Hindu liberals’ failure

The charge-sheeting of 11 men associated with the Sanatan Sanstha in connection with the Goa blast of October, 2009, has brought the problem of right-wing Hindu militancy to the fore.

Evidence is growing that the Malegaon and Ajmer blasts were also the handiwork of disaffected Hindu groups. It is now a virtual certainty that “secular” politicians will try to make capital out of it.

While it is nobody’s case that Hindu terror groups should be treated any differently from the jehadi groups wreaking havoc in the country, there are some essential points of difference, and they need to be noted. One, while the Pakistan-bred terror groups cannot be controlled, the India-based ones, and especially Hindu-linked ones, are easier to rein in for the simple reason that the police will find them easy to infiltrate.

They can be neutralised in no time, given the political will.

The same cannot be said for the home-grown Muslim terror groups which sometimes offer tacit support to the likes of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). Elements in radical Islamic organisations like Simi have been known to work closely with non-Indian terror groups, and the police have so far been unable to infiltrate them, thanks to deep suspicions about police impartiality within the community. Quite obviously, remedying this lacuna should be the first priority of the intelligence and law-enforcement agencies.

The second point of difference is the larger root-cause issue. While Pakistan-based terror groups have the annexation of Kashmir and the Islamisation of the world as their ultimate goals, the Hindu militant groups have more limited aims: to consolidate their power base among Hindus in India, preferably through communal polarisation. That they have not succeeded so far is largely the result of the innate good sense of Hindus than any great secular effort. As a group, Hindus tend to be inwardly-focused and less inclined towards millenarian causes.

The third point of difference is the uneven nature of Indian secularism. India’s phony secularists believe that majority communalism should be fought with abuse and bluster, but minority communalism should be brushed under the carpet. Harbans Mukhia, a history professor at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, has repeatedly made the same point.

Writing on the issue some time back, he said: “Secular mobilisation has lent strength to the notion that while all communalism is bad, majority communalism poses a much greater threat to the nation than minority communalism… The ‘secular’ parties’ unwillingness to question, challenge and confront minority communalism has thus created a space for it to grow, as its leaders realise the power vested in it as a political force or vote bank.”

The words used by so-called secularists to differentiate between the two kinds of communalism are also revealing. Yoginder Sikand, writing on Simi after the 2006 Mumbai train blasts, had this to say: “…the radicalism of Islamist groups like Simi, on the one hand, and Hindu fascist groups, on the other, feed on each other, both speaking the language of hatred.” Mark the use of loaded words. While a neutral word like “radical” is used for Simi, Hindu groups are “fascist,” a value-judgmental term. Where’s the evenhandedness?

We need to understand the main reason for this unevenness in the language used by Indian secularists. Many upper class Hindus are ashamed to be Hindus, a factor I spoke about in my last column, too. Thanks to centuries of living under British colonial domination, Hindus lost their self-esteem. The political purpose of the British colonial project was to show Indian culture and achievements as inferior, and to ensure that the upper classes bought this logic and internalised destructive self-criticism.

The upper classes thus learnt to ape their rulers and look down on themselves and their people. The British, for example, used negative Hindu practices like casteism, sati, and thuggee to make all of Hindusim sound backward and retrograde.

The Hindu classes thus chose two different directions: one group, led by the Communists, saw Hinduism as more evil than good. They also painted other religions as more progressive and civilising influences. Nehru and other westernised Indians belonged to this group. Other Hindus, in a natural defence against calumny, went the other way, and refused to accept any criticism against Hinduism. Few followed Gandhi’s third way — of proclaiming themselves Hindu and yet being constructively critical of the negative aspects of Hinduism.

Today’s card-carrying secularists belong to the first category of Hindu-baiting liberals, and the Congress, some OBC parties, and the Left are often torchbearers of the post-colonial legacy of self-hate. In a broad sense, thus, the failure of Hindu liberals to assert their Hindu identities left a leadership vacuum that could only be filled by the radical Hindutva outfits, which spew venom against Islam and Christianity.

Gandhi’s approach to Hinduism was the only rational middle-ground left for liberals, but he didn’t last long enough after Independence to impact secular politics. Liberal Hindus have to reassert their Hindu identities if more radical outfits are not to hijack the religion.