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The Leader of the Opposition was undeniably in well-equipped command of himself, his materials, and of the combined opposition alliance. The interjections thrown at him were met with feisty repartee that seemed to cause unsmiling panic among the most elderly in the front of the treasury benches.
Even the most honourable speaker of the august house had some explaining to do.
Rahul Gandhi clearly could be seen to have arrived, while the venerable prime minister seemed to have declined into petulant grumpiness.
The arrival of the former has come to have registered in popular perception as the result of leg-work extending to thousands of kilometres through the length and breadth of the republic.
The ‘pappu’ of old no longer seemed to be available to cheap mock. However, the declining colossus sought to denigrate and painful unease showed in the crow’s feet around his stern eyes.
After all, what chicanery can you throw at post-election surveys that showed Rahul Gandhi at 36% as the choice of the sacred lands of Uttar Pradesh for prime ministership against Modi at 32%.
Or, the fact that where the grand old party which was declared to have fossilised into antiquity made a 100% jump in its numbers in the House of the People, the mighty Modi who staked everything on his own “guarantee” lost some 20%, no matter the depths of unlovely desperation to which his campaign sank.
In his speech, the Leader of the Opposition made critiques that found no persuasive rejoinders.
The one issue, however, which predictably animated the treasury benches was the one that concerned what Rahul Gandhi said about being or not being Hindu.
In the first place, it is palpably galling to the self-appointed proprietors of Hinduism that this Rahul Gandhi should actually have been making studies into the archives of what constitutes the rich complexities of Hinduism, given that most who swear by it rarely bother to dive into its diverse makings through history.
Given the hullabaloo, it may in order to put some facts out among all Hindus of whichever definition or eclectic persuasion.
Those who heard without prejudice of one kind or another what Rahul Gandhi said heard the following: that, in his reading of scripture and the iconography of the Hindu pantheon, to be a true Hindu means being peace-loving, tolerant, truthful, and fearless; and that those who often proclaim themselves to be Hindus are none of these.
When accused by the BJP of brushing all Hindus as violent, the LOP could be heard loudly saying that the BJP did not represent all Hindus, and that, in fact, those who occupied the treasury benches were not Hindus at all.
This contention about who is a real Hindu has been at the heart of cultural/religious claims and counter-claims in the political sphere of our lives, particularly since the rise of Narendra Modi.
Are those who regard Mahatma Gandhi as the greatest Hindu of our times Hindus, or are those who saw him and continue to see his legacy as the chief antagonist to true Hinduism Hindus?
Most crucially, is violence anathema to true Hinduism or is violence a defining feature of the history of Hindutva?
In this medley, the LOP could have drawn knowledgeable support for his dualistic argument from a landmark book, Hindutva and Violence: V.D.Savarkar and the Politics of History (2022), by Vinayak Chaturvedi.
Chaturvedi is no Congress supporter or closet Leftist. Indeed, he, it transpires, was given the name Vinayak after Savarkar himself.
Chaturvedi makes it clear that his main task in the book has been to understand Savarkar’s universe of thought, and not to praise or rubbish him. In his study of Savarkar’s entire and very considerable oeuvre, Chaturvedi finds that the concept of violence was at the centre of Savarkar’s definition of Hindutva.
Savarkar’s principal conclusion in Chaturvedi’s words was that “Hindus had not only existed in a state of war in the past but they also needed to embrace permanent war as part of their future” for “Hindus understand themselves as Hindus only through acts of violence.”
We do of course know that the Hindutva right wing routinely engages in what is called shastra puja, namely the propitiation of firearms etc.
The contention, thus, that came to the fore as a result of what Rahul Gandhi said in his inaugural speech as LOP remains at the core of our continuing theoretical slugfest about what makes a Hindu a real Hindu; and it is a contention whose ghosts deserve to be exorcised if we are to obtain the sort of cultural stability within the majority community that is conducive to republican ideas.
Taken together, the opening session of the 18th Lok Sabha is likely to go down in the annals of parliamentary history as a watershed in more ways than one.
