Fearless Freedom Page 13
Likewise, if Muslim men and Hindu women fall in love with each other, the Sangh feels impelled to call it ‘jihad’, not ‘love’—because admitting it is ‘love’ means admitting that Hindus and Muslims can love each other, that women are not the property of their respective communities, and that Muslim men are not evil. To admit all this is to declare the very premise of Hindu Rashtra untenable and incoherent.
As we saw in our discussion of the Mahabharata and the Gita in the very first chapter, women’s autonomy has for very long been abhorred and feared in this part of the world, for its power to disrupt the foundations of the caste system, by creating an ‘intermixture of castes’. The violence against inter-caste and interfaith marriages both stem from a similar motive: the boundaries between castes and faiths and the notion of discriminating between human beings on the basis of caste and faith hierarchies are threatened every time a woman moves freely across these boundaries. Violence against minorities and oppressed communities inevitably also requires violence against women, not only from those targeted communities, but also those from the dominant community.
When Modi quoted Deendayal Upadhyay to exhort BJP activists to ‘treat Muslims as your own’, adding that Muslims must be ‘refined/cleansed’ (parishkrit) not ‘appeased/rewarded’ (puraskrit) or ‘shunned’ (tiraskrit), there were many approving media headlines that read it as an ‘integral humanist’ reproof to communal colleagues. But a close look at what Upadhyay actually wrote makes it clear that there isn’t much of a gap between Upadhyay’s vision of a Hindu India and Golwalkar’s Nazi-inspired vision of a Hindu India.26
In a piece titled ‘Akhand Bharat’ (Undivided India) in the RSS organ Panchjanya on 24 August 1953, Upadhyay wrote:
. . . the separatist and anti-national attitude of the Muslim community is the greatest obstruction to Akhand Bharat (Undivided India). The creation of Pakistan is the triumph of this attitude. Those who have doubts about Akhand Bharat feel that the Muslim will not change his policy. If this is so, then the continuance of six crore Muslims in India would be highly detrimental to the interest of India. Would any Congressman say that Muslims should be driven out of India? If not, then they will have to be assimilated into the national life of this country. If this assimilation is possible [of Muslims] within geographically divided India, then it won’t take long for the rest of the geographical territory to assimilate with India. But apart from making Muslims Indian, we must also change the 30-year old policy of Hindu Muslim unity, which Congress adopted on a wrong basis . . . If we want unity, we must display Indian nationalism which is Hindu nationalism, and Indian culture which is Hindu culture. We must adopt it as our guiding principle.27
So, where Golwalkar said that Muslims must ‘adopt the Hindu culture’ and ‘lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race’, Upadhyay too is saying that no Hindu–Muslim unity is possible or desirable as long as Muslims have a separate, distinct religious and cultural identity. For ‘unity’, Upadhyay says, Muslims must accept ‘Indian nationalism which is Hindu nationalism, and Indian culture which is Hindu culture’, or else be ‘driven out of India’. When Modi encourages RSS and BJP colleagues to follow Upadhyay and ‘refine Muslims and treat them as your own’, those RSS and BJP colleagues, who have read Upadhyay’s own writings, are likely to interpret that to mean, ‘treat Muslims as Hindus, teach them to be Hindus’.
Similarly, Modi in an interview to the TV channel Network1828 as well as in his Independence Day speech in 2016 spoke of ‘social harmony’ (samajik samrasta), a phrase that the RSS uses to describe their view of ideal, harmonious (and hierarchical) social relations in a Hindu nation. What will be the position of women, Dalits and religious minorities in this ‘harmonious’ hierarchy?
A selection of Modi’s speeches have been compiled in a book Samajik Samrasta.29 In it, Modi preaches ‘Samar nahin, samrasta’—that is, ‘not war but harmony’. He claims that B.R. Ambedkar sought not to wage war on caste and make a break with the Hindu religion and Hindutva politics, but to ‘unite’ Hindu society. This, of course, contradicts the central tenet of Ambedkar’s political philosophy, which called for the ‘annihilation of caste’,30 not the ‘rationalization of caste’ or the ‘unification of Hindus’. Modi’s definition of ‘social harmony’ in the speeches compiled in the book, specifically excludes Muslims and Christians. One of the speeches in the book has a long passage against the slogan ‘Dalit Muslim Bhai-Bhai’ (Dalits and Muslims are brothers)—instead, throughout his book, he refers to Muslims only as ‘foreign invaders’, and alludes to the ‘cruelty of Muslims’.
Modi claims in his book that Ambedkar, addressing 20,000 Dalit women at the ‘Convention of Federation of Scheduled Caste’ in 1942, exhorted, ‘You are the Lakshmi of the house. You have to be cautious that nothing unfortunate befalls the household.’ Did Ambedkar really say this? On 20 July 1942, Ambedkar did address the All India Depressed Classes Women’s Conference, which was attended by 20,000–25,000 women. He urged women not to be in a hurry to marry early, and to adopt family planning. Most importantly, he said, ‘Let each girl who marries stand up to her husband, claim to be her husband’s friend and equal, and refuse to be his slave.’31 Elsewhere, Ambedkar excoriated the Hindu Brahminical order that makes women gateways to the castes and polices those gateways rigidly. He pushed for women’s freedom in the form of the Hindu Code Bill in the teeth of orthodox opposition. The ‘Ambedkar’ in Modi’s speech does none of these things. Instead, Modi remoulds Ambedkar in Manu’s or the RSS’s image, to suit the `social harmony’ philosophy. In a travesty of the real Ambedkar, Modi’s ‘Ambedkar’ merely repeats corny lines about women as ‘ghar ki Lakshmi’ that could have been taken from countless conservative Hindi films. So, the concept of `social harmony’ disguises inequalities as ‘harmony’, using soothing phrases assuring the oppressed of their divinity. In this framework, women or Dalits who struggle for equality and dignity are accused of disrupting social harmony and introducing discord. If inequality and oppression are harmonious, struggles against inequality and oppression are, of course, disruptive and discordant!
Nothing reveals the true import of the ‘social harmony’ of the RSS and BJP more than their attitude towards the Ranveer Sena. In the 1990s, the Ranveer Sena—a feudal private militia backed by a galaxy of top leaders from the BJP and the JDU, which shared close ideological affinities with the RSS—conducted a series of massacres of Dalit landless poor in Bihar, to deter them from asserting their social, economic and electoral dignity and autonomy. The assertion of Dalit women for dignity, against the feudal sense of sexual entitlement over their bodies and lives, was an important aspect of class struggles in Bihar at the time. Agricultural labourers, both men and women, overwhelmingly from the Dalit and extremely backward oppressed castes, waged struggles for the right to organize, the right to negotiate for wages, the right to claim legally mandated entitlement to ceiling-surplus land32 and commons land, and the right to vote. These struggles were met with an organized political reaction. In 1996, the Ranveer Sena conducted its first massacre—slaughtering twenty-one people in the Bathani Tola hamlet, most of whom with one exception were women and children from Dalit and extremely backward Muslim communities. A series of massacres followed, the worst of which was the Laxmanpur Bathe massacre in which fifty-eight men, women and children were killed in their sleep. The Cobrapost sting caught many Ranveer Sena men on video boasting of having committed the massacres and receiving funding and arms from senior BJP leaders.33
Bihar’s BJP leader and cabinet minister in Modi’s first and second terms, Giriraj Singh, once described the Ranveer Sena chief Brahmeshwar Singh as ‘a Gandhian thinker and a farmer leader, who had faith in peace and social harmony’.34 Brahmeshwar Singh himself had said in his last interview before his death, to Dan Morrison of New York Times, ‘Violence for the restoration of peace and harmony is not a sin.’35 So, some of the worst massacres of Dalit landless poor women and children in India are described by the BJP and by the
Ranveer Sena as actions to restore ‘peace and social harmony’. Why did Brahmeshwar Singh use the word ‘restoration’? Because it is the Dalit men and women victims who are accused of disrupting the harmonious hierarchies by demanding equality and refusing subservience and subjugation.
‘Family’ and ‘Home’ as Nucleus of ‘Social Harmony’
One of the central metaphors of the Sangh’s ‘social harmony’ is that of the ‘home’ or ‘ghar’, and its sister-term ‘family’ or ‘parivar’. This metaphor is invoked to valorize the patriarchal family and subjugation of women inside families. RSS and BJP leader Ram Madhav, in an op-ed article on India’s Independence Day 2017, claimed that the ‘genius of India’ is ‘rooted in its religio-social institutions like state, family, caste, guru and festival’.36 Note: Madhav counts caste—which Ambedkar had branded as ‘anti-national’ and which he had sought to annihilate—as part of the corpus comprising ‘the genius of India’. Madhav’s piece celebrates social hierarchies as ‘Indian’ and derides constitutional values and what Ambedkar called ‘constitutional morality’ as alien ‘Western liberal discourse’. And those social hierarchies include not only caste but also ‘family’, because for the Sangh, gender hierarchies within the patriarchal ‘family’ are valorized rather than seen as something requiring change.
Journalist Neha Dixit, writing about a visit to a camp of the RSS women’s wing Rashtra Sevika Samiti, notes that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh means ‘National Volunteer Corps’, while in contrast ‘the term Rashtra Sevika denotes women who serve the nation. This difference in the meaning does hint at the conventional humble service that is expected of a self-sacrificing woman. The sense of autonomy and self-choice that are associated with the word “volunteer” are notably missing.’37
Dixit writes that the Rashtra Sevika cadres ‘are categorically told that the difference between the Rashtra Sevika Samiti and other women’s organizations is that unlike others they do not fight for women’s rights, instead they fight to create a Hindu rashtra’.38 A Rashtra Sevika Samiti leader explained to Dixit, ‘We are not feminists, we are family-ists.’39 In these camps, young Hindu women are indoctrinated to believe that they need arms training to kill Muslims who are lustful invaders and rapists. The ‘love jihad’ bogey is propagated among the young women, with one leader saying, ‘Muslim boys are encouraged to elope with our girls. The money they are paid to elope and marry a Hindu girl depends on the caste of the girl.’40
The idea of ‘family’ that the Samiti propagates is a strictly hierarchical one in which women must be subordinate to the wishes and decisions of their husbands and autonomy is discouraged and frowned upon. The Samiti manual says, ‘. . . after marriage, a girl will have many responsibilities in her new home. It is not advisable for her to bring disquiet by refusing to compromise. If ordained by her fate, her husband will permit her to study.’41
As long as women remain submissive and obedient, harmony within the family remains intact. Even domestic violence must be borne quietly, stifling one’s screams, to prioritize maintaining family harmony. Dixit asked Sharda, one of the Samiti leaders, ‘What advice would you give to a victim of wife-beating?’ The reply justified wife-beating: ‘Don’t parents admonish their children for misbehaviour? Just as a child must adjust to his/her parents, so must a wife act keeping in mind her husband’s mood and must avoid irritating him. Only this can keep the family together.’42 Sharda’s reply is not an aberration; this is the standard Sangh understanding on domestic violence. In an interview published in 1995, VHP women’s wing leader Krishna Sharma defended wife-beating in almost identical words: ‘Don’t parents admonish their children for misbehaviour? . . . a wife must act keeping in mind her husband’s moods and must avoid irritating him . . .
if she learns to stifle her screams, the matter will remain within the four walls of the house. Otherwise every house will become a “Mahabharata”.’43
Feminist assertions of women’s autonomy are painted by Sangh ideology as Western-inspired disruptions of the harmonious Indian family. Oppressive social practices are all rationalized as having evolved to ‘protect’ women from rapacious Muslims.
Constitution vs Manusmriti
Ram Madhav’s article suggested that the Modi government was the first government in independent India that was true to the values that define the ‘genius of India’, which is why ‘the mob is enjoying it’.44 His use of the word ‘mob’ is a deliberate jibe at the protests against lynch-mob violence; he is implying that those distressed and anguished at lynch-mob violence are Westernized elites, who are cut off from the ‘genius of India’.
Is it true that only the worst, the most dehumanizing social hierarchies and practices of India represent India’s ‘genius’ while any attempt to resist these practices—whether these are caste atrocities, communal lynchings, ‘honour killings’, sati, or dowry/domestic violence—is alien and foreign? It is worth recalling Ambedkar’s words here:
Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment . . . We must realize that our people have yet to learn it. Democracy in India is only a top dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic.45
Here, Ambedkar acknowledges that ‘Indian soil’ might be ‘naturally’ undemocratic—but instead of celebrating this undemocratic Indian soil as the ‘genius of India’, he advocated that the soil be supplied with democratic nutrients to nurture constitutional morality. In his speech in the Constituent Assembly on the adoption of the Constitution, on 25 November 1949, Ambedkar made it very clear why independence and liberty were precious in his analysis:
What are we having this liberty for? We are having this liberty in order to reform our social system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things, which conflict with our fundamental rights.46
If for Ambedkar, ‘liberty’ from the British colonial rule was the freedom to take responsibility for our own society and strive for change and reform, ‘liberty’ for the Sangh is the liberty to resist change, and deride any striving for social change and reform as ‘inspired by the West’. Inequality and discrimination are celebrated by the Sangh as ‘India’s native genius’, and those seeking to change and challenge them are ‘anti-national’.
People’s movements in India—the movements of women, Dalits, workers, peasants, the left, socialists, environmentalists, civil libertarians—all represent the striving of Indians to be the best version of themselves. These movements have routinely been branded as ‘alien’ and ‘Westernized’ by fascists, while fascists the world over have always claimed to be ‘organic’ sons of the soil. The truth is, though, that Indian fascists are, as we have seen, inspired by Hitler and Nazism which was ‘foreign’ to India. They appeal to Indians to be the worst version of themselves, drawing on the most illiberal tendencies and most oppressive traditions.
The Constitution, drafted in large part by Ambedkar, was an attempt to appeal to the best in Indians, calling upon ‘we the people’ to protect the rights of all citizens and people, especially the oppressed sections and minorities.
Ambedkar had mobilized people to burn the Manusmriti, as the fountainhead of obnoxious anti-Dalit and anti-women rules that continue to govern society. In contrast, the RSS wanted the Indian Constitution to be based on the Manusmriti.
The RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, in its editorial dated 30 November 1949, a few days after the ratification of the Constitution drafted in Ambedkar’s leadership, complained that the Indian Constitution was inspired by the West and did not reflect the native genius of the Manusmriti:
But in our Constitution there is no mention of the unique constitutional developments in ancient Bharat. Manu’s laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day laws as enunciated in the Manusmriti excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing.
Who was the Organizer referring to when it claimed that the Manusmriti was admired the world over? I
t was Ambedkar who, in his writings, had revealed the ideological link between the Manusmriti that had inspired the German philosopher Nietzsche, who in turn inspired Hitler. The RSS leaders were in turn inspired by Hitler and Mussolini.47
Even today RSS and BJP leaders continue to seek out ways in which to rehabilitate and ‘normalize’ the Manusmriti. Writing a separate hagiographic piece on RSS founder Golwalkar, Modi even described Ambedkar, the fighter against Manuvad who burnt the Manusmriti, as a ‘modern Manu’.48
Nowhere is the BJP’s and Sangh’s Manuvadi vision more apparent than in their attitude to women and Dalits. Adityanath (Ajay Singh Bisht, who styles himself ‘Yogi Adityanath’) was handpicked by Modi, Amit Shah and the RSS to become the chief minister of UP—India’s largest state. In a detailed write-up titled ‘Matrshakti: Bharatiya Shakti ke Sandarbh Mein’, which was uploaded in 2014 on his own website, Adityanath echoed the Manusmriti to write that according to Hindu scriptures, ‘[W]omen are not capable of being left free or independent . . . women need male protection from birth to death . . . a woman is protected in her childhood by her father, by her husband in her youth and by her son in her old age.’ This idea of women being under men’s protection all their lives (father, husband and son) is straight from the Manusmriti.
After Adityanath became the chief minister, some journalists began exposing his attitude towards women, citing the article on his website.49 Subsequently, the write-up was quietly taken down from the website. Clicking on the link for the article,50 you get a message saying: ‘The resource you are looking for might have been removed.’
In the article, Adityanath is eloquent against women’s freedom:
Whereas in our shastras, the greatness of women has been described, at the same time considering their importance and their decorum and dignity, the need to give them protection is also mentioned . . . Just like if you leave energy free and uncontrolled and unregulated, it may become useless and destructive, similarly ‘shakti swaroopa stree’—woman as the epitome of power—does not really need freedom, but a meaningful role with protection and channelization . . . For only such controlled and protected women power will give birth to and raise great men and when required step out of home to the battlefield to destroy evil powers.