From Ayodhya to Indraprastha
| Dr Koenraad Elst was born in Leuven, Belgium into a Flemish Catholic family. He graduated in Philosophy, Chinese Studies and Indo-Iranian Studies at Leuven. During a stay at the Benares Hindu University, he discovered India’s communal problem and wrote his first book about the budding Ayodhya conflict. |
While thinkers create a new intellectual climate in post-Nehruvian India, the task of political parties like the BJP, is to listen. And then, it is their own business to frame policies that are realistically in tune with this new thinking. Politics is an autonomous sphere, and its personnel is free to take or not take its inspiration from a line of thought which intellectuals have developed. However, in fact it has no choice but to be determined by the dominant ideological climate.
Conversely, the thought that gives form to the aspirations of Hindu society, is not tied to any political party. Not so long ago, a BJP leader said : “We will not allow Congress to play the Hindu card”. But from a Hindu viewpoint, it is just as well if Congress or any other party amends Article 30 or reintegrates Kashmir with India. Party workers may identify strongly with the success of their organization, but after all it is merely an instrument for realizing a programme beneficial to Hindu society. Once a convincing thought current has been created, all kinds of people and parties will tap into it, and that is precisely the sign of its success.
Parties cannot keep ideas to themselves, but they may profit from being the most consistent in advocating and applying them.
Till recently, most parties pledged their allegiance to some form of socialist ideology was visible from the very fact that different parties declared their intention of being instruments of socialism. Even the BJP in 1984 opted for some hazy thing called Gandhian socialism. This was yet another proof of how the Hindutva movement behaved like a mercenary looking for an employer, i.e. an ideology, because it was ignorant or ashamed of its own ideological roots. They had to borrow the socialists’ platform and slogans. The decline and fall of socialism is a good occasion to drop all this second-hand nonsense and develop a modern Hindu programme
In the short term, Hindu politicians would do well to concentrate on non-controversial issues like the abolition of the discrimination against the majority religion in State control over temples and, most of all, educational institutes (Article 30). This demand is perfectly unobjectionable.
Anyone who objects to it, exposes himself as a supporter of religion-based discrimination in secular affairs, i.e. as a communalist. This issue, while of no concern to the minorities, is at the same time a top priority for Hindu society.
By contrast, issues which affect the other communities but not Hindu society itself, should be relegated to second rank. This debate about the Common Civil Code, or in effective terms, the abolition of the separate Muslim Personal Law, is not immediately important for Hindu tradition (which should however not be totally identified with its old forms) to leave these matters to the community rather than to regulate it centrally and uniformly. Of course, it is not consistent with the generally Western-style Constitution which India has adopted in1950 (largely based on the colonial Government of India Act of 1935). But then, if even West-oriented secularists have not cared to implement the Constitutional injunction to enact a Common Civil Code, Hindus should not feel compelled to hurry when it is more expedient to settle other matters first.
When Westerners hear about this political Hinduism, this Hindu Rashtra movement, they wonder what colourful ideas might be involved. But it is not all that exotic. A political party that champions Hindu Rashtra and comes to power, what is it going to do ? Change the Flag or the Anthem ? Rename India’s capital Indraprastha or move it to Ujjain, the historical capital of Vikramaditya ? Those are the kind of things which many anti-colonial movements have done upon coming to power, but they are merely symbolic. After that, the day-to-day business of Government starts.
A lot of the Government decisions will be of the same kind as those taken by non-Hindu Governments in similar circumstances. It will have to balance the budget, privatize inefficient State enterprises, encourage education, ensure social justice, fight crime and corruption both at the symptom and the root cause level, and all these other mundane things.
The Hindu Rashtra will simply be a modern state, a democratic federal state, with political and religious pluralism, a free press, a free market economy with social security checks, all these common-sense things will be in common with most free countries.
It may promote Sanskrit, Yoga, traditional music and dancing, all these colourful things, but in politics it will not be all that exotic.
But then, concentrating on these normal common-sense policies, after the first assertions of post-colonial restoration of the national Hindu culture are completed, already constitutes a substantial change of policy away from the Nehruvian pattern.
In fact, in the short term its most valuable contribution to the Indian polity will not be the introduction of new concepts and policies, but the scrapping of vast amounts of nonsense that the Nehruvian dispensation continued to indulge in.
Take this National Integration Council and this Minorities Commission. In all the growth-up countries of the world, subnational communities look after themselves without weighing on the polity. But in India, Hindus and their State are told that they should instill confidence in the minorities. And they should foster the emotional integration of the country by banning everything that might hurt the feelings of the minorities, including the historical truth. As if Hindus owe the minorities anything. They give them full religious freedom, which is what they would get in most democratic countries, and which is all they would get. For the rest, a secular State does not recognize anything like minority communities, but treats all citizens as equal individuals. Cutting out the Marxist and Minorityist nonsense will already be an invaluable service to India’s integrity, progress and prosperity.
A party which champions traditional values embedded in a broad religious tradition, is not perforce a fundamentalist and theocratic party.
The Christian Democratic parties in Europe have played an important stabilizing role as centrist and integrationist forces. They have championed cultural and human values against the materialist accent in the socialist and liberal party programmes. And they have championed the harmony model against the class struggle model : A similar stand is very much the need of the hour in Indian politics.
It is correct that Hindu society faces more problems than just Minorityism. In fact, the secularists are right in considering the Minorityism problem a bit over-publicized and exaggerated : A few Amendments to the Constitution and dropping a few bad habits in day-to-day politicking will do to end this Minoritysm. Then, India will be just a secular Democracy like any other. A few decisions on symbolic issues will do to make it a Hindu Democracy. I agree that these things, few in number, are easier said than done. But in the whole volume of political issues, it is clear that a political party will have more on its mind than Hindu Rashtra.
So, that is where the culture movement for real decolonization and real self-determination of Hindu society parts company with the political parties who champion Hindu causes and try to please the Hindu vote bank. Politics is an autonomous sphere in society, and it is but natural for advocates of Hindu culture to respect it as such. It is quite alright that politicians have other things to do apart from the explicitly Hindu issues.
It is but normal and healthy to have other things to do apart from affirming your identity. It was the Soviet Union that wasted tonnes of paper and deplorably long stretches of time in appending eulogies of Socialism to every book or speech on any and every topic. It is in the Islamic Republics that this strains are put on the economy by fantastic demands for Islamic economy. For Hindu politicians, it is quite alright to go beyond identify and to get down to non-ideological business. It is only in its general spirit that economy and other mundane matters can have a Hindu character. Apart from that, things are just what they are.
If the BJP could be very wavering in its Hindu convictions when the secularists were on the offensive, you can be sure that Congress will be very wavering in its secularist convictions once Hinduism becomes respected.
It is quite a mistake to think that these mass movements and political parties are the leaders of the Hindu awakening. Their resolutions and programmes are but the visible shapes brought about by the lines of force of the prevalent thought configuration, like iron filings giving expression to the weightless and invisible magnetic field. The so-called leaders will easily fall in line and gladly make themselves instruments of a Hindu future, once their attachment to outdated doctrines is removed by the thought currents of Sanatan Dharma.
(Courtesy : Excerpts from the Book ‘Ayodhya and After’ published in 1991; and an article on VoiceOfDharma.org/books/ayodhya/ch15.htm)
| Politics is an autonomous sphere in society, and it is but natural for advocates of Hindu culture to respect it as such ! |