When the world is grappling with unsettling challenges and turbulence, India is immersed in politics of emotions and trivia instead of reason and thought. It is bewildering to see the political leadership fueling such meaningless discourses on religious and historical disputes, apparently to divert the nation’s attention from the real challenges. It is difficult to interpret this inexplicable attitude unless we presume the incumbent rulers neither understand the nation’s problems nor are interested in solving them.
While the content and direction of politics in India for the last good few years are known to everybody, what Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath said yesterday reinforces the perceptions about worthless anachronisms submerging our consciousness. Amidst controversies about the survey to unearth whether a temple existed underneath a mosque in Sambhal, Adityanath said, “Sambhal is a teerth (pilgrimage) site and has been mentioned in scriptures that are 5,000 years old. Puranas contain references to Lord Vishnu’s future incarnation. It is said in Puranas that the 10th avatar of Lord Vishnu would take birth in Sambhal. Islam, on the other hand, emerged only 1,400 years ago. I am talking about something that predates Islam by at least 2,000 years. Evidence for these things existed for centuries. Remember, in 1526, Sri Hari temple was demolished in Sambhal. Two years later, in 1528, the Ram temple in Ayodhya was destroyed by Mir Baqi, commander of Babur.”
Adding that only a few of the sacred places had been reclaimed, the chief minister asked his opponents to first read the religious scriptures before debating these issues with him. He also boasted about his saffron robes and declared that the “entire world will wear it one day”.
What’s the priority of the political head of the biggest state in India – to dig up history and reclaim lost temples, and work for the day when the world wears saffron robes? Is this politics aimed at triggering a creative thought process, or the design is to whip up emotional frenzy? India’s freedom movement was not merely an instrument to achieve political independence. The stalwarts, led by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, fiercely thought about the kind of society and the nation India would ultimately become.
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Nehru was constantly working on ways to develop a modern nation-state, giving equal importance to education and health, infrastructure and industries, science and technology, art and literature. He even recognised the need for spiritual development of citizens despite being an agnostic himself. The constitution drafted under the chairmanship of B.R. Ambedkar envisaged a model based on equality, justice, freedom and fraternity.
Now the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), initially treated as an untouchable entity in India’s politics, has won political power and will have to honestly present its own model if they are determined to discard the Gandhi-Nehru idea of India. To implement their own ideas through subterfuge has severe limitations and creates conflict.
BJP leaders also find the going tough because of the inherent duplicity and hypocrisy ingrained in this approach. If they want to strangle secularism, let them say this to the world. Allowing petty outfits to run a sinister agenda to undermine secularism and ploys to accord legitimacy to the Hindu Rashtra objective through the prime minister’s visits to the ashrams of religious leaders advocating such a state is fraud on the constitution.
Why can’t BJP leaders and the prime minister announce to the world that they represent the vision of M.S. Golwalkar and V.D. Savarkar, which was antithetical to Gandhian philosophy? Why mislead the world by a contrived loyalty to Gandhi? And the likes of Adityanath, widely seen as Narendra Modi’s successor should have the intellectual honesty to explain his agenda implicitly manifested through such assertions like the whole world will wear saffron one day.
These are not isolated incidents. The language and politics of other BJP leaders, including chief ministers and ministers, clearly indicate that they have a problem with the existing constitutional scheme that guarantees equality of citizens. Does anyone find any reflection of equality between Hindu and Muslim citizens in the statements of Adityanath, or his Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma? And what is the purpose of seeing the entire world wearing saffron one day? Is that the political goal the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the BJP are working on? Is reclaiming lost temples the national priority for the governments?
Does the current political leadership understand the world is debating economic restructuring, radical changes in development paradigm, new healthcare management in post-Covid era, environmental degradation, climate change, quantum computing, cryptocurrency, robotics, augmented reality, 3-D printing, and the new technologies in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI)? What’s worse, India has not been able to address fundamental concerns like poverty, unemployment, social safety, gender justice.
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After the disrupting interventions by US President Donald Trump, most major countries are engaged in serious deliberations about future options. China, the main competitor, held a week-long congregation of thousands of experts and political leaders and resolved to work on AI, bio-manufacturing, quantum technology and industries of the future.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who attended this gathering, separately met heads of China’s biggest tech firms and asked to gear up for the American challenge. Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said, “Where there is blockade, there is breakthrough. Where there is suppression, there is innovation.” This language should alert us to the lurking peril of stupidity in India as our leaders are swinging between Kanwariya and Kumbh, temple and mosque.
Prime Minister Modi chose to issue a detailed statement on Kumbh – pinning hopes on the new consciousness developed by the holy dip in the Ganga, chose to the worship at Somnath temple and tour forests and private zoos before embarking on a journey to the tiny Mauritius to receive an award.
What weighed on his mind is not tariff war and Chinese advancements. He too spoke about bringing the holy water from Sangam for Mauritius and how the world was mesmerised by history’s biggest congregation at Kumbh. He recalled the great occasion of Pran Pratishtha at the Ram temple in Ayodhya, a development he had earlier claimed would push India to the top of the world. The impending Bihar election did flit through his mind and he took care to speak in Bhojpuri because power is his biggest obsession.
Ironically, Modi showered praises on Mauritius for its respect for pluralism. He said, “People from different parts of the world came here – it is a beautiful garden of multiple cultures. The way Mauritius took everybody along is a lesson for the world.” India is crying for this message from her prime minister.
More than the ordinary citizens who understand the vitality of constitutionalism, the BJP chief ministers, ministers, MPs, MLAs and supporters need to internalise this message. Once that happens, the perverse agenda of digging up mosques to find temples will disappear. Leaders will start wondering how to compete with China in manufacturing goods rather than dreaming of wrapping the entire world in saffron.
India’s advantage against China is its democracy. Weakening of the democratic roots – and the erosion of cultural pluralism and social harmony – will weaken India. Only a strong and united India can stand up to a bullying America and the hostile China. Politicians who do not understand this should be shown the door.
