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COMMENTARY
The fraudulent
Hindutva-secularism debate
By Ramtanu
Maitra
The first question one faces today in
India is: What do you think of the religious issue
brought up by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party? The
answer depends on whether one wants to satisfy the
"secular" crowd, or to appease the newly-minted lovers
of Hindutva (Hindu consciousness). More precisely, a
Muslim is expected to support "secularism" and a Hindu
the Hindutva. A quick walk through any of the urban
centers or villages of India, however, is enough to
expose how ludicrous the question is and reveals just
how wildly off base Indian political discourse is at
this point in time.
The Indian constitution
states explicitly that the country will uphold a
socialist pattern of state. By definition, then, the
state will not favor one religion over the other. The
forefathers made it clear that India will not be a Hindu
rashtra (state), even if Pakistan, a part of
undivided India that became an independent nation in
1947, calls itself an Islamic nation. It is not made
clear, however, what is exactly meant by a "secular"
nation. Many nations in the world allow people of all
faiths to function freely and equally. These nations do
not call themselves "secular", but some Indians are hell
bent on being identified as citizens of a "secular"
nation. They bristle with anger if anyone dares say that
"secularism" means nothing.
Beyond Savarkar,
way beyond
The proponents of Hindutva, on the
other hand, have not got a clue what Hindutva means.
They latch on to it because it helps them to divide the
country on the basis of a debate in which they believe
that they have the majority's support. This could be
considered politically savvy, but only if the
fraudulence embedded in the question (secularism or
Hindutva?) itself is ignored.
Hindutva was first
defined by V D Savarkar, one of founders of the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha (RSS), the right-wing Hindu
grouping set up by the British in the early 1920s to
keep Hindus divided and to extend British colonial rule.
The British also set up the Muslim League in the early
part of the last century for the same purpose - to
divide Muslims and lay the foundation for a potential
conflict between the Hindu majority and the Muslim
minority. They succeeded in this, and the country was
divided.
Still, Savarkar's interpretation of
Hindutva is not particularly egregious. He said that
those who consider the geographic territory of this
country (undivided India at the time) as
pitribhumi (fatherland) and punyabhumi
(sacred land) possess Hindutva. It is difficult to
figure out why the Muslims, the vast majority of whom
are natives of India and who embraced Islam over a
period of time, find it difficult to accept the land in
which they originated as their fatherland or sacred
land. Whatever their intellectual hang-up on the issue
could be, it seems absurd to make it a life and death
issue.
It is, however, true that the latest crop
of Hindutva lovers have gone far beyond Savarkar's
interpretation, and their only interest now is to
permanently sideline the 130-plus million Muslims of
India as second-class citizens. The folly of the
"secularists" is that they believe that the words
"secular" and "Hindutva" are all that matter. Nothing
else seems to be important for them.
Poverty
Inc
To get a clear picture of how insane the
current political dialogue in India is, one must visit
the state of West Bengal, and the city of Kolkata
(formerly Calcutta) in particular. Since 1977 this state
has been governed with an undisputed electoral majority
by the left coalition. No one is more "secular" than
these leftists, and no other state of India has been
under a single political entity for such a long time.
Yet the devastation these "secularists" have caused over
the years to the state is there in the open for all to
see. Once the leading industrial state of India, West
Bengal is now a vast sea of poverty. Millions in Kolkata
live on the streets. They cook, eat, defecate, bathe,
sleep and procreate on the streets. They are all a part
of the "secular" framework.
If Kolkata is a
perfect example of how callous and inhumane the
"secularists" are, one has to visit some of the areas of
Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other states, known to cynics
as the "cow belt", where the Hindutva-lovers prevail to
evaluate the Hindutva-equals-nationalism equation. The
bottom line is that neither the Hindutva lovers nor the
"secularists" have any concern for the pervasive,
grinding poverty which suffocates hundreds of millions
of Indians and keeps India straitjacketed as a nation.
During the Cold War
period, particularly from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, India
was a witting victim of yet another hollow debate.
During that period, the protagonists of capitalism
were battling the protagonists of socialism. India's
economy grew at snail's pace. People often revolted, but
the leaders managed to keep them confined to the debate
of the day. With the formal demise of the Soviet Union,
and China's adoption of an economic system that is as
far from socialism as it is from classical free-market
capitalism, the socialism-versus-capitalism debate was
finally laid to rest a decade ago. In India the
resulting ideological vacuum has been filled with a new,
more compelling and dangerous game: the life-threatening
debate between the protagonists of Hindutva and
secularism.
A direct outcome of the total
preoccupation of the political classes with this phony
debate is that India continues to nurture a ramshackle
infrastructure. Power cuts haunt all urban centers
(except perhaps Kolkata, where de-industrialization has
reduced the power demand so drastically that the city is
on the verge of becoming power-surplus). Almost 40,000
kilometers of railroad track in India are cracked and
have become vulnerable to major accidents. In fact, rail
accidents are becoming more frequent and claiming more
lives. Despite the fact that a majority of Indians do
not receive piped potable water, the water shortage is
growing. But people are jaded and apparently inured to
the crippling shortfalls in their daily requirements.
Led by an irresponsible political leadership, people
have joined the "fun", debating Hindutva versus
secularism.
The viciousness
The
Indian political leaders' indulgence in the luxury of
debating a fraudulent issue threatens the nation with
irrelevance on the world stage. Next door in China,
where once the Cultural Revolution had devastated the
nation's economy, leaders are engaged in large-scale
power and transportation projects. Today, China
possesses the most advanced railroad technology in the
world and is involved in constructing the world's
largest water project. While China has focused its
energy and attention on building the nation, Indians
remain engrossed in a debate that perpetuates poverty
and economic backwardness. India's slums, inhabited by
displaced agricultural workers and immigrants from
Bangladesh, are becoming larger and larger. They are
infected with terminal diseases, such as AIDS, and all
kinds of criminal activities. In many parts of the
country, vast sections of the poor have been
criminalized due to absolute neglect by the political
leaders.
But the leaders remain oblivious. The
new-found confidence in the BJP following its electoral
victory preaching Hindutva in the state assembly
elections in Gujarat last December suggests that the
party is preparing to make Hindutva its political
campaign centerpiece for years to come. The leading
opposition party, the Congress, is bending over backward
in an effort to accommodate a soft Hindutva, while
re-emphasizing its commitment to secularism. The fraud
continues.
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