The seemingly illogical idea of Hindu victimhood – the victimhood of a majority – is alive and vibrant among a section of what one might term the Hindu Right. Those peddling such ideas of victimhood had earlier built their case by leveling accusations against the Muslim and the colonial rulers of India, holding them responsible for the historical subjugation and humiliation of Hindus. 

The works of V.D. Savarkar and M.S. Golwalkar laid the foundations of the above discourse and several historians published lurid details of the depravities of the foreign rulers. 

Today, the above formulations still carry currency. In continual diatribes against Islamic and British rulers, a whole host of historical wrongs are trotted out and sought to be assuaged. The long drawn out Babri Masjid affair was a particularly vicious example of such posturings. 

More recently, in order to express their own condition in connection with other instances of persecution around the world, the proponents of the Hindu victimhood thesis have brazenly linked to the Jewish Holocaust, Islamophobia, and the oppression of indigenous peoples. A good number of these proponents are part of the Indian diaspora. They seem to have wised up to the utility of magnifying their own sense of persecution by linking with that of other communities. 

Positioning Hindus as the indigenous population and civilization of India, such proponents unabashedly and unproblematically attempt to hijack the struggles of those whose indigeneity has been mostly unquestionable. Not just that. Terms associated with experience of indigenous and other oppressed peoples around the world, such as “intergenerational trauma,” are also employed unashamedly.

Such trauma, denoting the  psychological effects of various kinds of oppression carried over several generations, is often associated with the current lived experiences of  indigenous and Black communities around the world. It is a very serious, sensitive and a real condition that afflicts those communities since they have been under oppression generation after generation. 

To appropriate such terminology by unproblematically thinking themselves as “indigenous” and claiming resultant trauma from having been under foreign rule for generations is an example of deception and unethical posturing. on part of the Hindu Right 

Also increasingly employed is the idea of “Hinduphobia”—or a supposedly cognate term, Hindu dvesha (animosity towards Hindus), the former term patterned very consciously and cheekily on the ideas surrounding Islamophobia. 

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA) and other organizations put together seminars and talks on Hinduphobia and Hindudvesha, especially in school textbooks. This strand of thought is a continuation of the controversy regarding the depiction of Hindus and other Indian groups in California textbooks. 

The issue of Hinduphobia was also front and center recently in the backlash against hstrian Audrey Truschke at Rutgers University in the US, where she was accused of hurting the sentiments of the Hindu students. 

Such wild imaginings about one’s victimhood does not stop there. A webinar organized by the Dharma Civilization Foundation, a part of VHPA, titled “What Can Hindus Learn From  The Jewish Holocaust,” explains the thinking behind the event: “What are possible Holocaust lessons for Hindus who have experienced genocide in several countries and who continue to experience sustained Hindudvesha –  a discourse that dehumanizes Hindus everywhere.”

The list of countries the Hindus might have experienced genocide in seems to be anybody’s guess. The Indians, and a majority of them Hindus, form the largest diaspora in the world. They figure in the upper ranks of professionals and decision-makers in places like the US and Europe; they control large businesses in Africa; and they form both the laboring and service classes in the Middle East. How such a community with admittedly more than a modicum of success and prosperity is the target of dehumanization everywhere is a mystery.

The quest to understand and transcend the supposed inferiority, humiliation and dehumanization is however not a monopoly of diaspora actors. A recent presentation organized by the “Indian Knowledge System” track of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Ministry of Education, was titled, “The Real History of Prosperous India.” The two main presenters, from an organization called “Bharath Gyan,” were at pains to explain how Indians had high achievements much before the common era. They repeatedly pointed out that the Hindus were not “Janglis” (wild and uncultured), as several historians would have the world believe. 

It is such self-crafted profiles of victimization that the adherents of a nationalist Hindu agenda conjure up and then work to disseminate. It creates a platform to keep up the myth of persecution and of feigned inferiority.. What it urges, more covertly than overtly, is a solidarity based on supposed shared suffering, and, for historical justice, common enemies to blame. There is the perpetuation of a fabricated memory of victimhood, which in the present plays out in forms of irrational hate, a desire for avenging the persecution, and an endeavor to constantly glorify a supposed golden past. 

(The author is a writer based in Delhi NCR)

References:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbRSU9qkdCQ

https://youtu.be/B4MzWK9Jwbk?t=3171

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4026365/

https://sangamtalks.org/qa-trans-generational-trauma-and-hindu-resistance-a-talk-by-rajat-mitra/

https://blog.hua.edu/blog/hindudvesha-systemic-hinduphobia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LesTn6XMj0c

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-36376110

https://www.opindia.com/2021/04/rutgers-student-association-pass-resolution-against-hinduphobia-all-you-need-to-know/

https://dcfusa.z2systems.com/np/clients/dcfusa/survey.jsp?surveyId=10&

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFdtW57X8ww

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKsfq4rFzbA

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It is unlikely that the discussion on secularism will even lose relevance in India. Right now secularism is under global spotlight because of events in France. The French idea of strictures on public displays of religious symbolism – laicete – is once again being discussed avidly.

We are all well aware that India has a religious nationalist government at the center and in action after action by this government, there is the public expression of religious themes. We recently witnessed the inaugural event of the Ram temple in Ayodhya which was graced by the prime minister, no less. 

But how does one process the actions of some other political outfits which do not project themselves as outwardly religious? The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) recently proposed a “collective Diwali puja by all 2 crore of Delhi residents” by joining the AAP cabinet in virtual mode as it performs the puja at a prominent Delhi temple.

The AAP has never made clear its religious inclinations. Before the assembly elections earlier this year, party leader and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal made it a point to visit the Hanuman Temple in central Delhi. Another party member hosts public recitations of the Ramayana at his place.

According to a respected part of the AAP’s cabinet, such instances are not viewed as being exclusionary or aimed to appeal to any one section of the citizenry. She stated that AAP leadership marks celebrations of all faiths equally, such as celebrating Eid at a Muslim minister’s residence. 

The facile idea of “sarv dharma samman (or sama bhav)” – equal respect for all faiths – seems to be the cherished and totemic idea of Indian celebrations. It is often trotted out to assure sceptics that India is truly the place where “critical respect and distance” is maintained towards all faiths.

However, even if one considers the above instance of the public announcement by the Delhi CM, one can see how several majoritarian assumptions undergird it. In fact, so brazen are those presuppositions that one can only shake one’s head at the audacity of it all. 

There is no hint in the announcement that the “do crore dilliwaasis” being appealed to might not all be in favor of performing Diwali pujan at all. Forget people of faiths other than Hinduism, there are many within Hinduism who’ve never had anything to do with any pujas or such ritualistic observances. Then, of course, there are people of different faiths who might not be wished in such rituals, much as they might respect the passion for them by the Hindus. 

There are also many others who do not wish to be included in such rounding-up for Diwali worship. In fact, several sections of society actively discard the idea represented by Diwali – festival of lights, victory of good over evil etc – and try to see the darker history it attempts to hide. 

The ability to presume on behalf of others is the privilege of the majority in such cases. There is no indication or hint in the Diwali announcement that one need not view the puja as a religious affair but should come to it in a spirit of a cultural celebration or just some sort of convival, societal getting together. 

Last year the AAP had organized public fireworks in central Delhi – the effort was to reduce people setting off fire-crackers on their own and thus adding to the air pollution in the city. That event could have been passed off as quite religiously neutral, though firecrackers and Diwali have very strong associations. Still one could argue that they  probably do not have any religious mandate. 

But a “Diwali pujan” at a certain muhurta is a serious affair. It has a religious mandate and context. A homogenization of religious identities and preferences without consultation is an act of majoritarian privilege. It is an distortion of secular ideals and practices

It seems regrettable that AAP which tries to avoid targeting religious identities and attempts to push a welfarist agenda had to throw all caution to the wind in this instance. Symbolism and messaging matters. While representing a diverse citizenry, it behooves the political outfits to respect diverse faith persuasions and being extra-cautious about the messages one sends out by one’s public actions. But it seems AAP, like so many other institutions in India, simply assumes that everyone is on board with a majoritarian way of conducting one’s life. 

The author is based in the Delhi NCR region.

The post AAP’s Diwali Pujan – the power to presume appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP,  Swapan Dasgupta, in an opinion piece titled The rise of the proud, global Hindu which appeared in the Hindustan Times after the Aug 5 Bhoomi Pujan at Ayodhya, mentioned “the new Hindutva” that seems to have emerged in recent times. He contrasted it with the older Hindutva, identified with V. D. Savarker, describing that as “too ideological for popular taste.”

The new Hindutva, according to Dasgupta, “evolved after the post-liberalisation rise in living standards [and] blended cultural pride with a sense of national assertiveness.” Yet, even when describing the rise of a new Hindutva, Dasgupta employs descriptions and characterisations which have been the old Hindutva’s pet peeve and trope for a long time – the victimhood of the majority. For, Dasgupta marks the emergence of the new Hindutva as consisting in “the transformation of the meek Hindu and the submissive Hindu into a proud Hindu and even a global Hindu.” 

According to Dasgupta’s claim, the enabling conditions of skewed material prosperity, post-liberalization, occasioned the rejuvenation of the Hindu spirit. So much for all the lofty ideals of Hinduism, so much for the exhortations of Hindu icons like Vivekananda who made impassioned pleas for the rebirth of the Hindu spirit based on the inherent greatness of the Hindu faith and culture. It seems it took neoliberal economic policies to release the inner tiger among the Hindus, if Dasgupta is to be believed.

The “meek and submissive” Hindu has been a tired and provocative attempt by Hindutva forces to stress the emasculation and disempowerment of the Hindus, chiefly under foreign rule. Such inaccurate and exaggerated descriptions bear the mark of V. D. Savarkar, who charted the trajectory of Hindus in the vast sweep of history and even held Buddhism responsible for weakening the moral fiber of the Hindus by its stress on no-violence. 

What is to be noted, however, is where Dasgupta locates the hold and emergence of new Hindutva: among those who benefited from the post-liberalization bounty, India’s more affluent, middle and upper classes. In this, he seems to have a pulse of how things have evolved in the Hindutva space and he seems not too far from reality. One must also not ignore Dasgupta’s seemingly anachronistic mention of the weak and hurt Hindu. 

Hurt by History

For, even though the new kids on the block are younger, professionally diverse, and politically perceptive, they still seem unable to shrug off old demons of having been dealt a raw deal in history. 

However, while the new Hindutva and its adherents still nurse old wounds, they exhibit a certain brash confidence in projecting their views and in trying to deconstruct, with a modicum of method and analysis, what they consider as false views propagated till now. They might not openly push the idea of the Taj Mahal actually being Tejo Mahalya, a Shiva temple, as a previous generation of supposed scholars had proposed. But, they will try to chip away with questionable evidence, held up as new and revelatory, at the more established narratives of Indian history, say the story surrounding the king Ashoka.  

In a show of having dabbled in diverse scholarship, presenters from this new Hindutva brigade, with backgrounds such as in finance and business, draw from the edicts on Asokan pillars, from supposed counter-narratives in Hathigumpha (which have a later Kalingan king, Kharavela’s, inscriptions) and entries in the Ashoka-avadana, a northern Buddhist biography of Ashoka which have him put to death members of the Ajivika sect after he had repented about Kalinga. 

All to show that Ashoka was not the “nice guy” we’ve been made to believe in by colonial and modern (leftist) historians. It matters little to such presenters that the very points they accuse the modern leftist historians of ignoring and omitting are the ones that are taken up quite prominently in books authored by those historians! 

In the age of social media, with media pieces marked as “6 minute reads” etc, in an age of the Chetan Bhagatization of Indian literature and the Devdutt Pattanaikization of India’s complex cultural past, people seem to want convenient summaries and rough-and-ready lowdowns on issues that are inherently multi-source and multi-causal. Not too many people will have time or inclination to read books, reports or lengthy analyses. 

The simplistic distillations about matters of history, culture, faiths, belief-systems, sacred texts etc that are provided by many of those on the right who selectively cherry-pick information, often from dodgy sources on the internet and slap it all together, seems adequate to the curiosities of most of the audience. Truth, veracity and multi-layered discussions are not at a premium. 

A striking case-in-point of this attraction of what is termed the “Whatsapp University” standards of information and analysis is a comparison and reception of two recent books on the Sarasvati civilisation. One by an ex-serviceperson, G.D. Bakshi is sloppily written and produced, while the other, written by academic Michel Danino is infinitely better researched and argued. While both authors are very sympathetic to the Sarasvati civilization case, it is Bakshi with his more sensational – and rudimentary – attempt who is the darling of the right-wing crowds, snagging a speaking opportunity at JNU, no less. 

Who makes up the new Hindutva?

That the emergence of the new Hindutva is fairly recent is a correct assessment by Dasgupta. While, in the popular imagination of left-liberals, typical Hindutva elements have been more of the trishul-talwar-brandishing variety, often dismissed as “fringe elements” (even by the Hindutva organisations themselves), other “clone armies” were slowly coming up in different parts of the country and the world. 

These were often constituted by young professionals such educators, doctors, engineers, lawyers and business analysts. These joined forces with the old-guard in this space, who are also a motley crowd: software professionals, politically dead-end figures and even former military officers.  Many of them are the beneficiaries of the post-liberalization economic change India witnessed, as Dagupta has observed. This is in addition to the usual posse of godmen and godwomen, of whom India never has any scarcity. Only, the current crop of these godly-persons have also amplified their reach via social media and readily provide the byte-sized, seemingly profound, nuggets of wisdom to confirm Hinduism’s ancient and incomparable character – with all kinds of modern relevance – to their audience, who are convinced they are hearing authentic traditional wisdom. 

The new batch of the Hindutva-curious and Hindutva-adherents are primarily social-media savvy. Having endlessly griped about the media space being taken up by the left-liberals till now, they have set up a wide-variety of their own media outlets on popular social media platforms. Gone are the days when the Organizer or the Panchajanya had to bear the burden of broadcasting the Sangh’s views.

Now there are any number of youtube channels, facebook pages, and even podcasts and websites that openly engage with the broad concerns of Hindutva or some form of religious nationalism.

While organisations like the RSS and the ABVP have provided opportunity for the younger aspirants of the right from a very long time, what marks the new Hindutva is the extra-party nature of much of the efforts by the younger generation. These people frequently espouse the BJP and its leaders, yet they are often grouped into their own collectives, taking advantage of a kind of autonomy that social media allows them. 

The battle over intellectual space

We’ve all heard of the vicious and ubiquitous right-wing trolls that have bedeviled the Indian online space. But the new Hindutva is a slicker, more polished operation. It borrows not one but many leaves from what they see as the playbook of the left.

Primarily, this new Hindutva is taking aim at intellectual space as already mentioned above, which they feel has been dominated by “leftist historians and intellectuals.” This is a sentiment that gained currency when the issue of Ayodhya shifted to the courts, and matters of evidence came to the fore. Since the evidence sought and produced was of a nature that involved historical documents, details of material artifacts like buildings and architectural styles, and the results of archaeological explorations to determine the genealogy of the disputed site, it necessarily included the role of “area experts.” 

This thrust various academics to the fore and two sides arrayed against one another. One argued against the presence of a temple beneath the mosque and connected issues like the actual location of Rama’s birth-place, the historicity of Rama and of Rama-worship. The other side took the opposite view. 

The confrontations between these actors, mainly academics, involved such disciplines as history, architecture, archaeology, epigraphy, languages especially Sanskrit and Persian, and the consultation of religious texts such as the puranas and mahatmayas. 

Those who questioned the contention of a Rama temple beneath the mosque and those who questioned Rama’s existence as a historical figure, among other issues, were dubbed the “leftist historians.” None other than BJP ideologue Arun Shourie authored a book on several of these historians. The idea gained currency that such historians and other intellectuals were deliberately trying to subvert Indian history by questioning the beliefs of the Hindus, and thus were anti-Hindu. 

But what also struck many on the right was a notion of the hold of such leftist historians and intellectuals in the intellectual spaces and their influence in crafting the narratives of Indian history and culture. Books authored by the leftist academics were classics in academic institutions and several of these academics were involved in the writing of school textbooks also. 

The emergence of the new Hindutva

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, in the United States, some Indian-Americans had started challenging the works of Western scholars who wrote on issues dealing with Indian religions, including Hindu deities, and on religious figures (e.g. Ramakrishna). These Indian-Americans used early internet websites and message boards to propagate their views and attack what they saw as Western scholarship’s deliberately disrespectful stance towards the Hindu religion. 

The distrust with academia and the intellectual class, both in India and abroad, soon became widespread in the Hindutva-sympathetic circles. It is a fact that representations of non-West by the West have been a contested issue for a while now. Edward Said’s classic book, Orientalism, attempted to deal with the outlines and the politics of such representation. In India’s case, colonial representations were often problematic as they employed stereotypes to describe several episodes of Indian history and to characterize various Indian practices. 

Incidents like the Ayodhya confrontation and also the perceived transgressions by western scholarship provided the impetus for the next steps in the new Hindutva strategizing. The feelings of unfair representation of the Hindu religion crystallized into plans to create inroads into the so-called liberal bastions, especially universities. 

Dharma Studies, Dharmic faiths and the age of right-wing think-tanks

One such endeavor was initiated under the rubric of various organizations promoting “Dharma Studies” in the United States. Such a program stressed the concept of dharma which undergirds Indian belief-systems and “as the lens through which to view faith and belief systems,” in the Indian context. This was to contrast the Indian systems from the other religious systems, especially the Abrahamic systems; the proponents of Dharma Studies insisted that Indian belief-systems could not be classified as religions in the western sense but must be viewed as “dharmic systems.” 

Alongside, there were gradually constituted other think-tanks and research centers which carried out or facilitated their own studies on a wide variety of topics they deemed necessary for a new presentation of Indian history and culture. With the burgeoning social media, an ever-increasing number of youtube channels and facebook pages undertook their own explorations and knowledge-making, as was mentioned earlier. 

Such efforts often revolved around some key terms that the right has been employing to better convey ideas about Indian civilization and culture: Dharma, of course, but also, terms such as Vedic, Indic, Sanatana, and Indus-Sarasvati. There are also attempts to hark back to supposedly glorious institutions and epochs from the past, hence institutions and think tanks with names like Takshashila, Harappa, Chanakya etc found great resonance. 

The think-tanks were serious affairs, funding and promoting a wide variety of studies, academic research-papers, investigations etc ostensibly focused on building a knowledge base of India “from an Indian point of view” and the bolstering of the Indian position as a “soft power.” The subtitle of one breathless piece in Fortune India in 2015 about this new phenomenon, “How a disparate set of individuals, NRIs, entrepreneurs, who-have-you, is changing the India narrative” tried to explain how the new narrative came about.

Suddenly, the “Khan Market” (and Lutyens’) crowd’s monopoly on spaces like the India International Center, India Habitat Center, sundry literary festivals, convocations, conferences, seminars, panel discussions etc was broken. Parallel spaces came to be utilized and intellectual gatherings organized on the lines of what were considered liberal configurations earlier, such as literary festivals, conferences, webinars etc. 

There were different kinds of “Dialogs,” “LitFests,” “Festivals of Bharat” etc that mimicked the intellectual ostenations of the left-liberal elite earlier. They openly discussed provocative themes such as the left-wing student protests, the so-called selective outrage of the liberals and the difficulty of writing medieval history of India – just as the left sanctimoniously discusses the growing intolerance in the country or the cultural nationalism of the right!

 Since a major concern of this new Hindutva was the correct representation of history, interest in the antiquity of various aspects of Indian history has been an obsessive feature of such conferences and social media explorations. Numerous talks and presentations have been made on the dating of the Mahabharata, for instance, with clues culled from putative astronomical references within the text. Other contentious issues, such as the origin and identity of the Aryans, and the facts behind the Sarasvati river are actively pursued. 

But, in a sign of the times, and also in reaction to the challenges thrown up by Ambedkarite movements, there are gratuitous mentions of Dr. Ambedkar’s role in and as a maker of modern India. One frequent speaker on these platforms even recommends Dr. Ambedkar’s writings as part of his advice on required reading for his audience – especially Ambedkar’s thoughts on Article 370 and Pakistan, not surprisingly. Additionally, there are panel discussions on “The origins of the caste system,” and on untouchability, clearly demonstrating that the new Hindutva is trying, at least on the surface, to engage with the issue of caste which has been squarely laid at the door of Hinduism. 

It is another matter altogether, that more often than not, such engagements end up in subverting the issue, as when some of their interlocutors seek to turn things on their head and charge Buddhism with creating the institution of untouchability, for example.  

Despite the expected doses of Islamophobia, the time-worn accusations of appeasement of minorities, the non-stop lampooning of secularism, these new Hindutva efforts are at least exploratory. They don’t always exhibit the apoplectic and maniacal style of some well-known TV anchors who believe in browbeating their guests to steer the conversation in the direction they want. That said, even these new Hindutva-vadis always seem to be on a short fuse. The now popular term “whataboutery” is an apt way to describe many of their techniques to shut out arguments they do not like. 

It is a strange mix then, a sort of passive-aggressive mode in which this new Hindutva operates. On the one hand they try to present an urbane, measured, data-driven, fact-based style of argumentation and engagement with thorny issues. On the other, they bare their fangs in moments of whataboutery outbursts when the mode of patient deliberation gets in the way of the points they want to prove.

The proliferation and reach of the new Hindutva 

Regardless, they represent the “rise of the Hindu counter-sphere,” as a research paper terms the public expression of this new Hindutva. And what is more, this new Hindutva and its proponents are to be found in quarters one might have not expected, say, a decade ago. Or at least not have expected open expressions of the Hindutva sentiment in those quarters. But today, top engineering and business schools, social science institutions, research bodies, cultural organizations and the institutions of sports, cinema and theater are home to those whose heart beats to some kind of Hindutva sentiment. The Matrix does seem to be everywhere. 

If the IITs have Ambedkar Study Circles, they also have Vivekananda Study Groups. It is hardly surprising the objection to recitation of Faiz should emerge from an IIT. 

One can of course argue that India has always been a Hindu nation. That the most recent phase is merely a manifestation of a mass sentiment that was largely hidden or dormant earlier. Dr. Ambedkar was very aware of the political authority passing into the hands of a Hindu majority – or at least a Hindu elite – after India’s independence, and he therefore sought constitutional guarantees for the (religious) minorities. 

That probably has a ring of truth to it, as those considered to be lower-caste can easily attest to.  A pride and sense of privilege accruing from belonging to upper-caste Hindu statuses has always been a reality. 

One should also keep in mind that there were projects on the archaeology of the Hindu epics conducted by the Archaeological Survey of India in post-Independence India which blurred lines of tradition and scientific exploration. In fact, it was as part of such archaeological projects that ASI [or, more specifically, one of its directors, B.B. Lal] claimed the existence of a Ram temple beneath the Babri Masjid. 

Such a pride and caste-privilege might not, however, have taken on a sharp nationalistic consciousness, and concomitantly assumed a bitter feeling of historic oppression earlier. It was in the propagation and insinuation of those kinds of emotions – a feeling of defeat, victimization and the resultant need for strident assertion – with the start of the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation that the role of “political Hinduism” came to the fore.

That was still old Hindutva in the (ratha/chariot) driver’s seat. However, that tremendous polarization and resultant targeting of dispassionate narratives related to the nation’s history, culture and traditions seems to have fueled the push to carve out new intellectual territory and control. 

According to Dasgupta, relative affluence post-liberalization also helped to inject some confidence into a newer generation. Such a generation mostly from the upper classes with access to the internet, found digital resources, space, and often anonymity on the web and social media to explore areas like their past and connect with like-minded people. One might say, employing language often used in another context, that the online radicalization of this new Hindu had begun. It was this initially small movement of those who could express their unhappiness with extant modes of representation of Indian history and its traditions that gradually burgeoned into the larger, new Hindutva reality that Dasgupta is speaking about.

What must be done

This is not all bad news. One must keep in mind that even in 2019, BJP was returned with less than 40% vote share (overall). Subsequently, it lost various state elections one after another. 

The new Hindutva is an endeavor largely conceived of and managed by a privileged few who are funding institutions and organizations like think-tanks. Their vision is not grounded in the sentiment and ways of masses and they can only end up reproducing the social conditions they find themselves in. 

Sure, they will act in various roles – not only as knowledge disruptors but as knowledge disseminators in a certain narrow band of the intellectual spheres they inhabit. But to grant them the power to fundamentally shift the terms of discourse on issues of identity, belonging, tradition and culture in India is to grant them more than they deserve. 

Can the people who consider themselves progressive in matters of basic human relations and values engage meaningfully with issues of India’s traditions, its social cleavages and the complexities of its historical experiences? Can they talk about notions like aastha – “(religious) belief” – and dharma/dharmic/dhamma without being condescending and dismissive – and not let the right hijack those rich and profound ideas? 

It is the general view that the so-called left has already ceded the space of faith, belief, tradition, etc. at the altar of a supposed godless revolution. But someone as steeped in modern western social and political thought as Dr. Ambedkar understood the inclinations of so many of the people who looked up to him. He did not belittle their spiritual concerns. He evaluated Marx and Buddha. He relentlessly engaged with the Buddhist suttas as he did with the works of social theorists, historians and legal scholars. He dealt with the many meanings and notions of dharma, for example in his piece, Philosophy of Hinduism.  If he was to contend with people who wanted to quote sacred books and concepts in them in their defence, then he was well prepared to see through their chicanery and posturing. 

One need not think of trying to pander to those who arrogate to themselves the rights to interpret history, tradition and culture for reasons of bigotry, historical vengeance and cultural nationalism. But one must try to have the language and intellectual apparatus to be able to articulate terms and ideas grounded in existing realities. This means being able to offer well-reasoned and grounded narratives that can connect with the people and their concerns. In that way the vital space that matters of faith, culture, traditional practices occupy in people’s lives can be engaged with in a balanced and informed way. In that manner common communitarian legacies of discussion, debate and disputation can be revived.  And one can hopefully stop mourning the death of secularism. 

(The author is a writer based in Delhi NCR)

Related:

India’s Long March – Ekla Chalo Re
Shaheen Bagh: You can’t evict an idea
Would such a temple have been acceptable to Ram?
India’s composite culture and Muslim stalwarts

The post The new Hindutva appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Tasmātihānanda, attadīpā viharatha attasaraṇā anaññasaraṇā

Therefore, O Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves. Be ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external refuge. 

(The Mahaparinibbana Sutta)

When the migrant workers across India started walking to their homes, they knew that they could trust only in themselves and in no other, certainly not the government. They had been cruelly left in the lurch with a sudden and hasty lockdown which seems not to have taken their case into consideration at all. 

They knew to follow the one advice that could not go wrong, one which did not depend on the whims and fancies of false gods and fake prophets. They had to be lamps unto themselves. 

Every avenue of their sustenance and survival was suddenly taken away from them. The workers knew, deep in their hearts, that their deliverance lay in their own hands – and their feet. So, even though the path ahead was long and difficult, they betook themselves on the road to work out their own salvation and redemption. 

They knew in their heart of hearts that the road to hell was always paved with good intentions. They had been shown one. So, they decided to chart out their own path. In its own grim way, it was like a  Pilgrim’s Progress, from the City of Destruction to, hopefully, the Celestial City. 

They also knew that long ago, a wise man had led his people away from a Plague onwards to the Promised Land, even parting a sea for them. This time around, for their Exodus, they knew they had been abandoned by all so-called Leader of men and women. They knew they had been condemned to wander the desert on their own, without even manna from the heavens. 

But, they had nothing to stay back for. They had nothing to prove, no lamps to light in the homes they were leaving behind. They had already burnt their candles at both ends.

The author is a socially-concerned citizen, based in Delhi. He believes in solidarities with global struggles, such as the working class, indigenous and other marginalized peoples’ struggles around the world.

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Image Courtesy: ncronline.org

What is slowly becoming clear about the nationwide lockdown in India is not just it’s utterly shoddy planning and execution but also the political leadership’s disconnect with the working people of India. It reflects a dismal understanding of the functioning of the economy in general, and political economy in particular.  

Additionally, it also seems to betray a poor grasp of how urban India functions and the crucial role of migrant labor in the economic life of cities. The operation of India’s urban centers is intimately tied to its rural areas. The current crisis with the migrant labor trying to escape from urban migrant-hubs brings into stark view the reality of the composition of the urban economy. 

On the whole, then, one could conclude that by not taking India’s informal economy into consideration, the policy makers either do not comprehend the key features of the Indian economy or just chose to ignore it. 

What this piece wishes to address is the following: one, it wishes to look at the decision-making related to the countrywide lockdown, as it seemed to unfold; second, it wishes to examine more closely that which is being projected as a foregone conclusion, the Hobson’s choice between lives and livelihoods. 

Many decisions may be very complex and it may be especially difficult to anticipate all consequences beforehand. In the South Asian context, we have the instance of the Partition of the subcontinent that even today is not a closed case, in terms of its continuing trauma and divisive influences. 

Several of India’s much admired leaders associated with the anti-colonial freedom struggle were around when the decision was effected and it was obvious from later reports that none of them had foreseen the scale of the mayhem that unfolded. A socialist leader like Ram Manohar Lohia penned a tract called “The Guilty Men of India’s Partition” some years after the event, incriminating several of those leaders on whose watch the bloody event of Partition took place. 

Despite the complexity, there are some simple questions that can be asked of any decision, especially the ‘when’ and the ‘how’ questions: When was a decision taken (too late, too early, right time etc) and what was the manner in which it was taken (hastily, with or without consultation, with adequate preparation and notice etc). 

In this case, the ‘when’ and the ‘how’ questions seek to uncover the sequence and manner of the imposition of the lockdown. They seek to penetrate the fog of inevitability and unassailability which surround such decisions which are made in certain extenuating circumstances. This is especially so when the decisions have resulted in deep and wide suffering to a section of India’s most vulnerable population. 

Much of the justification for the decisions taken recently regarding the lockdown is based on the grounds of saving lives as against and over saving livelihoods. An Indian economist chose to defend the government’s decision in an article titled “India chose to protect lives, not livelihoods. And that’s a good thing.” 

However, an Italian study the economist quotes in support of the assertions in the article clearly states that, “While something a little short of the hypothetical radical lockdown is still likely to work, after a certain threshold of social interaction – which, unfortunately, we do not know – any choices would likely yield the second scenario in terms of human losses, without avoiding the economic costs of the lockdown itself.”

So, the chances that a complete lockdown will be effective depends on when it is put in place; after a certain, yet undermined “threshold of social interaction,” there is no telling if the fatal effects of covid-19 can be avoided.

Something similar was expressed by a former head in the ICMR, Dr. T. Jacob John, as reported in the Economic TImes on Mar 23: 

“The decision to bring life at a standstill is a good decision, but I’m not sure we have bought time for our people…We are still two steps behind the virus — ideally, this step should have been taken a week ago, that way we could’ve stopped the outbreak’s inward journey into heartland India.”

More recently, economist Deepankar Basu, also expressed concern regarding the timing of the complete lockdown in a piece titled “COVID-19 in India: Has Window of Opportunity Opened by Dip in Daily Growth Rates Closed?” 

Social distancing and lockdowns can only slow down the spread of the epidemic, they cannot stop it. Sophisticated epidemiological models show that once the lockdown is lifted, as it must be, and once social distancing measures are loosened, as would probably need to be done in a few weeks, the number of cases can rapidly rise again.

The manner in which the total lockdown was implemented bears some interrogation and questioning as to its timing, chronology and preparation.

From the sequence of events, we know that on Thu Mar 19, the prime minister Narendra Modi appeared before the Indian public on national TV and broached the idea of a Janta Curfew. He presented it as a sort of a wartime exercise: “This Janata Curfew will in a way be a litmus test for us. This is also the time to see how prepared India is to fight off a global pandemic like the coronavirus.” 

Thus, the Janta curfew, announced on a Thursday, was to take place four days later on a Sunday, for a fixed time-period of 7am-9pm, and was ostensibly a means to gauge the country’s preparedness. There was no sense of an official curfew with penalties attached (at least none were spelled out). It was more of a good-faith exercise in following some stay-at-home orders. The PM did not lay out any concrete plans beyond the Janta curfew. 

All he said, without elaboration, was, “I need some of your upcoming weeks.” What did that mean, exactly? Did he have to be cryptic and skimp on specifics? This becomes important when he later announced the complete lockdown, because on that occasion he stated that he had informed people about a lockdown in the previous Thursday’s address, as encapsulated in his request then for “some of your upcoming weeks.”

However, two points are noteworthy about the Janta Curfew – and its conclusion. First: despite no advance notice about the steps following the conclusion of the Janta Curfew, many cities and states imposed their own lockdowns right after the end of the Janta Curfew. How this was publicly communicated is still not clear; most people, including the author of this piece, received intimation from friends through social media. 

Second: on Monday morning, Mar 22, the PM Modi tweeted, “Many people are still not taking the lockdown seriously.” Which lockdown was he referring to? He announced the country-wide lockdown only the next day, on Tuesday evening 8PM – and by all accounts, that announcement was a surprise for people. Was there another national lockdown that was announced that Modi was referring to but most people did not know about?

If people already knew on Monday that they were under a continuing lockdown after the Janta Curfew, why was the Janta curfew announced as a bounded stay-in, between 7am-9pm on Sunday? Did the PM tell people that at the conclusion of the Janta curfew there would be other lockdowns following, which would be rigorously enforced? 

It does not seem so. In fact, the PM made the Janta Curfew into a Sunday-Holiday kind of family activity day, by encouraging people to come out on their balconies and join in a national musical brass-band of sorts, thus attempting to inject a lets-practise-this-playfully mood. 

Taking up the ‘how’ question next, we see that in addition to questions of preparedness, it also includes within its scope the centralized decision-making which operates on the basis of “executive powers,” bypassing the legislature.

 Narendra Modi’s lockdown announcement, affecting the entire country, is an example of such executive decision-making without consulting the parliament. It seems almost a futile exercise at this stage to go into the legality of the use of executive powers, given the way they were used to abrogate Article 370 in Kashmir. 

That seems to be the drift of one of the more comprehensive pieces on the constitutionality of the lockdown announcement, titled Is the National Lockdown in India Constitutionally Valid? The piece informs us that the center would probably cite the Epidemic Diseases Act and the Disaster Management Act to respond to any  issues of legality and constitutionality of the decision. 

In reference to the suppression of rights such decisions entail, the article cites an American legal scholar discussing legal rights with reference to the lockdown in the US, especially in times of exigencies, and how the common people abdicate their rights:  “[W]hile the constitutional validity of the lockdown in the United States is doubtful, it has bipartisan support and people, scared out of their wits, are also willing to voluntarily sacrifice their rights.”

However, the greater point is that the bypassing of the parliament can hardly be explained, even theoretically, when no political party had threatened any sort of veto on the government’s earlier dummy shutdown, the decoy Janta curfew. Still, the government decided on unilateral decision-making, in a way asking the people to trust in its abilities of foresight, planning and provisioning. 

Given its past record of unilateral decision making, especially in the case of demonetization and also the recent lockdown of Kashmir, both of which caused untold and largely unrecorded hardship to the common people, their self-righteous requests for trust in their wisdom does not evoke too much confidence.

Both the ‘when’ and the ‘how’ questions about the lockdown also bring up questions urgently on the economic preparedness going into the lockdown. It is not as though the PM was not aware of the shock to the economy and livelihoods. 

In his speech in which he announced the Janta Curfew, the prime minister made people aware of the economic difficulties that were looming and announced an economic taskforce to deal with them. “This global pandemic is also going to have a wide-ranging impact on the economy. Keeping in mind the economic challenges arising from the coronavirus, the government has decided to set up a Covid-19 Economic Response Taskforce under the leadership of the finance minister,” as reported in the Economic Times.

His statement following the above, describing the responsibilities of the taskforce, reveals how poorly the functioning of the taskforce was conceived – and, as evidence has it, executed: “This taskforce will take decisions in the near future, based on regular interactions and feedback from all stakeholders, and analysis of all situations and dimensions. This taskforce will also ensure that all steps taken to reduce the economic difficulties are effectively implemented.”

The taskforce quite obviously was quite clueless on the impact on the informal economy that sustains India’s cities and towns, as the enormous suffering to the migrant workers ever since has amply and irrefutably demonstrated. 

All it needed was knowledge of and expertise in dealing with the effects of the lockdown on the informal sectors of the economy, in which the migrant labor contributed and on which they depended for their survival. But, sadly, an intimate knowledge of the world of migrant workers and a well-thought out handling of the disruption to their lives was nowhere in evidence. 

According to an International Labor Organization (ILO) report as presented in a The Wire piece, “Close to 81% of all employed persons in India make a living by working in the informal sector, with only 6.5% in the formal sector and 0.8% in the household sector.”

As shown by economists like Amit Basole, and Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty, income inequality “exploded” in India after the 1980s. As the latter put it,  “From the perspective or our newly income inequality dataset, ‘Shining India’ corresponds to the top 10 percent of the population (approximately 80 million adult individuals in 2014) rather than the middle 40 percent.” 

In terms of income of the workers in the informal sector, another report stated that:

[T]he Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2017-18 reveals, the informal and self-employed workers are far behind the salaried class on income…The report also showed that in urban areas, the share of self-employment is 32.4 per cent. Self-employment was also the major source of income for 52.2 per cent of rural households. But, a majority of self-employed workers earned roughly ₹8,000 a month, lowest in the income bracket.

As is also well known in India and globally, the “informalization” of jobs has been a rapid feature of economies. As one paper puts it, 

[S]ince the initiation of economic reforms in 1991, there has been a tendency to employ contract workers at the expense of regular workers and outsource the production. On the basis of the Annual survey of Industry (ASI) data also, it is shown that the share of contract workers in total employment of the manufactured sector has increased during 2000-01 to 2008-09…The share of contract workers in organized manufacturing has increased to 34 percent in 2010-11 from about 10 percent in early 1990s, 14 percent in 1995-96 and 20 percent in 2000-01.

As another recent piece on the future of India’s political economy observes, 

It needs to be remembered, even with all the migration and informal work, the vast majority of Indians can barely make ends meet. Almost half the total consumption expenditure of average Indians was spent on food items in 2011-12. This share is significantly higher for the bottom half of the population…Such a high share of consumption expenditure on food also means that a large number of workers lead a hand-to-mouth existence in the country, and will find it very difficult to even get two square meals a day if their daily work is disrupted.

The “lives versus livelihoods” distinction might be a false distinction in the case of those for whom livelihoods mean (the barest continuance of) life – or for the most basic process of the production and reproduction of life, to borrow Marx’s language. When Parle-G is worried about reduced demand for its cheap biscuits, a staple for labor looking for a quick dose of glucose , maybe the country has to sit up and notice.

As researcher Shankar Ramaswami records a worker commenting on a co-worker’s death in an academic paper on lives of contract labor in Delhi, in a chapter titled ‘Death of a mazdur (wage worker)’: “Mazdur admi ka koi thikana nahim hota [There’s no telling when something can happen to a worker]’, a polisher observed, intimating an awareness that proletarian lives are precarious, uncertain, and vulnerable.”

A distinction between lives and livelihoods probably holds true for the more affluent classes with some sort of “disposable incomes,” and the luxury of assets and savings. For them livelihoods represent not merely the provision of life’s barest necessities but something else beyond; maybe some forms of comfort and luxuries. 

Many among them are the ones who can afford to indulge in “conspicuous consumption.” They are able to give up their jobs voluntarily and then do what their heart desires, like travel, for example. They are the ones who can sit out a lockdown or a forced shutdown even without everyday income. It is for them that issues such as “cabin fever,” “Netflix watching lists,” “Book reading lists,” and “rebroadcasts of television serials” makes sense. 

As migrants on the road have stated over and over again recently, not working and earning a wage means death to them, especially if they have to live in expensive migrant-hubs. So, they try to get home where they might have some sort of a support system in order to survive. 

In an unreflective and an uncritical reading of the rush of the migrants to get back home, we the more fortunate ones are not able to gauge the desperation and the drive behind the path they undertake. Sure, we are outraged and deeply affected by the arduous journey they attempt to undertake. 

But what few of us can discern and feel is the grim reality in their minds of those being left with no choice but to seek out a path to ensure survival. 

Each death out of exhaustion while on the road points to the reality that the migrants were anyway staring at – they were leaving behind death, they were walking home to where they thought they might have a chance of survival, but not unaware of the fact that they could probably perish on the journey itself. 

We have seen images of such straggly, tired lines of people walking not too long ago, with bundles on their heads, holding their near-ones’ hands, as though fused into a diorama of suffering and helplessness. Images from around the time of the nation’s independence, to be more accurate. Their lives too were rent asunder by forces seemingly larger than them, by decisions they did not comprehend, by an illness that infected millions. They too were left with no choice but to join a flight for survival. 

The rush at bus stations like Anand Vihar in Delhi or the line of people already on the roads is not some festival-season holiday rush, as for Holi or Chath puja. The forced trek is also not some religiously-inspired pilgrimage either like that of the kanwariyas, though it often traverses similar routes. 

Earlier this year, some state officials in UP showered rose petals on the kanwariyas from the air, at public expense. The migrants – they were showered with lathis – and chemical spray. 

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Jodi tor dak shune keu na ashe 

tobe ekla chalo re, 

Tobe ekla chalo, ekla chalo, 

ekla chalo, ekla chalo re.

…

If no one responds to your call then go on alone.

And if there is no one to speak out, and if they turn their face and are afraid, 

then open your heart and speak only you. Speak alone, speak alone.

If every one goes back and none accompanies you in the difficult path, 

then tread the thorns with bloody feet alone. Tread alone, tread alone.

 If there is no one to light the lamp, and if every one shuts his door in the stormy dark night, 

then burn the ribs of your heart with the thunder fire and burn alone, burn alone.  

 (Jodi tor dak/Ekla Chalo Re – Rabindranath Tagore, in The Music of Hindostan, p. 94).  

The world has seen several “long marches,” some forced and some politically expedient or to make a statement against injustice. The Trail of Tears march of Native American tribes, from the southern US to points north was a notoriously brutal relocation of several American Indian tribes that resulted in much suffering. Similarly horrific was the march of Armenians in the Ottoman empire in what is called the Armenian Genocide March. 

The best known political march is probably the Chinese Long March, undertaken by the Red Army, in the 1930s. India has seen its own examples of marches, like the storied Salt March by Mohandas Gandhi but there have been hundreds of lesser known marches to press for various rights, like the farmer’s march of 2018, and many other Dilli Chalo kinds of marches. 

To the long list of long marches, we have now added, rather unnecessarily, a Forced Long March – that of migrants heading back to their homes, on foot, since all forms of (long distance) public transport were suddenly stopped under the Covid-19 lockdown measures. This was done even as the migrants in various migrant hubs were just about taking in the catastrophic effect of Covid-19 on lives – and on livelihoods. For mostly daily-wage earners and other precarious workers like them, businesses shutting down meant a sudden and total loss of income. Staying on in the expensive migrant-hubs suddenly seemed an impossibility, with their razor-thin savings, if any at all.

Now many migrants are using the one form of locomotion that has not been taken away from them, walking, to try to get back to their homes. Since no one listened to their stories and plight, they just decided to ekla chalo the road.

A lot of the migrants are criss-crossing India on foot, arduously trekking to their homes, hundreds of kilometers away. In the north, the historic Grand Trunk Road (GT Road) is, as always, serving as a lifeline for those who must traverse its storied route to their homes east and north. They stream out from Delhi into the neighbouring city of Ghaziabad and then on to points north to Uttarakhand or east to other parts of UP and Bihar. Still others trudge westwards from Delhi to their villages in, say, Sawai Madhopur, Rajasthan. We have now created a “Dilli Se Chalo (Let’s head out of Delhi)” mass movement instead of the more well-known “Dilli Chalo (Let’s head to Delhi).”

This unfortunate result of the sudden lockdown was not entirely unpredictable. Of course, some national level decisions can be very hard to gauge for their impact.  With the cases of Covid-19 slowly inching up on a country like India with a weak public health infrastructure and inherent difficulties of social distancing, there is reason for some tough decisions so as to avoid a full-scale contagion. Countries with allegedly better healthcare systems, like those in Europe and North America have a ballooning crisis on their hands. 1.3 billion people in India is a cause for concern, just in terms of numbers. 

Yet, this needless emergency is also a colossal failure in the basics of administration, planning, governance – and leadership. All of which, we are told, are marked by qualities of foresight, scrupulous attention to detail, ensuring backup plans, understanding “dependencies” and “stakeholders,” and carrying everything out with clear and seamless communication. 

It is not necessary that in an effort to avoid one disaster, one ends up creating another. This betrays the real distance between policy-makers and the people. There are simply no excuses. The state machinery completely messed up in the manner it announced and managed the lockdown. Even the prime minister did not think it worthwhile to lay out any details of the post-lockdown logistics, especially the fate of migrant workers and the availability of essential items. Panic ensued even as the speech was winding down. And then the PM very helpfully tweeted, “Do not panic.”

All the political experience of the ruling party from the prime minister down, all the expertise of the bureaucrats around the PM and various ministers, all the wisdom in public domain from so-called “management experts” came to nothing; in fact, they all managed to cause immense human suffering. What a fall from grace and the high-horse of the “Gujarat model.”

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

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On Tuesday Mar 24, the Delhi Police snuck into the Shaheen Bagh protest zone and evicted the few protesters on site at that time. They thus, heroically brought to conclusion a situation they had created in the first place by blocking a section of the Delhi-Noida highway, right after the incidents at Jamia in December.

From beginnings in the shadow and support of the protests at Jamia, Shaheen Bagh grew into a full-fledged protest on its own. In the process, it became a symbol of hope and strength for many other such protests, in Delhi and across India, from places such as Turkman Gate and Hauz Rani in Delhi to Park Circus in Kolkata to Ghantaghar in Lucknow.

One can of course superficially compare it to the epicenter of the 2011 Occupy protests at Zuccotti Park in New York, which also set off a movement, first nationwide in the US and then worldwide, involving several local Occupy camps. 

But what set Shaheen Bagh apart right from the beginning was that it was composed and led by women. The Occupy movement, on the other hand, wrestled with issues of gender representation from its inception. 

Of course, as we all know, Shaheen Bagh was a sit-in comprising women, but, as importantly, the participants were Muslim women. Some like to call that conjunction of identities – being women and Muslim – as one of “double oppression.” To anyone who saw the women – and maybe spoke with them – they appeared to be anything but oppressed, doubly or singly. Instead they were determined to double down each new day with double the resolve. Winter had come when the Shaheen Bagh ladies hunkered down and they were ready to slay as many demons and spectres of divisiveness, bigotry and discrimination as possible. 

The important thing to note about Shaheen Bagh – and all the Shaheen Baghs around the country – was that it was community-based and apolitical; it was not doctrinal or rigidly ideological in its tone; and it was very clear and transparent about the reasons for the protest. It was the epitome of a spontaneous people’s protest that activists and progressives deeply yearn to see unfold before their eyes, and consider their life well-lived, if they are witness to one.

It was their clarity of purpose to oppose an existential threat that made them clear-eyed, focused and also determined in their quest. They were protesting the questioning of their Indian identity based on religion, an identity they considered settled, unquestionable and inalienable – and a given, which it always was. An Indian Express report quoted a protester in Wasseypur, Jharkhand as saying, “Maa, mulk nahi badla jata – Mother, motherland cannot be replaced.” Or as a dadi at Shaheen Bagh told an AFP reporter, “I was born in India and I want to die here.” 

Other than that, the idea of Shaheen Bagh as a protest, as resistance, was one of putting oneself on the line, as it were. It was the sheer physicality, the undeniable corporeality and the irrefutable solidity of the presence – all with the quiet, resolute, in-your-face frankness – that made each protest a visible redoubt, unshakable and immovable in its foundations. 

It was a live and throbbing symbol, fluid and discrete yet substantial. It was a visible aggregation made up of a mass of seemingly incongruous niqabs, abayas, burqas and hijabs. When you saw them the first time, you almost caught your breath at this well-known, yet unfamiliar sight, and you went, “Of, so it is true!”

It was this everydayness of the people who made up the protests that seemed to baffle and unsettle everyone. It represented the power of the ordinary raised to the levels of the extra-ordinary. Thus, Shaheen Bagh was also us out there – the weak, hesitating, diffident, dithering us, witness to injustice upon injustice but unable to act. It was the actualization of our superhero and superheroine dreams when confronted with injustice, swooping onto the streets to fight the real battle, dressed in our cape and suit, because we had to take matters in our hands to ensure triumph of good over, ahem, evil.

But, this superheroine story did not play out using any stunts, pyrotechnics or physical jousting with the villains. No, therein lay the beauty of this natural outpouring of resistance. This resistance believed in a silent, non-violent and non-flashy doggedness. It was a Chipko of the ground beneath their feet while also holding up more than half the tent and sky above. It was unabashed in its womanness and its Muslimness. By embodying those twin identities with ease and elan, by overturning the “doubly-oppressed” narrative in one fell go, the Shaheen Baghs presented a hitherto “unknown quantity,” not to be pitied for subservience but treated respectfully for some kind of “double strength,” precisely that of their womanness and Muslimness. 

Shaheen Bagh probably meant different things to different people. By itself it always represented opposition to the kala kanoons: the CAA, NRC and NPR. It revealed the hidden, or should one say, the unexpressed strengths inherent the “public,” but more specifically the Muslim woman public. It demonstrated that steadfast, physical protest in the age of outrage-via-social-media was still an immensely effective way of speaking truth to power. Moreover, by maintaining a resolutely non-violent, peaceable and unflappable demeanor, it subverted all attempts at provocations. 

When the various political leaders of the BJP, Amit Shah and Kapil Mishra included, began taking pot-shots at Shaheen Bagh, at this motley group of Muslim women, a contemptible minority otherwise, one could state that the terms of the conversation had been altered. The power equations had been disturbed and the visible frustrations of the BJP leaders was evident. It was as if the mighty Roman empire had trained all its resources on the targeting of the one holdout Gaul village, as depicted in the popular Asterix comic-books, over whom they had not been able to achieve victory despite all their resources. 

Shaheen Bagh proved to us the power in all of us. It was the shattering of stereotypes and the transcending of our limitations and fears. It was working with uncertainty, and without some detailed plan. It was working with just what one had, while discharging all our responsibilities as wife, mother, sister, lawyer, entrepreneur. 

It was putting oneself out there in the open, among the stares, glares and ridicules of the world. It was all of the above simply to express the deepest, purest conscientious objection to what was felt to be wrong. It proceeded from the idea that it is oneself that one has to put on the frontlines, whatever station of life one is in, however vulnerable, incapable and unlikely other people think one to be, despite one’s own doubts. 

In 2016, torch-wielding white nationalists marched through the University of Virginia (UVA) in the US, protesting the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movements and its actions of taking down monuments to racist civil war figures. Among the slogans they chanted were “White Lives Matter” and “Whose Streets? Our Streets!” the latter employed extensively during the BLM movement. It seems they had to assume the vocabulary of the movement they were opposing to express their own position – such was the hold of BLM and other progressive movements on their imagination.

In similar manner, on Mar 24, after the Shaheen Bagh encampment had been taken down by the Delhi Police, BJP MLA Kapil Mishra tweeted: “Sab Takht Uchal ke Phek Diye/ Sab Tent ukhad ke Phek Diye/Humne Dekh Liya/Sabne Dekh Liya.” Mishra’s impoverished imagination too had to employ Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s  nazm, much reviled by the Indian right, to gloat over the dismantling of Shaheen Bagh. But, with that, unwittingly, he had let Shaheen Bagh have the last word. 

The tent and material trappings of such acts of resistance may eventually come down, as they did for Shaheen Bagh. But Shaheen Bagh as an idea and symbol had found a place in people’s hearts and minds a long time ago. That edifice of protest will continue to remain enshrined in people’s memories. —

Aviral Anand is a socially-concerned citizen, based in Delhi. He believes in solidarities with global struggles, such as the working class, indigenous and other marginalized peoples’ struggles around the world.

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There is a popular – and cliched – declaration that is often made in grandiose fashion when faced with trying circumstances: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

Unfortunately, in the violent crisis that Delhi faced recently, the only “toughs” that seemed to get going were street-toughs who wreaked havoc on common citizens of Delhi.

The AAP, at a moment that required it to display character and courage, failed to do just that –  only about 2 weeks after a thumping mandate in the 2020 Delhi Assembly elections. A political formation that has defined itself narrowly and specifically with a city and even presumed a relationship on behalf of Delhi’s citizens, one of loving admiration for its leader (“I love Kejriwal”), was unable to reciprocate the trust reposed in it. It failed its people at their moment of gravest need.  

But that should not have been totally unexpected. It was becoming increasingly clear in the runup to the Delhi elections that there was on the part of AAP a deliberate aloofness, a disconnect, almost akin to a turning away from the ongoing struggles of the people. AAP sought to disengage itself from several critical incidents in the city, such as the violence in the universities, the brutal police action at Jamia, and then the anti-CAA protests symbolized by Shaheen Bagh. 

Delhi was making history in terms of its examples of people’s resistance, and the AAP, the Common People’s Party, which advertised itself as the messiah of the common people, was distancing itself from their struggles. . 

It is true that both at JNU and at Jamia, the police were to blame – in one case for inaction, in the other for excessively violent action. AAP’s administrative options were limited. 

But, a political party has various modes of its engagements with its citizens – administrative interventions are just one amongst them, and one is not pointing a finger at the administrative limitations AAP works within. For a supposedly “hands-on” party like the AAP, personal connections, responses and outreach are crucial areas of their engagement with the people. 

In the case northeast Delhi, as a situation of deadly violence developed moment-to-moment, the AAP leadership and cadre needed to be on the ground to help in any manner possible, to the extent they could: by organizing relief; by oversight of affected areas; by at least being around ranking police officers to keep tabs on actions being taken (would the police have turned down the Chief Minister of Delhi from accompanying them or being present in affected areas?); by assuring people to the extent they could of the remedial actions being taken, of the availability of medical resources etc. Such was their apathy and indifference that Ajay Maken of the Congress had to suggest what concrete steps they could take, such as delegating AAP ministers to specific tasks and forming peace committees. 

None of that happened. Several of the AAP legislators, otherwise reputed for their work in areas like education, when approached by civil society activists for some kind of intervention, responded with a stunning “not my constituency,” answer, which was another way of saying, “it is none of my business.” 

In moments of crisis, political leaders have to display the ability to think beyond their limited constituencies and spring into action regardless of narrowly defined areas of commitment.  Desperate, the civil society activists even protested outside Arvind Kejriwal’s house around midnight on Feb 26 trying to elicit a much-needed response. They were met with police water-cannons.

Suddenly the AAP looked like a deer caught in the headlights. They also seemed lacking the will and desire to bring about a quick and decisive end to the madness being played out in north-east Delhi. There was a strange paralysis; AAP just seemed to hide in the background somewhere, away from sight. They were happy to play a cowering second-fiddle to a center, which was obviously badly blundering and dithering, possibly deliberately. 

 It is a remarkable climbdown for AAP to have lost the plot of the political game, even if temporarily, something analysts were instead praising it for having gradually mastered after an impetuous beginning. 

Here was a party whose leaders and members made it their trademark by taking to streets and agitating vigorously and publicly against other elected officials for perceived injustices and broken promises. 

It was also a party that overturned a seemingly invincible Sheila Dikshit, who had initiated several marquee infrastructural projects for Delhi like the Metro, simply on the basis of its supposed connection with people’s issues. 

Reflecting most recently on AAP’s distancing from Delhi’s protests like Shaheen Bagh and Jamia, the commentator Ashutosh had observed regarding Kejriwal’s on the NDTV site:

AAP is not scared of losing Muslim votes in Delhi. In its opinion, the Congress in Delhi is not in a position to split Muslim votes as Muslims have sensed that AAP is the only force which can defeat the BJP and it does not matter if AAP avoids Shaheen Bagh.

 Considering the Muslims as politically expendable surely played a part in AAP’s ambiguity in engaging with the sentiments at Shaheen Bagh and Jamia. We are told that both at Jamia and later at Shaheen Bagh, AAP was also advised by its partner, I-PAC, to focus on its governance messaging and avoid displaying confrontational stances.

Kejriwal’s politics – like that of most successful politicians – has been based on his instinct to oppose what he considers as unfair and his insight into the dystopian state of public services in Delhi. But it seems he  set aside his own experience, instincts and insights in preference of “professional advice” from political consultants who can at best only offer general, managerial or operational views on efficient strategies – not an understanding of local, ground level political complexities.

This is not just about pointing fingers at a relatively new outfit like the AAP. But it does wish to highlight the  dangers of ceding political control and imagination to consultants, even if they are the most well-meaning and organized. Nothing can substitute the connections and relationships at the ground level between the citizen and the political representative.

By removing himself from the political upsurge in his own city, Kejriwal suddenly did not have his finger on the pulse of the people or on the dynamics underlying the struggle over CAA in Delhi. Neither it seems did he have the fire in his belly and the political sharpness any longer to seize the moment and intervene decisively in the madness in northeast Delhi. 

As a Telegraph article put it, he and his party were bystanders as riots broke out in the city that he is the CM of. As part of a response, his imagination could not extend beyond the charade of offering prayers to Gandhi. How ironic, when Gandhi himself never shied away from the actual theater of communal violence, plunging right in the middle of the worst disturbances, like in Kolkata and Noakhali. 

The Muslims gave him the benefit of the doubt and voted for him, trusting in him to bring about equitable improvement in their lives, and also to be a bulwark against the openly hostile policies and stances of the BJP. Instead, what they saw was a party without the will and urgency to help them in their moment of crisis. 

—

Aviral Anand is a socially-concerned citizen of the world, currently based in Delhi. He believes in all kinds of solidarities with global struggles, such as the working class, indigenous and other marginalized peoples’ struggles around the world.

The post Losing the plot – How AAP failed its Muslim citizens in the Delhi riots appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Salma Usmaani, who works with an international cosmetic brand in Dhanbad, said, “We just want to live in peace…the government needs to understand, ‘Maa aur mulk badla nahi jaata’ (The mother and the country cannot be changed).”

Indian Express report from Wasseypur, Bihar, on an anti-CAA protest, Jan 22, 2020.

The assertion in the comment above, while not explicitly equating the mulk with maa, can be reasonably seen as be making that very correspondence. Just as one does not (or cannot) change one’s mother,  similarly one does not (or cannot) change one’s country. 

The word translated as ‘country’ here, mulk, is a common enough one, used by one and all across the subcontinent to denote not just the country or nation, but more generally, home, as in the colloquial expression, “mai muluk ko jata (I am going to my home).” 

But, regardless, it denotes a sense of possession, of belonging –  and, in a more technical sense, even dominion. For example, the sura al-mulk in the Quran relates to the mulk of Allah;  the political title, Nizam-al-Mulk, for example, denotes lordship over a territory. It also means a bounded territoriality. 

Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali has examined in an academic article the relation of the terms ghar (home) and mulk (country) in the 1999 Bollywood film Sarfarosh. In it, she observes, the Muslim protagonist Salim’s “identity is resolved as he convinces Ajay [the Hindu protagonist] that he also believes that this mulk is his ghar.” That scenario of forced convincing as the expected burden of Muslims is enacted repeatedly in India, only more insistently in current conditions. 

The thrust of the statement from Wasseypur about the impossibility and absurdity of changing one’s  “Maa aur Mulk,” is quite obviously in response to the persistent charge against Indian Muslims, explicit or implicit, of not belonging to India – but instead, to Pakistan, which, as that bigoted logic goes, they had desired. 

But it is also serves as a wider and deeper retort against the logic and rationale being offered for the CAA, that, for the refugees and persecuted minorities whom the law aims to benefit, India is the only mulk they can come back to as their own – while for Muslims, there are any number of Islamic mulks to choose from, including Pakistan. According to that logic, also employed generally every now and then,  the “Go to Pakistan,” exhortation becomes broadened to “Go anywhere in the Islamic world.” The Wasseypur “Mulk aur Maa,” stand rejects that malicious insinuation. “We are not going anywhere; the question does not arise – this is our mulk and our maa, for now and forever,” is the message being hurled back. 

The declaration of the mulk being like maa works in a third way as well. It re-inserts the Muslim position as equal citizens on an equal footing into the narrative about nationalism and patriotism, especially the one about fealty to Bharatmata as carried out by the sons-of-the-soil-theory proponents as their monopoly. 

The mischief, meanness and bigotry in rationales like these cannot be under-estimated. While for the Hindus (this suddenly includes everyone not just from Hinduism, but also from Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism etc) there is just one nation they can call their own, the Muslims of India not only do not belong exclusively to India, but also their mulk is the entire “Islamic world,” or for simplicity, any and all Islamic nation-states. 

Such a characterization and  accusation found expression early, certainly in V.D. Savarkar’s writings, where his demands were for a totalitarian fealty to the Hindu nation, while making it clear why the Muslims of India could not be considered Hindus: 

For though Hindusthan to them is Fatherland as to any other Hindu yet it is not to them a Holyland too. Their holyland is far off in Arabia or Palestine. Their mythology and Godmen, ideas and heroes are not the children of this soil. Consequently their names and their outlook smack of a foreign origin. Their love is divided.

Savarkar’s nationalism demanded undivided love for the mulk and, in his analysis, the separation of Fatherland and Holyland did not allow that.  

In this connection, it is worth considering if Buddhist majority nations accuse their citizens, majority Buddhist in the case of countries such as Sri Lanka and Myanmar, of divided loyalties, since their Holyland is arguably India, different from their ‘home-countries’? Will Hindu-American citizens of United States, say, be under perpetual suspicion because their Holyland is not in the US?

But the women at Wasseypur, as also elsewhere in the country, are making the pitch of undivided love for their mulk-that-is-India, despite the rhetoric of a supposedly different Fatherland and Holyland. Their pitch centers on the claim that their mulk is their motherland – they do not seem interested in arcane arguments about a Fatherland and Holyland based on “Aryan forefathers,” that someone like Savarkar evoked. 

To reiterate, the crucial point the comment above seems to be making by the allusion to the figure of the Mother is the importance of considering a place – especially what one considers one’s country of birth – as sacrosanct. The statement also is hinting at the absurdity of having to prove loyalty towards the country of one’s birth. That relation, as between a mother and her children, should not have to be explained or proven; it is self-evident. That relation constitutes a primal identity and incontrovertible proof of belonging. Such an identity – and identification – is above reproach and non-negotiable; it is the terminus ad quem all such intrusive interrogations of identity.

As academic and Trinamool MP  Sugata Bose details in his book, The Nation as Mother, the adoption of a Mother as a symbol of the nation has roots in 19th century nationalism, as, for example, in Bankim Chandra’s invocation in his poem, Bande Matram (Hail Mother). 

Be that as it may, statements such as the ones in Wasseypur also underscore the deep hurt that the Muslim community is facing. While the accusations of “always cheering for Pakistan,” have dogged them for very long, the recent legal onslaught to constitutionally codify their “otherness,” has made this an existential issue like no other. What should not have to be explained and spelled out – that the mulk is also maa – is now, by urgent necessity, having to be stated in public. And by none other than by Muslim women, who have also been consigned more often than not to the private sphere of home. 

A few years ago, an academic paper such as, “Negotiating the Mohalla – Exclusion, Identity and Muslim Women in Mumbai,” highlighted how Muslim women in majority-Muslim areas of Mumbai  “often had less accessibility – and more stringently imposed curfew timings and dress codes – to public spaces and the public sphere compared to women who lived in mixed community areas of the city such as Bandra and Andheri.” 

While that might still be true in large parts of India, the Muslim women who have on their own bidding been holding fort, often round-the-clock, at places like Wasseypur, Shaheen Bagh, Park Circus, Ghanta Ghar, Sabzibagh etc, are defying all stereotypical perceptions and expectations. They are not even from the urban elite, and as some may like to frame their positionality, they bear multiple marginalities, in terms of class, caste, religion and gender. Yet, they have swept away all so-called disabilities and have emerged as torchbearers in the fight against the latest injustice. A national daily was forced to reckon with this phenomenon and title its report: “From anti-CAA protests, to JNU and Jamia, why women are leading the fight.”

Wasseypur, situated in the backwaters of Bihar’s coal-country, attained its fame, or notoriety, with the release of the Bollywood movies, the Gangs of Wasseypur series,  gritty tales of power and violence in the area. Its protagonists were mostly men, each outdoing the other in ruthlessness. It seems the women of Wasseypur are made of sterner stuff than that, without needing to take recourse in violence. It is these Dabanggs of Wasseypur who are countering the overreach of the state which seeks to undermine their place as full and natural citizens. 

A  review of a recent book of Nehru’s writings, titled, Who is Bharat Mata?, informs us about Nehru’s surprise during his early travels through India when met with cries of “Bharat Mata ki jai.” 

[H]e would often be greeted with the roar ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ and he would ask who was this Bharat Mata. His audience, Nehru wrote, would be bewildered and seek an answer from Nehru himself. Nehru would explain that, “Bharat Mata was essentially these millions of people.” You are parts of this Bharat Mata, Nehru would tell his listeners, “you are in a manner yourselves Bharat Mata.” And Nehru recalled, “as this idea slowly soaked into their brains, their eyes would light up as if they had made a great discovery.”

The women of  Wasseypur and all fiery spirits they represent are also putting it across loud and clear that not only is their reverence and belief in maa (Bharat Mata) and mulk (India) unquestionable, but also that they themselves are part of Bharat Mata – and its history, while also making it anew.

—

Aviral Anand is a socially-concerned citizen of the world, currently based in Delhi. He believes in all kinds of solidarities with global struggles, such as the working class, indigenous and other marginalized peoples’ struggles around the world.

The post Maa aur Mulk – the non-negotiability of Muslim identity appeared first on SabrangIndia.

It was a day of general holiday in December. I was returning from having visited Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) after the incidents of violence against its students. I thought of making small talk with the cab-driver.

Aaj aapne chutti nahin li? 

No holiday for you today?

Nahin – hum bahar ke hain na. Kaam karna padta hai. 

No, I am not from here. Have to work.

Achcha. Kidhar se hain aap?

Ok. Where are you from?

District Bijnor. UP me hai. 

District Bijnor. It is in UP.

I had to rack my brain for any recognition of or associations to Bijnor. Just to keep the conversation going, I followed up my previous question with an inane one:

Proper Bijnor se hain, ya…? Are you from “proper Bijnor or…?” 

As if I knew what “proper Bijnor” was…

Nahin, main ek choti jagah, Nehtaur, se hoon. Aapne suna hoga. Goli chali hai udhar haal me. 

No, I am from a small place, Nehtaur. You might have heard. There were incidents of firing there recently.

Accha. Kyun, I asked, though I suddenly recalled news about police firing on protesters in Bijnor among other places UP over CAA protests. 

Woh Mohammedan log nagrikta kanoon ka virodh kar rahe hain na. Sir, main kehta hoon yeh log gaddar hain.

The Mohammedans are protesting the citizenship bill, that is why. I say these people are traitors.

I was stunned by this sudden and confident sharing of views by him. (He had also employed the term ‘Mohammedans’ for the Muslims – I wondered if he was with some people he knew more intimately, if he would have used the more common ‘Musalman’ instead?)

Gaddar…? I tried to compose myself, thinking of a proper, diplomatic response, one that would not confront him aggressively. I also wondered if I could seize this as a teaching moment.

Sab ke baare me aisa kaise keh sakte hain aap, is all I managed weakly, however. How can you say such a thing about an entire people?

Aapko us SP ke baare main nahin maloom sir, woh Bijnor main pakda gaya tha…uska ISI ke saath naata tha. 

Do you not know about that SP, sir? He was arrested in Bijnor – he had links with the ISI.

Once back home, I decided to check what was happening in Nehtaur and elsewhere. It seemed bad. The UP police had cracked down brutally on supposed protesters; several people had died of gunshot wounds in Nehtaur too.

 In one news report I came across an interesting nugget of information about Nehtaur: “The town’s only claim to fame is Urdu writer Qurratulain Hyder, whose family hailed from here.” 

Qurratulain’s family on her father’s side had settled in Nehtaur. Her father, Syed Sajjad Hyder, later more famous as Sajjad Hyder Yildirim, went to Aligarh to receive his education, and it was in Aligarh that Qurratulain was born. 

***

Earlier that day as I was exploring the area around Gate No. 7 outside the Jamia campus – the site now christened Jamia Square, and the nerve center of the continuing protests. I had noticed the Bab-i Qurratulain, the name of another of its gates. I had known that Jamia boasts probably the only academic center in India named after the brilliant linguist and activist, Noam Chomsky, and also a center named after Nelson Madela and another after Yasser Arafat. 

Qurratulain was in good company at Jamia. 

She also happened to be buried at the Jamia Millia Islamia cemetery. 

***

How did a premier writer like Qurratulain Hyder think in terms of the nation, its people, and its intertwined, complex history?  Writers often work from intuitions and they employ creativity to approach multi-layered issues; they engage with complexity and investigate it using fictional techniques, characters, locations and the flow of narrative to tease out that complexity, rather than passing peremptory judgments and arriving at conclusions without proper deliberation, offering rigid, definitive answers. 

We could re-read and refer to someone like Paul Brass or a Gyanendra Pandey, academics who have dug deep into issues of issues of identity and inter-community antagonisms in India (“communal violence and riots”). 

If we were looking to literature instead, to seek more creative explorations, we would have Manto, Amrita Pritam and Khushwant Singh to choose from, among many others. 

Qurratulain’s works recommend themselves for reasons articulated ably by writer Rakshanda Jalil who explains her draw to Hyder’s epic novel, Aag ka Darya (River of Fire):

I found that while there was much in both Urdu prose and poetry that dwelt on the idea of a nation, much of it was written in moments of crisis, whether it was in response to the atrocities of the colonial oppressor or the horrific genocide during the Partition or whenever the threat of war loomed on the horizon. And much of it was concerned with the here and now, the immediate and topical; it was almost necessitated by a hair-trigger response to a threat perception. I looked for something that explored the idea of nationhood in a larger, broader, more panoramic sense.

As Jalil says, if one were to seek a different scale and canvas of conceiving of and engaging with the questions of history, belonging, identity, space and nation than the immediate and pressing, then Hyder’s works offer a very rich and profound source to consider. 

Here, in this current piece, we are not concerned with the craft of Hyder, which has its critics, including many in the Urdu literary world, especially for her anglicized depictions. What we seek to explore, building on the circumstantial encounter with the news of Nehtaur and also the visit to Jamia, is the kind of a world she dared to imagine and fashion, where identity and a sense of belonging were not narrowly defined and codified, but were instead rich expressions of human journeys.  

Aag ka Darya is an “easy” novel to cite and trot-out when there is a need to contextualize and understand an episode which smacks of bigotry, ultra-nationalism – and cross-border tensions between India and Pakistan. Just in the past year Hyder and her novels, including Aag ka Darya, were invoked on a number of occasions, in the New York Times, The Nation and The Wire, especially with reference to cross-border tensions and matters related to the Partition of the subcontinent.

Great works of literature – and Hyder’s stories have several streaks of greatness – act as storehouses of wisdom, insight and understanding that can continually illustrate and add meaning to new episodes of history as they occur. But mostly such works offer us a new pair of eyes to look at our history, culture and ways of life, transcending the urgency of immediate events. 

Hyder’s work, more specifically, offer the reader a bold imagining and re-imagining of a nation, especially one which is “multi-sourced,” like India (to use a description in the genetic context from Tony Joseph’s book, Early Indians). 

Rakshanda Jalil points to the crucial aspect of Hyder’s work when she states that, “Aag ka Darya is, to my mind, a classic instance of Imagining India…”

The novel, at the beginning, situates itself geographically in the Shravasti-Saket region of eastern India, hallowed ground of the Buddha’s teaching but also home to Brahmanical learning. The novel traverses time and space in leaps and bounds, by means of its protagonists. Among the characters, there is a brahmachari scholar through whom we glimpse the Brahmanical-Buddhist world 150-years after the Buddha’s passing; an Iranian rationalist scholar in the employ of Hussain Shah, the Sharqi musician-king of Jaunpur (with profuse reference to the glorious rationalist traditions in Islam of the Mu’tazilites, Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Arabi, among others, to provide the Iranian’s background); and an East India Company officer who serves as the interface of the meeting of east and west, in the form of a subjugated, “native,” eastern Indian culture and a ruling, “modern,” western, European power. 

The novel is rich in historical references and also in illustrations of some elements of philosophical beliefs and cultural practices at various times. If Shunyata of the Buddhists and the poems of the Buddhist monks and nuns finds mention (from the Theragatha and Therigatha), so do the aforementioned rationalist beliefs of medieval Andalusian savants, as do Dara Shikoh’s translations of the Upanishads presented to the Englishman. Almost on theatrical cue, the reader is also treated to an instance of sati.

Admittedly, such a vast canvas with its made up characters, especially characters inhabiting very specific roles and time-periods, is quite a feat to accomplish. Hyder’s novel can come off as contrived at times and the treasure-trove of references seem a little artificial and forced. 

But yet, what one cannot take away from this work is the boldness, openness, and the unabashed celebratory nature of its conception and unfolding. It seems almost against one’s will to make a statement that this was Hyder, a Muslim, lovingly assembling an epic tale about a nation that had seen bitter contestation over religion and nation barely a decade before this novel was released, in 1959 – in Pakistan. 

Hyder puts everything in question, especially the solidity and singleness of identity and belonging. Like rivers, she fashions her characters who are in flux and take on different roles and identities over time. Hyder’s imagination is not limited and burdened by narrow boundaries, especially cultural and religious ones. She owns and embraces all of India not in some apologetic manner but in a manner of reclamation and re-creation. 

Such an expansiveness, graciousness and majesty of imagination can be juxtaposed with another composition which has been of seminal influence in another “Imagining India” endeavour. Hyder’s works are representative of imaginings that differ significantly from this other imagining, and it is to this difference that we can probably trace the latest hostility witnessed at Nehtaur, Aligarh and Jamia – and elsewhere as well. 

The other imagining we refer to here is encapsulated in some of the writings of V.D. Savarkar, especially his elaborations on the concept of Hindutva. His text on Hindutva also considers the sweep of India’s history and its peoples, like Hyder’s – but ends up drawing conclusions very different from her. 

Savarkar’s intent in his book is to define and delimit the idea of a Hindu and that of Hinduness (Hindutva). The subtitle of his book “Who is a Hindu,” clearly signals an attempt to set in stone the exact contours of a Hindu. As Savarkar asserts, it is “Hindutva, the essential nature and significance of which we have to investigate into.” All along in his own exploration of the term and concept, Savarkar is concerned with pinning down an essence of Hindutva. 

He too goes back to an early period to begin his narrative, when, according to him, the Aryans first moved into, and then beyond, the land of seven rivers (Sapta Sindhu) in north-western India. 

But before Savarkar explores and chronicles the rest of the history of the land, he huriedly invests the Aryans with an awareness of a sense of nation: “Aryans or the cultivators as they essentially were, we can well understand the divine love and homage they bore to these seven rivers presided over by the River, ‘the Sindhu’, which to them were but a visible symbol of the common nationality and culture.” 

So much for a sense of nation, culture, and heritage being fashioned and shaped over time and admitting of myriad influences from a wide-variety of cultures, provenance and backgrounds.. 

Hindutva, according to Savarkar is tied to the idea of a common Hindu race and common blood: “We, Hindus, are all one and a nation [Sindhusthan/Hindustan], because chiefly of our common blood.” To these two qualifications Savarkar also adds the necessity of common culture (sanskriti) further on in his book. 

The Hindu nation, Savarkar elaborates, comes into existence “when the Horse of Victory returned to Ayodhya unchallenged and unchallengeable, the great white Umbrella of Sovereignty was unfurled over that Imperial throne of Ramchandra…[and]… the Aryans [of the Sapta Sindhu and the patriarchs of the Hindu race] and Anaryans [of South India] knitting themselves into a people were born as a nation.”

It bears mentioning that this task of imagining, especially of and by people as nations, is critical since some modern scholarship, like that of political scientist Benedict Anderson, has forcefully asserted the idea of nations as “imagined communities.” As Anderson explains, there is an imagined fraternity in nations which enables “so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.” 

This is in line with what Savarkar formulates in his book about Aryans and Anaryans coming together and moving forward under a “common mission, common banner, a common cause which all the generations after it had consciously or unconsciously fought and died to defend.”

It is against this idea of the fixedness of a nation, of a happy amalgam of Aryans and Anaryans in mythic history on the basis of common blood, that one has to view the more open-ended, vibrant, and almost sacrilegious manner of commingling that Hyder puts forward as being constitutive of the Indian nation.

Savarkar’s imagining was narrowly defined and also exclusionary. By setting the consciousness and establishment of a Hindu nation at a time in remote history and based on the bond of common race, blood, and culture, Savarkar precluded all those appearing on the Indian subcontinent from outside after a certain time and not outwardly partaking of a culture whose parameters Savarkar himself outlines.  

That the Muslims entered the continent as invaders was the only narrative he seems to have imbibed. The encounter with Muslims-as-invaders inaugurated, according to Savarkar, “the conflict of life and death…From year to year, decade to decade, century to century, the contest continued.” How does one transcend a language and an argument based on an imagined ancient and ongoing conflict?

The encounter with Muslims also operated in other ways for the Hindus, according to Savarkar: “Nothing makes Self conscious of itself so much as a conflict with non-self…In this prolonged furious conflict our people became intensely conscious of ourselves as Hindus and were welded into a nation to an extent unknown in our history.” 

Thus was consolidated the Hindu identity, the Self, in opposition to the non-self, the Other, the Muslim. The mortal conflict whose origins Savarkar laid out continues till today through all those who hold Hindutva dear and also those who are in the grip of communalisation, which in many cases is sharpened by the former set of the Hindutvawadis. The policies such as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) spring from a belief in a Hindu Rashtra and India as the refuge and homeland of the Hindus, which in its expansiveness can include Christians, Sikhs, Parsis and Buddhists – but not the Muslims.

***

Even Bollywood movies utilize metaphors of rivers in nobler ways than those who stick to ideas of the Sindhu which supposedly established identity and nation once and for all:

Koi Vaju Kare Mere Jal Se Koi Murat Ko Nahalaye

Kahi Dhobi Kapade Dhoye Kahi Pandit Pyaas Bujhaye

Ye Jaat Dharam Ke Jhagade

Ye Jaat Dharam Ke Jhagade Insaan Ki Hai Nadani

Mano To Mai Ganga Maa Hu Na Mano To Bahata Pani

Har Har Gange, Har Har Gange, Har Har Gange

Gautam Ashok Akbar Ne Yaha Pyaar Ke Phool Khilaye

Tulasi Ghalib Meera Ne Yaha Gyan Ke Deep Jalaye

Mere Tat Pe Aaj Bhi Gunje

Mere Tat Pe Aaj Bhi Gunje Nanak Kabir Ki Vaani

Mano To Mai Ganga Maa Hu Na Mano To Bahata Pani

Some perform wazu with my water

Some bathe their murtis

Washermen wash clothes

The pandit quenches his thirst

…

On my banks still resound

The words of Nanak and Kabir

If you are a believer, I am Mother Ganga

Else I am just flowing water

***

Qurratulain Hyder’s capacious imagination was not a one-off thing, limited to Aag ka Darya. She exhibited a similar, albeit slightly less flighty, consciousness in another of her works, Aakhir-e-Shab ke Hamsafar (Fireflies in the Mist). This novel moves seamlessly between regions of Bengal before partition and after, till the formation of modern Bangladesh. The work is suffused with a sharp sense of place and time of Dhaka as also of Shantiniketan, for example, and peopled by a bewilderingly wide and diverse array of characters. It straddles Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and even Marxist worlds with elan and without artifice. 

***

Nehtaur, Aligarh and Jamia have seen uncalled for repression and violence. A vengeful state has targeted citizens of India it harbours ill-will against. The state violence in UP against Muslims has been widespread and horrific as chronicled in a recent public hearing in Delhi. The inability to imagine the nation as multi-source, multicultural, and with a history that needs to be engaged with rather than interpreted as one of pure victimhood and hurt has led to a policy of wanton reprisal against and victimization of Muslims. 

As Rakshanda Jalil discerningly tells us about Hyder’s grasp of India’s realities:  “For all her talk of expatriates living in St Johnís Woods, of high tea on manicured lawns…there is in Hyder’s literary sensibility a profound understanding of the real India that lived on the fringes of the Camelot she knew and inhabited.” 

Some of those killed in the UP violence were dhaba-cooks, bangle-makers and bicycle-repairmen, people who worked small-time jobs to make ends meet. Qurratulain Hyder’s imagining had a space for them in her stories and in the nation she constructed between the covers of her books, which abounded with Princes and Paupers, rickshaw wallahs and revolutionaries, bhikkhus and courtesans. 

But it is the poverty of imagination that marks the other stories crafted by those who can only think of  India in narrow, oppositional, exclusionary ways. Their stories are frozen in time; they are not flowing rivers. 

The author is a socially-concerned citizen of the world, currently based in Delhi. He believes in all kinds of solidarities with global struggles, such as the working class, indigenous and other marginalized peoples’ struggles around the world.

The post Nehtaur, Aligarh, Jamia – how Qurratulain Hyder’s Aag ka Darya imagines India appeared first on SabrangIndia.