Opinion Why inclusive Hindutva is a myth

For traditional Hindutva proponents, the Dalit-Bahujan ideological school is a bête-noir that must be clamped down on with coercive and violent means. This independent Dalit presence has been treated as an ideological challenge to the Hindutva camp and therefore disciplinary state action is prescribed to curb it. Now, Dalit protests against social injustices, their ideological thoughts and even criticism of the current dispensation are condemned as anti-Hindu, criminal or even anti-national. The continued imprisonment of Anand Teltumbde, a Dalit scholar and social activist, testifies to the state’s opposition to radical Dalit activism. Recently, the police booked a Dalit faculty member of the University of Lucknow for hurting religious sentiments after he offered a critical view on the Gyanvapi mosque issue. Similarly, Professor Ratan Lal of Delhi University’s Hindu College was arrested for a satirical social media post referring to claims of a shivling being found at the Gyanvapi mosque.

The right-wing is non-democratic and insensitive when it has to deal with Dalit socio-political claims. It hardly offers a roadmap to ensure substantive Dalit participation in state institutions or execution of policies that examine and resolve the perpetual problem of caste atrocities. Instead, it often defends the perpetrators of caste violence and legitimises the use of coercive state action against Dalit protests. The state’s abnormal reaction to Dalit tragedies is further visible in the Rohith Vemula case, the Una flogging case, the Bhima-Koregaon protest movement and during the Hathras rape-murder case. Further, the recent imprisonment of legislator Jignesh Mevani on flimsy grounds only shows that the BJP regime has developed a vengeful psyche against the Dalit issues and activists.

The idea of subaltern Hindutva is an impressive political campaign that has helped the BJP to shape its image as a party of all Hindus. On the ground, however, the Dalit minority perpetually faces Brahminical wrath, state inaction and social prejudice. The right-wing has no means to deal with Dalit questions of social injustices, caste atrocities or to substantively ensure the execution of social justice policies. Instead, it exploits their emotive cultural values to consolidate its own conservative social base.

The right-wing says that any sensitive response to Dalit questions will only alienate its traditional support of non-Dalit communities and create more social anxieties. The idea of an inclusive social order that facilitates Dalits as empowered and equal beings disturbs the traditional social ideology and hampers the interests of conservative social elites and dominant castes. In order to retain the support base amongst non-Dalit Hindus, Hindutva proponents overtly demean Dalit voices as irreligious, belittle its ideological assertion as contempt for Hindu civilisation and do not hesitate to brand it as anti-national in spirit. The expectation that a Hindutva regime will build a sensitive deliberation for Dalit inclusion, organise campaigns for social reform or propose policies to resolve their socio-economic problems is therefore a grand mirage.

The way that Muslim issues help Hindutva forces to form communal unity, the social “othering” of Dalits helps the right wing to consolidate dominant caste unity. The othering of Dalits through sporadic cases of caste atrocities and social humiliation retains the distance between Dalits and other Hindus in subtle ways. The right-wing hardly offers any social or political programmes to challenge this. Instead, by making sympathetic gestures towards the perpetrators of caste atrocities, Hindutva organisations perpetuate the belief that they serve the interests of the social elites. The state’s actions against Dalit activists, scholars and leaders, therefore, consolidate the idea that it still abides with the conservative brand of Hindutva and that the campaign for “subaltern Hindutva” was merely a political strategy.

The writer is assistant professor, Centre for Political Studies, JNU