“George Bush is to the Christian Right what Atal Bihari Vajpayee was to the Hindu nationalists. We now have temples devoted to AIDS-amma, a new goddess who has been created purposely to enhance ‘AIDS awareness’. Science gets equated with, or becomes interchangeable with the amorphous grab of Hindu myths, mysticism and philosophy, lumped together as the Vedas”.

These are some sample statements found in the book The Wrongs of the Religious Right authored by Meera Nanda, a John Temple Foundation Fellow in Religion and Science. She is an Indian by birth, who has made America her home. The book is a collection of 3 brilliantly written essays titled Secularism Without Secularisation, Hindu Ecology in the Age of Hindutva and Making Science Sacred.

In the first essay she affirms that there has always been a religious dimension to politics in America as there is in India. The conservative Christian churches openly campaigned for Bush and the Republican Party in the 2004 presidential elections.

The Hindutva of the BJP and the “Christiantva” of Republican Party/ Christian right have come under sharp criticism for their mixing religion with politics. After a persuasive discussion she comes to the conclusion that without a grounding in secular culture the governments chosen by the people, for the people and of the people will, “end up stifling the people in the name of God”.

The second essay is about the propensity of Hindus to lend religious colour to any and every movement, whether it is for water conservation, social forestry, or AIDS awareness. She sees danger in the emerging nexus between the Hindu nationalists and the non-pagan elements of the European New Right. In the third essay, she deprecates the Hindus of a higher order to accept without questioning the authority of the Vedas. The book is eminently readable and fit for scholarly debate. One cannot however resist raising the question as to why she has singled out the BJP for criticism, while sparing the pseudo secular party, which ruled the country for over 4 decades, masquerading all the while as a secular party, which in actuality was mixing religion with politics for electoral gains.

The wrongs of the Religious Right

by Meera Nanda