HVK Archives: "Saffron Chic" by Mani Shankar Aiyar
"Saffron Chic" by Mani Shankar Aiyar - The Pioneer
Posted By HVK Editor (hvk@hindunet.org)
Tue, 1 Oct 1996 14:07:30 -0500 (CDT)
Source: Rediff on the Net
Category: Anti-htv (polished attack)
"Saffron Chic" by M.S. Ayer
It's good thing the Hindus don't bury their dead. For if the Father of
Hindutva, Veer Savarkar, had been disposed of in a coffin, he would
doubtless have been turning in his grave at the spectacle of what his most
avid followers are now up to in the name of Hindutva. It was central to
Savarkar's thesis that what distinguished the true Indian from the bogus
one was that the true Indian worshipped his pitribhoomi (fatherland) and
regarded only its sacred soil as his punyabhoomi (holy land).
Since the Muslims looked west to Arabia, Turkey and Iran for
religious inspiration and sanctuary, it followed, held Savarkar, that they
could not be true Indians or true to the soil of India. Hindutva, that is,
the nationhood of India, must, therefore, be entrusted to the Hindu whose
pitribhoomi was this land and whose punyabhoomi lay not in some foreign
part.
Fortunately for him, Savarkar shook off his mortal coils before the avid
emigration of Hindus even farther west than the shores of the Red Sea
began. Advani's problems with hawala operations are only a small segment
of the overseas connections, enthusiasm, finance-- and even inspiration
--- that accounts for much of the recent resurgence of Hindutva in our
society and polity.
The Hindu of Hampstead Heath has emerged as the financial and intellectual
standard-bearer of what once was called the 'Hindu, Hindi, Hindustani
brigade'. The incense-filled corridors of 10, Ashoka Road are filled with
Blimp-like ex-generals and former foreign service ambassadors.
It is curious, therefore, that the foremost Hampstead Hindu of them all,
Swapan Dasgupta, should, with his exquisitely chiselled mastery of the
mlechcha language, come down so heavily on the alienation from their
indigenous roots of 'secular fundamentalists' (incidentally, a
self-description he picked up from me at one of the unending round of
seminars on the subject we are both compelled by our convictions to
attend).
In the interests of the dialogue which he urges between communal
fundamentalists, like himself, and secular fundamentalists, like me, I
would commend to the secularists in my corner a perusal of the hugely
amusing, punchy and pointed review that Swapan has done for Dileep
Padgaonkar's Biblio (India's answer to The New York Review of Books) of
Religion, Religiosity and Communalism put out by Praful Bidwai, Harbans
Mukhia and Achin Vanaik. As I am yet to see the book, I shall have nothing
to say on its contents; my concern is exclusively with the larger issues
raised in Swapan's review.
These are easily summarised in Swapan's own words: 'What is behind the
secularist intellectual's deep contempt of indigenous traditions?' he
asks. The answer quite simply is that the secularist intellectual has no
contempt of indigenous traditions. He only thinks there exist, in addition
to the indigenous traditions of Aryavarta genesis, a large number of
non-Sanatani traditions, including, in particular, Muslim indigenous
traditions. Why 'in particular'? Because the Hindutva mindset insists
particularly on treating India's Muslim traditions as non-indigenous,
whether of 'Hindu' origin or not, then why 'Hindutva' in preference to
'Bharatiyata' or plain and simple 'Indianness'?
Next, asks, Swapan: 'Why are westernised Hindus so prone to self
flagellation?' I am a westernised Hindu. So, incidentally, is Swapan
Dasgupta. I have never flagellated myself on having been born into a Hindu
home. My mother spent the last 20 years of her life in the Sivananda
Ashram near Rishikesh. She never seemed to have any difficulty in
reconciling her secular fundamentalism with her pious religiosity. She
certainly never imagined that it was incumbent on her to go around Ayodhya
chanting 'Ek dhakka aur do' swathed in saffron scarves as at least one
editor of the Indian Express I know felt the need to do to reassure
himself that his fondness for Hampstead pubs is reconcilable with his
passion for Hindutva.
The only jam sessions I attended on Saturday evenings as a teenager were
bhajan mandalis. I enjoy a beer in a Hampstead pub quite as much as
Swapan, but my composite being has as much place for bhajans as for beer.
In much the same way, I am deeply convinced that the composite traditions
of India to which I am proudly heir have place as much for the proto-Hindu
and pre-Hindu traditions of India as two thousand years of Christianity
and a thousand years of Islam have given us.
I believe it is the anti-thesis of the Hindu tradition to reserve a
distinct and, worse, superior place for so-called 'Hindu' traditions over
the other traditions of India. I know my pious Hindu mother would have
been scandalised at the suggestion that any one Indian tradition was more
'indigenous' than any other. She was, after all, a good Hindu. Swapan
Dasgupta -- and his ilk -- are political Hindus.
Back
Top
|
