'You can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses': goes the
opening of one of Benjamin
Burt's songs. A political party, punch drunk with power, is judged
by the man it lauds as its hero in
the monlents of its inebriation.
Savarkar was not a religious fundamentalist at all. He was what the
historian Bipan Chandra termed
'a practicing atheist'. Savarkar was not interested in religion. The
religious fundamentalist
misinterprets his religion and perverts its message to secure his political
ends. Savarkar did not
misinterpret Hinduism. He ignored it. He did not pervert the message
of religion to serve the ends of
his politics. He perverted history for use in the service of his politics,
a politics based on
manufactured ancient wrongs for the spread of hatred and the spirit
of revenge.
Inevitably, the yatra which Savarkar's devotee L.K. Advani launched
in 1990 in a self-proclaimed
crusade for Hindutva ended on December 6, 1992, with the demolition
of the Babri Masjid. The
BJP leader Sushma Swaraj ripped apart all pretence, in Bhopal on April
14, 2000 when she
admitted that the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was 'purely political in
nature and had nothing to do
with religion'.
What does Hindutva mean, precisely? And, what does it spell for the
people of India? Hindutva is
not against the interests of only the minorities. The outlook, prospect
and lives of millions of Hindus
will be blighted by it. It is certainly not synonymous with Hinduism.
The 1996 election manifesto of
the BJP speaks of 'Hindutva or cultural nationalism'. This is in rejection
of what Savarkar and the
RSS Chief Golwalkar called 'territorial nationalism'. This was the
kind of nationalism known the
world over and which the Indian National Congress espoused since its
birth: every one born in the
territory of India is an Indian by birth. Gandhi and Nehru enriched
this concept. Implicit in it is the
concept of India's secularism, democracy and its 'composite culture'.
We are one nation with
cultures as diverse as our land itself, yet knit together by a common
loyalty to India.
Consistently with its rejection of this'territorial nationalism', the
BJP rejects the concept of a
'composite culture' also. The BJP election manifesto ( 1996 as well
as 1998) declared, 'The BJP
believes in one nation, one people, one culture '. That 'one culture'
which it flaunts is the heart of its
'cultural nationalism'. The reader could not have failed to discern
its import by now - it is Hindu
nationalism. The 1998 Manifesto is more explicit in the section, 'Our
National Identity, Cultural
Nationalism'. It says, plainly enough, that 'the cultural nationalism
of India... is the core of Hindutva'.
Not surprisingly, it firmly links the Ayodhya movement to this ideology.
'It is with such integrative
ideas in mind, the BJPjoined the Ram Janmabhoomi movement for the construction
of Shri Ram
Mandir at Ayodhya .... Shri Rain lies at the core of Indian
consciousness.'
This movement was begun by the VHP on Augnst 19, 1984. It was set up
by the RSS in Mumbai
for this very purpose. The BJP formally joined the movement on June
11, 1989, when at Palampur
its National Executive adopted a resolution on the issne demanding
that the 'Ram Janmasthan [be]
handed over to the Hindus'. This was probably the first time in independent
India that a major
political party had taken a partisan, communal line. For the BJP it
was par for the course.
Elections to the Lok Sabha were only a few months away. On this very
issue, the BJP bronght down the National Front government headed by Vishwanath
Pratap Singh in 1990. LK Advani embarked on his blood-drenched rath yatra.
He said, on September 24, 1990, on the eve of the
Somnath-Ayodhya rath yatra: 'ideologically, I am ranged against all
political parties because of this
issue. All political parties think alike'. The issue was clearly defined.
It was not Ram Janambhoomi. It
was a 'crusade in defence of Hindutva and a crusade against pseudo-secularism'.
The movement
reached its climax with the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December
6, 1992. However, BJP's
election manifestos of 1996 and !998, not to forget the utterances
of its mentor, the RSS, suggest
that its real goal is not limited to the Ayodhya campaign. It is to
recast Indian polity thoroughly and
replace the spirit and ethos of Indian nationalism with the exclusionary
and poisonous credo of
Hindutva. The real goal, then, is to establish a Hindu Rashtra. The
Constitution will retain its husk,
denuded of its democratic liberal and secular content. The ideological
guidance here, as in much else, comes from Savarkar.