by Ram Puniyani
(South Asia Citizens Wire
January 24, 2006)
After going through the turmoil created by Advani's
'Secular Jinnah' statement, its controller, RSS
decided to get rid of him and finally appointed
Rajnath Singh. a regional leader, as the President of
BJP. Rajnath Singh was not much known in the broader
circles and the views he held were practically not
much known barring the fact of his tenure as the UP
chief minister, which had nothing much to write home
about. Now with his pronouncements coming one can
understand why he has been chosen as the President
sidetracking others who are much more popular in the
political arena. Mr. Sing holds on to hard core
Hindutva, which its progenitor Lal Krishna Advani had
to tone down in the light of BJP electoral debacle and
compulsions of electoral calculations. Singh in
contrast holds to those even now. In one of the
functions recently he went on to give the outline of
his understanding about his political ideology. He
reaffirmed his belief in cultural nationalism, and
said that, culture is the main driving force of the
nation, and that India is not a politico-territorial state but geo-cultural
state. He also compared India with Israel. While the
belief in cultural nationalism is not new, we have
been hearing about it from last two decades and more,
his comparison of India with Israel was a new
dimension to the ideology held by Sangh.
In contrast to the values of India's freedom movement
and the principles of Indian constitution, India as a
secular democracy, the Sangh combine projected that
India is a Hindu Rashtra. It also brought forward the
notion of cultural nationalism, the earlier version of
which was Hindi, Hindu Hindustan. In contrast the
Muslim communal version of, Urdu-Muslim-Pakistan.
These are both parallel but opposite concepts,
mutually boosting each other. Cultural nationalism was
contrasted to the notion of India as a nation state,
as a geo political phenomenon, and carried the saffron
flag as a symbol and Ram Gita and Acharyas as the
central rallying cultural (religious) points. For this
politics the religion became the sole marker of
culture. The rich concept of culture as the set of
aspects of social and political life got reduced to
the values derived from the Brahminic version of
Hinduism.
Religion, its particular elitist version, as the
central repository of culture is the hallmark of
narrow sectarian politics based either on race or
religion. Hitler in his heydays did usurp democracy
from within by bringing forward the notions of
cultural superiority of Aryans. Interestingly he and
Mussolini both brought forward the concept of integral
humanism for their political agenda. Just to recount
these twin markers of fascist poltics led their
countries to the path of suicide. In Germany the
process of unleashing the agenda of cultural
nationalism led to the massacre of 120 lakh people,
half of them being the Jews. It is not a mere
coincidence that he came for praise from the ideologue
of Hindutva, M.S. Golwalkar, "...to keep up the purity
of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the
world by her purging the country of the Semitic races,
the Jews. National pride at its highest has been
manifested here. Germany has also shown how well neigh
impossible it is for races and cultures, having
differences to be assimilated into one united whole, a
good lesson for us in India to learn and profit by.
(We or Our Nationhood Defined, p.27)". It is no wonder
that Hitler found/finds a place of honor in the
schools text book of BJP ruled Gujarat.
Modern nation states have come in the geopolitical
zones, with the common pasts and divergent social
groups mingling with each other. Geo political regions
are the base of nation states. Culture has too many
more aspects than one stream of a particular religion.
Religion does matter but only as one of the components
of culture. Again the country has many cultures,
within the same political boundaries. In the
democratic polity these cultures supplement each other
in providing the richness to the life and ethos of the
country.
Interestingly for the proponents of cultural
nationalism the problems related to the lives of
people, related to their existence hold a secondary
place, if at all. Despite their using them for
electoral purposes here and there, the running thread
of their politics is around religious assertion,
identity based politics, at the cost of economic and
social issues. In particular, the social reform and
the concept of rights of the marginalized, exploited,
deprived sections are pushed to the backdrop and the
ones' related to dress code for women, the respect for
clergy and god men, the promotion of religiosity and
rituals comes to the fore. It is true that at times
earthly issues are also talked about, but in political
sphere it is the emphasis that matters. For the
poltics based on cultural nationalism the issues of
bread, butter, housing, education, employment and
health are non issues. Be it Taliban, or Hitler,
Sudarshan or- Rajnath Singh, the emphasis is on the
religious identity related matters. And in a way this
is a conscious ploy to undermine the needs of poorer
sections of society, their rights and their welfare.
During freedom movement the peddlers of cultural
nationalism, Hindu or Muslims, were not supported by
the vast sections of Indian people. They had a narrow
base in the elite sections of society which slightly
broadened due to the communal propaganda over a period
of time. A tiny section of middle class intellectuals
joined the Landlord-Kings and produced the ideology of
Hindutva and Islamism which drew some more borderline
segments of society and could mobilize some
downtrodden. Despite that, it remained marginal
phenomenon but was potent enough to cause the violence
in the name religion. This politics with the ideology
of cultural nationalism (Muslim and Hindu both) played
in the hands of British policy of divide and rule
resulting in partition of the country. In Pakistan,
the upholders of communal politics, the practitioners
of this 'cultural nationalism' were in power most of
the time and their politics led to the spilt, further
partition of Pakistan into Pakistan and Bangla Desh.
In Sri Lanka similar politics played a crucial role in
oppressing the Tamils leading to the rise of LTTE. In
India it has come up in stronger fashion from the
decade of 1980s resulting in the horrific violence
against the minorities geared around the Ram Temple
issue. To reemphasize, the word used by Mr. Singh,
'integral humanism', which incidentally is very
popular in Sangh combine, was also used by the fascist
regimes of Germany and Italy to unleash internal
repression against minorities and to launch aggression
against the neighboring countries.
In a way Mr. Singh is right when he says that for
Sangh combine, his concept of India is the one like
that of Israel. Israel came in to play a crucial role
for the imperialist designs of controlling the oil
rich zone and has been operating on the principles of
Zionism, again a concept serving the elite Jews in
today's times. It was presented as the Jewish homeland
but it had support of just a small section of Jews,
the affluent ones'. Israel's aggression against
Palestinians runs parallel to the internally
repressive state. No wonder Mr. Singh sees it fit to
compare his notion of Hindu Rashtra, cultural
nationalism, as an ideal to be pursued.
Incidentally there are various contradictory phenomena
around the concept of nationalism doing rounds at the
same time. They are struggling against each other
simultaneously. On one hand we have the process of
Globalization breaking the barriers between nations at
economic level, though it is highly loaded in favor of
the rich nations. At the same time in different states
the sectarian concepts of nationalism are coming up in
a serious way. Even in U.S. the Nation is being
identified as an Anglo Protestant English speaking
country. Samuel Huntington the one to give ideological
veneer to the US imperialist designs, has come out
with a book, 'Who are we'? And quite like M.S.
Golwalkar he too identifies elite section of US as the
defining axis of US, an Anglo Protestant English
speaking nation. The similarities between the
sectarian ideologies cutting across different nations
is not just incidental. It articulates the ideology of
affluent who claim to own the country because of
religion, caste or creed. One does not know whether
Huntington, the ideologue of "Clash of Civilizations",
'backward' Islam versus advanced West, has read
Golwlalkar or not, but surely he will be 'delighted'
to see the similar wave length of the thought process.
No wonder Huntington happens to be favorite of the
Hindu right!
The boundaries of nations states should be breaking
and paving way for a borderless human society. The
sectarian but powerful sections, who strengthen each
other, are seeing the dangers of pluralism, boundary
less world and so the narrow sectarian concepts of
Nationalism, appealing to the orthodox-upholders of
status quo, are being projected far and wide. It seems
the progressive ideologies, the one's standing for the
interests of poor and deprived sections of World have
to give a deeper thought to enhance the rights of
every living human being, to come back to ideas and
movements which can actualize the U.N. Charter of
Human Rights, to be able to march towards a more
humane society, looking at all human beings as equal
irrespective of their religion, language, caste,
gender or creed.
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