Hindutva and liberal India

A New York Times article written by Abhrajyoti Chakraborty appeared on December 1, highlighting how the right-wing agenda of the RSS cabal and Modi-led government has drastically changed the socio-cultural landscape of India. The writer has made the works of the leading liberal documentary producer and filmmaker, Anand Patwardhan, as the centre piece of his discourse.

Patwardhan has spent his life documenting changes in the Indian socio-cultural landscape and his work was largely censored by Indian governments, forcing him to adopt informal channel. Of late, the internet and social media platforms have allowed him to upload his documentaries online for a wider audience.

His latest work on the documentary, Reason, has drawn international interest, but his attempt to launch it in India faced a number of challenges. The gist of article by Chakraborty suggests the following:

The world’s largest democracy has plunged into a majoritarian abyss since the BJP came to power in 2014. With testimonies from witnesses to mob lynchings, stories of college students driven to suicide by intense right-wing ostracism and interviews with Hindu nationalists defending the frequent murders of journalists and activists, Patwardhan contradicts the narrative that the BJP routinely projects to the country’s 900 million voters: a story where, under Modi, India is at last starting to fulfil its potential, more than 70 years after the independence.

Modi’s war on reason has led to transformation of Indian culture of secularism into that of a grand lynch mob. RSS outlets like Sanatan Sanstha — a Hindu extremist organisation linked to four high profile assassinations in the last seven years — openly threatens any one with liberal ideas.

The Indian general public takes this change as the new normal and its minds have been infiltrated. There is no need for coercion. The society has been conditioned into a false sense of normalcy.

The Indian journey from its pluralist post-Partition ideals to a Hindu hegemony is reaching its destination. Dissenting voices have become inconvenient and RSS won’t allow it to mar the environment created by Hindutva rule since 2014.

Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) was placed under indefinite lockdown and its special status under the Indian federation, which had afforded it a degree of autonomy, was revoked. Local politicians were arrested; phones and internet lines were cut off with reports of thousands of civilians being detained.

India’s promise was embodied by three founding fathers: Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar. Despite their different priorities, the three shared a vision of India that preserved its historic heterogeneity, where secularism meant a benign, if sometimes mushy affinity for all faiths. India has reversed the gains so painstakingly achieved in establishing the facade of secularism, and RSS has bulldozed its way through to destroy the very fabric of India.

In India, the Modi years are often spoken of as an “undeclared emergency”. But something more enduring, a fundamental reimagining of the nation as a homeland for Hindus, appears to be afoot. The country’s 200 million Muslims are seen first as suspects, then citizens. They are accused of killing cows for meat and cornered in public places to prove their patriotism. Muslim men are beaten up over Facebook posts and blamed for everything from the country’s “overpopulation” to luring away Hindu women through “Love Jihad”.

Many cities and landmarks that reflect India’s Muslim heritage have been renamed. Some school textbooks now glorify Hindu myths and paint the Subcontinent’s Muslim rulers in a barbaric light. Hate crimes against Muslims and other minorities have gone unprosecuted for years. Dissenting artists and academics are told to “go to Pakistan” if they don’t like the way things are.

The rise of the BJP and RSS has also been accompanied by mounting attacks on freedom of expression. Publishers have been pressured to withdraw books critical of Hindu figures. Reporters have been harassed, silenced with spurious criminal cases and in some instances killed. Policemen have gone on rampages inside university campuses. More than 50 writers and filmmakers, including Patwardhan, have returned their state awards in protest. A few weeks ago, the government passed an order to regulate online news and streaming content, stoking fears of more censorship.

Coming to the documentary, Reason: taking extracts from the article under discussion, Reason tries to cover every aspect of this traumatic transition, the wanton displays of coercion and cruelty that increasingly characterise what Modi’s supporters gleefully call the “New India”.

Reason is structured around the murders of four Indian activists, all of whom appear to have been targeted for their resistance to Hindu orthodoxy. Narendra Dabholkar, a former physician, campaigned against regressive Hindu superstitions in villages; Gauri Lankesh, a journalist, was a vocal critic of the BJP; MM Kalburgi was a scholar who had spoken out against the practice of worshiping Hindu idols. All three were shot point-blank with the same calibre pistol. The shooters were men who were seen escaping on motorcycles. But the heart of Reason is Govind Pansare, a lawyer and Communist intellectual, who was assassinated early one morning in February 2015. Pansare had been active in progressive movements against caste and other discriminatory Hindu practices in Maharashtra.

We had highlighted the march of Hindutva in India in an article published by an English daily in Pakistan in May last year, to find if Godse has defeated the spirit of Gandhi. Looking at the drooping faces of leftists and liberals in India after 2019 elections, it appears that the Hindu majority has stamped the idea of Hindu Rashtra and it will be very convenient for RSS and BJP to move to the next step by officially declaring India as a Hindu republic.

The greatest casualty of this election has been the Muslim, Dalit and Christian voter; bewildered, confused and divided, the minorities have been suffocated completely. Another trend during campaigning in the Lok Sabha election and in Bihar was the fear of Congress and other secular parties to raise their voice for minorities. This appeasement of the majority Hindu population has now become a standard pattern in all political discourse in India and is being labelled as soft Hindutva. Another major group to suffer badly is the left and liberal segment of educated Indians, who were already labelled as Urban Naxal by the RSS-BJP cabal. This group, who lost great names at the hands of RSS affiliated terror groups, will be pushed into a tight corner.

The re-election of Modi with a landslide in 2019 has strengthened the perception that the Hindutva agenda of the RSS cabal is no more a dream but a reality. The debate and discourse on mainstream media is dominated by Godi media, bankrolled by corporate India. The parliamentary system and the pantheon of democracy is no more a debating forum but a notice board, where orders from Rajpath are posted to be followed without any discussion.

In a nutshell, Patwardhan’s documentaries appear to be a rear guard action by the liberal and secular India; however this action is becoming a losing battle as the time passes. Recent elections in Bihar indicate that Hindutva ideology has permeated into every nook and corner of India and the persona of Modi has transformed from Mahapurush to that of a Mahatma, who despite poor governance and Neo Nazi credentials, must be blindly followed.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 4^th, 2020.

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