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Ramachandra Guha: What Hindutva shares with Islamism

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Ramachandra Guha: What Hindutva shares with Islamism Empty Ramachandra Guha: What Hindutva shares with Islamism

Post by Guest Sun Feb 14, 2016 12:52 pm

It was the historian Dharma Kumar who first identified the curious parallels between Hindutva and Islamism. This was in the early 1990s, at the time of the Ramjanmabhoomi movement, which led to attacks on minorities across the country. Dharma Kumar had then argued that the RSS wanted ‘to build an Islamic State — for Hindus’. In medieval Islamic polities, Jews and Christians were accorded second-class status. They were not allowed to hold state office, but could practise their professions peacefully so long as they recognised their political subordination. This was precisely how the RSS expected Christians and Muslims to behave in India.
More recently, another historian, Irfan Habib, has compared the RSS to the Islamic State. This is a considerable (if not wild) exaggeration. The IS wants to dominate the entire world, not just one country. The jihadis in Syria and Iraq are barbarians, capable of mass murder and of the savage obliteration of history. The IS seeks to commit genocide against Christians, Yazdis, and even Shias.
To me, Dharma Kumar’s nuanced comparison makes more sense. The RSS wishes to subjugate Muslims and Christians, not to exterminate them completely. That said, in the context of the open, plural, democratic society that the Indian Constitution envisaged, the RSS does come across as bigoted and majoritarian...

Once again, the parallels with radical Hindutva are striking. In India, Muslims and Christians (and Dalits and Adivasis too) are under pressure to change their dietary habits to conform to the upper-caste Hindu pattern. Hindu extremists attack women in towns who wear jeans, and demand that women in villages not be allowed to choose their life partners.
Patriarchy and bigotry; these have been the twin pillars of religious majoritarianism everywhere, and at all times. India is no exception.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/columns/from-is-to-rss-drawing-parallels-between-islamism-and-hindutva/story-pmJCTRGbXlMfyp4r72EZsJ.html

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