Try some generosity

My research would suggest a hypothesis. At the deepest level, the idea that India’s national identity is Hindu and that Hindutva should be everyone’s culture in India is profoundly disturbing, not simply for the intellectuals but also for the masses. The problem has two parts.

The first is by now conventional wisdom. The idea of Hindu unity is threatening to the lower caste parties and large proportion of lower castes themselves. It effectively means that the way India’s lower castes have historically been treated by the upper castes is only a social, not a political, issue. This is absurd, for Hinduism may be externally and doctrinally tolerant, but internally it has been quite intolerant. Lower caste issues of dignity are real and have a national spread. Lower caste resentments will go up or down — perhaps down in this election — but they will not disappear. It’s too serious a matter for millions of lower caste Indians. Dignity is notsomething only upper castes can claim to have.

Second, a large number of Hindus quietly going about their lives, not participating in mobilisation, but not inclined towards the lower caste parties either remain unpersuaded. Those who are mobilised often receive a lot of political attention, not those who stay back in their homes.But the latter also vote. As a result, there’s often a gap between political mobilisation and election results. The Ayodhya movement was arguably the largest movement in recent years but the BJP did not come to power. Mobilised numbers can be an inaccurate indicator of electoral strength.

Deep inside their hearts, large proportions of the quiet, unmobilised, Indians are not ready for an ideology, however moderate its political practitioners may have become, that all religions and diverse groups of Indians must “assimilate” to a Hindu centre which, furthermore, would be defined by an organisation like the BJP, RSS or VHP.

India’s minorities linguistic, religious, caste ortribe-based have made remarkable contributions to India’s culture, life and history. To deny that is to cause undue bitterness and rancour. Millions of peace-loving Indians are happy with the nation’s many diversities and the syncretism of its culture. One may, of course, ask: Is India’s culture really syncretic? The question is relevant for both elite and popular culture. North Indian classical arts — dance forms, music, architecture — represent Hindu as well as Muslim influences. The Taj Mahal is architectural syncretism at its best. India’s languages feature Muslim words, images and metaphors that came from Persia and Egypt and entered India through the Mughal courts of the Middle Ages. Hindi, as is well-known, shares much of its vocabulary with Urdu, and vice versa.

India’s popular cultural forms — the songs, dialogues, and themes of Bombay films, the verses of Kabir and Rahim, folk literature, the cuisines and even some popular forms of worship such as those observed at the Ajmer dargah — areneither Hindu nor Muslim, but highly syncretic. Non-Muslim minorities have also shaped the India we know. The Sikhs have been the heroes of our armed forces; Indian Christians have made major contributions to education; and Parsis have been among the nation’s leading industrialists.

It is pointless to deny, as some scholars do, that India’s history has witnessed bitter struggles between Hindus and Muslims, but it does not follow that there have been no constructive exchanges between them. Since, unlike the nationalist movement, it has traditionally emphasised only the former, not the latter, Hindu nationalism amounts to a highly selective and dangerous retrieval of India’s past.

It clearly hurts the Muslims, but my main hypothesis is that it also upsets the deeper, everyday equilibrium of people’s lives. When millions of Hindus and Muslims are locked into daily relationships of business, work, and neighborhood, to make such a lot of fuss over who is a true Indian can only generate suspicion, disquiet, andunease.

Indian culture is not Hindu; it is simply Indian. Hinduism is undoubtedly a large component, but it is not synonymous with Indian culture and civilisation. That is why Nehru used the term “Indo-Muslim” to characterise Indian culture, and Gandhi, a Ram Bhakta, never called India Hindu. Gandhi was a Hindu and a nationalist, but not a Hindu nationalist.

In a similar vein, others have used the terms salad bowl’, mosaic’, or thali’. Such conceptualisation does not devalue the contributions made by minorities to India’s history and culture. The melting pot’ — the conception that all minorities must melt into the Hindu pot — does.

This may be a fundamental reason why so many Indians find Hindu nationalism disturbing. The core of the ideology stands for bigotry, bitterness and narrow-mindedness. And the moderation of BJP leaders does not quite neutralise the visceral mean-spiritedness of RSS and VHP cadres.

To overcome these suspicions, Hindu nationalists will have to work harder. How abouttrying a more serious gesture next time, Mr Advani: apologise for destroying the Babri mosque. Your aim should not just be alliance-building, but winning the trust of millions who remain sceptical. The former may be essential in politics, but for great political leadership, there is no substitute for generosity of spirit.

The writer is Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University