RaGa SEEKING AMMUNITION, NOT INSPIRATION
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is said to be an avid reader. His latest, self-declared bibliophilistic foray is in the realm of Hindu scripture. A worthy enterprise, had it not been for the fact that his motives are unashamedly political; he is studying the “Upanishads and the Gita since I am fighting the RSS and BJP”. In other words, he is seeking ammunition, not inspiration.
Judging from his address to party workers, his mission is to unmask the apostasies of the RSS and BJP. The Indian voter, stunned by the revelation that the actions and pronouncements of the RSS and BJP are contrary to the core message of Hindu scripture, will realise he’s been had. RSS supremo Mohan Rao Bhagwat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah & Co are in fact, not “good” Hindus. This mass epiphany will then drive voters back to the Congress.
Doubtless Mr Gandhi will dwell on the all-encompassing nature of Hinduism which comfortably accommodates rationalists, ritualists, empiricists, atheists, deists, gnostics, agnostics and theists of all varieties. Where else is there room for beef-eaters and vegetarians, practitioners of war and votaries of non-violence, the celibate and the sexually promiscuous, the monogamous and the polyandrous and so on? It's a limitless ocean; fish where you will.
Aided by a Brahmanical ease with the abstract (lest we forget he’s one-quarter brahmin) his theological exploration may carry him through the sruti and smriti; Vedanta and Advaita Vedanta; sankhya, yoga and mimansa and all the orthodox and heterodox schools of Hindu philosophy (his sibling, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, endorses Buddhism and has a master’s degree in Buddhist studies, so that should help). Many scholars have presented their personal take on the Gita; why shouldn't he?
Such a scriptural journey is not free of hazards. It might, for instance, lead to a cave in the Himalayas and austerities thereof, or an air-conditioned tryst with the likes of Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev and his illuminating blend of metaphysics, mythology and mysticism. Assuming he sidesteps these dangers, Mr Gandhi will then have to contend with allegations that his party, in seeking to beat the BJP at its own game, is playing at ‘soft Hindutva’.
He may answer critics by prating of the Congress commitment to secularism and religious tolerance, as opposed to the BJP's Hindu chauvinism and religious intolerance. Alas, the weakness of the Congress brand of secularism was ruthlessly exposed in the 1980s, when his late father, Rajiv Gandhi, first presided over the 1984 riots, then pandered to the minority post-Shah Bano and kowtowed to the majority on Ram Janmabhoomi. Unsurprisingly, the BJP emerged in the 1990s as the real Hindu deal and the Congress as a cynical manipulator of religious identities.
Mr Gandhi may take cognizance of Deen Dayal Upadhaya, who pointed out that if religion is equated with dharma, then a secular state is a contradiction in terms. A state without dharma is a state without law and order and thus, not a state at all. He might reflect on the emotional struggles of our founding fathers, grappling with the challenge of a constitutional framework for a country steeped in religiosity. Or he might turn to the Mahatma, supremely comfortable in his religious skin and dying with the words ‘Hey, Rama’ on his lips, at the hands of a fanatic who stood against all that was essentially ‘Hindu’.
He may then examine the provenance of the words Hindu and Hinduism, geographical and cultural terms coined millenia after the scriptures which form the subject of his scholastic sortie. By degrees, he may come to grasp their civilisational implications: neither dogma nor creed, but a layered philosophy enabling a pluralistic society with a globalist outlook (or so we’d like to believe).
How will Mr Gandhi apply his new-found insights? The fact that the state should not attempt to promote dietary preferences on a plainly tenuous religious basis is a given and does not require any great philosophical intuition (in this respect, it should be pointed out that the state may promote vegetarianism as an animal rights issue, but not as a religious one). Likewise, policing of women is wrong, any which way you look at it. Such actions are not in consonance with perceptions of Indian culture and appear rather to have been borrowed from the Taliban.
If Mr Gandhi's ruminations galvanise his party to oppose retrogressive beliefs and actions in any and all faiths, all power to him. But if the purpose is to portray the RSS and BJP as lapsed Hindus, he is missing the point altogether.
HOW will Mr Gandhi apply his new-found insights? The fact that the state should not attempt to promote dietary preferences on a plainly tenuous religious basis is a given and does not require any great philosophical intuition. Likewise, policing of women is wrong, any which way you look at it. Such actions are not in consonance with perceptions of Indian culture and appear rather to have been borrowed from the Taliban.