HINDU CHAUVINISM
The recent "miracle" of milk drinking idols which had thousands credulously thronging temples all over India might just be a foretaste of the kind of hold that those relying on the magic properties of rekindling of religious sentiment would like to have over public life in this country. The resurgence of superstition and credulity, four decades after these proclivities were scornfully and emphatically declared anachronisms incompatible with the vision of a secular and scientifically oriented India, might represent only one aspect of the bruising impact on the national psyche of the revival of religious chauvinism. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the ascendancy of religious chauvinism, which is what the Hindutva movement represents, is a direct threat to the value system that was so prized by the post- Independence generation of leaders.
It would appear an incongruous conjunction of circumstances that in today's context, where globalization and the liberalization of the economy are the avowed objectives of the political leadership, there is an upsurge of religious revivalism and fundamentalism. This would imply that other factors are at work in the fragmentation of the post-Independence ethos. It is obvious that the element of religious chauvinism which has come to acquire a distinct identity as a result of an in assertive attitude on the part of the Indian state is one such factor. Is it a coincidence that just when the idea of a secular political culture is under challenge the emphasis on a scientific outlook and the need for rationality are being tested through a cultivated attempt to revive religious fervor, using even "miracles"?
It was precisely to avoid the emergence of a political culture dominated by a majority that the post Independence consensus had placed an emphasis on science and secularism. It was recognized that the dominance of the symbols, rituals and folklore of the majority community would alienate the minorities. Hence the conscious campaign by the post Independence leadership to ensure that public life was free of the imagery and symbolism associated with religion. Yet today. cultural symbolism of the most excluding kind is back with a vengeance.
This is not to be dismissive of genuine religious sentiment or pride in one's own faith. But there can be no question that allowing religious symbolism to creep into public life, particularly the images and symbols of the majority community, is to put the minorities on the defensive, is to alienate them from a sense of participating in the affairs of the Indian republic and to give them a sense of being islands in a great Hindu sea.
Adding to the sense of being marooned in a Hindu Rashtra is the perception that since the early Eighties, the tacit approval of the Indian state has also been available to the militant section of the majority community. Thus the evoking of cultural and religious symbolism in the public arena by the majority community triggers off fundamentalist responses from the minorities who begin to appear more intractable in their unwillingness to subsume their religious identities. The gulf thereby widens to the point that the sense of a national identity is no longer able to overwhelm all other considerations.
The Chandraswami episode did underline was that figures of religious authority have come to hold definite sway in the political arena, much more so in the last few years than ever before in the past, because of the legitimation of their influence by the patronage of the political leadership. The sadhus are now a factor to be reckoned with in the political process.
Unquestionably the first step in the legitimation of the participation of religious figures in the political process was taken by Indira Gandhi who saw the potential in the use of Hindu cultural symbolism in shoring up political support. The trend was reinforced by the manner in which the Rajiv Gandhi administration handled the Ayodhya issue. The mobilization of Hindu sentiment on a large scale for the Ram Shila pujans and the organization of the Shilanyas near the disputed site in late 1989 paved the way for a visible political role in the recent period.
The Narasimha Rao administration, following in the footsteps of the Chandra Shekhar regime, gave considerable respectability to the idea of religious leaders involving themselves in the political process when under the aegis of the Prime Minister's Office, representatives of Hindu and Muslim organisations held discussions on a solution to the Babari Masjid tangle. Not only did these talks confer authority on organizations, whose representative character in relation to their respective communities was questionable but they also provided the scope for a new and volatile ingredient to enter the political arena. This was the argument that "faith" was outside the domain of the political process and could not be adjudicated and much less legislated. This was a dangerous concession of ground which led to the destruction of the Babari Masjid.
The tragedy was that the demolition of the Babari Masjid did not have a sobering effect on the conciliatory strategy of the Rao administration. The efforts to form a temple trust, based on the participation of "apolitical sadhus" as they were described then, were intended to counter the VHP's political mobilization. The Prime Minister's Office played an active role in roping in these "apolitical" sants on the basis of a calculation that thereby one could beat the VHP at its own game. The result was not so much a weakening of the VHP's dominance of the Hindutva agenda but a strengthening of the legitimacy of the agenda itself. Another instance was the summit meeting of sorts of the four Shankaracharyas in October 1993 who then communicated their "willingness" to undertake the task of building a temple through a trust. Thus the strategy of the Narasimha Rao administration has been directed at appropriating the platform of Hindutva, rather than questioning the locus standi of such a platform in the political life of a secular republic.
It is no wonder that the mobilization of militant and exclusivist Hindu sentiment has acquired a momentum that is increasingly difficult to counter politically. The danger of allowing the agenda of Hindutva to gain respectability is not just that it would damage the secular- scientific ethos. Without that ethos it would be impossible for India's civil society to endure as an integrated nation state.
(Source: The Hindu, 2 October, 1995)
