Samanth Subramanian: How Hindu supremacists are tearing India apart
Soon after the
violence began, on 5 January, Aamir was standing outside a residence hall in
Jawaharlal Nehru University in south Delhi. Aamir, a PhD student, is Muslim, and
he asked to be identified only by his first name. He had come to return a book
to a classmate when he saw 50 or 60 people approaching the building. They
carried metal rods, cricket bats and rocks. One swung a sledgehammer. They were
yelling slogans: “Shoot the traitors to the nation!” was a common one. Later,
Aamir learned that they had spent the previous half-hour assaulting a gathering
of teachers and students down the road. Their faces were masked, but some were
still recognisable as members of a Hindu nationalist student group that has
become increasingly powerful over the past few years.
The group, the Akhil
Bharatiya Vidya Parishad (ABVP), is the youth wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS). Founded 94 years ago by men who were besotted with Mussolini’s
fascists, the RSS is the holding company of Hindu supremacism: of Hindutva, as
it’s called. Given its role and its size, it is difficult to find an analogue
for the RSS anywhere in the world. In nearly every faith, the source of
conservative theology is its hierarchical, centrally organised clergy; that
theology is recast into a project of religious statecraft elsewhere, by other
parties. Hinduism,
though, has no principal church, no single pontiff, nobody to ordain or rule.
The RSS has appointed itself as both the arbiter of theological meaning and the
architect of a Hindu nation-state. It has at least 4 million volunteers, who
swear oaths of allegiance and take part in quasi-military drills.
The word often used to
describe the RSS is “paramilitary”. In its near-century of existence, it has
been accused of plotting assassinations, stoking riots against minorities and
acts of terrorism. (Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead in 1948 by an RSS man, although the RSS claims he had left the
organisation by then.) The RSS doesn’t, by itself, engage in electoral
politics. But among its affiliated groups is the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP),
the party that has governed India for the past six years, and that has, under
the prime minister Narendra Modi, been remaking India into an authoritarian,
Hindu nationalist state... read more:
see also
