By M.R.Lalu
Political climate in many countries has been altering these days. There have been reasons behind trends that have democratically overthrown incumbent governments. But there have also been chaos and skirmishes and armed rebellions in streets in some countries which ultimately vanquished ruling regimes. Bangladesh, India’s neighborhood, was one among those regions that empowered its people to overthrow an elected government, which they call, a popular uprising that converted the country into a radical destination for the Islamists. What followed after the eviction of Sheikh Hasina was heart wrenching and horrendous. Minorities, especially hundreds of Hindus and Buddhists were thrashed, molested, raped and burnt alive. The situation in that country came as a convincing example for the rest of the world that intolerance of the majority can any time turn into an unpredictable violence with its gargantuan dominance on the minorities.
India’s case is different. Here, the majority, the Hindus, hold a different philosophy that rests on the pillars of assimilation and acceptance. The majority in India has been extremely magnanimous when it comes to their habit of sharing space for others. But its history has been ridiculously manipulated and concealed of facts by the perpetrators, the historians who could easily mislead and misrepresent it for decades. Invasions, aggressions and the polarization of the Hindus have been consistently depositing emotional insecurity and apathy on them. Their temples and spiritual places were toppled and distorted and they still remain symbols of barbaric aggression causing indelible wounds in their minds. Obviously there had been vigor and valor. But there had also been helplessness and the vacuum it created throughout the journey of independent India was unfathomable. Their resentment was silent, and their approach was conservative and they could easily be polarized in the name of caste, and they could not activate a profound momentum against the partiality they suffered. Leaders at the time of India’s independence, after slicing a radical Islamist region out of its landmass, conceived a new India, which was secular in nature and accommodated everybody including those who shamefacedly raised slogans for a particular state in the name of religion. Everybody had a space for survival in India. But Pakistan was the creation of animosity being hatched for years in the name of a religious belief and its intolerance geared up all through the dark days of freedom struggle slitting the veins of togetherness.
What remained unseen for years were the bruises of the Islamic invasion and the brutal partition of India and the horror it had on the majority. Vulnerability to the extent of distrusting a man at the neighborhood for his being the follower of a different religion was the worst. Ideologically convulsed and irritably intolerant were the beliefs of the conspirators. People representing such beliefs placed their religion beyond the glory of the nation and they strictly believed that their acrimonious behavior and if necessary, their death too, would justify their ‘holy’ stance - India’s division. Though the struggle for freedom was a common cause, there had been this exasperation which emanated from the conflict of identity. Ultimately leading to the vivisection of an inclusive nation that attracted prominent faiths from across the globe, India’s ruling regimes from the beginning of its independent journey failed to demonstrably help its major chunk of population witness justice.
Well before India’s independence, there had also been thoughts that began to sense urgency for a Hindu unity. The undercurrent of intolerance and distrust in the name of religion remained a reality and probably that was the reason which propelled a thought process for a new organization; an organization that would seek the unity of Hindus and would ultimately lead the country to its freedom. In 1925 an organization intended to organize the Hindu majority was established which later came to be known as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The formation of RSS had also been the result of the ruthless killing of innocent Hindus by a Muslim mob in the Malabar region of Kerala in 1921. Though banned multiple times, the Sangh enhanced its reach and power all over the country ever since the British left its soil. Growing to the level of forming governments in India, today its eminence, prominence and dominance became unquestionable.
In fact the temples and religious places which were plucked and pillaged during the external aggression remained incontestably painful among the majority while laws and lawmaking mechanisms of the country consistently strengthened the Muslim minority from all directions, unpardonably submissive to its collective vote bank. Multiple laws get enacted phenomenally over and over again just to satiate the Muslim interests while disparagement of the majority continued to be disregarded under the regimes led by the Congress for decades. Things began to change in 2014, when Narendra Modi, a present-day incarnation of the Hindutva political ecosystem gained accolades. Ever since, there have been distinct and extraordinary approaches from the regime’s side to strengthen the feelings of the majority. Since 2014, elections across the country have reverberated slogans signaling the unity of the Hindus, though the Prime Minister was visibly hesitant to go with the flow until recently. Election results to the Jammu-Kashmir assembly might have shaken his conviction. This time, in Maharashtra, Narendra Modi’s “Divided we fall” call had broken the long-standing precedent of a feeble coalition with BJP an underdog. The electorate of the state blessed his party with a commendable victory. The saffron camp’s concerns have been intense as Muslim unity has been visibly toppling electoral equations in various pockets.
There have also been attempts to revive the fallen spiritual structures including the Ayodhya through judicial processes. The recent attempts to revive Gyanvapi, Mathura Krishna temple and the controversy erupting from Sambhal began to gain prominence mainly due to the legal interventions of individuals and agencies outside the government and the ecosystem of RSS. There has been a confusion simmering so strong ever since Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief came all guns blazing against such movements. His point of warning to those on the forefront of this emancipation spree was to shed such demands of revival. He critiqued them for attempting to viciously break the amiability among religions by disruptively searching for buried debris of temples under mosques. He stretched his hands of friendship ideally by visiting mosques and conversing with Muslim clergymen. But his attempts seemed to have not gone well among the Sangh Parivar. This time his suggestion was to forget and forgive even though moments of horrors and bloodshed from the past are bound to haunt the majority. Quite unusually, Bhagwat’s statements brought bitter resentments among sages. Some of whom publicly reprimanded him for confusing people. Jagadguru Ramabhadracharya slammed the RSS Chief for his mandir-masjid remarks. As the year draws to a close, there seems to be an emotional wrestling match evolving between the Sangh and the sages. Does the BJP subscribe to the views of Mohan Bhagwat, or will it go ahead with its unity slogans “batoge to katoge” and “ek hai to safe hai”? Year 2025 is the centenary of the RSS. We need to wait until next year to know how the Sangh Parivar is going to perceive the blistering remarks of its chief.
—M.R.Lalu