Bharat is mega, poly, maxi and multi. Mini and mono have no use for us. It is unpardonable sin to destroy our pluralism and our accommodation of multiple faiths, deities, forms of worship, languages, scriptures, folklore and lifestyles. Secularism consists in making these irrelevant to matters of economy-like occupation, employment, empowerment. It also consists in making them irrelevant in issues related to Justice. It also consists in not appealing to these identities for votes. This is a priori of the much needed Common Civil Code.

If a society was ever faced with two equally evil choices it is India at present-looking in confused bewilderment at the muck the goons of the two ways of life-secular and Hindu- are dousing each other with!

Time was when Philosophy — interpretation of life and Ideology — science of transforming society were domains of the scholarly and the thoughtful, known for restraint and intellectual fortitude, Now the debate has been hijacked by brash unthinking political touts and cons who writhe in muck and keep slinging it at each other.

Congress, the oldest political party in the country, is, for a change, in an introspective mood. Sonia Gandhi expects, from her party men, gratitude for the party which not only sustained but earned them more than what they deserved. A rare fit of ensuring equal opportunity for all the party is ‘considering’ the one family one post norm, it is reported. Who had stopped Sonia and the Congress from doing this before, one might ask.

Similarly the Congress will have to analyse ruthlessly how it earned the epithets of pseudo-secular, dynasty driven, soft on corruption and tolerant of the corrupt while being in near absolute power in Delhi for four and a half decades out of seven decades of parliamentary democracy and lent credulity – to the BJP slogan ‘Congress mukt Bharat-Brashtachar mukt Bharat!’

Judging by the total separation of word and action in politics the Congress stands unrivalled-the BJP is catching up fast but still has a lot of ground to cover-it has got the reins of power only recently. Congress hailed democracy but encouraged dynasty. It talked ad nauseam of secularism but based vote arithmetic only on religion. Within the Hindu society Congress professed eradication of caste but relied heavily on it in practice. Congress professed free press but followed the practice of stifling the critical media through quota restrictions and neglect and harassment of free minded proprietors and editors. In centre state relations Congress talked of federalism but ensured centrism at the same time. The list can go on…

Sonia and Co have to free the Congress of this gangrene if they really want to put some vitality into this party whose vote share is still significantly large. The Congress is akin to a whale washed ashore by high tide, herculean efforts to take it to the deep waters are the need of the hour.

BJP stands in stark contrast — it is a hungry, hammerhead shark — creating turbulence, throwing everything into commotion and thriving on it. NaMo is one head of the hammer and seems permanent at the moment. The other head keeps changing Shah, the late Jaitly and the UP-Yogi since the last assembly polls. To counter the Congress propaganda this hammerhead rakes up communal issues with remarkable consistency; the Gyanvapi mosque is its new ploy.

It is a historical reality that lots of temples were attacked-defended; demolished-reconstructed-vandalised; some became mosques for some time and later restored to the temple status during the middle ages when two mutually allergic faiths collided in the then India. Those who ordained this belonged to different faiths but artisans must have come from both and theirs must have been a dharma in tune with their skills though at home they might have worshipped gods of their choice. So finding an admixture of Hindu/Islamic icons in old structures should not be proof of ownership and there is no need to stoke communal fire. But that is the precise politics of the BJP which consolidated through Ayodhya, wants to thrive on Varanasi and emerge supreme in Mathura. Remember the war cry — Yeh to pahali zaanki hai; Mathura, Kaashi baaki hai?

This is not Hindutva; not even pseudo Hindutva but political expediency in its most shameful form.

For one thing Hindu is not a word of Indian origin. It is not found in the ancient scriptures. It is not in the four sutras. It is not in the two epics. It is a derivative of Sindhu coined by outsiders who could not pronounce Sa. Their first derivative was Indus which in Devnagri became Hindu. In fact even in the medieval period the more popular usage was Hind and not Hindu.

The then uncountable multitudes to be named (those beyond) Indus were a multi-faith lot of different origins having their own mythologies and deities whom they worshipped in their own rituals. There never as one God, one Holy Book, one Holy Language and one divinely ordained Code of Conduct. They survived, despite occasional clashes on mutual non-interference in matters of faith and worship and thrived and prospered through interdependence in economy. Castes emerged according to vocations adding to the complexity of the socio-cultural milieu. They too never called themselves Hindu. This was the story for the first thousand years of a d.

हेही वाचा : स्वप्न नको, सत्य पाहूया - विनय हर्डीकर

The second millennium is marked by invasions. The Islamic invaders looked upon India as a land of their dreams. They did not disturb the economy but attacked the faith/s. The Christian (sic European) invaders, barring a few exceptions, attacked the economy and left faith alone. In short during the last thousand years India suffered both in matters of faith and economy.

Bewildered at this embarrassing history of a thousand years on back foot in affairs of both God and Caesar the more thoughtful amongst ‘Hindu’s came out with a near impossible solution — unite these poly–God-language-worship multitudes into a religious homogeneity like the Christians and Muslims — to be called Hindu from then on. The once foreign word Hindu thus became a matter of identity only after the 1857 clash between the local and colonial rulers. Savarkar wrote its history in his treatise (?) ‘Hindutva’and later founded the Hindu Maha Sabha-a political party. In between RSS was launched for ‘Hindu tan-man; Hindu Jeevan’ without any philosophical-historical tenability to the term Hindu.

A classic case of falsehood parading as truth after consistent Goebbelsian method of incessant repetition!

BJP’s Hindutva is pseudo because it does not stand historical scrutiny. Daniel Defoe, the creator of Robinson Crusoe, chided the then popular cry of ‘the True-Born Englishman’ as ‘a Contradiction of Terms; a Fact in Fiction’! Same goes for BJP’s Hindutva.

Bharat is mega, poly, maxi and multi. Mini and mono have no use for us. It is unpardonable sin to destroy our pluralism and our accommodation of multiple faiths, deities, forms of worship, languages, scriptures, folklore and lifestyles. Secularism consists in making these irrelevant to matters of economy-like occupation, employment, empowerment. It also consists in making them irrelevant in issues related to Justice. It also consists in not appealing to these identities for votes. This is a priori of the much needed Common Civil Code.

This task will not be easy but it will only get more difficult if we postpone it. Leave aside Hindutva, it is neither civilized nor wise to appease the majority by continued humiliation of almost one fifth of the population. It is also unpardonable to use calls of national unity without addressing the economic disparities through employment generation. It is another sin to create vote banks of the poor through state charity and not creation of opportunities of living with dignity. Unfortunately both BJP and Congress are guilty of this.

While ideation for this piece was on I stumbled upon an article in ToI suggesting that Hindu should be proclaimed Bharat’s official religion as a step towards secularization of the country. While I agree that willy-nilly the (so called) Hindus nurse a grievance which the BJP has encashed over the last four decades I fear that the positive and negative hysteria this would create on both sides (sides which we want to obliterate) would be an instance of remedy worse than the malady.

A proverb in Marathi goes—‘Maakadaalaa Chadhali Bhaang’ ; do we wish the Monkey (Hanuman?) to get high on bhang ?

- Vinay Hardikar
vinay.freedom@gmail.com

(The writer has been working in the public sphere of Maharashtra for the last five decades. His versatile personality has several dimensions, but the primary ones remain to be that of an established writer, journalist, editor, critic, activist, and teacher.)

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