[Vision2020] Column on Indian Election

[Nick Gier]

Greetings:

Below you will find a column I've written on the Indian election.  I've 
taken most of it from my longer essay on Hindu fundamentalism.

BRAKES APPLIED ON HINDU RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM
by Nick Gier

         Those who fear the destructive nature of religious nationalism are 
breathing easier now that India's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has suffered 
a major defeat in recent elections.  The fact that former Prime Minister A. 
B. Vajpayee had to govern within a broad coalition prevented the 
implementation of most of the BJP's religious agenda.  To his credit 
Vajpayee's government had dramatically opened up the economy and it has 
been growing steadily, sometimes over 8 percent.
         The BJP has a lot in common with America's Religious Right--very 
conservative on social issues but very liberal, in the classical sense, on 
the economy.  The BJP was convinced that "trickle down" economics was the 
correct way to solve India's horrible poverty. But, just as we have found 
in the US, India's rich got richer and 300 million Indians still scrape by 
on a dollar a day.  India's poor turned out in large numbers and voted the 
BJP out of power.
         With a second term Vajpayee had promised his core supporters that 
he would focus more on his religious agenda.  First on the list was the 
building of a temple to the Hindu God Rama on the site of the Babri Mosque 
in Ayodhya, which was destroyed by a Hindu mob in December, 1992.  This 
site is one of 53 "places of divine power" that Hindu fundamentalists have 
identified in their campaign to bring back the glory of ancient India. Shiv 
Shena, a conservative social action group in Bombay (now renamed Mumbai by 
religious nationalists), proudly proclaimed that Hindus were no longer 
eunuchs and now they could stand up to the world as real men.
         Some Hindu fundamentalists have plans to recover the original 
Hindu Empire, extending West into Afghanistan, extending North to recover 
Tibet, extending Northwest to Cambodia to recover the Hindu Khmer kingdom 
of Angkor Wat, and extending Southeast to Java, where a Hindu-Buddhist 
kingdom once flourished, and finally Bali where three million Hindus still 
live.
         Does this remind us of Zionist maps of Greater Israel, or plans by 
some Calvinists for a new Confederate States of America, where God-fearing 
Anglo-Celtic top males will rule their households and their nation of 
fifteen states?
         V. D. Savakar's Hindutva (literally "Hinduness") was published in 
1923, but the ideas of Hindu religious nationalism go back to the beginning 
of the 19th Century.  (Gandhi's assassin was one of Savakar's 
disciples.)  The supreme irony about Hindu nationalism is that its first 
writers were profoundly influenced by European archeological and linguistic 
discoveries.  For the first time Indians were able to see their country as 
a unified nation that gave birth to not only to the European languages, but 
also to its first civilized peoples and the world's greatest religion, at 
least on their view.
         Interestingly enough, both Indians and Europeans agreed on at 
least one proposition: Hindu culture was indeed corrupt and suffering a 
long decline, but Hindu nationalists believed that the solution was not 
Christian capitialism; rather, it was the recovery of a glorious Hindu past 
that Europeans had conveniently rediscovered for them. Indians did admit 
that they had to address some problems that had crept in during this period 
of decline: caste discrimination, widow remarriage, untouchability, and 
child marriage.
          One of the most dramatic examples of these views came from 
Bajnarain Basu, who waxed eloquent as follows: "The noble and puissant 
Hindu nation rousing herself after sleep, and rushing headlong towards 
progress with divine prowess.  I see this rejuvenated nation again 
illuminating the world by her knowledge, spirituality and culture, and the 
glory of the Hindu nation again spreading over the whole world." Rajnarain 
was insistent that the Hindu Motherland could have no place for Muslims 
(now 121 million) or Christians (now 21 million) because their religions 
were alien to India.
         Dayananda Saraswati, another Hindu religious nationalist, saw his 
ancient ancestors as paragons of virtue and the world's first monotheists. 
He rejected the authority of Hindu priests to interpret scripture and set 
himself up, in a way very similar to some of our own preachers, as the only 
one that could interpret the Vedas correctly.  He saw the Vedas, the 
earliest Hindu scripture, as the literal Word of God and as the infallible 
text of the one true Hindu church, a concept alien to the Indian religious 
tradition, but once again very similar to Islam and Christianity.
         Religiously motivated violence in the Indian Sub-Continent has 
been rare until Muslims came in the 12th Century and the Portuguese and 
Dutch came in the 16th Century.  It is significant that Hindus did not 
attack Muslims or Christians until centuries of resentment boiled over and 
until they started thinking, unfortunately, like Muslim and Christian 
fundamentalists.

Nick Gier taught philosophy and religion at the UI for thirty years.  He 
has spent a total of 11 months in India during 1992, 1995, and 1999.  More 
on this subject and fundamentalism in general can be found at 
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/hindfund.htm and 
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/parallels.htm.