(Ashok Malik is a columnist and writer living in Delhi)Speaking at a public event in Cuttack earlier this week, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said, "The cultural identity of all Indians is Hindutva and the present inhabitants of the country are descendants of this great culture." In a sense, he added, all residents of India are Hindus. Predictably, this speech led to frenzied responses, television discussions, editorials and so on.
It is necessary to make a sober assessment of what Bhagwat said. For a start, his proposition is scarcely new. It is the bedrock of RSS philosophy, whether one agrees with it or not. The Sangh has been saying pretty much the same thing for close to the century it has been in existence, irrespective of whether the Jana Sangh and the BJP - political parties it has been associated with it - have been in opposition or in power. As such, to accuse the RSS of 'revealing its fangs' just because Narendra Modi has won an election would be unfair.
Shortly after the 2009 election, at a meeting in Mumbai of RSS and BJP functionaries and insiders, Bhagwat was asked questions about India's changing aspirations, about economic choices, urbanisation, youth and so on. Could and should the RSS and the BJP change to accommodate these or should they stay true to earlier positions? Bhagwat's response was very practical and pragmatic. everything, he said, was negotiable and could be amended when necessary. What was not negotiable was simply this formulation: "Bharat Hindu rashtra hai."
Depending on how you translate "rashtra", what was being argued by Bhagwat was that at its essence, India was a Hindu nation, country or society. It was not and is not and cannot be, as has been stressed repeatedly, a Hindu state. However, to contend that the wide and varied strands that are today subsumed under the omnibus term "Hindu" do not constitute a sort of mainstay culture and identity of India challenges logic.
It is equally true that at a certain period in history, and/or in certain geographies, the words "Hindu" or "Hindi" have been used to describe all residents of India. In the Middle East, for example, these have been long-standing descriptive words for even Muslims from the subcontinent.
Of course, this use of the word "Hindu" or "Hindi" is limited to a few contexts. It needs to be distinguished from the religion - as opposed to cultural parameters - of the faith and the forms of worship that we today call "Hindu". It does not mean, and should never mean, that a Muslim who goes to a mosque or a Christian who goes to a church is forced to see himself as a Hindu in a religious sense and compelled to worship in a temple.
Half the problem is public discourse in our media-driven age tends to take place in a vacuum. History seems to begin where the previous evening's prime-time show ended; the only timeline that matters is the one on Twitter. If this were not so, it would be obvious Bhagwat's argument is hardly new or unprecedented.
Islam and Christianity, not to speak of Zoroastrianism, have enriched India enormously. From Europe to Central Asia to Southeast Asia, cultural currents from across the world have helped shape India. Yet, a fulcrum culture has also existed, and many before Bhagwat have cited the absorptive capacities and salience of Hinduism to India.
In Discovery of India, Jawaharlal Nehru celebrates both the diversity of India and its essential Hinduness (and the two are in no way incompatible). How else would one interpret his magical, evocative tribute to India:
"She was like some ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously. All of these existed in our conscious or subconscious selves, though we may not have been aware of them, and they had gone to build up the complex and mysterious personality of India ... A country with a long cultural background and a common outlook on life develops a spirit that is peculiar to it and that is impressed on all its children, however much they may differ among themselves."
In the passage quoted above, Nehru does not use the word "Hindu". Yet, in invoking that "ancient palimpsest", is he not mirroring Bhagwat's point?
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