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The RSS has faced an extremely hostile opposition from the days of its inception. As the years have gone by, and as the RSS has made inroads into the Indian psyche and Indian life both through its social work as well as its ideological adumbration of Hindutva, the demonization of the “parivar” has become more predictable and more organized. The explanation and descriptions in the media of the Godhra massacre, and the events following the massacre have therefore been predictable, even lamentably so. Lamentable because they fail to break the cycle of blame and counter-blame, and because they push the “parivar” into a corner from where its leaders have sought to equivocate on the nature of natural responses of aggrieved Hindus.
Kenneth Burke (1937-1961, Attitudes Towards History) explores the implications of being driven into a corner. First, “being driven into a corner” results from what Burke terms “dialectical pressure”, the tendency during conflict for the positions of adversaries to migrate to their polar extremes. Such migration reflects the effort of an adversary to re-cast a position in the most absolute or “final” terms possible and then to attack it as absolute, irrational or untenable. From the very beginning, and especially after independence, academics and the media in India have characterized the RSS as fascist, Nazi-like, and fundamentalist. Such characterization, incessantly and deliberately purveyed, has then been used to stifle debate about the RSS, Hindu nationalism, and the nature of Hindu-Muslim conflict.
Defenders of the original position may succumb to this pressure and supply defenses of the more extreme or pure position, not always perceiving that the “stronger” position or statement they are led to defend is actually more vulnerable to attack and less likely to be convincing. The more the academics and the media have characterized the RSS as anti-Muslim or nationalist or harking back to a mythical past, the more therefore the RSS was forced to defend its position, which initially was not as narrow or predictable. For example, the use of garish and loud symbols of Hinduism during Advani's rath yatra and before the demolition of Babri masjid, could be attributed to this dialectic pressure. The more the RSS has been characterized as fundamentalist and extremist, the more it is called upon to defend a position, which really wasn't its own originally. Remember that Hedgewar explicitly rejected the harder, harsher Hindu Mahasabha position on Hindu-Muslim relations and the nature of the Indian nation. While Hedgewar carried a figurine of Hanuman with him always, Golwalkar did not believe in proclaiming his Hinduness, and simply said that the RSS had adopted the Bhagwa Dhwaj as its symbol -- a symbol that crossed “all superficial barriers of province, sect, creed, caste, language and custom.” But now, the RSS is forced to claim Rama as the God who unifies Hindus, because of the drumbeat of opposition to the construction of the temple in Ayodhya, and because the Muslims and the Left/Marxist combines have caricatured Rama as an ahistorical, mythological figure.
Once characterized in extreme terms, the party so accused may also partake of the dialectical pressure itself, performing a similar maneuver with the position of the other advocate. Thus the predictable use of the terms “Marxist”, “pseudo-secular”, “Leftists” (or as Varsha Bhosle prefers to call them, “pinkos”) that are applied by the BJP and RSS leaders and their defenders to characterize the Congress Party, JNU academics, or the editors of The Times of India. The effect is dialectical in the sense that pressure exerted on one position produces an equal and opposite pressure on the other. The pressure so exerted clears a battleground or arena between two adversaries who move into corners or fortifications they did not occupy when the dispute started.
While the corner is a refuge, in the sense that it may attract others similarly committed, and does not admit ambivalence or doubt, it is a corner nonetheless since it offers little floor space and no outlet. Cornered beings lose their interest in escape and instead fight to defend or protect the corner, sacrifice being preferable to surrender. That we should find ourselves “at home” in corners we get driven into is a most distressing paradox generated by dialectical pressure. So, to put this in the context of the BJP and the RSS, and the way their opponents have driven them into a corner, does it not make clear how and why the RSS and BJP leaders and many of their supporters have taken positions on issues and events that may sound “extreme”? Would they have had to resort to such rhetoric and such actions if they had not been pushed into a political and ideological corner in the first place?
“Being driven into a corner” is particularly problematic when the dispute pits an orthodoxy against a deviant or emergent position. In independent India, the Congress Party with Nehru at the helm, and the left-leaning academics at JNU have represented the “correct” and therefore the orthodox position on Indian history and pre-history, Indian secularism, Hindu-Muslim relations, and the role of the state in protecting minorities. Although the dialectical pressure drives both groups into corners, the orthodoxy, in Burke's terms, “owns all the recognized avenues of approach.” They can dictate or control the common ground as well as set the ground rules for exchange. To gain hearing and support, dissenters must “steal the insignia of the orthodox,” commandeering strategies intended to further isolate them. Only by such theft and stealth can the outcast group reclaim status or prerogatives as members of the more inclusive community. Therefore the BJP's efforts to be like the Congress Party, and the RSS' efforts to garner support from academics and the intelligentsia can be seen as attempts to gain acceptance in the larger and more inclusive world.
This effort by the cornered group to “build its character by using the prayers of the orthodox” may well be met by a countermove of the orthodoxy designed to drive “infidels” into corners previously occupied by other outlaws. Burke gives the example of an adversary condemning a statement because it resembles statements made by Nazis. This strategy works by re-defining the corner in much more sinister terms and denying to its residents any claim they might make to the open space beyond it. We have heard the almost incessant use of the terms “Nazi”, “fundamentalist” and “fascist” to describe the RSS, and now we have the media describing Hindu retaliation in Gujarat as a pogrom against Muslims being carried out by forces who are “theocratic fascists.”
We can easily identify metaphors associated with the Nazi Party that occur in discussions on BJP policies or VHP action. Scanning the pages of Indian newspapers these past four months, and reading the characterization of the Hindu retaliation against Muslims in Gujarat should not only leave any doubt in the minds of readers of the “vileness” of the VHP “conspiracy” but that the only way to resolve the problem would be to ban the VHP as a “terrorist” group. Pushed from the Nazi and fundamentalist corner to the terrorist den, the VHP can now only face one fate: banishment. And it is only a ban on the VHP that will satisfy the orthodoxy which has chafed at the BJP trying to wriggle into the center.
That is why the rash of commissions of inquiries, of op-ed pieces in The Boston Globe and the Houston Chronicle, of rants by the Angana Chatterjis and the Vijay Prashads. Prashad writes in his latest diatribe published on Znet (http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2002-07/14prashad.cfm), “This long-distance theocratic fascism was part of the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya in 1992, the anti-Christian riots in Gujarat a few years ago, and now, certainly, in the state-engineered pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat where at least two thousand people died. (...) It was not only 'Indian Hindus' who financed the pogrom, but also many suburban whites who uncritically join temples and other such organizations. They give the Hindutva Right money certainly, but also the much needed legitimacy of white followers in the movement.” This shows the ratcheting up of the pressure on the RSS and its supporters in the U.S. It is no longer effective to just blame the RSS for being Hindu fundamentalist, but it should now be hounded as the perpetrator of “pogroms” and, more importantly, those who send any money to the RSS or its affiliates for the variety of social upliftment programs that they undertake become automatically suspect. These include those who build Hindu temples in the U.S., those who visit those temples, and those who subscribe to the magazine Hinduism Today!
Prashad's target in his latest diatribe is my good friend, David Frawley, and one of the magazines I subscribe to. He proclaims, “Frawley is affiliated with various theocratic fascist (italics mine) organizations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Hindu Students Council (HSC) and the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) -- all three arms of the global Hindutva movement whose teeth were bared in Gujarat recently. In 1996, Frawley traveled across England as an honored guest of the VHP. From Arise Arjuna (1995) to Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations (2001), Frawley offers a Huntingtonian analysis of the clash between Islam (bad) and Christianity (almost good), with Hinduism being the necessary ally of the good. The anti- Muslim tenor of his books is also evident in his works on ancient India (such as Gods, Sages and Kings, 1991) where Frawley joins a series of theocratic fascists to argue that Vedic India was bliss and that everything since then has been a disaster.” For those who have not read Frawley, and who have some suspicions about Hinduism, such descriptions then lead them into one corner from where they will lash out. This is not mere theoretical speculation because recently a friend posted an email response from a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, who wrote, “David Frawley and Subhash Kak are Hindu fundamentalist academic poseurs who write supposedly 'scholarly' articles and books designed to enrage and mobilize Hindus into defining Indian minority members as outsiders, others, in need of conversion or expulsion -- or worse. Their tracts also offer the fodder for those wanting to re-write Indian history along similar lines.”
And as could have been expected, Ms. Farmer then cried foul because an anonymous email threatened her with some dire consequences. So, we now have a person responding from another corner, who would not have been in that corner and lashing out if not for what I described earlier as a dialectical effect, “… pressure exerted on one position produces an equal and opposite pressure on the other.”
Prashad does not stop at castigating my good friend; he decides to take on the honorable Satuguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami and Satguru Bodhinatha Velanswami. He says, “Founders of the magazine Hinduism Today and of the ashram in Hawaii that houses the Hindu Heritage Endowment (HHE), these two swamis (Satguru or Gurudev has since died) have very close ties to the VHP. Their materials regularly quote approvingly from VHP documents and the money raised by the HHE goes toward Hindutva activities.” Again, those who have not read Hinduism Today may believe whatever Prashad peddles and take public positions on it without confirming for themselves if what Prashad claims is true. Taking the position from the other corner, I will call a Stalinist propagandist. Of course, I may not be wrong in asserting that because the latest issue of Hinduism Today warns of reactive anger, and carries a commentary by Arun Gandhi, Gandhiji's grandson, extremely critical of the VHP!
Finally, “being driven into a corner”
is problematic, nay even tragic, in the sense that it names a state to
which we are subjected, a condition that reduces our choices or imperatives
as agents. The impetus comes from an abstract but insistent force that
operates upon us much as gravity does. Recognizing its influence, naming
its dangers, does not alter its operation. “Being driven into a corner”
would thus seem to be one of those inevitable consequences of human symbol
use. It is these elements of “being driven into a corner” -- its origins
in dialectical pressure, the advantage held by orthodoxy over the “deviant”
or emergent forces, and the downhill momentum it gains that should guide
us in breaking the cycle of blame and counter-blame, and in seeking a lasting
solution to the very grave problem of communalism in India. The pessimist
in me, however, does not see that time emerging anytime soon.
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