Do I hate Hinduism?

 

One of the many allegations I face occasionally, after Mr Modi became the PM, is that I hate Hindus or Hinduism or both. This allegation was hurled at me yet again yesterday on Facebook by a person who worked with me for a couple of months in the same school where I taught in Delhi.

It began with a 4-year-old blog post of mine in which I argued that the RSS view of Onam, which is the same as the North Indian view, will never be acceptable to Malayalis for whom the Asura Maveli, rather than the god-incarnate Vamana, is the real hero for obvious reasons. The above-mentioned friend first questioned my knowledge of Hindu scriptures because he, like most others of the fold, thinks that a non-Hindu does not care to study Hinduism. When he realised that I had perhaps more knowledge about Hindu scriptures than himself, he changed his charge against me. He said I refused to accept his good intention. When I questioned his intention, he changed his allegation again: I lacked “the purity of heart, mind, and body” required for understanding the Hindu scriptures. When I pointed out the crimes committed by acknowledged Hindu leaders of today (yogis and such ‘holy’ people) as a contrast to my alleged impurity of heart, he chose to hit me below the belt like any other mediocre bhakt. He said I was driven by hatred of Hindus and Hinduism.

This is an allegation I hear again and again from Modi bhakts. Where do I begin my answer to this?

Let me start with saying that I have a lot of friends who are Hindus. They know me personally and hence they also know that I don’t hate any particular community or religion. Questioning something is not tantamount to hating it.

Why do I question Hinduism? This, I think, is the crux of the problem. Is it because I hate Hinduism? The answer is plain: I don’t hate Hinduism. You think I hate Hinduism because I question Modi and his kind of politics which makes use of Hinduism as a political tool. What I question is not Hinduism but Modi and his religious politics. Vamana and Rama and Krishna all enter the discourse in the process. Obviously. When Modi the Prime Minister stoops to behave like a primitive temple priest on behalf of a mythical king who belonged to an age that history has no record of, it is not only Modi who enters the critical discourse. Myths are man’s creations and Modi is the grandest myth-maker today and so myths are inextricably interlinked with Modi-discourses.

Secondly, Modi is the Prime Minister of a country that carries a population equal to that of the whole of Europe and the USA put together, a population marked by more cultural, religious, linguistic, and ethnic diversity than the entire Europe and the US. Obviously, whatever Modi does is under the scanner. When he begins to exterminate the diversity in his country for the sake of what he envisages as a nation with uniformity, it becomes a matter of concern for certain people among whom I count myself. So it’s natural that I question Modi’s wrong policies. This questioning is no indication of my hatred of anything, let alone Hinduism.

The plain truth is that I don’t like religions, be it Hinduism or anything. I don’t like them because they necessarily blind people. They make people absolute ignoramuses and nauseating bigots. They start wars in the name of non-existent creatures who are imagined to be sitting smugly somewhere in the outer space watching a few billion simians fighting for the safety and security of non-existent, omnipotent, divine entities. I have wished many times for at least one god to become real enough to come down to this planet and give a few nice kicks in the asses of their most idiotic devotees. Since the omnipotent gods don’t do it, I do it as best as I can.

Hinduism enters my writing more frequently merely because I live in a country whose rulers are Hindus, whose majority are Hindus, whose culture is largely Hindu, whose whole national dialectic has been Hinduised. Can I escape from this national proselytising process? I am like a centipede on a road over which massive road rollers and bulldozers move up and down wearing a particular colour. At any time, my existence can just vanish into the gigantic wheels of that one nationalist colour. Obviously, I question the validity of that colour. Obviously, I assert my right to exist. As what I am, and not what any particular religion wants me to be. If the majority religion that sought to pulverise me was Islam, I would question that too. Or whatever else it was, I would question. Question, not hate.

No, mine is not hatred. It is an assertion of my identity, my personal worth. I am ready to fight for that identity and its worth till the last drop of my blood. Because I love real creatures more than imaginary gods and demons. I love while your gods hate.