The recent agenda of left-liberal-secular ecosystem is to mention frequently the word(s) ‘Hindutva Taliban.’ This is a classic manoeuvre of repeating a lie a thousand times to put any opposition into a defence, a known strategy for leftists since their inception. Creating new words for their own agenda is a great game for them. Fortunately, the pure Left did not succeed politically in our country but their language or parlance has hugely entered into the minds of academia, media, and bureaucracy. Of course, the most famous example of this parlance is the appropriation of the word ‘Left’ to themselves and making any opposition to them as ‘Right’-and hence bad. There is however no deciding body or any general consensus view on what does ‘center’ mean and how is it defined!
Hindutva Taliban is a contradiction in terms and it is simply a profound ignorance of both. At a fundamental level, there are no religions in India but traditions. Taliban is based strictly on a religious ideology with clear cut strategy to deal with others. It is an attacking strategy with guns in hand which has no sympathy for non believers. This was the same strategy of any conqueror who used religion to justify their practices. The fundamental and fanatical Christians did it when they destroyed the Greco-Roman civilisation ( The Darkening Age by Catherine Nixey) and the hard Islam has been doing the same since it originated. Dividing the world into believers and non-believers is the fundamental motivational drive of religions.
The Christian world moderated itself by the impact of Enlightenment values and the general questioning of society against its tenets. Christian belief is now mostly a personal pursuit and does not involve (excepting the hard core proselytisers) the non-believers. The Christian world at a society level is tolerant of many a criticism against Christ, the Church, and it’s doctrines by their own people and from others too. The Church or the society hardly persecutes such criticism and remains largely unbothered. Try that in a Muslim world or even a non Muslim world. Ask Salman Rushdie. Such moderation is yet to come in the Muslim world. The Muslim intellectual is scared to speak out against the clergy and the troublesome verses in the Book which worry a non- Muslim. Most often they will try to support the radical elements or give justifications to the passages in the holy Book. They rarely condemn their own troublemakers in public but do turn to convince the non- Muslims on the benign nature of their religion and how they have been misunderstood.
The political parties, academic institutes, media, and the intellectuals of post-independence India made a mistake of associating the past Islamic rulers with the present day Muslims. This is a gross injustice to both Hindus and Muslims of today as , in that exercise, they whitewashed all the past Islamic brutalities. Not only that, they reduced Hindu history and achievements to footnotes. The relearning of history later elicits different responses. The Hindu seethes in anger; the Muslim gets protective and almost goes into a denial mode. The stances arising from guilt from association makes both Hindus and Muslims rigid. The Hindus end up unfairly blaming the present day Muslims for the past atrocities and Muslims intellectuals go into a protective mode in defending the indefensible. The bridge forever remains under construction.
The Christian response is different as, true to their modification by Indian traditions, they have almost become like another tradition. The evangelists and the Islamic clergy fights against this merging into the mainstream, only the latter have been more successful. Yet, if we follow this path of traditionalising our religions, we can gradually attain harmony and remain in a plural society with mutual give and take. This is happening all the time but we need to focus more on this. Traditions imply multiple paths, multiple ideas towards some proposed common goals. At the basic level, traditions hold an indifference to differences. This civilizational philosophy is the definition of India or Bharat . That is why Pakistan became an Islamic state and we could not call ourselves a Hindu state. That would be against the core idea of a traditional culture.
Hindutva is a dynamic of protection and response. If you call Hinduism a religion then Hindutva is simply a kinetic force protecting the religion. If Hinduism is Sanatana Dharma, Hindutva is protecting Dharma as defined by Krishna Neeti. Doing the ‘expected’ Ahimsa of Gandhi would only be civilisational suicide. Whether it was the cultural Hindutva of Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj fighting the colonial-missionary discourses against Hindus, idols, caste, and the wily Brahmins responsible for every conceivable social evil ; whether it was the religious Hindutva of Savarkar and other stalwarts fighting against the extreme appeasement policies of the Congress and Gandhi in the wake of Khilafat agitation and the general perception of the extra territorial loyalties of Muslims for the sake of a greater ‘brotherhood’; or whether it was the political Hindutva arising from the appeasement policies of post- independent Congress acting against Hindus (Temple control issue, Shah Bano case, the issue of Uniform Civil Code, MF Hussain paintings) the whole Hindutva movement is that of protection and defence.
The unruly elements have to be condemned in no uncertain terms. For those who are not aware, Savarkar himself was critical of Hindus in their aggressive cow protection activities. But the worst become representative of the entire movement with a long history in a method perfected by the left liberals. Hate speeches, lynchings, and incidences where Hindus are targets are also too numerous to be counted but listing them as counter arguments would reduce the debate to a simple name calling. The tit for tat replies would only burn more and heal less. We need to look at the larger perspective and ask why is everyone angry?
Indian culture has produced an extraordinary and tremendous amount of knowledge by reflecting on their own experiences; about 30 million indigenous texts in Sanskrit and vernacular languages exist today (not translated from any foreign language) which shows Indian knowledge production of ancient times covering every conceivable field from astronomy to mathematics to brick technology to metallurgy to ship building to dye production to temple architecture to city planning apart from the huge treatises on various philosophies or darshanas. It covers both secular and religious topics of a mind boggling variety. This capacity to produce independent knowledge collapsed about 1000 years ago. The Islamic rule; the Colonial rule; and the Marxist influenced academic and political rule after independence in succession stopped this knowledge creation and we only became defenders of our culture, traditions, and scriptures. This defence has never taken and will never take the form of unprovoked attacks. In this way, equating Hindutva with Taliban is profound ignorance arising only from biases, assumptions, and a poor reading of Indian history.
Taking the worst incidents of some specific ‘Hindutva’ elements and associating the whole combine of BJP-RSS-Sangh Parivar with the Taliban (totally incongruous in the modern world) is objectionable. We should all fight this toxic narrative. Hindutva is finally Dharma Raksha meant for protection; Taliban at its best is fear and violence . Some Hindutva may be bad and some Taliban may be good (like holding press conferences). But to use the worst of one against the best of another and revel in the word Hindutva Taliban is an insult to all Indians who are truly concerned about social and mental welfare of Hindus.
India belongs to all and a Gujarati speaking Muslim in Ahmedabad, a Tulu speaking Christian in Mangalore, and a Bengali speaking Hindu in Kolkata belong to the same land of India. India is much more than the sum of its whole. Though the driving philosophy is Hindu, the traditional thinking simply allows people to live and let live. Democracy is its inherent nature. Let us all be proud of the country and of each other without the need to wear one’s patriotism on the sleeve. Let each one feel safe without having to prove one’s patriotism on a constant basis. Sanatana Dharma is only about inclusion and love. At a fundamental level, though the word Hindutva may be an construct and may be uncomfortable to some, it is essentially to protect this Sanatana Dharma from collapsing. The world would then lose its solutions for living in a plural and multi-cultural world.
RANDOM MUSINGS 