By Fazal Mehmood
For many who have panned the anti- corruption campaign led by Anna Hazare, it has also represented a resurgence of rightist forces. Through it, it is being said, the Hindutva agenda is back on the centre stage with all the dangers that it represents. One commentator in these columns recently described Anna Hazare as the prophet of banal Hindutva, involving people who may not formally owe allegiance to the Sangh Parivar but are loosely in agreement with its world view. There is a need to look critically at such claims. For how we view the matter, besides determining the outlook towards the campaign, indicates our position as far as Indian secularism is concerned.
The question of whether Hazare’s movement qualifies to be called a secular agitation or stands for soft Hindutva is inextricably linked to the parameters on which such an assessment is done. It calls for a debate on what it takes for any mass campaign in India to meet the standards of secularism laid down by our founding fathers. This would necessitate taking up the faith of the majority community and distinguishing it from Hindutva, its hegemonistic politico- cultural manifestation. For, the fact that Hindu is not Hindutva is not often acknowledged by the secular elite in this country. There may be a thin line dividing the two but it is nevertheless an easily distinguishable one.
Hindutva, which has a distinct history, by its very nature, is premised on exclusivity. It sees India as a “Hindu rashtra” and almost always demonises the other, in this case, the Muslims, the main minority community.
Perhaps, most importantly in today’s context, it seeks to capture political power by appealing to the religious identity of the majority community members, implying that Hindu faith and culture is under threat of some kind in secular liberal India. While the secular elite rightly attacks Hindutva given our recent past of communal strife and the insecurity it produces in the minds of minority community members, any and every expression of the majority community’s culture does not amount to Hindutva. This must be stressed because when commentators mistake one for the other they can end up sensing dangers where none might exist, as has happened with Hazare’s campaign. Why Hindu can be confused with Hindutva has a lot to do with the difference between the form of secularism practised by the elite, representing a minuscule section of our population, and that followed by common people. The “conscious secularism” of the elite is a value system in which the religious identity of the majority community members is understated – because of the nature of their faith and modernisation- even as it is ensured that the religious and cultural rights of the minority communities are not infringed. While this helps strengthen the secular fabric of India, problems arise when the elite judges common people in a hugely religious country by its own standards of secularism and finds them wanting. The Anna Hazare movement is a good example of this phenomenon being at work.
It ignores the truth that the secularism of the common people is “unconscious secularism” which stems from the logic of existence rather than a value system. This secularism has seen the two communities co- exist with a reasonable degree of harmony for hundreds of years notwithstanding the cultural differences that separate them. The people instinctively know that in the challenge called existence harmony is always preferable to discord. So each community allows the other to live by the tenets of their faith even as it is unabashedly steeped in its own culture. Sections in the two communities may even have some reservations about each other but these are rarely ever of the order that causes strife. When such people come out on the streets for a cause, as happened in the Hazare movement, it is only to be expected that symbols of the culture that guides their lives will occasionally spill over. The chants of “Bharat mata ki jai” that the secular elite has read as a sign of the Hazare movement acquiring a saffron hue can thus be easily explained. There is every reason to believe that a government peon chanting this cry along with his children at Ramlila Maidan was only expressing his patriotism through his cultural idiom, with Hindutva being the last thing on his mind.
Anna Hazare himself belongs to this category of people. It is pretty possible that the image of Bharat Mata as a deity that formed the backdrop during his first fast was his idea of evoking patriotism in people. As long as the manifestation of such religio- cultural identity does not get channelled into antagonism for the “other”, we can be said to be in safe territory. Quite obviously, this is not to downplay the need for a movement’s leadership to use symbols that are all- inclusive, a fact appreciated by Team Anna when they made Mahatma Gandhi’s image the backdrop during Anna’s second fast in Ramlila Maidan in place of Bharat Mata represented as a Hindu deity.
How does the Anna movement fare when assessed in light of the aforementioned considerations? Two of its features are critical here. One, the cause it took up was a pan- Indian one concerning all citizens regardless of their faith. Two, none of the members of the leadership had any past that could be called communally tainted or communally inclined. Therefore, to still describe the campaign as representing Hindutva amounts to disregarding the nature of India’s demography and the socio- cultural evolution of its population. In fact, such an assessment is positively harmful because it stokes the fears of the minority community, persuading its members to stay away from supporting a cause that is very much their own. It also perpetuates the process that has prevented the minorities from getting integrated into the mainstream and checked the development of a unique Indian identity. Sections of the intelligentsia have also judged the campaign less for its own sake and more in terms of the possible political ramifications of its success. Since the Congress is in power and the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Opposition, it has been feared that supporting the movement was to play into the hands of the BJP. Though this is a legitimate apprehension such political fallout is by no means certain, particularly if the Congress were to take the campaign as a challenge and respond appropriately.
This is not to deny that Team Anna has indeed allowed the Sangh Parivar to add fuel to its campaign. It is also a fact that its leadership seems a tad softer on the BJP as compared to the Congress though the two parties are equally mired in corruption.
To sum up, while there is a good lot to criticise about Team Anna and its stir, with its move to campaign against the Congress in the recent Hisar by-poll reiterating its intellectual rigidity and fixation with the Jan Lokpal Bill, to do so on the ground that it is leading a Hindutva charge is grossly unfair. – INAV