Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) supremo Mohan Bhagwat recently lamented at the sorry state of the lonely Hindu lion. This at a venue in Chicago where Swami Vivekananda had triumphantly brought home to the Christian and Pagan world the glories of the Hindu Vedanta tradition at the World Parliament of Religions.
The extent of the unfortunate ‘fall’ of which Bhagwat has spoken is best gauged from the contents of the September 1983 issue of the journal of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Vishwa Hindu, encapsulated by the late H.K. Vyas of the Communist Party of India in a CPI publication (No. 13, November 1983 – C 403, untitled monograph).
That issue of the Vishwa Hindu speaks of the global spread of the Hindus in bygone times. Some of the stunning pieces of information published there may be reproduced here:
- Jerusalem was actually Yedushalyam, temple of the lord of the Yadavas;
- The Al-Aqsa mosque was originally a Krishna temple;
- The St.Paul’s cathedral was likewise a Gopal Krishna temple;
- The Notre Dame church was initially a temple dedicated to Devi Bhagwati/Parvati/Bhawani;
- Paris was at first Parimeshwariyam, later Parisorium under the Romans and finally Paris;
- The river Seine was actually the Sindhu; and
- Nearer home, as is well known, Taj Mahal was Tejo Mahalay, a Shiva temple.
And so on and so forth. The journal then makes a sweeping encapsulation that should tell us how Hindus have suffered unimaginable regression and defeat: “In pre-Christian times all people, everywhere, in the entire world were Hindus.”
Reading this makes one wonder which ‘fall’ was more telling – that of Adam and Eve from paradise or of Hindus from universal hegemony.
These sad facts must put Bhagwat’s lament in a deeply distressing context: from the presumed pride of lions millions strong, we the Hindus have by some conspiratorial declension been reduced to a lonely lion always at bay from “wild dogs”.
Yet, Bhagwat’s analogy of the lonely Hindu lion confronts us with a profound grammatical conundrum: if it is agreed that some 80% Indians are Hindu, how can so many people be likened just to one lonely lion? And then there are the many affluent ones who burnish the fortunes of the western world as proud NRI Hindus.
Clearly, there is a catch in the loneliness of the lonesome lion and indeed in the subsequent reference to ‘wild dogs’ from whom the lonely Hindu lion, according to Bhagwat, is at mortal danger. Who, then, is Bhagwat calling for unity and who are his proverbial ‘wild dogs’?
The reality here seems complicated. Given the diversity within the Hindu fold – of cults, sub-cults, gods and deities, forms of worship, cultural-religious mix, food habits, things and material articles which are either profane or sacred and such like – is likely to remain intractable, who is to unite with whom, and to what purpose?
If one were to scan the discrete caste formations, from the Brahmin to the Shudra, one is guaranteed to run into a skein of irreconcilables and contradictions not just between castes but within castes, which makes ‘unity’ a distant prospect. Among Brahmins, for example, there are those like the present writer who are Shaivite and make non-vegetarian offerings to Shankar and Parvati on Mahashivaratri – reason why when the Nehrus, then indeed just Kauls, and many other Kashmiri Pandits left the valley for the mainland in what is now Uttar Pradesh, were hard put to find social acceptance as proper Brahmins.
At the bottom of the ladder, even now, some Shudra caste groups do not inter-marry with some others. All this must make the task of unity quite tough.
Also read: By Pitting Wild Dogs Against Lions, Mohan Bhagwat Has Stirred a Forest of Metaphors
Then there is the rather more gruesome face of this diversity and discord. Just the other day, in Madhya Pradesh a Dalit Hindu was allegedly “scalped” for wearing a turban, a totem of upper-caste identity. Those who seek unity will not let some 20% among the Hindus to ride horses to marriage and walk upright on lanes where their social ‘betters’ live. Not to speak of daring to inter-marry among the unifier families.
Might one then conclude that the lonely Hindu lion is, after all, the Brahmin a smattering of some adjacent high castes? Importantly, who is to be held responsible for the loneliness of this lion?
Now to the ‘wild dogs’. Who may these be? The non-Hindus who lay claim to the nation and to the rights and privileges its secular and democratic constitution bestows upon them? If so, how does this square with the claims that everyone who lives in the land is Hindu and that the whole world is a family – vasudhaiva kutumbakam? Ergo, when are we all Hindus and when not Hindus?
But more tragically, from Bhagwat’s point of view, the ‘wild dogs’ may not only be exogenous but endogenous as well – those Hindus-by-sufferance who insist on parities and dignities which Brahminical Hinduism may not allow them – all, of course, for the great glory of Hinduism.
Not to forget the womenfolk who have ‘fallen’ into the quagmire of modern ways, causing wickedness and dissension and breakdown of the patriarchal family, the bedrock of social harmony and spiritual and moral purity – all to be primarily ensured by the ‘good character’ of our women.
Alas, it seems that the lonely Chitpawan Brahmin lion has a tough task to handle, and primarily owing to its own pride (pun intended). How much nicer just to be good, conscientious, law-abiding, secular citizens of a democratic republic, which if allowed to be itself and true to its promise may generate more and better unity than what Bhagwat has in mind.
There is nonetheless a crasser and immediate cause to the call for unity, however couched it may be in imperial terms.
Beginning with the suicide – many claim it was abetted – of Hyderabad Central University Dalit scholar, Rohit Vemula, through a series of subsequent and unrelenting attacks on the Dalit community by upper-caste Hindus in BJP-ruled states, culminating in the quietus the Modi government sought at first to give to the Supreme Court intervention that diluted the terms of the SC/ST Atrocities Act, the BJP has been losing its hold among sections of the Dalit community. As it woke up to reverse the dilution of the Act by the Supreme Court in an obvious bid to placate rather than from conviction, its base among the upper castes has now sounded a contrary revolt, accusing it of ‘appeasing’ the Dalits.
Also read: In Chicago, Mohan Bhagwat Chose to Ignore the Enemy Within Hindu Society
The BJP is having to contend, on one hand, with its own Dalit ‘leadership’ within the party and cabinet who have said they will not stand for any messing with the Atrocities Act, demanding even that the real culprits of the Bhima Koregaon violence be apprehended, namely Milind Ekbote and Sambhaji Bhide (statement by Ram Das Athawale), and on the other with its longtime loyalists among the Brahmin, Thakur and Bania castes as also sections of the intermediate castes who in recent years have gone over to it, who feel that the Atrocities Act is like the sword of Damocles over their socially superior heads.
The RSS is aware that its political front, the BJP, could fall between two stools in the 2019 general elections unless a ‘unity’ is forged between the warring factions of the Hindus. The ‘wild dogs’ thus may have equal reference to fifth columnists who may not mind bringing down what is meant to be the everlasting citadel. BJP supremo Amit Shah has already pronounced a life of five decades or more for right-wing Hindu rule or of state power.
It remains to be seen how these warring factions read the roar of the lonesome lion in the months to come. As the National Geographic channel tells us, rival prides from within the leonine community routinely sideline old, tiresome lions. Lesser animals, too, drive the lion away, occupying the territory that the old lion can no longer hold.
A still more troublesome thought is that its loyalists are actually now at the receiving end of severe consequences wrought first by demonetisation and then by the wholly chaotic and deleterious Goods and Services Tax, and finding a social excuse to have at the ruling dispensation. If this is true to any considerable extent, the lion indeed has much to worry about.
Here the fact is, as becomes obvious with each passing day, that economic disasters like the sinking rupee, astronomical price of fuels and commodities, lack of job opportunities, social tensions, increasingly embarrassing allegations of corruption against various functionaries, and a total failure of the government of the day to live up to its promises, most of all the hollowness of the Sab ka saath, sab ka vikas slogan, has generated massive distrust and hardship even among wide sections of the BJP’s base populations. And the RSS lion is hard put to remedy the damage except through time-tested calls to ‘Hindu unity’ and invocation of the great alleged peril in which the Hindu lion finds itself.
After all, in what sense did Bhagwat find a predatory animal like the lion, which feeds on bovines among other animals, more useful a metaphor than, let’s say, a bumble bee or an ant which works hard and sustains a countless brood?
Badri Raina taught English literature at Delhi University.