In 2019 the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) will ‘apparently’ declare India a Hindu Rashtra. All though the right-winged Hindu nationalist paramilitary ‘volunteer’ organization is regarded as the parent organization of the ruling party of India, the Bhartiya Janata Party, I don’t see why they should ‘volunteer’ to take a call on behalf of the Government, which has long graduated college (umm throwback to 2014).
Even if contentious views regarding ‘secularism’ as exemplified in the Preamble float around, by the masses, we’re still a multicultural and heterogeneous lot. If you take my opinion that is the identity we should retain. Our history has seen the Mughals, French, Portuguese, British to name a few, infuse their culture to create something new of which all of us are a testimony to today. Whether for the better or the worse, the world knows and appreciates us as a nation for our religions, ethnicity, myriad traditions, practices and culture. To topple that notion over and satisfy political agendas to become a unitary perception would do no one good. A civil war of sorts will be inevitable, to begin with, and real issues like poverty, depravity, unemployment will be sidelined.
What does a Hindu Rashtra even mean in itself? Forced conversions? Banishment of anyone, who is not a Hindu into oblivion? In a nation with 1.3 billion population and equally diverse faiths, will it be acceptable to do such a thing, as making a country so, demandingly homogeneous? Heterogeneity breeds innovation, new ideas and development, how would curbing that help us get to being a superpower as we so often envision and hear our beloved political leaders talk nineteen to a dozen about. Will turning the State into a so called ‘Hindu Rashtra’ alleviate the problem of black money? Or will it magically cure the murky infestation of corruption? If any of these real world problems can be solved by making the nation toe the line of a single faith, then ISRO should take this up as its next pet project instead of anything else 2.0.
The table-talks, high tea-meetings, rallies, etc. are all political in nature done more so with the intention of further distorting ideas of development and progress for the already misled masses. It is a positive attitude to want to promote, maybe to even some certain extent propagate the ideals of one’s faith, true to one’s own belief of course. However, things can take an uncomfortable turn of events if anyone tries to lade their beliefs on others by force. The whole meaning of individual freedom and liberty which all of us so strongly believe in and fight for will be utterly lost. A State’s responsibility is to ensure the welfare of its people by formulating policies that benefit them and not the other way round. Tolerance is a virtue and another avatar of secularism, so boldly enshrined in the Preamble of our Constitution. A book so highly revered and followed despite the casual, political incorrectness of the front-runners of our nation.
To change that and to bring about such an alteration would be a brazen violation of the Constitution, a shame our makers didn’t apparently foresee. As a diverse nation we’re unified and if the various political layers (or liars) or are detached from this particular issue, the people are happy the way they are. To them three square meals a day, a roof to live under, clothes to cover their bare bodies and means to cover daily expenses are far more important agendas to deal with than a religious warfare of any sorts.
Retaliation on provocation is a natural instinct of human beings, that our political leaders exploit to the best of their advantage and viola, communal disharmony is the product of it. Issues like Beef ban, triple talaq, Section 377 are actually, Freedom of Choice, Equality and Progressive mentality which unfortunately have been discoloured and given the casing of religious transgressions.
As a Hindu, even if my religious scriptures hold the cow revered and holy, I personally have no qualms about any of my Muslim friends eating beef, if they wish to or anybody for that matter. How is controlling the freedom of choice of another person belonging to a different faith helping in the preservation of my religion? Lynching by ‘rakshaks’, ‘yogis’ not ‘being yogic’, the failure of the return of the Gandhis’ is in no way furthering any cause of the nation. What it is really doing is pushing us further and further away from civility and serene sustenance.
Rather than spurring such notions of separatism and divide as a nation it would do us tremendous good if we had ideals of harmony and mutual co-existence being propagated. If political parties in power gave up their diverse views about their converse mentality, half of the country’s glitches would be dispelled and isn’t that the agenda that every Government promises despite the political colors that they wear? If we truly are to grow and mature as a nation, we have to do it together encompassing all the different faiths, cultures, customs and traditions. ‘Our population is our strength’ is a popular maxim chanted, that really, only justifies vote banks, but what our phony representatives; don’t want to acknowledge is that the diversity is the very source that elevates them to power.
How then can they overlook the source of their subsistence and declare an identity of a nation based on a particular party’s ideology? Not only is it unfair for the people who it is ‘supposedly’ being taken for but also to the people who are unwillingly being subjected to it. A Hindu Rashtra would invite further troubles instead of solving the existing troubles for the country, what with the already complicated casteist hierarchy. The will of the people would certainly not rest with this choice and this would only mean that the Government would become dictatorial and that would lead to suffocating the life out of democracy and becoming tyrannical partners with North Korea.
This article is written by Ushashi Datta, a law student at NLU – Punjab.