Asatya and Himsa

The single most important lesson the Gujarat verdict holds for India is that we must hold firm to our cherished values of satya and ahimsa. Truth and non-violence vanquished the mighty British Empire. We must bring them back into our political life to tackle the asatya and himsa unleashed on our nation by Narendra Modi’s marauders.

Instead of applauding the cunning, military-style nature of BJP campaign in Gujarat, we should condemn it for what it really was; a cynical, no-holds-barred pursuit of political power. Let this warning go out to those who think they may have hit upon a formula to enslave India again; the champions of truth and non-violence will foil your design to infect the land of Mahatma Gandhi with the communal virus.

What could likely happen is that swaggering boasts of the BJP will cause India’s disparate liberal groups to pull together under the aegis of the Indian National Congress. The decent and civilised majority in India will come together to challenge and contain this boorish political movement. It is only a question of time.

There is very little reason to believe that the Gujarat election will have an impact on India. What is more likely is that it will transform the BJP and the RSS forever. And this aggressive new communalism will reverse the growing acceptability of both organizations in the mainstream. As such, this ungainly BJP victory in Gujarat could well be the start of its journey back to the fringes of Indian politics.

There is no doubt that Gujarat was swayed by a Hindutva wave. But it will eventually wake up from the hypnotic trance induced by Modi and his merchants of hate. That is when people will realize that Hindutva has little to do with Hinduism, the sophisticated creed in which tolerance and spiritualism are key beliefs. By contrast, Hindutva is a crude political strategy that combines terror and bigotry and is aimed at consolidating the majority vote in favour of the BJP.

In much the same way as Hitler’s National Socialism added muscle to the age-old theory of German supremacy, the new brand of Hindutva unleashed in Gujarat extends the traditional communalism espoused by the old RSS leadership to include violence.

This new macho Hindutva is, however, somewhat different from National socialism. Unlike the lower-class Germans, who embraced it, the lumpen and jobless Gujarati youth, who are its foot soldiers, have no work ethic of artisan know-how to sustain them. Nazism spread and survived for nearly two decades on the fabled German work ethic. The new macho Hindutva is like a house of cards, precariously held together by posturing and hectoring. It cannot last. Indians are not an intolerant people. Over the centuries our country has sheltered people belonging to diverse religions only because of this spirit of tolerance.

Now to the question of whether this macho Hinduism can be replicated as the pamphleteers of the VHP claim. Note the words they use; replication elsewhere, laboratory of Hindutva and so on. The idea is to convey that there is something scientific about this aggressive communalism.

The fact is that Hindutva is revivalism at its worst. It reaches, Taliban-like, into the dark crevices of the mainstream religion to portray fear and prejudice as the defining characteristics. The aggressive new communalists would just as soon control what we see, hear and speak; it would seek eventually to dictate what we wear, whom we associate with, our customs and rituals, what our children do, what we think!

The hate-mongers will not spare any effort to spread the communal virus. Their campaign of asatya and himsa has just established a powerful precedent by engineering an electoral victory in Gujarat. Rationality and compassion may appear to have given way to primordial cruelty. Stunned by the result of the Gujarat election and their bluster thereafter, many of us may despair. Is it possible they could roll out this campaign of communal violence and loud propaganda elsewhere to grab power?

Not if the Indian National Congress can help it. India’s grand old party has the will and heritage to take on the toughest challenge. We ousted the British, built India’s industrial and human infrastructure as well its space and nuclear programs, created the Green Revolution, envisioned and facilitated the advent of information technology. Over the years our message of development has won acceptance in 16 states.

Now we face this new challenge posed by the new macho Hindutva. To fight it, we will reach deep inside our heritage of satya and ahimsa to fashion a strategy to halt the barbarians at the gate.

(Courtesy : The Economic Times)