RELIGION AND POLITICS Understanding Contemporary Hindu Politics: Exploring a People's Project

Introduction

This is not meant to be a definitive essay on Hinduism. It does not deal with the theological, spiritual or ethical aspects of Hindu Religion. For readers who want to explore these aspects more they can start with the excellent monograph, ‘Hinduism’ by K. M. Sen. Acharya Kshiti Mohan Sen was at Shantiniketan with Tagore and was an authority on medieval Indian religion. His ‘Madhyajuger Sadhana’ is a classic contribution in this field.

This essay is meant mainly to remove a lot of confusion and vagueness that surrounds the term Hindu and Hinduism, and to understand the how and why of the mischief and violence carried out by the ‘Sangh Parivar’ in the name of Hinduism. The essay is addressed to the so called layman, who has wisdom to understand but may not have access to technical and academic jargon.

Terminology

The political and social system we live in today is called capitalism. It is a system based on exploitation of labour and natural resources by the bourgeoisie or the capitalist class. Since it is a complete social and political system, it affects every aspect of life including religion. The way it does is referred to as the project of the capital. As opposed to this the working classes too struggle against it and struggle in various ways, including in the religious domain. This is referred to as the project of the proletariat or the project of the people.

The word Hindu comes from the river Indus (Sindhu in Indian languages) and was used by medieval world of Arabs and Europeans to refer to people living east of the river. Hinduism or Hindu Dharma is a relatively modern term (the traditional word in India was Sanatan Dharma) and is an omnibus word referring to the religious practices, rituals, philosophical and theological ideas of these people. The words Hinduism or Hindu Dharma do not signify a homogeneous religion or people. The word Dharma does not mean religion. It means a set of duties and obligation according to one's station in life. This could be based on caste or that of husband, wife, father, son, teacher, and student and so on. These were defined originally by Manu in Manusmriti or Dharmashastra around 200 BC. The word for religion in the Indian tradition is Sampradaya and not Dharma. In this article the word Hinduism is used in both the senses, that is, as a set or group of religions (sampradayas) and as Dharma, that is, a set of duties and obligations or code of conduct.

What is Hinduism?

Hindus trace their origin to the Vedic period (1200 BC-600 BC), but the Hinduism as we know today dates from Arthashastra and Dharmashastra (or Manusmriti) around 200 BC. These texts got consolidated between 200 BC to 300 AD. Buddhism and Jainism dating from 500 BC were a big challenge which lasted up to 800 AD.  Buddhism then almost vanished from India but Jainism has survived as a small but powerful sect of traders. However their daily life is indistinguishable from other upper caste Hindus except for their strict vegetarianism. For all practical purposes Jainism is treated as one of the Sampradayas of Hinduism.

What happened during this period for Hinduism to consolidate? The answer in one word is ‘iron’. The coming of Iron Age made settled agriculture as the mainstay of the economy. Iron plough and iron tools helped to clear forests and improve agriculture production. This in turn supported the formation of a stable state in two ways. It gave taxes and supported an urban population and army with food. The taxes helped to pay the army and bureaucracy. Iron also gave better weapons to the army.

Now a state is an instrument of the ruling class to serve its interests and keep the ruled classes under control. This control is rarely done by force, although it is always there. Most of the time however, this control is done through a set of cultural processes which legitimise or justify the system of state power. Among them religion is one of the most important. In modern times democracy and election also perform this role. Arthashastra by Chanakya and Dharmashastra or Manusmriti by Manu helped legitimise the state and consolidate Hinduism.

But what is Hinduism? How does Hinduism legitimise or justify the system? Rahul Sankrityayan defined Hinduism as having three characteristics:

1. Belief in the Karma theory and rebirth. This gave the answer to the classic question that all religions have to answer: Why do good people suffer? And why does the ruling class gets away with all the injustice and corruption? The answer is that you get what you deserve because of the Karma or deeds you did in the past birth. If you behave well, that is, obey, follow ethics etc., then in next birth you will have a better life. The idea of rebirth came from Buddhism as Vedic Aryans did not believe in rebirth.  The Karma Theory was developed as both Buddhism and Hinduism developed into full fledged religions.

2. Taboo on cow slaughter and beef eating. This was the classic totem turning into taboo. Earlier the totemic food for the cattle herding communities was beef and cow sacrifice was a major Vedic ritual. This transformation occurred due to agriculture becoming more important. Buddhism and Jainism also contributed to it. This also distinguished Hindus from the tribals.

3. Creation of the caste system. This was the Arthashastra and Manusmriti way to consolidate the peasant society. Many tribal communities were probably forced to clear land for agriculture and later were absorbed in the Hindu society as the Shudras and Panchamas (untouchables). Untouchability was the Indian form of slavery which continued till independence in 1947. It was Ambedkar and the Hindu reformers who finally managed to abolish it legally through the Indian Constitution. However Ambedkar’s dream of abolishing castes probably cannot be realised because caste is quintessentially a Hindu phenomenon.  Abolish caste and you abolish Hinduism itself!

Who are the Hindus?

More than 90% of the people called Hindu live in today’s India. Nepal is the only other country that has a significant number of Hindus. There are a small number of Hindus scattered all over the world, particularly in the USA, UK, Canada, Fiji, Mauritius, British Guyana and East Africa.

Within India, out of a population of 100 crores about 20 crores account for Muslims and Christians, 7 crores Tribals and 23 crores account for Scheduled Castes. These are round figures for convenience of tackling them. These 50 crores are by most reckoning not Hindus, though the Sangh Parivar would claim the SC/ST population of 30 crores as Hindus. The remaining 50 crores are unambiguously Hindus. They live in today’s political India. North East India and Kashmir have very few Hindus and Hindu Indians are treated as foreigners/exploiters/enemies by the majority of these people.

The position of scheduled caste is ambiguous. Traditionally they were the shudra and panchamas, the lowest castes within the Hindu religion. As has been said above many tribal communities were probably forced to clear land for agriculture and later were absorbed in the Hindu society as the Shudras and Panchamas (untouchables). The daily life of the Shudras and Panchamas is closer to the tribals because of this history. Their gods and goddesses are not the normal Hindu deities like Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Rama and Krishna. Nor are their festivals same as Diwali, Dussera, Holi, Ugadi etc. Even in the 20th century some tribals became scheduled castes and some scheduled castes went to the forests to become tribals. This probably kept on happening for the last 2000 years. That is the reason why, these communities (today known as scheduled castes) are viewed outside Hinduism. The political leaders of these communities also do not see a future within Hinduism. Today there is a sense of revolt against mainstream Hinduism, and large scale conversion to other religions (Christianity, Buddhism and Islam) have occurred much to the anger of Sangh Parivar. What is clear is that the ideology of the Sangh Parivar wants to keep them as slaves and second class citizens within the Hindu fold.

Project of the Capital

The project of the capital represents the project of the ruling classes. In India while all the members of upper castes are not rulers, almost all the rulers are from upper caste or identify themselves with upper caste culture and religion. Dalit politics calls this as Brahminism. So we will first examine this Brahminism/upper caste project. We should remember that members of the ruling class are not conscious that they are exploiters just as men do not think that they oppress women. On the other hand if the oppressed classes have to oppose they have to become conscious. Finally many critics of the system are those members of the upper class/castes who do become conscious.

 Hinduism: An Upper Caste Phenomenon

Even today two thirds of India lives in rural areas and where Hindu religion and caste system plays a major role. Daniel Thorner once described rural Indian caste system in terms of 'Malik, Kisan and Mazdoor', thereby identifying the class aspect of the caste system. The Maliks or larger land owners were of course the upper castes of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Kayasthas. The Kisan or peasant farmer castes were the vast majority of what are known today as backward castes whereas the Mazdoor or agricultural workers were Shudras and the Panchamas as well as castes dealing with dead animals, wastes and so on.

In fact Hinduism is mainly a signifier of the upper castes, known as OCs (Other Castes -Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Kayasthas) and BCs (Backward castes– peasants, artisans and their sub-castes.) Let us have a closer look at it.

The Big Tradition

The term big tradition refers to the cultural and religious tradition of upper castes and the term small tradition refers to those of lower castes. In India we can trace this to the medieval period, when Buddhism declined and popular trends generally known as Bhakti Movement emerged. The Bhakti movement has two distinct trends known as Sagun and Nirgun. Both trends contributed to the emergence of modern Indian languages through Bhakti literature. As a rule the Sagun tradition is identified with big tradition and Nirgun with the small tradition.

The word Sagun means ‘with qualities’ and it refers to a concept of God who is all powerful and all knowing. In practice it means identifying God with king and in the temples there will be an image of God looking like a king with his queen and other court people. Almost all the founders and saints of this tradition were Brahmins. As against this, there is a Nirgun (without qualities) tradition. In this there are no deities in a temple and God is regarded as formless. Most of the saints in this tradition are artisans and lower caste people (except Guru Nanak who was a trader).

Among the three so called great Hindu theologians, Shankaracharya, Madhwacharya, and Ramanujacharya, only Ramanujacharya (12th c.) of Vishishtadvaita has a bigger constituency in the name of Vaishnavism. Apart from Brahmins many traders, peasants castes are also Vaishnavas although their priests are normally Brahmins. The Sagun tradition of Bhakti of Chaitanya in Orissa and Bengal, other Vaishnavas of Braj, Gujarat, Western M.P., and Rajasthan etc. belong to it. The highly articulated Advaita (of Shankaracharya, 8th c.) and Dvaita (of Madhwacharya 13th c.) sampradayas are restricted to Brahmins. Like the Jains, though small in numbers, they have access to much greater power.

The Modern Period – The Apologist Hindu - The Reformist Era

Colonialism presented a dilemma to the Hindu upper castes. The Christian missionaries criticised the Hindu religion and society severely for its cruelty to lower castes, practice of untouchability, its differentiation between different people, its Gods in the images of animals and made of stone images etc. Islam too had criticised Hinduism on similar premises and managed to convert a section of the artisan castes.

The first response of the Hindu upper castes was to convert to Christianity. Second was to reform Hinduism to suit to modern times. Thus Brhamo Samaj and Arya Samaj and many similar organisations came up. But they did not turn to the small traditions of the lower castes for egalitarian inputs but instead went to ‘Ancient India’ and the big tradition. Why?

The colonialists colluded with the upper castes to create this ‘Glory that was Ind’. This was started by William Jones in his famous inaugural address to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta. In it he showed the similarity between Sanskrit, Persian, Greek and Latin. Thus Ancient India had an affinity to the White man. Nay it even taught the white man!

This achieved two purposes for the colonialist. It brought the upper castes into their side and it created the Hindu Muslim divide. For, it created a discourse which blamed the Muslim for all the ills of Hindu Society. The slavery of the poor remained relatively untouched.

Of course many reformists were patriots and they also contributed to anti colonial movement; but as it chose the discourse of the big tradition, the reformist movement lacked the support of the poor. It remained an upper caste movement.

Vivekananda and the Birth of Assertive Hinduism

By the turn of the century the upper caste Hinduism began to regain some confidence. A lot of texts were translated in to English because of the efforts of scholars like Max Mueller in Germany, Asiatic Society and support of some princely states like Mysore, Travancore, and Baroda.

In this atmosphere Vivekananda appeared. He was a young man with some unusual skills. First he had tremendous energy to propagate the cause. He was a very skilled promoter and good administrator. All this came useful after his return from Chicago where he attended the world conference of religion. On its own his performance was not very different from other representatives, including the one from the Buddhist from Sri Lanka. However one newspaper reported it very enthusiastically and Vivekananda used the report very effectively in India to promote himself and the Ramakrishna Mission. Upper caste Hindu society was ready to receive this foreign certificate to its greatness.

Vivekananda gave Hinduism an all India image and made it in to a religion. Neither of which is the nature of Hinduism. As we had said earlier Hinduism is not a religion. It is a set of several religions (sampradayas), many of which have deep contradictions with each other. Theologically Vivekananda identified Hinduism with Advaita of Shankaracharya (8th century AD). Within the Indian tradition, as we have noted above, Advaita was a small sect and was heavily criticised in the theological debates of medieval India, often accused of borrowing from Buddhism and passing it off as the correct interpretation of Vedas, Gita and Brahmasutra Bhashya. However it suited the imperial design of one great India because Shankaracharya was supposed to have set up places of pilgrimages in the four corners of India viz. in North (Badrinath), East (Puri), West (Dwaraka) and South (Rameshwaram).

Vivekananda also gave it a Christian Mission kind of character in the form of Ramakrishna Mission. It is modelled on Jesuits of Catholic Christianity with its celibate priests, schools, colleges and hospitals and more recently with its ‘rural development’ programmes. Over time it developed all the ills of the Catholic Church. That is, its high handed authoritarianism, corruption – both material and moral, enormous wealth, landed property and real estate.

Post Independence: The Rise of the Aggressive Hinduism

The assertive, grand and ‘imperial’ image of India that Vivekananda created inspired Hindu chauvinists right from Savarkar, Golvalkar to Advani and Vajpayee. The present generation of leaders like Modi and his ilk use this kind of Hinduism to achieve political power. The Sangh Parivar also publishes and sells a lot of literature about Vivekananda. They fought for the land at Kanyakumari, (the southern tip of the Indian peninsula) and created a Vivekananda memorial. This had been a place of joint spiritual worship for both Christians and Hindus. While it is true that Vivekanand spent some time there, so did various spiritual leaders of the Hindu and Christian communities. The agenda of the Sangh Parivar is to use the different images of Muslims and Christian to portray them as danger to Hinduism, create hate propaganda and carry out mass killings whenever they can get away with it.

What is the basis of this aggressive Hinduism? Aggressive Hinduism aims primarily to achieve political power in post-independence India through elections. Not all upper-class Hindus support it; nor do the really religious people support it. But most of them do not oppose it either. And for these communal forces it is enough if they are not opposed. The discourse they use is that Hinduism is threatened by conversions and by reservation policies. Hinduism is threatened by the Muslims, Christians and SC/ST population because of their aspirations to acquire education, sharing power etc. The aim of the Sangh Parivar politics is that these communities should stay as second class citizens and be available as slaves and workers to the mainstream upper caste Hindus. This of course strikes a sympathetic chord in the hearts of many upper caste Hindus, many of whom have power and wealth in the present society.

There is of course a real basis for perception of this threat. It was Ambedkar who first said, ‘I am born as a Hindu, but I will not die as a Hindu’. For centuries Hinduism faced this threat because of its practice of inhuman slavery towards the lower castes. First a large section of the artisan converted to Islam and later a large section of tribals and scheduled caste communities converted to Christianity. While part of Hindu society did respond to the threat through social reforms of the Hindu society and legally abolishing untouchability and creating the reservation policy through the Indian constitution, many did not accept it in their hearts.

This battle has raged throughout post independence India. It took an ugly shape in 1975 when reservation did not get abolished as envisioned in the Constitution, and anti reservation agitation shook the country. The Mandal commission in 1987-88 added fuel to the fire by prescribing reservation for the backward castes also. The crisis came to head with the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. The Hindu fascist block threw its challenge with the Sangh Parivar putting it out the message that Muslims and Christians can exist in India only as second class citizens, obedient to the upper caste Hindu society. If you condemn the Babri Masjid demolition, you are opposing this agenda and vice versa. The battle lines were clearly drawn.

Rest of India stood aghast and helpless at this naked flexing of muscles. Why helpless? Because the ruling classes themselves were following a similar agenda in a secular and religious discourse since 1984. On one hand Rajiv Gandhi appeased Hindus by opening the locked gates of the makeshift temple at Ayodhya in the Babri masjid premises, changed the Indian Constitution to appease the Muslim clergy in the Shah Bano case; on the other hand he helped Anderson of Union Carbide to escape from India and prepared grounds for neo liberal policies or what came to be known as liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. This policy actually came into being in a full scale through Narsimha Rao as Prime Minister and Man Mohan Singh as Finance Minister in 1991. Hence Narsimha Rao’s government stood frozen, time stopped, while the masjid was being demolished over several hours. All the parliamentary parties have joined this agenda. What bothered them was election politics, how to stay in power. So the ’secular’ political parties also began to woo Muslim clergy and Muslim political parties and the Sangh Parivar rightly dubbed them as pseudo secularists and Muslim appeasers.

India Today

Today the agenda of neo liberal policies has overshadowed the communal agenda as can seen by the response to the Court judgement on the Ayodhya issue. Even the communal forces, once they  got power in Gujarat, Karnataka, and Chhattisgarh etc. have been busy in pursuing these policies, although they keep the communal agenda alive. These neo liberal policies have resulted in:

1.      Enormous creation of wealth. The rich have become richer and the poor have become poorer. However a 'creamy layer' has emerged from each section of the middle and poor classes

2.      Incredible levels of corruption

3.      Ecological disaster

4.      Enormous rise of conflicts

5.      Enormous increase in violence against the poor, women and even children

6.      Growth of unemployment and lumpenisation of youth

With the global recession all these are reaching crisis proportions and Indian society may be on the verge of collapse. However the Indian poor, Muslims and Christians continue to face the twin attacks of the Hindu right and the attack of the neo liberal policies.

Religion, Politics and Lumpen Youth

The neo liberal policies have created a large population of youth between the ages of 18 to 25 years who have nowhere to go. There education is not good enough to give them any capability to be employed either with government, industry, in agriculture or through self employment. They are often called 'lumpens' or 'goondas'. They have need for money for fulfilling some basic needs as well as some youthful fancies like tea, smoking, mobile phone etc. They are easy prey to political agitation and also are the goonda elements in public religious functions such as Ganesh Puja, Durga Puja or even Warkari walks in Deccan region.

Project of the People

The project of the people in a broad sense is defeating capitalism and building socialism. It is captured in the slogans ‘Our short term goal is unionisation. Our long term goal is achievement of socialism’. So the immediate task is always organising people. 

The people’s project in the religious and cultural front is visualised as uniting the oppressed people belonging to lower castes through reviving the small tradition. In Dalit politics the lower castes are called ‘Bahujan’ (majority) because they are in majority.

The Small Tradition

The small tradition to which lower castes (mainly the BCs) Hindus belong, is called small not because of number of people involved, but because they are in small local groups, unlike the ‘great’ tradition which is highly articulate, powerful and tends to have an all India face. This tradition in the North is that of nirgun bhakti saints, the most famous of them being Kabir. Theologically they maintain that between God and man there is no need of an intermediary like the Pandit or the Mulla. They do not have rich temples or expensive religious rituals. Typically the artisan castes are the followers and their saints also came from these castes. In India the Muslim Sufi tradition is very similar and most of the converts to Islam came from the artisan castes. This small tradition tended to oppose the division between man and man based on caste and birth and generally had a more egalitarian approach. They used simple language and have contributed to the emergence of modern Indian languages in a big way. This tradition has different names in different parts of India and in many places it is close to the Sufis.

The BCs have a dual religious allegiance. The peasant caste subscribe to mainstream Hinduism, often Vaishnavism, whereas the artisan castes subscribe to the Nirgun tradition of the Bhakti movement. There are regional differences too. Deccan, for example, is not a very productive region and has relatively poorer peasants. Here, therefore many peasants too tend to belong to the Nirgun traditions. Most of the twentieth century peasant movement involved the peasant caste and today they are ruling groups in many of the regional states whereas the centre is still dominated by the OCs.

The Shudras and the Panchamas do not belong to any of these traditions and as we have said above, there is tendency among them to leave Hinduism for other religions, although the Sangh Parivar tries very hard to keep them in the Hindu fold. Their political aspirations and its articulation is a relatively modern phenomenon, Ambedkar being the most famous of them.

The small tradition left to itself could have contributed to the emergence of a modern egalitarian society. However this was not to be. Colonialism intervened and the development of the Indian society took a different route. It is only today with the birth of poor people’s movement that this tradition is receiving more attention.

Reviving the Small Tradition

The small tradition or the anti authoritarian trend in religion carries the seeds of democracy and secularism.  As has been said above in India, it has been suppressed by capitalism under colonial conditions. The present crisis gives an opportunity to revive and make it a tool for liberation of the poor.

Politically it was Ambedkar who tapped the potential of Buddhism for dalit liberation. However even before Ambedkar, Acharya Dharmanand Kosambi, Rahul Sankrityayan, Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan and other Buddhists had realised this potential. Rahul Sankrityayan personified this kind of blending of communist and Buddhist and rationalist ideas coming together.

After the emergency, by 1977 a new political/ideological common platform started emerging. The rationalist movement in parts of India is joining the Buddhist and other dalit and religious groups like Kabir panthis and creating a lot of literature and activities representing the small traditions. This has the sort of role that communist literature has for cadre education. In fact they also use communist literature for this purpose.

 Culturally the small traditions of Hindus and Muslim in India have lived peacefully together for centuries. Sufi majars are visited by both Hindu and Muslim. Acharya Kshiti Mohan Sen has recorded this tradition in his ‘Hindu Muslim Jukta Sadhana’. In as much as the Hindu right is attacking all the poor both economically and on religious front, it opens a possibility of coming together of these anti authoritarian religious tendencies. There is possibility of genuine secular forces helping this tendency as has been witnessed in the Kabir festival in Bangalore last year. This was followed by similar events elsewhere. In Hyderabad, we had a performance about Lal Deg, the Sufi woman poet from Kashmir and later Mujaffar Ali performed with Abida Parveen. As a follow up of Kabir festival in Bangalore Sindhi Sufi poets were presented. The theatre movement in India has a long tradition of this kind of work. Some trade union activists and some dalit activists are also exploring these possibilities. There is also a regional spread of these ideas and movements. For example Prahalad Tipanya singing Kabir in Malwa region has very large regional followings among dalits.

However these ideas are not new. Even during independence struggle people were familiar with these ideas although no one carried it forward much. Ambedkar rejected them outright because these involved mainly peasant and artisan caste and dalits had no place in them. Secondly they did not reject caste. Ambedkar correctly realised that within Hinduism there is no possibility of egalitarian politics. That is why in 1935 at the Depressed Classes Conference, he made the famous statement, ‘I was born a Hindu but I will not die as one’. His slogan for the dalits was ‘educate, organise and struggle’.

Today while there is certain amount of common platform between Dalits and backward castes, tribals appear to be on their own, although in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh certain amount of political coming together has occurred.

The challenge is to unite the entire Bahujan Samaj with a political struggle of the poor for liberation, equality and peace. Some observations in this regard are:

1. This struggle is possible mainly at a regional level, using local language and culture. This at a positive level means using local people’s religious festivals, such as Jatras, Urs or mass pilgrimage walks in Deccan like Warkaris. One should however note that capitalism has penetrated many of these festivals and it needs to be combated. Only local traders with local wares should be allowed. Multinationals, particularly of electronic gizmos – mobiles, Ipod and clones, bottled water and soft drinks, plastics etc. can be banned. This can be done by local organising committees. They can also be enriched by secular independent inputs, like secular interpretations of these traditions.

2. At a negative level, the so called national or imperial festivals like Ganesh Puja and Durga Puja, Diwali, Dussera, Holi etc., can be boycotted, and controlled by not allowing/restricting forced collections, use of public tanks and rivers to dump the idols, use of loudspeakers, use of roads for erecting pandals etc. Similarly pilgrimages to Tirupati, Sabrimalai, and the four great traditional places of Badri, Puri, Dwaraka and Rameshwaram should be discouraged as they all have become capitalist money grabbing institutions.

3. The biggest threat to all this is the nexus between politics, religion and the lumpen youth. However youth also like idealism and given a realistic goal which also gives them a purpose they can be a great asset. In fact organising Bahujan youth will be the biggest project. In the religious festivals many green ideas can be combined to create jobs for youth. We have the example of Gadage Maharaj who repaired all the Ghats of religious places on the river banks in Maharashtra. Today instead of polluting the rivers and lakes by immersing the idols in them we can have projects to clean these bodies. These festivals can also be used to promote local and green products and boycott multinationals.

4. Organising contract, informal sector and municipal cleaning workers, agricultural labour, shepherds, dais and so on who largely belong to the lower castes, and are unorganised. This opens the scope of uniting the revival of the small tradition with secular movements.

There are anti authoritarian trends in other religions also which represents dalit interests like  Sufism in Islam and Quakers in Christianity. Almost all Buddhists in India are dalits. Similarly there are dalit Muslim, dalit Christian, dalit Sikh organisations. The challenge is to unite all these tendencies with the secular project of the people, which is socialism!