Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: December 11, 2007
One of the most compelling yet overlooked
themes of Hindu civilisation 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 Ravan, or defeating the
gods to rule over the three worlds like Vali. The rule of dharma is restored
only after much violence and bloodletting, 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 15th 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 civilisational base
of Indian nationhood firmly at the centre of the political agenda. The re-Hinduisation
of the polity is now a civilisational 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 has studiously avoided playing
the Muslim card in the current election, and left the issue of minority interests
to be handled indirectly by Congress-friendly media, Mr 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 civilisational 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 civilisational 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 civilisation
(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 civilisation. 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 its 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 civilisational legacy
that External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee 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 civilisational framework within which the myriad faiths and ways
of life can mutually adjust themselves. Any legitimate outcome must recognise
the primacy of Hindu civilisation 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 civilisational renewal and supremacy over the destructive
legacy of Lord Macaulay. Muslims may find a common cause here.
