Religion or politics? (The Hindu Janajagruti Samiti in Goa)

Herald, Panjim, 2 May 2008

Religion or politics? (The Hindu Janajagruti Samiti in Goa)

By Vidyadhar Gadgil

The recent controversy over the denial of permission to the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS) to organise a Dharma Jagruti Sabha on the grounds of the Government Engineering College in Farmagudi raised some interesting questions about the separation of religion and politics. Responding to an appeal to disassociate from the programme, Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) leader Sudin Dhavlikar is quoted as having said, "Religion and politics are two different issues... Nobody can stop me from participating in my dharm."

It's an unexceptionable statement - it is evident that religion and politics must be kept separate in any healthy society, and that Dhavlikar or anybody else is free to practice their faith. But the real question here is, was the proposed Dharma Jagruti Sabha about religion or was it about politics?

The pamphlet circulated for the Sabha makes a call to 'Hindu brethren' to unite against assaults on the Hindu religion. Christians and Muslims are identified as those who have assaulted Hinduism. Hindus influenced by the 'Western education system' and 'so-called secular ideology' are identified as major threats to Hinduism. The pamphlet asks for mobilisation against the proposed Ram Setu project, not on environmental or economic grounds, but for religious reasons. The government is accused of being part of a conspiracy to destroy Hinduism. An example of such a conspiracy, against which the pamphlet calls for action, is the Maharashtra government's proposed Anti-Superstition Act.

The meeting was moved to the Madkai Panchayat grounds after the organisers were denied permission to have the Sabha on the Government Engineering College grounds. The HJS saw this as another assault on the Hindu religion. HJS convenor in Goa Dr Manoj Solanki has defended the Dharma Jagruti Sabhas, saying they are "meant to educate Hindus about their religion and guide them about their day-to-day religious practices". He justifies HJS rhetoric saying that "the incidences of religious conversions are going on in a large scale in Goa... there has been a steep rise in the incidences of Hindu temple destruction..."

Is this 'education of Hindus', which the HJS says it has been doing in Goa in the recent past? Or is it mobilisation of people as part of the political agenda of Hindutva?

The HJS is a relatively recent front, set up, according to its own literature, in October 2002, "by initiative of seekers of Sanatan Sanstha". In Goa, it appears to have taken over many of the activities of the Sanatan Sanstha (SS); many of the office-bearers of these two organisations are the same. Besides, both these organisations seem to operate mainly in Maharashtra.

In Goa, the HJS appears to be consciously disassociating itself from the SS in people's minds. This might be because the SS has made itself unpopular in Goa, after its activists started laying down their own 'rules' (allegedly based on their reading of the scriptures) regarding the proper depiction of deities and the way rituals should be performed. Unsurprisingly, this imposition of a doctrinaire, Brahminical regime has been resisted by most Hindus, who are attached to their own traditional folk forms of worship. This underlines the difference between Hinduism, which is a wide, liberal religion unfettered by narrow rules, and Hindutva, which seeks to use the name of Hinduism to advance a political agenda by imposing uniformity on a religion that essentially thrives owing to its enormous diversity.

In the past one year or so, the HJS has stepped up the tempo of its activities in Goa. It has organised shows of an exhibition prepared by the French Hindutva supporter Francois Gautier. This exhibition, on the sufferings of the Kashmiri Pandits, presents issue of their displacement in an explicitly communalised framework. It tries to paint all Muslims with a 'terrorist' brush, and to unite Hindus against them. The HJS has shown this exhibition all over Goa, including in the government-controlled Kala Academy, and made it the centrepiece of its mobilisation programme for Hindus.

The HJS has also been organising Dharma Jagruti Sabhas. After Farmagudi, the most recent one was in Margao, in collaboration with, among others, the Bajrang Dal. The Sabha did have some religious content, in the shape of a 'pravachan' (sermon) by the pontiff of the Tapobhumi Mutt at Kundaim. But it also had a number of incendiary speeches that had little to do with religion and more to do with propagating hate. Jayesh Naik, South Goa chief of the Bajrang Dal, openly 'challenged' Margao's Muslims to attack the Hindus and promised a fitting reply. This is the kind of rabble rousing that dominates these Sabhas, which are prominently attended by members and office-bearers of other Sangh Parivar outfits, including the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and the BJP.

The website of the HJS at hindujagruti.org is extremely interesting. It takes on anything and everything that it sees as an attack on Hinduism. At present, the main issues that the HJS sees as 'anti-Hindu' offensives are the Bollywood film Jodhaa-Akbar, Artist M F Husain's paintings and the 'Ram Setu' project. The website calls for direct action to counter these 'threats to Hinduism'. Incitement to violence is common. The moderated comments include calls to bury alive alleged offenders against Hinduism, to execute them, kill them, hang them, and shoot them.
The website carries detailed stories about the success of the FACT exhibition and the Dharma Jagruti Sabhas. Former Chief Minister Pratapsingh Rane is pilloried for selecting a painting that allegedly denigrates Shiva for an exhibition at the Kala Academy. If one believes the website, desecration and vandalisation of temples is something of a cottage industry in Goa; apart, of course, from conversions. A message from Jayant Athavale, founder of the Sanatan Sanstha, exhorts Hindus to 'embrace the aggressive path'.

Clearly, the HJS and its activities are about politics rather than dharm. Religion, to the extent that it comes into the activities of HJS, is there only for three purposes: to leverage Hinduism as a base for identity politics and communal mobilisation; to give a veneer of respectability to an essentially divisive agenda; and to lay down a strict Brahminical line of ritual observance, without due respect for the natural, organic, and popular variations within Hindu religious practices.

Obviously, Sudin Dhavlikar is being disingenuous when he claims that the Dharma Jagruti Sabha at Ponda was related to dharm rather than politics. And he is not alone in flirting with the dangerous agenda of the HJS. It is a sign of the soft communalism that is creeping into our society that the HJS has even succeeded in persuading some environmentalists, intellectuals and social activists to participate in its sabhas. But let no one be under any illusions. The agendas of the HJS and its Dharma Jagruti Sabhas have very little to do with dharm, either in the sense of pure religion or in the sense that Mahatma Gandhi used 'dharm' -as a moral, ethical order independent of organised religion - and everything to do with 'politics'.