Former governor Satyapal Malik has been long saying that the Pulwama tragedy and Balakot airstrikes played a major role in the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party’s return to power in 2019. According to him, a similar “spectacle” will be created by the BJP in order to retain power in the 2024 General Elections. The hysteria being created by the BJP and its affiliate organisations around the Ram Temple in Ayodhya is of that order.
Amidst this hysteria, child rights lawyer and author Suranya Aiyar said that she is undertaking a 72-hour fast and penitence, starting from January 20, which she described as “72 hours of love and sorrow” towards fellow Muslims. She takes “pride” in the Mughal heritage. The two contrasting impulses explain the creation of a divisive atmosphere across the country, which does not portend well for a diverse country such as ours.
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As such, temple inaugurations have also been occasions of promoting communal harmony as a couple of instances will show. Mahatma Gandhi while inaugurating the Laxminarayan Temple (Birla Temple) in Delhi in 1939 stated, “It must be the daily prayer of every adherent of the Hindu faith…that every known religion of the world should grow from day to day and should serve the whole of humanity…I hope that these temples will serve to propagate the idea of equal respect for religions and to make communal jealousies and strife things of the past.”
More or less on similar lines, Swami Vivekananda earlier stated, (1997), “It is here in India that Hindus have built and are still building churches for Christians and mosques for Mohammedans.” In his book Lectures from Colombo to Almora, Vivekananda states, “Nay more, to understand that not only should we be charitable, but also positively helpful to each other, however different our religious ideas and convictions may be. And that is exactly what we do in India as I have just related to you… That is the thing to do.”
The present atmosphere is in total contrast to this as reflected by the fast of Suranya. It is also reflected in the incidents where cultural activists screening censor board-approved all-time classic by Anand Patwardhan, Ram Ke Naam are being arrested and issued non-bailable arrest warrants. This happened in Hyderabad on January 20.
Devotees attending the Ram Temple consecration ceremony in Ayodhya on January 22, 2023. Photo: X (Twitter)/BJP4India.
Then there are claims by the likes of Prafulla Ketkar, editor of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) mouthpiece Organiser claiming that “the pran-pratishta (consecration ceremony) of Ram Lalla in Ayodhya was not simply the culmination of the decades-old Ram Janmabhoomi movement, but the beginning of a ‘reconstruction of national consciousness'”. This essentially means the whole process of social change and the idea of India which accompanied the freedom movement is now negated, with the advent of what can roughly called ‘Hindu India’. Communal forces through multiple steps have achieved Hindu Rasthtra.
What accompanied the ‘idea of India’ was a coming together of different sections of society to fight the colonial powers, striving to establish liberty, equality, fraternity, and justice for all. This massive movement had the overarching ‘idea of India’, which culminated in the values of the Indian constitution.
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There were challenges to this idea of India, which were rooted in the values of kingdoms and what can be roughly called feudal society. The core of these values which are being hailed by these forces creating hysteria around temple consecration were/are the birth-based hierarchies of caste, class, and gender. The roots of these lay in the kings and landlords of different religions and their ideologues who came forward as Muslim League, Hindu Mahasabha, and RSS. While Muslim communal forces are implementing their idea of feudal values in Pakistan, the Hindu communal forces are now rejoicing, in gradually increasing intensity, now reaching its semi-peak with Ram Temple consecration.
The idea of India of the freedom movement got itself manifested in the values of Bhagat Singh, Ambedkar, and Gandhi focusing on liberty, equality, and fraternity or friendship. Despite a few differences with the Father of the Nation, Subhash Chandra Bose was also firmly committed to this “idea of India’.
The elite landlord and Manusmiriti worshipping ideology was the social base of Hindu Rashtra, Hindutva. These forces and this ideology have grown stronger, particularly during the last four decades and are rejoicing the sectarianism becoming stronger by the day. They are also giving narrow projection of the temple consecration in contrast to what Gandhi and Vivekananda stood for. The sectarian nationalists are for the further deepening of particular ‘civilisational values’ inherent in what can be called as Brahmanism inherent in Manusmriti.
Those standing for doing away with the values of Manusmriti, those integrating all into the umbrella of Indian-ness, those who have stood together cutting across class, caste, and gender are currently under different types of intimidations of Hindu India, the parallel and opposite of Muslim Pakistan are emerging.
The only ray of hope for the ‘idea of India’ is the same classes of society who ushered in the Idea of India during the freedom movement to come together. It is their collective movement; the overarching effort to undermine the forces which gloat over the birth-based hierarchical values in the name of religion, those who uphold the Holy Scriptures in contrast to the Indian constitution. Their movements have been scattered. Their group interests may be different but their interests in protecting the Indian constitution and Idea of India which emerged during freedom movements do need a collective expression, cutting across the groups- party lines.
Many non-sectarian parties do exist today. The predecessors of many of these had fought the British colonial powers together despite their differences. It is time for the social and political alliance of these sections of society given primacy. As colonial rule was detrimental to the interests of large sections of society, similarly those in power ruling through polarisation are also out to undermine the rights of weaker sections of society. This is abundantly clear during the last ten years or so.
Hysteria cannot be combated by hysteria. We need the ideology which binds the weaker sections of society: Dalits, religious minorities, women, workers, and Adivasis. They have many common values to protect and that is the ‘Idea of India’ which came with the freedom movement. Can Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra be the first step in building such a common platform, can the Yatra succeed in doing this is the question baying us all.
