It was the longest-serving Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) sarsanghchalak, MS Golwalkar, who famously viewed Gandhian nonviolence disdainfully, saying, “All Hindu deities are depicted carrying weapons”. . This year some of his retainers have decided to emulate their gods on Ram Navami, as Hindu yatris, apparently religious processions, carry swords, maces, even knives and revolvers to advertise their might. had come This weaponisation of belief is reminiscent of the cynical rejection of Gandhian ‘universalism’ and ‘non-violence’ by VD Savarkar, the original proponent of Hindutva, who regarded them as illusory opium. Instead of Mahatma Gandhi’s moral lessons in favor of peace, Savarkar advocated the “political heroism” of Hindutva, an idea that has found full flower in today’s doctrine’s foot soldiers.
Mahatma Gandhi’s idea of Ram Rajya – one might say Gandhi’s idea itself – is in danger of being swept away by the prevailing ideological currents, ironically in favor of a very different conception of Ram. These days, when the standing of his historical opponents is at an all-time high, Gandhi has been criticized for weakness, for going too far to accommodate Muslim interests, and for his pacifism, which has been described as a fundamentalist Hindutva movement. is seen in Masculine. The Mahatma was killed with the name of Rama on his lips for being a Muslim supporter. Indeed, he came out of the fast in order to force his own followers, ministers of the new Indian government, to transfer a large part of undivided India’s wealth to the new state of Pakistan. Gandhiji’s idea of Ram Rajya was arguably utopian – a vision of complete social harmony, economic justice and political freedom. The Hindutva idea is one of autocratic Hindutva dominance, in which those who do not conform are firmly put in their place.
Satya and Mahatma
The Mahatma was much more than the extraordinary leader of the world’s first successful nonviolent movement for independence from colonial rule. He was also a philosopher who was constantly trying to live out his own ideas, whether they applied to personal self-improvement or social change: his autobiography was commonly subtitled The Story of My Experiments with Truth.
No dictionary explains ‘truth’ in the depth of meaning that Gandhiji gave it. His truthfulness emerged from his convictions: it meant not only what was accurate, but what was fair and, therefore, right. Truth could not be achieved by ‘untruth’ or unjust means, which included inflicting violence on one’s adversary. To describe his method, Gandhi coined the expression satyagraha – literally, ‘the hold on to truth’ or, as he variously described it, truth-force, love-force or self-force. He disliked the English term ‘passive resistance’, because satyagraha required activism, not passivity. If you believe in truth and care enough to achieve it, Gandhi felt, you cannot remain passive: you must be willing to actively suffer for truth.
Hence nonviolence, like many later concepts labeled with a negation, was much more than a denial of an opposite, from non-cooperation to non-alignment; This did not mean merely the absence of violence. Nonviolence was the way to defend the truth, inflicting pain not on the opponent, but on oneself. Voluntarily accepting punishment was necessary in order to demonstrate the strength of one’s convictions.
a duel
The attitude of the Hindutva-inspired government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi towards Gandhi is very ambiguous. Many RSS pracharaks and other members of the Sangh Parivar were taught a strong dislike for the Mahatma, whose message of tolerance and pluralism was emphatically rejected by the Sangh Parivar as minority appeasement, and whose non-violence or The principle of non-violence was observed. as a confession of the unspeakable weakness of the masculine Hindu. Hindutva ideologue Savarkar, whom Mr Modi has described as one of his heroes, expressed contempt for Gandhiji’s “perverted doctrine of non-violence and truth” and claimed it was “the country’s bound to destroy power. But the prime minister, despite his Hindutva mindset, admiration for Savarkar and lifelong association with the Sangh Parivar, embraced Gandhi, hailed the Mahatma and even used his spectacles as a symbol for the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan Connected it to a call. To revive Gandhiji’s idea of service through ‘Swachhata Hi Sewa’ campaign.
The ambivalence says a lot: When many members of Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) call for Gandhi’s statues across the country to be replaced with those of his killer Nathuram Godse, the prime minister wants to claim the mantle of his fellow Gujarati Are. own political advantage. Also, there is a dissonance between the official government embrace of Gandhi and the informal ideological distaste for him privately expressed by members and supporters of the ruling party, some of whom have made no secret that he was assassinated. Eyes, a patriotic act. Even the Mahatma’s declared intention to spend the rest of his days in Pakistan, shortly before his assassination, sits uncomfortably with a party whose leaders’ favorite curse for its critics is ‘Go to Pakistan!’
The difference
It is well understood that openly practicing Hinduism, Gandhiji’s vision was very different from that of his fellow Hindus Savarkar and Golwalkar, the leading ideologues of the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS (precursors of the BJP) respectively. His Hindutva, open, liberal and accepting of differences, could mold itself into a different form of ‘Hindu nationalism’, a liberal nationalism that was imbued with his Hindu values, and did much to manage India’s diversity. was suitable. But Gandhiji was so inclusive that he did not associate his nationalism with a communal epithet. Savarkar, who had little use for Hindu religious beliefs and practices other than as a label for identity construction, never thought much of Gandhi’s faith or the principle of nonviolence that emerged from it. For a Hindutva, nationalism cannot be non-violent because to be successful, it must be coercive and destructive to enemies, and when it is successful it is expressed through the apparatus of the state, which has a monopoly on violence. . Despite being a far more deeply rooted Hindu than Savarkar, Mahatma Gandhi has little place in the Hindutva imagination.
opinion | How Ram Rajya has degenerated into Troll Rajya
Hinduism and Hinduism, as I have argued in my books Why I Am a Hindu and The Battle of Belonging, represent two very different and opposite ideas, with different implications for the role of nationalism and Hinduism. Are. It is easier to admire the principles Gandhiji stood for and the way he claimed them than to follow them. But his concept of Ram Rajya represents an ideal that those who distort Hinduism to promote a narrow, exclusionary fanaticism betray every day.
Shashi Tharoor is Member of Parliament (Congress) from Thiruvananthapuram, Lok Sabha, Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology and President of All India Professionals Congress.