A bellicose comeback

In his deep desire to make Hindus learn something worthwhile from Islam, a general secretary of the BJP has declared that his party shall in...

In his deep desire to make Hindus learn something worthwhile from Islam, a general secretary of the BJP has declared that his party shall include in the proposed common civil code the Islamic practice of formally seeking the woman8217;s consent for her marriage. The Hindu marriage ritual, he said, does not have such a provision and as an example of taking good things from all religions, this was his ready reference. As election eve is the only time for our legislators to think about religion, what else is to be expected? In the marriage season, they are too busy hopping from one kalyanam to another, blessing the newly-weds and protecting their guardians from the taxman, who may question the expenses on the huge pandals. Whoever stays to see the ceremony? If the BJP spokesman had stayed on, he would have learnt that more than mere consent, it includes seven promises 8212; saptapadim kriva vamam dakshinam tatha 8212; that the bride extracts from the groom before they are declared man and wife. This is not tosuggest that Hinduism has nothing to learn from Islam or vice-versa, but to point out that the customs, rituals and family laws of any sect cannot be modernised or even civilly codified by amateurish reforms.

The weighty task of evolving a common civil code to reflect a common cultural heritage, along with the revival of nationalism through cultural assertion against the renewed intrusion of Westernisation through information technology has been taken upon its shoulders by the BJP. In principle, it is an admirable venture and only the diehard secularist rhetorician who advocates total unconcern of the state in religious life can oppose it. But the BJP has still to demonstrate its ability and sincerity.

So far, its record, including that of the Jan Sangh and the syngenic organisations of the Parivar, has been poor. Even if one is ready to give the benefit of the doubt and accept their sincerity, their strategy shows that without a major reorientation they shall not be able to revitalise the cultural lifeof the nation. Like the Congress and the Leftists who have done their best to fossilise the minorities by generating in them a constant identity-loss phobia, the BJP has worked on the Hindu majority8217;s religious sentiment through a tokenism that generates a false cultural elation.

In the fifties, the party agitated for an all-India ban on cow-slaughter, but it forged no movement for improving the lot of the cow. The party could have floated a Gau Seva Dal, helped set up research organisations for better breeding, asked for tax holidays for dairies and so forth. It could have combined the traditional Hindu devotion to the cow with modern technology for a healthier govamsha. But that needed something more than tokenism.

In the sixties and seventies the BJP pushed Hindi politically, but it did not create any institutions to promote it as a medium for the Press, film, television, literature and translation. The funding for such enterprises need not always come through sarkari academies. It can come from thepeople as well, as it did for the Banaras Hindu University and the Aligarh Muslim University when they were established. But the BJP wanted the change to come not through a transformation at the grassroots but through state edicts.

In the eighties, the BJP went to the grassroots for the cause of the Ram Mandir. Parivar workers were active at local temples across the nation to raise funds as well as political support. It was the biggest movement in India, perhaps, after Vinoba Bhave8217;s Bhoodan movement. But it had two inherent pitfalls. It was a reaction to Mandalisation and a blind alley, whether it failed or succeeded. After the temple, what? One temple, however marvellous, cannot sustain Hindu culture all over the land. It takes a biased imagination to conclude that by the controversy and confrontation it has so far generated, 8220;India8217;s banished Hindu identity has staged a powerful comeback.8221; It could have been so, had the BJP launched a nationwide programme to improve thousands of Hindu temples, big andsmall, in villages and metros, to see that they were repaired, better administered and made centres of art. It is the sanctuary around the corner that gives me my daily solace, not Kashi, Jerusalem or Mecca. We need not one but a thousand sacred sites. That is why the land is strewn with pilgrimages, and it is unnatural to make one site a matter of Hindu identity. Hindu asmita kaa savaal. If the Ayodhya struggle could be really so, and not mere tokenism, the BJP would not have put it on the back burner.

Not long ago, Delhi Mayor Shakuntala Arya wanted to prohibit the display of affection in public places. Was it an innocent diktat in the interest of restrained moral conduct or was it cultural protectionism? A Delhi college principal recently 8220;ordered8221; women students not to wear jeans and tops, and boys not to sport pony tails. She argues that she is imposing a code for decent dressing as jeans send out wrong signals. Whether she wants her students to spare her the problems of campus conflicts, or whetherher definition of modesty extends virtually to purdah, or whether she insists on desi-ness to keep global influences at bay, is not easy to make out.

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The non-western societies are today faced with the dilemma of either aping the Euro-American model of amoral demagogy or reviving their religious roots with the accompanying pitfalls of obscurantism, commercial messiahism and cultural packaging by half-baked gurus. There is also the third road, of promoting open and sustained dialogue between various cultural and religious groups. Let fresh practices evolve among the people through a lived consensus instead of state-appointed votaries of culture prescribing definitions and laws for national behaviour. Culture is not a prescription that academics, bureaucrats and, least of all, legislators can provide. One can create conditions for its flowering by education, patronage, discussion and debate, by encouraging its growth through respecting a variety of discourse. By encouraging the people to leave the rut and makenew ways. If this ferment of reviving culture touches the people of the land, it shall inevitably touch its Hindu majority most of all. Is that not a more efficacious and genuine way for the 8220;banished Hindu identity to stage a powerful comeback,8221; without bellicosity?

The writer is a professor at Delhi University