by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Kolkata : Claiming that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) would keep on working in taking the Hindutva movement forward in West Bengal, the organisation’s state leadership on Wednesday said its membership has significantly increased here in recent years.
“In the last three to four years, the membership drive of RSS in West Bengal has yielded good results. The number of young men and women who have joined the ‘Shakhas (daily gathering units), are really high. In 2013, the number of Shakhas in West Bengal was 750, it has increased to 1,279 so far in 2018,” RSS South Bengal General Secretary Jishnu Basu told reporters here.
“In Bengal and few other states where the condition of the Hindus is not good, RSS would to try to increase its strength by increasing the number of shakhas and through its social welfare (seva) activities, so that the Hindutva movement in West Bengal can go forward and we can fight the anti-national forces like those in Dhulagarh, Kaliachawk and Khagragarh,” he said.
Referring to the prohibitory order issued by the Kolkata Police on carrying “sharp and offensive weapons” in public places, Basu said it would abide by the state law and order during the Ram Navmi celebrations this year, as long as it applies to Muharram rallies as well.
“I think the success of Ram Navmi is not dependent on brandishing weapons. The decision on how to celebrate Ram Navmi this year would be taken when the time comes. We will abide by the law and order in the state. If the state says there should be no weapons in Ram Navmi and Muharram rallies, we should follow that,” he said.
He also accused the state government of wrongly jailing their activists during Ram Navmi last year and said that the state ruling Trinamool Congress’ decision to celebrate Ram Navmi themselves this year, shows they are willing to come back to the mainstream.
“RSS does not aim to be a supporter or rival of any particular political party. So if the state ruling party Trinamool Congress or the left parties in Kerala celebrate Ram Navmi, it is good. This is what the Hindu society wants,” the RSS leader said.
“The Bengal government imprisoned 105 innocent youths for celebrating Ram Navmi last year. This year they themselves are willing to celebrate Ram Navmi. It shows that their mindset has changed and they are willing to come back to the mainstream. We welcome this change,” he added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews, Politics
By Sarwar Kashani and V.S. Chandrasekar,
New Delhi : The BJP government is looking to make a “major assault” on the Constitution if the ruling party gets a majority in both the Houses of Parliament, says Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who feels the attack on various constitutional provisions, like Article 370 on Kashmir and secularism, will be part of attempts to create a “Hindu rashtra” (nation).
Tharoor, a second-time Lok Sabha member from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, also feels that the Congress and like-minded secular parties should come together on a common platform to resist the Hindutva onslaught in the next Lok Sabha elections. Even the Left parties could come on that platform post elections if necessary, according to him.
“I think a lot of their real agenda is waiting for the time when they have both Houses under their control. And once they do, I think you can certainly look to a major assault on the Constitution. Then the question is, will the Supreme Court stand by the basic structure doctrine and interpret it to include these principles of equality, freedom of religion, freedom of worship, non-discrimination, etc., which would make it impossible to reduce the Constitution to the document of a religiously-derived majoritarianism,” Tharoor told IANS in an interview.
He recalled that during the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee a constitution review committee was formed under former Supreme Court judge M.N. Venkatachaliah, but it didn’t work on the idea of a Hindu rashtra.
But, Tharoor said, it seems a committee under K.N. Govindacharya, an ideologue of the Rashtriya Swayamseval Sangh (RSS), is working for the present dispensation, according to media reports and interviews, which have never been challenged. Govindacharya has already talked with some candour to journalists about what he is trying to do.
“He says socialism, secularism, all that will have to go. If they are embarking on such a project, I think they are quite serious about it. The only thing is that they probably felt this would be too much of a risk to be taken on in the first term, unless they also have a majority in the Rajya Sabha.”
Tharoor said the BJP doesn’t have a two-thirds majority now because almost no other party is going to go along with its approach.
“So, I think they were really hoping, and perhaps unrealistically hoping, to consolidate two-thirds majority in both Houses and then go for the kill. Rather than fighting the battle prematurely, when they could lose.”
Meanwhile, he said, the BJP did some “test-drives” like the triple talaq bill as one way of trying to get an issue that they believe will both be dog-whistle at their hardcore base and at the same time test their strength on an issue of religious significance.
“But once they get two-thirds in both Houses, I do believe the Constitution, including Article 370 on Kashmir… on the Hindu rashtra concept, on use of words socialism, secularism, all of these would be up for grabs. There is little doubt about it.”
He said he was surprised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi prescribing that Jana Sangh leader Deen Dayal Upadhyaya’s ideology is the one those in the ruling party should follow, as it was the same Upadhyaya who said the Constitution should be torn up because it is full of imported ideas.
At the same time, the Prime Minister said the Constitution is the holy book for him, Tharoor said.
Asked if Modi should not be holding this view because he is occupying high office, the Congress leader said: “That will be terrific, I think, if the Prime Minister were to say ‘I admire many things about Upadhyaya, but I don’t agree with him on the Constitution’.”
In the context of his latest book “Why I am a Hindu” (Aleph), Tharoor was asked whether he would like his party to counter the BJP on the lines of what he had written about Hinduism and Hindutva. He replied he would not like to overemphasise on this issue because of the inherent strength of Hinduism.
“In other words, while we were behaving like we were good people who worshipped in private but thought it unseemly to demonstrate our faith in public, they (the BJP) were the ones ostentatiously being religious and saying to their voters ‘see, we are Hindus like you and you should vote for us and those are godless secularists’.
“So, by Rahul Gandhi going to temples in Gujarat and so on, what is he saying: He is saying they go to temples, we also go to temples. So, let’s neutralise our issues. Now let’s talk about vikaas, talk about development, let’s talk about whether your life has become better in five years of the BJP ruling you.”
Tharoor said ultimately the key political arguments ought to be that these people made all sorts of promises five years ago that they have not fulfilled.
“And to my mind, politically, that is the most powerful argument that we can make — are you better off than you were four years ago or five years ago? And if not why do you want to vote for them again? You think about the price of your gas cylinder. You think about whether you’ve got a job. You think about whether you’ve been able to afford to pay for petrol or diesel at the pump even though world prices dropped for four years.”
Asked about who should be the Congress’ allies in the next Lok Sabha elections, Tharoor said it was too early and wrong because he is not in a position to speak about it.
“I would say there would be states where there would be straight fight between us and the BJP, and alliances would be of less consequence. But we may still have an alliance for the sake of opposition unity.
“But there would be other states where regional parties would be more powerful electorally than we are, and where we may have to reconcile ourselves either by allying with them or, if necessary, tying up a post-electionsalliance.”
Asked if the Congress would ally with the Left post-elections, he said: “They will, certainly. As far as the CPI-M is concerned, they have already announced they will not ally with the Congress and now we have the final decision to be made by their Congress. If that is confirmed by the party congress, then we will only see post-election (alliance).”
Asked what prompted him to write his latest book, Tharoor said he had been playing around with the idea 20 years ago “in the context of the Babri Masjid demolition”.
“The idea to do a full book on the subject became more urgent and compelling because of the extent to which Hindutva has tried to make the issue of the Hindu face front and centre in our public discourse.”
But the real trigger was the way Hinduism was being abused and to counter that abuse.
“You know, when you have been abused as I have been on social media and so on… as ‘anti-Hindu’ and you always thought of yourself as a decent human being within the Hindu faith. What do they mean by anti-Hindu? How can I be anti-myself?
“My father was a very devoted Hindu. Am I anti him? My father was in every respect a profoundly sort of convinced practitioner and believer of Hinduism. And yet the way he brought us up was one of such respect for other faith and such willingness to accept the ideas and sacred objects of other faiths.”
(Sarwar Kashani and V.S. Chandrasekar can be contacted at sarwar.k@ians.in and chandru.v@ians.in )
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Saket Suman,
Book: Why I Am A Hindu; Author: Shashi Tharoor; Publisher: Aleph Book Company; Pages: 302; Price: Rs 699
Shashi Tharoor’s new book on Hinduism — the religion followed by a majority of Indians — comes at a crucial juncture when there is an upsurge in fringe elements that practise and propagate the ideology of Hindutva. The book, therefore, was being thought of as Tharoor’s response to Hindutva. However, limiting “Why I Am A Hindu” to the debate between Hinduism and Hindutva will be a grave injustice to this riveting offering as the book is much more than the sum total of this debate.
At the onset, it is a layman’s account of his journey of discovering the “extraordinary wisdom and virtues of the faith” that he has practised for over six decades. Tharoor himself makes it clear in the Author’s Note that he is neither a Sanskritist nor a scholar of Hinduism and, thus, did not set out to write a “scholarly exposition of the religion”. The book comes across as the author’s attempt to understand the religion that he follows, calling it a self-discovery of sorts will be accurate. Tharoor’s exposition travels between personal accounts and his understanding of the religious scriptures as well as the values propagated by the likes of Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Pramahamsa and others in the league whom he refers to as the “Great Souls of Hinduism”.
It is thus imperative for the reader to have a clear state of consciousness before setting on to read the book because more than anything else, it is about Hinduism, a religion, and religions are, after all the reasons behind most conflicts.
The book is divided into three sections, the first of which is titled “My Hinduism”. This answers the question raised by the title of the book: Why I Am A Hindu? Admitting as sincerely as is expected of a liberal intellectual as Tharoor, he sets the record straight and confides that he is Hindu “because I was born one”, and goes on to elaborate that religion is selected for most people at birth, “by the accident of geography and their parents’ cultural moorings”. But this analogy is not to suggest that he is not a proud Hindu. “I was never anything else: I was born a Hindu, grew up as one, and have considered myself one all my life.” The section talks at length about Tharoor’s early days, highlighting how his personal understanding of the religion developed with time. “My Hinduism was a lived faith; it was a Hinduism of experience and upbringing, a Hinduism of observation and conversation, not one anchored in deep religious study,” he points out. The section also explains at length what he calls “My Truth,” where he describes the reasons why he is “happy to describe” himself as a “believing Hindu”, before going on to present a fair perspective on the values propagated by the “Great Souls of Hinduism.”
The second section is titled “Political Hinduism” and this is where Hindutva comes into play. It is interesting to note that the author takes 140 pages (about half of the book) to reach to the burning debate of our times and in doing so, he succeeds in providing a background on his belief of the religion, supplemented by the values propagated by the likes of Swami Vivekananda before explaining Hindutva. He begins this section by providing a clear distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva. For Hinduism, he presents an imagery of a banyan tree, in whose shade, “a great variety of flora and fauna, thought and action, flourishes”. From here, he moves to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and its ideologues — Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and M.S. Golwalkar, explaining their perspectives on Hindutva. Using original quotes, he mentions Savarkar’s assertion: “Hinduism is only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva.” The book then moves, at an incredible pace, to the advent of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and the Bhartiya Jana Sangh and then to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Tharoor then devotes 40 pages decoding the philosophies of Hindutva — not as he perceives it but exactly how its ideologues propagated it. Contrary to all expectations, he does not criticise them or counter their views, at least at this stage. It is from page 183 of the 302-page book, that he unleashes a storm of arguments on “the politics of division” that has led to “a travesty of Hinduism”. Next, the author eloquently elaborates on the uses and abuses of Hindu culture and history in the contemporary scenario, resulting from “the politics of division” that he early mentions.
The 28-page-long last section of the book is all that he spends on addressing what most would have expected from the entire book: “Taking Back Hinduism”. Beginning with a reference to former US President Barack Obama’s speech where he mentioned that “India will succeed so long as it is not split along the lines of religious faiths,” he elaborates on the “travesty of Hinduism” in the contemporary times.
Tharoor is brutal in his criticism of the saffron brigade but equally accommodating when it comes to presenting their views.
“Why I Am A Hindu” is a well-researched exposition and is yet a charming personal account — and it floats seamlessly in rich prose and diction synonymous with one of the most widely-read and revered authors of our times.
(Saket Suman can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
Nayantara Sahgal
Kolkata : Describing the current political situation as “not conducive for anybody”, veteran writer Nayantara Sahgal has called for rejecting the idea of “Hindutva” which is “creating violence” and has “nothing to do with Hinduism”.
“Right now, it is a very different situation. In the present political situation, the forces are trying to stamp out all dissent and disagreement. People who disagree with them are being killed. The last person was Gauri Lankesh.
“Not only writers, people who are transporting cattle have been killed. On suspicion of storing beef, people are being killed,” the writer told IANS.
“Remedy is to throw out Hindutva and reject it. This is creating violence. It is a very dangerous ideology and has nothing to do with Hinduism. Many writers have been speaking and writing against this ideology,” Sahgal said on the sidelines of the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival 2018 here on Saturday evening.
She said Hinduism was “not a terrorist creed” and did not advocate violence.
“The current (political) situation is not conducive not for just writers but for anybody. Anybody, they don’t like, they file cases against them. There is persecution and murder and (there is) a very evil political climate,” Sahgal said.
The much feted writer said India at the time of independence decided to put democracy before development and it also decided to be secular. “This is something to be proud of.”
During the session of ‘Women Writers: Shaping a New India’ at the Festival, an award – the Prabha Khaitan Woman’s Voice Award – in Association with Oxford Bookstore, was announced.
Applauding the initiative, she said: “I always hate to put a dividing line between men and women. Maybe, it is because that in my family men strongly believe about woman’s rights. I always firmly believe in a partnership between men and women.”
She also said that gender and class were not at all limiting factors while a particular writer writes about specific gender or class.
During the interaction, she said: “I have found from what I read that writers from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are much more politically engaged with their political situations than Indian writers are with Indian situations.
“I don’t know whether it is a correct assessment. But what I have read that seems to me… They have written very powerfully about various political situations in their countries.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
For the third time since the Narendra Modi government’s assumption of office, the Dalits have come into conflict with the Hindutva brigade. The first time was in Una in Gujarat, where a group of Dalits were thrashed by saffron activists for skinning a cow, a traditional occupation of the “untouchables”.
The second time was in Hyderabad central university where a standoff between members of the Ambedkar Students Association and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) student wing, led to the suicide of a Dalit student, Rohith Vemula.
Now, perhaps the most serious of all these incidents has taken place in Maharashtra following the objections of Hindu Right organisations to the celebrations by Dalits of an 1818 battle in the village of Koregaon on the banks of the Bhima river near Pune in which the “untouchable” Mahar soldiers of a British army defeated the upper caste Marathas.
Considering that these celebrations have been held for decades without the rest of the country noting it as an event of great significance even when B.R. Ambedkar participated in them in 1927, it is noteworthy that they should have led this time to a violent outbreak which spread from Pune to Mumbai and other Maharashtra towns.
Evidently, the Hindu Right groups have been emboldened by the BJP’s political ascendancy to decide to stop an instance of Dalit assertion, not least because it targeted the upper caste Peshwa rulers of the state of the 19th and earlier centuries.
The episode was a much larger version of the clash which took place in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, between Dalits and the Rajputs in May last year when the former objected to the processions taken out by the Rajputs to celebrate the birth anniversary of Maharana Pratap. A few weeks earlier, the latter had objected to the celebrations of Ambedkar’s birth anniversary by the Dalits.
What these episodes show is that unlike in the past, the Dalits are unwilling to commemorate their days of pride in a low key and are also ready to object to the noisy festivities of the upper castes.
The Bhima-Koregaon event may have kindled the ire of the Hindu Right all the more because of the unapologetic participation of the Dalit soldiers with the British army to defeat a Hindu ruler.
This is something which evidently riles the ultra-nationalists associated with the saffron brotherhood at a time when they are engaged in rewriting history to suit their own fads and prejudices as is evident in their objections to a yet-to-be-released film on a fabled Rajput queen.
In such a time of triumphal chauvinism, the Dalit-East India Company collaboration is obviously unacceptable to the Hindu Right, especially when Ambedkar had noted that the “untouchable” Dusads had helped Robert Clive to win the battle of Plassey in 1757, just as the “untouchable” Mahars, a community to which Ambedkar himself belonged, had helped the “foreigners” to win in Koregaon.
Not surprisingly, Ambedkar had not been a favourite of the BJP till recently when the party changed its mind about him after realising the high political cost of alienating both the Muslims and Dalits.
However, the party’s “mann ki baat” or speaking one’s mind about the Dalits was succinctly expressed by Arun Shourie, who was a minister in Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government, in his book, “Worshipping False Gods”, in which he said that “there is not one instance, not one single solitary instance, in which Ambedkar participated in any activity connected with the struggle to free the country”.
Considering that there are not too many instances of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) participating in “any activity” to free the country, Shourie’s charge cannot be taken seriously. But it does underline the traditional Brahmin-Bania outlook of the Sangh Parivar towards the Dalits and their foremost leader.
The objections voiced by the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, about the continuing reservations for Dalits in government jobs and educational institutions also denote the saffron attitude which is resented by the latter.
The BJP has tried to make amends by nominating a Dalit, Ramnath Kovind, as the country’s President, but it is unlikely to make any difference to the longstanding antipathy of the community towards a party whose hardliners swear by the Manusmriti, an ancient book which was once “ceremonially” burnt by Ambedkar along with hundreds of his followers for its anti-Dalit pronouncements.
For the BJP, the latest confrontation with the Dalits carries a disturbing message on the eve of elections in as many as eight states this year, including those where the party is expected to face the anti-incumbency factor.
While the BJP’s success in winning 69 of the 85 reserved seats in Uttar Pradesh last summer showed that the party was gaining the support of the Dalits, the trend was not in evidence in the recent Gujarat elections where, among other things, the victory of the previously unknown Jignesh Mewani, by a margin of 19,000 votes, pointed to the disaffection of the Dalits with the saffron organisation. Mewani emerged from nowhere after the Una incident to become a well-known figure in today’s politics.
There is little doubt that farily large sections of the Dalits, who make up 16.6 per cent of the population, as well as Muslims, who comprise 14.2 per cent, harbour reservations about the BJP, notwithstanding its attempt to placate at least the Muslim women by bringing the triple talaq bill. The BJP cannot but be deeply worried, therefore, about the impact of their alienation on the forthcoming elections.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
