Bhagwat Puran of a Different Kind

‘Though this be madness yet there is method in it…’

--‘Hamlet’, Shakespeare I.

The search for the real Independence Day has perhaps become longer in the Hindutva supremacist circles.

Close on the heels of the likes Kangana Ranaut, film actress and ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of Parliament, who had (in)famously said that “India attained freedom in 2014 and 1947 was ‘bheek’”, or alms and Vikram Massey, another flop Bollywood hero, questioning the freedom of 1947 as “so-called” Independence, has come the news that the numero uno of the Sangh Parivar, Mohan Bhagwat, has joined the ranks.

Speaking on the first anniversary of the Ram Temple inauguration day in Indore (as per the Hindu calendar), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief underlined that this day of consecration should actually be celebrated as "true independence" of Bharat, which faced enemy attacks "parachakra" for several centuries.

As expected, Bhagwat’s remarks have received widespread condemnation in Opposition circles. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has even called it an act of "treason" and asserted that they were an affront to every Indian. He even underlined that the "[R]SS chief would have been arrested in any other country" for such controversial remarks.

Looking at the fact that Bhagwat happens to be the supremo of the 'biggest cultural organisation in the world', whose ideology drives India today, who has the complete liberty of sharing his pearls of wisdom whenever he deems it necessary, at times even boomeranging on the organisation, it is difficult to imagine that any action would be taken against him, or whether he will be censured for his controversial remarks, which are an attack on the sacrifices and historic legacy of the freedom fighters as also on the Constitution.

What is evident is the real legacy of the likes of Hedgewar, Golwalkar or Savarkar -- the three icons of this exclusivist movement based on hate. A cursory glance at their life histories makes it obvious how they had no qualms in trivialisation of the freedom struggle and humiliation of great freedom fighters, all of which has now become an integral part of the Hindutva gene.

This is K.B Hedgewar, the founder member of RSS.

“Patriotism is not only going to prison. It is not correct to be carried away by such superficial patriotism.

CP Bhishikar, Sanghavariksh Ke Beej: Dr. KeshavraoHedgewar, Suruchi, 1994, p. 21.

Here is a quote from M.S Golwalkar, the second supremo of RSS on martyrs:

“There is no doubt that such men who embrace martyrdom are great heroes and their philosophy too is pre-eminently manly. They are far above the average men who meekly submit to fate and remain in fear and inaction. All the same, such persons are not held up as ideals in our society. We have not looked upon their martyrdom as the highest point of greatness to which men should aspire. For, after all, they failed in achieving their ideal, and failure implies some fatal flaw in them.”

MS Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, Sahitya Sindhu, Bangalore, 1996, p. 283)

Any student of the Independence struggle knows that this is a ‘weak point’ as far as Hindutva formations in general or RSS in particular are concerned. Much has been written on the fact that not only RSS did not participate in that struggle and focused itself on ‘organising Hindus’, but it even deterred its own activists from joining it. In fact, RSS played such an ignoble role during that tumultuous period that today they find it difficult to defend themselves over their inaction. To save themselves from such discomforting questions, they either engage in ‘picking someone from that period’, show her/his proximity with the ideals of Hindutva, or denigrate that period or devalue the great martyrs.

History bears witness to the fact that from the days of the heroic struggle led by the legendary Tilaka Majhi (1757 A.D.) to the historic ‘Quit India movement’ (1942) or the Royal Indian Navy Strike (1946), the nearly 200 years of British rule in India always met with resistance at different levels led by different forces.

The first half of the 20th century witnessed the coalescence of different anti-British forces under the Congress banner, or the emergence of the communist movement as well as the revolutionary movement led by the likes of Bhagat Singh and Chandrasekhar Azad, which posed a serious challenge to the colonial rule. The emergence of Indian National Army under the leadership of Subhash Chandra Bose which delivered mighty blows to the British colonialists is another glorious chapter of that period. All these developments and the growing aspirations of the Indian people to get rid of the colonial yoke could not impel the Hindutva leaders to join the struggle.

Interestingly, there is a strong commonality between Hindu communalists as well as Muslim communalists. Neither the Hindu communalists, led by the likes of V.D Savarkar and Golwalkar, nor the Muslim communalists, led by the likes of M.A Jinnah participated in ‘Quit India’ movement. Their support to the British rule also becomes evident when one witnesses that it was the same period when the Hindu Mahasabha was running coalition governments in Bengal and parts of today’s Pakistan with Muslim League.

While Syama Prasad Mukherjee, then leader of Hindu Mahasabha, was a senior minister in the Shahid Surhawardy-led government, his party supremo Savarkar was on a whirlwind tour of the country, holding public meetings and appealing to the youth to join the imperial British army with a slogan ‘Militarise Hinduism and Hinduise nation’.

No doubt the audacity with which our historic freedom struggle is denigrated a la RSS Supremo Mohan Bhagwat and the limitless sacrifices of our martyrs are made fun of has seen a quantum jump with the ascent of the Narendra Modi-led Hindutva supremacist dispensation at the Centre.

The opening shot in this direction to denigrate the historic freedom struggle was delivered by none other than Modi when he assumed the post of Prime Minister for the first time in 2014. What was disturbing to note was that in his first speech in Parliament, he had no qualms in spinning the RSS mythology on the floor of the august House, engaging himself in 'complete falsification of history'

What he said in his reply to the motion of thanks to the President’s address at the joint session of Parliament in 2014 needs thorough reading:

“Barah-sau saal ki ghulami ki maansikta humein pareshan kar rahi hai. Bahut baar humse thoda uncha vyakti mile, to sar uncha karke baat karne ki humari taaqat nahin hoti hai.” [Our 1,200-year slavish mentality is troubling us. Often, when we meet a person of higher stature, we fail to muster the strength to speak up.]”  (-do-)

One can see that with this single remark, Modi provided an altogether new interpretation of history, a paradigm shift, which would be slowly normalised in the coming years.

Modi offered a new interpretation to Indian history, which was a paradigm shift from what we had learned in school. We had learned of the “slavery of 200 years”—the years of colonial rule. Now Modi had increased the time period to 1,200 years. What he did here was to erase the difference between the era of colonialism under the British Raj and the earlier kingdoms, many of them led by Muslim rulers. This is the RSS view, that the Muslims are alien to India, that “they” ruled “us” for a thousand years.

Modi’s remarks were an integral part of how RSS thinks and how it considers Muslims and other religious minorities as the 'other'. He deliberately glossed over the fact that whereas '[B]ritish didn’t make India their home, whereas Muslims who came here, settled in India and contributed to the country’s culture. That gave birth to the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (syncretic culture).” (-do-)

As an aside, one can even mention how Modi was essentially peddling what Golwalkar - the second RSS supremo - had penned down in his controversial book, Bunch of Thoughts. In this book, Golwalkar calls Muslims, Christians and communists as internal enemies. The chapter ‘Internal Threats’ in the book has three sub-sections titled Muslims, Christians and communists, which begins like this:

“It has been the tragic lesson of the history of many a country in the world that the hostile elements within the country pose a far greater menace to national security that aggressors from outside. Unfortunately, this first lesson of national security has been the one thing which has been consistently ignored in our country ever since the British left this land (sic).”

Coming back to how Bhagwat insulted the great freedom fighters and demeaned the historic freedom struggle, one can see examples galore of how this 'offence' which was essentially 'treason' - as rightly underlined by Rahul Gandhi, was repeated umpteen times by all and sundry.

Close on the heels of BJP’s victory in 2014, Suresh Soni, a senior RSS pracharak (propagandist) had broached a controversy by his utterances while addressing the 161 first-time BJP MPs at a two-day training camp organised by the party at Surajkund near Delhi. He had compared BJP’s electoral victory with India’s freedom struggle.

“.[c]ompared May 16 — the day Lok Sabha election results were declared and the BJP emerged victorious — to August 16, 1947, the day after India won its independence and the erstwhile British rulers finally left the country.”

In fact, this denigration or trivialisation of the freedom struggle also resonates with the Sangh Parivar’s essential concealed disdain toward the anti-colonial struggle of the Indian people which, according to them, brought to power ‘pseudo seculars’ and their allies and did great harm to the cause of Hindu nation.

While Soni compared 'electoral victory in 2014 with India’s freedom struggle', Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had the audacity to claim that “cow protectionism was the spirit behind India’s freedom movement and thus insult the freedom struggle. What is surprising is that this innocuous looking statement by Sitharaman on the floor of the House, when she defended the shutting of illegal slaughter houses in Uttar Pradesh, had not raised any debate then.

It did not take much time to bring to the fore the real import of this statement when the alleged killers of Pehlu Khan -- a farmer from Haryana - by a self-proclaimed band of cow vigilantes were compared with the likes of Bhagat Singh. The video of the whole incident - where Kamal Didi, who heads ‘Rashtriya Mahila Gau Raksha Dal’, who then made headlines when she forced the Jaipur administration to close down a hotel owned by a Muslim under some flimsy pretext, had gone viral where she was seen comparing one of the accused in the case as “Bhagat Singh and Chandra Shekhar Azad of today”  

For close watchers of the incidents of cow vigilantism, which are increasingly coming under scanner everywhere, there was nothing surprising about this glorification. People had watched with horror when body of one of the accused in the Dadri lynching case was covered with the tricolour. It is now history how the lynching took place when the crowd had been mobilised by giving open calls using a loudspeaker placed in the local temple and the frenzied mob had killed Akhlaq in front of his house for supposedly storing beef. 

Lastly, comparison of ‘cow terrorists’ with freedom fighters also reminds one of the killing in Odisha of Graham Staines and his children by a Hindutva fanatic, Dara Singh, who was similarly glorified by his people. More about it sometime later.

The writer is an independent journalist. The views are personal.