The News, May 24, 2009
How religious do politicians need to be?
by Aakar Patel
One can be agnostic, or even atheist, and yet Hindu. This separates Hinduism from most faiths: the spectrum of belief, or unbelief, that it can accommodate without discomfort.
On Friday, many of Manmohan Singh's ministers chose the irreligious option for their oath of office. Twelve ministers, including Manmohan Singh, chose "I do solemnly swear in the name of God". But seven ministers used just "I do solemnly affirm" with no mention of god.
These seven included a Christian (A K Antony), an Untouchable (Sushil Kumar Shinde), a peasant (Jaipal Reddy) a warrior (Sharad Pawar, though his caste, the Marathas, is actually an elevated peasant caste), a merchant (P Chidambaram) and a Brahmin (C P Joshi). Lack of religious belief does not generally hinder the Indian politician's career, nor does excessive belief help it.
Gandhi was religious, but his appeal did not come from his ritualistic or mystical side; it came from his rejection of the material world, which is a great thing in Hinduism. That's why he was so careful with the manner of his clothing, his diet, his travel and where and how he lived.
The two most powerful people in India are not Hindus. Manmohan Singh is Sikh and Sonia Gandhi is of course Catholic. The Indian constitution clubs Sikhs and Jains under the larger Hindu fold, but Sikhs are offended to be called Hindus. They reject caste, at least in theory.
Bollywood, which is a better indicator than the constitution, makes reference to 'Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Isai' showing the separation.
Sonia Gandhi is seen, as Indian bahus are, as part of the larger Gandhi fold. In India, the woman becomes 'of the family' after her marriage. That's why most people don't agree with the characterisation of Sonia Gandhi as 'foreign'. The BJP's attacked her for her origin, though it is constitutional for foreign-born people to become prime minister. This kept her from becoming prime minister. But her act of declining office despite her election victory in 2004 made us see her as rejecting the material world. Ultimately that made her more Hindu than the BJP would like.
This is even though, for many years after her marriage, Sonia kept her Italian citizenship. She did not become an Indian citizen till it was clear that Rajiv would rise in politics. Even if she had chosen to become Indian earlier, Sonia could not have become Hindu. Hinduism is not a proselytising faith and one cannot be a converted Hindu. This is because one is born into caste or outside it. That is Karma.
In any case, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is not Hindu in the strict sense. Jawaharlal Nehru was a Brahmin from Kashmir. That is why he is called Pandit Nehru. Not because he was seen as learned, which he was, but because Kashmiri Pandit is how members of the community are referred to. His family name came from the nehr, or canal, that the Nehrus lived next to.
Nehru was agnostic, but in Mushirul Hasan's book The Nehrus, there is a picture of him that made me stop. From 1938, it shows Nehru wearing a dhoti and a janoi, the Brahmin's sacred thread, entering the Ganga. Nehru was also a very regular, and early, practitioner of yoga, the science of yogis.
The name Gandhi comes not from the Mahatma but from Indira's husband Feroze Gandhi, who was Parsi. The Parsi variation of the word Gandhi, which means grocer or merchant in Gujarati, is normally spelled Ghandy. That's because Parsis, like some Gujarati communities, find it difficult to sound the soft 'dh' (as in 'Dharna') and use the harder 'd' (as in 'Diet') instead. But by a happy coincidence Feroze used the conventional spelling and the most powerful name in Indian politics was given extension.
Her marriage to a Parsi offended nobody, but because of it Indira Gandhi was denied entry into the temple of Jagannath in the state of Orissa. Jagannath means 'Lord of All' and the temple is to Vishnu, one of Hinduism's three primary gods. Perhaps uniquely in India, the Jagannath temple's priests have kept a 'Hindus-only' policy, which is counterintuitive if they think of him as Lord of All. But this bigotry comes from the days when only caste Hindus were allowed into temples, and the lower castes and untouchables kept out. The constitution and the Supreme Court have decapitated caste hierarchy in India, but some people are nothing without their prejudice.
Indians were appalled when news of Indira being denied entry appeared, but the temple's policy is still in place.
To return to Feroze Gandhi, like Hindus, Parsis do not proselytise either. Though the community accepts as Parsi the children of Parsi males and non-Parsi women, they do so grudgingly. It is actually unclear what religion the Nehru-Gandhi family belongs to or believes in. But like I said, Indians do not care where on the spectrum of Hinduism you lie. For us it is good enough that the Gandhi family is an extension of Nehru's Brahmin lineage.
Neither of Indira's sons married a Hindu. Rajiv married Sonia, and his brother Sanjay married Maneka, who is Sikh.
The fact that the Gandhis look and behave like we think Brahmins should -- fair, handsome and soft-spoken -- helps them. As does the fact that they have followed Hindu custom. Their names, Rajiv, Sanjay, Priyanka, Rahul and Varun, are Hindu, though Varun is really Feroze Varun and named after his grandfather.
Rajiv was killed by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber in 1991 and he was cremated as a Hindu, burnt on the pyre, as was Indira, killed by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984. Nehru wanted his ashes to be thrown out into the Ganga, as Hindus are wont to do. Being agnostic he had a caveat:
"My desire to have a handful of my ashes thrown into the Ganga at Allahabad has no religious significance, so far as I am concerned. I have no religious sentiment in the matter... I have discarded much of past tradition and custom, and am anxious that India should rid herself of all shackles that bind and constrain her and divide her people, and suppress vast numbers of them, and prevent the free development of the body and the spirit; though I seek all this, yet I do not wish to cut myself off from the past completely... The major portion of my ashes... I want... carried high up into the air in an aeroplane and scattered from that height over the fields where the peasants of India toil, so that they might mingle with the dust and soil of India and become an indistinguishable part of India."
Sometimes caste is more important in India than religion. The chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state, which has 75 million people, is Y S Rajasekhar Reddy who just won another election. Reddys are the state's most powerful peasant caste and the appeal of YSR (as he is known) is to that community, though actually he is Christian.
In India sometimes even leaders who have a religious appeal might not be particularly observant. Shiv Sena's Bal Thackeray is referred to as Hindu Hitrakshak (Protector of Hindu interests). But after his wife's death in 1995, I was present at an interview he gave where he said that he had stopped believing in god and religion.
As he was saying that he was fondling the rudraksha beads that he wears, which are a symbol of religiosity. And he wears saffron, the colour of the Hindu faith, but showing something and believing in something else is accepted in our religion. One cannot stop being Hindu just because one has stopped believing. Fate is fate and we are what we are.
India has had believers as its leaders and Narasimha Rao, prime minister from 1991 to 1996, was the most famous. He was a Brahmin and brought in all sorts of religious men into politics, and they would hold rituals that would tilt the cosmos's blessings towards Rao.
A second prime minister who was deeply religious was the man who held office twice, but only for a few days each time, Gulzarilal Nanda. He filled in after Nehru's death in 1964 and after Shastri's death in 1966. Nanda lived by astrology and was convinced both times, wrongly, that the stars were aligned in his favour and that he would retain the office. He was otherwise a modest man and died in 1998 with no money at all, after being thrown out of his rented house.
A third prime minister who is intriguing for his religious belief was Atal Behari Vajpayee. Though he was the head of a religious party, Vajpayee was not particularly devout himself. This might appear strange particularly because, like all dedicated leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, he isn't married. Narendra Modi isn't either (which might explain his frustrations). But this actually shows the suppleness of the culture that these two men have done so much to project as unyielding.
Anyway, Vajpayee is seen as a lover of the good life and that's a fine thing. The story goes that as prime minister he was accosted by a woman at a party who said it must be so difficult being an RSS man. To this Vajpayee is said to have replied: "Madam, main sirf kunwara hoon, brahmchari nahin (I am only unmarried, not celibate)."
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