#dnaEdit: Bullying tactics

It would be a tired refrain if only it weren’t so ominous. When RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat declared a few days ago that all Indians were Hindus, it was repetition of a sentiment expressed not just by him but by members of India’s ruling BJP and, therefore, all the more dangerous for the country’s pluralistic fabric.

Equating all Indians with Hindus and all of Indian culture with Hindutva in the garb of geo-political talk is just a ruse for foisting a unichrome religious identity on a many hued India. It seeks to subsume the minority into the overwhelming majority and is against the spirit of the Constitution that promises a secular India to all its citizens.

If all inhabitants of England are English, of Germany are Germans and of the USA Americans, then why were those from Hindustan not Hindus? That was the rather disingenuous poser from Bhagwat during a function in Odisha. He went on to say that the cultural identity of all Indians is Hindutva and the present inhabitants of the country are “descendants of this great culture”. Just a few days before this assertion by the RSS chief, the ideological big brother of the rightwing Hindu brigade and of the ruling party, a BJP MP from Goa had said pretty much the same thing. With mathematical precision, Francis D’Souza had declared that India is a Hindu country, India is Hindustan, all Indians in Hindustan are Hindus and he himself was a Christian Hindu. So similar to what veteran party leader and former BJP president Murli Manohar Joshi had said some years ago — all Indian Muslims were Mohammadiya Hindus and all Indian Christians Christi Hindus. 

Quite clearly, this effort to paint all of India with the Hindutva brush is not new. And efforts to project it as an etymology debate about how ancient times and how all those living on this side of the Sindhu river were known as Hindus are hypocritical to say the least. This is not about geography but communal politics in a contemporary India where intolerance is on the rise, where riots break out over tragically trivial incidents. Tensions simmer, waiting for the slightest spark. Efforts to assimilate Indian identity into a Hindu one will stoke the fires further, increasing the sense of vulnerability of minority communities and exacerbating majority intolerance. 

Statements by Joshi, Bhagwat and sundry others like D’Souza can’t be seen in isolation. That they abrogate to themselves the right to stamp the Hindu identity on all minorities and also determine the very concept of Indianness is perilous for Indian democracy. That this also goes uncontested by a government and its leaders who may have preached Hindutva but now have the onerous responsibility of ensuring peace and prosperity for all Indians, not just those who fall in line, is unacceptable.  

In the political debate that Bhagwat’s statement sparked off, more than one opposition leader pointed to the fact that this is Bharat not Hindustan. And the Constitution very deliberately refers to “India, that is Bharat...”, reflecting the many religions that make up India not just one. 

That’s a basic history lesson that Bhagwat and his ilk, stuck in the rigid confines of a fundamentalist, majoritarian ideology, would do well to learn. It is about ‘Indianness’, not ‘Hinduness’, a syncretic society with myriad voices and views, not a brute, monochrome one.