Tag secularism

How secularism has failed Hindus and India – Arvind Sharma

VOI

Hindus, temples and the secular Indian state.

A glaring example of the anti-Hindu nature of Indian secularism is provided by the way Hindu temples have been taken over by the state governments. The extent of this practice is simply mind-boggling. What is even more disturbing is that some of the states, where the BJP is in power, have not discontinued the practice. – Prof. Arvind Sharma

Part One

How secularism has failed India 

This question can no longer be dodged.

Secularism, in its broadest connotation, was held up as the guiding principle of the new country when it came into existence in 1947, and of the new republic in 1950 when it adopted a Constitution, which was secular in every respect except in name, which too was added to it in 1976, by the Constitution (Forty-Second Amendment) Act.

But what is secularism? The fundamental principle of secularism is the separation of Church (or religion), and State. The state stays away from religion, and religion stays away from the state. All the citizens become subject to secular law as equals, religion becomes a private matter, which is kept out of the public square, and religious peace is thereby secured.

Let us now examine how well this principle has worked in India. What does the record of the past 75 years reveal in this regard? This is a considerable slice of time, almost a third of the period of British rule over India.

Has the Indian state stayed out of religion?

Let us take the case of just one state such as Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu has about 44,000 temples. Out of these, 38,000 are run by the Tamil Nadu government. If we spread our net wider, we discover that around 34,500 temples are under the control of the state of Karnataka. It has been further calculated that around 90,000 temples in the five southern states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana are run by the state governments.

One is compelled to ask if this degree of state control of temples is consistent with secularism. Is it a tenet of Indian secularism, that it is only the central government which will stay out of religion, and not the state governments? I know of no such principle. Both the central and the state governments represent the state in India.

Sometimes it is argued that the governments take temples over to fight corruption, but other secular democracies do not take over a religious institution if they suspect foul play; they take the institution to court, precisely because a secular government is supposed to stay out of running religious institutions. So far as corruption is concerned, the likelihood of the state governments themselves getting corrupted by running the temples cannot be discounted either. According to one source, the various state governments collected a total of around Rs 6,000 crore from the temples in the year 2020. According to another source, Rs 2,300 crore from the Tirupati temple were transferred to the treasury of the Andhra government in 2021. With such astronomical amounts of money floating around, the possibility of corruption cannot be overlooked. Just imagine that the annual hundi collection of Tirupati is Rs 1,310 crore, of Vaishno Devi Rs 520 crore, and of Siddhivinayak Temple Rs 98 crore. There are good reasons why a secular state needs to stay out of religion.

Can the Indian state still be considered secular? Consider this. In both Delhi and West Bengal, both Hindu and Muslim priests are receiving monthly stipends from the respective state governments. This also seems to be a serious violation of the secular principle.

A secular legal system is the next feature one needs to consider in this context. This is the necessary legal basis of the secular state. In keeping with this realisation, the Constitution directed the government to move towards evolving a Uniform Civil Code for all its citizens in keeping with Directive Principle No 44. In the absence of such a code, a Muslim can have four wives in India but other citizens are restricted to monogamy, to mention just one anomaly. The principle of equality also has implications for the running of religious institutions by the state. Only Hindu institutions, it seems, have been taken over by the state governments; Muslim and Christian institutions have been left untouched, although they are also subject to Article 25 of the Indian Constitution.

A remarkable example of the inequality in this respect has come to light recently. The St. Stephen’s College is a well-known Christian institution of higher education in Delhi. According to newspaper reports, it receives substantial funding from the Indian government; some reports put the extent of support as high as ninety per cent. However, fifty per cent of the student body is said to be Christian. According to reports, the college now wants to influence the procedures for admission for the other fifty percent. One wonders how all this can be reconciled with the idea of secularism.

Has Indian secularism succeeded in securing religious peace as promised? The record is extremely distressing in this regard. Over the years, Hindus have killed Muslims and Christians. The names of Akhlaq and Pehlu Khan come to mind, who were lynched by Hindu mobs, and of the Christian missionary Graham Staines, who was killed by Dara Singh. Muslims have also killed Hindus, as the film The Kashmir Files documented, and as happened recently in Udaipur and Amravati. Christians have also killed Hindus, as in the case of Swami Laksmananada, in Kandhamal in Odisha. It is remarkable that a secular state has succeeded in making members of both the majority and minority community equally insecure.

In other words, it could be argued that secularism has failed in India, but can we conclude from this that secularism has failed India?

It has been said that the trouble with Christianity is that it has never been tried. The same could be said of secularism in India. The parallel is tempting.

Just as, by and large, the impressive ecclesiastical structures of Christianity pay lip-service to the principles of Christianity, but hardly ever seem to abide by them, according to its critics. Similarly, the impressive political structures of Indian democracy, regularly pays lip-service to the principles of secularism, but seems to ignore its basic principles in the actual functioning of it.

The secular foundation of the Indian nation has been receiving one jolt after another in the form of The Kashmir Files, the hijab controversy, the Gyanvapi mosque episode, the Nupur Sharma controversy, and now its gory aftermath—for how long will it be able to withstand such shocks?

The government or governments should immediately get out of the business of running Hindu temples, as by not doing so they violate one of the basic tenets of secularism, even as they invoke it. Similarly, equality of all citizens before the law must be established, which is to say that a Uniform Civil Code in some form must be introduced as soon as possible, before the so-called secularism collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.- Firstpost, 24 July 2022

Hindus, secularism and the Indian state.

Part Two

The anti-Hindu nature of Indian secularism

In an earlier post, I tried to draw attention to what I perceived to be the failure of Indian secularism. In this post, I would like to identify its anti-Hindu character.

I admit that the claim, that Indian secularism is perceived as hostile to Hinduism, is a controversial claim, and therefore, I would like now to provide the evidence in support of this claim.

Soon after independence, the Hindu community rebuilt the Somnath Temple which had been destroyed by Mahmud of Ghazna in the 11th century, and also subsequently by other rulers. Jawaharlal Nehru, first prime minister of India, not only declined to participate in the celebration but also tried to prevent the then president of India from participating in it, whereas Pandit Nehru had no compunction in attending functions of a similar kind when organised by minority religions.

Although the Indian Constitution directs the government to endeavour to establish a uniform civil code for all Indians, the then government only consolidated Hindu personal law and left the minorities out of that exercise. This was, and is, perceived as discrimination against the Hindus. It leads to the anomaly that a Muslim in India can have four wives, but not the followers of other religions in India. It is not so much that the followers of other religions want to have four wives; the feeling of resentment springs from the discrimination involved.

Another aspect of the Constitution, which has caused considerable anguish in the Hindu community, is that the rights of the minorities to run their own institutions are clearly safeguarded in the Constitution but no such protection is afforded to the institutions run by the Hindu majority. A glaring example of how this works out in the field is provided by the Ramakrishna Mission. This quintessentially Hindu body petitioned the courts in 1980 to have itself declared a non-Hindu minority religion (following Ramkrishnaism), in order to benefit from the protection of Article 30 of the Indian Constitution, which allows Muslim and Christian institutions to safeguard their autonomy. The request was finally turned down by the Supreme Court of India in 1995, after the Calcutta High Court had accepted it. The fact that a Hindu institution had to claim to be a minority institution to safeguard its independence speaks volumes.

According to most scholars, the case of Shah Bano disillusioned many Indian intellectuals regarding the commitment of the Indian government to secularism. Shah Bano was the name of a Muslim divorcee, who petitioned Indian courts for maintenance under India’s secular laws and the request was granted by the Supreme Court. The government, however, under pressure from the Muslim lobby in India, introduced legislation in 1985 to modify it in accordance with Islamic law. The prolonged debate around the issue, and the volte-face of the government on the issue, seriously undermined popular confidence in the secular claims of the Indian government. One Muslim member of the cabinet, Arif Muhammad Khan, resigned over the issue. He now serves as the Governor of Kerala. According to him, the Shah Bano case was a point of departure on the issue of secularism.

The Indian government has rarely shown such legal sensitivity in cases involving Hindus.

Kashmir has been a bone of contention between India and Pakistan for a long period. It could be argued that Kashmir as a Muslim majority state within India, which is a largely Hindu country, is a strong factor in keeping India secular. However, a chain of events from 1989 to 1991 led to the expulsion of a large number of Hindus from the state, amidst violent circumstances in which many Hindus lost their lives and those that survived the convulsion had to be accommodated in camps in Jammu. The spectacle on TV of unarmed Hindus being driven out of the Kashmir Valley to threats of rape and murder (some of which were carried out) was not the best advertisement for Indian secularism. The plight of the exiled Hindus has been captured in a film, released recently under the title The Kashmir Files and creates the impression that there is no place for Hindus if they are in a minority anywhere in secular India.

A glaring example of the anti-Hindu nature of Indian secularism is provided by the way Hindu temples have been taken over by the state governments. The extent of this practice is simply mind-boggling. What is even more disturbing is that some of the states, where the BJP is in power, have not discontinued the practice.

It is difficult to imagine a more serious violation of the secular principle. It has led to such potentially incendiary developments, as money collected from Hindu temples being used to fund Haj trips for Muslims, and trips to the Holy Land for Christians. It is as if the looting of the Hindu temples, once associated with Muslim and British rule, continues unchecked in a secular India.

I hope enough evidence has now been provided to convince the sceptical reader that the charge regarding the anti-Hindu nature of Indian secularism should be taken seriously. – Firstpost, 21 August 2022

Indian Constitution Cartoon

Part Three

India should have adopted pluralism rather than secularism  

India famously claims to be a secular state. What is the basis for this claim? The claim rests on the grounds that the present Constitution of India declares it as such in the Preamble. Two objections could be raised against this claim. The first, that the original version of the Constitution did not contain this word in the Preamble and it was inserted into the Constitution during Emergency (1975-1977) imposed by Mrs Indira Gandhi. Emergency is generally regarded as a dark period for Indian democracy and therefore the insertion remains questionable. The second could be that although the Constitution claims to be secular, some of its provisions favour the minority religions over the religion of the majority, and therefore cannot be accepted as a genuinely secular document.

These are heavily contested points, so let me make it clear that, for the purpose of this column at the moment, we will accept the statement that at face value India is a secular state.

The point to note then is that the concept of secularism arose in the Western world, in a context in which religion dominated the public square. Religion in the Western world, as a term, connotes exclusive religious identity. In the broader context of the Abrahamic religious traditions, one cannot be a Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim at the same time, although all of them are monotheistic religions and believe in only one God. In the narrower context of the Christian world, one cannot be a Catholic or a Protestant at the same time, although both accept Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Such exclusive religious identification, in the Christian world, did not pose a problem so long as Roman Catholicism remained the dominant form of Christianity, but the situation changed with the Protestant revolution ushered in by Martin Luther (1483-1546). The Reformation, as it was called, ultimately led to enormous political conflict when different principalities in Europe started espousing the cause of different sects. The idea of the separation of the church or religion from the state, which is the key conceptual element of secularism, then arose as a way of dealing with the religious conflict generated by these developments.

This concept was then applied to India, where the dominant concept was one of dharma, which does not insist on an exclusive religious identity. One could challenge this point by insisting that the concept of religion, as a replacement for dharma, had been successfully introduced in India during the British period through the decadal censuses; that the introduction of the Western concept of secularism was therefore justified to deal with the problems of religious life in India. More than seventy years have passed since secularism was adopted as a possible solution to the problem, but it does not seem to have produced the desired outcome so far.

This raises the question: What went wrong? Could it be that the close connection between European secularism and Christianity was overlooked when the concept was applied to India? Was Indian reality perceived through a European lens and the European solution applied to an Indian problem unthinkingly, thereby creating or aggravating the very problem it was meant to solve in Europe, in India; that the treatment created the disease? Was the fact also overlooked that Europe faced a sectarian problem, not a religious one? That is to say, Europe faced the problem of conflict among different sects, all of whom professed Christianity, while India faced the problem of conflict among various religions. Could a solution meant to resolve an inter-sectarian problem, be applied to an inter-religious problem, such as the one faced by India?

Let us, however, adopt a historical approach to the issue for a moment. Then it becomes clear that just after World War II, when India became independent and the Constitution was framed, the key term invoked in matters of religion was secularism. Let us now fast-forward to our own times. Is the word secularism still the flavour of the season? To a certain extent it is, but there has also been a new development. In the interval, the West has witnessed what has been sometimes referred to as “marbling”. The word refers to the fact that the West, which was previously monochromatic, has changed. The West, which was overwhelmingly Christian until the end of World War II, has now sizeable minorities following religions other than Christianity within its borders, with the result that it finds itself as much in an inter-religious situation as an inter-sectarian one. The word now increasingly being used, as a response to this new situation, is pluralism.

What then is the difference between secularism and pluralism? Secularism wants to keep religion in general, and any religion in particular, out of the public square; pluralism wants to find a place for all of the religions, and ideologies, in the public square. Both want to avoid the public square being dominated by any religion (or sect or ideology); secularism wants to achieve this result by keeping religion out of it altogether, pluralism wants to prevent it from being dominated by any one religion by allowing all an equal place at the table.

Perhaps our Constitution would be more in sync with the dharmic traditions of India if it adopted pluralism rather than secularism as its guiding principle. Perhaps it is not too late to make the change. – Firstpost, 14 Novemeber 2021

› Prof. Dr. Arvind Sharma, formerly of the IAS, is the Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University in Montreal Canada, where he has taught for over thirty years. He has also taught in Australia and the United States and at Nalanda University in India. He has published extensively in the fields of Indian religions and world religions.

All religions in India.

Why India doesn’t fit the Woke script – Yuvraj Pokharna

VOI

Woke, Woker, Wokest

The word ‘woke’ is a quintessential example of a Western term—a misfit and incongruous in the Bharatiya context and conscience—advertently superimposed and forced into our lexicon just like myriad others. – Yuvraj Pokharna

If you ask five people to define Wokeism, it’s likely that each will provide a unique interpretation based on their personal understanding. In a significant research paper called The Scholarly Definition of Wokeism: Why American Universities Enforce Belief without Clarifying the Doctrine, American military scientist, philosopher, and metaphysical architect Jeffrey Camlin wisely points out that Wokeism is a strict moral belief system that stifles questioning and turns conversations into ways to enforce beliefs through guilt and fear of losing reputation. The definition offered is not based on polemic opposition but on structural necessity.

The word ‘woke’ is a quintessential example of a Western term—a misfit and incongruous in the Bharatiya context and conscience—advertently superimposed and forced into our lexicon just like myriad others. Speaking in brevity, the term ‘woke’ originates in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), meaning to be alert or aware, particularly of social injustices. It first appeared in the 1938 song Scottsboro Boys by Lead Belly, urging Black Americans to stay woke to racial injustices, referencing the wrongful convictions of nine Black teenagers in Alabama. In the 1960s, activists like the Black Panthers used ‘stay woke’ to encourage vigilance against systemic racism. It gained prominence during the mid-2010s in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. This phrase was supposedly a call to awareness of social injustices, especially those related to race in the American context.

‘Wokeness’ emerged as a noun in the mid-2010s to describe the state of being woke or the collective ideology of social justice awareness. It was meant to encapsulate progressive values like diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and advocacy for marginalised groups in the US. However, over time, it became distorted and transformed into ‘wokeism’, which is viewed as an ideology opposing merit, the rule of law, constitutional democracy, and even the aboriginals, who are considered the flag-bearers of the indigenous cultural legacy of the native land. President Donald Trump has expressed disdain for the term ‘woke’, arguing it’s vague and overused. In 2023, he stated, “I don’t like the term ‘woke’ because I hear, ‘Woke, woke, woke’. It’s just a term they use; half the people cant even define it; they don’t know what it is.”

The MO of Wokeism is rather simple—fracture the society into countless isolated blocks and turn them against each other through either exaggerated and outright fictitious claims of oppression or by instilling a sense of perpetual victimhood within some of them. Celebrated American commentator Michelle Malkin has authoritatively commented, “Liberals see racism where it doesn’t exist, fabricate it when they can’t find it, and ignore it within their ranks.” The same hypocrisy, if not more, is palpably visible in the context of Indian activists and politicians! The result is an unending and multi-layered chaos that has no certain objective. And by doing so, Wokism protects and empowers those whom it claims to fight—the ultra-rich global elite.

The modus operandi, thus, is simple: divert people’s attention from the real socio-economic issues and turn the masses against themselves to provide a protective cover to the globalist masters who wish to pull the strings of the world from behind the curtains. Wokeism, however, doesn’t stand with every section of society. After fragmenting the people’s collective into numerous pieces, it works to turn some of them against the others. It sides with those whom it sees as more conducive to its agenda in a particular country or region.

There are absolutely no objective morals or convictions behind the way Wokeism operates. While Wokes may claim to side with the minorities or less empowered sections of society, the facts suggest the opposite. If they were truly the champions of minorities, they wouldn’t have opposed the peaceful Hindu minorities in White Christian majority countries while defending the illegal Muslim infiltrators in those same places.

Today’s Woke tyranny has left many scholars in their fields in a precarious situation: a liberal utopia where the mere suggestion of biological sex is met with labelling as a transphobe. J.K. Rowling, world-renowned for the Harry Potter series, received criticism from LGBTQ activists because Dumbledore isn’t openly gay in the new Fantastic Beasts film. Is the movie really the zenith of the gay community’s oppression? The greatest perils to the LGBTQ community, as per the Wokes, appear to be diversity in a fictional film rather than Islamic states targeting gays with brutal public executions and decapitations.

The Woke, more often than not, align themselves with individuals they find convenient. They make viable attempts to weaken, negate, and cancel those who are not deemed worthy enough for their cause by creating further schisms within their ranks through paid narratives and campaigns such as #DismantlingGlobalHindutva. The same Wokes are very eager to dismantle the indigenous way of life in India, which is Hindutva, even as they claim to stand for the rights of the natives in New Zealand.

Apart from tactfully nudging society towards a state of eternal chaos, the Wokes have another agenda—replacing traditional collectives such as the family with politically motivated groups. But why? This, once again, serves the interests of their globalist overlords. How? To put it simply, collective living involves the sharing of resources among individuals. For example, a family of four shares one house.

But if all four individuals were to live separately, that would suddenly increase the demand for houses by three to four times. Then again, the houses don’t come in isolation. Along with them come all the other necessary amenities that an individual requires for proper living. The breakup of the family suddenly expands the market base by many times. That is exactly what the globalists want, and the Wokes are trying to achieve it through their concentrated anti-family propaganda.

After having wreaked havoc in its place of origin—the United States and western Europe—the hydra of Wokism has turned its heads towards a new market: India. However, unlike in the West, the Wokes find it challenging to run their business in Bharat. Why? Unlike the West, the multifaceted and diverse nature of Indian society makes it challenging to make generalisations and, consequently, to promote simplistic narratives. In the West, it is very convenient to brand the family and the church as evil. But in a society like India, which has no organised church in the same sense as the West, defining evil becomes extremely difficult. In a society like ours where homosexuals never face any kind of discrimination based on religious dogma, it becomes a complex task for the Wokes to apply their template. They do try, but the attempts are laughable and clearly hypocritical. While in the West, Wokes may still maintain some pretence of activism or concern for the weak; in the Bhartiya context, this veil comes off the moment they open their mouths. Their failure is primarily due to their cluelessness about how to apply their Woke template, which was perfected for Western society, in the Bharatiya context.

To understand the situation better, let’s take a look at some examples from recent memory to exhibit how, time and again, the Wokes have embarrassingly exposed themselves in India. In 2020, the Indian government implemented new agricultural reforms aimed at transforming Indian agriculture into a competitive industry. However, the movement gained momentum when over 3,00,000 farmers reportedly marched to New Delhi to protest against these reforms. While the farmers may have had legitimate concerns and their grievances needed to be heard, some of the most articulate left-leaning Wokes, such as Greta Thunberg, and even the oblivious artist Rihanna, weighed in on the Indian farm imbroglio, pledging support to the farmer protests.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the alleged climate activist, the flagbearer of the global Woke commune, who’s barely an adult with an IQ understandably equivalent to Delhi’s temperature, Greta Thunberg, was unaware that the reforms help combat the climate apocalypse that she claims to fight by minimising the worst annual carbon emissions across the globe through stubble burning, which also leads to significant health problems like asthma and cancer.

Rihanna, a fully monetised celebrity and a pure product of capitalism, denied the benefits of the same to millions of farmers in India, pushing them to espouse a system of agriculture that was not just mediaeval in method and practice but was first introduced in the mediaeval period itself. The hypocrisy is unreal and uncanny! However, despite strong arguments and enough support from some of the most celebrated economists from around the world, the Indian government later repealed the farm reform laws as a mark of respect for the dissent of the farmers and the people.

Another amusing instance of Woke hypocrisy is the case in 2021 when Aryan Khan, son of Shah Rukh Khan, was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau. Defenders of Woke culture contended that the arrest of the 24-year-old was due to his Muslim identity. So, as per the dimwit Wokes, the son of one of the most influential Indians in the last 150 years was being marginalised. Ironically, these same individuals remained silent over the brutal murder of a Dalit man named Nagaraju, who had married a Muslim woman.

One such example of abject absurdity stems from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s female activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai who herself is an iconic victim of Islamic violence and its forceful nature. In her book I Am Malala, she writes, “Wearing a burqa is like walking inside a big fabric shuttlecock with only a grille to see through, and on hot days it’s like an oven.” However, Malala, acknowledged globally for her intrepidness, reverses her stance by neglecting to acknowledge the real-life struggles faced by Indian Muslim women. She came all in for the Muslim girls in Karnataka, claiming they were denied entry into a government school because they were wearing a hijab, despite it being evident that Islamists were using the students as weapons to disrupt and fuel anarchy in India. Such celebrity activism reeks of hypocrisy, if not inanity. Ironically, she gratefully accepted the Nobel Prize from Norway, which has for many years banned burqas and hijabs in educational institutions.

The Woke community and rent-a-cause activists, who otherwise claim to stand for the rights of underprivileged classes, conveniently specialise in whitewashing realities and downplaying the brutal injustices faced by the Hindu community due to their unapologetic, unabated, and perpetual hate for Hinduism. To summarise, the Woke utopia wilfully ignores the murder of Nagaraju, a Dalit man, out of fear of being labelled as Islamophobic. However, it intimidates people into silence and dismisses anyone who deviates from the narrow Woke path. And this is what identity politics does to you.

Clearly, mediocre minds would rather celebrate the public inanity of the incurable nincompoops than ponder over the nuanced argument of an expert that would go over their heads anyway. The Woke utopia has begun to silence all voices except its own, justifying all evil committed by its members’ clique. It brings people together by segregating them into smaller and smaller groups, where only a handful of privileged, spoilt individuals with no credibility and numbers agree among themselves. The Woke utopia is engaging in a much larger international arena and seeping into the Indian diaspora through foreign media, celebrities, and OTT platforms. We must be careful. – Firstpost, 12 July 2026

› Yuvraj Pokharna is a Surat-based educator, columnist, and social activist who keeps a eye on contemporary issues including Social Media, Education, Politics, Hindutva, Bharat (India) and Government Policies. He is the author of the book Hindutva For Gen Z, from which the above article has been excerpted.

Woke Ideology

The Modi government as an exponent of BJP secularism – Koenraad Elst

VOI

Narendra Modi

Like the previous BJP Government, the present one fails to live up to the oft-heard predictions of strident pro-Hindu and anti-minority policies. This is due to a phenomenon insufficiently realized by most India-watchers: a desire to live up to the norms upheld by the secularists and an interiorization of the disinterest in “outdated” Hindu concerns, not just among the numerous opportunists who have flocked to the new party in power, but even in the loyal core of the BJP’s personnel. Based on insider sources, this paper enumerates the data establishing the reality of “BJP secularism” and analyses the reasons for this emerging phenomenon. – Dr Koenraad Elst

A.B. VajpayeeA. B. Vajpayee’s NDA Government (1998-2004) heavily disappointed the experts who had predicted “all Moslims into the Indian Ocean” or similar doomsday scenarios—or rather, it put them squarely in the wrong. Hindu “fascism” as a threat to democracy? When Vajpayee narrowly lost a confidence vote, he meekly stepped down. War against Pakistan? Though Pakistan unilaterally invaded India (Kargil 1999), Vajpayee forbade the Army to strike at the invaders’ base across the border, and later opened a peace process, making symbolic concessions which Congress had always refused. Isolationism? He threw the Indian media market open to foreign media ownership, a move opposed by India’s entire political spectrum. The only “Hindutva” thing the NDA ever did was HRD Minister M. M. Joshi‘s clumsy overhaul of the recommended history schoolbooks, changing nothing dramatic and easily reversed. When the Government created a Chair for Indic Studies in Oxford (“saffronization!”), it selected an outspoken opponent for the job, in the vain hope of receiving a pat on the back from its declared enemies.

With the hindsight knowledge of historical reality, it would be embarrassing to reproduce the predictions by Indian and foreign experts. Today, anti-BJP discourse is less shrill, but still confidently classifies the BJP among the “Hindu Right”. This implies a prediction that once in power, the BJP would pursue distinctly pro-Hindu policies. However, in the light of our experience with the Vajpayee Government, it is no surprise that the present Government led by Narendra Modi fails to live up to this learned prediction, at least for now. (Of course, this paper will be updated by November as new developments take place.)

In spite of having a more homogeneous majority, it is reluctant to do anything pro-Hindu or perceivable as anti-minority. On the contrary, one of its first acts was to decree a new subsidy to Islamic schools. The stray Hindutva statements by loose cannon (Sakshi Maharaj, Niranjan Jyoti) were followed by retractions, condemnations by Government spokesmen, and indignant innuendos by Modi-friendly journalists (Tavleen Singh, Swapan Dasgupta). Public reconversions by the allied VHP, heavily publicized and demonized by the media, were promptly discouraged by the Government. Having learned from Vajpayee’s 2004 defeat, though, Modi does “keep the pot boiling”, does regularly throw crumbs of inconsequential Hindu symbolism to his support base, all while not formally changing anything.

However, if many BJP workers are disappointed with this Government, is not for what it does but mainly for what it persistently fails to do. Thus, it inducted no figures with a strongly ideological profile (Arun Shourie, Subramanian Swamy). Likewise, some public figures who had crossed the floor (e.g. Madhu Kishwar) were conspicuously not rewarded—a fact not considered here for disgruntled ego reasons but for illustrating the BJP’s lack of strategy: it doesn’t put people who have actually sacrificed for the BJP to any use, while awarding positions of influence to unreliable newcomers motivated by sheer opportunism. While some things on the Hindu agenda are either useless to Hinduism (e.g. declaring a “Hindu Rashtra”) and others would arouse violent protests for which the media are sure to blame Modi (e.g. a Common Civil Code, though “secular” par excellence), others are perfectly feasible and, moreover, turn out to be the most consequential for the flourishing of Hinduism.

In particular, the amending of Constitutional Articles 28 and 30, which (de facto c.q. formally) discriminate against Hinduism in education, does not take away any rights from the minorities, yet lifts an enormous burden from Hindu organizations investing in education and eliminates a major reason for Hindu sects (Arya Samaj, RK Mission, Lingayats, Jains) to have themselves judicially declared non-Hindu minorities. Similarly, eliminating the legal basis of the discrimination against Hinduism in temple management, with rich temples (but not mosques or churches) nationalized and their income pocketed by politicians or diverted to non-Hindu purposes, would give an enormous boost to Hindu religious and cultural life, without impinging upon the rights of the minorities. It has to be noted, however, and it buttresses my case for “BJP secularism”, that temple management is partly a competence of the States, and that BJP State Governments have not made the difference. At any rate, there are meaningful things a BJP Government could do specifically for Hinduism without endangering its non-religious agenda (development, cleaning India etc.) or its international standing, yet it chooses not to do them.

As for the Hindutva fits and starts of some BJP members, now considered extremists but in fact only representative of what the erstwhile Jan Sangh (1952-77, predecessor of the BJP) stood for, it should be easy to bring them in line around a more reasonable but still credibly pro-Hindu programme. It is here that the BJP is most conspicuously failing — conspicuous at least to insiders, for 99% of the outside literature about the BJP never mentions this phenomenon. Contrary to a consensus among academic and journalistic India-watchers, the supposed “Hindu extremist” party has no Hindu agenda. It relies on pro-Hindu workers to do the campaigning legwork, but once in power it cold-shoulders them, it publicizes and pursues an agenda of economic development only, and it tries to curry favour with the secularists.

The main reason is the long-standing deliberate lack of investment (pioneered by M. S. Golwalkar) in an intellectual and strategic vision of its own, the spurning of any analysis of the forces in the field and of the potential and limitations of the situation. It therefore also lacks competent personnel for the ideological struggle, e.g. for a textbook overhaul or, now, for nominating politically friendly new Vice-Chancellors. Consequently, most BJP leaders have an enormous inferiority complex vis-à-vis the secularists and, even when in office, try to live up to the norms laid down by their opponents.

This is hardly the impression created by most experts; but the primary data, the only source to which this paper pledges loyalty, tell a clear story: the present BJP is only termed a Hindu party in deference to the distant memory of its initial orientation. – Koenraad Elst Blog, 15 November 2016

» Dr Koenraad Elst is an Orientalist and historian from Belgium who publishes with Voice of India.

Koenraad Elst Quote