The BJP’s Hindutva rocket blasted off with a vengeance on December 6, 1992 when a fanatic mob of Hindu fundamentalists tore down the centuries old Babri Masjid in Ayodhya – the birthplace of the Hindu God Ram. This was the culmination of centuries of anger against the mosque, which Hindus allege was built by the Moghul emperor Babur demolishing a previous temple on this exact spot where Ram was born. In the years that followed, the BJP slowly consolidated power, pulling more and more people into its fold, until they really became a pan-Hindu movement: drawing on the resentment against partisan political handouts provided to Muslims as a minority, they became even more belligerent. They appealed to the Hindu psyche, to vote in unison above caste identities, not for the creation of any idealistic casteless society, but for the assertion of Hindu muscle power, to announce that the Hindu will no more be treated second-class. Four years, 21 elections, 15 victories, 19 states later, if and buts aside, electorally the NDA II has definitely notched up outstanding numbers. If the Hindutva movement has been so successful in tapping resentful Hindu sentiment , then it must have already been there lurking unaddressed for a while. After all, promise of corruption-free-vikas alone cannot be harnessed to cause such communal mobilization unless it has pulled some other unknown chord for self-preservation in people’s minds and psyches. If it can happen once, it definitely can happen again. So what we need to honestly question ourselves is – what went wrong ? and can we ever reset it ?
One thing is for sure, the Hindutva definitely cannot be deactivated anymore by simply pulling out cheesy universal messages or hybrid rituals out of the Hindu magic hat. Much water has flowed under the bridge for that and intellectuals such as Tharoor who mouth such fancy notions know it all too well. The disenchanted Hindu pocketed by the RSS-BJP, cannot be re-courted by a few temple visits or a book on Hinduism, he needs tangible changes to placate him. Therefore, if Hindutva as a movement is to be effectively neutralized, then its opponents must honestly recognize what inspires and hijacks the Hindu to it, and neuter its very source.
Whether we may like to acknowledge it or not, from colonial times into today’s smartphone-era, every dominant intellectual and academic discourse in India was designed to continually shame the Hindu psyche. To consciously indoctrinate an inferiority complex, to constantly remind the Hindu how his religious & cultural legacy is the source of all social evils around him and why all historical intellectual achievements of his heritage should only be labeled Indic and never Vedic or Hindu. After all his religion is nothing more than a borrowed Persian name, a colonial social construct, and hence only deserves to be defined a way of life. He dare not contemplate calling his structure-less heterodox bundle of contradictions a religion. As though such disgrace were not enough – he must shamefully own the misogyny of the Manusmriti in perpetuity but should never ever own the merit of zero or the Pythagorean triples, he must continually confess that caste is his “ religion´s ” evil legacy but concede Ayurveda & Yoga are purely Indic achievements detached from his religion, he must always showcase himself as that tolerant strain that welcomed the Jew, the Christian and the Mohammedan to his shores to proletyse a 1000 years ago, but is forbidden to intercept ongoing erosion of his folk under the garb of missionary humanitarianism. In contemporary leftist academic, intellectual and political discourses, all social malice in the sub-continent must mandatorily be declared a Hindu-Brahmin legacy yet none of its accomplishments or triumphs should ever be claimed or attached to it; all Hindu grievances, historic or contemporary, essentially must be ridiculed, denied and vehemently established as a sham to maintain the facade of being secular. In such matters, one observes that Hinduism in India, in very many ways, is condemned to the same fate as the Indian woman herself. Much like the selflessly servile Indian wife who is exalted as morally chaste by the husband she serves, Hinduism too is praised only if it plays ashamed, coy, selflessly recruiting to the nurture of all others. However, if it as much as dares to pride in its legacy or act in self-preservation then it is instantaneously shamed much like that selfish wench who dared to fill her belly without feeding her child. With such a degrading ecosystem, intellectually, socially and politically, the average Hindu is inadvertently pushed to extremities, to either masochistically parrot self-hate or to hitch hike with the first Hindutva fanatic who gives him a false and bloated sense of pride.
The Hindutva´s collective fantasy of a resurgent Hindu nation offers most shamed and emasculated Hindus, a strong alternate sense of pride, fairy-tale masculine warriors and fables of achievements both imagined and true. Every fart and fork in ancient India is dressed with pride to compensate his starvation for dignity. His shamed self-respect & genuine existential fears are all effectively nursed by the Hindutva messiahs by gifting him icons and merits both imagined and true to pride in and covertly cajoles him to shun pacifism – soon he slips into its abyss mistakenly hoping to reclaim his dignity. If ever we truly wish to deactivate Hindutva, then we must be willing to offer the Hindu and his religion a minimum fairness and dignity due to it, not less not more – just the right dose.
SandysThattuKada 