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"Hindu
Fascism"
1. Hinduism, Hitler's mother?
A Contention often heard in secularist circles, is that
this Hindu revivalism is a form of Hindu fascism. Specifically, a BJP
in power would soon reveal itself to be a Nazi government-- but then it would be
too late. I will not bother about quoting all the people who have made such
allegations (there are many), and just deal with the substance of this
allegation.
Actually,
there are two radically different allegation of Hindu fascism. One
merely is an allegation against the current wave of Hindu communalism.
The other one says, that Hinduism is intrinsically fascist. The best-known
proponent of the latter theory is V.T. Rajshekar, who publishes the fortnightly
Dalit Voice from Bangalore. He builds his views on Ambedkar's. But at the same
time, he strongly subscribes to the theory that the Aryans invaded India, and
instituted the cast system to preserve their racial purity, much like the
Apartheid system in South Africa.238



In
fact, all his anti-Hindu views are put forward in ethnic and even racial
terminology. The non-caste Hindus and the minorities are for him the oppressed
nations of India, oppressed by the Aryan invaders who constitute the upper
castes.


Of
course, the racial view of caste, a product of the British fascination for race
theories, has been debunked scientifically.239
Even Ambedkar rejected it.240
By now, the whole notion of Aryan invasions has come under fire. Western
scholars start recognizing what many Indian scholars have since long pointed out
: that there is not a single piece of proof for the whole theory, and that all
the known relevant facts can just as well be explained with alternative and
equally coherent theories.


But
since is lost on Mr. Rajshekar. He has published a book in the West, titled
Dalit -- the Black Untouchables of India. On the cover is a photograph of, I
presume, the writer. And the first thing you notice is : but this man is not
black. He is quite a Caucasian, or white man, though slightly more
suntanned than Europeans, but not at all a negroid type. And you start to
realize : this man is a crackpot. In order to attract American Black support, or
for other propaganda reasons, he makes the caste system into a racial issue. The
rich white Aryan Brahmin invaders oppress the poor black non-Aryan Shudra
natives.241



Now
this has a lot to do with Hitler. He too was a crank racist. While the
reprehensible racism in South Africa is at least based on a actual racial
difference between black and white, Hitler based his anti-Jewish racism on the
erroneous notion that the difference between Germans and Jews is racial, which
is biological nonsense. Moreover, he too had borrowed the concept of the Aryan
race, which the British had developed in India, but which was totally alien
to the Hindu tradition. Rajshekar has borrowed the same theory in the same
place. He holds the same kind of crank notion that the difference between upper
and lower castes is a racial one. So, Hitler-Rajshekar bhai-bhai. With them,
everything gets drawn into racial categories. The only difference is that Hitler
is on the side of the Aryan race, while Rajshekar is on the opposite side.


Thus,
in an article about the Israeli technician Mordechai Vanunu, Dalit Voice says
that he is a Sephardic Jew (migrated from the Muslim countries), who are
oppressed by the Ashkenazi Jews (migrated from Europe, and founders of Israel).
When the technician revealed to the world some nuclear secrets of Israel, this
was portrayed as an element in the ethnic struggle of oppressed (dalit)
Sephardim against Zionist Ashkenazim, who also oppress the Palestinians. So it
all fits : Dalits and Muslims should form a front against the Brahmins,
therefore Dalits support the Palestinians, therefore they oppose the Zionists
who are Ashkenazi Jews, and link up with the oppressed Sephardic Jews. But here
the racist logic breaks down : it so happens that the hard-liners in Israel,
like many in the Likud Party, are precisely these Sephardim, who have fled
Muslim countries and have no love lost for the Arabs, while the Ashkenazim are
generally more liberal. This goes to show once more the nonsense of these racial
conspiracy theories on which the Hitler and Rajshekars of this world feed.


So,
what remains for the enemies of Hinduism to dub intrinsically fascist about
Hinduism? The caste system, of course. Even if it is not racist, it is not
equalitarian and institutionalizes inequality on the basis of people's birth
(just like in racism). Therefore, the caste system is reprehensible. And
therefore Hinduism is reprehensible (through a remote influence of Marxism,
everything gets reduced to its social dimension, so Hinduism equals caste
system).


This
matter is far too large and complex to decide in just one chapter, so I will
limit myself here to some general remarks. Firstly, there is a distinction
between theory and practice. This may seem an easy way out, often used by
soft-Leftists when confronted with criticism of the implementation of socialist
theory in the praxis of the Soviet system (But that is not the real
socialism !). But the distinction is pertinent. On the one hand there were
ideologues of the four varnas, the functions in society with their allotted
duties and privileges, and they wrote Shastras in which they tried to fit
reality into the scheme, complete with a slant in favour of their own caste. On
the other there was the existing reality of jatis, roughly endogamous groups,
roughly coinciding with occupations, but far more diverse and in motion than the
crystalline theoretical framework of Chaturvarnya.


Secondly,
this social system did not exist in isolation. Thus, centuries of foreign
domination must have had an impact on it. We can say a priori that when leading
groups in society come to groan under the weight of foreign oppression, they
themselves will weigh heavier on the lower groups. That would not be the case if
the new rulers would engage in reform of the existing society, but the Muslims
never did this (in spite of the new myths about Islam as bringing socialist
reforms). A society that is put on the defensive, will harden and develop
internal friction. Again it may sound like an easy explanation, but it is just
quite plausible that a part of the inhuman traits of the caste system
as recent generations found it, must be attributed to later outside influences
like the impoverishing, brutalizing and demoralizing effect of Muslim rule.


When
we study its theoretical conception, we find that the caste system is quite the
opposite of Nazism in essential respects. Let us think clearly about this very
charged matter. In the caste system, we may distinguish the following
components:



In society, different groups
are recognized.
These groups have their own
mores and duties.
Membership of a group is
determined by birth.
On the basis of their
function, a ritual hierarchy exists between these group, which does not
coincide with either wealth or actual social power.

The
first point says merely that difference is recognized. This is not as evident as
it sounds. Islam and Communism champion equality, which in practice
means uniformity.


The
second point means that these groups are defined by the role they play in
society, and that duties as also privileges are allotted accordingly. This does
not mean that the higher ones grab all the privileges. Thus, one who has the
duty to guide society by communicating knowledge, commits a crime when he is
untruthful, or drunk, whereas these things are of no consequence when committed
by a manual labourer. This allotting of duties also concerns the different
age-groups. As any anthropologist can tell you, the distribution of duties among
age-groups is one of the most evident features of tribal society. That is why
the varna division is considered together with the division of life in stages,
the ashramas, so that Hindu social philosophy is known as Varnashramadharma.
While this recognition of different roles with their own duties and privileges
is by no means a complete answer to every possible social question, it at least
provides a framework which is perfectly true to universal human experience.


The
third point means that one's qualities are largely determined by birth. The most
natural division of mankind, the two sexes, a division which brings with it a
definite role, duties and privileges, is determined by birth. One's gunas of
qualities, which determine one's vocation in society, are in turn partly
determined by heredity. At this point Hindu society has hardened a statistical
law, which generally makes people follow in their parents' footsteps, into a
rigid steel frame. In reality, an individual's swadharma (own duty, own way) may
differ from that of his parents, and that is why the Bhagavad Gita (which is of
course only one voice in the plurality of Hindu tradition) simply states that
one's varna is determined by one's guna (quality, type), regardless of whether
this guna is in turn determined by heredity, by environment and education, or
who knows, by the stars at birth. Of course, this is a point where historically
the divergence between theory and practice has become quite substantial.


The
fourth point is to modern socialists perhaps the most horrible : a hierarchy
between the groups. Well, there is an undeniable hierarchy between social
functions, even where an equalitarian law system has firmly taken root. Thus, an
employee is equal, as a human being and as a citizen, to his employer; the work
both do is equally indispensable; yet, the employee's work is by definition
determined by the tasks his employer allots him. So, while there is equality
between human beings, there is a logical hierarchy between functions. In that
sense, the Vaishya function is superior to the Shudra function.
Similarly, a ruler, even while autonomous in his decisions (remember
secularism), is dependent on knowledge and a social philosophy, but the thinkers
who devise this intellectual and ideological framework, should be independent in
their thinking, free from the rulers' interference. In that sense, the Brahmin
function is logically superior to the Kshatriya function, even while
rulers are more powerful and wealthy than thinkers.


In
my opinion, it is this logical hierarchy of social functions which the early
ideologues of Varnashramadharma had in mind. It is but human that people with a
higher function were also honoured accordingly. But in how far that was
translated into a cruel anti-human inequality in actual village and city life,
is another matter. It is too vast to go into it here. Suffice it to say that I
have become a bit skeptical of the abysmally grim picture of the caste system
which all of us have been fed, after actually living among Hindus of both high
and low castes, and after studying the research done by modern-educated Indian
scholars. As Meenakshi Jain has indicated, it is not because certain Brahmins
were particular about not eating with other people etc., that other castes felt
inferior or oppressed by this uptight and unprofitable kind of behaviour (much
less inclined to imitate the difficult Brahmin lifestyle, as the Sanskritization
theory would have it).


In
Catholic circles, like in religion class, we used to get some testimonies from
the missions, now and then. When asked for examples of how horrible the caste
system is, missionaries would always mention the distance Brahmins keep from the
inferior non-Brahmins. But so what? For orthodox Brahmins, as I have
known some in Varanasi, I myself am an avarna, and they will not have dinner
with me. But I don't feel offended by that. If they think I am impure (and I am
: I have eaten many a beef steak in my life), then that is their choice. I don't
really care, and I think most Shudras in India's long history didn't care. But
they did not not care in the intolerant way of the iconoclastic
modernists, who like to trample on somebody else's rules and taboos : while they
themselves did not observe the near-obsessive purity rules of Brahmins, they
would not think of forcing Brahmins out of their purist seclusion.


The
effort to rewrite history and to see integration instead of separation and
enmity as the norm of interaction between the different communities, should not
be directed to the history of Hindu-Muslim relations (where it is gross
distortion), but at the history of caste relations (where it is a correction of
the extremely divisive picture created by the missionaries and colonialists).
There was plenty of co-operation, amity and human concern across caste lines.


On
the other hand, as in other societies, there has existed oppression in Hindu
society too. And this has been aggravated in the last few centuries by the
decreasing prosperity, which in turn was due to Muslim oppression and
plundering, to the disruption of India's economy by its forcible integration
into Britain's colonial trade system, and to the victory of modern industry over
the indigenous industries (which also affected non-colonies like China and
Iran). Increasing poverty invariably increases social friction and oppression.


While
rejecting the immensely black picture which the missionaries have painted of
Hindu society, and which has been very much interiorized in the Indian
collective consciousness and is still being reproduced by the self- proclaimed
Ambedkarites today, we need not deny that oppression and misery existed. And it
must have taken the shape of the social structure in force, which happened to be
the caste system. No-one in his right mind is inclined to denigrate the efforts
at "bringing the Backward Castes into the mainstream of Indian
society" (to use the politicians' expression). On the stand taken by
the Hindutva people on the caste system, see ch.14.2.
Now, in essential respects the caste system is the opposite of Nazism. This
counts not only for the idealized theory but even for the raw practice. First of
all, this system is not at all centralized. The traditional Hindu society knows
many layers of social organization : family, kula, upajati, jati, varna. Now,
this layeredness of society, this devolution of many organizational functions to
intermediary levels, is the strongest possible buffer against dictatorship and
totalitarianism.


When
analyzing why the French Revolution quickly degenerated into a reign of terror
and a dictatorship, Hegel state that it was the destruction of the intermediary
levels of social organization which led to this polarization between the naked
individual and the all-powerful state authority.


The
first task of totalitarian-minded people is to break down those organizational
units which they cannot control. In Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the
protagonist of the narrative regains a measure of mental independence from Big
Brother's total control, when he falls in love with some girl. Suddenly there is
an emotional relationship, i.e. another form of human interaction than Big
Brother's state, a bond which escapes Big Brother's control. These simple
natural forms of human togetherness, like the family, the clan, the tribe, no
matter what their drawbacks, are the strongest possible protection against
totalitarianism.


Traditional
societies all had clans and tribes. With the building of empires, these lost
some of their importance. But the atomization of society into isolated
individuals who find nothing above them but the all-powerful state, is largely a
modern phenomenon, and fascism is one extreme outgrowth of it. It is not only
factually incorrect to attribute the characteristics of fascism to a traditional
society like the Hindu society, it also gives proof of a total incomprehension
of larger historical categories, like modern vs. traditional, hierarchy vs.
totalitarianism.


The
unique thing about Hindu society is that it kept this tribe-wise and clan-wise
organization even after setting up very large integrated state structures. By
contrast, Mohammed, in his bid to form a state (after the admired models of the
Persian and Byzantine empires), wanted to destroy these intermediary levels.
Thus, he is not at all clan- and family-minded. While Confucianism, Judaism or
Hinduism are very family-centered, Islam does not ordain family stability, but
gives a man all the freedom to break up the family he started, by simply
declaring to his wife: Talaq Talaq Talaq. Moreover, Mohammed explicitly wanted
his followers to put the loyalty to Islam above the loyalty to the clan.


One
may consider this an element of universalim, rising above narrow loyalties.
That is certainly how Muslim apologetics puts it. But the other side is that the
primitive loyalty to the natural family unit merely gets replaced by another,
more demanding narrow loyalty: to the Prophet, to Big Brother.


All
dictators like uniformity. The Spanish dictator Franco worked hard to destroy
the linguistic diversity in Spain by suppressing the use of Catalan and Basque.
Similarly, Stalin wanted to abolish all ethnicity and language diversity. These
subnational identities were anathema to a centralistic dictatorial mind. It so
happens that Islam too insists on uniformity, even in very small things. In
world history, it is perhaps only the Mao outfit of the Chinese communists that
matches the uniformity of appearance among Muslims. Women Should wear burqa, and
men should trim their beards after the Prophet's example. This outer uniformity
is expressive of an imposed uniformity of behaviour and belief. I do not find
this uniformist loyalty to the Prophet any more open-minded or universalist than
the "narrow loyalty" to a tribe.


There
is reason for suspicion against people who need to trample upon natural
loyalties before they can establish their brotherhood. It is like a
scorpion, who lifts his prey up from the ground and then stings. These natural
social units are the ground under people's feet, and if you want to enlist them
in your own power trip, you have to take them out of these natural units, and
make them vulnerable to your claims on them, by isolating them.


It
is quite possible to teach people universal values and awareness of the larger
whole, without breaking open the existing divisions in society. Actually,
calling clans and tribes a division conceals the fact that they are
just as much units, levels of integration. Few buildings these days are
built from one massive rock ; the normal thing to do is to integrate smaller
units into bigger and yet bigger ones. The global civilization which we are
building today, will not be made up of scattered individuals. Organizationally,
it will be a hierarchy of intermediary levels of integration, a two- way
combination of unity and diversity. The current revival of ethnicity throughout
the world is just one example of man's natural resistance against atomization.


The
essence of Varnashramadharma, the social philosophy that allots different duties
to differently minded groups of people, as well as to the different age-groups,
and that allows communities to develop at intermediary levels between individual
and state, is quite the opposite of the uniformization so typical of
totalitarian systems.





2. Hindutva and the
"evils of Hindu society"


In the secularists' tirades, the Hindutva people are
systematically portrayed as upholders of inequality and of all the evils of
Hindu society.
Remark
: the very expression evils of Hindu society, which Nehru routinely
used, is totally out of bounds when Hindu is replaced with Muslim
or another community. The expression "the crimes of the Muslim
conquerors", or "the evils of Muslim society" (like
anti-modern backwardness, persecution of non-Muslims, slavery, the inferiority
of women), are sure to provoke shouts of communal ! There is also no
one to describe the social problems in the West as "the evils of
Christian society", as if all worldly problems can be reduced to the
impact of the prevalent religion.


In
fact, the unity of Hindu society, and the promotion of the backward castes in
the mainstream of society, has always been a major plank of Hindu organizations
like the RSS. In its literature242,
the RSS boasts of having received compliments from such non-communalist people
like Mahatma Gandhi and Jayaprakash Narayan, for its entirely caste-free
structure and working. Nonetheless, for decades after it was set up, it was
mostly an organization of Brahmins and, increasingly, Vaishyas.


It
seems that recently, the caste-wise composition of the RSS is changing.
According to a recent report, "much to the despair of the Marxists and
secularists alike, it is not the upper caste that dominates the Sangh's shakhas.
It is ironically the middle castes and rising Dalits."243
An RSS member is quoted saying :"All our best attended shakhas are in
the poor areas, not in the alienated middle class or rich upper caste suburbs or
cities or towns. In simple words, the new Sangh Swayamsevak is mostly a backward
caste or Dalit."


So,
the following analysis by Sunil Adam is just another Leftist lie : "The
Muslims only serve as a negative target of Hindu consciousness so as to
marginalize the contradictions of the Hindu social order and at the same time
maintain the social and political status quo, which is the actual object of
Hindutva."244
While totally denying the historical fact of the unprovoked all-out Muslim
attack on Hindu society during centuries on end, and while reducing the thrust
of the Hindutva movement to an anti-Muslim thrust, it repeats the classic
Marxist fallacy of reducing everything to a matter of class (c.q. caste) contradictions.
Moreover, it ascribes to the Hindutva movement an intention of maintaining the
social and political status quo: this goes contrary to all statements of
intention by the Hindutva leaders.


Of
course, we may be dealing here with the rhetorical trick of ascribing intentions
to people : "You say that this is what you want, but it is not what you
want. I will tell you what you really want." This is a venomous act of
psychological imperialism : not even letting people decide for themselves what
they intend. Unless of course you can prove from their actual behaviour that it
is something else they want. But the burden of proof is on the accuser. So, the
Hindutva movement is innocent of casteist conservatism until the contrary is
proven. For establishing such proof, Mr. Adam will have to explain away all the
anti-caste statements of Hindutva leaders (all eyewash ?) and all the
testimonies that the RSS and affiliated organizations are indeed caste-free.


But
no, Mr. Adam gives no proof of anything. Assured that no-one in the arena will
contradict him, he continues :"The economic and political mobility of
lower castes is one of the factors that stirred the upper castes to resurrect
the question of Hindu identity during the early eighties. In other words, for
Hindutva to succeed it has to accomplish the twin and contradictory tasks of
uniting the country's majority under the Hindu banner and also ensure that a
majority among them accept their place in the social and political hierarchy
prescribed by the pristine Brahminical religion..."


Now,
this is where Mr. V.P. Singh's decision to implement the Mandal Commission
Report recommendations comes in. This Commission recommended that, after the
Scheduled Castes and Tribes, who have been getting 22.5% reservations in
recruitment and promotions in government service as well as in education (though
these quota have not been filled up in many cases), the principle of reservation
be extended to the Other Backward Castes (Classes, says the Report, but
then it enumerates castes). V.P. Singh's decision was clearly meant to attract
the Backward Caste vote (46% of the Indian population, according to an old
census). It could at the same time split the Hindu vote, pitting high against
low castes.


Opponents
feared that this split would not be limited to election day, and that Mandal
would tear the whole social fabric apart. Enemies of Hindu society also looked
at it that way. Said Prof. Rajni Kothari :"The Mandal Report has the
potential to finish off the supremacy of Vedic Hinduism." The effect
of the caste-based reservations would be, to strengthen caste identity (with
opposing caste interest). But while in traditional society the caste system was
a harmony model (this nice-sounding term is a curse to Marxist ears), this newly
strengthened caste consciousness would foment caste enmity. It would also
frustrate the drive to unify Hindu society.


As
Mr. Adam says :"It is this [Hindu-unifying] scheme of things that the
Mandal Report... is capable of upsetting. Whether the Hindu identity will
submerge caste identity or vice versa will depend on which is a better agent of
politicization, caste or religion. In other words, India today has the
paradoxical choice of choosing between caste, which has a secularizing impact,
and Hindutva which can lead the nation to an unknown destiny."


Paradoxical
indeed. While anti-Hindu pamphletry and rhetoric largely focuses on the horrors
of the caste system, which is depicted as intrinsic to this horrible Hinduism,
we now get to read that caste will break Hinduism. Caste is the evil of
Hindu society, it is a hierarchy prescribed by the pristine Brahminical
religion, but now we get to read that it has a secularizing impact.



It
is not only a logical paradox, or rather contradiction. There is also a moral
contradiction in Mr. Adam's reasoning, which I would re-word as follows :"Hinduism
is reprehensible because of caste ; because we want to kill caste, we want to
kill Hinduism ; now, in order to kill Hinduism, we are going to strengthen
caste." These secularists have been saying that they think they can
use it as a weapon against Hinduism, they have no scruples in promoting it as
progressive and secularizing. So, the Janata Dal people who have been
decrying the Janmabhoomi movement as a threat to national unity, as well as the
communists (from whom one had expected many ugly things, but not the promotion
of a non-Marxist category like casteism), as well as most non- Congress
secularists, have applauded the divisive Mandal plan.


Anyway,
while the secularists use every occasion to demonstrate how unprincipled they
are except for their commitment to the destruction of Hinduism, Hindus need not
unduly worry over the issue of caste-based reservations. Its impact would not be
all that deep. In some southern states, large reservation schemes have already
been implemented during the eighties. While it is said that these have harmed
the efficiency of the administration, they have not spectacularly affected caste
relations. And while it may be unfair against upper-caste people, it may have
the beneficial effect of encouraging them to enter and develop the private
sector, instead of settling for a life in the bureaucracy.


If
I may make a few blunt generalizations about caste, I would venture to say that
the rise of the Backward Castes may well be a very beneficial development for
Hindu society. When I look at the caste titles of the Communist leaders and of
the most rabid secularists, I notice they are mostly high-caste people. The
upper castes have intensely collaborated with the Muslim and then the British
ruler, they are largely an alienated lot with little sympathy for their own
culture and society. Some of them, in fairness, have fought until their back was
broken. Others have simply prostituted themselves with the rulers for
generations. By contrast, the lower castes have fought the Muslim invaders tooth
and nail. Contrary to the modern myths of Islam bringing relief to the oppressed
low-castes, they suffered badly under the Islamic onslaught : e.g. the lands the
Muslim rulers took to set up their zamindari were mostly taken from these
agricultural and cattle-rearing castes.245
Moreover, thanks to their limited schooling, these low-castes have not yet
massively imbibed all this pro-Muslim and anti- Hindu propaganda that passes as
history in the school curricula. So today, the Backward Castes are not only the
numerical centre of gravity in a democratic Hindu society, they are also less
contaminated with anti-Hindu bias.


With
that, I have said more than enough in terms of caste considerations. The real
work for revitalizing Hindu society has to be done by individuals, and these are
found in any caste and community.


Incidentally,
the upheaval over Mandal has brought out a fact which should be rather
embarrassing for the missionary propaganda. The Dalit Christians are
low- caste people who have been lured into conversion with the promise of (1)
eternal Salvation by Jesus Christ the Saviour, our Lord, and (2) freedom from
the low-caste status as well as from poverty. These Dalit Christians held a
demonstration in Delhi to demand reservations, on the plea that they are still
as poor and low-caste as before conversion.


The
Ram Janmabhoomi movement has demonstrated, more than anything else, the fact
that Backward Castes and Scheduled Castes and Tribes, in spite of all the ploys
to wean them away from Hinduism, still very much identify themselves with Hindu
demands, such as a symbolic restoration of the damage Islam has done. In the
tribal belt in southern Bihar, Mr. Advani's rathyatra got a rousing welcome.


The
communal riots too show how the efforts by Muslim parties and by the anti-Hindu
Bahujan Samaj Party to forge an alliance of low-castes and Muslims against the
high-castes, are not having much of the desired result. In the Hyderabad riots,
Muslims attacked a Harijan quarter, primarily because they expected these
Harijans to be unorganized and weak. A local Harijan leader has confirmed this
to me. Even more telling was the violence in Bijnor, U.P. on October 30. There,
the District Magistrate confirmed to journalists that the violence had been
instigated by a local Muslim politician, and he added that the city was a
stronghold of the BSP, but that the communal riots had just as much pitted the
Muslims against the Harijans.246
The Ghaziabad riot on 26 January 1991, with nine casualties, was nothing but an
attack of a Muslim pro-Saddam demonstration on Valmikis (a Scheduled Caste) who
were celebrating Republic Day.247.



These
incidents conform to a larger pattern in Indian history. Contrary to the fables
of the low-castes being sympathetic towards Islam, it is they who have always
opposed it tooth and nail. Today in Pakistan, the large majority of the
remaining Hindus are very poor Backward Caste people. If Islam is so good for
them, and Hinduism so harsh, why have they continued to stick to Hinduism and
suffered so much trouble and oppression by Islamic society for it? It is time we
realize that the caste system has in fact protected Hindu society against total
islamization, and that even low-caste people took pride in their caste so that
they preferred their place in Hindu society to absorption in the atomized Muslim
community.248



So,
the stand of the Hindutva people is not : Hinduism has sinned terribly by having
this caste system, therefore it has to imitate Islam and abolish caste. It is
rather :the caste system had its use sometime in the past, over the centuries it
has come to carry a lot of unhealthy social equations and attitudes, and now it
has become socially irrelevant and a factor of divisiveness, therefore it is
time for us to abandon it.





3. Arya and Swastika


A very crude kind of anti-Hindu propaganda, sometimes used
by American Protestant sects in warning the youth against the dangers
of Hare Krishna etc., points out that Hinduism and Nazism have a central symbol
in common : the swastika. I have also heard the comparison from Ambedkarites
who, taking V.T. Rajshekar's lead, systematically refer to Hindus as "Hindu
Nazis".249
For
the latter category, it may be of interest to know that the swastika is just as
much a central symbol in Buddhism, Ambedkar's chosen religion. In China, the
swastika is known as a Buddhist symbol. Moreover, in the Aryan mythology of the
post-Ambedkar Ambedkarites (if a teacher gets killed, it is by his pupils), the
Hindus were invaders who destroyed the Hindus civilization, of which the Dalits
are the legitimate descendants. Now, this pre-Hindu Indus civilization
already used the swastika. The swastika is quite a sanatana symbol, not bound up
with any nation or ideology. It is also found among peoples outside the Hindu
sphere of influence.


It
is because of his fallacious doctrine of the Aryan race that conquered
both Europe and South Asia, and because of a mistaken belief that the swastika
was typical of the Aryan peoples, that Hitler adopted this symbol as a symbol of
his Aryan state. But of course, the legitimate Aryans, i.e. the
Sanatana Dharmins of whatever ethnicity or race, and of whatever sect including
Buddhism, cannot be blamed for Hitler's misconceptions nor for Hitler's crimes
that gave a bad connotation to this symbol.


People
who believe in magic, and in the independent power of symbols, infer from this
primary belief, that Hitler's spectacular rise to power may have been due to the
power inherent in the swastika. In a moralistic variant on this
superstitious theme, some people believe that the evil which Hitler committed
under the swastika flag, must somehow be inherent in the swastika symbol. And
from there, as they keep on inferring, they start suspecting that some
mysterious evil is inherent in Hindu culture.


This
reversal of the swastika's meaning, from a sign of luck (always depicted on the
hand of opulent Ganesh) to a sign of evil, is somewhat like the story of the
Christian image of the devil : he is depicted with buck's horns, a clear
reference to the horned god of Paganism (like the Pashupati on one of
the Indus seals). The positive imagery of Paganism got integrated into Christian
imagery, but then as the symbol of evil. Now that we are no longer bound by the
compulsions of the missionary project, we may clear the horned god, as well as
the swastika, of the evil aura with which outsiders have covered them.


For
Hindus who have migrated to the West, especially the U.S., there is a practical
problem : if they display the swastika on the gates of mandirs, or other places,
outsiders think that this is some Nazi outfit. Worse, people who have personally
suffered under the Nazi regime, may feel painfully reminded. I think it is a
matter of sensitivity to display those swastikas only in very modest ways, for
as long as people who have lived through the horrors of the Nazi regime are with
us. Meanwhile, the Hindus abroad should educate the public about the real
meaning and hoary tradition of this symbol, so that some time in the next
century the Swastika may regain its rightful place as a profound and timeless
symbol, untainted by the accidental and misconceived association with Nazism.


With
all this talk about the misuse of the swastika, it may be useful to briefly
restate its basic meaning. The word comes from su-asti, it be good, as
in the Sanskrit greeting Pratah swasti, good morning. So, swastika
means auspicious-maker or sing of auspiciousness. What the
swastika visually depicts, is the solar cycle, be it during the day or during
the year. It shows the circular movement at the four cardinal points : sunrise,
noon, sunset, midnight ; or spring equinox, summer solstice, autumn equinox,
winter solstice. As such, it is a shorthand for the Zodiac as well as for all
macrocosmic and microcosmic cycles. It signifies the completeness as well as the
dynamics of the Whole. Being primarily a solar symbol, it is normally (except in
black-and-white print) painted in solar colours like red, saffron or gold ;
while the Nazi swastika was black.


Like
the swastika, the term Arya, which is rather central in Hindu tradition and more
so in Nazism, is in need of rehabilitation. Of course, the term does not
indicate a race, but a quality of character.250
When Buddha gives a short formulation of his teachings, he calls it the Arya
Satyani, the four Noble Truths.251
If the secularists have been inhibited about the use of the word Arya
as proving the Fascist character of Hinduism, it is partly because of
this terminology used by Buddha, the hero of their mythical anti-Brahmin
revolution.


The
term Aryan was used by the Nazis in opposition to the term Semitic. It so
happens that both have



a primary linguistic meaning
(the Indo-European and the Semitic language families),
a fallacious racial meaning
(with Semitic standing for Jewish), and
a derivative theological
meaning, derived from the language groups in which the main texts of two
religion families have been written

the
Hindu tradition in the largest sense, and the Jewish-Christian-Islamic
tradition. The Nazis used the terms in the second meaning, vaguely basing it scientifically
on the first meaning. For the third meaning, they didn't have the brains not the
philosophical inclination to go into it.


Aryan
and Semitic are shorthand for two radically differing approaches to religion.
With "Semitic" are meant the religions claiming revelation from the
one and only God. In primitive Shamanistic cults, there may be spirits speaking
through the Shaman, but that is never a unique and definitive revelation from a
unique Creator- god. Similarly, there were oracles where a god was supposed to
speak through a human medium ; the point is that there were many of them. But
the revealed monotheistic religions carry with them a typical fundamental
doctrine that sets them apart from all other religions.


On
the one hand, their God speaks to people at a specific moment in history, at a
specific place, so that the beneficiaries or immediate witnesses are limited in
number, certainly less than all of humanity. On the other hand, their God is the
only one, so that all the other people on earth either have to get other
revelations from this one God, or they are not getting revelations at all,
except false ones from false gods. While the first option was theoretically
possible, the Semitic religions have effectively chosen the second.
This implies that humanity gets divided into two : those whom God has personally
addressed, and those whom he has ignored. So, we get Jews and Gentiles,
Christians and Pagans, Muslims and Kafirs.


Of
course, every tribe used to divide the world into the tribe and the rest. The
tribe was home, the rest was unsafe and foreign. And every group identity,
tribal or other, can give rise to hostility against other groups. As an
application of this general rule, even religious group identity could be the
basis of polarization and conflict. However, the polarization between the One
God's Chosen Community and the rest of humanity was of a radically different
nature than these ordinary group antagonisms.


The
tribal division was a division between people on an equal footing. The others
had their own identity and interests, with which our own might sometimes be
incompatible, but there was nothing intrinsically evil or wrong about them. We
had gods, and so had they. Both of us worshipped the sun god, or the goddess of
fleeting time who devours us all, or the Unknown god, with local accents and
variations, but not radically different. For instance, in Homer's epic about the
Trojan war, you see some of the gods side with the Greeks and other
gods side with the Trojans. They shared the divine sphere between them.



This
basic equality is broken in the Semitic religions. There, one part of
humanity has God on its side. That implies that whoever stands against it,
stands against God, with no divine friends on his own side. There is now a
fortunate part of humanity, and another part which is doomed and cursed.
Religion in its public aspect used to be a unifying thing, a celebration of a
cosmic oneness transcending the biological social and other differences between
the realms of nature and the members of a society. Now it became a divisive
thing, pitting the Chosen against the doomed.


In
this psychology, it is quite normal that all the non- human layers of the
cosmos, who, just like the doomed part of humanity, were ignorant of God's
unique revelation, were all deprived of their sacredness. The golden calf and
other idols of the Gentiles were smashed. The sacred trees of the Pagans were
felled. The holy cows of the Kafirs were slaughtered. And all this cosmos was
given to Adam and Eve for their pleasure. Henceforth, a tree was nothing but
timber


Thus,
the Semitic religions constitute a radical break with natural religiosity, which
had always made nature share in the manifestation of the divine, and which had
never thought of limiting the awareness of the divine to one community.


In
books written in a monotheistic cultural milieu, this revealed
monotheism is always portrayed as a great step forwards in the march of
humanity. However, in real terms I cannot see one genuine advantage that has
accrued to humanity thanks to the is revelation-based monotheism. It is said
that this monotheism meant the end of superstition, of people praying to
godlings for favours. But people have prayed to this new. One God for the same
favours. Worse, is there a bigger superstition than the belief that you are
specially favoured over the other part of humanity, and that God is on your side
?


By
contrast, the Aryan religious tradition has not pretended to be the
special recipient of a unique divine revelation. The divine is manifest
everywhere, be it in different ways and to different degrees. It is not excluded
that some elements/times/places/animals/people are more sacred than others, but
the difference is only gradual. There is a divine oneness of all entities in the
cosmos. If at all you want to give this outlook a philosophical name, you could
say that roughly, it is monism. That means, the assumption or perception that
somehow everything is of one essence.


This
Aryan tradition has found its classic formulation in the Sanskrit writings of
entire lineages of human beings, referred to as Rishis. However, it is also
present in Pagan traditions outside the area where Sanskrit was the language of
culture. There are outward differences but a fundamental akinness with Pagan
traditions the world over. If you analyze Pagan practices of ritual, sacrifice,
incantation, you find the same presupposed attitude towards the cosmos : a basic
awareness that it is one.


This
basic awareness will be present in the religious feeling of many a member of the
Semitic religions. But there, it is overlaid with the doctrinal
assumption of a fundamental and irreducible two-ness of the cosmos : on the one
hand God and His chosen ones, on the other hand the godless remainder. The
degree to which individuals feel bound by their formal allegiance to this
doctrine, may differ widely. And we will not judge the individuals. But we may
give an opinion on the doctrine of the One God who reveals Himself to/through a
specific individual, has brought an absolute division of mankind in the minds of
its adherents, and this mental division has in turn caused untold suffering in
persecutions and holy wars.


So,
I cannot honestly compare the Aryan and the Semitic approach,
and neutrally say that they are merely different. There is an inequality between
the two. I think the Aryan approach is fundamentally more wholesome
than the Semitic approach.


Because
of this inequality, I think it is important to choose other terms for these
basic doctrinal categories, than Aryan and Semitic. For, these
terms also denote people. They may not denote races, as Hitler thought, but they
do denote language groups, and people identify to quite an extent with their
language. Moreover, these two types of religious outlook do not historically
coincide with the said language groups.


The
Bible was written in Hebrew and the Quran in Arabic, while Jesus spoke in
Aramaic (though his words were preserved in Greek translation), all three
Semitic languages. Nevertheless, there was a lot of Paganism in this language
area before revelation-based monotheism took over. It is often forgotten that
the Arabs whom Mohammed tried to convert, were just as much polytheists
as the Hindus, and that they fought equally hard to preserve their Kaaba as the
Hindus fought to repeat that the Jewish tradition lost the aggressive edge,
which form the most reprehensible effect of the Semitic outlook, long
ago.


Conversely,
in Aryan Iran, under the Sassanian dynasty, we see the Aryan religion
of Zoroaster take on an equally exclusivistic attitude as is typical for the Semitic
religions, complete with temple-destruction, idol-breaking and persecution of
Manichaeans and Buddhists. Later, many Aryan-speaking people have been converted
tot he Semitic creed of Islam. In Europe, most followers of the Semitic
religion of Christ, are speakers of Aryan languages. In Africa and
other places, the division in Aryan and Semitic has no linguistic (much less a
racial) relevance.


So,
I propose to renounce the habit of using Semitic as shorthand for "revelation-based
monotheistic" religions. The use of the word Arya as
shorthand for Sanatana Dharma can continue, but one should be careful not to
give secularist slanderers a chance of falsely associating it with the Aryan
race nonsense.


But
before renouncing the Semitic habit myself, I will use the term Semitic
one last time, in order to show how Nazism itself, for all its anti-Semitic
rhetoric, very much fitted into the Semitic tradition.


As
Girilal Jain has convincingly argued, Nazism was an extreme realization of the
19th century secular nationalism in Europe. This secular nationalism was in its
general attitude towards mankind a direct heir to the Semitic legacy
carried into Europe by Christianity. There is a straight lineage from Moses' Chosen
People to Hitler's Herrenvolk (superior people). The radical division of
mankind into the chosen insiders and the lost outsiders is very much present in
this secular nationalism.


A
not-so-secular slogan of the impeccably secular Nazi state, written on the belt
of the German soldiers, was : Gott mit unsp (God with us). This notion can be
traced straight to Moses, from whom it had made a second lineage to Mohammed's
jihad.


Because
of Hitler's dislike for Christianity, and because of some Nazi intellectuals'
rhetoric involving the pre- Christian German mythology, many people, especially
Christians, have considered Nazism as a return to Paganism.252
That is a case of being fooled by a superficial semblance. In the Nazi ideology,
the Germanic mythology had no place whatsoever. There was a certain flirting
with themes from Germanic mythology since the mind-19th century at the latest,
the best-known being Richard Wagner's operas (as there had been an exploration
of Greek mythology since the Renaissance). So, by the time of Nazism, there were
some artsy upper class people and some weird intellectuals playing with this
ancient Germanic imagery, but there is no trace of any ideological influence
from those fairytales on the actual political thought of the Nazis.


Incidentally,
today there is a new revival of Pagan religion in Europe. In Britain we have had
the New Druids, both formal groups who claim to revive the ancient Celtic
traditions, and individuals who explore whatever lore has survived, combining it
with astrology, Oriental mysticism, and more such ingredients. This movement
started in the romantic 19th century, in the same climate in which Wagner wrote
his Ring der Nibelungen and Lohengrin, and it has continued with ups and downs
till today. In Germany too, there is now a rediscovery of pre-Christian Germanic
religion. Apart from the fact that these New heathens have to reconstruct this
lost tradition from stray fragments and outsiders' testimonies, they also face
the problem of this association of ancient Germanic lore with Nazism. But they
manage to convince themselves and others of the utter superficiality in the
Nazis' appropriation of this ancient imagery, and of the inherent tolerant and
open- minded attitude of the Pagan civilization. In today's Germany, an
estimated 20,000 people regularly participate in gatherings where the ancient or
neo-ancient rites are conducted, most of them intellectuals with decent jobs.


If
we look at the basic points in the Nazi programme, we do not find anything there
that can be traced to Germanic Paganism. Anti-Semitism (i.e. anti-Judaism) has
nothing whatsoever to do with Germanic Paganism, it is a strong Christian
tradition. Especially the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church
in Hitler's Austria gave it implicit or explicit ideological support.
Authoritarian political thought has nothing whatsoever to do with the Germanic
tribal organization, which was largely democratic, with an elected king and a
regular all-tribe assembly meeting. It had more to do with the secular
organization of the Roman empire (which model had loomed large over the European
polity all through the Christian period), which has also influenced the Church
organization. The same Roman influence we find in outward forms like the
uniformist discipline, the Roman salute and the fondness of grand parades.
Secular nationalism, glorification of the state, genocide, racial purity and
uniformity, all these essential ideological elements of Nazism have nothing
whatsoever to do with the Pagan religion. Neither the Germanic Paganism, nor the
Hindu Paganism with its swastika.


It
is important to stress this profound foreignness of Nazism to pre-modern
Paganism, because once Hindus set out to rediscover the social philosophy and
other elements of their own traditions, there will of course be some secularist
ignoramus who will say that "this is just what Hitler did".


The
Nazi kind of nationalism was also of the Semitic kind. Rather than
seeing the nation as one step on the ladder in the organizational hierarchy,
below civilization and humanity, and above regional, tribal and family units, it
denied this gradedness. Instead, it divided the world in outsiders and insiders,
thus in principle opposing itself to the rest of the world, and imposed
uniformity on the nation, discouraging all subnational groupings. Again, this
exclusivistic and uniformist nationalism is opposed to the Pagan outlook.


The
dominance of monotheism has strongly promoted that single most essential trait
of the monotheistic mind : simplistic crudeness. For a well-known example,
monotheists are idol-breakers : they are for God's unity, therefore they are
against diversity. Their mental culture is too crude to see that multiplicity
does not exclude unity, even while polytheists know fully well that there is one
divine essence in all their gods (who anyway are all projections of the one but
multi-faceted human consciousness). Most modernizers these days are appallingly
limited to black-and white categories in their thinking. For instance, in the
present discussion of multi-level integration, they are of course for slogans
like unity and integration, and therefore they are against any narrow
and chauvinistic championing of region, sect, language group etc. Their
only concept of unity is to raze everything flat, then there will be no more
difference and disunity, so that will be the realization of unity, equality etc.
This is Hitler's and Stalin's approach to national integration.


Yet,
real modern scientific thinking is gradual. It handles in-between categories
(such as probability between certainty and uncertainty). This is formally a
rediscovery of the old Pagan world-view. There is not just the absolute one God
and the absolutely profane plural world, as in monotheism. There is a lot of
life between the two. There is both sacredness and profaneness within the world,
as there is both oneness and plurality within the divine. Similarly, there are
in-between levels between the individual and the state, with units who entertain
a certain specificity rather than submitting to uniformity.


A
typically simplistic fallacy of the monotheistic mind is the one heard so often
in the anti-Mandir rhetoric :"But Ram is everywhere ! Ram would be
ashamed if he saw how attached you people are to something as profane as a
spatial location and a structure of bricks !" Of course God is
everywhere. And yet, there is a sanatana, ineluctable tendency in man to make
the sacred present within the world, by consecrating certain parts of space and
time, and demarcating them from the profane parts. We like to create difference,
and make some places and some times special. Even the monotheists have had to
yield to this natural tendency. Even though Allah is not in any place and time
in particular, the Muslims have places of pilgrimage, festival days, a special
day for prayer (Friday), a special month for fasting (Ramzan). The uniformizing
monotheists can't help recognizing certain more sacred parts in space and time.
So it is quite alright for Hindus to say : no, not any place will do, we want
the one site that we have considered sacred since centuries. Sacred means : not
just any.


This
Semitic simplistic crudeness, the same which prevents secularists from
properly understanding the Ayodhya issue, is present in many modern unhealthy
forms of nationalism, among them Nazism. They see their nation in isolation, as
an absolutely independent unit, which on the other hand excludes all
subdivisions within the nation. In a healthy international set-up, there are
grades of independence, which are proportional to the grades of separate
identity between ethnic and linguistic units.


A
case in point is "Khalistan". The Sikh community is distinct by its
dress, and by its specific choice of Hindu scriptures and parampara. It is not
distinct by language, for Panjabi (if at all it can be considered a language
rather than a Hindi dialect) is also spoken by Hindus and Muslims ; and its
scriptures are in Hindi, the language of crores of non-Sikh Hindus. It is not
distinct geographically, for it has always lived mixed with other communities.
It does not have a separate political history, for Ranjit Singh's empire was a
state ruled by a Sikh, but by no means a Sikh state in which Sikhdom was shared
by all or even the majority of the citizens. So, by the United Nations criteria
for recognition as a separate nation, the Sikhs don't qualify at all. To the
extent of the distinctness of their identity, they are entitled to, well,
cultivating the things that make up their identity, but not to a separate state.



There
has been a gradual increase of Semitic influence on the Sikh community
during this century, or rather, on the Akalis who have set themselves up as the
leaders. They have exchange the Hindu concept of God's oneness, through many
forms, for the Semitic concept of God's unicity, inimical to all personified
depictions or goods. They have reshaped their gurus into prophets,
intercessory mouthpieces of God, with guru Govind Singh as the "last
and final prophet". These prophets have revealed the
words that make up Sikh Scripture, and made the Sikhs into a "people
of the Book". The chief influence is of course that of Islam, but the
general depreciation for polytheism and idolatry which the British
brought, has also played a role.


It
is no wonder that with this artificial Semitic identity, some Sikhs
have developed a Semitic concept of nationalism, not admitting of any
gradations. They began applying the crass simplistic reasoning of absolutizing
their small measure of distinctness into a separate nationhood, and denying
their internal differences and sub-identities for the sake of uniformity. They
have a separate dress, therefore they have a separate identity, therefore they
are entitled to an independent state. On the other hand, within their own
community, they accept no differences and impose the Khalsa Sikh identity on the
otherwise pluriform Nanakpanthi community : any Sikh who is not a Khalsa Sikh is
not a real Sikh. Absolute cleavage with other communities and uniformity within
the community, these are the essential ingredients of modern
nationalism, generated in the Semitic cultural context of late-
Christian Europe.


For
the sake of national integration in India, it is imperative to set the record
straight, to reverse this process of absolutizing any minor difference in identity
into a separatist claim to a nation-state. In the specific case of the
Sikhs, the obvious fact should be made clear, that Sikh identity is integrated
in a hierarchy of differentiation within Hinduism : it is a Bhakti sect within
the broad Vaishnava tradition within Sanatana Dharma.


In
general, a theory of graded integration of distinct communities via a hierarchy
of political levels that does justice to this distinctness should be evolved.
That is the Aryan answer to a world-wide problem of plural- identity
states, which has been aggravated by the Semitic absolutist approach.





4. "They killed
the Mahatma"


"It is extremely symbolic that Advani is the heir
of Nathuram Godse who, in pursuit of what he was convinced was his duty to
India, shot dead the man who had chanted the name of Ram all his life till his
last breath", writes M.J. Akbar.253
Many others make the same allegation, mostly more sharply.
Before
going into the facts of the matter, let us make the observation that today the
name and especially the murder of the Mahatma are being exploited to the fullest
by people who are crusading against that which was Mahatma Gandhi's first
concern and loyalty : Hindu society. As is clear from the Mahatma's polemic
against the Christian missionaries, he was first and foremost a Hindu, who
opposed all designs to destroy Hindu culture.254
And it was because he loved and served Hindu society, that he could take the
freedom to criticize it. Those who criticize Hindu society and its defenders
today, not as its well-wishers but as its enemies, and who do not hesitate to
invoke the Mahatma's authority to prop up their Hindu-baiting designs before a
population with an increasingly hazy memory of the Mahatma's real commitment,
are traitors to the Mahatma's message. These people, from the shameless
Jawaharlal Nehru down to his sycophants like M.J. Akbar, are in no position to
lecture Advani about Gandhi the Ram bhakt.


Now,let
us get the facts straight. In 1948, Nathuram Godse was an active member of the
Hindu Mahasabha. Many workers and leaders of this organization were also members
of the Congress, the party which Akbar in his article seeks to portray as the
absolute antipode of the communal forces. Since 1925 there existed
another Hindu organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which did not
intend to be political. Godse, who was a Maharashtra Brahmin just like the
founders of the RSS, had left this organization some time before he killed
Gandhi, because he didn't find it radical enough.


In
1947, the Mahatma's decades-long attempts to forge Hindu-Muslim unity ended in
utter failure, when the Muslim League, supported by an overwhelming majority of
the Muslim electorate, forced Partition on India. It should be a lesson for
those who talk lightly of national integration and Hindu-Muslim unity, that even
the Mahatma couldn't influence the Muslim community leadership. In the
perception of millions of Hindus, especially those who had too flee their homes
in what had suddenly become Pakistan, this Partition was very much the Mahatma's
personal failure and responsibility : he had carried on a policy of concessions
to the Muslims in order to appease their ever-increasing demands, and they had
only become more arrogant in the process.


As
if to confirm their views, he went on a fast to death in order to force the
Hindus and the Indian government into a number of concessions. Among them: the
Hindu refugees who were staying in mosques in Delhi had to vacate them and find
a place elsewhere, and the Indian government had to pay Pakistan's share of the
treasury which the British had left, to Pakistan, a country with which it was
actually at war in Kashmir. All his demands were meet, and he stopped his fast.


This
one-sided string of demands on the Hindus, and this masochistic habit of
instilling guilt into his own community and swallowing all the Muslim crimes
without protest, immensely angered many Hindus, among them Nathuram Godse. He couldn't
take it any longer, for him the very name of the Mahatma made my blood
boil. So, with the complicity of a few friends, he murdered the Mahatma.


The
Indian people, which was so angry with the Mahatma the day before, now
re-installed him as the living saint they used to venerate, and as he was now
dead, they made a myth out of him. A myth that contained the beliefs which the
day before had been seen by everyone to lie shattered by reality.


Conversely,
there was a lot of violence against the Hindu Mahasabha. There was also
large-scale violence against the Maharashtra Brahmin community to which Godse
belonged, much like the anti-Sikh violence after Indira's murder (in both cases
M.J. Akbar's Congress is generally believed to have actively fomented this
violence).


The
great beneficiary of the Mahatma's murder was undoubtedly Jawaharlal Nehru. It
marginalized the Hindu Mahasabha, and whatever other Hindu activist party
existed, completely. Without the murder, Nehru and his Congress would have had
to answer for he betrayal of the election promise that India would remain
united, and for the immense suffering to which they were a party by accepting
Partition.Now, he had an occasion to ban and possibly destroy what he hated most
of all: the organizations which championed Hindutva.


In
this case, the fact that Nehru benefited immensely by the Mahatma's murder, will
not lead us to the conclusion that he must have been behind it.255
For, the principle that he who benefits must have committed the crime, only
applies if people act rationally. Now, Nathuram Godse's act was anything but
rational. Not only did he do the biggest possible damage to his own political
cause. He also did not even punish the source of the Partition disaster that had
angered him so much. If he had killed Jinnah, it would still have been murder,
but it would somehow have been logical. But killing the Mahatma was like being
beaten up by street toughs and then coming home and killing your father in
revenge. It was quite irrational.


It
is therefore quite improbable that the Hindu Mahasabha as such had a hand in the
murder. In fact, Godse had been angry with party leader Savarkara for being too
co- operative with the new Indian government. At any rate, the party leadership
was not involved in the murder : that was the judge's opinion, when he fully
acquitted Savarkar, whom the prosecutor for the state, at the express
instigation of Nehru, had also accused of complicity in the murder. The party
leader's non- involvement was so clear, that the prosecutor did not appeal
against the acquittal.


As
is well known, Godse and his accomplice Narayan Apte were hanged, and several
others were sentenced to life imprisonment, of which they actually did some
fifteen years.256



Now,
what does L.K. Advani have to do with all this ? He has been a member of the RSS
since decades. His party, the BJP, or at least its earlier incarnation, the Jan
Sangh, was formed by RSS members who wanted to give a political dimension to the
movement, in 1951. So, his party did not exist at the time of the Mahatma's
murder, but the mother organization RSS was very much around (in fact, RSS chief
Guru Golwalkar was one of the first to condemn the murder as a heinous crime,
but that condemnation was of course so common that it couldn't prove much0. So
the question becomes: is the RSS anyhow "the heir of Nathuram Godse",
as M. J. Akbar wants us to believe ?


After
the murder, Nehru, who saw his chance, banned not only the Hindu Mahasabha but
also the RSS, and jailed many RSS workers. However, the prosecutor could not
find any trace of complicity, and did not prosecute any RSS man. So, in a
juridical sense, the RSS had nothing at all to do with the murder. And M.J.
Akbar and similar propagandists have to exploit people's ignorance in order to
pass off their association of L.K. Advani with Nathuram Godse.


Now,
one could say that the RSS was co-responsible for the murder in the vaguer sense
that they crated the atmosphere for it (the same way secularists today allot
guilt for the riots). And it is undoubtedly true that the RSS was against
Partition and therefore against the Partition managers, including the Mahatma.
He had done so many fasts unto death to force Hindus, why had he not done one to
stop the Muslims from partitioning the country ? This question lived in the
minds of many Indians, and probably the RSS was vocal in expressing this anger
against the Mahatma's passivity in the face of Partition. There is no doubt that
they did their part in strengthening the anti-Gandhi mood in the country. But
they did not create the atmosphere for Godse's act : Godse knew them since years
and he was through with them. Godse didn't need the RSS (on which he looked down
as being merely a culture organisation) to make up his mind about Gandhi and
about how to punish him.


There
is quite a difference between demolishing the Mahatma's myth (a myth which
M.J.Akbar's Congress Party continues to exploit even today) or criticizing his
policies, and killing the man. The anti-Mahatma things which the RSS people said
and wrote, were to my knowledge not more vicious than the anti-Advani propaganda
which the secularists spread today (being a bigot, vicious, rabid, fascist,
another Barbar, Jinnah, Hitler, etc.) And if tomorrow a lunatic kills Advani, we
will not accuse the secularists of committing or even inspiring the murder. They
may be proven liars, but that does not make them murderers.





5. Hindu nationalism


"The Hindu communalists' claim to being patriotic
is wholly suspect. The RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha have a shameful history of
collaboration with the British, especially in 1942. Their support to the
colonial state, unlike the communists', did not even have that redeeming feature
or fig leaf : the choice of a lesser evil against fascism. It came from utterly
despicable, base and crass motives." Thus spake praful Bidwai.257
Praful
Bidwai repeats here a classic from the communist gallery of lies : that the
communists collaborated with the British as a matter of choosing the lesser evil
and first fighting fascism. It is simply not true that the communists joined
hands with the British because they wanted to fight fascism. When England
formally, declared war on Nazi Germany in 1939, the communists didn't move.
Stalin had a pact with Hitler, and so the communists did not fight Hitler. It
was only when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, that the communists joined the
anti- fascist struggle. The communists' loyalty was not to India, not to
Britain, not to the cause of anti-fascism, but solely to the Soviet Union. The
only redeeming feature in the communists' collaboration with the
British, was that it was part of their collaboration with the Soviet Union.


Praful
Bidwai writes an articles against communalism and accuses communalists of "utterly
despicable, crass and base motives" for their collaboration with the
British. So that must be his judgment about the Muslim League, which always
consistently collaborated with the British, and which was wholly unconcerned
with fig-leaves like the anti-fascist struggle. We may add that Bidwai's
communist friends supported the Muslim League's Pakistan demand, and that they
spied for the British and got many freedom fighters jailed.


The
Hindu Mahasabha had always been in the anti-colonial struggle. Its leader
Savarkar had spent many years in a penal camp on the Andamans for complicity in
anti- colonial murder. We may disagree with what he said, but as titles go, he
had deserved his title Swatantryaveer (hero of independence). When he wanted
Hindus to join the British army during the war ("Hinduize all politics,
militarize Hindudom"), this was not a betrayal of the freedom
struggle, but rather a potentially very effective strategy for obtaining quick
independence. Savarkar's calculation was that after the war, the British would
find before them a Hindu army, well-trained in the war against the Japanese,
well-armed and well-organized, against which they would not even want to wage
another colonial war.


Why
does Bidwai mention 1942, and not, say, 1944? Because in 1944 all parties
including Congress collaborated with the British, while 1942 was the year of the
Quit India movement. This movement was no doubt patriotic, but it was a great
failure. It did nothing for independence, and it did not even achieve its real
objective : bringing Congress back in the centre-stage of Indian politics. But
at the same time, Subhash Chandra Bose was joining the Axis powers and
organizing the Indian National Army to invade and liberate British India. Now,
let's see who collaborated with the British against his own people. Jawaharlal
Nehru declared that when Subhash Chandra Bose would set foot on Indian soil, he
would fight him. That is, Nehru would collaborate with the British against the
Japanese-backed Indian National Army. Taking our cue from Praful Bidwai, we must
ascribe to Nehru "utterly despicable, crass and base motives".



Anyway,
what a strange exercise : dealing with the allegation that the Hindu activist
parties are not India nationalists. I had thought that at least would be granted
to them. It just goes to show how rabid (to use one of their favourite
terms) the secularists' hatred for the Hindu communalists has become : they just
kick around whichever way they can, now reverting to the more familiar
allegation of national revanchism, irredentism (reclaiming territory on
historical grounds) and narrow chauvinism.


Let
us consider these more familiar allegations, which would be an element in common
with the aggressive nationalism of Germany, Japan and Italy in the thirties (and
with that of China in 1950-62). Take irredentism : designs to annex territory
based on historical claims. In some RSS publications, you see maps of Akhand
Bharat, which are roughly British India : including Myanmar (Burma), but not
including Afghanistan. So, it might seem they somewhere have a design to annex
Myanmar one day. In fact, Myanmar was never a part of India, it was only the
British who lumped the two together for a while.


On
the other hand, Afghanistan was a full part of the Hindu cradle up till the year
1000, and in political unity with India until Nadir Shah separated it in the
18th century. The mountain range in Eastern Afghanistan where the native Hindus
were slaughtered, is still called the Hindu Kush (Persian :Hindu slaughter.)
It is significant that one of the very few place-names on earth that reminds us
not of the victory of the winners but rather of the slaughter of the losers,
concerns a genocide of Hindus by the Muslims.


It
seems that many people who champion the Hindu cause, do not have a good
knowledge of Hindu history. But others do at least know of Afghanistan's having
been a part of Hindu culture, for I have heard once, as an illustration of the expansionist
ambitions of the Hindu communalists, that they want the shuddhi
of Afghanistan. It was quoted by a secularist, with the suggestion : isn't
that irredentist, and therefore fascist?


Well,
no. As long as shuddhi means the Hindu variety of conversion, there is
nothing wrong with organizations like the Arya Samaj going to Afghanistan and
performing shuddhi of the Afghans, that is, ritually leading them back into the
Hindu fold. Of course, one doesn't see it happen just like that. But then, one
doesn't see it happen after military conquest either. No cases are known to me
of forced shuddhi, even in the heady twenties when Shuddhi and Tabligh movements
competed for converts. Shudhi can only come after a conscious and free decision
of the human being involved. On that condition, there is nothing wrong with the
Shuddhi of Afghanistan.


There
are also, no doubt, some cranks who think that all countries with some Indian
influence have to be brought together in a Greater India : Iran, Tibet, Sri
Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia. But since some of the same
cranks also believe that everything comes from India (my native tongue, Dutch,
is said to have been brought by the Daityas), this Greater India would really
comprise the whole world. Yeah, why not the whole world one big Hindu Rashtra?
The thing is that such people, while politically totally unimportant, are
somehow visible enough within the Hindutva movement, to give the whole movement
a bad name.


The
one questionable and even objectionable element in the nationalism of Hindutva
prophets like Savarkar and Golwalkar, as well as of Jawaharlal Nehru for that
matter, is this 19th century European concept of a territorial nationalism.
Savarkar defined a Hindu as someone for whom India is both his fatherland and
holyland258.
The two words are important in the definition : a Chinese Buddhist may consider
India his holyland, but since he is not an Indian native, he is not a Hindu; and
an Indian Muslim, conversely, is not a Hindu because his holyland lies in
Arabia.


Now,
why tie the definition of Hindu to this piece of land? The Hindus in Bali,
Guyana etc. are just as much Hindus as those in Bharat. One can migrate and yet
retain Hindu culture. Of course, the name Hindu is really a geographical term
(Hind is Persian for Sindh), but then the task for Hindu thinkers should be to
free Hinduism from this territorial definition, rather than to confirm it.


It
is said that Shintoism is Japan's national religion (as opposed to
so-called universal or imperialist religion). Alright, but Shinto does
not mean Japan, it means the way of the gods. So, if you
define a religion, you should say something about its contents, not just about
its geographical location. "The way of the gods" may be still
very rudimentary as a definition, but it says at least that it is a method or
practice (a way) involving the divine in a kind of personalized way (the gods,
as opposed to an atheist or nirguna system). That is more than Hindu,
which means just of India.


Savarkar
put things upside down. He was a nationalist, pledging allegiance to this piece
of earth now called India. But what is special about this country, so special
that Savarkar builds a religion on it? There is nothing special about this
country, except that historically it happens to be the cradle of Hindu society,
and that society in turn derives its worth from its practicing and embodying a
certain culture, Sanatana Dharma. It is because of Sanatana Dharma that this
society is worth serving and preserving, and in turn it is because of Hindu
society that Hindusthan is worth loving and defending. But this culture
can be transplanted or re- created elsewhere, and then that other country is as
much fatherland and holyland.


This
territorial nationalism centered on Bharat Mata only confuses the issues before
Hindu society. For instance, it occasions all this silly talk about Muslim
Indians cheering for Pakistan in cricket games, and having extra- territorial
loyalties to the area from which their religion was imported. But so what? The
problem with Islam is not at all that it is foreign. The problem with Islam lies
not in its geographical but in its ideological origins. The problem is not one
of nationalism vs. extra- national loyalties, it is one of culture and ideology
: an exclusivist anti-humanist creed vs. a pluralist and integrally humanist
culture. The Islamic problem is not one of loyalty to Pakistan or Mecca, but one
of self- righteousness and intolerance.


As
long as the Hindu nationalists continue to define the Muslim problem as
a problem of nationality, of "joining the national mainstream"
and of "being Indian first and Muslim next", they are trapped
in 19th century state nationalism, with all its puffed-up patriotic
emotionalism. They are evading the confrontation between two incompatible
ideologies/cultures, which no patriotism or loyalty to the state can unit. For
instance, asking the Muslims to identify themselves as Mohammedi Hindus
is not only very unrealistic, it constitutes a refusal to recognize the true
(exclusivist and therefore averse to assimilation) character of Islam, in the
name of a superficial Hindu nationhood.


There
is no good reason why Muslims or anyone else should direct his first loyalty to
the Indian state. That state is nothing but an instrument to regular society and
facilitate the citizens' fulfillment of their own life aims. If Muslims want to
direct their loyalty towards an international religious community, they are free
to do so, as long as they abide by the law of the land. The way forwards for the
Hindu movement, is to redefine the problem in terms of ideology and
civilization, and to address the challenge of Islam not at the level of
ineffective emotional categories like loyalty and identifying with
the nation, but at the ideological level. And when it comes to loyalty,
this should not be directed towards such accidental matters as a territory or a
nation in which we happen to be born, but towards the eternal values embodied in
Hindu civilization.


Hindutva
ideologue V.D.Savarkar was a territorial Hindu, but culturally he was quite
alienated. The well-known example: he advocated meat-eating and even
meet-eating. Savarkar reasoned: if beef is more nutritious, then drop all the
taboos, and kill cows for their meat. If seems many of his (formal and informal
) followers still think that the Hindus can only defeat the meat-eating Muslims
if they give up vegetarianism. What nonsense this is: what are you fighting for
if you believe that "in order to better defend Hindu culture, I have to
give up Hindu culture"? If you think you have to forsake your culture
identity, you only have this territorial identity left.


And
then, paradoxically, you arrive at the same point where the Nehruvian
secularists are. They too advocate a culturally neutral, territorial patriotism.
Both in the Hindu movements and in the anti-Hindu secularist movements, people
are saying that you should be Indian first. What is this, being India?
What is that, Bharatiyatva? Human beings are not different by the land
they inhabit. They develop a certain distinctiveness by the value-system they
practice, by the social ways that mould them, by the mental outlook that is
instilled in them. So you can have a commitment to certain values. But a
commitment to a certain piece of earth can only be superficial. And if this
basically superficial attachment to this territory gets mystified, as happened
with the secular nationalisms in some European countries, then the consequences
are evil.


Of
course, when there is a football game, I want the team from my town to win. If
it's an international game, I want my country's team to win. It would be a bit
ridiculous to support the other town, the foreign country. So, that much
territorial patriotism is alright. But one's basic commitment should be to more
substantial things than that. A country can only acquire a value, and be an
object of commitment, if it becomes historically linked with a substantial
value. As long as India is conceived as culturally neutral, it is just a piece
of land, not really worth any commitment. Forget about Bharatiyatva. The day
when the world has one global culture, and that day is not too far off, these
concept of territorial patriotism, of Indian-ness or American- ness etc. will
only apply in football stadiums.


However,
today the Indian state has an important function as the abode and defense of a
culture which could hardly thrive otherwise. Since Hindu society is surrounded
by Islamic and Communist enemies out to destroy Hindu culture, this state
acquires a more than territorial importance. India is not culturally neutral,
because objectively it is the only defense of Hindu culture against its enemies.
So, as abode and defense of Hindu culture, this land and this state can count on
the Hindus' allegiance and attachment. At this secondary level, nationalism
becomes meaningful.


That
Savarkar, one of the foremost Hindutva leaders, could be so careless about Hindu
culture even while defending it, is significant for the advanced state of
self-forgetfulness that threatens to submerge Hindu society. And in this
nationalistic and directed to Bharat Mata, than cultural and directed to
Sanatana Dharma.


If
at all the nationalism in the Hindutva movement would develop fascist overtones
(and I do not see that at present), it would be due to its not being Hindu
enough, and being too secular-nationalist. Compare with the relative
unimportance of national borders in medieval Europe when it was all Catholic and
unconcerned with nation-states. It was the larger religious and cultural idea
(the Brahmin level) that could keep in its place the political idea of the state
(the Kshatriya level). Similarly, a deeper knowledge and understanding of
Sanatana Dharma would soon dedramatize and ultimately dissolve the problems of
religionalism and sectarianism.


For
instance, Sikh separatism is based on externalities like beards and turbans, and
on a defective and distorted understanding of Hindu and Sikh doctrine. If today
Hindu politicians have to advocate a tough line in Punjab, and sending in the
army, it is because they themselves (as well as all the traveling sadhus and
other consciousness-raisers of Hindu society) failed to check the spread of
ignorance and misconceptions about the Sikh tradition.


Saying
that India only makes sense as the eggshell in which Hindu society lives, and
that India takes its identity from Hinduism, may not be the position taken by
Savarkar, who put this the other way around, but at any rate it is the position
considered Hindu communalist par excellence by the secularists. Yet,
the position is wholly correct. But for Hinduism, there would not have been an
Indian Union. Suppose that, as some foresaw a century ago, all Hindus would have
been converted to Islam or Christianity. What would happen then, can be seen
from such happy Muslim-Christian bhai-bhai countries like Lebanon, Cyprus,
Sudan, Kosovo (Yugoslavia), Nagorny-Karabakh. The country would have been split
at the very least into a Muslim North and a Christian South.259



In
the sense that Hinduism is the cultural reason for India's very existence, India
cannot exist but as a Hindu Rashtra. Let us see what the secular alternative is.



In
a secular India, there is room for different religions, right? This pluralism is
either a negative pluralism : we don't care, be whatever you want to be. In that
case, you have a neutral state. That is the official position today, and it is
not generating much enthusiasm. The minorities don't want it, because they feel
threatened by majority rule. They fear that a neutral state regulated by
majority vote, would uniformize at the expense of the weaker elements in the
plural set-up. They allege that, against its own professing, the preserving of
the minorities' identity is made an issue, and when the majority of the weak, an
anti-democratic policy of championing the minorities against the majority is
enforced. And so, everyone is unhappy.


The
alternative to this neutral pluralism is a positive pluralism. Underlying it,
there is philosophy that positively gives a full-blooded foundation and
justification to plurality. That philosophy exist : it is called Sanatana
Dharma, and a state founded on it could well be called a Hindu Rashtra. In this
state, the different components of the plural set-up are recognized as such.
This state would be different from a uniform democracy, in that it would
recognize plural subsystems. This recognition of plurality is, once more, the
very opposite of fascism.


Integrating
different units of identity into a large identity, is one of the foremost
socio-political problems of today. And it is an issue on which the Hindu
tradition has interesting approaches to offer. Since it is such a vast and
important issue, I will limit myself in the following chapter to the one aspect
of it that is highlighted at present in this discussion : minorityism
vs. majoritarianism.





6. Majorityism


The BJP has been saying that the government and some
political parties indulge in minorityism. This means that they have
promised or given special privileges to the minorities, chiefly the Muslims, in
exchange for their political support. Two other reasons for this pampering
the minorities may be " the approval of the Muslim countries,
with whom Nehru and his successors established a special relationship (party
made necessary by the Nehru-created Kashmir problem, on which a united Muslim
front had to be prevented), and the satisfaction of a mental desire to be secular.
In my opinion, the last factor, the mental cluster of secularism, the
need to prove oneself non-Hindu and pro-minorities, is the most important one.
The
examples of systematic institutional minorityism cited most often are
the separate personal law based on the Shariat, the special status of the
Muslim-majority state Jammu and Kashmir, the immunity of minority schools and
places of worship from government interference or take-over. Examples of
occasional political minorityism are the numerous unequal treaties before
independence between Congress and the Muslim league, the creation of a
Muslim-majority district in Kerala by redrawing of district borders, the
overruling of the Shah Bano verdict with legislation, the creation of a minorities
commission (under the Janata government of which some BJP leaders were
Cabinet ministers). These do not add up to a full oppression of Hindu
society by the Muslim minority, but they do constitute real discriminations.


Opposing
this minorityism, the BJP has put forward the slogan : Justice for all,
appeasement of none. This means that there should be no discrimination
between individuals, between states, or between any intermediary levels of
organization, on the basic of religions. Thus, instead of a Minorities
Commission, there should be a Human Rights Commission, because
members of the majority can have grievances too. Instead of immunity
for minority schools, there should be immunity for schools run by any community.
In fact, many members of the Constituent Assembly who voted this Articles 30
giving guarantees to the minority educational institutions, acted on the
assumption that majority institutions would wrong, the Article should be
reconsidered. A common civil code should be enacted. Articles 370 should be
scrapped and Kashmir should be fully integrated.


So,
what the BJP demands here, is that the rules of democracy be applied without any
exemptions or exceptions on communal grounds. To any democratic-minded person,
this would seem quite unobjectionable. Not so to the Indian secularists.


Of
late, they have coined a new term, which should brand this democratic equality
as really a component of fascism: majoritarianism. The right term to oppose
minorityism would have been majorityism, i.e. espousal of the majority cause,
but they chose the uglier majoritarianism. This is too bad for them, because the
term can be analyzed as "espousal of the majoritarian cause",
so not championing a (majority) community, hence communalism, but championing
the majoritarian principle. And there is nothing objectionable in the
majoritarian principle: it is the very working principle of our democracy.


In
fact, the secularists are quite correct in not describing the opposition to
minorityism as majorityism. Opposing the favouring of minorities need not
indicate a favouring of the majority, it may just as well stem for a concern of
the working principle of the current from of democracy, viz. decision by the
majority.


"The
true test of a democracy is the justice that the minority gets in the system.
The majority will always get its share whatever the system",
writes M.J. Akbar260.



With
that, white minority rule in South Africa certainly passes the true test of
democracy. M.J. Akbar implies that all struggle against minority regimes
oppressing majorities was futile, since majorities cannot possibly be oppressed.



But
Hindus point out that they are really discriminated against in the laws of the
land, and that minorities do get privileges which are unthinkable in most
genuinely secular states.


If
we apply Bipan Chandra's definition of communalism, viz. attributing
common secular interests to people on the ground of a common religion. then we
must consider M.J. Akbar's statement as an application of communalist thought
categories. There is absolutely no questioning of the religious rights of the
minorities in India, so if Mr. Akbar raises issues involving the minorities, it
must be non-religious issues, in which the category of religious community (minority)
does not properly apply. >From the moment the religious rights of the
minorities are guaranteed, any other talk of minorities is
fundamentally communalist. Every single article of law not dealing with the
exercise of religious community as a legally relevant unit of organization, is
an element of communalism in the legal framework of the state, and should be
repudiated in a truly secular-set-up.


A
religious community is only a lawful category in strictly religious matters. In
these, there is already discrimination against the Hindus. The state governments
can (and do, as recently in Kerala) take over the management of Hindu temples,
not of minority places of worship. They can (and do, as in West Bengal) take
over school started by Hindu organizations. Apart from the secular aspects of
education, there is religious discrimination against the Hindus in that the
imparting of Hindus tradition is hampered, as well as the creation of a Hindu
atmosphere in a school (e.g. through the selective recruitment of teachers, to
which the minority schools are fully entitled).


Both
in the letter and spirit of the Constitution and in actual practice, Hindus as a
religious community are discriminated against in matters of temples management
and education. These discriminations are at least partly encroachments on the
exercise n the exercise of the Hindus' constitutionally guaranteed religious
freedom. Just imagine what rhetoric and agitation would be lunched if such
discriminations had applied to the minorities.


Then
there is the matter of the separate civil code for the minorities. Marriage and
inheritance laws are, perhaps on top of some sacramental dimension, quite
secular matters. Recognizing and institutionalizing inequality between the
citizens of India in these secular matters on the basis of their religion is
definitely a case of constitutional communalism. Or rather, let us not be too
harsh on the Constitution itself, for it does call on the law-maker to
eventually abolish the religion-based law systems. It is political communalism
on the part of the parties that refuse to implement the constitutional provision
for the eventual enactment of a common civil code.


It
has been said, by commentators ranging from Girilal Jain to Mani Shankar Aiyar,
that this common civil code should not be forced on the Muslims, that they
should agree to it voluntarily, without any pressure being put on them to do so.
As a matter of practical policy in the given situation, that makes good sense.
However, as a matter of principle, the position that a common law decided on by
a democratic majority, should not be imposed on an unwilling minority, opens the
door for all kinds of minority veto rights that make a mockery of the democratic
principle that decision are taken by majority vote. One can justify this
position by saying that a minority's personal law is not the whole country's
business, so that the relevant majority whose choice should determine the
democratic decision, is not the majority of the entire nation, but merely the
emerging in the democratic process within the community.


This
reasoning would from part of a philosophy of multi community integration, in
which as many powers as possible are devolved to the lowest possible level, in
this case the religious community (since personal law is associated with
religious commandments). This philosophy is currently gaining in relevance in a
world which, with its increasing global integration, is discovering the
socio-political value of decentralization: while matters of global concern are
to be decided at the global level, national decisions should be retained at the
national level, which in turn should not usurp decisions that can be taken at
the regional level, and this in turn should devolve to the local level decisions
that can be taken at that level. This decentralization trend (which is visible,
for instance, in the increasing recognition of the substate regions as political
units in the European Community) is linked with the modern small is
beautiful philosophy, applied to political decision-making.


Of
course, this decentralization of power to the proper and lowest possible level,
is akin to the decentralized structure of Hindu society, which always was
commonwealth of (occupational as well as religious) communities. It is quite in
the spirit of Hindu tradition, tough not in the spirit of the Constitution, to
leave the Muslim community its personal law.


The
separate status for the state of Kashmir (Article 370) is again a discrimination
in secular matters on the basis of religion, viz. its being a state with a
Muslim majority. Nehru sycophants have tried to explain this irresponsible and
communalist Article as follows: "The special problems of Jammu and
Kashmir do not arise only out of the fact of its being a Muslim-majority state.
It is also a state coveted by a foreign power which has thrice gone to war with
India to capture the state,... whose territory is partly under hostile foreign
occupation,... which is geopolitically located in the cockpit of international
intrigue."261



In
fact, each of these problems can be reduced to this one fact that it is a
Muslim-majority state and is therefore claimed by Pakistan under the terms of
the Partition of British India. With a Hindu majority this would be radically
different, and it would not even want the separate status granted by Article
370. Moreover ,none of the said problems justifies a separate status. On the
contrary, in most countries they would lead to an extra strong integration into
the Union, if not permanent central rule


But
our Nehruvian knows it all better: "It is with a view to addressing
ourselves to these very special problems... that the constitutional device of
Article 370 was evolved." If that is true, then we must recognize in
all sincerity that this device has been ineffective. It has not stopped
the Chinese from annexing parts of Karakoram and Ladakh, it has not stopped
Pakistan from invading it twice more, it has not prevented the ongoing
skirmishes over the Siachen glacier, it has not prevented the general spread of
secessionism, it has not prevented the Kashmiri Muslims from practicing majorityism
at the expense of the Hindu and Buddhist areas of Jammu and Ladakh and from
hounding out the Hindu minority of the Kashmir valley, and it has not given
private investors the confidence to go in and bring some genuine economical
development. Short, in every geopolitical, communal and even economical respect,
it has been an outrageous failure.


But
our Nehruvian spokesman remains, like his mentor, adamantly blind to the
feedback from reality :"In the circumstances, the demand for abrogating
Article 370 is totally misplaced. It would only result in the further alienation
of the people of Jammu and Kashmir..."


Firstly,
subtract people of Jammu: they would welcome the full integration with
India, either through the abrogation of Article 370 of through separate
statehood for itself and Union Territory status for Ladakh. Secondly, subtract Hindus
of Kashmir: they would gladly welcome full accession to India. But then,
they have already fled to areas that are really India. Thirdly, why would the
people of Kashmir feel alienated by integration? That seems a
contradiction. It might be more accurate to say that Nehru has treated the
Kashmiri Muslims like spoiled children, afraid to refuse them anything, so if
you tell them now that they will get equal treatment with the rest, they become
very nasty.


The
blatant communal discrimination that guarantees the Muslim majority in Kashmir
by forbidding non-Kashmiris to settle there, is also defended by our Nehruvian :"There
is little practical scope for settling any considerable body of outsiders in the
valley. What land there is, is already under the plough." By these
standards, outsiders should be prevented from settling in Bombay.262
Moreover,"there would not be many Indians from elsewhere in the country
who would wish to actually settle there..."


But
abrogating communalist Articles is a matter of principle, of upholding the basic
constitutional and democratic principle of non-discrimination, and is not
dependent on just what number of people it will affect in practice. As BJP
spokesman K. L. Sharma said :"Equal status to all states and equal
rights to all citizens is the BJP secularism."263
Moreover, as a political precedent, Article 370 affects millions of people, viz.
those in states where separatist movement are encouraged by it and use the
demand of the extension of Article 370 to their own state as a propaganda item
or bargaining chip ("our ultimate concession short of
independence").


Of
course, it is not certain that the abrogation of Article 370 will make much of a
practical difference for Kashmir itself in the near future. As long as the
secessionist terror continues, and even for some time after that, not even the
refugees will go back, let alone other. But at least the principle of India's
integrity will have been restored. And it will discourage the secessionists in
Kashmir and elsewhere, as well as the Pakistani agents, to see that India is
reasserting its integrity on at least the level of legislation, that one level
where terrorist created ground realities need not be taken into account
and where principles can be upheld without compromise.


The
argument of the secularists against the allegations of minorityism
is that Hindus should be generous, and that they are not entitled to a persecution
complex since their very majority makes it impossible for them to become
the object of injustice. Moreover, the Muslims are a poor and wretched community
who must be suffering a lot of discrimination otherwise they would not be so underrepresented
in government jobs, business, the army, the universities: how can Hindus claim
they are put at a disadvantage by this pitiable minority?


As
often, the secularists defend their case by confusing issues. There is a
difference between suffering legal constitutional discrimination, and being
poor. In the Islamic Republic of Malaysia, the Chinese are second- class
citizens, legally discriminated against as being non-Muslims, yet they are very
successful in business, and considerably wealthier than the Muslim Malays. If
the Muslims in India are poor, it is not at all because of discrimination, as
should be clear from the record of other minorities. If Sikhs are overrepresented
in government services and the security forces, if Christians are overrepresented
in education, if Jains are overrepresented in business, it is not
because of preferential treatment by the law or by the executive. In fact, if we
drop the false socialist parlance, these communities are not over-represented
in the said fields, it is more accurate to say they are great achievers.



And
the Muslims, unfortunately, are on average poor achievers. That is almost
entirely due to one single factor: their poor schooling. This factor in turn may
be reduced to Islamic factors like large families, low status of women (keeping
them uneducated and thus less able to teach their children and to create an
education- friendly atmosphere for them), and stress on Quranic rather than
secular studies. Short, the hold of Islamic orthodoxy over the Muslim community
is by far the largest factor in Muslim community is by far the largest factor in
Muslim backwardness (as well as fostering its ghetto mentality).264



By
contrast, while Hindus may be doing alright economically etc., they do
objectively suffer legal discrimination. They are denied certain constitutional
rights and guarantees, as well as many political favours, and that constitutes a
real inequality even if it is not impoverishing. The secularist line that Hindus
should bear discrimination without complaining, since there are worse things in
life (such as this abysmal poverty which these wretched Muslims have to suffer),
presupposes that Hindus have no sense of honour. It assumes Hindus don't mind
being second-class citizens, as long as they make a decent living. This
presupposition certainly fits the stereotype, created in the centuries when
Hindus were sharply discriminated against in the laws laid down by Muslim
rulers. But that does not justify continuing legal discriminatio