One of the most compelling yet overlooked themes of Hindu civilization is that the gods themselves are prone to dislodgement from their celestial heights, to suffer exile and humiliation at the hands of upstarts who have inveigled fancy boons out of them, and then defeated them in battle. The gods return to the heavens through a long process of rebuilding their stamina, often creating new and potent energies to take on the asuric forces.
Asuras in Hindu tradition are persons or entities who do not leave space for others to live in honour, denying freedom to worship a la Hiranayakashipu, making off with other men’s wives in the manner of Ravana, or defeating the gods to rule over the three worlds like Vali. The rule of dharma is restored only after much violence and blood-letting, and the defeat and decimation of the violator of dharma. Hindu bhakti is thus legitimately concerned with the power dimension of the celestial and human worlds, that is, the lawful and rightful exercise of authority to uphold the moral order.
The faux anger of our secular Parliamentarians last Thursday, causing disruption of both Houses on the fifteenth anniversary of the removal of the Babri non-mosque, which in terms of Islamic theology ‘ceased to be’ due to decades of non-worship, demonstrates the Indian elite’s continuing discomfort with the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Sadly, after December 6, 1992, the orchestrated anger of intellectuals, activists, and politicians, the complicit silence of the economic elite, the riots that broke out in some parts of the country, not to mention an unsympathetic judiciary and cold-feet developed by leading players, forced the movement into an eerie limbo.
Mercifully, since then, the lengthening shadow of Islamic jihad worldwide, coupled with an increasingly unmasked face of Christian evangelism in India (though still hiding behind the façade of human rights), has once again placed the issue of the civilizational base of Indian nationhood firmly at the centre of the political agenda. The re-Hinduisation of the polity is now a civilizational imperative. The distinguished journalist, late Girilal Jain, suggested that the proper translation of Hindu rashtra is Hindu polity, not Hindu nation in a Western or theocratic sense.
Possibly this may be emerging on a limited scale in contemporary Gujarat, where the Congress party has studiously avoided playing the Muslim card in the current elections, and left the issue of minority interests to be handled indirectly by Congress-friendly media, Narendra Modi-baiting secular-Christian activists, and externally-funded NGOs. The 2007 Gujarat election is significant because it is modern India’s first election fought consciously by both sides for the majority Hindu vote.
Those embarrassed or uncomfortable with the emergence of civilizational India, those who wish to defer the decisive moment of Hindu affirmation and triumph, must now retire from the public arena, or be banished from it. It is time to separate the men from the boys. A few points are in order.
Hindus are primarily a civilizational and not a territorial people. This is to say that unlike the nomadic Jewish tribes which wrested a ‘promised land’ from the ruination of an extant civilization (probably history’s first genocide); early Islam which superimposed itself upon the Arab people and their holy sites; and the Christian fathers who took over the Roman Empire, the driving impulse of the Vedic vision was not land, territory or material wealth, but a quest for harmony with the universe and consciousness regarding its divine origins.
So though Hindus have a distinct territory in cultural, geographical and historical terms, the proper function of the State is not preservation or expansion of frontiers, but the promotion of Hindu civilization. A legitimate Indian State must express the Hindu ethos and personality; it cannot be an impartial arbiter between communities as the British conditioned us to believe; much less can it be an instrument of offence against religious minorities, as has been the Hindu experience in Pakistan, Bangladesh and now Malaysia.
India has not discriminated against any religious group seeking her protection since the first historical refugees arrived after the destruction of the Temple of Solomon in 70 AD. Since then, we have given shelter to Christian and Muslim sects, Parsis, Bahai’s, and Tibetans, all fleeing persecution in different parts of the world. It is this civilizational legacy that External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukerjee claimed was now government policy, while assuring Parliament of protection to Bangladeshi rebel writer, Taslima Nasreen.
The essential spirit of Hindu dharma is inclusivist: it seeks to abolish rather than build boundaries. Hindus do not believe in exclusion in the manner associated with the Christian West and Islam. Muslims and others have been graciously accommodated in the charmed circle of territory and their affinities with Hindus through common language(s) and blood ties generously acknowledged.
The bone of contention remains the acceptance of a common civilizational framework within which the myriad faiths and ways of life can mutually adjust themselves. Any legitimate outcome must recognize the primacy of Hindu civilization in this land; others must seek space in its nurturing bosom. Like the Jewish community, Abraham’s other children must renounce the desire to dominate this land and annihilate its native faiths and cultural traditions. Their refusal to honour the majority faith will meet increasing resentment, and place the onus of communal disharmony upon them and their rich co-religionists in other parts of the globe.
The struggle to restore the Ram Janmabhoomi to the divinity who is also the exemplar par excellence of the Hindu moral and political universe is central to the fight for Hindu assertion and affirmation. Its principal opponents include a West-approved intelligentsia and inimical State power; their joint strategy invokes tired clichés of majority communalism and uses judicial and quasi-judicial institutions to discredit all forms of Hindu assertion.
Indian Muslims would do well to reconsider their obedience to this game. Girilal Jain said Hindus cannot sustain anti-Muslim feelings except temporarily, under provocation; anybody who has studied the rapid fizzling out of the economic boycott of Gujarat Muslims after the 2002 post-Godhra violence would appreciate the merit of this view. Hindus have no fight with Islam, not even (past) iconoclastic Islam; Ram Janmabhoomi is intrinsically about civilizational renewal and supremacy over the destructive legacy of Lord Macaulay. Muslims may find a common cause here.
The Pioneer, 11 December 2007