BOOK REVIEW

Abhas Chatterjee: The Concept of Hindu Nation and

N.S. Rajaram: Secularism: The New Mask of Fundamentalism

Review by Prem Nath Luthra

The books under review belong to the same genre whose main theme is the glory of Hinduism, not merely as an ancient religion but also as a vital political instrument. The authors of the books put forward a vigorous plea for the regeneration of Hinduism as a cultural, religious and political force. In "The Concept of Hindu Nation", Abhas Chatterjee, develops his tour de force to explain the true implications of the word Hinduism and the imperative of formulating and achieving the Hindu national goal. He claims that Hindus have for some 6,000 years inhabited India whose traditional boundaries are marked by Nature as extending from the, Himalayas and the Hindukush to the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. Thus, the Supreme Being specially created India as the motherland of a nation, namely the Hindus. Therefore, Hindus are a nation and not merely a community professing the Hindu religion. To add further validity to his concept of the Hindu Nation, the author borrows support from the words of Swami Vivekananda, Bankimchandra and Shri Aurobindo who have in their writings and speeches observed that Hindus are a nation.

The author rejects the geographical connotation of Hindu. According to this concept which was initiated by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan in 1884, every inhabitant of Hindustan is a Hindu. The author considers it wrong to characterize Hindus as a geographical unit instead of cultural national entity.

In his thesis, the author demolishes the Nehruvian concept of Bharat, the idea of composite culture of India and the Constitutional and legal provisions that contend against his claim of Hindus being a nation. The book is certainly thought-provoking although it may not enlist many supporters in its extremist standpoint.

In his book "Secularism: The New Mask of Fundamentalism", N.S. Rajaram not only attacks secularism as practiced by the Government of India but also warns that secularism is providing a hideout to left wing academics and right-wing clerics to develop into dangerous fundamental forces as would threaten the unity of India. The author draws a contrasting difference between secularism as a Western notion and as an Indian reality. In the West, secularism is nothing less than the total isolation of religion from the State. But in India, secularism has come to mean the very opposite in that special groups are claiming extra privileges from Government in the name of religion. The author quotes the Shah Bano case and the ban on Salman Rushdie's book (as) hardly secular acts. The net practical effect of the Government's secular policy results in suppressing pluralism inherent in Hinduism and sheltering exclusive ideologies of Islam and Marxism. In effect, thinks the author, secularism in India is leading to eschewing everything Hindu and espousing everything Islamic. If this continues, the danger is that India may become the battleground between exclusivism and pluralism.

(Source: The Hindustan Times, 6 October, 196)