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Hindutva’s Contradictions


The book I’m reading now is Whose Rama? [in Malayalam] by Sanskrit scholar and professor T S Syamkumar. I had mentioned this book in an earlier post. The basic premise of the book, as I understand from the initial pages, is that Hindutva is a Brahminical ideology that keeps the lower caste people outside its terrain. Non-Aryans are portrayed as monsters in ancient Hindu literature. The Shudras, the lowest caste, and the casteless others, are not even granted the status of humans. 

Whose Rama?

The August issue of The Caravan carries an article related to the inhuman treatment that the Brahmins of Etawah in Uttar Pradesh meted out to a Yadav “preacher” in the last week of June 2025. “Yadavs are traditionally ranked as a Shudra community,” says the article. They are not supposed to recite the holy texts. Mukut Mani Singh Yadav was reciting verses from the Bhagavad Gita. That was his crime.

The Brahmins of the locality got the man’s head tonsured, forced him to rub his nose at the feet of a Brahmin woman who then sprinkled her urine on him. That was the punishment given to a Hindu for reciting the Gita! This is the essence of Hindutva, Whose Rama? teaches me.

I will write about Whose Rama? in greater detail when I complete reading it. I wish to draw your attention to the Caravan article now which says that “The myth of a homogenised ‘Hindu identity’ and so-called ‘Hindu unity’ – the political mission of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – it turns out, is not just a hollow narrative, but a brittle political coalition that collapses as soon as it is put to test in the social realm.”

The Caravan goes on to say that “Under Modi’s tenure, upper castes have targeted Shudras for even the slightest challenge to their social dominance.” Non-Hindus such as Muslims and Christians are attacked relentlessly. You would have thought that at least Hindus would be safe in the emergent Hindu Rashtra. No, you’re wrong. Hindutva doesn’t even recognise the low caste Hindus and the so-called Untouchables as human beings.

What happened in Etawah is not an aberration, says The Caravan and goes on to mention similar attacks in other places. “At least 50,000 cases of caste atrocities are annually committed against Dalits and Adivasis,” according to the article. Apart from such assaults, there is a systematic effort to deny citizenship to the Dalits and Adivasis. For example, 1.9 million people were declared foreigners in Assam. Thousands of people are denied voting rights in Bihar now.

Recently, P N Gopikrishnan, noted Malayalam poet and writer, delivered a lecture in Kochi on the rise of fascism in Modi’s India. He spoke about how Savarkar, one of the RSS patriarchs, invented a strategy to strengthen Brahminism by subsuming the lower castes into the system. Having obtained freedom from prison by means of numerous apologies to the British officers, Savarkar condescended to eat with the Dalits in his neighbourhood. He also supported the view that the Dalits should be allowed to enter temples. This was only a strategy to make the Dalits feel they are respected. A strategy just to keep them within the system.

From The Caravan

In reality, Savarkar was playing with the Dalit psyches. If V T Bhattathiripad, a social reformer from Kerala, asked the Brahmins to humanise themselves, Savarkar gave the Dalits a false sense of pride in sharing some of the privileges reserved for Brahmins. This Savarkarian strategy is employed today by the Sangh Parivar, says The Caravan. “The only visible social dimension of the BJP’s Hindu unity,” says the magazine, “has been that, every now and then, its leaders visit Dalit homes to eat off freshly bought plates.”

Gopikrishnan calls the RSS “a terrorist organisation.” The Caravan ends its article with a prognosis: “The contradictory approach of the BJP-RSS in cementing Hindu unity will take them nowhere except irreparably shredding the social union of the nation.”

Comments

  1. The Indian Version of Fascism has its political Economic software, the nexus between Brahmin, Kshatriya Sahukar and Sarkar. The Dvijas and the Sarkar. Belabouring repetition, it is exclusionary to the core, as it has always been..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's the ultimate paradox because there's a profound philosophy in the Upanishads that ascribes divinity to everything and everyone. Looks like this disconnect between what is said and what is done is an eternal problem in the religion.

      Delete
  2. Hari Om
    Sickening and saddening...Had it not been for Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda's vision that the Gita and Advaita were for ALL to draw intellectual and spiritual sustencance from, I would never have had the opportunity I had of attending gurukula and rising through the heights of understanding that I have, not just for being of non-Indian birth, but also of 'farming' people. He was a proud Indian, who played his part in the fight for independence, but who also fought against casteism, believing that the independent India would be the better for every citizen opening themselves up to the wonder of the Upanishads - that included those from all other faith systems. Even in the Chinmaya 'family', however, I did witness those who came in with the attitudes you describe and from whom I definitely felt rejection, despite the mission statement. The conclusion to be drawn is that it is much easier, perhaps takes less energy, to hate than to love... and I say again, saddening and sickening. YAM xx

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    1. I keep wondering why these people refuse to understand the meaning and message of their own religion. They fight and kill for it, but don't ever try to understand it.

      Unfortunately people listen to political leaders instead of spiritual ones. The number of the latter is dwindling rapidly.

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  3. I agree with the concluding statement.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes, there is a huge chasm between what is preached and what is practised. It's so sad that even now, even in cities, very well-educated Indians look through the prism of caste and religion. The only difference between what happens in cities and what happens in villages is that in the former it's very subtle; in the villages it's very explicit.
    (My latest post: Independence Day: What freedom means after 78 years)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, in Delhi I could feel it somewhere beneath the conscious level.

      Delete

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