Sidharth Bhatia: Hindutva vs Secularism

by Guest Sat Jan 06, 2018 5:57 pm

In the dying days of 2017, Union minister for skill development and entrepreneurship Ananth Kumar Hegde said that those who considered themselves secular did not have their own identity and were ‘unaware’ of their own parentage. At an event to launch the website of the Brahmin Yuva Parishad, Hegde also said that the constitution would be changed in the days to come.

On the first day of the new year, an event held near Pune to mark the victory of Mahars against the Peshwas was attacked, allegedly by followers of two well-known Hindutva leaders. The event commemorates the defeat of Peshwa forces by the British, under whose command the Mahars fought. It has gone off peacefully for years – Babasaheb Ambedkar was a regular presence – but this time crowds waving saffron flags came and disrupted it, beating up participants and vandalising property...

The sudden outburst of Hindutva assertion – whether in Pune, in front of the media or at lectures in obscure towns – may have something to do with what lies ahead. This is the year when eight state elections will be held, and is the last full calendar year before the general elections scheduled in May 2019. As Gujarat showed, the BJP, confident and arrogant even two years ago, cannot take anything for granted. In Gujarat, its die-hard supporters, the Patidars, moved away in significant numbers; what is to say this will not happen at the national level? There is no political opposition to Narendra Modi yet, but who is to know how things will pan out? Elections can be very unpredictable.

On many key fronts – jobs and investment – the government has failed; there is no time to perform any economic miracles. As has been seen in UP and now in Gujarat, when all else fails, there is always Hindutva. In the last stretch of the Gujarat elections, the BJP, led by the prime minister, played several Hindutva cards: Pakistan, dadhi-topi, Aurangzeb, all of which made complete sense to the faithful and rang a bell with the floaters; in 2018 many more such cards will be needed and many more players too.

The sorriest part is that there won’t be a strong counter narrative to it. The Congress, while not a Hindutva-oriented party, has decided to play it low-key on the issue. It seems almost nervous to mention secularism and its leader Rahul Gandhi doesn’t mind visiting temples for the optics. Tactical though it may be, it strikes at the very root of what the party has stood for all these decades.

Clearly, therefore, this is going to be the year when Hindutva will be front and centre in Indian politics. At one end there will be violence perpetrated by the pawns, at the other will be strongly anti-minority statements by the big guns. Much before ‘secular’ is cut out from the constitution, it will become an archaic word in our daily lives.

https://thewire.in/210344/hindutva-india-2018-bjp-rss-sangh/