Transforming chaotic India

India is currently experiencing unrest and violence enough to make the Mahatma toss even in heaven. Much of it seems to be the result of a transformation that India is experiencing from its secular — or pseudo-secular —philosophy to the Hindutva or ‘soft Hindutva version of cultural mutation.

The arguments for and against the philosophy driving the Constitution and its basic structure in the light of the CAA and NRC/NPR have only fuelled the fires. All this indicates that the cleavages within India, one that had perhaps so far only been concealed, are very real indeed.

There are schools of thought that argue in favour of these developments and believe that they will be a sort of second freedom movement that will give renewed independence to India; there are other schools of thought which believe that these developments mark the end of a secular and inclusive India with the CAA and NRC/NPR beginning to divide society in the name of religion, foreshadowing similar division by caste and creed and birthing vaidic Bharat which will be considerably more religious and spiritual.

It is important to note at this juncture that India is no stranger to this kind of revivalism. The objective of such movements in the past had been to renew interest in traditional religion and spiritualise politics.

Followers of Arya Samaj and the Congress faction, led by Tilak, sought the revival of Hindu traditions while building modern India. Following the death of Tilak in 1920, M K Gandhi was seen as its inheritor. When Gandhi publicly emerged as the Mahatma, he received widespread revivalist support. Indeed, many believed him to be one of them but they were soon disappointed.

Despite Gandhi having much in common with them, the more these revivalists learnt about Gandhi’s ideas the more they stood in his opposition. The revivalists were disturbed by Gandhi’s definition of the ‘Indian nation’ as a brotherhood or confederation of communities—a plural-secular India.

This was in direct opposition of the revivalist idea of a majoritarian Hindu society. Hindu-Muslim tensions promptly grew during this time (1921-1923) and dominated the national movement ultimately emboldening the hitherto dormant Hindu Mahasabha as a forum for a variety of Hindu interests (including cow protection, Hindi in the Devanagri script, caste reforms etc).

It was this fear psyche that consequently spread nationwide leading to the popular idea of Hinduism somehow being endangered. It legitimised the founding of yet another influential Hindu organisation — the RSS in 1925 by Hedgewar, a man who was deeply influenced by Tilak’s ideas.

The RSS purports to defend Hinduism and its avowed objective is the unification of Hindus. It believes in the inculcation of a belligerent awareness among people that they share a common heritage and that such a destiny of unification for Hindus was merely the natural outcome of historic developments.

One of the most influential works in the development of the Hindu nationalist ideology was a treatise called Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? published by Veer Savarkar in 1923. Golwalkar, who succeeded Hedgewar, in an interesting speech at the Hindu Mahasabha attempted to list the cultural changes which Indian Muslims would have to undergo in order to become acceptable Indian (Bharat) nationals. This outlook was seen as parochial and introduced rifts in Indian society going so far as to break its tolerance.

In the South, Periyar was quick to react thinking that this new ideology of India’s elite was moving towards a vaidic Bharat and sought to defend the rights of the Dravidians against Aryan domination. In 1925, the same year the RSS was formed, he organised the “Self Respect Movement” designed foruplift of Dravidians.

This in turn gave rise to a Muslim revival recalling its attention to the 1820 ideas of Tajdid (renewal) and Islah (reform) proposed by Sayyid Barelwi, the Indian Muslim revivalist from Raebareli. Many developments supporting this came about in 1826 culminating in the growth of Political Islam as a modern phenomenon in the early 20th century.

Political Islam has since had many faces. Some Islamists took the radical militant route while others preferred a more secular, soft approach involving appeasement and societal adjustment. One earliest such group was the Jamaat-i Islami (the Islamic society) established by Mawlana Abul ‘Ala Mawdudi (1903-79) in India. Setting up of the Indian Union Muslim League in 1906 as a political party was the ‘first major step in the direction of the separatist movement among Indian Muslims’ writes Asghar Ali Engineer in ‘Indian Muslims’.

Democratic integration

The Khilafat movement, which was also part of the pan-Islamic movement, left lasting impression on the Muslim psyche and caused incalculable harm to the efforts of leaders like Gandhi who were fighting for a secular and democratic integration of Muslims into mainstream Indian society. This was the beginning of the disintegration of trust between Hindus and Muslims.

The conclusion to this series of events has to be more positive. Today, we seem to be frozen in the same situation and it has left those who believe in the existence of a middle path rudderless. The gloriously flawed answer to this appears often in binary must be fought back.

But it is time those in the middle make more attempts to close the rift and cement India’s identity and cultural heritage with the Hindu pride and bring everyone under the umbrella of a simple Bharat with Hindustan also as our pride, with our individuality intact, with things left in peace, and learning lessons from history.

It is time to shift the focus of our arguments judiciously and fairly. Just as we seek out the wrongs done to any religion or community, we must revisit our generational timeline and alter our ways of life within the broader cultural mosaic of Bharthiya ethos and bring peace. Instead, if we sit idly by and let things run their course, it will weaken India and allow a new breed of colonialists to take over our beloved Bharat again.

(The writer, a political analyst, teaches political science at Karnatak University, Dharwad)