Questioning the Equality Statue

 

 

Questioning the Equality Statue

 

(First Post, mid-January 2022)

 

 

On 5 February 2022, the revered Prime Minister, Sri Narendra Modi, unveils a giant five-metal statue of the 11^th-century founder of the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta (“qualified-non-dualist conclusion-of-the-Veda”) philosophy and Ācārya of its concomitant Bhakti (“devotion”) practice, Śrī Ramānuja. Though the preceding philosopher Śaṅkara with his Advaita Vedānta (“non-dualist conclusion-of-the-Veda”) is better known internationally among intellectuals, in India he is more revered for his path-breaking organizational work in monasticism and temple worship, while it is Ramanuja whose devotional theism is far more entrenched in Hinduism’s religious orders and popular culture, including its variations in sects like the Nanak Panth (Sikhi) or the Swaminarayan community. In living Hinduism, which has many leading figures, he may not be such a household name as Shankara or Swami Vivekananda, but arguably his influence reaches the deepest.

 

This is a joyous occasion, we have no reason to minimize it. But, as is my wont, I leave it to others to applaud this event; I would rather offer a few critical observations.

 

 

1.    Gigantism

The Ramanuja statue is one of the largest in India, reportedly 216 feet high, standing on top of a 54-feet pedestal. It follows the trend set by Sardar Patel's statue in Gujarat, to which even overflying airplane pilots draw the attention of their passengers. But what purpose is served by this?

In the case of a political figure, one can understand that the public square is where he belongs. So, a century and more ago, national authorities strengthened their self-justification in the public's mind by visually commemorating those who had been pillars of their establishment. For a philosopher and religious leader, this overwhelming physical presence is less appropriate.

 

Secondly, making a statement about your ideological sympathies by means of a statue towering over the street view is rather obsolete, since our visual life has mostly gone into cyberspace. Statues belong to a past century, nowadays you can produce far more impressive images online.

Thirdly, why the gigantism? The best Hindu temples have an intimacy about them (as struck me especially in Ujjain’s HarSiddhi temple or in the present Kashi Vishvanath), and even the biggest ones are divided in compartments that reproduce this intimacy. They are meant for visits by families at times convenient to them, not for congregational worship fixed on Friday or Sunday. And they are meant for pilgrims, not the mass tourism that giant statues aim for.

 

A few years back, I was in Haridwar and Rishikesh, where a flood of the Ganga river had wrought some destruction, washing human constructions away. This included a recent giant statue of Shiva. The locals told me that this was Ma Ganga's way of showing her disapproval for this gigantism. A god doesn't need this kind of emphasis on his intrinsic greatness. In a way, it is disrespectful to his divine character. If you must, then make a giant statue of Patel, who after all cemented the Indian state, the ultimate authority sanctioning all these monuments. But Shiva can do without this, and so can Ramanujacharya.

 

 

2.   Trinkets

Whenever anything is done for religion, Leftists sourly object that the money had better been spent on prosperity-enhancing initiatives for the masses. Dharma-oriented people can take a leaf from the Leftists’ book and wonder whether the money spent on the statue (and to be spent on its upkeep in the future) could not have served a better purpose. Thus, local temples or Dharmic associations connected with those temples could have deployed more activity in the field of education, a field where Hindus are painfully absent compared to the Christian missionaries.

Since Modi came to power, many people have noticed with increasing consternation that several consequential legal anti-Hindu discriminations which could finally have been abolished by the BJP’s comfortable majority in Parliament, are on the contrary being perpetuated. The BJP not only left the existing inequality between Hindus and the minorities (who are given privileged autonomy by the Constitution, esp. Art.26-30) in school and temple management intact, it has actively thwarted attempts to correct this glaring inequality. When in 2018 BJP MP Satyapal Singh tabled a Private Bill to abolish these discriminations, it was not just cold-shouldered by his party; he was given a minor Minister’s post (bought off?) and nothing was heard of his proposal again.

Hindu places of worship are not autonomous, they are subject to or constantly threatened by nationalization and the siphoning off of their funds towards secular or even anti-Hindu purposes. This is highlighted by the race to the exit of the Hindu community by sects that want to invest in education and fear such government take-overs, such as the Arya Samaj, the Ramakrishna Mission or the Lingayats. Similarly, Scheduled Tribe communities who have a status in a grey zone part Hindu part separate, are embracing the non-Hindu side, affirming their local identities as Donyi-Polo (Arunachal Pradesh) or Sarna (Jharkhand), because they gain from a cool “aboriginal” identity and have everything to lose with a demonized and discriminated-against Hindu identity. The alternative to leaving the sinking ship of Hinduism is to remain loyal, but of such loyal Hindu temple associations I hear from local primary sources that they sometimes contemplate initiatives in education but call these off because of this same fear of a hostile take-over. Instead of glittering statues, they could use extra funds to finance their juridical defence under the present power equation; or better still, a BJP-piloted abolition of these discriminations so as to lift this fear.

Instead, apart from giving privileges to the minorities in the vain hope of catching their votes (or in the equally vain hope of a pat on the back from his revered  secularists), Modi has merely made a number of empty Hindu gestures. These include highly televised temple visits, conspicuous public works in Ayodhya and Kashi, or the recent unveiling of a Shankara statue in Kedarnath. But the legislative jobs for remedying the second-class status of the Hindus in India, which only his government is in a position to do, he has left undone. As a former confidante of Modi’s told me, the BJP merely wants to “keep the pot boiling”, throw Hindu-looking crumbs to the Hindus to earn their votes, yet give them nothing substantial.

The highly mediagenic unveiling of the Ramanuja statue follows the same pattern. Hindus love all the pomp and circumstance, regardless of whom it is dedicated to (hence no eyebrows were raised when Modi recently gave glittering presents to the dargah of the anti-Hindu ideologue and invasion-facilitating spy Muinuddin Chishti in Ajmer). Short of a high-powered campaign to raise their awareness of the discrimination they suffer, they won’t be up in arms about the disappointingly superficial performance of their Hindu government. Even if the BJP itself can’t convince the Hindu voters of any pro-Hindu commitment, it can count on the media: they will seize on any appearance by Modi in a religious setting to clamour indignantly that he is pursuing a Hindu Rashtra, an unearned reputation that only makes him more popular. It merely confirms him as the Hindu Hrdaya Samrat (“emperor of the Hindu heart”). Hindu jubilation after receiving yet another trinket only proves that a child’s hand is easy to fill.

 

 

 

3.   Egalitarianism

 

When honouring Ramanuja, the Government has taken care to give an ideologically useful name to the new monument: it will go by the name “equality statue”. In the 1960s the Jan Sangh, earlier incarnation of the BJP, veered into Socialist territory, rather explicitly in the case of leaders like Nana Deshmukh (whose slogan vikās/“development” is still central in Modi’s speeches), AB Vajpayee and trade-union leader Dattopant Thengadi, and even after the liberalization of the economy since the 1990s it hasn’t really vanished. In all three, this Nehruvian economic view went hand in hand with a choice for secularism: in both realms they simply followed the dominant ideology.

This is still the case today: the BJP, portrayed worldwide as fanatically Hindu, is in fact ideologically weak and ever-weaker. It has no ideological backbone and therefore turns with the reigning wind, or even dances to the tune played by its declared enemies. It has no self-respect but is a dedicated follower of fashion. Now, an international ideological fashion that even India can’t escape, is absolute egalitarianism.

So the great Sri Ramanuja is instrumentalized in the BJP’s egalitarian re-profiling. It emphasizes that Ramanuja assured everyone regardless of caste that he could achieve Liberation. Anyone can develop and cultivate devotion (Bhakti) to a God and intone His name as a Mantra.

This insight wasn’t all that revolutionary: none of the classics on Yoga (Katha Upanishad, Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutra, Yoga Vasishtha, Shiva Sutra etc.), demanding though they may be in terms of Sadhana discipline, excludes anyone from the spiritual path. Thus, one of the most constant inequalities in society is that between men and woman, yet already in the Mahabharata the nun Sulabha defeats king Janaka in debate with her argument that “the Self (Ātman) is not gendered”, so that women are equally fit for yogic achievement.  

It is claimed that some Brahmin circles did transpose the inequalities in society to the spiritual realm. If so, it was but an intermezzo in Hindu Dharma’s long history, always counterbalanced by the view that the Self is nirguna (“without qualities”) and neti-neti (“neither this nor that”). Indeed, that the worldly inequalities do not apply to the yogic sphere is the more orthodox, more Vedic position. Whatever else may be up for criticism in the Arya Samaj, its endeavour to root its egalitarian reformism in the Vedas has a basis in fact.

And yet, though this same age-old position was expressed by Sri Ramanuja, the modern-sounding name “equality statue” is infelicitous. It is unlikely that he had ever heard of egalitarianism, and it certainly wasn’t what occupied his mind. He concentrated on the Supreme, as did the many Bhakti sects centred around variations on his worldview. I suspect that his assuring all men of Liberation provided they do the right Sadhana made no difference to their societal status.

The Leftists, whom Modi has been imitating in his zeal for secular social justice, won’t be impressed. When Karl Marx and the first trade-unionists took their stand in then-Christian Europe, they faced a similar ideological obstacle: the Church instilled in its flock the sense that vis-à-vis God they were all equal. They all had an eternal soul, tainted by eternal sin, but capable of faith and of receiving God’s grace, regardless of their status in society. That was what Marx called the “opium of the people”: the belief in some higher realm endowed with equality which made socio-economic inequality bearable. As St Paul wrote: there is neither freeman nor slave, for all have been freed in Christ – but this was a poor consolation for the slaves, for it made no end to worldly slavery.

For the present purpose, the situation in Vedanta is not substantially different from that in Christianity. Yes, in a yogic perspective, all are equally endowed: man and woman, rich and poor, master and servant. But their spiritual progress doesn’t make them leave the class they belong to. It may Liberate them from their limitations, but not from their societal category. It doesn’t make them equal in any worldly sense.  

 

Conclusion

The statue of Sardar Patel, who like Otto von Bismarck in Germany was the “iron man” and the unifier of his country, is sensibly called the “Unity Statue”: his main legacy is indeed India’s unity. In Ramanujacharya’s life, equality is only an incidental aspect of his prescriptions for spiritual progress. Commentaries and papers have been written about him in the intervening nine centuries without dilating on equality. The pursuit of equality is a typically modern phenomenon, alien to Jesus and Paul, and just as alien to Ramanuja.

We've often seen Hindus make flattered claims to modern equality, only to collapse when critically questioned by outsiders. They may find themselves very clever in projecting this contemporary value onto their ancient tradition, but others see through this ploy. That's why we warn them to think twice before making such claims. Neither the Buddha, another much-acclaimed purported egalitarian, nor Ramanujacharya had the power to change lay society. They could influence their followers’ minds and organize their monastic orders, but that was the extent of their reach. From a modern perspective, a certain amount of equality was incidental to their real purpose, but this purpose was not equality. Contrary to what Ramanuja’s statue’s name might suggest, his goal was not equality but Liberation.

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The Modi Government as an Exponent of BJP Secularism

(Now that the Annual Conference of the American Academy of Religion is only a few days away, let me present the abstract plus explanation I sent in for last year's conference. It was written in February 2015 and draws attention to an important phenomenon with a strong and hitherto unrefuted predictive power, viz. the BJP variety of secularism. The AAR's "experts" were not interested, preferring their prestigious delusions to the hard facts.)

AB Vajpayee's NDA Government (1998-2004) heavily disappointed the experts who had predicted "all Moslims into the Indian Ocean" or similar doomsday scenarios -- or rather, it put them squarely in the wrong. Hindu "fascism" as a threat to democracy? When Vajpayee narrowly lost a confidence vote, he meekly stepped down. War against Pakistan? Though Pakistan unilaterally invaded India (Kargil 1999), Vajpayee forbade the Army to strike at the invaders' base across the border, and later opened a peace process, making symbolic concessions which Congress had always refused. Isolationism? He threw the Indian media market open to foreign media ownership, a move opposed by India's entire political spectrum. The only "Hindutva" thing the NDA ever did was HRD Minister MM Joshi's clumsy overhaul of the recommended history schoolbooks, changing nothing dramatic and easily reversed. When the Government created a Chair for Indic Studies in Oxford ("saffronization!"), it selected an outspoken opponent for the job, in the vain hope of receiving a pat on the back from its declared enemies.

With the hindsight knowledge of historical reality, it would be embarrassing to reproduce the predictions by Indian and foreign experts. Today, anti-BJP discourse is less shrill, but still confidently classifies the BJP among the "Hindu Right". This implies a prediction that once in power, the BJP would pursue distinctly pro-Hindu policies. However, in the light of our experience with the Vajpayee Government, it is no surprise that the present Government led by Narendra Modi fails to live up to this learned prediction, at least for now. (Of course, this paper will be updated by November as new developments take place.)

In spite of having a more homogeneous majority, it is reluctant to do anything pro-Hindu or perceivable as anti-minority. On the contrary, one of its first acts was to decree a new subsidy to Islamic schools. The stray Hindutva statements by loose cannon (Akshay Maharaj, Jyoti Niranjan) were followed by retractions, condemnations by Government spokesmen, and indignant innuendos by Modi-friendly journalists (Tavleen Singh, Swapan Dasgupta). Public reconversions by the allied VHP, heavily publicized and demonized by the media, were promptly discouraged by the Government. Having learned from Vajpayee's 2004 defeat, though, Modi does “keep the pot boiling”, does regularly throw crumbs of inconsequential Hindu symbolism to his support base, all while not formally changing anything. 

However, if many BJP workers are disappointed with this Government, is not for what it does but mainly for what it persistently fails to do. Thus, it inducted no figures with a strongly ideological profile (Arun Shourie, Subramanian Swamy). Likewise, some public figures who had crossed the floor (e.g. Madhu Kishwar) were conspicuously not rewarded -- a fact not considered here for disgruntled ego reasons but for illustrating the BJP's lack of strategy: it doesn't put people who have actually sacrificed for the BJP to any use, while awarding positions of influence to unreliable newcomers motivated by sheer opportunism. While some things on the Hindu agenda are either useless to Hinduism (e.g. declaring a "Hindu Rashtra") and others would arouse violent protests for which the media are sure to blame Modi (e.g. a Common Civil Code, though "secular" par excellence), others are perfectly feasible and, moreover, turn out to be the most consequential for the flourishing of Hinduism.

In particular, the amending of Constitutional Articles 28 and 30, which (de facto c.q. formally) discriminate against Hinduism in education, does not take away any rights from the minorities, yet lifts an enormous burden from Hindu organizations investing in education and eliminates a major reason for Hindu sects (Arya Samaj, RK Mission, Lingayats, Jains) to have themselves judicially declared non-Hindu minorities. Similarly, eliminating the legal basis of the discrimination against Hinduism in temple management, with rich temples (but not mosques or churches) nationalized and their income pocketed by politicians or diverted to non-Hindu purposes, would give an enormous boost to Hindu religious and cultural life, without impinging upon the rights of the minorities. It has to be noted, however, and it buttresses my case for "BJP secularism", that temple management is partly a competence of the States, and that BJP State Governments have not made the difference. At any rate, there are meaningful things a BJP Government could do specifically for Hinduism without endangering its non-religious agenda (development, cleaning India etc.) or its international standing, yet it chooses not to do them.        

As for the Hindutva fits and starts of some BJP members, now considered extremists but in fact only representative of what the erstwhile Jan Sangh (1952-77, predecessor of the BJP) stood for, it should be easy to bring them in line around a more reasonable but still credibly pro-Hindu programme. It is here that the BJP is most conspicuously failing -- conspicuous at least to insiders, for 99% of the outside literature about the BJP never mentions this phenomenon. Contrary to a consensus among academic and journalistic India-watchers, the supposed “Hindu extremist” party has no Hindu agenda. It relies on pro-Hindu workers to do the campaigning legwork, but once in power it cold-shoulders them, it publicizes and pursues an agenda of economic development only, and it tries to curry favour with the secularists.

The main reason is the long-standing deliberate lack of investment (pioneered by MS Golwalkar) in an intellectual and strategic vision of its own, the spurning of any analysis of the forces in the field and of the potential and limitations of the situation. It therefore also lacks competent personnel for the ideological struggle, e.g. for a textbook overhaul or, now, for nominating politically friendly new Vice-Chancellors. Consequently, most BJP leaders have an enormous inferiority complex vis-à-vis the secularists and, even when in office, try to live up to the norms laid down by their opponents.

This is hardly the impression created by most experts; but the primary data, the only source to which this paper pledges loyalty, tell a clear story: the present BJP is only termed a Hindu party in deference to the distant memory of its initial orientation.

Abstract

Like the previous BJP Government, the present one fails to live up to the oft-heard predictions of strident pro-Hindu and anti-minority policies. This is due to a phenomenon insufficiently realized by most India-watchers: a desire to live up to the norms upheld by the secularists and an interiorization of the disinterest in "outdated" Hindu concerns, not just among the numerous opportunists who have flocked to the new party in power, but even in the loyal core of the BJP's personnel. Based on insider sources, this paper enumerates the data establishing the reality of "BJP secularism" and analyses the reasons for this emerging phenomenon.

Read more!

Propagating English to help India advance?

(In the last days of October 2015, the India Ideas Conclave list saw a lively debate on the subject of India's link language. It started with an off-hand remark by an Angreziwallah (supporter of English as India's national language) that we need to propagate the knowledge of English among young Indians. This he saw as the gateway to success. I remarked that other tiger nations do without English. So:)

>Cultural pride and development are not mutually exclusive. But cultural pride by itself will not guarantee development either. In fact the countries you refer to but did not name, I am assuming that you are alluding to China, Japan and South Korea, have also been fairly open to Western influences. They are all ethnically and linguistically far more homogeneous than India. It may neither be possible, nor desirable, to attempt to emulate them.<
 

I never expected to encounter advocacy for the destruction of native culture on, of all places, the India ideas forum. Because that is what this plea for English amounts to. The choice before you is either to promote a native language and take your entire population with you, or be a peripheral part of the Anglospere. If you decide in favour of the Anglosphere option, you should realize that it is hugely antidemocratic, excluding the (immense) majority that is not fluent in (sophisticated) English, and only approaching democracy when the entire population has acquired a first-language proficiency in English.

Of course I know there exists an honourless type of Hindu clinging to the coat-tails of the erstwhile colonial masters and deriving therefrom a superiority vis-à-vis their non-anglicized country-men. If those inherently following types are the "leaders" you want to follow, you are of course free to do so. And stay in the undemocratic schizophrenic neo-colonial second-class condition for another century, until that bothersome native culture has finally been layed to rest for good.

(In reply, offering my observations was called "racism" and "white man's burden",-- i.e. my plea against the colonial language. Meanwhile I received an e-mail from Rajiv Malhotra's discussion list:)


First off, herewith a mail which has arrived today, on another list where the choice of language was being discussed. A thoroughbred Indian observes:

"When we analyze this problem, as some one said, it all boils down to the quality of education we have. In states like Andhra Pradesh, there are numerous engineering colleges and literally 2 Lakh engineers come out annually. But the quality of education is so poor that not even 15% are able to even write a leave letter properly. The problem is English being medium of instruction, which Rajivji mentioned several times, comparing with Chinese Education. The problem with the students is that they can't write in their mother tongue and can't speak in English and so are good in either. Without command in the language, acquiring knowledge in any subject is highly impossible. Because of this, the majority of the students are not in a position to even understand simple concepts. I experience these things first hand as I handle the Indian operations of my company. For us the problem is NOT unemployment, but rather production of UNEMPLOYABLE youth. Even to find some one who does very simple things, even after being instructed, is also a very difficult task. I guess things are better in metros. Unless the medium of instruction is mother tongue, things wont change. We will continue to remain a production house of cheap labor to US and Europe."

Not every Indian is so convinced of the benefits of English, it seems.

Next, (Mr. X) rhetorically asks the same question I've heard a hundred times from Angreziwallahs:

"Do also enlighten me about the period when Sanskrit was the language of the masses. It must be invoked when we sell it to be adopted as the 'native' language of all Indians."

Much of the answer has been given by Indians and relayed in this article of mine: http://koenraadelst.blogspot.be/2015/02/the-language-question.html

If you think another language is more suited, OK, though the experience with Hindi does not make this likely. As for English, it only flourishes in India at the expense of the vernaculars. India can become a full (rather than a clumsy and servile) member of the Anglosphere if the native languages are elbowed out of the way, maybe in two generations' time. For that long, I suppose democracy can wait. It was never the concern of the elitist Angreziwallahs anyway. And then, when India will have become English-speaking, it will simply be a piece of geography still called "India" but without privileged relation to Indian heritage, which will be no more than a museum piece. So why call this forum "India Ideas Conclave"? What about "Ideas for Destroying India Conclave"?

Meanwhile, describing a plea against English as "white man's burden" is a very rich case of having things backwards. It is another trick I've to to face so many times, viz. trying to save a losing cause by an appeal to nationalism or, as (Mr. X) prefers to call it, "racism". And he has actually used the word against me for daring to distinguish among Hindus those without honour from the honourable ones.  In fact, that statement has nothing to do with racism (and his allegation is 100% slander), for it could fairly be said about most nations and communities in the world. Its counterpart, which you by implication advocate, viz. that all Hindus by definition are honourable, that would be seriously racist. No, we all know that many Hindus still suck up to their erstwhile colonial masters, still crawl to please Macaulay eventhough his colonial regime is long gone. So indeed, some Hindus have self-respect, others don't.

This language debate is all too familiar to me. In my own country, the Flemish have had to struggle long and hard against the imposition of French. Angreziwallahs use all their resoursefulness, worthy of a better cause, to think up original arguments in favour of English, but they are all old hat to me. They have all been used in favour of French and been found wanting. For one, Cardinal Mercier, head of the Belgian Catholic Church around WW1, used to say that Dutch is unfit for higher education. I've heard the same thing about Hindi any number of times. And of course, our nation too had its honourless people sucking up to the dominant power and language.

Some other strange arguments here. Economic gains are said, by an advocate of English, to cause a promotion of Sanskrit to national language in a generation or so. In fact, the knowledge of Sankrit (and other classical heritage: Apabhramsha etc.) is diminishing by the day. Upgrading it to national language was feasible in 1949, would be difficult now (with much more opposition by anti-Hindu forces whom too many Hindus are eager to please, and opposition by the selfishness of the now more numerous class of those who stand to gain from English and lose by its abolition), and will be extremely uphill at a time when, in accordance with your own wishes, all Indians will be used to English as link language. Where would this promotion of Sanskrit come from if even under the present government, no step in this direction is taken?

Another familiar but actually very strange argument is that Indians have succeeded in the US using English. Well, of course. What else should you be speaking in Silicon Valley: Tulu? Nahali? Abroad you use a foreign language, but it doesn't follow that you have to impose that language on your homeland. I know many European graduates who have gone to greener pastures in the US and earned success there, using English. But they all have had their education in their mother tongue. No self-respecting country uses a foreign language for its administration and education. In this regard, India is not in the same league as China, Germany, Russia etc., but as such success stories like Mozambique and Zimbabwe. As long as it is useful to learn English, it is possible (and young Swedes, Germans etc. prove it) to became proficient in the language during a second/third language course. For me personally, English was the fifth language I took up. That is why some Indian state governments have upgraded the teaching of English as second language within the vernacular-medium schools.

II am well aware that Indian schools do not yield the same results as those in Europe because education in India is quite poor, with paid teachers not showing up etc. Well, then that is something to seriously focus on. Some free advice in this regard: education will be much better, and young minds become much more self-confident and creative, if it happens through the mother tongue. English as medium of education is detrimental to the development of India and to the harnessing of India's potential. It should be abolished.

 

(After having been lambasted as "racist" and all that, I wrote:) 

 

>When Koenraad uses phrases like thoroughbred Indian, and honourless Hindus, I bristle. It's almost as if we were animals in a zoo, waiting our turn to be evaluated by the expert and once he gives his seal of approval we can be sure of our worth and identity. Quite a few of us would like to categorize our fellow Hindus as honourable or dishonourable based on what they speak, or eat, or dress, or drink. (...) For a scholar of Hinduism, Koenraad appears too quick to judge and categorise us, dare I say in a most un-Hindu like manner. I am happy and honoured being an honourless Hindu Koenraad, if honour is defined in terms of your European sensibilities about culture and identity.<

 

So then, according to my written words against which you claim to react, my own Flemish people is like "animals in a zoo"? At any rate, if the Hindus are, then so are the Flemish, for they have or had similar language issues which serve as an acid test distinguishing dishonourable collaborators with the oppressor from self-respecting people  My sensibilities in this regard are not "European", they are certifiedly universal. Look at if the other way: while some Rajputs were dishonourably collaborating with the Moghuls, others saved the nation's honour by opposing them. But it is one of the great Fehlleistungen (mis-achievements) of the current Hindu movement to conceive every problem in terms of nationalism. In terms of "foreign invader" Babar against "native hero" Rama -- as if Babar's iconoclasm had anything to do with his being foreign rather than his being Muslim. Moreover, I have found that in many debates, the appeal to nationalism is a good way out for the out-argued. As Samuel Johnson observed: "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."  

 

Then again, I have sometimes argued that collaboration, though not very honourable, is sometimes the lesser evil. The Moghul army was such a power-house that sometimes collaboration was the best way to save as much of Hindu culture as possible. But does this apply here? There is absolutely nothing being saved by imposing English on the Indian people, it only hastens the demise of a distinct Hindu civilization. Ah, but the economy then? It is an easy and unverified assumption that India flourishes because of English. In terms of economic growth, China without English zoomed India by. Angreziwalahs prefer the example of Zimbabwe, a basket-case in spite of following essentially the same language policy as India.

 

>This link between national identity and language is itself a European invention. I don't see why we must swallow it hook line and sinker.<

On the contrary, the imposition of a foreign language is European, viz. an aspect of European colonialism. To be sure, in Asia there may be a distance between the official language and the popular dialects (as between Classical Chinese or now Mandarin and the spoken Chinese dialects), but the distance is much smaller and estranging, and the court language is as native as the popular vernaculars.  But I agree with you that Indians must not swallow English hook, line and sinker.

 

>I don't see Koenraad making a distinction between Italians with honour and Italians without honour based on their adoption of Latin.<

Latin might have been a legitimate option, but I accept that the people concerned have agreed on a common modern dialect (different from other dialects) as official language, which everybody could easily adopt. If Indians chose Hindi, I could live with that. It's just that it hasn't worked, and Indians like Rajiv Malhotra or Sankrant Sanu have rethought the issue and concluded that Sanskrit is the only feasible alternative to English. Yes, it takes effort, but then propagating English has equally not been a success either. They have estimated what cost and effort it would take, and contrary to Angreziwallah propaganda, it is very feasible. All that it really takes is political will. 

(Though the racism angle exists only in his imagination as well as in the pro-English position, Mr. X kept on hammering away at this nail:)
 

> Of course he wouldn't. They (i.e. the Italians) are white Europeans and these rules don't apply to them. They are free to choose and we Indians must submit to however Koenraad and his ilk of experts on India choose to classify us. This is simply a more sophisticated form of racism. Some of you might like to line up to receive your honourable Hindu certificate from Koenraad. Please count me out. I find his classification absurd and racist. Try making a similar classification of Europeans. The response you get will validate my point of view.<

 

Well, I have made this classification of Europeans too, in several different contexts. And I have not received any response validating your point of view. Many Hindus (indeed, many people) only talk with like-minded people and never get out of their comfort zone. I, by contrast, have exposed myself many times to real opposition, and I know by now what kind of reaction to expect.
 

So the same rules apply to "white" Italians and "white" Flemings as well (as per my proven record, starting decades before this debate), and to most human beings. In my last mail, I had already refuted the predictable "racism" charge, but here it is being repeated. So this is becoming a routine application of the pattern I have seen so often. First you make a point, someone argues against it, but then you trump this counterpoint with serious arguments. Then the Indian "nationalist" withdraws to the line of defence he deems safest: nationalist. So he denounces this "foreigner" and reduces his points to their "foreignness", regardless of their equal use on foreigners or their equal use by Indians. The Indian nationalist may then be able to polish his false native/foreign distinction a bit (as has happened here), but henceforth he is doomed to endlessly repeating his "racism" discourse. Angreziwallahs are nothing if not parrots.

  

> Given our linguistic diversity, I think that it is futile to make language the foundation of our national identity. It will lead to needless political friction and resentment. The present Government would be squandering its mandate on a very volatile and emotive issue. I respect the views of those of us who resent the domination of English in our public life, even though I don't quite share their sense of alarm and outrage. This domination did not come about overnight and therefore it can't be removed overnight either. By all means encourage the promotion of Sanskrit and other Indian languages. That can be done by more liberal funding of teaching and research positions in our schools and universities, especially for Sanskrit. But to rail against English per se and to demonise those who use English primarily as an instrument to bridge our linguistic diversity as honourless Hindus is not a very constructive approach.<
 

I was about to continue: "And the worst part of this misplaced and mendacious 'racism' discourse is that the real debating point is being sidelined." But to my pleasant surprise, it raises its head again. Good.
 

The Angreziwallahs themselves see language as the foundation of national unity over and above the local languages, see their own earlier posts. Only it is not Indian unity but unity of the Anglosphere, of which India should, at the expense of its native languages and civilization, become a member, unlike the other members who are simply being themselves. Now that is white racism for you.
 

It is true that the domination of English will take a long time to undo, and that precisely is why it is time to make a start now. But "encouraging the promotion of Sanskrit and other Indian languages" is not going to do it. Esperanto has been promoted by a number of governments (Brazil, Iran, Japan...) yet come to nothing. As Rajiv Malhotra observes, not the push factor of "promoting" a language will succeed, but the "pull factor": make it lucrative to be a Sanskrit graduate by reserving a growing number of posts and functions to knowers of Sanskrit. This swich-over can then be made gradually, as you people desire, but it should be a visible change, and then people themselves will learn Sanskrit by their own initiative, as they now do with English.

 

 

(Then we got the libertarian-sounding argument: the state should not interfere:) 

 

 >Let us leave such matters to the individual wisdom of citizens rather than constrict their choices as though we were colonial masters. That is all that is being asked. Indians are adults and each can make up his or her own mind. There is nothing Anglo about wanting the freedoms of a genuine democracy.<

 

According to Abbé Lacordaire, "between the strong one and the feeble one, it is freedom that oppresses and the law that liberates." The "free" choice of parents to send their children to English-medium schools is a consequence of their weak position, necessitating accomodation, vis-à-vis the accomplished fact of the imposition of English. There has never been anything "free" about this imposition: first it was initiated by the colonial ruling class, then expanded by the Nehruvian elite. It chose to ride roughshod over the people's will and over the Constitution, which enthroned Hindi as national link language as of 1965, and which was overruled by a mere presidential decree.

 

The option for English was the result of state policy, and the choice for Sanskrit will also be a matter of state policy. But that doesn't impinge on your "freedom". Everybody remains free to go for English education; only there won't be a premium on it. A pro-Hindu government can install "pull factors" that make it lucrative to be a Sanskrit-knower rather than an Angreziwallah. Unfortunately, we now have a government of time-servers (though elected on the strength of the Hindu vote and Hindu party workers), and by the time we have a committed and powerful Hindu movement, it may be too late.

 

To be sure, I realize that the Angreziwallahs have inertia on their side, including the inertia of the pro-Hindu camp. Indeed, the Hindus' lukewarm efforts show when you compare the number of Wikipedia pages in each language (though this is partly caused by their uphill struggle against the accomplished fact of English dominance). The Angreziwallahs have personal gain as their pull factor, while votaries of Sanskrit only have the collective good as their main appeal. Though the gain of abolishing English is enormous, the road to that goal is a difficult one, and seems at first sight prohibitive if not quixotic. But as William of Orange said: "It is not necessary to hope in order to undertake, nor to succeed in order to persevere."

 

 

(More pro-English mails repeated the already-refuted points, and one mail lambasted them as typically left-liberal:)

Since the Angreziwallahs are now going around in circles and repeating points that have already been refuted once or twice, this should be my last post on this topic.

 

 

> It is strange when Koenraad talks of honourable Hindus and honourless Hindus we must accept it as a valid academic distinction. However when I try to point out that his approach is part of a European tradition of looking down at India, it is characterized as left liberal talk or hate mail.<

 

 

No idea whether my distinction is "academic", but it is one that all people regardless of race can relate to. Some people have self-respect or "honour", others don't. E.g., they prefer to suck up to their former colonial masters by perpetuating their medium of administration. 

 

> Neither Koenraad, nor any well meaning scholar, has the right to make such insulting, sweeping generalisations about any religion.<

 

It is the very opposite of a "generalization", viz. it is a distinction. The "dishonourable" category does not include everyone, it includes specifically those who prefer crawling to walking upright. Moreover, it is not deterministic at all: you can leave one category any time and join the other. You can see the error of your position, change it, and no one will blame you for your former wrong position. And no honest reader can construe it as an attack on your "religion".  

 

>My point is very simple, an idea of India that does not recognise the linguistic diversity of India, and aims to impose any language, Sanskrit, Hindi or even English through state policy is going to create needless friction. It is an emotive issue with tremendous destructive potential.<
 

That, then, is a formidable indictment of English, which was exclusively and undemocratically imposed by the state: first by the British, then by the Nehruvians. The will of the people was democratically expressed once, and then very authoritatively, viz. in the Constituent Assembly. There, the vote was between Hindi and Sanskrit, English was not in the picture at all. Indeed, to the generation that had achieved decolonization, it was totally obvious that decolonization implied abandoning the colonial language and asserting linguistic self-sufficiency. This democratic expression of the people's will was overruled by a presidential decree, blocking the constitutional abolition of English in 1965. The smokescreen motive was the agitation by Tamil chauvinists, the real reason the self-interest of the Nehruvian elite against the Indian masses. To complete the tactic, we then get a hit-and-run position: "Now that we can enjoy the effects of the imposition of English by the state, no more state intervention!, From now on, 'freedom'!" 

 

>If you use harsh words be prepared to take them too.<

That's right. I have spoken harsh truths, so I should be prepared for harsh slander.

>I see Koenraad as the modern day inheritor of the great European mission to civilize the world and refashion it according to their fixed notions of race, religion, ethnicity and national identity. In this narrative, Indians (you can replace it with any another national group), don't know what's best for them. They need to be made to realize who they truly are and be guided in their choices.<

 And that is why this Koenraad is following numerous Indians in pleading against the abject choice for a European language and supporting the self-respecting choice for a native language.

> The earlier generations of invaders promised us a better future, the new wave of Koenraads offer us a better past.<

A really fine phrase, though its meaning is not so clear.


>Make no mistake, this promise is as much a lie as past promises.<

Like Lord Macaulay's promise that the imposition of English would liberate the Indians from their backwardness?


>It does nothing to address the real challenges of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, malnourishment and gender/caste based iniquities that are the real challenges that all patriotic Indians (and well meaning outsiders who wish to help) must address collectively. I believe that addressing these real failings of present day India directly, must be the main focus of the India Ideas Conclave.<

Ha, the "real" issues! That has always been the secularist buzzword to neutralize all cultural concerns. Nowadays it is much used by the dominant "BJP secularists" (better get used to this expression if you want to understand today's political dynamics) and by all the opportunists now joining the Modi set-up to make hay while the sun shines. Since that outlook is already dominant, I think the India Ideas Conclave has more future-oriented concerns to focus on.

To shield the 1965 decree overruling the Constitution and perpetuating English against criticism, the Times of India's cartoonist Laxman drew men fighting over Hindi and English aboard a sinking ship surrounded by the sharks of poverty, unemployment and similar "real" problems. (according to what I read in MJ Akbar long ago)

This is the typical tactic of people defending a status-quo. Before they will even confront the contentious issue, they first forestall that confrontation as long as possible by sabotaging the opposition's attempt to raise the issue at all. They blur the terms of the debate, they pretend that there is not even an issue, or that it only hampers the solution of other, more urgent, "real" issues.

>The richness of our past must be celebrated and propagated but we must address our present challenges with a greater focus and sense of purpose. Does the abolition of English, and the imposition of Sanskrit or Hindi help us achieve any of the goals listed above? I think not and therefore..."<

As the Orientalizers observed already 200 years ago, and as has been amply proven by now, education through English breeds mediocrity among "educated" Indians. So yes, a different language policy amounts to an enormous tangible gain, not just culturally but also economically.


>...it must be treated as the quaint academic parlour game that it probably is.<

Here you may be right. The writers of Bhasha-Niti and other pleas against English may argue all they want, but if the government doesn't take up their project, nothing will come of it. In modern society, the state is an important actor, with more powers than what an ancient tyrant could dream of. Today on the cultural front, the BJP is very inert (an impression I gather through the media, confirmed by some privileged actors with whom I am in contact), unfaithful to its original party manifesto. Already in the 1990s, LK Adani said: "English should continue." So for linguistic patriots this is an uphill battle, whereas Angreziwallas can remain smug and safe in the knowledge that no reform is on the horizon yet.


>Oh if only we were as homogeneous as one of the European nations. We could have been like Europeans too.<

Well, my own country is not homogenous, it has three official languages (or Switzerland, four) yet does not use a foreign language.


We are neither China nor Zimbabwe. We are India, a country of such richness and bewildering complexity that the poor binary European mind will always struggle to comprehend.

Ah, "complexity"! That is another secularist buzzword used to keep serious questioning at bay. Romila Thapar uses it all the time. In fact, India's linguistic situation is not complex at all. It can be summed up in one sentence: "With so many languges, India needs a link language." That is equally simple whether you choose a foreign or a native language as link language.

>I wonder if Koenraad would react in the same way if by some accident of history the Belgians had conquered India and Flemish was our official language. Perhaps then a Koenraad would emerge from the British Isles and rail against the destruction caused by the Flemish language on the poor Indian mind.<

The Flemish movement aimed at linguistic justice for the underdog, including ourselves, and never ever considered conquest.

>By the way the Belgians did colonise a country in Africa called Congo. I really envy them.<

In French. And the first thing Belgians (not Belgium, the Congo was then private property of the Belgian king Léopold II) did there was to abolish slavery through a war with the Arab slavers -- the only war Belgium won on its own. Belgium never practised slavery, and when it finally came in a position to do so, it abolished slavery.

All this talk about colonialism (and that by a defender of the continued imposition of the colonial language!) is a manoeuvre to obscure the fact that the adversary of your language policy is not the British (on the contrary) or any other Western power (they couldn't care less), but your own countrymen. For me it is only advantageous that we are having this debate in English; it is the Indian masses who are put at a disadvantage.


>Our use of English does nothing to add or subtract from our civilizational self esteem.<

So the Indian Republic's  Founding Fathers were wrong?  You know it all better than them?


>Just curious,but do you also campaigning in Belgium and more broadly in continental Europe for the suppression of English? After all, native culture in those parts needs to be saved from the toxic effects of this apparently hugely destructive language. Please let me have details of your efforts at blocking English in Belgium and in the rest of Europe,or is your activity in this regard confined  to India?<

This unfunny attempt at humour (cfr. Laxman, above) is typical for the Angreziwallah position: smug, conceited, very sure in their superior position which they trust is not going to be assailed anytime soon. But still mendacious.

These rhetorical questions falsely presuppose that Europe has the same language policy as India. But to the contrary, like Russia, China, Japan and every other self-respecting nation, the European countries use their own native languages for governance and education.


>As for China,the Chinese Communist Party has since the past twelve years embarked on a program to spread English widely within the population,and as a consequence,the number of those speaking the language is rising to levels that will soon challenge India's. It is important that you visit China and warn people there of the danger to their culture and traditions posed by the rapid spread of English. Dont confine the good work only to India.<

It would be funny if it were true, but Angreziwallahs are nothing if not "economical" -- with the truth. China maintains Chinese as medium of governance and education and in all walks of life. At official press conferences, it has decreed it will take no questions in English. The promotion of English that you pretend to be in line with your own English-medium policy, is in fact only the promotion of a foreign-language course. That is exactly what "nativists" advocate for India: learn English as a foreign language, within the safe setting of a native medium, like the self-respecting Chinese do, and unlike what the dishonourable Angreziwallahs advocate.


>Once we rise,so will our languages,in a natural process.<

Once people rise, they will promote whatever language they consider their own. If all their serious business is conducted in English, it will not be the kitchen language they vaguely know from their grandparents. Hindu preachers tell me that when addressing young audiences, they have to switch to English, for any message given through the cleaning-lady's vernacular is not taken serious. During the Constituent Assembly, India was not "shining" yet, it was much poorer than under Modi, yet those leaders didn't say: "Wait, first we have to deal with the 'real' issues, and then one day, in a century or so, our great-great-grandchildren may consider abolishing English." They had a sense of honour.


>To attempt such a growth through fiat on the Bandaranaike model would end in disaster.<

No one here was proposing to emulate Bandaranaike's imposition of Sinhala on the Tamils. That is a red herring and again typical of an establishment's ("bourgeois") propaganda against alternatives. But his mistake, and the disastrous imposition of Urdu on East Pakistan, may serve as a useful lesson to India. In charting a policy, the mistakes made by others should be learned from. When mentioning problems facing a project, lazy people take these as prohibitive objections, whereas energetic people take them constructively as obstacles either to be avoided or to be learned from. But thanks for your helpful warning that any reform will provoke violence from the Angrezi Tigers.


>Allow me to make this my last post in this particular exchange.<

Agreed.

 

 

 

 

--

Read more!

Savarkar and Modi, beginning and end of Hindutva

(Hindu Human Rights, 1 June 2015; India Facts, 1 June 2015)
 

 

Hate mongers

Hate mongers often need concocted stories to buttress their political message. In India, these are most common in that peculiar Indian form of hatred: anti-Brahminism. As the local counterpart to what anti-Semitism has been in the West, it fantasizes about how Brahmins have only domination over us lesser mortals as their uppermost concern. Everything a Brahmin does, just has to be a wily stratagem to manipulate others. With their greater book-orientedness and heavy overrepresentation in the writing professions, they control public discourse and make others look at the world through Brahminical glasses. No matter how you try to gain autonomy, they manage to outwit you, even to the point of taking control over progressive movements, even over anti-Brahminism itself.

 

Against such a formidable enemy, any means are justified. That may well be the reason why Abheek Barman chose to write the misleading opinion piece: “Why did PM Modi skip mentioning Savarkar at the Mathura rally?” (Economic Times, 27 May 2015). Alternatively, given the preponderance of borrowed, deformed and simply mistaken historical ideas in the anti-Brahmin movement, he may only have been misinformed.

 

For starters, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar did not found “the ‘parivar’, that he started and which now holds the reins of power in New Delhi”. He was president of the rivalling Hindu Mahasabha in 1937-43, though not its founder: when it was created (1915 or 1922, depending on the definition), as also in 1925 when the RSS as backbone of the Parivar (family) was founded, he was in jail and barred from participating in politics. He did, however, launch the concept Hindutva as a political category common to several Hindu Nationalist organizations, and indeed adopted as central to the RSS worldview.

 

Much is made also of Savarkar’s plea to the British for a lenient treatment, and his pledge of loyalty, after he had been confined to the Andaman Penal Colony. Anti-Hindus let on their secret fear of Savarkar as a Hindu leader when they assert that he should have locked himself up in stern but sterile opposition, merely being heroic and dying – the very policy that the Rajputs pursued, ultimately to the detriment of the Hindu cause. The truth is that Savarkar was too intelligent for that. He played his cards well and managed to actively serve the Hindu cause once again after his early release. It is this strategic acumen that Nehruvians like Barman cannot forgive him for.

 

It must be admitted, though, that the anti-Hindu camp is very savvy in its use of arguments developed by anyone, as long as they are useful for the anti-Hindu cause. Seeing that Savarkar was being lionized by the Hindus, someone at the Communist fortnightly Frontline decided to belittle Savarkar as essentially a coward who had others do the killing that he planned, moreover a toady of the British. In reality, the British gave Savarkar two life sentences and many years of actual imprisonment for his proven anti-British opposition, much harsher than anything that the luxury inmates Gandhi and Nehru have had to endure, let alone the caviar Communists at Frontline. Their attempts to cut him to size only draw attention to the fact that they aren’t qualified to touch his feet.  Yet, ill-conceived as this anti-Savarkar mudslinging was, it has been taken over by all anti-Hindu spokesmen and is now being used to maximum effect. This contrasts with Hindutva behavior: when any new pro-Hindu argument is launched, the Hindu Nationalist movement will ignore it and fall back on the same worn-out outpourings of long-dead stalwarts like Guru Golwalkar, blind to the proven impotence of this outdated rhetoric.

 

 

 

Gandhi

indu cause once again after his release

 

Then, we see Mahatma Gandhi for the umpteenth time called the “Father of the Nation”. Though quite vain (as when he condoned the crowd demanding that MA Jinnah address him as “Mahatma” rather than “Mister”), Gandhi himself would have rejected this epithet. It stems from the new-fangled Nehruvian notion that India is a “nation in the making”  conceived by the political unification under Queen Victoria, whereas Gandhi saw himself as a son of an age-old nation. This falsehood is a cornerstone of the Nehruvian rhetoric, but then nobody in his right mind had considered falsity and Nehruism incompatible.

 

Gandhi is also termed an “implacable opponent of the British, who won independence for India”. Though admittedly very common worldwide, this myth crumbles when you investigate it properly. His love of the British came out several times in successive wars when he organized military or humanitarian support for the British camp, or when he forced the apparent Congress candidate for the first Prime Ministership, Sardar Patel, to step down in favour of the anglicizer Jawaharlal Nehru. The confused and contradictory course he charted, actually caused serious setbacks to the freedom movement. Ultimately it was Britain’s weakening in World War 2 and India’s heightened self-confidence through its wartime record that convinced the British to withdraw. As the decolonizing British PM Clement Attlee later confided, Gandhi’s role had been “minimal”.

 

 

Trinity

 

That Narendra Modi singled out Deendayal Upadhyaya, co-founder of the Jan Sangh, predecessor of the BJP, as “one of the three pillars of Indian politics”, together with Mahatma Gandhi and Ram Manohar Lohia, would be a fit topic for criticism, for it is indeed an ill-conceived choice. Lohia launched casteism in politics, a tendency here flatteringly referred to as opposition to “upper-caste domination over subalterns”. Gandhi’s policies of strict non-violence and economic primitivism, if followed, would have finished India long ago.

 

Upadhyaya had the merit of coining the phrase “Integral Humanism”, which in a nutshell says everything Dharmic politics should be. It would still be a good thing if the BJP today would highlight “Integral Humanism” as its real ideological commitment, instead of weasel terms like “Nationalism”. Call it “Dharma” for Indians and people with a vivid Indian connection, “Integral Humanism” for foreign consumption or in English-language media.

 

Unfortunately, in his elaboration of this bright idea, Upadhyaya proved too attached to the RSS fixation on a “national soul” (ultimately stemming from European Romantic thinker Johann Herder), which took up all the space in his booklet with the promising title. People who knew him confided to me that he was an all too ordinary man, which corresponds to the verifiable mediocrity of his ideas. But for Barman, these are trifles pertaining to the contents of his ideological work, unimportant next to the damning indictment that he was “a Brahmin” and “an early member of the RSS”. What much of ideology he does consider, is sweeping and inaccurate (“hostile to the all ideas of individualism, capitalism, democracy and communism”), but we can put that down to the space constraints of a mere column.

 

 

Why not Savarkar?

 

Anyway, the crucial question for him is also crucial for us: “But why did Modi skip Savarkar, whose image in Parliament he paid homage to, soon after becoming PM? The RSS celebrates him as ‘Veer’ or ‘valiant’. From the 1920s, he was the main ideologue of the RSS that came into being on Vijaya Dashami, 1925. Savarkar wrote its basic text, ‘Hindutva’ in 1923.”

 

Indeed, though Savarkar was formally not one of them, his Hindutva ideology was all-important to the RSS and its daughter organizations, including the present ruling party. Why did Modi not even mention him? Has he been superseded by more recent Hindu ideologues, such as that other Jan Sangh president, Balraj Madhok, or by historian Sita Ram Goel, or by later converts to Hindu politics like Arun Shourie and Subramanian Swamy?

 

And it is not that Modi was shy about naming names. Mentioning Gandhi may have been in deference to the actual moral aura that the Mahatma still enjoys worldwide, and Upadhyaya may have been unavoidable for an RSS loyalist. But he lionized Lohia of all people, the stalwart of the divisive casteist poison that has so long paralyzed Indian politics. He actually preferred the socialist caste-monger Lohia to Savarkar, as well as to all other unnamed Hindu leaders and thinkers.

 

Could the reason be that Modi partakes of the intellectual culture of the RSS: borrowing from Nehruvian sources, playing by the rules laid down by the enemy? But such considerations are outside the Nehruvian worldview, which catalogues anything done by any Hindutva hate figure as wily, fanatic, part of a tough secret plan motivated by Hindu interests. It just doesn’t occur to Barman that nominal Hindu Nationalists are really obedient playthings in his own side’s own hands. Not that they themselves fail to treat Hindus as enemies, but Hindus refuse to see this and treat them as their own standard, as their Guru. Even when securely in power, Hindu Nationalists still crawl before the secularist standard.

 

 

Savarkar’s sins  

 

Anyway, Barman puts it down to a belated recognition of Savarkar’s own sins. The worst is of course that he was “a Chitpavan Brahmin”. At age 12 already, young Savarkar took a leadership role in a communal riot. That he was an accomplice in the assassination of a British official should count as relatively good (if not the means, at least the purpose) for an avowed admirer of “implacable” opposition to the British. Ah, but that admiration was only meant for Gandhi, the man responsible for many thousands of deaths during the Partition massacres, the man who let others do the killing (described as an act of cowardice in Savarkar’s case) all while keeping his own hands clean even to the point of becoming a by-word for non-violence.

 

Barman also claims that Savarkar “wrote of the ‘unity’ of all Hindus, but his writing had no place for Muslims, Sikhs or other communities”. It is only a dogma of the Nehruvians, including the separatist section among the Sikhs, that Sikhi is a separate religion. From a scholarly viewpoint, of course Sikhs are Hindus: all Indian “unbelievers” were called just that by the Muslim invaders who introduced the very term “Hindu”. And at least Barman should know that from a Hindutva viewpoint, Sikhs are Hindus just as Buddhists, Tribals and other Indian religionists are. That precisely is what “the unity of all Hindus” means. Barman is a frog in the well who projects his own limited and ignorant Nehruvian worldview onto more mature views.

 

Then, Barman accuses Savarkar (and another Chitpavan Brahmin, prominent freedom fighter BG Tilak) of having espoused the Aryan Invasion Theory. This is the cornerstone of British rule in India, of missionary propaganda and of the anti-Brahmin agitation among Tribals, Dalits, Dravidians; indeed, of Barman’s own anti-Brahminism. And it is true that Savarkar was wrong in this regard, having been mesmerized by the then all-powerful belief that linguistics had somehow proven he Aryan invasion and thus overruled Hindu tradition, which knows of no Aryan invasion but only of several “Aryan” emigrations. (But while Savarkar was wrong 90 years ago, under several constraints, the anti-Brahmin movement entertains the same mistake even today.) Contrary to Barman’s claims, it was not exported from India to Europe but had been invented in Europe ca. 1820, after several decades of assuming that the newly-discovered Indo-European language family had originated in India.

 

Let us face the fact here that Savarkar’s worldview was influenced by the then Zeitgeist (spirit of the times), which no longer obtains. Likewise, Mahatma Gandhi is badly outdated, as are Ram Manohar Lohia (though sinister disintegrationists including Barman try to keep his legacy alive) and Deendayal Upadhyaya. It is one of the worst traits of Hindu Nationalism that it refuses to grow and just keeps on hero-worshipping long-dead leaders without making their inspiration evolve with the times.

 

 

Savitri Devi

 

And then Barman gets really off track: “Savarkar’s story has a sinister follow up. By the late 1920s, a European woman called Miximiani Portas travelled to India, where faced with deportation, she married Asit Krishna Mukherji, then the only Indian supporter of Nazism and Japanese expansionism across Asia. (...) Inherently racist, but with a mystical awe of ancient Hindu and Egyptian civilisations, Savitri gobbled up Savarkar’s bizarre Aryan theories. (…) ideas of Aryan racial supremacy, and the inherent ‘sub-humanity’ of other people, travelled via Savitri Devi to Adolf Hitler. She believed that Hitler was the divine power that would deliver this world from the Kali Yuga. Savitri Devi – and Savarkar – helped Hitler form his bizarre racial theories.”

 

Having devoted a few hundred pages to the sad case of Savitri Devi (chapters in The Saffron Swastika, 2001, and  in Return of the Swastika, 2007), I will not fill up this limited space with the many reasons why Barman’s version is worse than imaginary. The reader merely has to consider the chronology to see that this is impossible. Adolf Hitler wrote his Mein Kampf, full of “Aryan racial supremacy and the inherent ‘sub-humanity’ of other people” in 1923, when Maximiani Portas was a young student and Savarkar a prisoner. Until then, Savarkar had only written a few books about Indian history, which didn’t interest Hitler, and about the anti-colonial struggle, which Hitler strongly opposed. So no, Savarkar did not influence Hitler and did not give him the very European idea of the Aryan race. (But at least, Mein Kampf and Savarkar’s Hindutva were written at the same time and both in captivity, a likeness about which astrologers and fantasy writers like Barman could certainly think up a good story.)  

Maximiani Portas brought her Aryan theory with her into India, as she had learned it in Europe. She only took Indian ideas with her back to Europe when she could leave India at long last in 1945, too late for Hitler to learn anything from her. Incidentally, she had taken the name Savitri Devi shortly after settling in India, years before she married Mukherji. It is but one of the many mistakes of detail accumulated in Barman’s brief column. She did have a peculiar veneration for Hitler as well as for Genghis Khan and for Pharaoh Akhenaten, the founder of monotheism and iconoclasm (a tradition that has particularly victimized Hinduism through Islam). She prefigured the many Westerners who have travelled to India to brew their own combination of Hindu and Western ideas, and who often ended up getting sun-struck.

What Barman strategically omits, is that after the outbreak of World War 2, Savarkar immediately offered help in the anti-Nazi war effort and started recruiting for the British-Indian Army. Indeed, Gandhi would deride him as a “recruiting officer”, forgetting how he himself as a British loyalist had recruited Indian volunteers for the British war effort in the Boer War, the Zulu War and World War 1. Of course, in Barman’s game, it is “heads Hindus lose, tails anti-Hindus win”: if Savarkar had sided with the Axis against the British (as the secular Leftist Subhas Bose did), he would have been denounced as a proven Nazi, and now that he worked for the opposing camp, he is denounced as a British toady. In reality, he had only India’s best interests at heart, which he thought were best served by enlisting in the British-Indian Army, just as Bose thought that enlisting in the Axis Armies was the best course to India’s independence. Barman with his puny divisive ideas would not understand, but Savarkar and Bose, for all their differences, were first of all patriots.

 

Conclusion

Why did Narendra Modi not enumerate Savarkar, as the coiner of the political category Hindutva, among his political role models, when he did include the whimsical Mahatma, the divisive Lohia, and the mere follower Upadhyaya? For a reason that doesn’t figure in Barman’s worldview: BJP secularism. Whereas Nehruvians like to portray the RSS-BJP as a formidable enemy mercilessly pursuing the Hindu agenda, the fact is that most BJP stalwarts prefer to keep the Hindu agenda as far removed from their policies as possible. They serve their time in government and enjoy the perks of office, meanwhile hopefully cleaning up the economic mess that Congress has left behind, but never touching a serious Hindu concern with a barge-pole.

This even counts for the Prime Minister, whom Barman and his ilk have spent a dozen years demonizing as a Hindu fanatic. The Hindutva once espoused by the Jan Sangh (1952-77) should be updated, the old formulas should be allowed to evolve, of course. But most BJP stalwarts are not interested in any evolution of their ideology, the only evolution they can conceive of is betrayal. They have never developed an ideological backbone; instead, they have continuously borrowed conclusions from the Nehruvians and others who did their own thinking for non-Hindu purposes. They had the pick-pocket mentality of getting things on the cheap, of being mentally lazy and borrowing their ideas from elsewhere.

That is why both BJP Prime Ministers thus far, Atal Behari Vajpayee and now Modi, have professed their secularism. No, not age-old Hindu “secularism” (in the sense of religious pluralism) but the anti-Hindu ideology that is falsely called “secularism”. They essentially live up to the standards set by their enemies because their movement has never seriously developed a perspective of its own.

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