The wages of Hindutva | The Governor and the Mob

We live in strange times. People who swear to protect and defend the Constitution mock at the word ‘Secularism’ that is inscribed in the very preamble to the Constitution. The Governor of Maharashtra, a Constitutional functionary, writes to the Chief Minister, another Constitutional functionary, that “you have turned secular now, the term that you used to hate so much?” What do we see in this question? A clear sense of mocking that “you who were with us till last year have now turned against us!’’ And this conversation was triggered by the Chief Minister’s refusal to open certain temples for festivities in view of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the heart of the matter are ‘temples’ and the relation of State to religion.

These words reflect a much deeper malaise among various Constitutional functionaries. Truth is, for most of them, the Constitution is a huge inconvenience.

Then there is the other episode that has occupied the electronic and social media space. It is an advertisement promoting ‘Tanishq’ – a
company owned by the Tata group —jewellery. The ad is built around the story of a Muslim mother-in-law telling her Hindu daughter-in-law that Godh-bharai (or Seemantha ceremony) is not specific to any religion; for keeping a pregnant bahu happy is part of every religion. It’s a beautiful, heart-warming message.

Some people saw a subversive ‘love jihad’ in it and decided to troll the ad so much on social media that the Tata group decided to withdraw the ad. The withdrawal was so quick, meek and tame that the Mob suddenly knew how powerful it was. If you can generate 20,000 or may be 100,000 tweets against anything online, you can wipe it out of real space. And the most powerful corporate house can be humbled, without breaking a single glass pane of a showroom. That’s the new ‘empowerment’. This is the Mob online. We have seen the Mob on the street and then on TV channels. Or the TV channels themselves acting as the Mob.

These two episodes reflect a broader crisis that confronts us today. The first is the increasing irrelevance of Constitutional norms in governance, while the second depicts the increasing failure of the ‘rule of law’, in inverse proportion to the power of the Mob.

To understand the psyche behind the Maharashtra Governor’s letter, one must examine the BJP’s paranoia over the word ‘Secular’ and the party’s uncomfortable co-habitation with a Constitution that proclaims secularism as one of the goals of the State. Most BJP supporters would be quick to point out that the word ‘Secular’ was inserted in the Preamble by an ‘illegal’ government under the rule of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency in 1976 through the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution. But then came the 44th Amendment passed by the Janata Party-led coalition government, the successor to Indira Gandhi’s regime of which the BJP’s earlier avatar was also part, that promised to undo all the damage she had done to the Constitution. How the two newly-inserted words (Socialist, Secular) in the Preamble escaped their attention is not clear. Nevertheless, ‘Secular’ (and ‘Socialist’, too) remains in the Constitution and all functionaries who take oath on the Constitution, even if they do so in the name of God, have sworn to protect and defend the Constitution as it stands.

Calling the earlier Congress governments ‘pseudo-secular’ or ‘sickular’ has been a favorite pastime of BJP leaders, but none of them have taken the trouble to define what ‘real’ secularism is or who is a ‘real’ secularist. One thing is clear: Secularism stands in an adversarial position to Hindutva. And for a party based on Hindutva, secularism, pseudo or real, is anathema. But the problem is, BJP leaders, too, want the badge of secularism and wish to wear it on their sleeves as the ‘real’ secularists. And how do they demonstrate it? By passing Acts such as criminalising Triple Talaq, the Citizenship Amendment Act, breaking up of Jammu & Kashmir state into two Union Territories and placing J&K under a curfew and lockdown for over a year. Their point is that they no longer ‘appease’ the minorities as the Congress party did. But what they do to the minorities is as clear as daylight.

Savarkar proclaimed ‘Hindutva’ as a nationalist ideology for the resurgence of Hindu community in political terms, not religious terms. Is it not possible to aggregate the Hindu community in political terms without the religious narrative? Is there nothing to the Hindu cause or psyche other than Ram Janmabhoomi? Are they not troubled by existential needs such as roti, kapda, makaan, and naukri, sadak, bijli aur paani?

Truth is, if it is only Hindu unity that is sought and not Indian unity, the Hindus then have to be aggregated in opposition to the ‘Other’. And this majority has to be weaponised against the minorities. Only then Hindutva will succeed. For that, it is necessary to coin such terms as ‘love jihad’ – a crime that does not exist in the Indian Penal Code -- an unfounded conspiracy of Muslim men enticing Hindu women to marry them, convert them and increase their numbers. Pose it as a demographic challenge – the challenge of 14% Muslims against 82% Hindus. The Hindus apparently should be a worried lot. If you start believing in the message of the Tanishq ad, then you are lost to the cause of Hindutva. This ad is an act of subversion of Hindutva; hence it must be deleted from public memory.

The Governor of Maharashtra has nothing to do with the Mob, but both come from the same ideological moorings. One is a high functionary of State with limited powers; he can only mock. The Mob is faceless and amorphous but has the muscle to subdue the high and mighty. Both are instruments of the same Power.

(The writer, a former
Cabinet Secretariat official, is
Visiting Fellow, ORF)