Imagining India as Hindu rashtra

By Jyotirmaya Sharma

(Feb. 24 2006, The Hindu)

...The greatest impediment in the way of "a true vision of the nation," as Golwalkar chose to put it, was the liberal idea that various communities - and here he means Hindus, Muslims, Christians - were to be considered as parts of a single nation. On the contrary, Indian national life was the ideal of Hindu rashtra. Here, the foremost Sangh ideologue speaks of the Hindu rashtra as an inalienable, eternal, unbroken, and unified identity. He calls it the reality of India, whether people accept it explicitly or not.

To argue otherwise was to lose sight of a clear conception of the nation. What about other communities living within India? Golwalkar is forthright in his exposition: "An unclear imagination of the nation - the impractical idea that whoever comes here and stays will be considered a part of the nation; even today if any alien comes and stays, he is deemed as part of the nation - it is to this level that there is lack of clarity of thought." While he is acutely aware of this stance being branded racial, communal, and narrow, he exhorts his audience not to be ashamed of the claims of the Hindus...

Golwalkar addressed his last ideological session of the RSS, called chintan baithak in RSS parlance, in Thane from October 28, 1972 to November 3, 1972. The very first words that Golwalkar uttered were: "This is our Hindu rashtra." He declared the goal of the Sangh as the re-establishment of the glory, excellence and universal authority of the Hindu rashtra. There was a certain definitiveness, even stridency, in his tone. Those who did not believe in the truth of the Hindu rashtra were un-Hindu...

In 1972, this tendency in Golwalkar matures into questioning the very existence of India's democratic model. In its place, he argued for a Platonistic framework of wise men leading society and determining its affairs. The illiterate of India were incapable of handling democracy, he argued...

The RSS of today, along with members of the Sangh Parivar, will do well to spend the Golwalkar centenary year in dispassionately evaluating his thought and legacy. More importantly, they will have to either own up the ideological vision of Golwalkar, or tell the ordinary people of India of their points of disagreement and departure with their ideological mentor.

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So long as religion is religion

As Jharkhand debates the prospect of an anti-conversion law, SOLI J. SORABJEE returns to debates in the Constituent Assembly on the freedom to propagate one's religion

SOLI J. SORABJEE

During the framing of India's Constitution, minorities, especially the Muslims and Christians, were most concerned with the guarantee of freedom of religion. Article 13 of the original draft Constitution inter alia provided that all persons have shall the right to freely profess, practice and propagate religion subject to public order, morality and health. It is noteworthy that this freedom extended to all persons - citizens and non-citizens alike - and included the right not merely to profess and practice but also to propagate religion.

What was the founding fathers' understanding of the expression "propagate"? Was conversion included in propagation and consequently in freedom of religion? Was the subject of conversion debated in the Constituent Assembly and what was the ultimate outcome?

At the outset I want to clarify, the present article is not about the legality or propriety or otherwise of conversion. It is to highlight the fact that the topic of conversion was very much in the minds of our founding fathers, was discussed in the Constituent Assembly and in the Advisory Committee on fundamental rights.

There was heated, extensive debate in the Constituent Assembly about the expression "propagation". Loknath Misra was opposed to the expression. He proposed an amendment to delete the word "propagate" from the article. This amendment was rejected. K T Shah mentioned that there are "religions which are professedly proselytising", obviously referring to Islam and Christianity. He was not against what he called "propaganda of religion" (meaning conversion), which is "calculated to change the religion or form of belief or worship inherited with one's parentage", provided the limitations in his proposed amendment were accepted. The principal limitation was that there should be no propagation in institutions receiving aid and consisting of young children.

Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra (W Bengal" stated that "the Indian Christian community happens to be the most inoffensive community in the whole of India". He expressed the view "that propagation does not necessarily mean seeking converts by force of arms, by the sword, or by coercion. But why should obstacles stand in the way if by exposition, illustration and persuasion you could convey your own religious faith to others? I do not see any harm in it".

Krishnaswami Bharathi (Madras) said, "So far as my experience goes, the Christian community have not transgressed their limits of legitimate propagation of religious view and on the whole they have done very well indeed. It is for other communities to emulate them and propagate their own religions as well". He emphasised, "It is very necessary that we should show tolerance. That is the spirit of all religions. To say that some religious people should not do propaganda or propagate their views is to show intolerance on our part".

K Santhanam felt the word "propagate" was unnecessary because propagation is merely a facet of freedom of expression. He noted that the word "convert" was not in the article. He was however happy that no "unlimited right of conversion has been given", obviously referring to the right to propagate one's religion and the limitation in the Constitution that this right is subject to public order, morality and health.

Rohini Kumar Chaudhari (Assam) had "no objection to the propagation of any religion. If anyone thinks that his religion is something ennobling and that it is his duty to ask others to follow that religion, he is welcome to do so".

The speech of T T Krishnamachari (Madras) is significant. He said, "I know as a person who has studied for about 14 years in Christian institutions that no attempt had been made to convert me from my own faith and to practise Christianity. I am very well aware of the influences that Christanity has brought to bear upon our own ideals and our own outlook, and I am not prepared to say here that they should be prevented from propagating their religion. I would ask the House to look at the facts so far as the history of this type of conversion is concerned. It depends on the way in which certain religionists and certain communities treat their less fortunate brethren. The fact that many people in this country have embraced Christianity is due partly to the status that it gave to them. Why should we forget that particular fact?" He concluded his speech by saying it is only fair to give "the same right to every religionist - to propagate his religion and to convert people, if he felt that it is a thing that he has to do and that is a thing for which he has been born and that is his duty towards his God and his community".

K M Munshi, who had taken a leading part in the framing of the Constitution, pointed out that he "was a party from the very beginning to the compromise with the minorities, which ultimately led to many of these clauses being inserted in the Constitution and I know it was on this word (propagate) that the Indian Christian community laid the greatest emphasis, not because they wanted to convert people aggressively but because the word 'propagate' was a fundamental part of their tenet... So long as religion is religion, conversion by free exercise of the conscience has to be recognised. The word 'propagate' in this clause is nothing very much out of the way as some people think, nor is it fraught with dangerous consequences". He urged that the word propagate "should be maintained in this article in order that the compromise so laudably achieved by the Minority Committee should not be disturbed".

Freedom of religion ultimately enacted in Article 25 of our Constitution inter alia provides that subject to public order, morality and health every person has the fundamental right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion. The debates in the Constituent Assembly clearly indicate that our founding fathers did recognise that conversion was implicit in propagation of religion and that the expression "propagate" was deliberately incorporated because Islam and Christianity are proselytising religions. In this context the rejection of Loknath Misra's proposed amendment to delete the word "propagate" is noteworthy.

Our founding fathers were not swayed by narrow-mindedness and prejudices against certain religious minorities. They displayed broad-mindedness and the spirit of tolerance in keeping with our tradition which is most heartening. The crying need of the hour is to preserve that spirit of tolerance in all religious communities which is a must for creating an atmosphere conducive to mutual trust and understanding so essential to the welfare of our multi-religious, multi-cultural nation.

Soli J. Sorabjee is a former attorney general for India

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A Gift from the Fundoos

Hindutva is not a spent force in tribal Gujarat

Second Thoughts / GITHA HARIHARAN

Still working
It’s not as if we have forgotten what the Hindu fundoos are capable of. But since the electoral defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre, many of us have been tempted to take a break from foregrounding resistance to the parivar’s day-to-day communal designs. Our attention has also been diverted by the public antics of the BJP and its cohorts as they reinvent their internal power structures. As a result, a little hope has lodged itself in us; a hope that Hindutva is almost a spent force. This hope, like so many of our dearest hopes, is unlikely to be realized quite as soon as we would wish. It’s been business as usual — malignant business — for the Hindutva brigade in several places in the country. The tribal district of Dangs in Gujarat is a case in point.
Dangs, of course, is not the only tribal area that has been at the receiving end of Hindutvadi cultural indoctrination. For several years now, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its front organizations — such as the Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad and the Hindu Jagran Manch — have targeted the tribal belt. This includes Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Orissa and Gujarat. In all these areas, the object of the Sangh’s activities has been to “Hinduize” the adivasis.
But Dangs has the misfortune to be in Gujarat, a state in which the BJP government has systematically abused power to isolate and terrorize minorities. In addition to the generalized statewide “policy” of hatred against Muslims, there is the anti-Christian propaganda in tribal areas. Although the population of Christians in the state is a mere 5 per cent, and though there are less than 8,000 Christians in Dangs, the bogeyman at large is the “threat” of Christian conversion.
Consider, for a moment, a view of Dangs if we look at the inhabitants as people, not as numbers on the scorecard of one religion or the other. In this district with more than 90 per cent forest cover, most cultivators barely manage to survive for a few months of the year on the crops they harvest in their smallholdings. Agricultural labourers are able to get some employment only during the agricultural season. The rest of the time, they migrate in large numbers to Surat District — often to work as semi-bonded labour. Overall, the political economy of Dangs makes the district a study of neglect, dispossession and non-development.
What has been the state government’s reaction to such a situation? Like a good servant of Hindutva, the state, in close collaboration with Sangh organizations, has come up with a familiar answer: cultural indoctrination. In other words, never mind the dull and painstaking task of building economic and social progress; what these tribals really need is some new mythology, some new folklore that will tell them who they should be. The fundoo solution to the difficult life of the Dangi tribals has been to gift them with a new goddess that will make them less tribal but more “Hindu”.
The goddess is Shabri, a faithful servant of Ram, just like Hanuman. (But the choice of Shabri also has that edge to it: the adivasis are linked to the dominant ideology-bearing myth only through a female servant of Ram.) With the open support of the BJP state government, organizations affiliated to the RSS have been working hard at mobilizing lakhs of adivasis and Hindutva activists to attend a gathering in mid-February — what is being described as a massive “Shabri Kumbh”. Two fact-finding citizens’ committees visited the district in December 2005 to investigate the plans for the Kumbh. Both teams talked to the local people and activists, and the second team also met local district officials and leaders of the RSS.
The report that emerged from the teams’ investigations describes the misuse of the legend of Ram and Shabri by the attempts to draw adivasis into the Hindu fold. We already know that the RSS lot have a hotline to Ram — they know exactly where he was born, where he travelled, where he made his mid-journey halts. So it should not surprise us when these informed people tell us (or tell the adivasis) that Ram visited Dangs, which is actually the Dandakaranya of the Ramayana. The new legend naturally adds that important detail: a nearby hill, Chamak Dongar, is the exact place where Ram met Shabri and ate the sweet wild berries she tasted for him. This is the place where the “Shabri experts” have chosen to build a temple. In our own Ram-less times, this has meant cutting down a large number of trees, and violating laws protecting forests, as well as tribal land ownership.
The Kumbh Mela is an old tradition; it has been organized by turn in Nasik, Hardwar, Allahabad and Ujjain. But courtesy the new tradition-keepers, the mela is now being organized in Dangs. Professionally prepared CDs reveal the real intention of this gift to the Dangi tribals. They call for the destruction of Christianity, a dangerous foreign faith, just as Ram destroyed Ravan. “Hindu jagao, Christi bhagao” is the rallying slogan.
The report of the fact-finding teams traces the way this anti-Christian propaganda has been building up over the years. It also illustrates the ways in which the propaganda seeks to divide the adivasis and distract them from the real issue in their lives — dispossession. Perhaps worst of all, it undermines tribal identity as it attempts to take tribals “home” to Hinduism through a process called ghar-vapasi or re-conversion.
These findings are based on various testimonies from the Dangis as they describe the strategies of the Hindutva brigade. Typically, the RSS-type activists encourage the adivasis to think of themselves as vanvasis, and encourage the youth to join outfits such as the Bajrang Dal. With the arrival of Swami Aseemanand, a Vishwa Hindu Parishad functionary from West Bengal, ancestral stones where adivasis worshipped or performed agriculture-related rituals were identified, and small temples built next to them. This creates a new, non-tribal practice of housing a god as opposed to the usual practice of a god kept in the open. The traditional practice of sacrificing chickens and goats is stopped. And over a period of time, this “temple deity” is incorporated into the Hindu pantheon as a lesser god — befitting the lower caste status of the “vanvasis”. The promotion of the Shabri legend is in line with this approach to “gift” the tribals mythological characters who were subservient to more elite characters or gods. Community leaders in Dangi villages point out that they have heard of Shabri only in the last year or so. But the shrines for Shabri not only assault tribal identity, they also mean the grabbing of land — as much as sixteen acres in the case of Jairam Kashiram for example.
What will the Shabri Mela bring the Dangi tribals? The collector and others who have bought the RSS line claim it will develop religious tourism, provide employment, and “help instil moral values in the tribals”. The victims of the mela, the Dangis, testify otherwise. What they expect is more intimidation of Christians; more tree-felling and land-grabbing; more threats to an already precarious livelihood; and a new position as a marginal member of the “Hindu family”.

More attacks against Christians in Madhya Pradesh: Is it ever going to stop?

By Vijayesh Lal

30th January 2006: The night of 30th January 2006 was replete with reports of incidents against Christians in Madhya Pradesh.

The state already infamous for attacks on the Christian minority with as many as 4 attacks on the community since 25th January 2006 experienced more of it, with unconfirmed reports indicating at least 18 instances of violence against Christians as India mourned the father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi refered to as the apostle of peace.

The first attack was in Betul in Madhya Pradesh where in Hindutva fundamentalists attacked and attempted to burn a Pentecostal Church. The Church pastored by Senior Pastor K T Samuel was broken into by miscreants. After vandalizing the Church they attempted to set the Church on fire.

The second attack took place in Banapura, District Hoshangabad. Between 12:00 – 1:00 in the night unidentified men broke in the Friend’s Church in Banapura and after vandalizing they set the Church gates on fire.

The police station of Banapura is just opposite the Church and as soon as policemen saw flames from the Church they came to the rescue thus making the attackers flee from the scene. It was the police personnel who doused the fire and protected the Church.

The Friend’s Church is a historical Church and is about 150 years old. It belonged to the UCNI and currently the CNI is the custodian of the Church. Ena Jiwan Masih, an elder of the Church has filed an FIR with the police. We spoke to Mr. David Nathaneal, one of the elders of the Church and he has expressed his concern at the attacks but was appreciative of the police action.

The third attack was again at a Friend’s Church but this time in the town on Itarsi. Unidentified people broke the Church lock and attempted to vandalize the Church, but a major mishap was averted when the miscreants ran when someone raised an alarm.

According to reports received unidnetified people attempeted to burn a Church in Mandla district too, but the police intervened at the right time and thus prevented a major mishap.

All these instances of attacks on Churches, Pastors and Christians do make us wonder about the seriousness with which the government of Madhya Pradesh claims to protect minorities.

Christians in Madhya Pradesh have always suffered some amount of violence and social discrimination but the coming of the BJP led government in early 2004 led to a huge escalation on attacks on the community. The list of atrocities is becoming longer by the day.

Uma Bharati famous for her cow protection drive is also equally infamous for facilitating persecution of Christians. She demonstrated this openly when she gave a clean chit to the BJP and VHP workers after the violence in Jhabua. She instead came on records and appreciated the patience and tolerance of the majority community inspite of provocation (Indian Express, February 3, 2004) thus attempting to divide the society in Jhabua on communal lines.

Even today 14 innocent Christians languish in Alirajpur prison without bail. They are all accused of murder of one of the Hindutva brigades “Martyrs” Arjun Pal. Facts indicate that many of them were not even present at the scene at the time of the violence, but with BJP’s hand on the judiciary, who cares for facts anymore?

A school teacher, Ramesh Baghel, who was in a parent teacher meeting at the time of the violence was targeted and locked up. According to Patras Habil, a representative of the minority commisison in the state, the judge rejecting Ramesh’s bail petition at the High Court acknowledged that the evidence did not point to his involvemnet in the case, but the charge was so grevious and the case so “politicized” that a bail for Ramesh Baghel was not possible.

Reports coming in from Jhabua indicate how the magistrates just happen to go on leave just before the case is due for hearing and so the people continue to be in jail. This is a total disregard of the judiciary and a mockery of justice.

Arjun Pal meanwhile, has been promoted to the stature of a national hero by no less than Mr. Kailash Vijayvargiya, a cabinet minister in the BJP government. A picture collage sponsored by Mr. Vijayvargiya at Indore puts Arjun Pal in the same category as Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekhar Azad, Subhash Chandra Bose and the faithful soldiers who lost their lives at Kargil.

Babulal Gaur the next chief minister of the BJP led government in the state also did little to protect the minorities. It was during his tenure that the biased “Narendra Prasad Committee report” was unveiled, which blames conversions as the reason for the violence in Jhabua. The report predictably does not speak a word against Hindutva elements responsible for the violence.

Shivraj Chauhan, the RSS karyakarta (volunteer) who keeps the RSS ideology very close to his heart, according to the BJP website, and the third chief minister of BJP in less than 3 years, offers little hope for Christians in the state. One only has to take a look at the number of incidents against Christians happened in the state in January 2006 alone to get a feel of the future.

One thing is for sure, the BJP not able to give good governance to the state of Madhya Pradesh, not being able to deliver its basic promise of Bijli, Sadak and Pani (Electricity, Road and Water) is diverting the minds of the people of the state using the only weapon that they are good at: communalism. And it is sad because in the end the only loser and the one cheated is the voter of Madhya Pradesh.

Time to Expose Political Hinduism - Worldpress.org

Time to Expose Political Hinduism - Worldpress.org