Notions Of The Nation

I
Within hours, literally, the world will know whether thenation-state in America as decreed by the American Constitution has or has nottriumphed finally over the competing, even if subterranean, notion of the nationas race.

If indeed Obama wins the Presidency, the American voter would have set anexample to other regions, India included, where Constitutional stipulations withregard to nation and citizenship continue to be bedeviled by racial andreligious supremacists who contest the ideal of secular equality under acommonly accepted regime of laws as stipulated by the Constitution at any giventime.

These impulses of course work severally: they can be pressed into service toseek from the state a redistribution of largesse by privileging one identity orthe other, internally.

Often an identity that has been reviled previously finds itself elevated tofavour subsequently (today's Maharashtra offers a fine instance; for now,neither South Indian lungivalas nor Marathi-speaking Muslims are the targets ofMaratha chauvinism); More ominously, a reformulation of the notion of thenation-state in toto becomes the object.

Which of course is not to say that the nation-state is already too evolved to bemeddled with on behalf of those that derive rather little participation in orbenefit from its decisions and operations.

Occasionaly, intermediate forms of racial privileging detrimental to the idea ofthe nation-state also surface with strident insistence on behalf of somesections of the citizenry, without overtly challenging the nation-state per se.

A fine current example of this in India is the pressure built within Tamil Naduon behalf of fellow-Tamilians in another country.

Members of the Indian parliament from this state have thought nothing of makinga gesture of resigning their parliamentary memberships if the Indian statefights shy of intervening in Sri Lanka to protect the interests of Tamilians.Never mind that in that beleaguered country, the government of the day isbattling the world's first and worst terrorist outfit, banned in most countriesincluding India, namely the LTTE.

Not only did this outfit invent the suicide bomber, it also murdered an IndianPrime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, using such a bomber.

Tamil parties in India, with the honorable exception of the AIADMK, supportedalso by bevies of film stars, have thus expressed their primary allegiance totheir racial tribe in another country rather than to the Indians who electedthem to the Indian parliament.

Not to speak of sections of more vociferous racists among them who haveclandestinely supplied munitions to the LTTE for many years, and who make nobones about going to war on its behalf.

Given all that, the Indian government which depends on the support of theTamilian parliamentarians has felt obliged to send its foreign minister toColombo to do some talking, and to make repeated statements on behalf ofTamilian refugees in Sri Lanka.

Speaking of which, imagine how the government of India would react were SriLankan Muslims to issue statements with respect to real or imagined excessesperpetrated on Kashmiri Muslims, or Muslims in Tamil Nadu itself. Unbearablethought that. Not to speak of Indian Muslims expressing the least anxiety aboutMuslims anywhere else. That would be pure treason.

Thus, in short, much like many Muslims the world over who privilege the Muslimnation, or the Ummah, over the nation-state, India's Tamilians feel that the"Tamil nation" takes precedence over the Indian state when push comesto shove.

As to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (Global Hindu Community), it is on record asbelieving that "in pre-Christian times, all people, everywhere in theworld, were Hindus" (see H.K.Vyas, The VHP, Communist Party of IndiaPublications, New Delhi, 1983). And yet, it only sees enemies everywhere,including in India. You might well wonder why.

II

Dating from colonial times, of course, the most concertedchallenge to the notion of a secular-democratic Republic wherein the ideals ofequality and non-discriminatory justice, with due consideration for thepreservation of the specific needs of non-Hindu Indians—some twenty or sopercent of the population, all taken together-- against hegemonising oppression,either by the state or the majority community, would define and informcitizenship has always come from the Hindu-Fascist right-wing.

That at least a third of the so-called "Hindu majority" feel asoppressed by the hegemonising brahminical upper-caste minority of Hindus is ofcourse another little- discussed matter. Indeed, one thoughtful Dalitintellectual was to feel impelled to write a whole book, explaining why he doesnot regard himself a "Hindu" (see Kancha Ilaiah, Why I Am Not AHindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture, and Political Economy,Samya, Calcutta, 1996.)

But, to return to the "Hindu/Muslim" question:

Before you bring up the question about the Muslim League, let it be reiteratedthat the earliest formulation of a two-nation theory was not to come from theLeague but from Savarkar.

Explicitly in his pamphlet, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (1923), Savarkarwas to say that India comprised two distinct nations, "Hindus andMuslims".

As has been often noted, Hindutva for him had little or nothing to do with theHindu religion (not that the Hindu religion is any one identifiable monolitheither, although those that have hegemonised it over ruthless millennia is). Theman claimed to be an atheist and did not approve of the Hindu caste system.

Hindutva for Savarkar constituted purely a racial thesis; only those could beregarded genuine Indians who were both born in India and whose places of worshiplay within the territorial confines of India. That most of these places ofworship do lie within India is of no account, since Mecca remains outside, afact sufficient to negate millennia of Hindu-Muslim syncretism.

This formulation has since become the source of the call on Indian Muslimseither to fall in line or accept without question the primacy of the "HinduNation."

In modern parlance, the RSS/BJP call this "cultural nationalism"—aracial concept which is deployed to question and dislodge the ideal of secularcitizenship, bedrock of the Constitutional Republic.

In 1939, Golwalker was to write about the "minority problem" thus:

they must "merge. . .in the national race and adopt its culture, or to live at its mercy as long as the national race may allow them to do so and quit the country at the sweet will of the national race."

This he called the only "sound view on the minorities problem...thatalone keeps the nation safe from the danger of a cancer developing into its bodypolitic of the creation of a ‘state within a state.'"

(see We, Our Nationhood Defined, Bharat Publications, Nagpur, p.47)

Remarkably, as has often been pointed out, the entire ideological equipment ofthe Hindu Right which prides itself for representing the essence of Indianness,was imported from Fascist Italy where Munje, who was to become head of the HinduMahasabha, met and imbibed Mussolini, and from Nazi Germany. (Interestingly, itwas also in 1923 that Mussolini's Doctrine of Fascism appeared.)

Munje, whose great friend Hedgewar was, passed these thoughts to the RSS whichhas ever since not just lauded Hitler and Nazi Germany for the height of their"race pride" but sought to impose this notion of nation on independentIndia.

III

As visuals now of "Saffron terror" splash acrosssome Indian tv screens, the occurrence does not surprise those who are familiarwith Hindutva history and ideology.

And if the exposure has taken so long to become public, it is for the simplereason that the Indian state, however secular its protestations, has neverreally on the ground practiced even-handedness as between Hindutva violence, beit mob-terror or bomb-terror, and violence inflicted by non-Hindumilitants/insurgents/terrorists—call them what you will.

As we take in the "shock" of the current revelations, such as:

• a "sadhvi" implicated in the Malegaon blasts of September 29, 2006, remarkably, two years after the event, something that goes to suggest the alacrity of state agencies when it comes to "Hindu terror";
• alongwith her a retired army major, Upadhyay;
• a serving, no less, Lt. Col. named Purohit;
• a whole Military Academy at Bhonsala in Nagpur, headquarters of the RSS, its director, one Raikar, now also hauled up for questioning, since the school, it is acknowledged, had been very kindly handed over to the Bajrang Dal for military training for a full two weeks;
• an organization called Abhinav Bharti run currently by, guess who, Himani Savarkar-- the daughter of Nathuram Godse's brother, Gopal Godse, a co-accused in the Gandhi murder, and niece also of the good old Savarkar-- who has made bold to state publicly on tv channels that Hindu reprisals are justified, we must remember that militarism and violence, often of a secretive and Masonic variety, have been part and parcel of the fascist ideology of the Sangh.

The Hindu right-wing has always berated Hindus generally for being"pacifist", Golwalker going to the extent of saying that Ashoka'spreaching of "ahimsa" (non-violence) after converting to Buddhismsubsequent to the carnage he wrought at Kalinga in Orissa (3rd C, B.C)"makes cowards of Indians."

Although Gandhi's murder at the hands of the Hindu- Right remains the mosttelling instance of its willingness to commit to violent terror, more shadydetails are also on record pertaining, disgustingly but revealingly, to its owninternal culture.

For example, Balraj Madhok, the founder of the Jana Sangh, recounts in hisautobiography, Zindagi Ka Safar, how the shady murder of the President ofthe Sangh in 1968, Deen Dayal Upadhyay, was sought to be passed off as an"accident."

Upadhyay's corpse was found on 11th February, 1968 at the Mughal Sarai RailwayStation. The then S.P and S.S.P refuted the theory that the death was the resultof an accident.

Pointing a finger squarely at Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Bala Sahib Deoras—whobecame, respectively, President and Secretary of the Sangh after Upadhyay'smurder—Madhok records how Vajpayee admonished him to float the accidenttheory. Refusing to do so, Madhok was asked to resign from primary membership ofthe Sangh.

If since India's Independence the chief violent recourse of the Sangh has beento instigating and effecting mass killings of Muslims in one pogrom afteranother, (Commission after official Commission over the last six decades hasfound the Sangh complicit in these pogroms) it has now obviously taken a furtherleap to engage what it calls "Islamic and Jehadi terror" with its ownbrand.

Having done so, it invites us shamelessly to desist from calling this brand"Hindu terror." The pronouncements of Himani Savarkar and Bala SahibThackeray notwithstanding. Remember that the latter, not too long ago, hadpublicly expressed the view that Hindus also need to prepare terror squads thatwould do more than measly damage to Muslim areas.

Uncannily, it is pushed to gurgitating all those protestations and argumentswhich Muslims have thus far sought to present to the world: to wit, presumeinnocence till proven guilty, do not brand whole communities; do not viewterrorism as a religious/Islamic phenomenon etc.--arguments which have foundlittle use as far as the fascist Hindu right-wing is concerned.

As Kavita Krishnan speculates brilliantly in an article on the subject, justimagine that the "sadhvi" was not a sadhvi but a "maulvi";the discourse of the Sangh would have been blood-curdling in the extreme. (seeCountercurrents, The Tip of the Iceberg, October 10, 2008).

Likewise, her further charge related to the role of the state and itsinvestigative agencies in suppressing the facts regarding the Malegaon blast forfull two years is both germane and indicative; as is the further chargeregarding the quiescent nature of the state's response to the other known recentinstances in which Bajrang Dal activists have been found bomb-making, and haveindeed also been found dead as some of those bombs went off in their own hands.Complete with the discovery of false beards and "Muslim" attire hiddenin their houses. Not to speak of venomous anti-Muslim and anti-Christian printedmaterials littered in their hide-outs.

IV

Nothing, it must be emphasized, spells more cataclysmicprospects for the Republic than any attempt on behalf of the state or any of itsagencies to become complicit in legitimising one form of terror as an"understandable" form of violence—reprisal, if you like, and"patriotic" in intent, don't you know, and delegitimising some otheras ab initio "anti-national."

And, indeed, the reprisal theory must anyday yield a better argument to India'sMuslims than it can to the Hindu right-wing. One long look at all the pogromsthat have been affected since 1947 and the meaning of that becomes clear. On thecontrary, it may well be asked, what is it that India's Muslims have done to theHindus which calls for "reprisals'? Ask for equal citizenship, contrary tothe edicts laid down by Golwalker?

Or are we here to understand that the "reprisal" theory is meant toapply to the long, secular, and creative rule by Moghul monarchs in India? Oragainst the insistence of the Gandhi-Nehru-led and Communist-supported freedommovement which defeated the Hindu-fascists' collaboration with the British toforge a theocratic state, and against their success in placing the Republic on asecular and pluralist footing?

It is something of a pity that the secular, pluralist, egalitarian, andanti-colonial impetus that impelled the freedom movement led by the Congressparty should be finding exhaustion even within that august bastion; and that theCongress should frequently also be seen to partake of a version of nationalismthat, however surreptitiously, yields pride of place to a so-called Hinduculture and religion. No dearth of cabinet ministers who sport idols of gods andgodmen in their very office spaces that belong to the secular state.

The sooner this oldest of parties readjusts its coordinates, and rediscovers itssources of creative hegemony among India's labouring and secular masses thebetter for everybody. And it may not have much time either.

A test of all that will be how it deals, and is seen to deal, with the terrorismthat comes from the Hindu right-wing. And where it places considerations ofelectoral failure or success in so doing. And whether or not it remainsundeterred in the many constructive initiatives it has taken to improve the lotof the Muslims.

Likewise, the test of India's upwardly-mobile urbanites who have tended to seein the BJP a guarantor of their commercial and cultural aspirations, togetherseen as a formula for hegemonising the labouring and the low-caste and puttingthe Muslims in "their place" in close embrace with American corporateimperialism, will be to take their blinkers off so they may see beyond theirthoughtless , sectarian and self-regarding noses.

They would do well to recognize that two of the accused in the Malegaon blastshave been members of the BJP, just as Sadhvi Pragya Thakur was a member of theRSS student wing, the ABVP.

They should also learn to stop pointing an instant finger at one kind ofimagined "terrorist" outfit even before a crime has been committed,and to be more tolerant of those in civil society who raise questions that arecontrary to their world of a priori certainties. Precisely as we do notpronounce on the guilt or innocence of the Sadhvi and the rest before the courtshave adjucated.

They should also understand that law-enforcement in India is not such anuntainted procedure as they wish to believe when it suits their predilections,and that more repressive laws in the hands of tainted enforcement agencies, farfrom mitigating terror, provoke it many times more.

It is also to be hoped that the discovery of the Sadhvi and, with her, the clan,will bring some perspective back into the flourishes with which our globalisedmedia channels often glibly pronounce on the menace of "terrorism."Or, huckster-like, demand to be told by the police and the politician that someor the other Muslim organization is involved even as a blast goes off.

That shift and correction in perspective should oblige a far deeperacknowledgement of the concrete sources of disaffection among diverse segmentsof the polity than an impatient, money -and -news-spinning culture of"modernity" seems to enjoin.

Even blame games deserve to be fairly distributed and explored.