The Arbiters Of Hindutva

The irony cannot be more striking. Known for their fierceopposition to reforms in Hindu law that sought to ameliorate the conditions ofHindu women, Hindutva groups present themselves as ardent champions of Muslimwomen. The image of Muslim women as oppressed by their men and their religion iscentral to Hindutva discourse, buttressing their claim of Islam and Muslimsbeing inherently and unrepentantly ‘obscurantist’ and ‘barbaric’. Thisexplains the hypocritical defence by Hindutva ideologues of Muslim women’srights, while at the same time the pogroms they unleash lead to the death andrape of Muslim women.

While Hindutva ideologues present themselves as saviours of Muslim women fromwhat they describe as the ‘tyranny’ of Islam, they are fiercely opposed toany measures that might threaten Brahminical Hindu patriarchy. Thus, the coverstory of the last issue of Organiser, the RSS’ official English weekly,protesting against a move to reform Hindu marriage, should come as no surprise.Titled, ‘A Mischievous Proposal to Tinker With Hindu Faith’, and written bya certain R. Balashankar, the article furiously denounces the proposal putforward by the Tamil politician, M. Karunanidhi, leader of theanti-Brahmin Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham, to allow for ‘self-respect’marriages that do without a mandatory priest, who is generally a Brahmin.

The article refers to a letter sent recently byKarunanidhi to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanding an amendment in the HinduMarriage Act, 1955 in order to legalise, at the all-India level, marriageswithout a priest. Presently, such marriages are recognized only in Tamil Nadu.This demand has been a long-standing one, and was first put forward byE.V.Periyar Ramaswamy Naicker, the pioneer of the anti-Brahmin movement in TamilNadu. Periyar was a bitter critic of Brahminical Hinduism, seeing it as athinly-veiled guise for Aryan, North Indian, ‘upper’ caste Hindu hegemony.He regarded Hinduism as a creation of 'wily Brahmins' to assert their controlover the ‘low’ caste majority whom they had reduced to servitude. Hebelieved that the non-Brahmins could effectively challenge Brahmin hegemony onlyif they developed a sense of self-respect and refused to consider the Brahminsas ‘gods on earth’, a status that the Brahmins claimed for themselves.

As part of the comprehensive plan for cultural revolution that Periyarlaid out, non-Brahmins would dispense completely with Brahmins to officiate overtheir religious and social functions. In particular, the use of Brahmins toconduct the marriage of Hindu couples was to be strictly avoided. In this way,non-Brahmins would be able to assert their equality with the Brahmins and would,at the same time, be saved from paying the Brahmins the hefty fees that theycharged as ritual specialists.

In place of Brahmin-officiated marriage ceremonies, Periyar launched what hecalled ‘self-respect’ marriages, which were conducted without any priest atall. Unlike the Brahminical marriage, in which the bride is explicitlyrecognized as subordinate to the husband and is given away as a commodity tohim, the ‘self-respect’ marriage was an egalitarian one. In contrastto the Brahminical marriage, the ‘self-respect’ marriage did not entail anydowry.

That the RSS, and the Hindutva brigade as a whole, aresimply a new face of Brahminism is well-known. Little wonder, then, that the Organiserspies in Karunanidhi’s proposal for state recognition of ‘self-respect’marriages throughout India a conspiracy to ‘meddle with Hindu religion’,going so far as to denounce it as ‘promot[ing] atheism by deritualising andde-Hinduising Hindu marriages’. Clearly, it recognizes that marriages thatdispense with Hindu priests, mostly Brahmins, are a potent challenge toBrahminism.

It is, however, careful not to register its protest in a way that reveals itsown Brahminical agenda. Instead, it denounces such marriages as‘anti-Hindu’, as ‘intimidation of Hindu religion’, and as calculated ‘to spite the religious sentiments of the Hindu majority’. The fact that thevast majority of ‘Hindus’ are non-Brahmins, who might well believe that theyare equally capable as Brahmins to conduct their own marriages, is, of course,ignored. So, too, is the fact that many Dalit castes and Tribals, whom theRSS seeks to include within the ‘Hindu’ fold in order to augment ‘Hindu’numbers, continue to conduct their marriage ceremonies without Brahmin priestsand dispensing with Brahminical ceremonies.

Any critique of Brahminism, therefore, is interpreted as an attack on Hinduismas such by the RSS. Any move that might challenge the hegemony of the Brahminminority or make a dent in the citadel of Brahminism is presented as an attackon the ‘Hindu majority’ and ‘Hinduism’, even if such moves as ‘selfrespect’ marriages might work in favour of the non-Brahmin majority.

As defenders of Brahminical or ‘upper’ casteprivilege, Hindutva ideologues see every issue from the point of view of theBrahminical elites. Hence, the reasonableness of Karunanidhi’s demand iscompletely dismissed, without any recognition of the fact that it might wellhelp the majority of the ‘Hindus’, who are from the oppressed castes,victims of Brahminism. The Organiser sees no merit in the proposal atall, and, instead, makes the ridiculous suggestion that it might be acommunist-inspired conspiracy to ‘wean away Hindu youth from the fold offamily and religion and make them tools of atheist, anti-Hindu tirade’.

The Organiser ends its vehement denunciation of Karunanidhi’s proposalwith by insisting that, ‘as a declared non-believer, Karunanidhi and the[sic.] likes have no right to talk on Hindu religious affairs’. ‘It is forHindu religious leaders and social reformers to talk on the religion’, itinsists. If that is the case, then why, one must ask, do the Hindutva-walasappear to take such an inordinate interest in the ‘plight’ of Muslim women?If non-Hindus and self-declared non-believers have no right to talk about Hindureligious matters, what gives the RSS and its affiliates in the Hindutva campthe right to talk about Islam and shed crocodile tears over the ‘oppression’of Muslim women?

It is striking how, despite their visceral hatred of eachother, Muslim and Hindu fundamentalists think alike on a range of issues. Bothspeak of religious identity as a monolith, conveniently ignoring the obviousfact that the interests of the elites they champion have little in common withthose of the poor.

On the issue of gender, too, both are firm upholders of patriarchalprivilege. Like their counterparts among the Muslim clerics, the Hindutva-walassee patriarchal control as essential to their vision of religion, and hence anystep that threatens to challenge it is regarded as a sinister anti-religiousplot, as the Organiser’s furious reaction to Karunanidhi’s sensibleand very welcome proposal makes amply clear.