Resurgent and increasingly militant movement of Hindu revivalism sweeps across India
Slowly but surely, a resurgent and increasingly militant movement of Hindu revivalism is sweeping across the country. The message in the new militancy is that the minorities are being pampered while the majority has been restrained from asserting Hindu nationalism.
The symbol is stark, simple, and effective: Lord Kama imprisoned in a padlocked cage. For more than two years now, the incarcerated deity has been criss-crossing the land aboard garishly caparisoned raths, pounding out a messianic message: Hinduism is in danger.
That message has struck a high-strung emotional chord. Slowly but surely, like a juggernaut gaining angry momentum, a palpable, resurgent, united and increasingly militant movement of Hindu revivalism - Hindu jagaran - is sweeping across the land.
Frenzied in pace, frenetic in character, the religious and communal combat vehicle is free wheeling across the collective Hindu consciousness, dragging in its slip-stream a divergent following - shopkeepers, sadhus, social activists, professionals, businessmen - and threatening to trigger off transformations of unfathomable dimensions in the country's tightly-stretched political and social fabric.
In Punjab, sharpened trishuls have become standard wear for militant Hindu youths, united under the new battle cry of 'Om'. In Kerala, angry demonstrations and mailed fists greeted Pope John Paul's visit.
Elsewhere, issues like the Shah Bano affair and the Muslim Women's Bill have evoked militant responses from Hindu organisations, which see these as provocative symbols of minority pressure being applied to wrest concessions from the Government.
| "Beyond caste, beyond parties, O Hindus, awake, arise and unite." Swami Satyanarayana Saraswaty, Ramdasa Mission Universal Society |
Ayodhya has been dragged out of relative obscurity to be transformed into a communal cauldron. The Meenakshipuram and other conversions have led to impassioned rhetoric about a resurgent Islam riding in on the strength of petro-dollars.
The new militancy is menacing, and growing in intensity. And the message being hammered home is the same: for too long, the minorities have been appeased and pampered while the majority has been restrained from asserting what it holds to be the only basis for unifying the country - Hindu nationalism.
The new mood and the forces taking shape manifest themselves in dozens of ways: in the sharply increased attendance at temples, the growing strength of the once discredited Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which has seen a sudden and unprecedented increase in attendance at its drills and enjoyed the growing popularity of its numerous front organisations, the drive to reconvert people from Islam and Christianity to Hinduism and the effort to end Christian or Muslim proselytisation, the palpable increase in communal tensions across the country's northern belt, the programme aimed at "liberating" more than two dozen Hindu temples converted into mosques by the Mughal rulers, the growing popularity of all-night jagarans, even perhaps in the character of the vote in the 1984 general elections, described by a variety of political pundits as a Hindu backlash.
 Ashok Singhal, VHP Mahamantri  P.N. Haksar |
The clarion call to Hindu nationhood, sounded from the pulpits of rath yatras, dharnas, morchas, andolans, padyatras and kirtans organised by socio-cultural-religious groups like the RSS, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Virat Hindu Sammelan, Hindu Samajotsav and others like the Bajrang Dal and Youth Volunteer Corps, has found credence and acceptability among the unlikeliest of people; people who are banding together, for the first time, under one saffron banner.
Observes K.C. Kulish, publisher of the Rajasthan Patrika: "There has been a spurt of religious activity in all areas. But I have never seen the kind of religious fervour that exists today. It is the response of a people who are not at peace."
In Kerala, one of the most important centres for the jagaran, Marxists have in some cases given up their traditional clashes with RSS activists, and many notable CPI(M) members have been attending VHP meetings in order to court the Hindu vote against the Karunakaran Government.
In Trivandrum, Leela Thampy, a social worker, now supports the VHP and talks about "the raw deal Hindus have been getting from the Government and media". In Tamil Nadu's Ramanathapuram district, former hardcore Dravida Kazhagam activist and artist N. Balasubramaniam - once given to iconoclasm and opposition to organised Hinduism - celebrates his new habit of temple-going and excoriates the "carelessness of Hindus about their religious rites and ignoring their own religion".
There can be no doubt that the Hindu juggernaut has arrived, its wheels propelled by surprisingly large numbers of Hindus from every corner of the nation who have begun to articulate as - if with one voice - a feeling of persecution.
The majority appears to have developed a minority complex. And within the confines of this mass psyche, it is embarked upon a zealous unification - a zeal marked by religious purgation. Harijan and tribal uplift aimed at persuading lower caste Hindus who have strayed into Christianity or Islam to re-enter Hinduhood, xenophobia, the formation of multifarious Shiv Senas withtrishul-wielding acolytes banded into self-defence groups, public works and educational projects, and militant demands for ending what are seen as the special privileges enjoyed by the religious minorities.
During a recent Ram Navmi Mahotsav organised by the VHP in Ayodhya in April, to celebrate and plan further for the liberation of the Ramjanmabhoomi site - attended by about a few million people and hundreds of mahants and mandaleshwars representing different Hindu sects - a swami offered a new twist to the well-known pacifist couplet: Jo take kanta bove tahi bove too phool (shower flowers on the enemy who pricks you with a thorn).
The swami's version: Jo take kanta bove tahi bove too bhala. Voh bhi humko kya samjhega, para kisee se paala (he who pricks you with a thorn, pierce him in return with a spear and teach him a lesson he won't forget).
Small towns across Uttar Pradesh echo with resounding Shiv Sena cries of Jo hum se takrayega choor choor ho jayega (He who takes us on will be crushed into smithereens), and Hindu ki pahchaan. Trishul ka nishan (recognise Hindus by the sign of the trident). Even liberal, reformist Hindu organisations like the Arya Samaj have been swept along by the currents of the militant resurgence.
At a recent centenary celebration in Delhi, the first speaker, Ramgopal Shalwale, a former Jan Sangh MP, said that one of the most recent and significant achievements of the Samaj was its having prevented a masjid from being erected inside Rashtrapati Bhavan when a Muslim was the President of the country.
 Bir Bahadur Singh, U.P. Chief Minister  Rajendra Singh, RSS General Secretary |
His call to "free" Bharat Mata from outside influences was greeted with resounding cheers and shouts of Jo Bole so abhaya, Vedic Dharma ki jaya (speak out fearlessly, long live the Vedic religion). The meeting was attended, among other important personages, by K.C. Pant, cabinet minister.
The cooler heads in the community are a ware of the inherent dangers in the new mood of militancy and have been trying, unsuccessfully, to counsel restraint. Says Vayalar Ravi, Kerala's home minister who has been fighting an unsuccessful battle to ban the sale of public lands to religious organisations: "Will it solve any problems if everybody tries to live like a Hindu or as a Christian or as a Muslim and not as an Indian in this country? It will not."
Adds Tariq Anwar, chief coordinator of the Congress Sewa Dal: "No one seems to be thinking where we are heading by adopting this aggressive communal posture. While it is the duty of the majority community to ensure that the minorities feel safe and part of the nation's mainstream, minorities are dutybound to prove that they want to respond to friendly accommodation."
The Hindu cause has found a redoubtable champion in Orissa's coastal town of Puri, the spiritual capital of India in the east. He is Niranjana Dev Tirtha, 81, the 144th Jagadguru Shankaracharya, one of the most venerated personages of Hinduism. He perceives the Government as the greatest enemy of Hinduism because of what he calls its policy of "appeasing" the minorities.
He accuses the Government of having bowed to minority sentiments in passing the Muslim Women's Bill because the Government saw the Supreme Court verdict in the Shah Bano case as an intrusion into the community's internal affairs. "But in Hindu social affairs." he fumes, "there is daily interference."
The Shankaracharya is particularly irked by the minimum marriage age law and the Hindu Religious Endowment Act which allows the Government to take over temple land. "The Government has taken away 550 acres of our land in Orissa," he says.
"But can you imagine the Government touching even an inch of mosque or church property?" And he argues that by making Hindus vulnerable and insecure, the Government has "negated secularism. There must be a common law for all inhabitants of this country".
Hindu stalwarts like him are convinced - however ludicrous it might sound - that a conspiracy of sociology and demography will soon render the Hindus a minority with in their own country, bereft of economic and political power. The Shankaracharya has now taken to travelling around the country to drum up support for his crusade against the Government.
"Everywhere I go I sense a feeling of helplessness among the Hindus," he says, and charges that the current "weakness of Hindu society and morals" is the Government's fault. In the cause of Hindu awakening and unity, he brought a procession of more than 1 lakh Hindus to the Kumbhmela, led by 72 Hindu organisations from all over India, and united them on a three-point pledge: Stop the slaughter of Hindus in Punjab, ban cow slaughter, and pass uniform laws for all religions.
The Jagadguru's views are a distillation of the essence of the reasons behind the Hindu restiveness and call to revivalism. The irony that 600 million Hindus, comprising 80 per cent of the population, should feel threatened by a handful of disparate minorities has somehow been buried under the rising tide of Hindu revivalism and truculence embodied in the Shankaracharya's remarks.
And the deadly seriousness of the crusade leaves no passage for pondering over paradoxes. The symbolic Ram Ratha represents, in apotheosis, the crisis that many Hindus see as having overcome their community.
 Vayalar Ravi, Kerala Home Minister  Yadavrao Joshi, RSS Joint General Secretary. |
Intones Ashok Singhal, 58, mahamantri of the VHP, the 22-year-old organisation which is in the forefront of the resurgence: "It is as if God himself is going to the people and beseeching them to unshackle him. What is happening among the Hindus today is like an incarnation. It is like God himself in action."
The current Hindu mood started with a slow burn in 1981, after the mass religious conversions at Meenakshipuram. And it was soon after this that the VHP came into prominence. But the slogans of Hinduism in danger, periodically mouthed by the RSS and VHP, gained momentum with the disturbances in Punjab and Kashmir where, it was perceived, Hindus were at the receiving end because of the connivance of an appeasement-minded government.
There was more grist for the mill with the Shah Bano and the Muslim Women's Bill controversy, and the call to action issued by Syed Shahabuddin, Janata MP over the unlocking of the Ramjanmabhoomi temple.
The Muslims saw black. The Hindus saw red. And what was an amorphous feeling of Hindu malaise exploded last winter into a palpable, energetic movement, a movement that was revanchist and which began to smell the political power that comes with unity. Ekatma yagyas and celebrators of the Ramjanmabhoomi "liberation" clashed with protesters fired by the influence of the Babri Masjid Action Committee. Communal violence flared. And the killings still continue.
Whether based on reality or imaginary fears, the feeling of being de-Hinduised in a predominantly Hindu country is nonetheless sincere and deeply ingrained in large numbers of Hindus, though one cannot say what percentage of the majority community has been caught up in the new mood.
One of the revivalist movement's unique and most significant recent manifestations is the creation of the Dharma Sansad, which now guides the actions of the VHP. The sansad consists of representatives of just about every Hindu sect and order of sanyasis and sadhus - some 900 of them - who took a vow at a Mahatma sammelan last year, before a gathering of more than 5 lakh people at Udipi in Karnataka, to eschew sectarian differences, give up turf battles and intra-religious litigation, and to fight for the purification of Hinduism and the propagation of Hindu nationalism.
"This is the first time in 600 years that such an event has occurred," says VHP's Singhal. "In fact, during the meeting at Ayodhya, mahatmas and sadhus have pledged to leave their ashrams and go among the people to spread these beliefs. This is nothing short of a Hindu renaissance."
The sheer size of the effort - organised largely by the RSS and VHP - and its geographical spread are staggering. In Kerala, now gripped by Hindu insecurity because of the perception that Muslims and Christians are rising in numbers, more than 1 lakh RSS activists turned out in uniform recently to listen to Balasaheb Deoras. Nearly all the 5,000 villages in Kerala now have RSS shakhas.
And communities like the Nairs, Ezhavas and Namboodiris have begun to unite on single platforms to fight for what they call "the Hindu cause", RSS shakhas have in fact doubled in number during the last three years, and are now attended by more than a million people daily. This means that every fifteenth Hindu now living in Kerala, regardless of party affiliation, attends an RSS drill.
Aggressive Hinduism is also evident in the attendance at Hindu temples and other religious gatherings. Some 16,000 coconuts are broken daily at the famous Ganesha temple in the heart of Trivandrum, compared to 9,000 three years ago.
 Leela Thampy, social worker in Kerala  Ramakant Jalota, Shiv Sena organiser |
The Sabarimala Hindu shrine, located in the heart of the Muslim-dominated Idukki district, attracted 5 million devotees last year, double the number two years back. Money collected at Sabarimala has shot up fivefold. And every day, some five million worshippers visit Kerala's 6,000 Hindu temples, donating an estimated Rs 20 lakh in hard cash.
A ratham carrying an idol of Agatsya rishi is slowly moving towards a temple in the ancient Agatsya Hill in Kerala. Earlier attempts to install the murti had been foiled by the Government in response to minority sentiments. "But this time we are determined to restore the temple to its Hindu glory," says Kerala VHP President K.V. Eradi. The VHP has also banded 36 Hindu organisations in Kerala into a temple protection committee with branches in every taluka and district.
Said S. Parameshwaran, a member of the committee: "We cannot allow the temples to be run by non-believers who are in the Government. For many years there was no nexus between the temples and the Hindu community. Now we are organising Smarka Ardhanas in these temples to discuss our problems. There is a new awakening."
And there has now arisen in Kerala the Young Men's Hindu Association (YMHA) attached to the Ramadasa Mission. Its members are mostly college-going students. Says R. Ravi, 28, an economics student who heads the YMHA: "We have failed to channelise the dynamism of Hindu society, which has been lying dormant. Once we are able to awaken this sleeping giant all our ills will evaporate."
In Karnataka, the site of the Dharma Sansad, 700 VHP committees run schools, temples, hostels and medical centres. In order to spread Hinduism among children, VHP now organises an annual Bharatiya Sanskrit Parichaya Pariksha in which students are tested for their knowledge of the Mahabharata and Ramayana, and awarded gold and silver medals for excellence.
This year 39,000 students from 750 schools participated, as against 17,000 last year. Among the cardinal tenets of the new Hindu resurgence is the reinduction of low caste Hindus into the religious fold.
Swamy Sathyananda Saraswaty of the Ramadasa Mission Universal Society now preaches the slogan Jathlkalkatheetharai partikalkatheerai Haidavare Unaruka Unaruka (Beyond caste, beyond parties, O Hindus, awake, arise, and unite), VHP workers have also begun to intercede in violent quarrels between upper caste Lingayats and Harijans in an attempt to bring them together, RSS joint General Secretary Yadavrao Joshi boasts: "Hindus are no longer shy of calling themselves Hindus."
The same pattern prevails in Tamil Nadu. Rathams run by the VHP have begun to symbolise Hindu unity, drawing in Brahmins and the Scheduled Castes, and even the supposedly godless cadres of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.
Three rathams named Shakti, Gyanam and Deep, starting from villages in Tamil Nadu, criss-cross the south each day carrying Hindu deities and swamis from various muths through villages and Harijan bastis, offering the lower castes the opportunity to perform Abhishekas which they are not allowed to do in the temples.
The sleepy village of Kalancheri in Papanasam taluk on the Thanjavur-Kumbakonam route, with a population of 1,000, now boasts of six Hindu temples. Two months ago, more than 20,000 devotees turned out at the inauguration of the Kumbabhishekam temple built by the VHP.
 Syed Shahabudin, M.P.  D. Khanna, Dharmik Raksha Saraiti |
Now the VHP has begun to construct a temple at Vennputhur, a Harijan village near Thanjavur where there was no place of worship. Christian missionaries had been trying to acquire land for a church. But the VHP pre-empted that effort by moving swiftly to construct a Bhagvati Amman temple there. "We wanted our own place of worship and there is now no inducement for us to change our religion," says Ponnusamy, a villager.
Gujarat has not been immune to the spread of the Hindu Rashtra sentiment which, voiced in the wilderness by the RSS a decade ago, now finds almost eager acceptance in large parts of the state. The sentiment has now acquired a new legitimacy, a new belligerency. Within three short years, RSS shakhas in the state have mushroomed to more than 1,000 from a previous low of 300.
State RSS workers have just completed a house-to-house visiting programme, meeting 5.5 million people in 9,000 villages. Exults Narendra Modi, RSS chief of Ahmedabad: "We cannot cope with the work people want us to do now. There is so much of public involvement and demands made on us."
During the Ekatma Yatra, the VHP organised 53 "Upayatras" carrying Ganga water which would meet the main procession. Hindu consciousness in the state has spurred devotees to celebrate any Hindu festival with eclat and aplomb. During Ram Navmi recently, small towns all over Gujarat were brightly lit and long processions passed through every town.
And last year, a record nine million Hindus from various parts of the state visited Ahmedabad to participate in the Swaminarayana mela, during the course of which thousands of youngsters were inducted into the Swaminarayana cult as swamis.
TheRatha Yatra, an annual feature in Ahmedabad, caused violence and bloodshed this time after it was first prevented and then allowed to pass through Muslim-dominated areas, with Hindus dancing jubilantly to the tune of religious fervour.
Frayed tempers on both sides produced the inevitable clashes, and within minutes seven people lay dead: victims of gunfire. The incident has re-created a surge of communalism in which Hindus, who live in Muslim-dominated areas are selling their houses and moving out. Muslims are doing the same.
Hindu rancour has played a large part in increasing the influence of the VHP. The organisation, to bolster Hindu unity, has started a scheme of Harijan uplift. When Harijan houses were looted and burned in Ambedkarnagar last year, sadhus and sanyasins went around distributing money and high caste Hindus joined the activity.
When Dalit leaders in Gujarat threatened last year that they would convert to Islam if the anti-reservation riots continued, RSS and VHP members held long parleys with them. And the RSS has used this to political advantage. Recent elections to the Prantij Cooperative Bank and the Nagar Panchayat in Himmatnagar witnessed Hindus announcing that they did not want Muslim votes.
In VHP and RSS parlance the movement to reconvert Harijans and tribals is called "Prawartan", literally meaning "return to original position". In a 400-km stretch from Simdega to Palamau in Bihar, the Sri Banbasi Vikas Samiti works assiduously to prevent people from being converted to Christianity.
So far, the Samiti, with the help of the VHP, has constructed 42 schools, five hospitals and four hostels in the region. And on April 18, Ram Navmi Day, the Samiti inaugurated a large Hanuman temple at Anjan in Guhla district, the "birthplace" of Hanuman, 200 km away, near Simdega, Brahmachari Jayram Parpanna Maharaj has devised a novel method to stop Hindu conversions.
For the past three years he has been organising a Malviya Jayanti on Christmas Day todissuade tribals from going to church. The Banbasi Kalyan Kendra - an offshoot of the RSS - was specially set up to wean tribals back to Hinduism.
Headquartered at Lohardagga, near Ranchi, the kendra has established hospitals and temples for tribals and mounted a "mass awareness" campaign during the Pope's visit to prevent conversions, VHP activists claim that nearly 75,000 Hindus have returned to the Hindu fold during the last few years.
While Hindu organisations engage in public construction and social welfare programmes in several stales. If they encourage the formation of Hindu self-defence groups in others. The trishul - Shiva's trident - has emerged as the militant symbol for these loosely-formed militias of unemployed youth and small shopkeepers in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.
In Punjab, the Shiv Sena is a motley crowd, divided into two distinct groups, one led by goldsmith-turned-organiser Ramakant Jalota and dominating Jalandhar.
Kapurthala and Amritsar, and the other led by Jagdish Tangri, a Ludhiana businessman operating in Patiala and Hoshiarpur. Jalota claims that 80,000 youths have been "baptised". These groups now control major Hindu temples, like the Durgiana mandir in Amritsar, Devi Talab in Jalandhar and the Shiv temple in Ludhiana.
"We have enough money to buy arms and defend ourselves," says falota, who can match even Bhindranwale's rhetoric. "We Hindus have been at the receiving end for too long, we cannot tolerate it any more."
In Uttar Pradesh, towns like Meerut, Khatauli, Sambhal and Moradabad, the Muslim heartland of northern India, units of the Akhil Bharatiya Shiv Shakti Dal are being formed. The initiation ceremonies for Hindu recruits are similar to the ones in Punjab, except that they take place after puja and havan ceremonies in small ashrams.
 Tariq Anwar, Congress Sewa Dal  Ravi Kumar, Shiv Shakti Dal, Meerut |
Activists wear saffron caps and sashes, and in addition to wearing plastic-covered trishulsalong their waists, they also sport embroidered trishuls on their clothes. They claim anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 adherents.
During meetings their leaders chant Jo bole so randhir, and the followers answer in refrain, jai Bharat, jai Hinduvir. One of their local leaders in Meerut, Ravi Kumar, son of a local halwai, expressed an intense nationalism at a recent meeting. "Shiv Shakti ka jap karenge, apni raksha aap karenge," he intoned. (This is a time of our testing, we must be ready to sacrifice ourslves for Akhand Bharat).
We are not political but we will create a movement that will help elect only Hindu-minded MLA's and MP's." Their Delhi-based leader, businessman Virendra Sharma, said at a baptism ceremony that Mrs Gandhi had "become a symbol for Hindu martyrdom. The country that was bequeathed to us by our ancestors is being splintered. We must foster a spirit of nationalism and emulate Germany and Japan in the way they built themselves up."
According to senior government officials, numerous towns in western Uttar Pradesh have become flashpoints for more communal violence. Meerut is peaceful now after the killings in February, resulting from clashes over the Ramjanmabhoomi issue. But an official warned that "people are in a fighting mood".
Moradabad, after a respite following the 1980 riots, is tense once again. "There's a lull here." said one official in theft-lakh strong brass capital of north India that has a 45 per cent Muslim population.
"Any local issue ignites a spark." Nearby Sambhal, an ancient town of 80,000, the majority of them Muslim, is tense under an undeclared curfew following a handful of stabbings and killings, RSS activist O.P. Garg claims that Hindus are righting on two fronts - against the Government as well as the local majority community "which is pampered by the local administration". Barabanki is still recovering from a spate of communal violence in which 14 people were killed and 61 injured.
And more holy wars loom ahead. During the next phase of its battleplan. starting this summer, the VHP will move towards Kashi (Varanasi) and Mathura to re-annex the Vishwanath temple and the Sri Krishna janmabhoomi which, they claim, were captured and converted into mosques and idgahs by Mughal emperors.
Though VHP and RSS leaders openly assert that their targets are just these two temples, they are also working on a list of 25 other Muslim shrines which they say were ancient Hindu temples. This long-range plan is already creating panic. Lok Dal Varanasi Vice-President Sharan Yadav describes the VHP plan to launch a drive toward the Kashi Vishwanath temple as "dangerous and disastrous".
That the VHP - the intellectual arm of the RSS - has become so strong is hardly surprising. It has benefited not only from the challenge of Shahabuddin, who claims that "I have to stand up for what I believe to be right because India is my motherland and I can not see it being destroyed by this mania for absorption", but also from the politics of communalism and casteism to which every political party has pandered. "We are reaping now the poisonous brew concocted through those follies," says elder statesman P.N. Haksar.
Organised, ideologically fired, and armed with a million dedicated workers in 3,500 branches all over India, the VHP now reaps the benefits of communal politics played in recent years by none other than the Congress(I).
"You will soon see within this country," warns Singhal "a vertical divide within each political party - those who accept Hindu nationalism and those who don't." VHP, he said, has already completed a mass contact programme in the country which included lobbying 250 legislators at the state and Central levels.
"We find a lot of support for our cause. In fact we have managed to raise about Rs 2.5 crore for our projects, but the Government has imposed a lien on our funds. The Government doesn't question money raised by other religions from foreign sources, but it tries to persecute us."
 Virendra Sharma, Bhartiya Shiv Shakti Dal  R. Ravi, Young Men's Hindu Association |
That the communal chicken has come home to roost is not lost on politicians. Taking note of this development, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Bir Bahadur Singh said: "Today it is the turn of the Hindus to fall into the trap of communalists and raise dangerous questions, tomorrow it will be the turn of the Muslims. We should all think like Indians and not like Muslims,Hindus and Christians."
But the communal divide - now almost out of the control of the mainstream political parties - began with the patronage of Singh's own party. It took an emotional turn in 1983, during the Kashmir polls, when hardcore RSS elements in Jammu forgot their Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidates and joined hands with the Congres(I) in a bid to end Farooq Abdullah's regime. Mrs Gandhi had herself openly exhorted Hindus in the Jammu region to vote for her party.
After 1980, Mrs Gandhi began to refrain from attacking the RSS or BJP on communal issues. And in 1984, the Congress(I) joined hands with the Shiv Sena's Bal Thackeray in Maharashtra to fight the panchayat poll.
Following the Bhiwandi riots, the-then chief minister Vasantrao Patil in fact struck a deal with the Shiv Sena to get a Congress(I) candidate elected to the post of deputy chairman of the council, VHP leaders claim that Mrs Gandhi had several contacts with them and urged them to launch programmes for Hindu unity.
The parishad, in existence since 1964, came into the limelight in 1982, soon after the Meenakshipuram conversions, when it launched a drive that culminated in the reconversion of thousands of Muslims back to Hinduism in Ajmer. That same year, VHP trustee Moropant Pingle conceived of the Ekatma Yagya.
The Congress(I) quietly backed the idea with an eye to political gain. And Mrs Gandhi even rushed to Hardwar to participate in the "Asthapana" function at the Bharat Mata mandiron May 15, 1983. It was during this period that Daudayal Khanna, a former Congress minister of Uttar Pradesh, "guided by some divine powers", wrote a letter to Mrs Gandhi arguing that Hindu holy places in Ayodhya, Mathura, and Varanasi should be "liberated" and given back to the Hindus.
Following severalrath yatrasand mass pledges taken by lakhs of people all over India, the Dharmik Asthan Raksha Samiti was created with Khanna as convenor. "I persuaded the Dharma Sansad to accept this pledge and dedicate it to the VHP cause." says Khanna. "I helped bring the whole movement together and it will be my dying wish that we Hindus succeed."
Ultimately, according to RSS General Secretary Rajendra Singh, a former lecturer in nuclear physics at Allahabad University, "a Hindu nation which accepts all diverse religions as sects, but which does not give any special treatment to any sect, is our goal. We want a consolidated Hindu society, based on our national heroes, and it should be homogeneous."
Singhal added that what is now occurring in India as part of the Hindu jagaran is the RSS and VHP's four-point plan of action. This consists of bringing all the different Hindu sects under one manch to fight for Hindu causes, uplift Harijans and tribals, ban proselytisation, promote Sanskrit as a uniform language, and back political candidates who support Hindu interests.
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, when asked last fortnight about the new revivalism and the activities of organisations like the VHP, conceded that there might be a problem but argued that "by and large the Hindus will remain under control .They will not become fanatics." (see interview on page 68).
But the movement is not to be dismissed lightly, and if it succeeds, says Haksar, "it cannot create a Hindu India of anybody's dreams. If we organise ourselves as Hindus the inevitable reaction will be to organise others in serried ranks of Muslims, Sikhs, tribals, Christians", and, as he points out, a country besieged by revivalist fanaticism cannot produce a united India.
| "Speak out fearlessly Hindu Braves, Glory to India, Glory to Hindus." Battlecry of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Shiv Shakti Dal |
If the country, he argues, is divided along religion, will not only have to contend with 100 million Muslims in India but also in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Arab world. "The East India Company," he says, "peeled our country like an onion. And now my fellow countrymen after 100 years of struggle have learned no lesson from this."
But easily persuaded into ascribing all their woes to creeping Christianity or insidious Islam, increasing numbers of Hindus are in no mood to listen to blandishments of old-time secular sanity.
They are in no mood to listen to arguments that given the 1941 census base - and not the 1951 census in which Muslims were undercounted - the rate of growth in the Hindu and Muslim population has been about the same; that increasing the Muslim population on the basis of polygamy is an impractical exercise and is squarely restricted by the availability of women for each man: that Health Ministry statistics show that within given spheres of socio-economic strata the acceptance of birth control is roughly the same for both communities: that the rate of religious conversions now favours Hindus; that the VHP and Arya Samaj together run more minority-style institutions than other communities; that more than 60 per cent of Muslims live below the poverty line, are miserably under-represented in government jobs in relation to their population, and lag seriously behind in education.
But shibboleths die hard in a time of religious and emotional catharsis. Whether or not communalists and revivalists of all persuasions are propagating false dreams of Indian unity while actually promoting the death of secularism, one thing is certain: the country stands once again before the bar of history.
On trial is nothing less than the appropriateness of the vision of India's founding fathers, who had dared to dream of uniting a country of diverse peoples and faiths along the precepts of Nehruvian secularism, not only because they believed it was the right and just path but also because it appeared to provide the only historical and practical answer to the problem of weaving a diverse people into the fabric of a nation state.
Now, almost 40 years later, India is once again to be judged on its ability to cope with the forces of irrationality and to sustain its vision ofmanavadharma and unity. And among all the slogans of hate and unity now being sounded across the country, the one that is conspicuous by its absence is the ancient and appropriate Vedic credo: Atmavata Sarvabhuteshu - He who looks upon all creation and living things as he looks upon himself, he truly is a great person.
- with Prabhu Chawla, Farzand Ahmed and bureau reports