The Hindu - August 10, 2004 | Book Review
The phenomenon of Hindutva
HINDU NATIONALISM AND INDIAN POLITICS — An Omnibus comprising The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India: John Zavos; The Saffron Wave: Thomas Blom Hansen; The BJP and the Compulsions of Politics in India: Christophe Jaffrelot and Thomas Blom Hansen — Editors; with an introduction by Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Oxford University Press, YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110001.
Rs. 695.
THE PHILOSOPHER, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy introduces his magnificent long essay on Hinduism with one affirmation and a set of five denials. He calls Hinduism the oldest of the metaphysical disciplines, with an unbroken tradition that is comprehensible to the learned as well as to the toiling peasant.
Having enumerated the essentially democratic character of Hinduism, he goes on to list five elements that have been misunderstood in relation to it— the Vedic doctrine was neither pantheistic nor polytheistic; Karma is not fate; Maya is not illusion; the idea of reincarnation is merely a misunderstanding of the doctrines of heredity, transmigration and regeneration; and the six schools of Indian philosophy were not mutually exclusive systems but six points of view that were hardly contradictory.
Hinduism universal
Having listed the five denials, Coomaraswamy comes to a conclusion that might startle contemporary votaries of Hindutva and the theorists who seek to make sense of Hindutva. He denies that there was anything unique and peculiar to Hinduism apart from the local colouring.
Hinduism, argues Coomaraswamy, contained universal truths that no one set of people, ethnically or racially determined, could claim as exclusively their own. He goes a step further and suggests that other faiths might see the truths of Hinduism as "intrinsic and probable proofs" of the truth inherent in their own faiths.
There is no knowing whether the Hindi critic, Hazari Prasad Dwivedi who is quoted by Pratap Bhanu Mehta in his introduction to the Omnibus edition of writings under review, had ever read Coomaraswamy.
Even if he had, there would be little in common between the philosopher and the Hindi writer, since Coomaraswamy would be perplexed by the language of "anxiety" and about Hindu "identity" as much as he would have little to do with tracing the roots of this anxiety to the ideas of "victimhood" and "uncertainty".
Situating Hindutva
In this sense, the Hindutva Omnibus is, in fact, two separate texts. The first one is represented by Mehta's introduction and the second is a collection of works already published in the past by John Zavos, Thomas Blom Hansen and Christophe Jaffrelot.
The second set of texts have been pioneering attempts in the recent past to unravel the emergence of Hindutva as a phenomenon in India and have illuminated many dark corners in our attempt to understand Hindutva. The introduction does attempt to justify the inclusion of these texts in the Omnibus and does so elegantly.
There are, however, two separate sets of assumptions that run through these texts and the introduction. The first is to do with finding causal connections to explain the rise of Hindutva.
Nationalism, colonialism, quest for identity, Hindu anxiety, victimhood, resentment and history are some of the factors marshalled to account for the recent visibility of Hindutva. This is where the problem lies.
To perceive Hindutva as representing a set of ideas that were a reaction to modernity, colonialism and nationalism is to miss the point altogether. Hindutva is only a visible manifestation of the sickness within Hinduism. This sickness was, in turn, generated by the denial of a political role that the faith played since the time of the rise of Buddhism.
It failed to play the role well, both in the metaphysical realm as well as in the material world, and sought to cover its disgrace by painting itself into a tolerant, inward-looking and amorphous faith. Each failure to confront the "Other" led to an increasing ambiguity within Hinduism about its relation to power, especially political power.
Critique
Methodologically, therefore, the prudent step is to deny any exclusive claims to superiority on the part of Hinduism in the manner of Coomaraswamy. Existing claims to superiority are not merely a result of India's subjugation or Hinduism's contentious relationship with modernity. Rather, it lies in the failure to produce new knowledge and creatively confront the "Other".
If one were to use words like "anxiety", "uncertainty" and "resentment", all part of the once-fashionable theoretical universe of excitable French philosophers of the 20th Century, then, in the context of Hinduism, these psychological disorders were born out of its inability to come to terms with the Buddha's metaphysics and the failure to turn the conversation with Buddhism in its favour.
Hindu nationalism
The second set of assumptions has to do with the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party as representing a form of Hindu nationalism. Mehta describes it as a powerful political force, a veritable social movement and a widespread cultural phenomenon that has the ability to redefine India. Even a scholar of Jaffrelot's dexterity claims that Hindutva has been "able to progressively integrate itself into the Indian political discourse."
The truth is that Hindutva never had a politics, much less a theory of government or even a model for economics. The burden of Hindutva lies in attempting to forge a romantic pre-social, pre-political unity on the assumption that there are certain ties that bind all Hindus together.
What masquerades as politics is its ability to integrate itself into the electoral and democratic process effectively. If Hindutva resounds louder than any other political ideology today, it is because of the fragility of the liberal discourse, the limited salience of the radical alternative and the use of culturally salient metaphors by the Sangh Parivar.
To describe it as a political force or even a movement is to make the Owl of Minerva crash-land before reality has concretised.
JYOTIRMAYA SHARMA
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