By BS Murthy
No mistaking it, in India’s socio-religious turf, caste is the divisive creed of the Hindus, largely immune to the cultural credo of the Hindutva, formulated by Savarkar, which diminishes their demographic strength in its electoral arena, comprising of non-Hindus in considerable numbers, who, in stark contrast, are religiously cohesive and politically emotive, particularly against the Hindu nationalists. But the lazy explanation offered by some for the lack of Hindu communal coherence, though historically they have been under the Semitic threat, is that unlike those faiths, Sanatana dharma, Sanatana for short labeled as Hinduism, is not a dogma of faith but a way of life, which is not as straight-jacketed as that. Whatever, with no sense of foreboding about things in the offing that is in spite of the unmistakable Semitic signals, as the addicts of the caste politicking remain skeptical about the overall political significance of the Hindutva in maintaining the Indian status quo in the long run, pitching for the same as the preservative of their caste identities and interests that are dearer to their hearts above all else, is vital for India’s national integrity.
No denying that Sanatana, evolved in the ancient Arya Varta, from esoteric ideas, such as – narō nārayana (man is God) and vasudhaiva kutumbakam (holds world all in one household) – envisaging a lofty society with varna vyavastha based on varnāshrama dharma (occupation-oriented caste grouping) with swadharma (caste code of conduct) unique to each varna long got distorted beyond recognition. Maybe it was because, while its spiritual focus is on the self, aham brahmasmi (I’m the Spirit) obviated the Semitic need of One God to obey and One Book to revere (as in the tailpiece), its eclectic dictum, ekam sadviprā bahudhā vadanti (what is right is One only, describe it wise variedly) gave rise to innumerable gods and godmen, numerous sects and sub-sects and umpteen philosophies and theologies, often mutually contradictory. However, with the Brahmins at the intellectual helm, this diverse, yet not divisive social arrangement, managed for the most part by the Kshatriyas, going by the travelers’ accounts of yore, made India a land of milk and honey. But sadly, Sanatana’s broad dharma gave way in time to the narrow swadharmas, thereby each varna becoming a Semitic faith in itself and if anything the Islamic invasions followed by the British colonization of the country of riches impoverished it every which way.
Given their penchant to impose Islam in the conquered lands, though the brute Muslim invaders didn’t make any exception to India, the very fact that they failed to Islamize it in toto, like Persia, Egypt etc., but could only marginally penetrate their alien faith into it, speaks volumes about the inherent strengths of the Sanatana that have never been adequately analyzed or documented. But under the dubious British colonial dispensation, the devious evangelists, so as to serve their Christian cause, started turning the Hindu menial castes into soft conversion targets by polluting their minds with the projection of varna vyavastha as an evil ‘caste conundrum’ that’s debilitating as well as demeaning to them. And thereafter, as a double whammy, the left-leaning stuff branded Hinduism as caste-oppressive Brahmanism and that began to alienate the intermediate castes as well from it to further upset the Hindu social order for its political disruption, seemingly forever.
Then came India’s independence, which ushered in the overdue universal education and that brought about social confidence in the Hindu middle and lower castes but as the Brahmins continued to remain the face of the Sanatana, be it as temple priests, or as Shankaracharyas (it’s time they’re forced to shut their shops that impede the Hindu caste equity) and even as Sarsanghchalaks of the vaunted Rashtriya Sawayam Sevak Sangh, not to speak of the plethora of its preachers and proponents, the missionary mischief and the left-liberal libel got fillip, with no mean help from the Nehruvian political ecosystem that’s patently ant-Hindu. Even though the Hindu right labours to theorize Sanatana’s egalitarian ethos, given the ground realities, Hindutva, its religio-cultural vehicle in the Indian political arena, got mired in the quagmire of the caste conundrums even after India’s traumatic partition on the Islamic lines.
However, at the same time, Muslims who made up some 9% of the post-partitioned India (if only Dr. Ambedkar had his way, they would’ve all been in Pakistan) have been exploiting its democratic electoral process to further the Islamic demographic agenda of unbridled growth by way of procreation as well as infiltration. The Muslim political strategy has always been to place ummah’s votes on the electoral platter of those Hindus, who enable them to strengthen the Indian arm of Islam without let or hindrance, and what with their ever growing numbers, there was never a dearth of the ‘secular’ takers among the political ranks to India’s democratic detriment. Strange though it is, it is seldom appreciated that in the caste-oriented India, it’s the Muslim ummah, pegged at around 15% (only as of now) of its populace but yet tagged as a minority community, is by far the more populous, that too by a considerable margin, than any Hindu caste group to name!
However, at long last, with the meteoric rise of Narendra Modi the Hindu nationalist to the Indian political helm, what with Hindutva making sense to the backward classes that he happens to belong to, devotedly at that, it seemed as if he has pulled some of the Hindu middle ground out of its caste conundrums. True to the Hindutva, with the parliamentary numbers on his side in his first two stints, he did dare to enter some of the hitherto forbidden Muslim legislative zones to come up trumps. But when he was aiming to bring about ‘earth-shaking’ changes in his third term, while the ummah, so as to curtail his legislative clout, channelized its electoral might to deny him the required numbers, some of the Hindu castes, giving credence to his opponents’ false propaganda that he would do away with their reservations if reelected, turned their backs on him for the same purpose. Yet luckily for Bharat, Modi made it to the top but barely so and bruised at that to face the next electoral round in 2029 and that gives the Hindus enough time to reflect over their collective future.
Hope in the meantime, the Hindu castemen would be able to visualize the political ploy of the ‘secular’ parties in using the Hindutva as a hammer to forge the Muslim-Christian minority vote bank and as the sickle to slice the Hindu majority ballot box into antagonistic caste pieces to stop the only nationalist political force that is there in the electoral tracks. No denying that Hinduism is hierarchical in practice but Bharat, the cradle of Sanatana’s egalitarian ideals, views its children of all castes and creeds with the same benign eyes, which won’t be the case if it were, God forbid, to lose its Hindu credo; dread that say. So, the recalcitrant castemen may realize that by cutting off Bharat’s nose to spite its Hindutva face, there may be no castes in the distant future for their progenies to be proud of, or vote for. Instead, being the overwhelming majority of the Hindus, it’s wise for the so-called middle and lower castes to own up the Hindutva and restore Sanatana’s pristine ideals to shape an egalitarian Hindu polity through a social reformation.
Tailpiece
The Christian chicanery lies in making people vulnerable by propagating that in the eyes of the God their mundane acts are nothing but sins to expiate which His Son had died on the Cross. Even as that proposition makes a compelling case for the possibility of salvation only through the Christ, the regimen of confessions in the meantime acts as a guilt-release valve to make the Christian life merry on the moral ground never mind the violations. No less dubious is the evangelism itself for the Christ clearly told the Commissioned Twelve: “Don’t go to the Gentiles or the Samaritans, but only to the people of Israel – God’s lost sheep.” Be that as it may, despite its founder’s forbiddance, the Christianity has engulfed the best part of the globe to become its widest faith with an active agenda to harvest the Hindu souls to further buttress its ranks.
On the other hand, the Islamic ruse is to inexorably bind the Musalmans in the blind alley of the supposed ‘right path’ of life that Allah ‘the God’ had allegedly revealed to Muhammad their prophet for them to unquestioningly follow so as to stand them in good stead on the Day of Judgment. Not only that, to downplay the mundane bumps on Islam’s right path, supposedly perfected by Allah for the Musalmans, they are made to believe that “naught is the life of the world save a pastime and a sport. Better far is the abode of the Hereafter for those who keep their duty (to Allah). More so, with diktats such as “they only are the (true) believers whose hearts feel fear when Allah is mentioned, and when the revelations of Allah are recited unto them they increase their faith, and who trust in their Lord” Quran turns Musalmans into Islam’s, nay Muhammad’s, bonded labourers. Above all, by dubbing ‘the others’ as kafirs, as Islam incites Musalmans against them with Allah’s quotes like “relent not in pursuit of enemy, If ye are suffering, lo! They suffer even as ye suffer and ye hope from Allah that for which they cannot hope. Allah is ever Knower, Wise”, it can be said that it’s more of a cult than a religion and what’s worse, it too, like Christianity, works to further expand in India.
More on the topic in my free ebook ‘Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife (A Critical Appraisal of Islamic Faith, Indian Polity ‘n More)’ in this site.
