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THE CHANGING FACE OF INDIA
Dr. M. V. Kamath

Now that the Godhra ‘event’ has come to a conclusive close and the Special Court had made it clear that there was a conspiracy to torch the Sabarmati Express, the time has come to ask ourselves what is wrong with Indian society. Why have there been ‘communal’ riots? Why have churches been attacked in recent times? Why do people resort to violence at the slightest provocation? In the case of Godhra, Narendra Modi has been the venomous target of our secularists. In the late thirties and forties, whenever there were riots in Mumbai, the target was the then Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee (BPCC) secretary, later president, S.K. Patil, who was the biggest fund-raiser for the Congress and whom Gandhiji would jokingly call the Emperor of Bombay. Has anyone ever made a psychological study of Hindu, Muslim and Christian mentality? One thing is clear without being aware of it, techtonic changes are taking place in Hindu society that call for study. From its age-old slumber, Hindus are waking up to their great past. Our ‘intellectuals’ don’t want to give the changes any other explanation, except ‘communal’, but the fact is that it is largely the Hindu merchant the Hindu scientist and the Hindu common man who is giving India the push that is taking it to hitherto unscaled heights. And he is reacting sharply to any assault on his psyche. Whatever the faults of the Hindus-and they are many-they have always been accommodative. When Hindu society was at its nadir and a man like Macaulay could insult Hindu literature and culture and there was no one around to challenge him, the Hindu was lost. Hindu society was divided because of lack of communication, however much leaders like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Dayananda Saraswati or Swami Vivekananda sought to revitalise it. Consciously or unconsciously today the Indian- the Hindu-is waking up to his strengths and is not going to take any more beating servilely. Some Hindu intellectuals are still scared to admit that they are Hindus, betray their age-old inferiority complex and insist that they are ‘secular’ to the point that the tragi-comic Shiv Sena of Mumbai had to invent the slogan 'garv se kaho hum Hindu hai' (say with pride that I am a Hindu). That apart, even conceding that Hindu “fundamentalists” or “extremists” have been of late aggressive, one has to ask what has turned them into extremism. What has irked them? Would there have been a Godhra if there had been no torching of the Sabarmati Express that burnt alive some fifty odd women and children? What made the Muslim hordes torch the Express? The answer is: the destruction of the Babri Mosque. Why was the mosque destroyed? Talks between Islamic leaders and certain Hindu groups had gone on for weeks. The talks failed. They need not have. The Muslim leaders showed total lack of grace to the sentiments of Hindus, which were deeply hurt. The Muslim community was supported By Hindu “secularists” who questioned the very existence of Sri Ram, questioned the belief that Ayodhya where he was born is not the Ayodhya we know, but an Ayodhya somewhere in Afghanistan or Nepal and so on. The faith of millions was run down, even insulted. That the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court has at last given a favourable verdict on 30 sep. 2010 and a temple may still be built on the Ram Janmbhoomi site is beside the point. What is more to the point is that a Hindu awakening is quietly growing, and it would grow even if there were no RSS or BJP or VHP. There would have been bloody riots in Gujarat even if there were no Narendra Modi in power or even a Nehru replica running the government in Ahmedabad. To charge Modi with instigating the riots is juvenile. It may satisfy ‘secular’ instincts but they are only fooling themselves. It doesn’t resolve any issue. It merely closes the lid on any serious discussion on what is happening in our society. We tend to dismiss the riot as “communal”, that precludes further discussion. There have been as many as 89 riots in India in between 1947 and 2003. The usual argument is that riots are politically motivated. But how come there were riots in Ahmedabad successively in 1714, 1715, 1716 and 1750? According to Bipan Chandra in his book communalism Modern India, communal tensions and riots in India began to occur only in the last quarter of the 19th century, but they did not occur on any significant scale till 1946-47. Before that the maximum communal rioting took place during 1923-24 – during the frightening Moplah Rebellion. The charge is made that the propagation of Hindutva is responsible for the change in Hindu attitude and that all riots are politics-based. That stops further discussion. The intellectual ‘secularist’ has got his answers and he feels superior in laying the blame the blame on fellow Hindus. Isn’t he impartial? Isn’t he daring? He rises in his own self-estimation. But the question remains unresolved. Can it be that Indians – Hindus, Muslims, Christians to start with – have not yet come to terms with history? Can it be that a thousand years of “alien” rule has conditioned the Hindu minds to a point of no return, to servility? This calls for a lot of circumspection among all. How were Hindus treated in Goa during Portuguese rule just to mention one example, how were Hindus treated in the state of Hyderabad under the Nizam? We have the Institutes of Peace and conflict studies. We have books like Ashtosh Vershney’s Ethnic Violence and Civil Life but nobody faces the issue of psychological disturbances fully. In India, if there were no RSS or BJP, it would have been necessary to invent them. Our intellectual mind is as petrified that discussion stops at blaming Hindus and Hindutva and some self-introspection among the so-called minorities is just not done. Have Muslims and Christians ever asked themselves what is bothering Hindus and whether their own behaviour may in part be responsible for riots and attacks against churches? There never were attacks against churches in the past. What has happened in recent times to create a new class of extremists? These questions are never asked. But they need to be asked. Importantly, all communities have to come to terms with history. For any community to say that they cannot be held responsible for their past ancestors’ ill behaviour is to duck the issue. The past is ever with us as Mayavati keeps telling upper caste Hindus who are trying to make recompense in Uttar Padesh. To keep damning Hindutva is an easy way to forget one’s own shortcomings, but it doesn’t take the critics anywhere, a point that needs to be stressed again and again.