoundrel". These days in India the adage can be safely
applied to nationalism. Ever since BJP ascended the throne of Delhi in
May this year, we heard of inflamattery statements, provocative
speeches and prime-time TV interviews of die-hard nationalists of the
BJP and the affiliated rightwing organisations-RSS, VHP, SHIV SENA to
name a few. During his opening speech at VHP's Golden Jubilee
celebrations at Mumbai on August 18, the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said,
"Hindustan is a Hindu nation...Hindutva is the identity of our nation
and it (Hinduism) can incorporate other (religions) in itself".

Earlier, a Goa minister (a partner in the coalition) made similar
remarks that "India could become a Hindu-rashta under Narendra Modi".
These hyper-nationalists, time and again, make concerted efforts to
define and describe India's improbable Identity. The past provocations
by Subramanian Swamy and Ashok Singhal (Hindustan Times, July 17) and
the more recent ones by Mohan Bhagwat does make the question worth
debating.

The unprecedented majority gained by the BJP in the recent
elections and the recent upsurge in communal voilence has made it
clear that India is on the road to becoming a Hindu-majoritarian
state. While there can't be any doubt that the Hindutva agenda will be
steadfastly pursued, it would be naive to frame Hindutva and Hnduism(
read hindu) as one and the same term and not to delink and
contextualise them as two different, albeit, contrasting terms. The
issue demands us to revisit the whole question of state and society in
Indian context. It is not a matter of just conviction, but a pertinent
issue of describing a political entity, its identity and soveriegnty.
It lay bare the artifacts of secular credentials of India by splitting
the communal and political.

The whole rigmarole of Hindutva, Hindu,
Hindu Rashtra is very deliberate and a part of political agenda. These
three terms have to be seen in a historical context. Hindutva is a
beleagured doctrine everywhere. It is a vague and a contesting term.
Introducing first by RSS propagator Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, in his
1923 pamphlet Hindutva: Who is a Hindu, the word Hindutva denotes an
exclusionary and voilent nationalism of semi-fanatic, fascist
ideologues. Savarkar's "Hindu Rashtra" concept was deeply influenced
by the voilent European Fascism. And it was nothing but an Indian
version of " Absolute Despotism". The foundational basis of India as a
multicultural society and a democratic polity of equal religious
assertion has been, it seems, challanged by the fanatic ideology of
Hindutva. The term validates the two-nation theory by subscribing to
an erudite worldview of describing India as a unique cradle of Hindu
civilization. It is in sharp contrast of both Hinduism, a spiritual
creed of the Subcontinental hindus, and the secular-democratic
strucure of India.

"Hindutva", wrote political psychologist Ashis Nandy, "is the end of
Hinduism" (Outlook, Nov 25, 2013). It is against the intense
consciousness of those who saw Hinduism as a revered faith and an
emancipatory religious creed. Hinduism is a way of life and a
spiritual creed of hindus who took solace in the centuries old
tradition and community life. It makes no apparent distinction between
the political and personal. Hindutva, oppositionally, is a cultural
and a political concept champained by upper caste, lower class elite,
who uproot themselves from tradition and subdued by the promise
offered by the modernisation, and now find themselves abondened. The
votaries of Hindutva, though apparently religious, are secular both in
their approach and practice. They are the ardent believers of a
belated nationalism which is in total deniel of both Hindu faith and
the Indian nationalism. In contrast to the Hindu worlview, which saw
India as a revered place of accomodation, toleration and pluralism;
Hindutva emphasised anexclusionary national Identity. This identity, its language and
singularity is both archaic and utopian. It is champoined by those who
lost their faith in Hinduism. They are attracted by the tempted
modernisation, its artificiality and atomism.

Hindutva is a fallacy which robbed India its prominence as a revered
place of exotic beings, democratic sucesses and religious toleration.
Whatever Hindutva's perveted hatemongers say and die for was to make
soveriegnty and imperialism compatible. They want to make India a
hyperbolic-hindu polity which has what politcal theorist Sunil
Khilnani eloquently stated, both God and Nuclear weapon on its head.
Their inadvertant, but often, disastrous experiments to model India as
a "globalised society", where rebellion and revolution met the same
fate, is what makes India a truly "Offended Kleptocracy".
Mohan Bhagvat's remark that "Hindutva can incorporate other religions"
has proved wrong both by the growing Muslim discontent and the
historical injustice inflicted by the pogroms of Ayodhya, Gujrat and
the Muzaffarnagar. Hindutva is a fanatic suedo-secular creed which
emphasised the uniqueness of hindu culture, its singularity and
messeinism. Any attempt to include or accomodate other religious
assertions is considered an eminent threat to the vitality of the
Hindutva. The Hindutva ideologues thus picked up "communal plitics" as
a lethal tool to marginalize, even eliminate, other communites. The
Ramjhanbhumi, Akhand Bharat and now "Love Jihad" are poisonious
politcal designs to Install a complete "Agressive Hinducracy" in
India.

The third, Hindu Rashtra was, and will be always be, a non-sense
political bullshit. India is a vast country with a feast of
viewpoints, vastly diverse convictions and plural identities. Any
singular or isomorphic identity is both anarchic and utopian. The
Hindu Rashta envisages total hinduness, common race (Aryan),
culture(Brahminic), Identity(Hindu). It propagated a monolithic
culture of people who accept Bharat as their motherland(matribhumi),
fatherland(pitreabhumi) and holyland(puniybhumi). This idea
categorically excluding Muslims, christians and Jains, who for
centuries live and enrich Indian civilization, from the
national-buildup. The past experiences and the current communal
impasse is a grim reminder of the fact that any such idea is both
ferrocious and catastrophic. India is not a holyland of Hindus and
hindu culure is not the sole denominator of calling a national
culture. It is a mixture of innumerable cultures, religions and
histories. No single culture can claim the monopoly of ruthless power.
Every blatant attempt by the hindutva fanatics to be the sole
proprietor of Indian nation is barbaric and amounts to repressive and
retrogative claims and counter-claims of nation-formation. Hindutva
fanaticism originated as an extremist ideology to counter the
hegemonic monopoly of the Indian natinal movement, and its
secular-democratic agenda. Hindutva, now, rejuvenated to embellish its
utopian politcal creed. In its new avatar, it finds the muslim
resurgence as the easy and valnurable force to challange. So, the
Ayodhya, Gujarat and Muzaffarnag are the drawbacks of this nefarious
politcal design. Even if India will become a Hindu Rashtra, it will be
a Muslim Rashtra, Sikh Rashtra, Christian Rashtra and so on. And it
will not be without tragedies, holocuasts and genocides. Millions have
already perished in Hindutva's cumbersome mission to install Hindu
Rashtra. Today India has its own ground zero at Ayodhya. If nothing
is done to stem this rising tide of irrational nationalism, India,
sooner or later, will explode into unimaginable scenes of genocide,
extremism and nefarious nationalism.

The author is an Independent researcher and writer on South Asian and
Middle East Affairs, based in Kashmir.