Co-option is a term with both positive and negative connotations. If the first implies ceding space to difference in the cultural sphere, the second has effected, for centuries, the appropriation of cultural symbols, even primeval goddesses and gods that were and are –Hindu or pre-Hindu by Sanatan Hinduism. This has been an appropriation accompanied by a subtle obliteration of origins in the age old project to claim all as ‘Hindu.’
When co-option or appropriation transforms – through political design and even violence, into obliteration – warning bells must ring.
This warning bell should have rung every January 26 since 2014. Lists and recounting have become repetitive, and through a crafted normalisation, even boring. So I will eschew an account of the more than decade long lynchings (Mohsin Shaikh, Mohammad Akhlaq and scores of others, this republic and its peoples owe you), cultural capture, historical reductionism and the attempt at a complete subversion of institutional governance.
A day after the 75th birthday of the republic, the conscious and constitutionally subversive hate mongering by elected officials associated with the regime, including the prime minister himself and the home minister, continues. Carefully trained saffron-clad women and men who have been trained in vitriol and in fanning mob frenzy grow powerful too.
Of one woman a special mention must be made as she was the inspiration behind the Sadhvi Prachis and Raginis who dot the stratosphere today. In the days of video cassette driven propaganda, Rithambara who is labelled as the founder of the Durga Vahini dominated the hate sphere of the 1980s. She held crowds, especially male, spellbound as she constructed a universe that was macho and built on a twisted and perverse discourse of the ‘Muslim Other’. It is no surprise that her launching pad(s) were in Gujarat.
No wonder that she was the appropriate Rakhi sister that the present prime minister chose, with full photo view, to tie the sacred ‘brother, I protect you’ thread on him in August 2014. He waited a full 11 years to award his Rakhi sister the nation’s second highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan, on January 26 this year.
Its worth recalling for the social media driven Generation Z how effectively the hate that the Sadhvi spread in the 1980s culminated in the notorious shrill call at Ayodhya, “Ek dhakka aur do, Babri Masjid tod do (push again, bring down the Babri Masjid).”
Before December 6, 1992, her shrill speeches that were spread far and wide by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh combine, heavily constructed and amplified a gender imagery, fanning an aggressive violence among Hindu women in general and women followers of the Vahini in particular. Women were seen by this writer actively participating in violent acts against Muslim women for the first time in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The sexual violence following the Babri Masjid demolition, against Muslim women in Surat (and one Hindu woman too) and in Bombay 1992-1993 have been blurred from public memory.
If women were fired with her brand of hatred – in a first, that catapulted the Hindutva gameplan to distinct societal dimensions – men of the Hindu fold were fired up in the defence of the ‘Hindu motherland’, responding to her frenzied and shrill appeal to their Hindu masculinity for reclaiming their ‘besmirched’ land. Muslims, especially Indian Muslims, were slurred and demonised as never before – likened to lemon in milk, and compared to flies who are mass breeding to outnumber Hindus.
This then is the icon of a hate-filled extreme right which was chosen and awarded on India’s 75th Republic Day. The Padma Bhushan to Rithambara is a public signal and one more brazen declaration of appropriation and intent.
As our constitution stands firm, if bruised, this January 26, what remains a biting question is who and what will emerge as the final victor. Will a groundswell reclaim the republic? Or will it crumble into a rigid shell of a nation that turns against its own people?
Teesta Setalvad is a rights activist and journalist.
