Bugbear of the secularist

In a twisted way, the bully-boy smile of a Pramod Mahajan, playing Pierre Salinger in pyjamas to Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee, signifies something deeper than his flippant 8220;We are ready for the fourth war with Pakistan8221; might suggest. So does VHP leader Ashok Singhal8217;s eagerness to build a temple at the site of the blasts or RSS SarasanghachalakRajendra Singh8217;s glee at Mother India acquiring the nuclear aura.

They represent the logical culmination of the attempts to construct Indian nationalist consciousness in terms of a monolithic Hinduism and a majoritarian Indian state in the image of a modern Western state. These attempts were initiated by the organic intellectuals of colonial India, the Bhadrasanatans in the mid-19th century, and subsequently nurtured by Congress leaders representing the interests of dominant indigenous social forces.

The Bhadrasanatan who rose above all in shaping this consciousness was Bankimchandra Chatterjee, whose position in this context is best laid down in his Dharmatattva The Theory of Religion: 8220;The day the European industries and science are united with Indian dharma, man will be God8230;Hindus will gain new life and become powerful like the English at the time of Cromwell or the Arabs under Muhammad.8221; No wonder the post-Pokharan-II rhetoric of the votaries of the Sangh Parivar sounds similar. That theyeulogise the tests as an outstanding feat of Indian science and talk of constructing the Ram temple in the same breath might, prima facie, appear incongruous. But this too has a deeper significance.

It is not a coincidence that the RSS raked up the centuries-old Ayo-dhya dispute in the mid-8217;80s when the consensual politics of the Congress was on its last leg and Atal Behari Vajpayee8217;s Gandhian socialism had failed to stop the emergence of new social groups on the political stage threatening the hegemony of the ruling establishment.

That the temple was only a tool was conceded by Murali Manohar Joshi whose Ekta Yatra in 1992 followed L.K. Advani8217;s Ratha Yatra: 8220;We are uniting the masses on the basis of Hindutva 8212; not in a narrow religious sense, but in a wide geo-cultural sense8230;Therefore, if nationalist sentiments have to be aroused even today, we believe it can only be based on the tradition of militant Hindu culture.8221; The temple and the bomb, thus, represent two sides of the same coin. The templemovement avenged the humiliations heaped by foreign Islamic invaders in the past and the bomb is to protect Mother India from potential foreign invaders.

Though Raja Rammohun Roy was the first to attempt it, it was Bankim who gave the project to unite Hindus under one umbrella a mass appeal. His eulogy of goddess Kali in the hymn Vande Mataram8217; instilled the idea of the motherland as a divine entity. Early Swarajists like Tilak and Aurobindo too used the same religious discourse in their scheme to transform Indians into 8220;a great nation8221;.

They failed to involve the masses because they ignored the contradictory composition of the indigenous social forces. This could be done only by Gandhi who succeeded in welding them together against the British by advocating accommodation of these elements. Gandhi attracted the Dalits and lower castes by questioning the caste system in the light of contemporary practices 8220;Today castes have become mongrelised. Varnas have disappeared.8221; His dictum that8220;religions are different roads converging to the same point8221; and his rejection of the doctrine of majoritarian nationalism as 8220;a heartless doctrine which has done harm to humanity8221; brought in followers of other faiths.

But Congress leaders, who found Gandhi useful in organising the hegemony of the indigenous dominant class during the freedom struggle, had little use for Gandhi8217;s pluralist mode of nationalist consciousness once they had come to represent the ruling class. The Congress under Nehru reverted to the Bankim-Tilak-Aurobindo mode of Hindu majoritarian nationalism identified with the creation of a 8220;great nation,8221; with the trappings of a modern Western8217; state such as majority rule, a discourse on industrialisation, an emphasis on technology for development and a 8220;modern8221; system of knowledge production, etc. Treating Hinduism as a unifying conformist religion was a critical element of Nehru8217;s 8220;secular8221; politics of development and centralisation. He chose to ignore the conflicts within theHindu social order with respect to social reproduction of hereditary rights, i.e. the caste system.

The equivocation allowed the representatives of various shades of saffron to thrive within the post-Independence Congress system and these elements asserted themselves at critical moments. The installation of the Ram idol in the disputed Ayodhya shrine in 1948, the opening of its locks in 1986 and the shilanyas foundation-laying of the Ram temple in 1989 just before elections during Congress rule prove the point. It is not a coincidence that senior Congressmen like Karan Singh and Dau Dayal Khanna were among the founders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

This should forewarn the secularists, who first collaborated with the BJP to dislodge the Congress and are now willing to do business with the Congress to oust the BJP government at the Centre. Communalism of any kind, and especially majoritarian communalism, is not anybody8217;s hidden agenda but an ideology. And it cannot be contested within the confines of theelectoral arena alone, or by Stalinist cloak-and-dagger methods, designed and employed by official Marxists with the help of casteist politicians like Laloo Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav.