Politicisation without Democratisation; Militancy without Reform

In Hindu civil society, the options before its youth in choosing their direction of life - spiritual, secular or political - is closed to all except Brahmin youth. For all others, the right to choose a spiritual profession is closed.

For Dalit-Bahujans, Hindu religion does not even give an initiation. In the universally known non-Hindu religious civil societies such as Christianity, Islam or Buddhism are given religious initiation. They can choose to become a Jesuit, a Mullah or a Monk or they can choose a secular profession such as medicine or engineering. Or they can choose to become political leaders. But for all Shudra (OBC), SC and ST youth, the option to pursue the spiritual line of life is closed. Thus, a major section of the Indian youth in the present religious relationship cannot enter into a religious profession at all. (This) impinges upon the formation of the personality of the individual and this has implications for democracy. Who is responsible for this situation? What solution does the RSS have for this problem? ..

The 70-80 years work of the RSS did not do anything to resolve this contradiction. It did not address the basic question of untouchability, leave alone the right to religion. It worked very hard to politicise Hinduism but never to democratise it. After the BJP came to power, it is sending a large number of RSS cadre to tribal areas to spread Hinduism. Do all those tribals who are taken into Hinduism get dwaijahood or equal rights within  that religion? What is the mode of initiation they undergo to call themselves Hindus? Can they call themselves Hindus by retaining their historical food culture, which includes beef as well? Within Hinduism in which caste will they be located? If the tribals embrace Christianity or Islam these religions offer that scope because they made all food and linguistic cultures inclusive ?...

The attempts of the RSS to communalise the Shudras, and SCs by constructing the enemy image of Muslims and Christians did not make them Hindus with all the religious rights that other universal religions offered. With the present understanding of religion, the RSS is not going to make the STs, SCs and OBCs Hindus with mere declarations. It has failed to construct Hinduism as a religion of love and brother/sisterhood. The RSS did not expand the civil societal space to Shudras, SCs and there is no indication that it would expand that for the tribals either. Expansion of such space is based on opening up of the spiritual line of promotion to people who are said to be part of such religious society. Neither Golwalker's writings nor those of Vivekananda show any way out for this contradiction in Hinduism. But this question remains central for its survival - leave alone expansion.

The right to choose a spiritual line of life and to reach the top ... is part of the larger civil societal democratic rights of every individual. This issue acquires a political democratic significance when some individuals or communities are said .(or claimed) to be part of that religion but denied that right ... The State and the judicial institutions have the right to intervene.

This is where the Indian State and judiciary have failed all these years ... Surprisingly, the Hindu priests, politicians and judges seem to think even now that religious inequality and political equality can exist side by side. Such inequalities do not co-exist. Any amount of suppression of Dalit-Bahujans within the Sangh Parivar or outside, while winking at the real problem is not going to stop the structural fragmentation of civil society ... This is where the crisis of Hinduism lies and this is going to haunt it in the 21st century ... Hindu religion ... right from its inception negated that elemental spiritual democracy. In the Bhakti movement some Shudras fought for the right to worship Hindu deities. With great reluctance, that too in the face of major threat from Islam, the right to worship was granted to only Shudras. But this was not a great change ... The situation of the SCs is worse.

In the modern period two people tried to reform the Hinduism from two different ends - from above Gandhi and from below Ambedkar. Gandhi failed to democratise it ... Having realised that it was impossible to reform it (Ambedkar) embraced Buddhism just before his death. Nehru must have thought that modernisation of india would automatically reform Hinduism too. But his agenda too failed ... What is the solution of the RSS to this fundamental problem? ... (Source: The Hindu, 18 January, 2000)

Saffron Bullies, Editorial, The Hindustan Times, 20 Jan., 2000

All bullies ... pick on those who are too weak or too few in number - to strike back. And they goad mobs into supporting them by taunting them about their lack of bravery or by questioning their manhood. Seen in this perspective the behaviour of the Sangh Parivar over the hijacking of IC 814 has followed a predictable pattern. Upset perhaps that ... there was no upsurge of anger within the Hindu community against Muslims, the Parivar has ... chosen the method (of) inflammatory taunt ...

It is a tribute to the essential fairness and secularism of the people of India that nobody has been goaded into action by this bully-boy taunt. Not one passenger has turned the hijack into a communal issue. Rather, they have recognised it fot what it really was: one mere episode in the proxy war waged by Pakistan against India ...

... The Parivar's idea of bravery is to demolish a mosque while a friendly police force looks the other way; to pick on a community when it is sufficiently outnumbered; or to terrorise artists who dare to represent an alternative world view. What is worrying is not that the likes of Singhal and his bully boys are calling decent people names ... The real worry is that the Parivar is an important constituent of the government at the Centre. And to date, not once has the BJP spokesmen condemned these bullies and their hate-filled utterances.

Eminent Journalist Chanchal Sarkar On Nationalism

India is in conflict again with her neighbour, a conflict inching towards a possible war. Instantly one thinks of friends across the border, warm and affectionate, with whom one has shared many golden moments. What must they be thinking? There is no conflict with them and it is decidedly sad that the quarrel is the manufacture of politicians and the military.

Both countries have been served badly by arrogant fighting services and visionless politicos. At the risk of being dubbed unpatriotic I would say that peace is too serious a business to be left to soldiers with waxed moustaches and to netas in jawahar coats ...

And who are the countries solemnly counselling restraint? The United States, the world's biggest arms exporter supplying 40 per cent of the arms of the developing world. And Britain, the second largest arms exporter with 25 per cent of the share of the legal market.

In this kind of a world we are ready to blow billions on mortars, submarines, aircraft carriers and gunships. But do we serve the essential needs of the Indian (or Pakistani) people? Do we even recognise those needs? Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, law adviser to the Viceroy, said "An Indian Parliament would produce unqualified anarchy". Forty years ago we would have laughed in contempt, but can we do so today? Mumbai is India's richest city with some poshest housing and skyscraping business towers. But are our rulers concerned at all about the fact that 45 per cent of Mumbai lives in slums or slumlike areas? Or about the fact that in a women's panchayat training camp of the 650 participants, in Saharanpur (UP) 80 per cent were from the weaker sections and 50 to 80 per cent illiterate.

Such facts are never raised in Parliament, never banged down on the table by our legislators. India, it is said, produces more milk than the US. For whom? In Midnapore district I was told of children who had never seen milk in their life! Malnutrition is rampant, so is the milk being produced for rabri and ice cream? Among the Bhils of MP's Barwah tehsil medical and child health services exist only on paper and 85 per cent of the women have some reproductive organ illness. Are those women concerned with how many planes India loses in Kargil? And are South Block, the PMO and the military brass concerned about the women of Barwah?

Have our politicos and civil servants ... been able to make people happy? Then why so many suicides, dowry deaths, female infanticides and so many hassles and obstacles, at every step in hospitals, courts, sub registrar's offices, with patwaris, till one's irritation boils over in India and Pakistan? This was not so in the time of the detested imperialists. Letters reached then and money orders were not stolen.

Travelling in the railways, talking to people in the streets and crowded eating places one always comes across the problems of people, not their joys or happiness. Those who pull the strings or call the shots don't care one whit. And to have on top of all this a warlike conflict loaded on us is indeed like getting the straw which broke the camel's back. We ... genuflect to nationalism but synonym it can be hate. (Source: The Hindustan Times)

Mushirul Hasan On Vande Mataram Controversy

... Today, as the Republic celebrates its 50th year, the controversy is not about the flag or the national emblem but the singing of Vande Mataram. (This is) symptomatic of the enlarged arenas of conflict in our polity and society ... The country wrestles with long-standing religious, cultural and intellectual disputations ... Generally speaking, the Congress was wedded to the view that divisive symbols should be kept in abeyance in order to conduct the struggle against colonialism. But, when it came to ... Vande Mataram, some insisted that the song was an integral part of their campaign ...

Tagore, who set its first stanza to the tune and was the first to sing it at an early session of the Calcutta Congress, maintained that Vande Mataram had acquired a separate individuality and an inspiring significance of its own. Yet Tagore conceded that the poem, read together with its context, was liable to offend Muslim susceptibilities. Perhaps he was talking of a Hindu song, reflecting a Hindu ethos in which the country is equated with the mother goddess. Today, if some leaders of our minority communities express their disquiet, I see no reason why their feelings and sentiments should be brushed aside. At any rate, a secular state has no business te make Muslim., Sikh and Christian students sing any song against their wishes. This is the essence of any secular democracy. But, is the song anti-Muslim?

Let us discuss threadbare ... Let the priests and politicians congregate in the shadow of the Red Fort and debate their viewpoints ... A nationwide consensus is what we need ... (Source: The Indian Express, 9 February, 2000)

On Patriotic Character of Vande Mataram Controversay

If "patriotism" means commitment to the ideal that India should always be ruled by Indians, that a sense of unity, equality and secularism should be promoted, the continued playing of Vande Mataram song should be stopped in TV and Radio. Eyen those who are carried away by the rhythm and melody of this song will resent if they learn about the context of the song and how it was made popular ... We can easily know the mind of those who continue to appreciate this song even after know its context and its purport.

When the British partitioned Bengal (1905), East Bengal which included Assam and turned out to be a Muslim-majority state ... In meetings and gatherings criticising this Bengal partition, upper caste leaders encouraged the singing of Vande Mataram, despite opposition from Muslims. Deliberate indifference of upper caste leaders including those in the Congress to Muslims and Muslim League's caution (Resolution of 1937) against this song became an irritant in Hindu-Muslim relations.

Dr. Iqbal's historic song "Sare, Jahan se Achcha Hindustan Hamara" reflects true patriotism while the Vande Mataram promotes violence and destroys country's unity and integrity.          (Courtesy: The Dalit Voice) (Source: The Anti-Corruption Weekly, 10-17 January, 1999)