5 December 2019
#CAB #NewIndia
‘We or Our Nationhood Defined’ is the title of a book written by RSS founder Golwalkar and it has a very simple construct that every state adheres to a religious affiliation and for this Indian subcontinental mass that is South Asia the predominance of Hinduism cannot be denied. So as a legacy state of then British Colonial India, the new India must be a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ or Hindu Nation.
Now we know that his dreams and his vision is not exactly a novel approach to nationhood. From the oldest memories of nation states, states have adopted a state religion and ruled as per its edicts, in fact the temporal and spiritual were intertwined and it was all a mangle of draconian law that forbid the open enquiry or disrespect of either the King or of the Religious edicts issued in his name. After all, in that tribal, cultist and poorly informed world for the sake of cohesion and semblance of order, it was important for people to adhere to a set of rules and code a way of life.
Over centuries the human project evolved, adding more nuance and more girth to philosophical moorings from a ‘God Fearing’ religious centrality of rites to idealism, through shared values and customs and traditions that were essentially more open and supportive of individual pursuit and individual persuasion. What the Hindutva brigade have conveniently hidden is the true nature of Dharma, that which never allowed itself to be wedded to the state or the symbolism of regnal power! The King and the state were kept assiduously at arm’s length even as the King offered patronage of ritual sacrifices and later accretions like Temples. Dharma was and remains centred on the householder individual, its sustenance was never on the edifice of state edict and it drew its power and meaning from philosophical discourse and transactional dialogue between the adherent and the source- the body of knowledge from Vedas to other treatises to hymns and their appended rites of discourse, sacrifice and festivity. Over the years, centuries and across societies, Dharma managed to add more and more layers to her existence, such rich texture and substance that she became an umbrella for any thing from mono theism to poly theism and even atheism. She could offer sanction and sanctuary to the materialist, to the renunciate and to the one balancing and eking out existence in this world.
Indians today bred on a ‘silly’ notion of Secular State, by heady Communist ideology of totalitarian utilitarian solutions, and most importantly by lack of religious understanding, are largely followers of idolatry and rituals, most of the other key components of Dharma remain at the margins, tapped by a select few, and it is an irony that Dharma sustained itself through the eons, by these elements which are considered ‘fringe’ in modern Hindu society. So while espousal of religion and state as coalition of compulsion for competitive survival is Abrahamic in how the Church wielded power in Christiandom, or how the Caliphate sought to wield power in Islam, we are clearly witness to how ethnolinguistic ‘tribalism’ is more powerful than religious affiliation or political ideology as witnessed in the collapse of not just Caliphates or the Roman Papacy as political contingents across continents, but also in the collapse of the USSR in the last decade of the previous century.
It is actually an indirect compliment to how Dharma evolved, skirting the temporal and anchored on the spiritual, that history unfolded the way it has. In fact, few Indians are willing to explore and understand how India of all places could withstand the onslaught of religious proselytisation and conquering conversion, the manner it did. Even if all of South Asia from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka, including Myanmar, was to be taken into account, when the British left in 1947, the adherents of Dharma were in a clear and overall majority by a fair stretch than all the Muslims and Christians put together. It did have Buddhist majorities in regions, it did have Jain and Sikh followers in significant numbers, but an adept of Dharma will also acknowledge the debt of Dharma and interconnected nature of these faiths as religious orders founded that were mutations of Dharma and borrowed largely on its foundational principle of ‘Karma’.
Now the BJP government wants to pass a Citizenship Amendment Bill which seeks to place a religious sanction for the nature of refuge New India will offer. There is naturally a immediate historical perspective- Partition which carved out the Indian subcontinent into Muslim dominions out of the Hindu one, which then further split into Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1971. So was it necessary to revise something which was not broke? We rescued Ahmadis, Bahai sect, and many others persecuted Muslim sects including prominent Sufi ones besides offering refuge to millions of Hindus from other parts of the subcontinent at the time of Partition, in our post partition years. We have stood as a contrast to Pakistan as a failed state, which has been in a religious mood ever since its inception, one that has led it to becoming servile to ‘Allah, America and Army’ as scholars put it. We have also seen Nepal, which proudly functioned as a religious monarchy as the only ‘Hindu nation of the world’ ( since India was officially secular) convert to a secular state, after a communist revolution and a palace mass murder through a democratically pushed transition. Like Zia ul Haq the military dictator who adopted to overtly encourage Islam in temporal matters in Pakistan, we have seen a campaign in public discourse in India to offer similar leeway to Hinduism in India. As a national choice, if this is the national mandate, to transition from a secular state which appeared to pander to its minorities but which actually ended up failing them equally ( Sachar Committee findings are damning proof), India was eager to make a change, eager to switch and explore other options to discover her animal spirits. So if Nepal can change her nature, if Pakistan can go the whole hog with a state just short of Shariah, India can also try to redefine her nationhood by calling her self the authentic refuge of Non Muslim religious minorities and Hindus.
Across the comity of nations, we have official Christian nations in Europe and Americas. We have Islamic Republics in Africa, Asia and Eurasia. Yet, we are with the exception of Israel unable to spot a country that allows religious exclusion for refuge like how India is seeking to do. Even the only Jewish majority state it must be clarified only offers a positive bias toward Jews as possessed with a natural right to settle in that state. It allows Palestinian citizens of its state equal citizenship rights and right to organise, who are residents of Israel. So is India actually borrowing a Israeli model? Where we declare that non Muslims can seek refuge here, even as we continue to guarantee the Muslims already resident with us their full rights as citizens under our Constitution!
Is there a need? Look at how India had to twist herself into knots and claim all sorts of ‘phantoms’ to deny Rohingya refuge in India? There are nearly a million of them in Bangladesh next door, thanks to a pogrom by the Myanmarese military, under the fig leaf offered by Nobel Laureate Aung Sang Su Ki! Can India host them and reopen the wounds of her border states in the East? What if Climate Change forces millions of Bangladeshis to come in to high lands in Indian Bengal and Assam? What about refugees from Indian Ocean littoral like Maldives & Mauritius?Can India afford to deny ethnic Biharis and other indentured labour and emigrants of the colonial era who are in Carribean islands or for that matter in Africa who could be Climate Change Refugees? The decision matrix would have inputs which were inflection points forcing the Indian hand and not just a ruse to further divide or ‘other’ the Muslims in India. Yet it could be as devastating to Indian polity like Demonetisation was to the economy, but that would largely be an unintended consequence, couldn’t it?
The bill to be tabled in Parliament could offer assurances to Muslim citizens of India, it could also offer assurances to tribal sects in the North East for whom their traditional tribal lands are beyond the confines of the Indo-Myanmarese borders. It could also offer distinct exceptions to even sects within the larger Islamic framework to whom India has in the past offered refuge, or could make exceptions for like those of Tamil ethnic stock in low lying areas of Sri Lanka’s northern and eastern Tamil majority provinces.
Where the plot is lost is when RW handles wish to push this amendment as a sort of validation of Partition. In 1947, India had rejected outrightly the religious sanction of Partition, it refused to be an exclusive homeland of Hindus. It thwarted very ingeniously under Gandhi’s leadership the creation of a third nation state dominion within the subcontinent which would consist of Avarna and Christian and other Non Muslim minorities of Indic origins. So Golwalkar’s push to redefine India and not actual ground realities of a modern nation state is being propelled as the narrative dominance for this move. What the RW have no answers for is when Pakistan is clearly a failed state before us, why must we prove its founder Jinnah right by writing into our law provision that clearly excludes the Muslim!
They say the some of the worst plans are made with best intentions, not because of the intentions but because of how they get carried out…The motive is definitely to narrow our responsibilities going forward as a nation state, defined by constricting our world view based on ‘Vasudeva Kutumbakam’ and ‘Yaadum Ure’
indiarubberman.com 