HVK Archives: Marx & Ram: Hindutva redefined
Marx & Ram: Hindutva redefined - Indian Express
Anil Nair
()
6 June 1996
Title : Marx & Ram: Hindutva redefined
Author : Anil Nair
Publication : Indian Express
Date : June 6, 1996
WHILE the nation's chattering classes would very much
like to quarantine the BJP, there is within the BJP a
chattering class which wants to do the same to the VHP.
This section has developed a convenient amnesia about the
fact that it was the strategic Ram Janmabhoomi movement
that catapulted the BJP from two Lok Sabha seats in 1984
to almost two hundred now.
Ironically, as the fall of the Vajpayee Government seemed
imminent, they started talking, albeit in whispers,of
mass mobilisation and aggressive campaigns.
That, however, should be of little consolation to the
VHP, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, the Bajrang Dal or sundry
individuals who form the radical core of the sangh
parivar. They have belatedly realised that it is they
themselves who are to blame for the BJP's obsession with
power.
Hindutva's present impasse - missing the wood for the
trees - is basically because its proponents have failed
to marshall the necessary intellectual resources to
legitimise its indispensability and thereby evolve an
enduring vision. The frequent showcasing of suave
personalities and slicker schemes betray an apologetic
stance arising from the defensive they have been pushed
into by the insinuation that Hindutva is atavistic and a
trader class phenomenon.
It is doubtful if Hindutva's ideologues are really
cognisant of the radical political break they inaugurated
with the 1989-92 phase of the Ram movement. It was an
attempt to define lndian mainstream polities in terms of
an Other. This has two dimensions: vertical and
horizontal.
The former means demonising, or structuring oneself by
constituting an enemy, an evil outside oneself. The
horizontal dimension means, for the principally upper
caste leadership, in the context of the designated evil
being Muslims and pseudo-secularists - and here was the
break truly radical - to descend into the lived world of
lower castes and subaltem strata. It is tantamount to
brahminical practice ofaccessing forbidden forces, taboo
realms.
The Sangh leadership, after protracted stasis, had
finally brilliantly intuited the fundamental thesis of
Hindu elites down the ages. It postulates that while
human evolution means refinement, culture and material
progress it also means a simultaneous distancing from
natural impulses, from the physical and the material,
which before long leads to entropy. It makes culture
alienated from the basics, makes it ethereal, as it were.
To rejuvenate itself, culture must periodically embrace
what lies at the base.
The Ram movement was a witness to history from below. It
was paradigmatic as a genuine political expression of the
collective Hindu unconscious. Why have there been no more
movements of the kind? The popular perception is that
the Hindutva leadership has pulled back fearing the
forces it has unleashed. This assumption hides more than
it reveals. For,one thing, it is an idle superstition
dressed up as historical lesson that mass movements can
overwhelm resolute leadership.
This the Hindutva leadership too knows very well. What
it is more worried about is that were it to exercise firm
control it would be seen to be plainly reactionary.
It should clearly outgrow this for it is a residue of
marxist ideological influence which it fights so
bitterly in the political sphere. The idea of an elite
and,implied in it, of hierarchy, is intrinsic to
Hinduism.
The Ram movement has shown the potential of calibrated
control. The violence it led to was tragic but perhaps
unavoidable given that there were deep historical
grievances at stake. The next mobilisation of Hindutva
needn't be for Mathura or Varanasi.
The Hindutva leadership should for a start, seek the sort
of critical interface Thomas Mann had in mind when he
said that "Marx should read Holderlin." This was never a
derisive remark. What Mann meant was that there were
themes in Marx that Holderlin shared.
The same applies to Hindutva vis-a-vis neo-marxism. The
latter, which Adorno defined as "a seismographic reaction
to the experience of failing revolutions", proffers
insights which Hindutva should consider a windfall.
The principal insight is already incipient in Hindutva:
the need to free history from deodorised versions and
falsehoods which suppress the real scars, violence, pain
and hopes that inform life at the level of the'lived'.
Promiscuity with post-modernism will lend Hindutya the
necessary self-confidence to deepen this process.
Back
Top
|
