There is an irony in the tectonic upheavals currently besieging the BJP. A party that once rode the crest of a national political quest to give Indic civilization due honour in the public arena is itself convulsed by a clash of ideologies. An elemental struggle is on between those who wish to return to the pre-NDA commitment to the nation’s foundational ethos as bedrock of the polity, and those seeking quick-fix solutions in the defeated dogmas of the Nehruvian era.
Every nation derives its identity from a core culture based upon the traditions of the native majority; all groups position themselves around this core. This does not mean that later entrants or minority groups become second-class citizens; but in a democracy, minorities do not determine national identity and ethos. The forced Partition of India and Congress’ refusal to adhere to the two-nation theory provided an ideal opportunity to demonstrate how the inclusive Hindu tradition operated in a modern polity. A Hindu Rashtra, far from being an Islamic-style theocracy imposed by the majority, would have ensured the flowering of the perennial Hindu virtues of affirmation of dharma; respect for religious diversity; and the separate but complementary roles of political and spiritual leaders.
Unfortunately Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru stood the civilizational issue on its head. Commiserating with Muslims for becoming a “divided” community, he launched a vigorous policy of minority appeasement to contain the “imagined” Hindu community. A Euro-centric mindset juxtaposed tradition against modernity, debased Hindu civilization and culture, and proposed a rootless “scientific temper” that was actually a mindless imitation of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet New Man.
Mr. Nehru’s worst sin, to my mind, was not that he imposed a perverted secularism upon India, but that he dishonestly forced Hindus, rather than Muslims, to shoulder and internalize the guilt of Partition. This permitted minorityism to grow at the expense of the Hindu majority, as manifested in the growing Hajj subsidy, regressive personal laws, tacit encouragement of illegal immigration by inclusion in the voter’s list, tolerance of illegal madrasas, and now, reservations in jobs and educational institution on religious lines (in Andhra Pradesh). And now Andhra Pradesh is set to experiment with political reservations for Muslims in local bodies.
The so-called Nehruvian consensus involved, as a natural corollary, the complete suppression of the culture of the majority community. Sanskrit, engine of the nation’s culture, nobility and learning, both sacred and temporal, was the first casualty of this approach. Despite powerful appeals, including endorsement by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, it was denied the status of national language and relegated to schoolroom learning for a fixed number of years. Although NASA uses Sanskrit to programme supercomputers, the language has failed to get its due in its home country.
Most people fail to realize that modern democracies take the civilizational issue for granted. Indeed, since the mid-twentieth century, no majority in any country has been denied this right, except in India. When we look at the new post Second World War nation-states, we see that Israel made Jewish civilization and culture the bedrock of its nationhood and Pakistan based its identity upon the Islamic injunction not to live under a non-Islamic polity.
While I have no personal information about Christian East Timor, which was carved out by the West and the United Nations from Muslim Indonesia some years ago, it can hardly have a non-Christian ethos. East Timor is powerful evidence of how the West continues to use religion as an instrument of international diplomacy to subvert other nations and cultures; those of us who claim adherence to Nehruvian-Western standards of secularism in public life would do well to examine this deeper truth before reading false sermons to the Hindu community.
It is hardly surprising that many Hindus have viewed the Congress raj as a continuation of the British Raj, because India is institutionally insensitive to popular sentiments. Some years ago, the Supreme Court looked askance at attempts to update and rewrite History books, though it ultimately approved the revised NCERT curriculum. Around the same time, however, a petitioner who sought that namaz be prohibited in public places (roads, pavements) as it inconvenienced others, did not merely have his petition dismissed, but the apex court actually accused him of causing communal tension and fined him Rs 10,000/-, which is quite unprecedented.
Mr. Nehru’s cleverly crafted all-India minority votebank, however, served the Congress well and with help from sections of the Hindu community kept Congress in power for over four decades, despite the party never managing to win a majority of the total vote. The pent-up anger of the Hindu community first showed up in the rout of the Congress in most of northern India in 1967. It is my view that post-1967, all people’s movements in India have aimed to undermine and overthrow the Nehruvian order, which has been systematically unsympathetic to their aspirations. That is why anti-Congressism was the hallmark of opposition activity for several decades.
The BJP’s failure to respect the mandate given by this sentiment enabled the Congress to make anti-communalism a plank to attract anti-BJP parties to its fold. Yet, I believe that the civilizational issue has not gone away merely because it has been sidetracked once again. The BJP would do well to recognize that it was the Hindu concern with national identity and self-esteem that made the Ram Janmabhoomi movement such a phenomenal success, and the inability of party leaders to cope with the consequences of that triumph in no way invalidates the movement.
Even if one accepts the BJP claim that coalition politics prevented unilateral movement on the Ayodhya temple, it is inexplicable that even after the Archaeological Survey of India, under High Court instructions, excavated the site and found the remains of two tenth and twelfth century Hindu temple complexes below the Babri structure, little was done to facilitate the temple. Indeed, the Babri pillars were proved to be affixed to the Hindu temple. This is why even if Mr. Advani was forgiven for calling the demolition the saddest day of his life in 1992, his reiteration of this view in Pakistan after Hindu civilizational memory was so explicitly vindicated in stone, propelled him out of the gates of history and into ignominy.
The civilizational issue is crystallizing once again, and we will be remiss in our duty if we fail to seize the opportunity providence is offering in terms of a minority-majority synergy. Last time the Hindu community used Rajiv Gandhi’s capitulation to ulema on the Shah Bano judgment to open the locks of the Ram Janmabhoomi. Since then, the issue of the common civil code has become far more serious, with obscurantist ulemas making a mockery of the human rights of Muslim women. Some time ago, young Gudiya was forced to return to her first husband although pregnant with the child of her second husband whom she truly loved.
Now, Imrana, raped by her father-in-law, is declared divorced from her husband and told to marry another man if she wishes! Rabid secularists like Shabana Azmi and Teesta Setalvad cannot be expected to speak for her, but Hindu dharma’s inclusivist tradition demands that it embrace the beleaguered Muslim woman. A common civil code has never been more imperative; for BJP it may be the route to reinvent itself in national life.
The Pioneer, 28 June 2005