On Friday 17 Jul 2009 5:09:47 pm Kiran K Karthikeyan wrote: > Thanks Salil. > > I've always nursed the idea that Hindu fundamentalism's continued rise, the > reasons you've stated notwithstanding,
I have a problem with the widespread assumption that "hindu fundamentalism is on the rise". Please hear me out. I'm not joking. Hindus, including people from Hindu backgrounds who profess atheism, agnosticism and other blasphemous -isms tend to have a mental picture of "Hinduism" as something that is "not fundamentalism" Please tell me what it is about Hinduism that opposes fundamentalism? If you allow Hindus to flourish you will allow Hindu fundamentalism to flourish. So why does everyone lament the "rise of Hindu fundamentalism" and try to pin the blame on "others" such as the VHP, RSS, BJP etc? I believe that this is because everyone has a mental picture of what Hindusim should be like - and that mental picture has been developed over the past one and a half centuries or so after British "sanitization" and "Victorianization" of the Hindu elite - a group to which most of us belong, This was followed by Gandhis ploy of converting Hinduism into a religion of non violence and tolerance - a ploy that was swallowed hook line and sinker by everyone. But if you look at the reality - that is if you look at the people whose feelings were merely kept in abeyance by the Brits and who were not taken in by Gandhi, you find that these people are now getting empowered in modern India. They are merely "being Hindu". Being Hindu is not threat to any Hindu. Being Hindu is technically not a threat to anyone. But opposing the newly empowered Hindu makes him angry. And if opposition to him can be pinned on something to differentiate him from "the other" it gives him a lever to bash the other. But more of this later. Expressions like "The rise of Hindu fundamentalism" are products of a limited mind like that of Martha Nussbaum - who seeks to define Hinduism as "Tolerant, non-violent, of Victorian morality". The predicted behaviour is closer to that of a pet Chihuahua and one wonders how anyone can be that naive. Those who do not fit this definition are "Hindu fundamentalists" Hindus too fall for this pre-infantile tactic of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, and believe in Nussbaumian Hinduism. But that is complete rubbish. It is an artificial construct. It doesn't exist. Where Hinduism is, there fundamentalism is. In Islam Martha Nussbaum cannot be holy - she's a woman In Christianity she can become holy by becoming a nun and leading a life of virtue If you make Nussbaum a sexy temptress who kills and eats evil men you get a Hindu goddess Where's the fundamentalism? Sorry for the digression.. I was talking about the brash, newly empowerd Hindu. In the "good old days" that a lot of people seem to yearn for nowadays, Hindus knew their place and their worth. Theirs was a faulty religion of inequity and discrimination. The egregious "caste system" caused untold misery to millions, and abominable practices like the burning of brides had to be stopped by the iron hand of a benevolent system of justice. Fine. So far. So what did Hindus do? Hindus in general accepted many of the accuastions as true. Particularly they said OK no social discrimination based on caste. In fact the upper castes in India and the Indian elite were foremost in their rejection of caste as a basis for discrimination and used to (and still do) descend like a ton of bricks on any Hindus who shows caste discrimination. In other words - the worst offenders became the most rabid opponents of the caste system (Gandhi gets part of the credit here). But guess what this has done. It has made Hindus more homgenous than ever before. Caste was the single reason why Hindu society was fractured. It was also the single characteristic that was roundly criticized by non Hindus as an egregious "Hindu" concept. Every effort was made to wipe off caste. Excuse me..if you remove fissures from a society what do you get? You get homogeneity. And this homogenity is now being labelled, with some fear as "Hindu fundamenatlism" But that is rubbish, Yesterday's Hindu fundamentalism was the caste system. Back then you could always get a Hindu to side with one caste against another. But now all these bloody Hindus are getting together and finding new enemies. And that is "Hindu fundamentalism". Exactly what do people want? Bring back the caste system? Back to the good old days when the Hindu knew the weaknesses of his faulty faith and spent all his time trying to remedy that? Sorry. The time for that is over. The Hindus who are getting empowered now are the very Hindus who were kept down by the caste system. They are mostly doing their own thing being garish, messy, quarrelsome, noisy Hindus. But they no longer take things lying down if you tell them they are wrong. Especially if you say that being Hindu is wrong. Hindus in India are being told (from time to time) that being Hindu is wrong from at least two separate sources. As long as they do not object - they remain good Hindus. If they object they become Hindu fundamentalists. How stupid. Why does anyone wonder where "Hindu fundamentalism" comes from? While we are into intellectual honesty - let us strive to be 100 percent intellectually honest. shiv
