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Modi: Driving Forward with Eyes on the Rearview Mirror

Let us not beat around the bush. BJP's win in the last round of Assembly polls, in which it has emerged as the single largest party in Maharashtra and with a single party majority in Haryana, is significant for all of us. For the BJP core Hindutva support base, it is a “new” India in which the Hindu face of India should permeate all aspects of nationhood. For all of us who value the promise of India as a secular and diverse nation, there is indeed much to worry about.

We are all witnessing the current strategy of communal mobilisation of the BJP; it is to create communal tensions in every locality. Some where it is temples against mosques, some where else, it is starting bhagvati jagrans close to mosques with loudspeakers, or “bans” on Muharram and other processions. The underlying strategy is to keep the communal cauldron boiling all the time and consolidate the “Hindus”, but without major riots; low level but continuous communal violence.

Not that this is new. Those who saw the poisonous communal campaign of the RSS after independence, will remember the continuous chain of riots that were engineered then. The bigger riots had enquiry commissions that brought out what was common knowledge -- the RSS and its political arm, the Jana Sangh (the previous avatar of the BJP) were fully complicit in the riots. I still remember the incendiary speeches that the RSS and Jana Sangh leaders made all over the country based on any small incident. They were all incitements to hatred and violence – this has been and is is the hallmark of the Hindutva groups.

Image Courtesy: en.wikipedia.org

The RSS claims it is a nationalist force. They never participated in the national movement against the British. Their focus, as always, was only against the Muslims. While the Congress, the socialists and the communists all had major figures who led struggles against the British, the only figure the Hindutva forces have ever produced is Savarkar. Yes, Savarkar did have an important role at the start of the national movement, but marred it by his surrender to the British later1. His visceral hatred led him to be a party in the conspiracy in Gandhi's assassination. Apart from Savarkar's early years, the RSS can find no other figure in the national movement.

So in what way are the RSS nationalists even though they did not participate in the movement to throw out the British?

The answer to that is that for the RSS, fighting Islamic “invasion” that took place in the 11th-12th century. Its nationalism is not directed against the British but against Muslims who they felt had conquered india. That is why while talking about the future, they exist only in the past; driving towards the future with their eyes firmly fixed in the rear view mirror.

While communal violence and riots are serious business, what can one say of the BJP and the RSS fascination for the past? We now have a Prime Minister who gets up and unabashedly talks about India having genetics and organ transplants based on the Mahabharata. Apparently Karna was a product of “genetics” that existed at that time and Ganesh a result of “plastic” surgery! This is Batra history that Modi is regurgitating. We now have the Prime Minister of the country making a laughing stock of himself and the country by spouting such utter nonsense in public.

It is also interesting how the BJP has always liked technology and disliked science. Science demands critical thinking and critical thinking is anathema to the BJP. Technology poses no such problems. You can climb on a Toyota and call it a “Rath” and talk about Ram's birthplace without having to go through the methods of science – actually gather and sift through evidence, make conjectures, try and prove it, etc. All of this is hard work and requires critical thinking, something that that strain the RSS minds too much. History is a scientific discipline while TV utterances of even the Prime Ministers are not. This is the test of science – whoever says it, it can be verified and proven. Nonsense, however “exalted” the person is, still remains nonsense.

1 RC Majumdar, PENAL SETTLEMENTS IN ANDAMANS (pp. 211-213) published by the Department of Culture, Government of India, in 1975.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Newsclick

 

 

 

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