The thriving hate industry
The saddest takeaway from the Dharma Sansad held at Raipur on December 25-26 is that fancy dress and cross-dressing qualify for scholarship in Indian traditions, history and politics. A man with flowing tresses, thick beard, a large bindi and an ochre robe abused Gandhi. In a Gandhian Republic, everybody who chooses to abuse Gandhi should have complete freedom of expression and opportunity to do so, be it Pragya Thakur, Arundhati Roy or Kalicharan Maharaj. In fact, the early symptoms of the ill-health of the Gandhian Republic were seen with the ruling Congressmen setting up the offence-taking enterprise by banning Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. It has now become a full-fledged industry with immeasurable political profits.
The hate speeches of Hindu supremacists are actually an apology for not keeping the country intact, and Gandhi was always their convenient villain.
Without taking offence at Gandhi getting abused, the Dharma Sansad was still disappointing for another reason. Kalicharan did not use an Indian or Hindu word to abuse Gandhi. He had to borrow from Arabic and Islamic practices to abuse Gandhi for not being Hindu enough. Haram is an Arabic word and a concept integral to Islam, meaning that which is forbidden. Harami, thereby, is an illegitimate child born of a forbidden relationship. Of course, a man of indigenous religions cannot be expected to proffer the sophistry and articulation of a Booker Prize winner or a Nobel laureate like Churchill, who famously asked why Gandhi didn’t die along with the millions who were starved to death by the British. But can’t Kalicharan at least learn a few cuss words in Sanskrit, like jaaraja (child of a married woman by her lover) or kaaneena (child of an unmarried woman) or golaka (child of a widow)? Just as Indians have separate names for maternal and paternal cousins and aunts, we have specific cuss words for every possible illegitimacy.
Despite such great wealth of colourful vocabulary, a man in saffron robes chose the most pedestrian abuse, showing once again how Islam and words of Arabic origin have become an essential part of the Indian social intercourse for the lowest common denominator. In that sense, Kalicharan was totally secular in his choice of words. But this complete descent into ignorance of the popular Hindu clergy is very disturbing. The fact that any person with an illiterate or semi-literate past — in this case the person is a school dropout — can get invited to a so-called Dharma Sansad proves that the Hindu religion is in the hands of those who have no clue about its many languages, literatures, traditions and practices. Any person wearing saffron, abusing Muslims and proclaiming allegiance to the ruling party now qualifies to be a man of religion.
Hatred has almost hit us like Comet Dibiasky of the latest DiCaprio-starrer satire, Don’t Look Up. If we do look up, what we see is a nation-killer comet of hatred targeting every Indian. No one is safe and nobody would have a future if we allow this comet to hit us. The hate-speakers may have upped their volume for election-time reasons, but each attack has a lasting impact. Every time an entire community is threatened with ethnic cleansing and genocide, a valid reason is being offered to it to get armed and fight. For those who spew venom, it could only be bravado aimed at immediate electoral gains, but the politics that they articulate is very old — as old as the Partition. The hate speeches of Hindu supremacists are actually an apology for not keeping the country intact, and Gandhi was always their convenient villain.
Of course, the essential contradiction in the proposition does not occur to the Hindutvavadis seeking an Akhand Bharat — or united Bharat — encompassing the present-day Pakistan. If Hindus and Muslims are two nations, as Savarkar and Jinnah claimed for the benefit of their British patrons, how could they be united under a Hindu government? Gandhi might have even dreamed of undoing the Partition through the example of love and peaceful coexistence and was indeed planning a trip to Pakistan when he was assassinated. Akhand Bharat can be achieved only if both communities live happily and peacefully together, a condition that is not available even in Jammu and Kashmir. Still, if semi-literate, saffron-clad public speakers seek a Hindu Rashtra, they are merely reiterating the reprehensible two-nation theory without realising that our society cannot afford nor does it have the stomach for another Partition.
Gandhi need not be treated as a totem, but what he represents has to be held sacred for an emerging economy like India. A pandemic-induced lockdown broke our back and we can only imagine what a civil war would lead us to. Well, it could be argued — can a few illiterate hotheads in fancy dress trigger a civil war? Won’t it only ring in the New Year with a lot of electoral goodies, to be forgotten after the last voting machine is accounted for? No. The socio-cultural wounds that these hate-mongers inflict cannot be healed. If it was so very easy for the colonial administration to prop up Jinnah and create Pakistan 75 years ago, it would still be easy to build bloodstained walls between communities in our districts and villages. After all, the Indian political Right has not moved an inch from where it was designed to be by the British.
The situation has only become worse with liberal Indians progressively abandoning their cultural roots and offering the space to the national fancy dress competition. One can only marvel at the colonial brilliance as its allies still control the grand Indian narrative from the perspectives of Jinnah, Savarkar, Ambedkar and even the imbecile princelings against the lone man in loincloth. At the close of a terrible year of loss, the memory of the father of our nation remains brutalised. According to Indian traditions, being an illegitimate child or harami is no big deal, as is illustrated by the great Mahabharata character Karna. But a father getting abandoned by his children causes the gravest disgrace; for a son is the one who delivers the father from hell (put nama narakat trayate iti putra). Let us wish the father of our nation deliverance in 2022. Happy new year!
