Consciousness of the situation

Looks like an instant, and everything is upended. But this instant is spread over a century, and everything was not the way the secular-constitutional politics of last 70 years in India would have us believe. The undercurrents, with their occasional surface exhibitions, pointed towards this in no uncertain terms.

A country where ‘secularism’ was the gateway to politics is now undergoing massive changes in the architecture of politics. A Republic is now a Rashtra. The old set of catchphrases, bywords and slogans is on its way out. A new set of things firmly placed - nomenclature, wisdom, perspective and ideals. When Narendra Modi talked about Ram Consciousness, it wasn’t just a political rhetoric, it was a graspable substance. But the spectacularity of the event, and its dramatic coverage by the media, becomes an event in itself. Much is lost in that.

No matter wherefrom we look at it, our response is generally driven by the euphoria of the moment. If we are a part of celebrations, we are ecstatic. If we are not, we are seething. This creates a twin-problematic.

On the side of affirmation, there are people who take it as a starting point of the process of civilisational revival, correcting all the historical wrongs thrust on the Hindu community time to time by outsiders-invaders. An approach towards history, a placement of events, a deployment of detail – all is very well arranged in a narrative.

This narrative is like an organism that will grow till it has the capacity to grow. It will insist on correcting-the-wrongs, and more events will follow. If anyone feels annoyed, irritated, agitated, or even scared, it is least consequential. The size this narrative has acquired, matters.

On the side of opposition, there are people who take it as a culmination of the process of erosion; erosion of secular values, of republican ideals, of constitutional standards. There are people who belong to Hindu community, who acknowledge the historical trauma that Hindus have undergone in terms of the destruction of their places of worship, but they are not part of the new narrative. In fact they are worried over what is happening in India right now and where it could lead this country to.

These two positions are not spread out so neatly in the Indian societal and political spaces. There must be, and there are, differences within each space. But for now the major representatives of the contest are the BJP and the Congress. The upcoming national elections will mathematically tell us who stands where in terms of the popular support. Now numbers will decide which side of the history is the right side of the history.

But it is not the electoral space that captures this contest in its entirety. It is spread into deeper and wider spaces of a human society where more than a billion people live - before, after and beyond elections. Invoking secularism, or constitution won’t make any substantial difference now. In fact these political constructs are the sign posts of a civilisational journey undertaken in the West.

A plain and random application of these concepts in a space like India was accompanied by a sort of political convenience. An ordinary Hindu, or an ordinary Muslim, in this region was not meant to identify themselves to an idea that had no roots in their history. With the rise of BJP and its insistence on local terminology, a word like secularism now sounds strange. Gone are the times when everyone had to swear by this word.

Gone are also the times when for the sake of sounding secular, a politician would visit places of worship belonging to different religious communities, and behave like a devotee. The time for those ‘political acts’ is up. Our own Farooq Abdullah may continue to hum the Hindi devotional songs, and present himself as equidistant to a religious figure like Ram, but the coordinates set by the new narrative insist on a mathematical measurement of history and identity.

The consciousness of the situation creates new imperatives. The surrogates like secularism are unhelpful. It is time when Hindus with different ideas about religion and politics engage directly with each other, through their own language, through their own reference points. It is not the time to accuse each other, pitching Hindutva against secularism.

That is counter productive. It is time to recognise each there, and conduct a dialogue on what constitutes Hinduism. The rabble rousing of politicians apart, it is time Hindus talked about Hinduism, about Hindu history, and about Hindu aspiration and create an atmosphere where differences don’t degenerate into frenzy.

But what should Muslims do? They should look inwards; before accusing Hindus of using religion, or religious history, to justify violence, Muslims have much to question about how they understand Islam, and how they have employed it across the globe.

When I hear Muslim religious scholars invoke secularism, I find it revulsive. In their cherished spaces they call secularism as anti-Islam. They are not just harbouring hypocrisy, it is downright self-deception. For Muslims it is time to seriously question their own religious thought – the ideas about history, about political power, about the relations with others. For Muslims it is time to engage with Hindu and Hinduism as it is, and not as our sermons depict it.

Tailpiece: The Hindus say, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam - the whole world is one family. The Muslims say, al-Khlaqu Ayalullah - the entire humanity is God’s own family. And then we are afraid of each other, exclude each other; even our histories are in a state of clash.