Ghar Wapsi
Welcome to the Hellhole of
Hinduism
Most converts to Islam and Christianity, being from the lower castes who had converted to escape the yoke of caste bondage of Hinduism, would be reincarcerated into the hellhole of Hinduism which their forefathers strove to escape.
Anand Teltumbde (tanandraj@gmail.com) is a writer and civil rights activist of the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights, Mumbai.
Drunk with political power, the hydra-headed Sangh Parivar has gone berserk with spreading communal hatred against religious minorities with Goebbelseque persistence of lies and venomous intrigues. While flaunting ultra nationalistic rhetoric, it has been threatening the fragile fabric of the nation and pushing the country towards an inevitable civil war. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), its political outfit, catapulted itself to power at the centre by capitalising on the resentment of people against the listless performance of the corrupt and arrogant Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance government, by dangling the carrot of development, with massive financing from corporate coffers. It has since been winning elections in state after state. Narendra Modi, the mascot of these victories, has been taking rapid strides towards the sell-out of the country's resources to global capital, duly camouflaging the process with his unmatched theatrics for regaining the imaginary glory of "Mother India". Surely he has brought acche din to the capitalist honchos, stockbrokers, wheeler-dealers, and the like, and of course, the upwardly mobile middle classes, but without an iota of improvement in the quality of life of commoners. Indeed, he has only compounded their existential anxieties.
The monkey brigade of the Sangh Parivar has been let loose to advance the project of communalisation and thereby invigorate the Parivar constituency. But besides the numerous named and unnamed Sangh Parivar outfits, even persons occupying positions in the executive of the state, like Smriti Irani, the Union Human Resource Development Minister, and the Foreign Minister, Sushma Swaraj, not to speak of some other BJP Members of Parliament (MPs), all of whom have made a mark with their irrational and absurd suggestions or moves. Irani's Hindutva overtures, such as imposing Sanskrit in schools, are a persistent controversy, and Swaraj suggesting that the Bhagavad Gita be made a national scripture are ominous signs. The old saffron agenda – removing the special autonomous status given to Jammu and Kashmir (Article 370), bringing in a uniform civil code aimed at doing away with Muslim Personal Law, making voting in elections compulsory, etc – is, of course, in reserve. The head of the Parivar, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's (RSS) Sarsangchalak (supreme leader), Mohan Bhagwat, has already declared that India is "our" Hindu Rashtra and their aim is to convert all Muslims and Christians to Hinduism by 2021. He has commissioned his monkey brigade to accomplish this task, calling it ghar wapsi.
Lies, Pure and Simple
Lies have been the Sangh Parivar's staple of propaganda material. It fabricates history to justify its absurd actions. Bhagwat sought to legitimise his conversion programme as taking back what was stolen by thieves. The poor analogy marks Muslims and Christians as thieves who have fraudulently converted Hindus. About his bête noire, Muslims, none other than Swami Vivekananda, whom the Hindus idolise, had refuted the canard spread by Bhagwat's ilk. He wrote,
Why amongst the poor of India so many are Mohammedans? It is nonsense to say that they were converted by the sword. It was to gain liberty from zamindars and priests... (The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol 8, p 330).
If the Muslim rulers had converted people by the sword, would they have spared Bhagwat's forefathers? Eight hundred years of Muslim rule was long enough to make India a Muslim country. That the Bhagwats and Togadias of this world are around to spew communal venom proves that the Muslim rulers were not obsessed with conversion. Their sword was the sword of rulers, quite like any of the Hindu kings, meant to subjugate people and amass wealth.
Largely, people of the lower castes became Muslims and that really lies at the root of Bhagwat's brahmanic hatred. The lower castes willingly embraced Islam because of its egalitarianism, experienced through the Sufis, Islam's mystics, who preached love and compassion in an idiom that appealed to them. They were forbidden from entering Hindu temples but were embraced whenever they entered Sufi darghas. After Islam, the lower castes also became Christians not because they were forced or bribed by the Christian rulers or missionaries but out of their own volition. The major reason behind their becoming Muslims or Christians was the exclusionary and oppressive caste system of Hinduism. Not only was the latter the cause of religious conversions but it was also the reason for the history of slavery (in the sense of outsiders' rule) and backwardness of this subcontinent, which the Sangh falsely calls India's glory. For much of the known history of India has been the history of outsiders' rule. The Bhagwats and Togadias need to introspect about this debilitating system if they want to see India proud. Instead they want to recreate the old glory of brahmanism and incur the shame that it has brought upon India even in modern times.
Ominous Portents
The entire Sangh Parivar, excited over the electoral victories of the BJP, is set to do tandav and tamasha under the patronage of political power. The strategy of communal polarisation in the crisis-ridden polity does work, for it did bring Modi three terms in office as chief minister after the 2002 Gujarat carnage and the BJP 74 seats out of 80 in Uttar Pradesh in the last Lok Sabha elections. But to think that people could be swayed permanently by such identity politics would be utterly naive and foolish. The BJP's success in 2014 is more due to its development rhetoric than any of its communal gimmicks. Its strategy to consolidate its constituency by whipping up a communal frenzy against Muslims and Christians smacks of its characteristic juvenility and poor intellect. Politics in modern times cannot be constructed on the basis of an ethereal entity like religion, truly the opium of the masses, without disastrous consequences. We have the example of Pakistan for what is likely to happen. The Sangh Parivar must rethink its premises.
Unfortunately, contrary to the commonplace impression, religion has not been totally out of statecraft in India and the menace of religiosity (Hindutva being its most hideous form) that we suffer is its direct consequence. Ruling class intrigues have grossly compromised the principle of secularism in the Constitution. With an overdose of liberalism and under the guise of providing social and communal justice, the Constitution has legitimated the use of caste and religion in statecraft. They were actually meant to be levers to manipulate people. As electoral politics became increasingly competitive by the 1970s, with the rise of backward castes, their manipulation became widespread among political parties. The after-effects of such caste-based strategies, injurious as they have been, did not turn fatal. Unlike these electoral strategies, however, the BJP blatantly plays the majoritarian game, pitching the Hindu majority against the minorities, which could be grossly fatal. We have already experienced the calamitous consequence of religious-communal divide-and-rule in 1947; it could potentially push the country into a veritable civil war and may lead to its dismemberment as in Yugoslavia.
Ghar or the Hellhole
On 8 December 57 families (nearly 350 persons) in Ved Nagar in Agra were converted to Hinduism by Dharma Jagran Samanvaya Vibhag and Bajrang Dal activists, both RSS outfits. The event made big news when it was disclosed that these pavement dwellers/ragpickers and other destitute persons were promised that if they participated in the religious function they would be given ration cards and below the poverty line (BPL) cards. It made bigger news when one of the converts, Ismail, complained to the police that they were cheated. Interestingly, this initiative was spearheaded by a dalit, Nand Kishore Valmiki, touted as the convenor of the Dharma Jagran, who went absconding immediately after this expose but was arrested by the police on 16 December. A dalit was deliberately projected as its initiator, as the converts would potentially be dalits and only acceptable among the Valmikis. Interestingly, the Valmiki community of Agra punctured this plan by threatening to strike work if Nand Kishore was harmed. They alleged that the real mastermind was some Ajju Chauhan. The stooge Nand Kishore, however, spiritedly spoke on television and owned up his act, revealing to some extent the degenerate state of dalits.
Degenerate because the biggest challenge in modern times to the Hindutva forces (now they do not need even that slippery camouflage for "Hindu" as the Supreme Court in 1995 intriguingly defined Hinduism as a way of life) could be from dalits who do not have any stake in Hinduism and who can easily reject their demeaning status as they did by renouncing Hinduism in the past. Castes are the only defining feature of Hinduism; the rest is just an incoherent hodgepodge of customs and traditions, gods and goddesses, rituals and festivals, and babas and buwasmasquerading as sadhus and saints. The bankruptcy of dalit politics however has reached such a nadir that dalits find themselves in the Hindu trap, all their Rams having become Hanumans. In the wake of the Agra conversions, one dalit group led by the BJP's Bizay Sonkar Shastry, former chairman of National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, has taken it upon itself to restore the "lost pride" of the Valmikis, Khatiks and Chamars by assuming their "original" surnames such as Mishra, Pandey, Tiwari, Tomar or Rathod. This hero of dalits claims to have addressed 500 seminars and lined up another 2,000 on this move.
Which castes do the converts land up in? This crucial question is conveniently sidelined. Inadvertently, Yogi Adityanath, the Hindutva face of the BJP, demystified this issue by revealing that "those being subjected to ghar vapasi will be given the Gotra and caste from which they converted". That means, most converts to Islam and Christianity, being from the lower castes who had converted to escape the yoke of the caste bondage of Hinduism, would be reincarcerated into the hellhole of Hinduism which their forefathers strove to escape. What a prospect for the Muslims and Christians of India!
Anand Teltumbde (tanandraj@gmail.com) is a writer and civil rights activist of the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights, Mumbai.
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