Purushottam Agrawal

Political Hindutva fails to articulate the rich cultural diversity of India and inevitably distorts its history

AANANTDAS, A VAISHNAVA sadhu, wrote the first biography of Kabir around the turn of the sixteenth century. At one point in the story, he recounts how a delegation of pundits and maulanas of Kashi went to Sikandar Lodhi to complain about the waywardness of Kabir. Being an argumentative Indian, Kabir, the faith leaders complained, refused to believe in the putative divinity of any holy book, and insisted on assessing all propositions and practice against the touchstone of common sense and wisdom derived from everyday life. Naturally, they were upset with him.

Sikandar, who had not heard of Kabir, was perplexed. What possible harm could a humble weaver have inflicted on the high and mighty of the city? Had he seized a piece of land or robbed someone perhaps? But, of course, the complaint against Kabir was not simply material—and perhaps therefore harder to grasp. Kabir had discarded Islamic dogma and practice, and was equally scathing of Hindu customs and beliefs. Instead of following the dictates of holy men, he would insist on using his own intellect and, even worse, encourage others to do so as well. This couldn’t go on, the mighties of the delegation concluded, and Kabir had to be banished from Kashi for “as long as this weaver lives in Kashi/ No one is going to follow us”.

All authoritarian ideologies see interrogative human beings—intellectuals, that is—as a threat. Conversely, fear and hatred of such human beings is a clear marker of an authoritarian ideology, irrespective of whether it invokes religion, history or nation to justify itself. Such ideologies, by their nature and systematic practice, foment passions in public life, and seek to create structures of feeling filled with anxiety, aggression and hatred for the ‘other’—and an antipathy for intellectuals. The ‘law of controversy’ propounded by American science fiction writer and astrophysicist Gregory Benford, as a parody of Newcomb-Benford’s law, puts the authoritarian mindset’s dependence on passion in perspective: ‘Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.’

POLITICAL HINDUTVA IS NO EXCEPTION;

it cannot be. It can remain acceptable only when passions run high, hence the constant attempts to create anxieties and regular appeals to sentiment with no regard for fact or information. Recall the controversy over a recent Bollywood film: it has to avoid rational examination, hence the bid to stir up passions against intellectuals. Consider the oxymoron ‘intellectual terrorism’ being popularised by political campaigns and the media and bandied about in Parliament. All this is justified in the name of ‘Hindu sentiment’. Like its counterparts among other religious communities, ‘Hindutva’ claims to represent the culture of its believers and their interests; it calls

itself ‘cultural nationalism’—as distinct from ‘geographical nationalism’, a term it uses derisively to describe the more inclusive variant of Indian nationalism. And yet, as V.D. Savarkar put it bluntly: ‘Hinduism is only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva.’

Savarkar was the first and probably only Hindutva ideologue who took intellectual pains to define Hindutva and explain its composition and orientation in the 1928 pamphlet titled Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu? (first published in 1923 as Essentials of Hindutva under the pseudonym ‘A Maratha’). Savarkar was aware of the richness and complexity of Hindu tradition—every Hindutva ideologue worth his salt is—but he saw this richness as a liability rather than as an asset. Savarkar desperately

POLITICAL HINDUTVA CAN REMAIN ACCEPTABLE ONLY WHEN PASSIONS RUN HIGH, HENCE THE PERSISTENT APPEALS TO SENTIMENT WITH NO REGARD FOR FACTS

wished to bring the rich matrix of Hinduism under a monolithic definition. Being motivated solely by contemporary political concerns, he was insensitive to the historically evolved content and texture of Hinduism. He wrote: ‘Hindutva is not identical with what is vaguely indicated by the term Hinduism.’ Further, ‘By an “ism” is generally meant a theory or a code more or less based on a spiritual dogma or a system. But when we attempt to define the essential significance of Hindutva, we do not [primarily] and certainly not mainly concern ourselves with any particular theocratic dogma or creed. Had not linguistic usage stood in the way, then Hinduness would have been a better word than Hindutva as a near parallel to Hindutva’ (p. 4, Hindutva: Who Is...).

Savarkar’s definition solves the puzzle of why beef is alright in Goa and Meghalaya, while in the Hindi heartland, mere suspicion that there may be beef in your fridge is fair excuse for a mob-lynching. The Gau Raksha sentiment is not sacrosanct, it appears; it is about the political expediency of a certain brand of ‘cultural nationalism’. Savarkar’s ‘Hindutva’ is not as concerned with intellectual rigour as it is with keeping passions roiled. His idea is to somehow exclude Muslims and Christians from the ambit of nation, so he comes up with the idea of ‘holy land’ as the real touchstone of patriotism. He asks: ‘Who is a Hindu?’ And puts the essence of his answer in a Sanskrit verse, attempting to bestow on it the sanctity of ancient scriptural wisdom. The verse says: ‘He who considers this land of Bharat, spread from Sindhu (the river) to Sindhu (the ocean) as his motherland, fatherland and holy land is Hindu.’

HIS IDEA OF ‘HINDUTVA’, in its traditional wisdom/ Sanskrit masquerade is actually foreign; it coheres with the European/ Christian idea of national community, defining it in terms of uniformity of language, culture, history and religion. M.S. Golwalkar was only taking the next logical step in his Bunch of Thoughts (1966) when he saw not poverty, deprivation and structured injustice, but ‘the Muslims’, ‘the Christians’ and ‘the Communists’ as ‘internal threats’ to the nation (Ch. XII). Naturally for him, the Indian freedom movement was “reactionary” as in it, ‘...anti-Britishism was equated with patriotism and nationalism (p. 143)’. It might come as a surprise to some female votaries of Hindutva that Golwalkar brackets the idea of empowering women (including Hindus) with communalism and casteism: “There is now a clamour for ‘equality for women’ and their ‘emancipation from man’s domination’! Reservation of seats in various positions of power is being claimed on the basis of their separate sex, thus adding one more ‘ism’—Sexism!—to the array of casteism, communalism, linguism etc” (p. 117).

Many people in their fear and hatred of the chosen other—the so-called ‘enemy of culture’—don’t see that as an articulation of patriotic sentiment, and as a basis for Indian nationalism, political Hindutva is hopelessly inauthentic as it fails to articulate the rich cultural diversity of India and perforce distorts its history. It is not only against the inclusive idea of India, but also indifferent to Hinduism as Savarkar himself admits.

SAVARKAR COULD NOT IMAGINE the quandary Hindus would find themselves in if his ideas were taken to their logical conclusion. I was addressing a group of students at Columbia University, New York, in 2002. A belligerent young Hindu American asked: “Why can’t Muslims and Christians (he presumably meant those living in India) treat India as their holy land instead of Mecca or Rome?” I asked him if he had ever taken a dip in the Ganga? He said he hadn’t, but his parents did every year. “Why don’t they take a dip in the Hudson to prove their credentials as patriotic Americans?” I shot back. The young man was flabbergasted; he’d probably never been shown the mirror this way. I told him to be thankful to God that his fellow American citizens did not subscribe to a Christian version of this Hindutva world view.

Not only that “proud” NRI Hindu but every sensible person anywhere in the world must know that nationalisation of religion is good neither for religious faith nor for the idea of nation. Jawaharlal Nehru’s note of caution remains relevant for all times: ‘The affairs of nation must be conducted on the basis of political principles, not religious sentiments’.

EVERY SENSIBLE PERSON MUST KNOW THAT NATIONALISATION OF RELIGION IS GOOD NEITHER FOR RELIGIOUS FAITH NOR FOR THE IDEA OF NATION