Religious sense and sensibilities

Besides introduction and conclusion, book has four chapters, Each chapter meticulously tracks past debates and political developments and often they are reinterpreted with the benefit of hindsight

Hurt Sentiments: Secularism and Belonging in South Asia

Author: Neeti Nair

Publisher: Harvard University Press /HarperCollins India

Pages: 333

Price: Rs 669

Victimhood in Indian politics is easy to come by. Besides being used by numerous political leaders, including currently domineering personalities, chants of being “wronged” is the constant refrain of ideologically driven organisations and parties. This sentiment is at the root of the primary political divide in India, which exists, in the words of the author, between Mahatma Gandhi and Nathuram Godse’s visions and the imagination of India. We in India are aware of the swiftness with which different communities of people claim to get “hurt” by the “other”.

In Neeti Nair’s contention, this emotion – manifests at all times in our south Asian neighbours, Pakistan and Bangladesh too. Alongside India, they carry the burden of centuries of a common heritage that has been lamentably undone over the past century or may be more. Indeed, hurt sentiments is a phrase that has been chorused for several decades in India’s contemporary political discourse, especially after the Ram Janmabhoomi movement metamorphosed from a fringe movement to the most potent mass movement after the freedom struggle. Given the inverted political logic in today’s India, also Pakistan, a reasoned investigation and analysis of this divisive mind-set could not have been timelier.

At the height of the first episode of Hindu triumphalism after the Babri Masjid’s demolition, several affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) decided to “control” cultural expressions too. The author dispassionately examines the fracas and eventual surrender to Hindu majoritarian forces by the Congress government in 1993 on the issues of Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust’s (SAHMAT’s) iconic exhibition Hum Sab Ayodhya and other secular programmes it mounted at that time. But, it was not that Hindutva forces targeted only those with left-liberal backgrounds, accusing them of hurting Hindu sentiments. While the attack on SAHMAT was an attempt to delegitimise the consensual framework of the country’s intelligentsia, the Sangh Parivar was equally interested in framing the parameters of popular culture. As part of this effort, a clutch of pro-RSS bodies issued a diktat to the Film Makers' Combine not to make films that hurt Hindu sensibilities, even if they had truth on their side. This was the start of a process that has evolved into the state not just issuing similar directives, but also creating legal and executive frameworks that make control foolproof.

Ms Nair’s principal accomplishment is being able to simultaneously address those uninitiated in the politics of Hindu majoritarianism and minority communalism with a thought-through and riveting text, as well as provide food for contemplation for those who track the rise of divisive politics in India and its neighbours. Historians are expected to be patient when scouring long-forgotten primary sources or the now mainly ignored debates of the Constituent Assembly or other speeches. Her endurance is visible in every chapter and it is established that the Indian state compromised with Hindu right-wing views from the beginning, despite securing the position of strength after Gandhi’s assassination.

That one form of communalism is no less dangerous than the other is borne out by several statements the author cites. For instance, she draws attention to Pakistan’s 1949 Objectives Resolution, passed after overruling sentiments of the religious minorities, especially those in East Pakistan. Legislated with the intention of enabling Muslims to shape their lives on the basis of Islamic teachings, it nonetheless promised “adequate provision” for the religious minorities “to (freely) profess and practise their religions and develop their cultures.”

This safeguard was a way to balance between the two ideological poles in Pakistan — one headed by ulemas,  and the other by those who wished that secularism be retained at least as a governing principle. Seventy three years after the resolution was adopted and incorporated into Pakistan’s Constitution, in India it is now commonplace to hear arguments that there is no need “to make” the country a Hindu Rashtra because it is already one. Although the religious minorities, especially the Muslims, are welcome to practise their religion, they are also currently relentlessly pressured into invisibilising themselves.

Besides the introduction and conclusion, the book has four chapters, two devoted to India and one each to Pakistan and Bangladesh. Each chapter meticulously tracks past debates and political developments and often they are reinterpreted with the benefit of hindsight.

There are episodes that are traced in the first chapter which merit further examination in today’s India; for instance, the one in regard to censorship in the legal case involving the RSS organ, Organiser and the state. The case, intrinsically linked to suppression of Godse’s defence statement in the trial court, paved the way to the First Amendment and the debates surrounding it. This ensured Godse’s speech became a veritable manifesto of that section of Indians who are at the helm of affairs. Ms Nair’s interpretation goes a long way in understanding the reasons for the assassin being a “veiled icon” of the Hindu right wing.

In Chapter II, the author analyses M S Golwalkar’s Bunch of Thoughts as a seminal text of the RSS and affiliates. Although Golwalkar has so far been the longest-serving Sarsanghchalak, this book, a collection of articles and speeches, was subsequently updated and in recent years, certain portions were “labelled” as being articulated or written in a historical context and thereby not currently valid. The book would have benefited if the writings of V D Savarkar, undeniably the ideological guru of the fraternity, too was critically put under the author’s unforgiving gaze.

The reviewer is an NCR-based author and journalist. His latest book is The Demolition and the Verdict: Ayodhya and the Project to Reconfigure India.  @NilanjanUdwin