XPost: soc.culture.indian, alt.fan.jai-maharaj, alt.religion.hindu   
   XPost: alt.politics, talk.politics.misc   
   From: alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com   
      
   Forwarded post from S. V.   
      
   Hindu activism outside the Sangh   
      
   By Koenraad Elst   
   Tuesday, August 16, 2011   
      
   "An RSS man", that is how the Indian media and the   
   Western South Asia scholars label anyone known as or   
   suspected of standing up for Hindu interests. In fact,   
   there have always been Hindu activists outside the RSS   
   Sangh, working as individuals or in smaller   
   organizations. Today, the modernization of Indian society   
   and especially the spread of the internet has facilitated   
   the mushroom growth of new forms and networks of Hindu   
   activism.   
      
   Most supposed experts refuse to see the existence of   
   Hindu activism outside the Sangh and instead reduce any   
   Hindu sign of life to "Hindutva" (thus incidentally   
   flattering the Sangh). One reason is purely political: in   
   the struggle against Hindu activism as a whole, it is   
   simply more useful to extend all prevalent criticism of   
   the Sangh, e.g. that it murdered Mahatma Gandhi or   
   committed "genocide" in Gujarat 2002, to any and every   
   form of Hindu resistance. It implies that if you hear a   
   Hindu complain about, say, Christian missionary   
   demonization of Hinduism, you must stop him for he is   
   about to commit murder if not genocide. In the Indian   
   media, this kind of innuendo is frequent enough.   
      
   The main reason, however, seems to be that India-watchers   
   have settled for a conspiratorial explanation of the   
   existence of Hindu activism. In their construction, you   
   first have the Sangh, or its historic core, then you get   
   Sangh propaganda, and as a result of this, you get a   
   belief among large numbers of Hindus that they are   
   suffering various injustices, historical and   
   contemporary. This is the dominant paradigm in Hindutva   
   studies: a Hindutva conspiracy has created for itself a   
   large constituency by means of mendacious propaganda.   
      
   The existence of multiple independent sources of Hindu   
   activism makes this Hindutva conspiracy theory harder to   
   sustain. It becomes more likely that they had   
   independently noticed a really existing state of affairs,   
   which then aroused their indignation.   
      
   For example, in numerous media and academic accounts, the   
   Ayodhya controversy is introduced with the explanation:   
   "Hindu nationalists claim that the Babri mosque had been   
   built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple", or   
   something to that effect. While the Hindu nationalists do   
   indeed assert as much, the formulation falsely insinuates   
   that this "claim" is of the Hindu nationalists' making.   
   In fact, that "claim" has been made in all the historic   
   sources that speak out on the matter: Muslim, Hindu and   
   European. Before the controversy became politically   
   important in the 1980s, it was accepted by all competent   
   authorities, e.g. the 1989 edition of the Encyclopaedia   
   Britannica. So, the temple vandalization scenario was not   
   a piece of propaganda deliberately floated to plant false   
   consciousness in the minds of the Hindu masses. It had   
   very solid historic credentials, and consequently,   
   divergent people with no mutual organizational connection   
   or common ideological allegiance could independently act   
   upon it.   
      
   For another example, the "Hindutva claim" that the Indian   
   state imposes some and tolerates other injustices against   
   the Hindus, can simply be verified. Thus, when I asked   
   Hindu activists of any stripe in the 1990s what motivated   
   them, practically everyone of them would mention the   
   constitutional exception for the non-Hindu majority state   
   of Jammu & Kashmir (and likewise Nagaland and Mizoram)   
   and the related expulsion of the near-total Hindu   
   community from Kashmir in 1990. Well, has this expulsion   
   taken place or not? From most Western studies of Hindu   
   nationalism, you wouldn't learn about it, and yet, the   
   answer is that it really has. Moreover, no Indian or   
   Kashmiri government has seriously attempted to resettle   
   the expelled Hindus in their homeland. One need not be   
   duped by a Hindutva conspiracy to notice this fact as   
   well as the injustice of this fact. Consequently, non-   
   Sangh Hindus as well as Sanghis have spoken out against   
   this injustice. If the Sangh had not existed, Hindus   
   would still speak out against this injustice.   
      
   When the Pope came to India in 1999, the Indian media   
   loudly denounced as "Hindutva paranoia" the assertion   
   that the Church was out to destroy the Indian religions   
   by converting their adherents to Christianity. But of   
   course it is official Church doctrine that only   
   Christians are saved and that out of charity, all Pagans   
   must be converted. Having gone through the Catholic   
   school system myself, that is what I learned from the   
   horse's mouth. And when the Pope finally opened his mouth   
   in Delhi, he said in so many words that the Church was in   
   Asia in order to "reap a rich harvest of faith", modern   
   Church parlance for the harvesting of Pagan souls. He   
   merely restated a generally known fact, one from which   
   any Hindu could draw his own conclusions without anyhow   
   being compromised with "Hindutva paranoia".   
      
   For yet another example, the "Hindutva claim" that the   
   absence of a Common Civil Code amounts to "pseudo-   
   secularism", or indeed to a simple absence of secularism   
   in the Personal Law dimension of the Indian state, would   
   have to be acknowledged as more than just a Hindutva   
   claim. It is something that Hindus of all kinds including   
   those hostile to the Sangh, and people of all   
   denominations, can see. Indeed, were it not for the   
   widespread assumption that anything coming from the RSS-   
   BJP must be "Hindu fundamentalist" or "Hindu fascist",   
   all international observers would readily concede this   
   point. By definition, a secular state is one that has   
   laws applying to its citizens regardless of their   
   religion. The usual insistence that "Hindu nationalists   
   want to abolish secularism" and its implication that the   
   Indian state is indeed secular, cannot stand scrutiny on   
   this score. But admitting this much would upset the   
   entire conceptual framework of Hindutva studies.   
      
   Anyone desiring to uphold the dominant construction of   
   Hindu nationalism, viz. the Hindutva conspiracy paradigm,   
   logically has an interest in denying or minimizing the   
   existence of independent non-Sangh Hindu activism. But   
   the facts on the ground show increasingly that concerned   
   Hindus are emancipating themselves from this   
   identification of their own work with Hindutva.   
      
   Some of these start from philosophies different from the   
   nationalistic RSS narrative, others are not ideologically   
   different but want to provide an alternative mode of   
   action to complement or replace an RSS working-style in   
   which they have become disappointed. For indeed, the BJP   
   election defeats in 2004 and 2009 and the steady decline   
   in RSS shakha attendance since 1998 highlight a longer-   
   standing disappointment in Hindu revivalist circles with   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)