When elephants fight it is the grass which suffers. With rising intolerances between the political parties and increasingly partisan attitudes of the judiciary appearing to act on personal whims it is the country and especially the Hindus who are suffering the most. BJP is an outcome of the amazing Congress policy of seven decades after independence where the latter divided the Hindus on every conceivable faultline. Not only that, their consistent definitions of ‘secularism’ and ‘liberalism’ were appeasement of the minorities and abusing the Hindus respectively. The other political parties were too insignificant to change the Congress attitude.
The BJP simply consolidated the Hindu vote which, fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be, still has the majority share in the vote. When an angered Hindu community voted en bloc to the BJP, suddenly and ironically, democracy went into ‘danger.’ Unfortunately, most of the opposition, in its dislike or even hatred for the BJP and specifically Modi, is transforming into a hatred or dislike for the Hindus and even India. No political party is trying to make amends by trying to appeal to the Hindus that it will do better for them.
For most Hindus, the BJP happens to be the least of the evils but worried intellectuals have been disappointed at their performance. The BJP still thinks of binaries of ‘us’ and ‘them.’ It continues the Congress policy of dividing people into various groups, offering sops to each, and finally trying to project that it is doing more for the Hindus and protecting them from even extinction. As an example, the freeing of the temples from government control and the rejecting of many historical narratives set by the left-liberal academics is the minimum the government should have done till now for the Hindus.
What we need perhaps is a new avatar of BJP or a new party in India which takes in the real principles of Sanatana Dharma in running the country. Hindu, Hinduism, and Hindutva are very porous constructions which means everything and anything to politicians and scholars depending on their ideology and political affiliation. The silliest and the most popular of course is “Hindus and Hinduism good; Hindutva bad” which shows ignorance at the deepest level.
Hinduism may or may not be the same as Sanatana Dharma but it has the closest association. Sanatana Dharma has been existing for thousands of years as the driving philosophy of the nation and which has an immense capacity to absorb any pluralism, diversity, and multiculturalism more than any other political philosophy, faith, or religion in the history of the world. India has the solutions for harmony not only for itself but for the entire world if there is a true understanding of what the great country is all about. The few people who correctly understood the country were Sri Aurobindo in the past and scholars like Dr SN Balagangadhara in the present. It is time we look at them more diligently.
RANDOM MUSINGS 