Daily News and Analysis
The saffron juggernaut and bulldozing manoeuvres
Friday, 19 December 2014 - 5:00am IST Updated: Thursday, 18 December 2014 - 8:35pm IST | Place: Mumbai | Agency: dna
by Gowri Ramnarayan
In a delightful Walt Disney fantasy film, we see a kitchen cluttered and clogged — a monumental mess. The fairy godmother waves her wand nonchalantly. Hey presto, every single thing instantly turns sparkling clean, and zooms back to its allotted place.
Indians are practical. When Narendra Modi assumed charge as Prime Minister, and touched the steps of the Parliament in a grandiloquent gesture, all the hype and euphoria could not dupe us into believing that every wrong would be righted in the blink of an eye. However, mesmerised by Modi’s development mantra, we said, let us give the new government a chance. After all, it has the majority to make things move at last. Even the most sceptical among us felt some stirrings of hope. And those who had raged about Modi’s silence over the post-Godhra massacre, tried to “console” themselves by recalling that opposition parties were equally guilty of turning a blind eye to pogroms.
The new PM has proved himself a flamboyant showman, spellbinding demagogue, nifty sloganeer. But is he really in control? Can he make his incontinent partymen toe the line?
To a lay citizen like me, with little grasp of politics/economics, prices of everyday commodities are a commonsensical means of judging whether things are going right or wrong. But one thing I know for sure. Any real development in a polyglot nation like ours demands some degree of tolerant, stabilised co-existence.
But every day, I see words and actions that divide and discriminate. Since the saffron juggernaut is a stranger to subtlety, these bulldozing manoeuvres are as clumsy as they are obvious.
Take the recent order, “Keep schools open on Christmas day — hold quiz, elocution, essay contests!” and its partial retraction. Before that a Sadhvi somebody declaims in Parliament — gloatingly — that those who are not Ram’s children are bastards. Yogi Adityanath spews venom on non –Hindus. The love jihad nonsense creates its own ruckus. And why unnecessarily antagonise so many by thrusting Sanskrit down everybody’s gullet? I am disquieted by the political intent even as I welcome the move to get the Kashmiri Pandits home.
The conversion programmes don’t bother me. Every religion does it. Anyway, those who convert for material advantages may eventually revert to their creed. But I will certainly ask: since Hinduism is not a proselytising creed, nor accountable to a central regulatory body like the church, or a single holy book like the Koran, how does any politically-driven fringe group have the legitimacy to speak or act for Hinduism? I resent most the Bhagavad Gita being politicised.
And please tell me — if you hail Nathuram Godse as a patriot, are you not supporting terrorism? Are you not trying to silence all that is sane, secular, inclusive, progressive and enlightened? When some hidebound politician insists on a dress code for women, isn’t he opposing individual freedom and constitutional rights?
Well, through this stench and miasma, we saw some wholesome light in the PM’s progressive, pro-peace, pro-development assertions, invoking Mahatma Gandhi’s name along the way. We thought that he would condemn the regressive speeches made by the members of his party, and uphold secularism, if not as an ideology, at least as a governance strategy, a prerequisite for his development plans.
We needed a Subramanian Swamy on a TV channel to set us right. He asked, approvingly, “Why do you say these pro-Hindutva voices are not under his control? Sure, development is on the BJP agenda, but, didn’t Narendra Modi’s ideologies develop in the RSS camp? How can he not share the RSS vision?”
A blinding truth?
The author is a playwright, theatre director, musician and journalist, writing on the performing arts, cinema and literature
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