Edelbert Kharsyntiew
The election room, to be precise. Many have recognized it and called it by name. But it is still there, and i feel constrained to address it, not with arrogance or spite in my heart, but with sympathy, albeit with honesty. I’ll go backward from 2014 when the Modiwave happened to the unforgettable 1992, when the Babri Masjid was demolished, to 1990 when Advani kicked off his rath yatra to support the Ram temple movement, further back to the 1950s when BJP was birthed from its parents the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and the RSS. Mookerjee formed the BJS in 1951, and when he died in 1953, the RSS elements within the BJP ousted MC Sharma the elected successor to Mookerjee to install their own man Upadhyaya as leader who led till 1968 when Vajpayee took over. The moderate strategy of Vajpayee did not help, and popular sentiments pushed Advani and his hardline Hindutva agenda to the forefront. Through him, it culminated in the destruction of the Babri Masjid, when a rally of more than a lakh RSS, VHP and BJP activists combined turned violent that resulted in the destruction of the said mosque in Ayodhya.
Further still to 1925, when the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or the National Patriotic Organization ) was founded by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar from Nagpur, who had learned revolutionary techniques from the secret societies in Bengal where he was a student, to overthrow british rule in India. After he read V. D. Savarkar’s “Hindutva’ published in 1923, and personally met Savarkar in 1925 he changed course and adopted Savarkar’s idea which was to set the house in order before they even think about overthrowing the British. This would be in the form of strengthening the Hindu society through reviving its religion and culture, which had been battered and bruised under outside influences, mainly Islam and Christianity. He conducted camps and trained the pracharaks or key workers who were sent to various places starting with Benaras Hindu University etc.. to establish shakhas or Hindu theological schools for learning of Vedic texts. For perspective’s sake, there were 51,335 shakhas in the country as of August 2015, with UP as the highest at 8,000 and 46 in Meghalaya. The pracharaks practiced renunciation from family ties and consecrated themselves to the cause of the RSS. The first experiment was in 1927 on Lakshmi Puja in Nagpur, when Hedgewar took around 100 trained pracharaks into the Muslim area, and when attacked, they fought back, resulting in mass exodus of muslims from the area. This marked the first organized Hindu resistance and catapulted the RSS image and consolidated its position. They were on the right track, had their priorities right, and it explains why the RSS never participated in the Quit India movement against the British. These leaders were smart and chose their targets well. They knew it was futile to antagonize the British. This also explains why Savarkar pleaded mercy from the British government when he was jailed and vowed not to involve in anti-government activities. He had higher goals.
MS Golwalkar, another Maratha, became the longest serving head of the RSS from 1940 to 1973. His thoughts are compiled in two books – “Bunch of Thoughts” and “We, or our nationhood defined”. He became a sanyasi in 1936, and was appointed leader of the RSS by Hedgewar in 1940, bypassing many seniors. Hedgewar’s choice was proven right, since RSS grew under Golwalkar, from 1 lakh to a million members with 50 front organizations. Golwalkar’s views were clear. He rejected socialism and communism and openly warned against the threat from Islam and Christianity. He said “The non-Hindu people of Hindustan must either adopt Hindu culture and languages, must learn and respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but of those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture…in a word they must cease to be foreigners; Or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment—not even citizens’ rights”. He rejected the Constitution and the national flag. He somehow was inspired by Hitler’s nationalistic fervor and treatment of the Jews, and applied it to ‘indian muslims’ whom he saw as a ‘foreign body’ embedded in and destabilizing Hindu society. However, he later expressed appreciation for the Jews because of their cultural wealth and a revived language. The RSS’s opposition of Gandhiji can easily be understood, his pro-muslim stance deeply resented, and Nathuram Godse – a former RSS member, who shot the Mahatma dead, thought he did the Hindu nation justice by killing the Mahatma.
The independence of India in 1947 therefore, was set in a context of tremendous cultural upheaval. On one hand, the RSS and its affiliates that wanted India to go the opposite direction to that of Pakistan, while the Indian National Congress, founded in 1885, spearheaded the independence movement with over 70 million participants, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, wanted a secular India. Shashi Tharoor, in a recent interview by the Pakistani channel most succinctly crystallized the picture. He said “there are two different logics at work. One, seeing nationhood as in adhering in faith, and the other is in seeing a large diverse nation of people … of caste, of creed, of color, of culture, of cuisine, of conviction, of costumes and of custom, and still rally around the consensus. The Indian Nationalist Movement … never accepted the logic that because Pakistan has been created as a state for Muslims, that what remains must be necessarily a state for Hindus”.
This was the India that Jawaharlal Nehru presented to the Northeast leaders at the Khasi National Durbar Hall, Mawkhar, while he appealed for them to join India prior to 1947. Today, the scene is changed, totally but gradually. Would the Northeast Christians have accepted the current notion of India way back in 1947? If not then, why now?
The world has changed in 2018, and the RSS has managed to turn the tide for the Hindu society, rising so to speak from the ashes of brutalized history, into becoming the largest organization in the world, and Hinduism as an aggressive proselytizing faith, at par, if not more than Islam and Christianity. The New Age philosophy that took the West by storm is basically Hindu with advaita or monism as the core concept. It was a convenient marriage of western materialism with eastern mysticism. The industrialized West of the 20th century, embraced modernism and abandoned its Judeo-Christian heritage. It prospered materially, but at the cost of its soul. It had rejected the personal, law-giving God of the Bible and came to India in search of spirituality. The Beatles etc led the way and hordes of young hippies, most of whom from affluent background, came to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Rajneesh (later Osho) and other gurus, to learn yoga, or the discovery of self through altered consciousness. Many thinkers like Francis Schaeffer and others saw a parallel in the attainment of altered consciousness through yoga and hallucinogenic drugs. Having achieved transcendental enlightenment, or the monistic/unitarian merging of atman and Brahman, they returned home and spread the idea. The Western door was opened to eastern mysticism, and thus the New Age was born. Hollywood movies buffs need only to listen to Jim Carrey to fully grasp what eastern monistic enlightenment is all about.
But however attractive advaitic monism is, it is not palatable to the dualistic Abrahamic belief systems, where there is a clear cut distinction between Creator and creation, and any claim to divinity, with the exception of Jesus Christ, is nothing short of blasphemy. And worship of the divine manifestations in creation – whether animal, or tree or stone – while valid to the monistic adherents, is idolatrous to the latter. So the twain do not meet. RSS ideals are intrinsically opposed to the Judeo-Christian belief system of the Northeast. Having said that, I feel indebted to the Hindu friends who helped the liberalized Westerners to rediscover their theistic roots. Ironically, the trend has turned full circle. Rajiv Malhotra wrote about the U-Turn Theory, in which he demonstrates that the Westerners turned atheistic, then discovered spirituality through the Hindu gurus, and then turned back to Jesus. In spite of their best efforts, somehow the gurus could not fully hinduize westerners from a Judeo-Christian background. There are just not enough ‘poison pills’.
Finally, the best way forward therefore is to live and let live. Let belief systems thrive or collapse based on their own innate strength and appeal, without the State machinery favoring one above the other. Tell the truth, and leave it to the individuals to decide. Let the NPP also tell the truth that they are an ally of the BJP and member of the NDA from its inception, and the fact that they are part of the NEDA and share power in Manipur. Let us not hesitate to call the elephant in the room by name.
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