HINDUTV - ABOUT KEEPING UP A FAITH - By M. V. Kamath
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
Hindutv - about keeping up a faith
By M. V. Kamath
Free Press Journal
June 17, 2004
In his first public utterance after the fall of the NDA government,
L. K. Advani made an interesting remark. He said that Hindutv
remained the guiding force of the BJP and there was no need to be
apologetic about it. If he has been correctly reported, if not in
words at least in spirit, the time has come to engage in a public
discussion of the subject. So much has been said and written about
Hindutv and no two persons seem agreed on an acceptable definition.
Decades old writings and sayings of Veer Savarkar and Guru Golwalkar
are often cited by secularists not so much to elucidate the phrase as
much as to damn both and add to the hate propaganda.
In the 'secular' mind Hindutv is associated with jingoism,
communalism, anti-minoritism, fascism and everything negative. Debate
becomes impossible. It is also associated with Hindu separatism, it a
divisive factor in Indian society. The very word 'Hindu' has become
anathema to many 'intellectual' Hindus.
To the Communists,especially in West Bengal, Hinduism stinks.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the CPM Chief Minister of West Bengal could
even say, with a smirk on his face, that his party would support the
Congress if only to keep the BJP out. The CPM government had gone to
the extent of making the activities ofthe non-political Sri
Ramakrishna Mission in the field of education so hard to pursue that
the Mission, set up by no less than Swami Vivekananda felt forced to
approach the Calcutta High Court to seek for itself a separate non-
Hindu minority status.
The Mission's affidavit in the High Court and,later, its written
arguments in July 1983 contended that "Ramakrishnaism is definitely
no part of Hinduism" but is" a religion separate and different from
the religion of the Hindus" and that" it has its own separate god,
separate name, separate Church, separate worship, separate community,
separate organization and, above all, separate philosophy".
What Swami Vivekanand, would have to say about this religious turn-
coatism is another matter. What is it that is turning otherwise
decent and religious Hindus against themselves? One has to read Pawan
Varma's nauseating book 'Being Indian'to appreciate the depth to
which hatred of Hinduism has gotten inside the Hindu mind.
It is self-flagellation at its worst. One can understand the anger of
the reformer who has set out to change Hindu society. India down the
centuries had several of them. One of the last, Sri Aurobindo could
say: "These hollow worm-eaten outsides of Hinduism crumbling so
sluggishly, so fatally to some sudden and astonishing dissolution, do
not frighten me. Within them I find the soul of a civilization alive,
though sleeping".
Sri Aurobindo was no ordinary critic of what was crumbling about
Hinduism, but even when he was being critical he could see through
the devastating influence of westernisation that was affecting Hindu
society at the beginning of the twentieth century. He was one of the
original pleaders for Hindutv.
As Jyotirmaya Sharma, a sociologist says in his work Hindutv:
Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism: "If Savarkar's exposition of
Hindutv is the most radical, the most extreme and, certainly the most
militant, it is only because his universe of ideas and its milieu was
nourished by predecessors like Dayanand (Saraswati), Vivekananda and
Aurobindo." Each of them was a product of his times.
Each had seen the damage wrought to Hinduism by alien religions.
Writes H. N. Bali in his book 'Hinduism at the Crossroads':"In their
zeal both Islam and Christianity did everything possible to distort
the essence of the Hindu faith and paint it in the darkest hues to
make Hindus self-conscious of the inadequacies of their religion...
For centuries our tradition of tolerance and catholicity has been
grossly abused..." It was out of this that Dayanand Saraswati, Sri
Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda were born. Decades have passed. The
anger of the Hindu, it seems, still remains. Not among the
westernised Hindu 'liberals'but among the masses. But what is the
answer? How should one reinvigorate Hindus and Hinduism?
Bali, in his book India's Wounded Polity notes "how a fatal flaw
Hindu civilization has been its inability to stand up to defend
itself, militarily, against the onslaught of foreign aggressions" and
concludes by saying that "this has almost entirely been because of
the unpardonable incompetence of a self-complacent leadership and had
nothing to do with the religious faith that the Hindus professed".
But how is this to be reversed? Can so-called secularism do the
trick? Can secularism as propounded by our Congress and Leftist
leaders give back to the Hindus the greatness of the civilization to
which they are the natural heirs? In a way the secularists have no
clear concept of Hindutv.
As Dr Makarand Paranjape, Professor of English at the Jawaharlal
Nehru University says in Dialogue Quarterly (Jan. March 2004) "we
need a much greater degree of introspection and self-examination
before we can occupy the higher moral and intellectual ground from
which to mount an attack on Hindutv. But instead we find ourselves
incapacitated and blinded by the deceptions and distortions of the
very secularism which we claim to espouse..." As Prof. Paranjape sees
it, secularism is really "inverse communalism", and corruption.
Hyper-secularism actually took Hindu away from themselves, in effect
"de-Indianised" them. And that is the special tragedy. But should the
assertion of Hindutv become a political weapon? Can't the concept of
Hindutv be effectively separated from politics? An activist, Ram
Gopal has sought to define Hindutv in his own way. He writes:
* Briefly speaking Hindutv is a clarion call for Hindu revival. It is
geo-cultural concept which, in the present circumstances, has
acquired a political bias.
* Hindutv is rooted in Hindu culture, distinct from Hindu religion
and is poised gainst the present hybrid of Marxism or Socialism and
the capitalist philophy of the West.
* The word 'Hindutv' should not and need not raise an alarm in any
quarters as falsely made in the English media and reflected in the
Vernacular Press.
* Hindutv based on Hindu culture must be catholic and must aim at
peaceful co-existence with all sections of mankind and with Nature,
too. It has to be eco-friendly respectful to all great souls,
irrespective of their religion or religious faith who devoted their
lives for the upliftment of man.
* Hindutv bereft of Hindu culture is dangerous and even suicidal.
Viewed in this light, Hindutv becomes a liberating force and a
uniting force that could bring Hindus, Muslims, Christians together
instead of dividing them. When, in Indonesia, the second largest
Islamic country in the world, population- wise, the government
consciously puts the figure of Lord Ganesh on its currency notes and
names its national airline after Garuda, it is going back culturally
to its Hindu cultural roots.
When Indonesians consciously name their children as Sukarno, Suharto,
Meghavati and so on they are going back again to their cultural
roots. When Christians in India demand that Mass be said in their
local mother tongues (Konkani, Kannada, Telugu or Gujarati) instead
of in Latin, they are going back to their cultural roots. When
Christian women after marriage, wear mangal- sutra and a 'tilak' they
are again going back to their cultural roots without forsaking their
religion.
Christians these days are increasingly giving their children
Sanskritnames. Here it must be emphasised as strongly as possible
that there are no Hindu, Christian or Muslim names. What we have are
Sanskrit, Hebraic, Latin or Arab names. It does not make a Christian
less Christian if he or she is given a Sanskrit name. Sanskrit is the
heritage of every Indian whether born in a Hindu, Muslim, Christian
or Jain family.
Sanskrit has nothing to do with Sanatan Dharm. It was to Sanskrit
that Mahatma Gandhi took recourse to when he spoke about satyagrah,
swaraj, sarvodaya and ahinsa, though this was viciously exploited by
the Muslim League during its campaign for Pakistan to estrange
Muslims from the nationalist struggle. Gandhi could have translated
these words into English but then the Anglicised words would have had
no impact on the populace at all. That is why he spoke about Raam
Rajya which every Indian would instantly understand. If he had used
the word 'Utopia' he would have become the laughing stock of the
country.
Who knows what utopia is when the meanest and most illiterate of
Indians would have no difficulty in understanding the meaning of Raam
Rajya? Gandhi was no 'communalist' but had he lived now he would most
certainly have been dubbed as one.
The minorities in India have nothing to fear about Hindutv, but it
has to be explained in all its catholicity, to the minorities who see
in Hindutv an aggressiveness that frightens them. Much of the blame
for this state of affairs should be laid on secularists whose
mindless hatred has brought about damaging rifts in Indian society.
As Prof. Paranjape puts it "Hinduism must not go in the defensive,
apologeticaly seeking refuge in secularism.... Hindutv can be
defeated not by substituting Hinduism with secularism, but by
replacing a corrupt and rotten secularism with a genuinely
pluralistic and satisfying Hinduism...."
As matters stand the propagation of Hindutv needs to be accompanied
by large-scale social reform, a task that calls first for
introspection and understanding of the issues involved among Hindus
themselves. A renewed and re-invigorated Hinduism, freed from its
many defects and sure of itself can serve as a model, to all
communities. But Hindutv must be separated from politics, if it has
to gather wide acceptance, a point that Advani could well take note
of. Politicising Hindutv robs it of its essence which is
revolutionising Hinduism as Sankara in his time did or as Dayanand,
Vivekanand and Aurobindo had done in their times.
End of forwarded post
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
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