Bhagwat Puran of A Different Kind: Conflating Hinduism and Hindutva

I

Mohan Bhagwat, the ‘young’ supremo of an eighty plus-year-old exclusively male cultural organisation called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is in high spirits these days.

It is not very difficult to understand the glee on his face which has to do with the latest developments in the cause célèbre of the Sangh Parivar. One can even notice that every member of this different kind of ‘family’ also seems to be upbeat, its representatives can be found in the neighbourhood playground in the morning doing drills, playing games or listening to ‘sermons’ of their seniors which they call baudhik.

The Ayodhya verdict, that deliberated on the sixty plus-year-old legal dispute over the title of a piece of land where a mosque stood for the last five hundred years and which was demolished by hordes of gangs inspired by the ideas the Sangh Parivar still espouses, has in fact come as a blessing in disguise for Bhagwat. While every peace and justice loving person felt betrayed with the judgement that neither mentioned the criminal act of demolition of
the mosque, or the blows it gave to the Indian Constitution and the crude manner in which it rediscoverd the virtues of faith, it has emboldened the Parivar which had never felt comfortable with the rule of law enshrined in the Constitution. Even a cursory glance at the making of the Constitution provides details of the manner in which the then leaders of Project Hindutva opposed the whole process and wanted that newly independent nation adopt Manusmriti —the code of conduct of the Hindus scripted by Manu—in its place. From time to time their fascination for Manu’s edicts, which supports the hierarchial division of society based on caste and gender and denies basic human rights to the wider populace, has been visible in very many ways. It was not for nothing that when the BJP, one of the affiliated organisations of the RSS, came to power at the Centre twelve years ago, it did not waste much time in appointing a Commission to review the Constitution. Although they could not tinker with it as they lacked the necessary majority, they still made their intentions clear.

As any neutral observer would be able to tell, apart from the ‘vindication’ of their ideas the verdict has solved many of the immediate problems facing the Parivar. Gone is the talk of disarray in the fraternity with every other affiliated organisation trying to put the blame on the other for the dip in their collective fortunes, gone also is the defensive posture which the RSS had to adopt when recently many of its ‘wholetimers’ (called Pracharaks in their lexicon) were found to be involved in terrorist acts, with sleuths of different investigating agencies raiding their houses and parading these Pracharak terrorists hooded like common criminals. In fact the situation seemed so serious that in June the top leadership of the RSS assembled for a five-day emergency meeting in Jodhpur to deliberate on the whole situation. Anyone can guess that the overall mood within the Parivar was quite gloomy. The verdict has altered the scene completely. Sensing this opportunity when the secular-democratic camp has gone on the defensive and is contemplating their next line of action, like a true General Bhagwat has decided to strike back. Basing himself on the age-old maxim ‘offence is the best defence’ he seems to have decided to take the plunge to take the battle to the camp of the ‘pseudo-secularists’ themselves.

One is reminded of the manner in which Balasaheb Deoras, the third supremo of the RSS, went round the country claiming victory (Jitam Maya—We have Won) after the Emergency was over (1977) and the Janata Party had come to power. The high moral posture adopted by the likes of Deoras about the ‘valiant struggle by the RSS against the Emergency’ did not last long when it was disclosed that the same Deoras had written long letters to Indira Gandhi and tried to persuade Vinoba Bhave to mediate so that the ban on the Sangh is lifted. The Sangh leadership had even directed thousands of its volunteers/activists lodged in different jails to give an undertaking to the jail authorities assuring them of ‘good behaviour’ if they were released from jail. (For details of the correspondence readers may refer to RSS by D.R. Goyal, Rajkamal, Delhi.)

II

TERRORISM, Hindus are oxymoron: Mohan Bhagwat

October 17, 2010, Press Trust of india

Nagpur, 17 Oct: Taking strong exception to the use of the term ‘saffron or Hindu terror’, RSS chief Mr Mohan Bhagwat today said terrorism and Hindus are “oxymoron” and can never be linked to each other.

“There is only one country left in the world on which you can’t put the blame of terrorism and that country is India. Terrorism and Hindus, terrorism and saffron, and terrorism and the Sangh are oxymoron and can never be related to each other.

“This (effort to connect the two) was an attempt to weaken the strength of Hindus in India and, at the same time, to appease Muslims,” he said..addressing the annual Dussehra rally at Reshim Bagh ground here....

“These are sinister conspiracies to mislead the Hindus through a campaign of lies and defame Hindu saints and noble citizens.”

Close watchers of the RSS know the long tradition within the organisation wherein the supremo gives a speech on its foundation day (that is, Dusshera) which is supposed to be a guideline to all the affiliated organisations— ranging from the parliamentary to the extraparliamentary ones. Newspapers tell us that during his speech on the Reshim Bagh ground in Nagpur Bhagwat basically raised three points: one, he welcomed the Ayodhya verdict and hoped that the day was not far off when they would build a ‘Grand Ram Temple’ at Ayodhya; two, he talked of the deteriorating situation in Kashmir and emphasised that in the coming months the focus of the Parivar would be on it; thirdly, he said that Hindus and terrorism are oxymorons and whosoever is calling the Hindus terrorists is stigmatising the whole community.

Nobody can deny that Ayodhya and Kashmir are important issues and every social-political formation will have to devise its own strategy for intervention. And looking at the differences in their world views, any truly democratic and secular intervention would be qualitatively different from what Bhagwat’s boys intend to do as part of their ‘nationalist’ duties. Not long ago the RSS had devised a unique plan to tackle the Kashmir situation by suggesting to trifurcate it on religious lines—Leh for Buddhists, Jammu for Hindus and Kashmir for Muslims. It is a different matter that this divisive plan did not get any support from the rest of the polity despite the saffron dispensation holding the reins of power at the Centre.

It is not much difficult to see that the highlight of the speech was the new wisdom which has dawned on Bhagwat, that Hindus and terrorism are oxymorons. Definitely it would soothe the egos of many among the community who have no qualms in rationalising incidents like the Gujarat genocide or the Kandhamal riots or the attacks on churches or forcible separation of two adults belonging to different religious communities supposedly to defend the community’s honour.

Coming to this new-found thesis which emphasises the incompatibility of Hindus with terrorism, one wishes to ask Bhagwat whether he or his organisation has made any new discoveries as far as the religious affiliations of the first terrorist of independent India, called Nathuram Godse, is concerned, whose band of terrorists included Madanlal Pahwa, Karkare, Parchure and several others. The same Nathuram cut his political teeth in the RSS shakhas only and later focussed on his work on the Hindu Mahasabha front. Interestingly during his trial Nathuram formally said that he had left the RSS in 1933, but in an interview to the magazine Frontline in the late nineties his younger brother, Gopal Godse, who was also part of the conspiracy specifically said that none of the brothers ever left the RSS. When the reporter asked him pointedly why Nathuram ‘lied’ about his dissociation, pat came the reply: To save the organisation from harassment.

It has been on record that there were five attempts on Mahatma Gandhi’s life during his lifetime and the last one proved fatal. It is revealing to know that Hindu fanatics were involved in all these attempts; they were eager to eliminate the Mahatma—who, for many, was ‘the biggest Hindu of the 20th century’.

Of course, it is possible that for many among the Hindu Right who yearn to build a Hindu Rashtra of their dreams, the death of the Mahatma was not a terrorist act; rather it was a ‘patriotic act’. It is an open secret that every year many from the Hindu Right do observe the day Nathuram was hanged as ‘Martyrs Day’? And it is not a Pune-specific phenomenon where Nathuram lived. A narco analysis of those involved in the Nanded bomb explosion (April 2006) which saw the deaths of Himanshu Panse and Rajeev Rajkondwar—both activists of the RSS/Bajrang Dal—tells us how these ‘patriots of a different kind’ use to organise programmes on this day.

And what about Savarkar, the pioneer of the idea of Hindutva, who escaped conviction in the case of Mahatma’s assassination only on technical grounds? It is a different matter that the Kapoor Commission which was set up in the sixties to look into the conspiracy angle of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination—where many fresh witnesses to the case appeared—rightly concluded that Savarkar was very much a part of that conspiracy. And why did these fanatics kill him? Only because Gandhi was trying to practise Hinduism in his own way. And so when independence came, this frail old man—who was called ‘One Man Boundary Force’ by the then Governor General for singlehandedly bringing peace to strifetorn Calcutta by resorting to fast unto death—did not join the celebrations but was instead touring Noakhali to console and help people affected by the riots.

While the role played by the Hindu fanatics in Mahatma’s assassination is widely known, not much has been written on the bomb blast in Shikarpur area of Karachi at the time of independence; this resulted in the deaths of two Sangh Pracharaks, namely, Vasudev and Prabhu Badlani. Their third accomplice was apprehended by the Pakistani Police and had to languish in the jail there for quite some time. And how come there was a bomb blast in the residential area in a house owned by one Raibahadur Tolaram which was rented by the RSS people supposedly to run tuitions for kids? (‘RSS in Sindh’, Economic and Political Weekly, July 8, 2006) The plan, hatched by a 21-member team of RSS workers, was to organise bomb blasts in different places in Karachi and kill as many people as possible. The house served the purpose of storing bombs. Police records reveal that the explosion was so severe that the whole house came literally crumbling down. Anderson and Damle, who have penned a monograph on the Sangh journey, Brotherhood in Saffron, also provide details of the incident. Perhaps Bhagwat can get a few more details of the case from Lal Krishna Advani, who was looking after the work of the Sangh in the area. It should also be investigated whether Advani was in the know of things or not?

To be very frank, one can quote a number of other examples which can help puncture Bhagwat’s argument that ‘Hindus cannot be terrorists’. The exposure in the Malegaon bomb blast case (September 2008)—which brought to the fore an elaborate national network of terrorists involving military officers like Lt Col Purohit, religious people like Swami Dayanand Pandey or for that matter Sadhvi Pragya or the likes of Dr R.P Singh, Himani Savarker or RSS activists like Ramji Kalasangra, Aseemanand or Sunil Joshi (killed by his own people) or the actions by Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Janjagruti Samity like putting explosives and bombs in crowded places—just goes to show that contrary to popular perceptions, Hindus can be found to be equally involved in such anti-human actions as the Islamic fundamentalists.

One need not go into the details of every incident but the point worth underlining is that terrorism cannot be the sole preserve of this or that community. One can find terrorists in every community and also sane elements in every community. Just as there are good people or bad people in every community, there are fanatics or sane elements in every community.

Singling out a particular community for the ills of society or for negative traits reflects what is popularly known as a communal under-standing of society. In today’s multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual and multireligious environment where the world seems to be turning into a global village, such an outlook is definitely at variance with the growing intermingling of people, communities, cultures.

Nobody can deny that the post-9/11 develop-ments have contributed a lot to further strengthen a warped understanding of history. The manner in which the US declared its ‘War Against Terror’ as a new strategem to further its influence and gain legitimacy for its criminal actions, the entire plan effectively got reduced to stigmatising and targeting people, formations or countries owing allegiance to Islam. It was a sheer coincidence that the BJP, an affiliated organisation of the RSS, was in power at the Centre when the US rulers unleashed the ‘War Against Terror’. Looking back one can say that there was deep resonance between what the Bush regime wanted and what was on offer for them here.

III

THE ‘thesis of oxymoron’ has shades of the concept of the Supreme Hindu Race emanating from it. In fact it can also be interpreted as an indirect admission that whereas Hindus and terrorism are incompatible with each other, terrorism easily gels with all non-Hindu communities. Definitely it is a very dangerous statement not only because it tries to denigrate every other community, it tries to pass on the blame to others. It can thus be seen as a poor attempt to deflect attention from the number of crimes committed by the Hindu fanatics.

To avoid confusion of any sort when we are discussing the crimes of the Hindu fanatics, then it should in no way be construed as being soft towards the crimes of Islamic fanatics or Christian fanatics or similar faith based fanaticisms. Fanaticism of every kind needs to be condemned in every possible manner. In fact, history is witness to the fact that religion based fanaticism has killed more innocent people than any other social catastrophe.

Surprisingly Bhagwat’s speech also conveyed the deliberate conflation of two distinct terms: Hinduism and Hindutva. According to him, all those people who talk of Hindu terrorism are trying to denigrate the whole community. It cannot be denied that a few people did describe the role of Hindu fanatics in terrorist operations as ‘Hindu terrorism’. But a large majority of the critics avoided describing it in this fashion and instead talked of Hindutva terrorism which seems to be a more accurate description of the phenomenon.

All those people who are not aware of the debates in the movement would not be able to gauge the big difference between Hindu terrorism and Hindutva terrorism. Perhaps it would be better to refer to a book by Savarkar, who is considered to be a pioneer of the Hindu Right or the ‘Hindu nationalist movement’. This monograph, which is named Hindutva, has reached classic status and lays down the guiding principles of the idea.

What does the monograph say? Its key contribution is the way in which it differentiates between Hinduism and Hindutva:

Hinduism is only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva. Unless it is made clear what is meant by the latter, the first remains unintelli-gible and vague. Failure to distinguish between these two terms has given rise to much mis-understanding and mutual suspicion between some of those sister communities that have inherited this inestimable and common treasure of Hindu civilisation.[..] Here it is enough to point out that Hindutva is not identical with what is vaguely indicated by the term Hinduism. By an ‘ism’ it is generally meant a theory or a code more or less based on spiritual or religious dogma or system. But when we attempt to investigate into the essential significance of Hindutva, we do not primarily and certainly not mainly concern ourselves with any particular theocratic or religious dogma or creed. Had not linguistic usage stood in our way, then ‘Hinduness’ would have certainly been a better word than Hinduism as a near parallel to Hindutva. Hindutva embraces all the departments of thought and activity of the whole being of our Hindu race[..] It is imperative to point out that we are by no means attempting a definition or even a description of the more limited, less satisfactory and essentially sectarian term Hinduism. (V.D. Savarkar, Hindutva, Delhi: Bharti Sahitya Sadan, 1989, sixth edition, pp. 3-4)

It is imperative that before getting confused with what Bhagwat wants to convey, it would be definitely helpful if one refers to this classic monograph and understand for oneself that when we say Hindutva terror then it does not at all mean all those people who have deep faith in the principles of Hinduism. Just as Islam and Political Islam cannot be considered as synomy-mous, Hinduism and Hindutva cannot be measured on the same scale

Looking at the emphasis on action as opposed to contemplation (which involves reading also) in the whole Hindutva movement, it can easily be presumed that a large majority of those people who today owe their allegiance to the ideas of Savarkar, Hedgewar and Golwalkar and who want India to usher in Hindu Rashtra, must not have bothered to even read Savarkar’s monograph. And this cannot be said to be an exaggeration. There have been instances when the RSS-BJP people had to withdraw books which were published under their own aegis or withdraw articles from textbooks which they themselves had ratified.

A newsitem is worth taking note of:

Mystery surrounds the sudden withdrawal of one of the 16 volumes of an official account of the Jana Sangh-BJP history, four months after it was released as part of its silver jubilee celebrations in Mumbai. The series, written by historian Makhan Lal under the supervision of senior BJP leader J. P. Mathur, carry a foreword by Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha L.K. Advani.
(Indian Express, May 9, 2006)

But perhaps the Orissa experience truly shows the mental abilities of the plethora of activists of the Hindutva brigade who needed around five years to notice ‘discrepancy’ in a textbook when the person in charge of the Education Department was a hardcore RSS Pracharak called Samir Dey himself. It was the period when the BJP was sharing power with the Biju Janata Dal.

In its report on its front page, captioned ‘In NDA Orissa, a textbook equates BJP with Lashkar’ (Indian Express, Delhi, February 2, 2007), the paper gave details about the manner in which a textbook on ‘Indian Polity’ for second-year degree students in Orissa clubbed the Lashkar-e-Taiba with the BJP. According to the report,

The chapter on the ‘Existence of Terrorist Organisation’ says: “Terrorist organisations create tension in the country. Communal parties like the BJP, RSS, Bajrang Dal, Hurriyat Conference and Lashkar-e-Taiba are responsible for fomenting violence...leading to the killing of hundreds in the country and especially Kashmir.

It is worth noting that the said textbook— which was written by Amarendra Mohanty and Shyama Charan Mohanty, teachers of Political Science—was taught since 2003. The matter could come to light only after a BJP worker in Salepur, about 60 km from the State capital, noticed it and lodged an FIR. And as expected, to remove the egg on its face members of the Hindutva brigade did a lot of things which can be bracketed as ‘taking law into their hands’.

Bhagwat, who is in high spirits these days, would do his organisation a great favour if he could inculcate some reading habits in his people who believe more in action than study.