Reclaiming history and destroying a nation

India is a country of divisions. It is said that Winston Churchill believed independent India would not remain a cohesive unit for long. Others thought so too, believing that British rule held India together, and that fissiparous tendencies and mutual incompatibilities would tear the country apart. When Churchill died in 1965, India was still one nation and a functioning democracy, albeit one struggling with poverty and the need to provide social justice to the broad masses. Today, in the 21st century, India still is a democracy struggling with the issues of poverty and social justice. But something more dangerous has been added to the mix. Notions of civilizational supremacy and Hindu fascism have made their way into the mainstream of the political process and even into the corridors of political power. Pronouncements by judges prove that the secular ethos of the country has been severely compromised. These strands were always there in post-independence India. But their recent successes in gaining a stranglehold on the power structure of the country is a new reality that any serious analysis of India needs to contend with.

The notion of reclaiming the Hindu glory of the past is a passion for many in India. I am a skeptic when it comes to these ideas. For one, they are anachronistic. Also, in the public arena, they do smack of fascism. And also, they completely miss the multi-religious nature of the country. There are those in India who would have you believe that all of India’s ills are due to the non-authentic character of its political system. These people would also have you believe that all of India’s economic failures and its social evils will vanish when what is called Ram Rajya is established in India. Ram, who is an incarnation of God Vishnu according to Hindu belief, is held as the paragon of virtue. Ram Rajya, or the Kingdom of Ram, is the land of lost content for the Hindus. It is a mythical utopia where morality is uppermost and where everything proceeds from this adherence to morality. A little bit like the Biblical notion of a “ shining city on the hill “ that Ronald Reagan invoked in the US. Hindu fascists would have you believe that this moral kingdom is the pre-requisite for all positive transformation. It is a dangerous idea in a country with massive poverty and with built-in social injustice. It indirectly implies that the law and the constitution, by themselves, are incapable of upholding social morality to a reasonable extent. This group would have you believe that a society that proceeds from Ram-like morality, based on atavistic notions of purity and rigid rules of social behavior, is the one that will ensure the future success of India in every field. There are those who want to harness these archaic impulses to gain political power. They also happen to be what the media calls the Hindu nationalists. As opposed to the secular nationalists in the secular parties. Hindu nationalists, who swear by the notions of Hindu purity mentioned above, are not that different from the other political outfits though when it comes to things like corruption or the nexus between crime and politics. But they are the ones who constantly shout about purity and morality in India.

Experience and analysis both show that this constant hankering for the moral kingdom actually undermines the quest for social justice and economic justice in serious ways. For example, the right-wing Hindu nationalist parties are often at odds with lower caste parties during elections and in the parliament. Also, while Ram is held as the paragon of virtue, the notion of the ideal woman as enshrined in the mythologies surrounding Ram is a misogynist one by modern standards. For one, an ideal woman in a Ram Rajya would be expected to maintain high standards of sexual purity and chastity. Whatever your personal views about this may be, it does not jell with modern notions of separation between religion and state. If the woman obediently adheres to these values, Ram-morality will elevate her to a divine status. Everything has a cost associated with it. To obtain this high position of respect within the ambits of Ram-morality, the woman has to be subservient to man in many ways. She must behave according to old Hindu norms where the husband is the equivalent of God. Finding a good basis of morality is a tricky philosophical question, and I am not trying to argue that this way of thinking cannot lead to the best society possible, but the fact is that in practice, this kind of thinking leads to exploitation of women in India. So, till the Ram-moralists lay out a clear plan as to how everybody’s happiness will be enhanced by following their archaic prescriptions, skepticism towards these notions is the right attitude.

And one of the pre-requisites for attaining this moral kingdom is the dilution or elimination of notions that are foreign in nature. For example, systems dating back to the Muslim rule in India, or systems stemming from the British rule in India or more recent trends due to the spread of American culture are things that are often anathema for this group. Somehow, they think that they can work towards these aims while simultaneously working towards geopolitical alliances with the West. Using selective amnesia, killing of Indian Christians by Hindu groups can co-exist with the courting of the West in areas of economic co-operation and strategic alliances. Calling America a “ natural ally “ and working towards an internal state of ideological purity that leads to violent confrontations with Christians are two seemingly incompatible things that these groups pursue, and also carry off with some reasonable success. Also, people celebrating Valentine’s Day in India have recently attracted the opprobrium of this group. Much tough love rhetoric issues from the mouths of Hindu groups about the undesirability of having Western notions of love pollute the old Hindu innocence.

But much more serious than the killing of Christians is the desire of these groups to eliminate some of the vestiges of Muslim rule. For example, old mosques built by Muslim rulers that may have had Hindu temples prior to the construction of the mosques become targets of political and physical attacks by these groups. Apart from provoking riots across the country, these campaigns aimed at “ reversing history “ divert attention away from the more serious tasks of nation-building in the areas of poverty reduction and other economic matters. The Hindu nationalist politicians proceed under the assumption that scientists and engineers will build the country’s missiles, and solve the “ trivial “ problems of satisfying economic want. And the politicians can go about their merry business of policing morality and enforcing morality according to some archaic norms. Both aspects of this line of thinking are terribly dangerous. One, that something beyond good constitutional ethic and good law enforcement is required for social morality. And that the economic problem is trivial compared to the morality problem. It is a line of thinking that has led to some serious problems for the nation. In the field of social morality, it has led to willful flouting of the nation’s laws, attacks on its secular fabric and a justification of mafia-like activities in the name of national purity. As for the economy, the negative impacts are both short-term and long-term in nature. Past cultural glory is no guarantee of present or future economic success. And harping too much on the halcyon days of the past is a recipe for compromising the nation’s scientific and economic achievements. Mindset is everything when it comes to science and the economy. It is an empirical reality that in the economic and scientific challenges that Mother Nature confronts man with, she does not care so much about national boundaries or even about supposedly high moral standards. A nation that does not realize this may well be consigned to historical irrelevance.