Inclusivity _ Hindu
phobia
Inspired by Sri Sreemoy Talukdar
https://ramamohanraocheruku.blogspot.com/2024/02/inclusivity-hindu-phobia.html
When the prime minister spoke of 22
January not as a date on a calendar but ‘Nava Kalachakra’ (the origin of a new
time cycle) in his address after the Pran Pratishtha ceremony of Ram Lalla, he
set the tone for an epochal shift in India’s journey to modernity. This is a
seismic shift.
The Ram Mandir at Ayodhya marks the
formal end to India’s somnambulist existence forced by the post-colonial ‘idea
of India’ that Hindus must devalue their faith, curb all overt expressions and
refrain from cultural nationalism to keep the compact with the minorities,
especially Muslims, who faced no such restrictions. It was the reflexive
response of a defeated people who justified their defeatist mindset with moral
posturing.
The suppression of Hindu pride and
heritage as a necessary condition for nation-building—that formed the core
of Nehruvian consensus—could be an elitist construct imposed from the top by
leaders far removed from the people they represent, or the long-term trauma
caused by the destruction of a civilization and the intergenerational wounds of
repeated invasions, layers of cruelty, brutal wars, colonialism, and Partition.
Whatever the framing, it deadened the
nation’s soul. As VS Naipaul wrote in a 1997 article for India Today, “What
happened (Arab and Turkic invasions of India) from 1000 A.D. on, really, is
such a wound that it is almost impossible to face. Certain wounds are so bad
that they can’t be written about. You deal with that kind of pain by hiding
from it. You retreat from reality.”
With the return of Prabhu Shri Ram, a
lightning rod for a simultaneous civilizational, cultural, and religious
revival, that defeatism is now over. The chakra of ‘Amrit Kaal’ now rolls
towards a reinvigorated civilisational state where the arc won’t demand
temporal, religious and cultural deracination from its majority population but
a modernity compatible and comfortable with India’s core Hindu identity.
With the building of the glorious Ram
Mandir at the birthplace of Ram Lalla and Pratishtha (instillation) of Pran
(life) into the murti, we have a new tryst with destiny where voices ‘from the
below’, as subaltern studies would frame it, have finally forced decolonisation
of the Hindu mind and the decolonisation of the Hindu civilisation, leading to
contemporaneous India reconnecting with the Sanatan idea of Bharatvarsh.
And this transformation, as Narendra
Modi described on Monday, will take place under the aegis of Prabhu Shri Ram
who stands not just as the symbol of the awakening of Hindu consciousness and
the liberation of Bharat from centuries of ‘slave mentality’, but also as a
marker for nation-building and good governance. As he said, Prabhu Shri Ram
isn’t the problem, but the solution.
In this Bharat which arises from the
churn and the turn of the ‘kaalchakra’, Hindus take pride, sagacity and
inspiration from their past as legatees of a high civilization and replace
their passivity with reaffirmation of their religiosity and nationalism.
They are no longer ashamed, fearful
or guilt-tripped to cry Jai Shri Ram, or Siyavar Ramchandra Ki Jai and announce
the fact that their Gods are not remote figures to be prayed to and feared from
a distance but devatas who lie at the centre stage of our lives, on different
planes of consciousness, and move at ease between the philosophical abstraction
and intellectualism of the Vedas and Vedantas as well as the mundane routines
of existence through nitya (daily) pujas, sadhanas, and rituals.
To the question on inter-community
relations in such an India, the answer is clear. A nation that emerges from
such a praxis exercised by its majority population won’t be at war with itself,
but, as the prime minister pointed out, it will be a nation which is “samarth,
saksham, divya and bhavya (capable, empowered, divine and grand)” because the
tolerance that western nation-states aspire for in the name of ‘secularism’ is
baked into the pluralistic Indic faiths that together form the mosaic of
Hinduism. Ram Rajya, or the ideal that Bharat aspires for, is inclusive and
sees unity in diversity—the eternal nature of Sanatan dharma.
A state where the majority of its
people are dharmic is naturally inclusive. This is not a blank assertion. At a
moment of great significance and joy for the majority Hindu population that has
been made to wait for five centuries to see their Ram Lalla return at his
birthplace, Prime Minister Modi and RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat sent out
messages of pragmatism, humility, inclusiveness, and nation-building.
The prime minister reminded us that
“today’s occasion is not only a moment of celebration; it is also a moment of
realisation of the maturity of Indian society. This is not only an opportunity
of victory but also of humility.”
The prime minister then sought to
define what Ram means for Bharat and how the divinity of Prabhu Shri Ram shapes
the ethos of this civilization. He started by saying that “the construction of
this temple of Ramlalla is also a symbol of peace, patience, mutual harmony and
coordination of Indian society. We are seeing that this construction is not
giving birth to any fire, but to energy. The Ram mandir has inspired every
section of society to move forward on the path of a bright future. Ram is not fire,
Ram is energy. Ram is not a dispute; Ram is a solution. Ram is not just ours;
Ram belongs to everyone. Ram is not only present, Ram is eternal.”
The reconstruction of Ram Mandir,
once destroyed by the sword of a fenatic invader, is also a reconstruction
and reimagining of the new ‘idea of India.’ In a breathtaking bit of oratory,
Modi said, “Ram is the faith of India, Ram is the foundation of India. Ram is
the idea of India; Ram is the law of India. Ram is the consciousness of India;
Ram is the thinking of India. Ram is India’s esteem; Ram is India’s glory. Ram
is flow, Ram is effect. There is Ram neeti, Ram is eternal, and continuity. Ram
is vibhu—vivid, all-pervasive, the world, the universal soul.
Hence, when Ram is revered, its impact does not last for years or even
centuries. It lasts till the world exists.”
He urged the Indians to “take a
pledge that we will dedicate every moment of our lives to nation building. Our
worship of Lord Shri Ram should be special. It should rise above the self.”
There can hardly be a message more inclusive.
Before the prime minister came to the
podium, the RSS chief struck a note of caution amid the collective euphoria
when he said, “in Ram Rajya, we will have to stop fighting over petty issues.
We must move forward with truth, compassion, wisdom, discipline, and charity.
Ram Rajya will come by giving up greed and by staying disciplined.”
Now, imagine for a moment the
magnitude of the occasion and the solemn messages sent by two of the most
powerful leaders in India. There are ample historical evidences of Mughal
emperor Babur’s deliberate vandalism, who erected the Babri mosque over the remnants
of a Hindu temple that formed one of the most sacred sites for Hindus—the birthplace for
Ram Lalla. In fact, Babur didn’t want to hide his ‘feat’.
Historians such as Meenakshi Jain
have painstakingly provided archival references and historical accounts in her
book ‘The Battle For Rama’ (Case of the Temple at Ayodhya), that Babri mosque
was built over Ram’s janmasthan, which gave the mosque its moniker
Masjid-i-Janmasthan.
These are indisputable facts. Far
from seeking to conceal these realities, the Muslim invaders sought to make it
a public spectacle to humiliate the Hindus by desecrating the sanctity of their
holiest sites. It was a celebratory move, a mark of authority and domination
for the invaders and subjugation for the Hindu population who were defeated and
coerced into silence, stopped from praying at the site where their deity was
born. A hypothetical equivalent could be Hindu invaders destroying the holiest
of Muslim sites and erecting a temple on that spot. We all know, of course,
that no such thing has ever happened.
As Naipaul had once said in an
interview for Outlook, the vandalisms “speak of the triumph of the faith, the
destruction of idols and temples, the loot, the carting away of the local
people as slaves, so cheap and numerous that they were being sold for a few
rupees. The architectural evidence—the absence of Hindu monuments in the
north—is convincing enough. This conquest was unlike any
other that had gone before. There are no Hindu records of this period. Defeated
people never write their history. The victors write the history. The victors
were Muslims. For people on the other side, it is a period of darkness.”
How did the Hindus react? In the
culmination of a struggle that lasted nearly 500 years, the Hindus waged a
legal battle to reconstruct a temple at the site where the mosque stood as a
mark of their slavery, dishonour and betrayal of faith. Once independent and
post-Partition, they could have simply built a temple with an administrative
decree, as Erdogan did while demolishing the museum at Hagia Sophia and
converting it into a mosque at the stroke of a pen.
The Hindus waited patiently for
centuries, and when an uprising from the below flattened the mosque, they
waited some more for the legal verdict to come their way. It is difficult to
think of any country which has over 80% Christians or Muslims battling it out
at the judicial halls, citing evidence after evidence, with its political class
looking to stall a verdict at every opportunity, to earn the legal right to
pray to their deity at their own homeland. The verdict that eventually swung it
in favour of Hindus also ruled that a new mosque would be built at a land
nearby. If this isn’t fairness, what is? If this isn’t tolerance, what is?
It is difficult to reconcile this
reality with the disgraceful propaganda being projected by the western media
outlets such as the New York Times, CNN or Guardian that have come out with
alarmist takes reeking of bad faith arguments and blatant falsehoods that would
have put even Joseph Goebbels or Chinese state media to shame.
Written in censorious tones, these
articles cast doubt on indisputable facts, challenge every Hindu assertion as
dubious, make a mockery of the Supreme Court verdict, and paint Muslims as the
perennial victims crying out for justice under the yoke of a dictatorial Hindu
nationalist regime that is dragging India back to the middle ages.
The articles are too many to be
shared here, and too ridiculous to be individually rebutted. Every sham trope
is used to denigrate Indians and their democratic choices, and a painstaking
effort is made to portray the Hindus as a savage race with stereotypical,
racist imagery thrown in—the “dirt poor natives”, gullible and stupid, led by
deceitful godmen and power-hungry leaders.
Such is the folly of the West that it
finds fault with Hindus for the “crime” of looking at its past with pride. The
root of this folly lies in the otherisation of the Pagan way of living, looking
at this country, this civilization as one that needs to be “saved and brought
into the light”.
This casting of Hinduism as a
barbaric, antediluvian, primaeval faith that is unfit for modern civilization,
whose people must be rescued from themselves, is not explicitly stated but the
subtext is clear in each of these pieces—revealing
monotheistic imperialism that cannot quite fathom the rise of a proud, Pagan
civilization that worships strange gods, animals, stones and trees. All the
progress of semiconductor microchips and F35 stealth fighter jets cannot mask
the subliminal colonial impulse. But not for long.
The West will eventually realise that
Bharat’s rise will be on its own terms, and nothing like the West. It won’t
resemble the malevolent, resentful, aggressive revanchism of China, but it
won’t be a western appendage either.
In due course of time, Bharat will
establish its own praxis, an order based on the rule it creates, and to truly
understand Bharat, the West will need to get rid of its glasses. The West will
need to show the humility and curiosity of a student. And since Bharat is a
democracy and unencumbered by the language barrier that makes China a dark,
brooding, opaque power, our rise will be cacophonous, chaotic and yet
transparent.
There will be pushbacks to insidious
narratives, framing that seeks to exploit its fault lines will be called out. Decoloniality
will have to be redefined. Dogs may bark, but can not stop the Elephant from the mejestic walk.
Swasthi.
