Decoding new India: Narendra Modi is giving shape to M.S. Golwalkar's dream. By Manini Chatterjee
NB: This important observation says something that has been obvious from the inauguration of this government, yet something many (aside from those who welcome the idea of overthrowing the Indian Constitution by stealth) wish to deny. Yet others see the RSS as the vanguard of civilisational trans-formation. (Isn't that how the ISIS saw itself?) To my mind, there is no doubt that nation-worship is a conservative form of atheism, an ideological expression of the festering wound of communalism in the Indian body-politic. Those who believe the RSS represents a challenge to western civilisation or modernity are indulging in the same kind of wishful thinking that considered Donald Trump and his white nationalists to be the answer to American militarism and Islamism.
All communalists, whatever their rhetoric (and their location) are, in their economic theory, servile spokesmen (and instruments) of capitalism in its most vicious form. They use nationalist and nativist slogans to fulfil the requirements of the multi-national corporations at the expense of the living and working standards of the working population. They also launch an assault on industrial and environmental regulations. This is as true of the Hindutva brigade as it is of the Islamist regime in Turkey and the Christian funda-mentalists now sitting in the White House. The RSS knows well what the Modi government is doing- he is their man, after all - and they keep up the communal temperature to enable his government to attack peasants, workers, small businesses and the informal economy. The RSS aims to establish an ideocracy - the rule of an ideology. It is a totalitarian dream, wherein they will dictate to us what we may eat, whom we should love and most importantly what we should think, especially about the past. It is a dream of total control and represents the capitalists' utopia. Ultra-nationalism, racism, tradition-mongering and communalism are all as much a part of modern capitalism as the internet, aircraft, and atom bombs. As an aside, readers might consider this sentence from Charlie Chaplin's 1947 film, Monsieur Verdoux: "Von Clausewitz said that war is the logical extension of diplomacy; Monsieur Verdoux feels that murder is the logical extension of business." DS
To his long list of
skills - powerful oratory; indefatigable energy; peerless grandstanding; bear
hugging every world leader within handshaking distance - Narendra Modi just
added another one: a talent for black humour. That talent was
evident in his remarks in Ahmedabad last Thursday. Speaking at a function at
Sabarmati Ashram, the prime minister said, "Killing people in the name
of gau bhakti is not acceptable." And added, with a
straight face, "We are a land of non-violence. We are the land of Mahatma
Gandhi. Why do we forget that?"
Those words certainly
jogged -and mocked - public memory, coming as they did from a man who was chief
minister of Gujarat when riots left over 2,000 dead and who resolutely refused
to express any remorse, then or since. And a man who, as prime minister, has
chosen to ignore the violence unleashed by vigilantes on a regular basis. Yet such is the
stature of Narendra Modi that his words at Sabarmati have been welcomed, not
just by his supporters but even by his critics. The prime minister's belated
attack on cow vigilantes, they feel, will have a sobering effect on the
marauding mobs and will rein in the "loony fringe" of the sangh
parivar.
The speech at Sabarmati on June 29 was not the first time that Modi spoke out against the lynch mobs. He had expressed similar sentiments after the lynching of Dalits in Una last year. That had had little effect on the ground. But this time, many hope, it will be different.
One reason for this hope is that the prime minister spoke out a day after thousands of citizens came out in different cities of India under the "Not In My Name" banner to protest against the growing climate of hate and violence which led, most recently, to the murder of 16-year-old Junaid Khan on a train a little outside Delhi. The "enough is enough" sentiment that animated the protests may have touched Narendra Modi too and impelled him to speak, some believe. Another view is that for purely political reasons the prime minister has signalled a change of course. He does not want unruly elements, in the garb of " gau rakshaks", to mar his ambitions of becoming a world statesman, jeopardize his goal of building a 'New India'.
This hope, sadly, is
likely to be belied because it rests on a fundamental misunderstanding.
Narendra Modi may be a consummate politician with an enviable ability to mould
his words and persona to suit the audience and the occasion. But he is also a
deeply committed ideologue, more ideologically oriented than any Indian prime
minister barring, possibly, Jawaharlal Nehru. The saffron fraternity
knows this well. Soon after Modi led the Bharatiya Janata Party to single party
majority in 2014, a television anchor asked Uma Bharati whether the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh would now exercise "remote control" over the new
government. Uma Bharati's immediate response: there is no need of any remote
control because RSS ideology flowed through every vein of Narendra bhai Modi,
he was the very embodiment of its ideals, the best vehicle to translate its
vision into reality.
Modi may have focused
on " vikas" and "parivartan" all through his
election campaign but after assuming power he has given glimpses of his deep
adherence to RSS ideology. And though he has seldom mentioned M.S. Golwalkar by
name, it is Golwalkar's thoughts and writings that seem to have most influenced
him. Since Golwalkar took
over the reins of the RSS in 1940 and remained at the helm till 1973, he
exercised an enormous influence over generations of young men who joined the
RSS in the post-Independence era, the most dedicated of whom became pracharaks (full
timers) - Modi a star among them. One only has to read
Golwalkar - not just his infamous We or Our Nationhood Defined but
his collection of writings brought together in Bunch of Thoughts - to recognize
his imprint on Modi's mind. Modi's recent use of "Attock to Cuttack and
Kashmir to Kanyakumari", for instance, is a straight lift from Golwalkar.
But it goes far beyond
phrases. The RSS's central thesis, extensively elaborated in Golwalkar's
writings, is that India is the sacred land of the Hindus and Hindus alone, it
was a land of unparalleled glory in ancient times, it fell to ruin because of
successive assaults by foreign invaders, and it can only regain its lost glory
once it becomes wholly Hindu again. Golwalkar had the
greatest antipathy towards the concept of "territorial nationalism" -
the name he gave to the modern nation state which bestows equal rights of citizenship
on all those who live within its territory regardless of caste or creed. The
RSS's "cultural nationalism", a euphemism for upper caste Hindu
supremacy, is the stark opposite of civic nationalism enjoined by the
Constitution of India.
The difference between
the two is not mere semantics but has very real consequences. Every campaign of
the so-called "loony fringe" - be it ghar wapsi, love
jihad, cow vigilantism, or painting minorities as anti-national - is rooted in
the ideology of the RSS and finds ideological sustenance in Golwalkar's
writings. India's independence
from colonial rule in 1947, Golwalkar argued, did not constitute real freedom
because the new leaders held on to the "perverted concept of
nationalism" that championed India's composite heritage. "The concept of
territorial nationalism," he wrote, "has verily emasculated our
nation and what more can we expect of a body deprived of its vital energy?
...And so it is that we see today the germs of corruption, disintegration and
dissipation eating into the vitals of our nation for having given up the
natural living nationalism in the pursuit of an unnatural, unscientific and
lifeless hybrid concept of territorial nationalism."
For the RSS,
therefore, the BJP's victory in 2014 marks a seminal moment in the dream of
forming a Hindu rashtra. That Modi is aware of his own significance
in this journey was made clear when he referred to the end of "1200 years
of foreign rule" in his first major speech in the Lok Sabha after becoming
prime minister. In the last three
years, Modi has relentlessly run down the achievements of the first 70 years of
independence and insisted that India has changed in a wondrous fashion only in
the last three years. These exaggerated claims do not result from misplaced hubris alone.
It comes from a deeply held belief that only a "Hindu" government and
polity - where all "non-Hindu" elements are obliterated or made to
surrender their identity - can redeem India's destiny.
Modi's New India,
thus, has two inextricably intertwined sides to it. On one hand, it is about
rooting out black money, building toilets, giving up LPG subsidies, enhancing
India's space programme et al. On the other, it is 'Hinduizing'
both State and society by obliterating the myriad influences on art and culture,
ideas and scholarship from 'non-Hindu' sources that have so enriched India over
millennia.
The men who killed
Junaid Khan because he was wearing a skull cap and taking home Eid gifts, Yogi
Adityanath's comment that the Taj Mahal does not reflect Indian culture, and
Modi's belief that India's efflorescence has only begun with his victory in
2014 are all facets of the same Golwalkarian mindset - a mindset that forms the
bedrock of New India.
In his Sabarmati
speech, a newspaper report said, Modi narrated a childhood memory of a cow who
gave up eating after it was overcome with remorse for accidentally killing a
child. "His voice choked with emotion and he fought back tears as he
detailed the compassion of the cow," it noted. Modi never mentioned Junaid
Khan, whose bloodstains are still visible on the platform of Asaoti station.
In New India, suicidal
cows evoke more tears than murdered human beings. But then a cow, we are told,
experiences remorse and compassion that a prime minister seems incapable of feeling.
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