FRACTURE FIGUREHEAD
As the centenary year of Deendayal Upadhyaya closes,
Apoorvanand examines why the late Jan Sangh leader is being actively
deified and prodded to the top of national iconography
Upadhyaya was kept in the background in the days of aggressive ascendance of the BJP. Now he has been dusted and brought out of the closet.
The BJP and the RSS believe that now that they have more or less captured the parliamentary political space, it is crucial to begin transforming the semiology of Indian nationhood. They realise that Mahatma Gandhi is too deeply ingrained in the national subconscious. Rather than wasting energy on erasing him from national memory, they are trying to "modify" Gandhi by hollowing out his staunch stand against majoritarianism. The idea is to gradually devour Gandhi ji and produce before the nation a likeness which would be Gandhian in form but a Hindu nationalist in content. To do this, they first need to replace Nehru as Gandhi's chief interpreter.
This search has led the Sangh to a Deendayal Upadhyaya. There is nothing extraordinary about his looks. He comes across as the man next door. Bespectacled, clean shaven and dhoti-kurta clad, he looks perfectly Indian, lower middle class and can also be passed off as an earthly intellectual, a village school teacher. He looks soft, his presence is non-threatening unlike the tougher, more daunting image of [K.B.] Hedgewar and [M.S.] Golwalkar. But ideologically, he remains an unadulterated anti-minority Hindu nationalist.
Upadhyaya was a trusted man of Golwalkar who selected him to keep the Bharatiya Jan Sangh ideologically aligned with the RSS. Made general secretary of the Jan Sangh just after its creation, he took over as its chief in 1967, a very crucial year as it was the time Congress hegemony first showed signs of weakening, giving an opportunity to the RSS to occupy spaces created.
The ambition of the RSS has always been to capture India in all its aspects. It waited for the British to vacate India and used the interlude to gradually strengthen its organisational power and also its hold over the Hindu mind. Hindus were to act as its willing vehicle to the destination. The RSS has been a true practitioner of the Gramscian notion of the war of position. Only by Hinduising the "insufficient" Hindus could it aim to make them its armoured vehicle.
The first thing the RSS did was to replace Hindutva with Bharatiyata. Hindutva was redundant since, as Upadhyaya explained, "Indian nationalism is nothing but Hindu nationalism" and "Indian culture is Hindu culture". The ideal goal, however, remained: Akhand Bharat. It cannot be achieved without undoing the great sin of Partition which mutilated Mother India. It means bringing Pakistan back to the fold but to do this the Muslims on the right side of the border need to be fully Indianised. To be Indianised, they first need to be "purified".
Inaugurating the centenary year of Deendayal Upadhyaya a year ago, the most important message that the Prime Minister picked from Upadhyaya was his call to purify Muslims. He said, "Fifty years ago Pandit Upadhyaya said 'do not reward/appease [ puraskrit] Muslims; do not shun [tiraskrit] them but purify [ parishkrit]". When criticised by AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi for this zeal to cleanse Muslims of "undesirable characteristics" to make them more Indian, a representative of the RSS clarified by asking Muslims to evolve from their old mindset and "critically examine and accept the pre-Islamic cultural and intellectual legacy of India".
Admirers of Hitler and yet pragmatists, the leaders of the RSS realised after the fall of Germany and Japan that the model of extermination of "aliens" was not viable. If it could not be achieved by the super-efficient Germans under the uncompromisingly ruthless Hitler, it would be impossible in India, where being Hindu means different things to different communities and castes. Their first task was to try and create a homogenous entity called the Hindu. It was a long haul. So, the model proposed by the RSS was to establish dominance over Muslims, the largest "other" of the Hindu, permanently. The dominance had to be couched in a cultural and civilisational language. Muslims and Christians were to be claimed as our own. But since they themselves suffer from an amnesia about their origin, it is the sacred duty of the true bearers of Hinduness or Indianness to cure them of this forgetfulness.
Much later we heard a member of the Sangh Parivar terming Muslims as our own, just the way a headache is our own; but you cannot live in peace as long as the headache persists.
Upadhyaya suggested a way out for Muslims. It was to cure themselves of the desire to be distinct from Hindus. The onus was on the Muslims.
Upadhyaya claimed that Indian culture is like the sacred Ganges. Since the Ganges has purifying powers, anything that enters it has the advantage of being purified. How strong is the purifying urge can be understood if we read Upadhyaya, who asks even the Yamuna to lose its darkness by mingling with the white Ganges. Would Muslims avail of this opportunity to purify themselves or not is for them to decide.
India, to Upadhyaya, is naturally a nation, unlike the artificial Western construct of nations. Also, it has been a unified entity from time immemorial and the task before all good Indians is to restore it to its original Akhand form. He asserted, "Undivided Bharat is not a Utopian idea, but a carefully thought-out ideal. Some people consider the Partition of India a settled fact... These people have forgotten history and have never properly understood its implications. The country was divided into many parts during Muslim domination but our Hindu leaders never accepted that as a settled fact and continued to fight against it... there is only one nation in this country. There is no minority in this nation...
He further stated "...there exists only one culture here. There are no separate cultures here for Muslims and Christians. Culture is not related to mode of worship or sect; it is related to the country. Kabir, Jayasi and Rasakhan should serve as models for Muslims. Today their centre of loyalty is outside Bharat. The Muslims must completely change their sentiment and view."
Upadhyaya is very clear that Muslims are a problem India has to deal with. But that job has to be done "strategically and beautifully". He was the best bet for the RSS for his ability to confuse people with his teacherly, non-violent demeanour. A Gandhian disguise helps people like Upadhyaya to gain access to civilised spaces. Similarly, a vacuous concept of integral humanism helps people to present Upadhyaya as a humanist despite his uncompromising anti-Muslim views.
It does not require a deep reading of Upadhyaya (because there is nothing deep about him) to see that he represents the true ambition of the RSS - to stage a Hindu Revolution against the India held together by its constitutional principles.
Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University
