Last week, the famous Shri Jagannath Temple in Puri, Odisha, remained closed for devotees when the sevayats (servitors) refused to open the gates of the temple after a tussle with the police.

The past months had seen tensions escalating between the temple’s sevayats and the Odisha government following a Supreme Court order that imposes new ‘reforms’ on the temple.

The order came in response to a petition that raised concerns about harassment by the sevayats, inadequate hygiene, encroachments, commercialised rituals, and general “deficiencies in the management of the Shrine”.

Now the devotees are witness to yet another episode in a long series of legal disputes surrounding the Sri Jagannath Temple. Ever since the government passed legislation to take control of the temple in the early 1950s, conflicts have arisen again and again between the temple administration, the sevayats, the Gajapati or ruler of Puri, and the devotees.

Naturally, this case is part of a larger story. For decades now, state bureaucracies have intervened in the ‘management’ of Hindu temples, from controlling the finances to supervising the rituals. Along the way, politicians and judges have frequently condemned the mismanagement, which they claim is rampant in temples, and used these claims to justify the ongoing expansion of government control.

There is an irony here. It is precisely those temples that saw decades of government intrusion that are also the ones that have become hotbeds of conflict and mismanagement. To find remedies for the shortcomings in temples like the Jagannath Temple, the Supreme Court issued an order in June 2018, in which it directed the Union government and the Odisha government to create committees that should study “the management schemes” of major pilgrimage centres.

These included the Tirupati temple, the Vaishno Devi temple, and the privately owned temple of Dharmasthala in Karnataka. After first creating the space for a massive government take-over, the court now advised the government to look to other sites for lessons about proper management of temples, as though the problems can be solved by compiling a list of ‘best practices’.

The point is not that no well-managed ‘public’ temples (controlled by the government) exist or that all privately managed temples are beacons of harmony. Something more important is at stake. India’s larger temples are highly complex organisations. The tasks to be performed every day are numerous. Temple premises have to be cleaned, different kinds of water need to be drawn from specific wells, puja (ritual) is to be performed multiple times. These activities require a variety of flowers and other ingredients that need to be cultivated or acquired.

In addition, cooked food along with different kinds of prasad (food offering) needs to be prepared for rituals. The large numbers of visitors to the temple and their movements have to be monitored and handled. In some temples, food needs to be served to thousands of people and there are many other big and small tasks surrounding major festivals.

So, the work of the many people involved in the functioning of the temple needs to be well-coordinated and conflicts need to be proactively resolved or kept at bay.

Now, consider the following: the Indian temple is the most ancient type of organisation sustaining with this level of complexity. It goes back thousands of years. As a form of organisation, the temple survived in extremely hostile environments over millennia. They had to withstand Islamic invaders and rulers, who saw temples as sites of false religion and devil worship. British colonial governments viewed the temples in much the same way, but also exploited them as sources of revenue. The latest assault, of course, was the government take-over after Independence.

The temples also adapted to the fast-paced societal, technological, and demographic developments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Hundreds of thousands of temples are thriving in today’s India and their numbers keep growing. Therefore, the Indian temple must be a highly resilient and adaptable organisation, at least as complex as a mid-sized company, to flourish under such challenging situations.

In post-Independence India, multiple state governments passed legislation that transformed ‘public’ Hindu temples into branches of state bureaucracy, which happen to deal in rituals and deities rather than, say, liquor licences or land records. In the case of the Puri temple and many others, this occurred with enthusiastic endorsement from the Supreme Court. Yet, for decades now, people have kept rediscovering that such temples have become sites of mismanagement, harassment, and commercialised rituals.

What else can be expected when pujaris are transformed by law into lower-level government servants? Predictably, they will also want their share of the revenue pie that India’s ‘public’ temples have become. The same is the case for politicians and bureaucrats sitting on the temple boards. Sadly, temples have begun to function as a means to pursue private interests.

This is precisely the kind of harm that government control of temples is unleashing. It is leading to the breakdown of the patterns of collaboration among the various groups of people involved in the temples, the very thing which allowed them to flourish for so many centuries. In this way, post-Independence India has perhaps become the most hostile environment ever faced by its temples. Leaving these institutions in the hands of state bureaucracies is a recipe for further decline.

Adding to government control of temples is the judicial intervention with regards to many traditions and rituals followed in temples. Why should people have to face these obstacles while they live in a country that claims to recognise the constitutional right to religious freedom? Should we not put an end to the unthinking political and judicial intervention that leads to disruptions in the functioning of temples and their traditions?

One of the tragedies of our times is our ignorance about the current state of affairs plaguing Hindu temples. It is time for social scientists to start figuring out how temples have worked in India, what kind of organisations they are, and what has gone wrong in the past seven decades.

We need to examine the legal grounds of the system of government control and build effective means for challenging this state of affairs in the courts. That is why a research project has been launched under the guidance of professor S N Balagangadhara, which aims to develop systematic analysis of these issues. This project will examine the legal and conceptual foundations of the state’s interference in temples, its historical origins in British colonial rule, the effects on the temples and their traditional practices, and the relation to the international legal tenets and jurisprudence about religious freedom.

To tackle the legal issues involved, it will re-examine state-level legislation about ‘Hindu religious and charitable endowments’ and the judgements of the Supreme Court and the high courts in cases related to temple management and temple entry, all from a jurisprudential point of view.

Finally, the enquiry will also focus on the Constitution of India and its articles concerning freedom of religion.

This controversy shows that the secular state and its principles give enormous opportunities to create new problems.

The Hijab controversy began as a dispute between a few Muslim students and college management regarding permission to wear hijab inside the campus, which was denied on the grounds that it was against the uniform rule. Muslim girls insisted that they have their freedom to wear hijab because it is part of their constitutionally guaranteed rights. Immediately, Hindu students reacted by wearing Saffron shawls on campus to assert their identity. These protests had a cascading effect and resulted in a series of protests and heated debates.  

The controversy got muddled up when different political parties entered these debates. Now the matter is under trial in the high court of Karnataka. What transpired in this debate involves multiple issues ranging from rights and law to an array of moral positions. Irrespective of which side one belongs to, the debate around the dress code on college campuses do not help anyone but  shows a bankruptcy in handling issues like this especially in educational institutions. These conversations show how shallow the nature of our reflection on serious issues like the peaceful coexistence of communities is today in India and how we are converting places of learning into places of hatred.  

To get some glimpse of what was debated in this controversy, a cursory look at the debate will be sufficient. Some have stated that wearing hijab is a fundamental right guaranteed by the constitution. Many felt that the public places like educational institutions must show neutrality towards any religion and therefore they cannot use those religious symbols in colleges. Some even argued that uniforms in campuses bring about a sense of equality and therefore allowing hijab would violate of such principles. For some the prayers, Saraswathi puja etc. on campus is evidence of schools being neither neutral spaces nor all religions being treated equally. Therefore, allowing hijab should not be a problem but, rather, a means of treating all religions equally. For some this conflict is about denial of the right to education to Muslim women as well as discrimination against minorities and is therefore a clear case of communal bigotry. If one carefully examines this debate, it appears that the principles of equality and religious neutrality in public places are at loggerheads with the principle of religious freedom, while both are important pillars of liberal secular democracy. 

During this debate, many thinkers were worried about the fate of the students and what they will learn and carry along with them in such an environment. Today, students are provoked to show off their identities. On the contrary, these campuses are expected to nurture an attitude of valuing diversity and peaceful coexistence. But these controversies are doing the opposite of what is expected of the campuses. It is puzzling how the issue has become such a point of conflict which was not present earlier. What enabled our ancestors to deal with enormous diversity in dress, food, practices etc. for centuries? They always lived with people from different backgrounds, traditions, and religions in India without any of these conflicts. Even when such conflicts came, they had their ways of dealing with them successfully. 

During our student days, campuses were known for their diversity. Most Muslim girls did not wear hijab, even if they did, they did not bring it into to classrooms and rarely some wore it in the class. Even when someone wore a hijab or burqa none of us identified it with any serious problem. In the same manner some of the boys used to wear dhoti and shawl on certain occasions, while a few used to have shikha on their head. Almost all of us shared this school upbringing. Campuses were filled with a lot of humour regarding attire and although students used to make fun of each other it hardly led to any kind of tension. There was freedom to wear what they wanted to. There was ease among the students to change these dresses to suit the occasion. The hijab or burqa was not very different from any other person wearing a turban, saree or shawl or dhoti. There was no problem in these people attending Saraswathi puja or attending a Muharram procession which used to pass through school campuses. In all these cases, the idea of the hijab or burqa as a religious symbol was neither known to us nor to even many Muslim students. Just as there were many other jaati groups, Muslims were also seen as yet another group. Even though we learnt about religions in secondary school, that did not make any difference to our lives. Just as different groups exist and have different ways of going about this world, Muslims became one of those different groups and it was the same for most Muslim students, with whom we continue to share same affectionate friendship. 

The idea that some dress is a symbol of some religion was almost non-existing amongst student communities. There was an “indifference” to different ways of being in this world. The question of tolerance or respect was never raised, but all of us thought that different people have different ways of being in this world, and each has their ways of being in this world. Neither Muslim students and their parents saw us as ‘Kafirs’ nor did we see them as enemies. Muslims existed like any other community/jaati and many of the Muslims still exist in the same manner (except for some intellectuals and activists). Though there could be local conflicts, they were never major problems till the 1990s.  

This should not be mistaken for a preachy story of peace or harmony in the service of national integration. It is about what we experienced as part of Indian traditions, and how we were brought up. We did not see the dress as an expression of religious identity. The way Kodava, Gujarati or a Bengali woman draping saree in her own way, Muslims wore some dress. It was part of our milieu to deal with the differences with an attitude of indifference. The hijab or burqa was seen in the same manner. But this did not mean that we tolerated somebody wearing a particular dress because of the principle of toleration which assumes that one has a problem with something and yet tolerates it because of a principle. It was not even a question of mutual respect or disrespect. As Indians we had and even now continue to have a kind of indifference to differences, and this has been a hallmark of our co-existence. The tendency of Indian culture has been to accept and live with differences.

But today things seem to have taken a different shape, maybe because of various political reasons, the differences are highlighted as symbols of identities. Earlier even most Muslims in India did not think that hijab was the symbol of their religious identity either. But now they have been made conscious of such an identity and this controversy only adds to this kind of awareness. Similarly, many of the groups who do not have any such symbols have begun to engage in such symbolism and affirming different symbols of identities. As a result of affirming these new identities there has been growing intolerance in India amongst the educated population. Today we are witnessing that the feature of indifference which had made co-existence possible in a very healthy manner, is fast vanishing. The politics around identities which are linked with the language of rights, constitution, freedom etc. seems to be provoking a deeper conflict rather than solving the issue at the local level. So, where is the problem arising from? 

The problem seems to emanate from the structures and ideas that evolved during colonial rule of India and the same continued with the secular state. The secular state with its structure emerged in certain historical situations in Europe, and it is fundamentally a product of dynamics within Christianity and its secularisation in Europe. These theological ideas and institutions in its secularised form were then sold as the only option to save this world and all of us bought it as panacea to the problems of humanity. If we look at the debate around the hijab controversy, it is very clear that the entire controversy has emerged because of the possibilities that law allows us to think. The legal system in our part of the world, instead of solving problems of the society, creates more opportunities to create new problems. 

If one looks at the history of educational institutions in Karnataka, Muslims, Hindus and Christians studied in all private institutions where management had people from all these groups. In all these colleges different people studied and followed the rules of these institutions without much problem. At times when there were some minor disputes, they resolved it by talking to each other. We had not witnessed any such controversy of this kind earlier.

If one looks at why there is a conflict now, which did not appear earlier, one will start finding the answers. Many intellectuals who claim themselves to be secular, along with some of the Muslim organisations have been training students to assert their rights. Though such attempts were never successful earlier, recent attempts by some scholars backed by different political outfits have been successful in fuelling such controversy now. This has been main goal of certain Muslim groups since the colonial period, that is bring all the Muslims under Sharia and Islamic way by dissociating with the local practices. For these attempts Hindu groups reacted by picking up the language of rights and law and used the saffron as their identity marker. Saffron, the colour of Rishis, is associated with knowledge and the kind of change that they brought in the world. Such a colour is reduced to a religious symbol. All the parties in these debates are employing the language of modern politics. Saffron today is pitted against Hijab and Muslims. They invoke ideas like liberal democracy, secular state, law, rights, religious freedom and so on. Instead of thinking about how this language itself generates the problem, as it has been well formulated in the works of S N Balagangadhara, people are using these languages to solve some problems. They are unable to recognise that these problems themselves are products of entry of secular state in a non-religious culture. Once we start building our conversations within the language of modern politics to talk about ourselves be it Muslims or Hindus, then we will have initiated a process of creating new problems and look for solutions that are already provided by these structures like law. 

Finally, by looking at this controversy one is tempted to think what are we up to? Today, we are in the process of making our future generation learn religious symbols, create conflicts and start deciding relationships based on religious identities. This allows different Muslim fanatic organisations to push the large Muslim population to follow a particular kind of Islam that they propose. This will result in Hindu and other groups asserting their identities. Muslim population will be pushed towards aggressive Islamisation. The attitude of indifference that was carefully crafted and transmitted by our ancestors will simply disappear and we are forcing our future generation to ‘tolerate’ differences. such conflict over hijab has already happened in the courts of many of the western countries but have their solutions satisfied either side? The answer is clear no. But, in our part of the world, we have a legacy and a history of coexistence, a practical knowledge that has been transmitted to us. Our schools and colleges must be centres of learning for such values rather than transforming the living with the difference into a pain. 

This controversy shows that the secular state and its principles give enormous opportunities to create new problems. There are groups which are keen in exploiting these possibilities in the name of identity politics or in the name of asserting rights and that has become a new formula that guides present-day politics. In fact, it has become counter-productive to resolve conflicts by dissolving the indifference to difference that Indians have and then preach about peaceful coexistence. One must look at these kinds of issues with more intellectual rigour while attempting to assess what kind of conflict resolution our ancestors undertook in our past. The liberal, secular claim would deny such possibilities of explorations as shown in the works of Jakob De Roover. Therefore, we must envisage a way of living which emerges from within our culture. At this stage what we must teach our students is not the new ways of generating conflicts using the constitutional principles but a way of peaceful and happy living wherein dresses are not seen as religious symbols, but it is a kind of difference that exists in the world. We must learn from our ancestors, to teach indifference to differences. Otherwise, our campuses will be battle grounds of identity politics and this is exactly what we must not allow to happen.

The article was first published in: https://www.news9live.com/state/karnataka/hijab-row-pushing-children-to-learn-religious-symbols-decide-relationships-on-religious-identities-152907

Opposing proselytisation = Casteist   

The Hindutva movement is widely and correctly described as being anti-proselytisation. In arguments that criticise the movement for being casteist, Hindutva’s anti-proselytisation stance is used as proof of its casteist nature.

A few questions follow from the equation of being anti-proselytisation with being casteist. How does opposition to conversion = casteism? One of the answers readily available in academic and popular discourse is that conversion out of Hinduism is a means to free oneself from the shackles of the caste system. This was also what various Christian denominations in India have promised their lower caste converts for centuries. The same rationale of conversion as an escape from caste was behind the mass conversions of Dalits into Buddhism led by Dr B R Ambedkar, and the same argument is given for conversions to Islam as a protest against caste and its violent inequality. Given this link between conversion and emancipation from caste, to oppose, discourage, or disallow conversion out of Hinduism, particularly of/by lower castes, is to oppose their efforts to break free from caste oppression.

However, this premise of the communalism = casteism argument, namely, the link between conversion out of Hinduism and freedom from caste, is itself highly problematic. To begin with, there is the very long and complex discussion, right from the earliest European studies of India, about what caste is and whether it is a religious practice of the Hindus. While Orientalist discourse on India developed such that the dominant story today is that caste is a Hindu institution and has basis in Hindu scriptures, there is as yet no consensus at all on any number of important questions such as the link between Hinduism and caste, the rules and structure of the caste system, and wherefrom this “system” draws its legitimacy and authority such as to fundamentally shape the lives of India’s millions. To add to this, there is a growing body of work which argues that what we know about the “caste system in India” is result of the European experience of India, and exists in that experience only. That the caste system as it is spoken of today, is not Hindu, and does not exist in India.

Lack of clarity on caste notwithstanding, even if one is willing to accept the idea that conversion is an escape from caste, another problem arises. Caste is widely acknowledged to have become a part of Indian Islam and Indian Christianity and is seen to have been so for many centuries. As such, conversion to these religions will not and cannot be an escape from caste. Proponents for extension of reservation benefits to Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims make precisely this argument – that lower caste converts to these religions continue to face caste discrimination within their own communities and face the same oppression and lack of access to opportunity as their Hindu counterparts. The idea that conversion out of Hinduism is an escape from caste, in fact, contradicts academic and popular knowledge about caste in both Indian Islam and Indian Christianity. If we then take away the premise that conversion = freedom from caste, Hindutva’s anti-proselytisation stance no longer relates to caste and caste discrimination in any way and cannot be seen as evidence of the movement’s casteist nature. As such, the movement’s opposition to proselytization could be criticised for going against freedom of choice and freedom of religion (and even this criticism is not without complex problems), but it cannot be used to characterise Hindutva as casteist.  

The confusions and contradictions underlying the use of Hindutva’s anti-proselytisation stance as evidence for its casteism leads us to a larger, more fundamental problem, namely, that there is a pervasive confusion about caste and the caste system in academic and popular discourse. 

Confusion about caste

Caste and the caste system in India have been discussed for centuries. Early travellers, merchants, missionaries, Orientalists, colonial officials, Hindu reformists, gurus, Indian and foreign intellectuals, academics across the world, journalists, and activists have all had something to say about the “social structure” of India. To provide any meaningful overview of these discussions, much less to put forward a critique, is beyond the purview of this article and my own abilities. Nonetheless, without going into the complex history of how caste has been spoken of and written about, when we examine the conclusions of the received story about caste as they are used in discourse on the Hindutva movement, inconsistencies and gaps become visible, and it becomes evident that there are cracks in the wall. For those who would like to dive deeper into these cracks and discover the underlying structural problems, there is seminal work being done on the received story of caste and the caste system, it can be accessed here. In this article, however, I hope to illustrate simply that the cracks are there. In itself that is enough here because it alerts us to the question: If there is a fundamental confusion about caste and the caste system, how much can “Hindutva is casteist” tell us? In order then, to zoom in on one of the conclusions of the received story on caste and how it is used in discourse on Hindutva as casteist, I’d like to use an example from Ornit Shani’s Communalism, Caste and Hindu Nationalism: The Violence in Gujarat.

In her book, Shani situates the communal violence of the 1980s in Gujarat within a historical context spanning almost a century. Telling the history of Ahmedabad, and in lesser detail, also Gujarat, Shani touches several times on the social and economic status of an important Gujarati community, the Patels. She links the rise of the Patels to several developments: Maratha rule in Gujarat which appointed Patels as revenue collectors; land reforms enacted by the British Raj which benefitted the Patels greatly by suddenly turning them from tenants to landowners; large scale migration into Ahmedabad during the city’s industrialisation; the advent of textile mills; and finally, India’s independence and subsequent land reforms by the Indian government which further cemented land ownership of higher castes and of the Patels. Shani identifies each of these developments as an important event which changed the socio-economic position of different castes in Gujarat and particularly in Ahmedabad. As a result of these socio-economic shifts, Shani writes, “The Patel caste, shudras by Hindu law, emerged as an economic and political force, and was able to attain the savarna.” (Italics in original). In her book, Shani uses savarna as “a generic term for upper-caste Hindus (also referred to as twice-born or Caste Hindus)”.  Shani goes on to discuss the ultimate development that lead to the particular caste and communal tensions of 1980s Ahmedabad: Caste-based reservations. About the impact of caste-based reservations in Ahmedabad, Shani states;

With the growing class fissures among and between castes it gradually became apparent that the widely perceived harmony between the ‘cosmological’ Hindu order and everyday reality was breaking down. If, for example, the relatively low-status upper castes in the walled city had previously been able to justify their self-representation as middle-class, this was no longer negotiable in the context of the mid-1980s.

It is interesting to note however, that though caste-based reservations were the ultimate in a long series of developments, the Patels, shudras, as Shani points out, had already been able to “attain the savarna” decades before caste-based reservations, especially for shudras or OBC communities, were enacted. With this in mind, let us consider Shani’s reference to a “‘cosmological’ Hindu order” and her claim that post-independence events led to a breaking down of the harmony between this “order” and everyday reality.

Leading up to post-independence events, particularly reservation, were many other developments, such as change in the ruling power (Maratha rule in Gujarat), reforms by the ruling power (land reforms by the British Raj), and economic developments (the rise and fall of the textile mills in Ahmedabad). Surely, change in ruling powers, reforms, and economic development would have been a fairly recurrent feature not only of Gujarat, but also of the many other regions and polities of the Indian subcontinent. This is a reasonable assumption considering that the Indian subcontinent has a documented history going back several centuries which speaks of the rise and fall of dynasties and of the region’s importance in the global economy as a centre for trade and manufacturing. We are then bound to raise certain questions.

There have been several political and economic upheavals through the history of the Indian subcontinent. The administrative and economic changes that enabled a shudra or lower caste community such as the Patels to “attain the savarna” through economic and political success were surely not the first instances of such change. Such changes would have taken place innumerable times in the history of the subcontinent and, as indicated by the rise of the Patels, communities must have held alterable positions along the purported “hierarchy” of the caste system, and would have risen or fallen along this “hierarchy” depending on whether or not they thrived as a result of the political and economic changes taking place around them.

When communities could rise or fall in caste hierarchy by virtue of economic or political success or lack thereof, how then could any cosmological Hindu order have had a sustained, “widely perceived harmony” with everyday reality? Surely, it must have been clear all along to people in the subcontinent that there is a good amount of disharmony between the supposed “‘cosmological’ Hindu order” and everyday reality. In what contexts, then was this cosmological Hindu order remembered and considered relevant, if at all? What relation, if any, did it have to how people actually lived and interacted with each other?

Unfortunately, the possibility and impulse to raise such questions are often foreclosed by an idea pervasive in academic and popular discourse; that caste is at once remarkably rigid and remarkably flexible, allowing it to adapt rapidly to changing circumstances (2 decades of economic liberalisation and urbanisation in India is said to have eroded almost completely some of the foundational, characteristic elements of caste). What this idea indicates, in fact, is a concealed lack of clarity about caste and the caste system. Because we do not possess any significant depth of understanding about what caste and the caste system is, it becomes possible and imperative to, on the one hand, “update” its salient features and characteristics continuously, and on the other hand, go about discussing what is considered unquestionable, namely, the impact of caste: hereditary oppression and inequality. It is this lack of clarity about caste and the caste system that allows Shani and other scholars to write about developments such as Patels “attaining the savarna” through economic and political success while simultaneously referring to the enduring, and supposed arbitrary caste system based on birth, which Hindutva purportedly seeks to uphold.   

Conclusion

Focused only on arguments used to criticise Hindutva as a casteist phenomenon, one could conclude that such criticisms of the movement build a weak case for the indictment they hand down. The natural next step would be to say we need to build a stronger case by doing better, more in-depth research, by gathering more and better evidence. However, as this article has tried to point out, on one level, criticisms of the Hindutva movement as being casteist betray a blindness towards the larger reality of what is happening in India today. They feign ignorance of the social and political impact of caste-based politics in the country. But on another, more fundamental level, this discourse illustrates that while we indict the Hindutva movement of being casteist, within academia and popular discourse itself, there is no clarity whatsoever about what caste and the caste system are. When we do not know what caste and the caste system are, branding the Hindutva movement “casteist” cannot and does not further our understanding of the movement in any way. Instead by giving the impression that we have arrived at a correct diagnosis of what Hindutva is in India today, such discourse forecloses possibilities of asking better questions and ultimately of developing actual insights on the movement. Thus, the task at hand is not to find more and better ways of and reasons for saying that Hindutva is casteist, but rather, to examine how much this description actually tells us about the movement. If on examination we find it to be a dead-end, doors are open for us to head out and discover new and promising directions for the urgent, important work of understanding what the Hindutva movement is and its impact on the India of today and the future.

Acknowledgments

My sincere gratitude to Dr Prakash Shah, who has guided me through the many drafts of this article, kindly giving me so much of his time and the benefit of his expertise over the long period I took to develop this into something coherent. A big thank you also to Dr Sufiya Pathan whose sharp insights on earlier drafts of this article enabled me to tell the grain from the chaff.

The article was first published in Pragyata.com.

The labeling of the Hindutva movement as casteist leaves a lot to be desired.

Introduction

The Hindutva movement is at an unprecedented position in India today. Led by the charismatic Narendra Modi, the movement’s political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the 2014 and 2019 general elections with an absolute majority and is currently in its second term at the helm of the central government. In the patchwork-coalition politics of India, this absolute majority was a feat unseen in decades. Since 2014 the movement’s growing support base has rallied behind Modi’s government as it aggressively executes a series of controversial promises (think revocation of Kashmir’s special status, the Ram mandir (temple) in Ayodhya, and the Citizenship Amendment Act) in the face of protests and sometimes, uproar and strife across the country. In what commentators have dubbed “a struggle for the soul of India” the Hindutva movement seems to be enjoying a significant edge. This fact is not lost on its critics, and alarm bells have been ringing the world over. Articles, op-eds, reports, and academic work have poured out in criticism of the movement for decades now.

Judging by the growing heft of the Hindutva movement, these denunciations, expressions of concern, and annual reports on India’s lack of religious and journalistic freedom have not achieved much in countering the movement. Simply put, the liberal response to the rise of Hindutva doesn’t seem to be working. Perhaps for good reason. Apart from raising alarm bells, the steady rise of the Hindutva movement in India also raises some pressing questions for the movement’s critics. While the party’s sweeping electoral victories in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha (the Indian parliament’s lower house) elections show definitively that the BJP has successfully built a national following, these victories also underscore one of the most pressing and confounding anomalies facing experts and commentators on the Hindutva movement, namely, its popularity amongst Dalit and Other Backward Class (OBC) voters.

An anomaly to be addressed, a diagnosis to be re-examined 

The BJP is the political wing of the Sangh Parivar, which has played a pivotal role in the Hindu nationalist or Hindutva movement in India. The movement itself is described as, among other things, a Brahmanical, upper-caste phenomenon that seeks to consolidate Hindus into one community while still maintaining prevalent caste discrimination between different groups.

In the face of this description of the Hindutva movement and its political arm, the BJP, being upper caste and casteist, the fact that the movement has become significantly popular amongst Dalit and OBC communities is a striking anomaly. The 2014 and 2019 general election results in Uttar Pradesh offer proof. Uttar Pradesh (UP) is heralded as the state where the political power of Dalits and OBCs came into its own. It is home to regional caste-based parties such as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP), both of whom have achieved repeated electoral success, with SP leader Mayawati being celebrated as the face Dalit political power and being projected as a possible Prime Ministerial candidate. Even so, in the 2014 and 2019 elections voters in UP, including Dalits and backward castes, swung sharply towards the BJP and away from the BSP and SP, both of which exist with the explicitly stated objective of working for the rights and upliftment of lower castes. This electoral success of the BJP, replicated across the country in both general elections, brought to fore in very concrete terms what a majority of academics and intellectuals across the world have been pointing out and expressing concern over; Hindutva has successfully won over Dalit and OBC communities. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, this raises a pressing anomaly: How can a movement criticised for being Brahmanical and casteist become the choice of those it seeks to oppress?   

Several explanations of Hindutva’s popularity amongst Dalit and OBC communities have been put across by academics, intellectuals, and commentators the world over. Most of these refer to outside factors, such as a crisis in Dalit politics, and the effect of globalisation and India’s economic liberalisation on Dalits. However, there are also one or two explanations which locate reasons for Hindutva’s popularity amongst Dalit and OBC communities within the movement itself. Interestingly, across all explanations, descriptions of Hindutva as a casteist phenomenon remain unshaken. I will argue that this is part of the reason why criticisms of the Hindutva movement have failed to make a dent; Because most descriptions of the movement are hardly insightful to begin with.

“Co-opting” Dalits and OBCs and the “true intentions” argument

Almost every discussion of Dalits, OBCs and Hindutva describe the movement as having “co-opted” these communities. Such discussions accuse the Hindutva movement of only paying lip-service to Dalit and OBC interests while in reality it is opposed to their true upliftment out of the inequality and humiliation of the caste system. The problem with this description is that it implies access to the true intentions of the Hindutva movement, and that too within a wider political and social environment where all political parties and ideological organisations say the same thing: that they condemn caste discrimination, seek to improve the lives of Dalits and OBCs, and are working for their upliftment and access to opportunity.

Common ways in which intellectuals and academics have “accessed” the “true intentions” of Hindutva are by referring to the movement’s history and by noting that almost all its leaders and important officials have been and are upper-caste. For instance in his Hindu Nationalism: A Reader Christophe Jaffrelot, refers to speeches by several people considered important to the development of the Hindutva movement in general and the Sangh Parivar in particular. Without going into the content of these speeches and what they might contrarily indicate, one can identify a basic problem with the “true intentions” argument. In India today, activists, experts, and commentators have assigned “casteist” as a tag to almost everyone and every organisation, including upper-caste intellectuals condemning caste discrimination (eg., here and here) and upper-caste leaders of anti-caste movements and organisations. When seen within this larger context, the “true intentions” argument for describing the movement as casteist only tells us that the Hindutva movement is casteist in a particular way, as are, for instance, Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party.          

With the exception of Dalits and to a lesser extent OBCs, if all those who have publicly taken a stance against caste discrimination are actually/always suspect of being casteist (which is what one would expect if one takes the received story about India and the caste system seriously), then describing the Hindutva movement as casteist by claiming access to its “true intentions” does not tell us anything about the movement except that it is par for the course in a society and culture deeply permeated by the discriminatory caste system.

In itself, this is not nearly enough to prompt a re-evaluation of descriptions of Hindutva as casteist. However, taking the “true intentions” argument seriously will compel us to conclude that at least when it comes to being casteist, far from being on an extreme end of the discriminatory spectrum, Hindutva lies alongside a majority of its staunchest ideological rivals and critics, many of whom are seen as the last hope of a secular, egalitarian India, as the last embankment against the onslaught of the very Hindutva movement, they share space with as actual/potential casteists.

Opposing caste-based reservation = Casteist  

A link commonly made in academic and popular discourse on caste is that opposition to caste-based reservation is in itself a casteist stance. One of the bases for criticisms of the BJP and Sangh Parivar is that their opposition to caste-based reservations exposes their casteism.

Without going into the explicitly stated stance of the Sangh Parivar and its many organisations on caste-based reservations, let us accept that the Sangh and the BJP have been against caste-based reservations in the past. Over the last three decades, however, things have changed. As Christophe Jaffrelot has pointed out, the political wing of the Hindutva movement has accepted the inevitability of reservations for SCs and OBCs. Given the caste-based politics of India, the BJP has actively supported caste-based reservation, at least since the 1990s. As Jaffrelot quotes, in its 1999 election manifesto the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition led by the BJP, promised that “If required, the Constitution will be amended to maintain the system of reservation [. . .] We are committed to extending the SC/ST reservation for another 10 years. Reservation-percentages above 50 per cent, as followed by certain states, shall be sanctified through necessary legislation measures.” The BJP’s acceptance of the inevitability of reservations and the resultant break from its ideological moorings (given the Sangh Parivar is against reservation), is by no means an exception.

In the caste-based politics of India, all parties and organisations operate on the basis of political expediency rather than fidelity to ideological standpoints. For instance, in Uttar Pradesh, the Mayawati led BSP has often built electoral alliances with Brahmins despite its roots as a Dalit party. These Dalit-Brahmin alliances were completely contingent on the party’s “social engineering” plan, which dictated which castes it sought to woo and changed from election to election. In 2002 when the BSP ran an anti-upper-caste campaign its election slogans included the following:  Tilak, Tarazu aur Talwar, Inko maaro jutey chaar (roughly translated, it means: Brahmins, Vaishyas, and Kshatriyas, beat them with shoes). In contrast, in 2007 when the party ran a sarvajan or all-community campaign, one of its slogans was: Tilak, Tarazu aur Talwar, Inko pujo barambaar (roughly translated it means: Brahmins, Vaishyas, and Kshatriyas, to them pay your respects). In the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Mayawati again attempted to cobble together an alliance of Dalits and Brahmins. Thus, as any observer of Indian politics will know and as both the BJP’s and BSP’s political opportunism shows, ideological volte-faces are an everyday feature of Indian politics. Pretty much like its political wing has bowed to the reality of caste-based politics, sometime before 2010 the Sangh Parivar too created the Anusuchit Jati-Jamati Arakshan Bachao Parishad, which roughly translates as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Reservation Protection Assembly. There is little information available about this organisation, however, and it has not been possible to find its website online.

While the BJP repeatedly emphasises its active support for caste-based reservations, these proclamations are received by most of its critics with suspicion. The underlying assumption is that though Hindutva is wooing Dalits and OBCs, promising and pushing for reservations, is all this in good faith?

The problem with this question is, how can we tell? The Congress Party enacted several policies and decisions with the explicitly stated objective of improving the lives of Indian Muslims. Was the Congress’ pro-Muslim agenda in good faith? Ambedkarite and OBC politicians have promised time and again to work for the upliftment of all SC or OBC communities. Are these promises made in good faith? Commentators have argued that the Congress Party used the Muslim vote bank but did nothing to improve the lives of India’s Muslims. Mayawati rose to prominence as a Dalit leader but, after coming to power in Uttar Pradesh, she has been widely criticised for having focused only on the welfare of Jatavs, a sub-caste of Dalits to which Mayawati herself belongs. As a result, the BSP has become a Jatav party rather than a Dalit one. Similarly, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP), ostensibly an OBC party, brought political and economic gains almost exclusively to Yadavs during its tenures in the Uttar Pradesh government, and today the SP remains a Yadav party, unable to gain the trust of other OBC communities in that state. Thus, whether or not political parties speak or act in good faith, and why, can be a larger question about Indian politics, but to be meaningful it must go deeper than simply raising suspicions of insincerity.

The BJP may never be able to convince critics of its good faith regarding caste-based reservations, but the party has made strong statements to convince the Indian electorate about its stance on Dalit and OBC interests. After coming to power in 2014, the BJP government restarted an endeavour by its predecessor (a Congress-led government), and in 2015 it moved a bill in parliament proposing amendments to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities Act), 1989 (commonly referred to as the SC/ST Act). The SC/ST Act makes a range of offences coming under the rubric of caste atrocities punishable. One of the many notable changes the BJP’s amendment sought to bring to the SC/ST Act was to disallow the possibility of anticipatory bail for any person accused of committing a caste atrocity. This effectively made complaints filed by SC/ST persons sufficient grounds to immediately arrest a non-SC/ST person, who would then have little to no ability to secure bail.

The ensuing Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act 2015 was passed by Parliament, in the upper house within minutes and without debate. However, it was soon challenged in the Supreme Court on grounds that the Act violated Constitutional guarantees to personal liberty and equality before law. In March 2018 the Supreme Court ruled that anticipatory bail could not be barred to those accused under the SC/ST Act. It expressed concern over misuse and abuse of the stringent provisions of the law. The BJP government responded by urging the Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling. When the Supreme Court refused to do so the central cabinet led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved an amendment bill that would bypass the Supreme Court’s ruling on the amendments of 2015. Within a week the bill was passed by parliament, nullifying the apex court’s ruling earlier that year and delivering the changes promised by the BJP. In 2019 the Supreme Court recalled its March 2018 ruling.

The BJP government’s rapid, deft, and determined manoeuvring in response to the controversy over the amended SC/ST Act clearly indicated that the BJP, the political wing of Hindutva, an allegedly upper-caste movement, is as determined as almost every other political party in India to extend reservations, protection under a special category of criminal offences, social welfare benefits, and political visibility to Dalits and backward castes and that it will make exceptional efforts to do so.

Returning to the link discussed at the beginning of this section between being against caste-based reservation and being casteist, the question arises: if being anti-caste-based-reservation is casteist, and even if we accept descriptions of the Sangh Parivar as being casteist for this reason, does the BJP’s active wooing of Dalits and Backward Castes by offering them benefits and reservations transform the party into a non-casteist organisation? If yes, it is no longer possible to describe the BJP as casteist, at least for this caste-based reservation-related reason. If not, then this contradicts the link between being opposed to caste-based reservation and being casteist, since supporting caste-based reservation does not seem to have any impact on the description of the BJP as being casteist.

Manipulation of Dalit and OBC culture as a strategy to successfully co-opt these communities

One explanation for Hindutva and the BJP’s popularity amongst Dalit and OBC communities is that the movement has successfully made itself attractive to these communities by manipulating their culture and icons. One of the many who make this claim is Badri Narayan, an academic and expert on the movement who writes frequently in the public domain about Hindutva and Dalits. In his book Fascinating Hindutva: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation Narayan discusses the manipulation of Dalit culture;

… ambivalence in the collective memory provides a fertile ground for the reconstruction and recreation of the collective memory of different castes for the politics of power. It is interesting that the emancipatory Dalit memories that are being reinvented and reinterpreted by BSP and other Ambedkarite political groups and the creation of saffron Dalit memories by the BJP are being done through the same strategies and devices … But the difference between the strategies of these two kinds of political forces lies in the result, as mentioned earlier. In the process of political mobilisation, one produces racial communal politics which empowers a powerful section of the society, while the other tries to provide opportunity to the powerless Dalits in the power and welfare politics. ((Badri Narayan, Fascinating Hindutva: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2009), 36.)) (emphasis added)

Without going into Narayan’s comfort with manipulation of Dalit culture right away, an obvious question arises from his general argument: why is manipulation by the Hindutva movement successful as against the many other manipulations of Dalit and OBC culture? Here “manipulation of culture” explanations run thin. References to the shifts in India’s economy post liberalisation and the creation of a new aspirational Dalit middle-class, or the attraction of an explicitly “Hindu” agenda for Dalits who continue to see themselves as Hindu and not Buddhist, oppressed, or working class, as Ambedkarite and Left politics would have them see themselves, offer some context but hardly scratch beyond the surface. Largely, the question as to why Hindutva’s cultural manipulations are more successful than others remains unanswered.

Regardless of the reasons for this success, Narayan’s work effectively shows that manipulation of Dalit and OBC culture is what political parties and ideological organisations do in order to woo these communities. Discussing the focus and content of election campaigns, Narayan notes that before caste was an important part of the electoral discourse, there was a meta-language “promising the fulfilment of basic needs” ((Narayan, Fascinating Hindutva, 154.)), which was used to address all “small communities”.((Narayan, 154.)) With the advent of caste-based politics, Narayan writes, Dalits and backward caste communities find themselves at the centre of attention from political parties across the spectrum. This has given several communities the power to negotiate for more benefits, affirmative action, and political visibility. However, Narayan also notes that political discourse, especially when aimed at Dalit and backward caste communities, remains limited to appeals to caste pride, while addresses to middle-class audiences (whom Narayan identifies as mostly upper caste) are focused on development-oriented issues such as infrastructure and healthcare. Thus, manipulation of local heroes, stories, songs, and culture take precedence in winning elections, particularly in rural or semi-urban areas, while issues of infrastructure, education, healthcare, or agriculture, take a backseat.

Narayan’s work is unique in that it makes explicit what remains implicit in most other works. As he shows in his book, the cultural manipulation undertaken by the BJP and other Hindutva organisations is by no means unique to them. It is, in fact, common practice in the vote-bank politics of India. As such, while the “cultural manipulation” explanation of Hindutva’s popularity amongst Dalits and backward castes claims to tell us something about the movement, it actually tells a larger story about the broader social and political scenario in India today. The kind of token politics evidenced in this ubiquitous strategy of cultural manipulation is further compounded by the responses it generates in intellectuals and academics. What Narayan takes exception to is not the cultural manipulation of Dalits or OBCs, but rather one cultural manipulation, namely, manipulation by Hindutva organisations such as the BJP and RSS. At one point he also expresses regret that Left organisations are missing opportunities to use Dalit and backward caste culture to mobilize these communities towards their own particular brand of politics and ideology. In his book, Narayan asserts that the particular manipulations of Hindutva organisations lead to racial communal politics, while manipulations by organisations and parties from other political standpoints result in the empowerment of Dalits in welfare politics. Because it remains largely implicit, this assumption regarding the differing end results of manipulation of Dalit and backward caste culture is never justified in the discourse on the Hindutva movement. Such is its assumed credibility that even where it does become as explicit as Narayan makes it, the assumption is still not put to any test for its verity. While Narayan and other scholars might well be correct in questioning the impact of Hindutva strategies and actions on Dalit and OBC communities, the assumption that the culturally manipulative strategies and actions of Ambedkarite and other political groups have brought power to Dalits and OBCs in welfare politics, on the one hand, remains highly debatable and, on the other, presumes that welfare politics and any such “power” in it leads to an actual and sustainable improvement in the lives of lower caste communities as a whole. Both, this assumption and presumption, remain unexamined and are perhaps some of the most important questions facing India today.

Meanwhile, choosing one manipulation over another, intellectuals and scholars such as Narayan remain limited to hinting at the impact of this kind of cultural manipulation on Dalit and backward caste communities. They seem unable, or maybe are unwilling, to examine the larger social and cultural ramifications of such politics, even as their own work offers some very clear hints.

The article was first published in Pragyata.com.

Detailed exploration of his works could lead us to radical reappraisal of the Indian image constructed by the Europeans and even by the contemporary scholarship of India. He authored many important texts like Panchayat Raj as the Basis of Indian Polity: An Exploration into the Proceedings of the Constituent Assembly (1962), Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century (1971), Civil Disobedience and Indian Tradition (1971), The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century (1983), Bhàratiya Chitta Mànas and Kàla (1993), Understanding Gandhi, Rediscovering India, Despoliation and Defaming of India: The Early 19th century British Crusade, The British Origin of Cow-Slaughter in India: with some British Documents on the Anti-Kine-Killing Movement 1880-1894, The Madras Panchayat System, Vol II: A General Assessment and so on, among other seminal works.

I want to briefly sketch an initial introduction to his work, Civil Disobedience and Indian Tradition which is more relevant today than when it was written. When we observe the social movements and protests that occurred in the past decade, we can clearly see a lot of confusion over the issues raised and the foundations of the claims of certain movements. Thanks to social media it has become clear that general public has lost interest in such movements.

Even the over-exposure to media has not brought people together to fight for many causes that we think are important. The mockery of the situation is best expressed by a Kannada intellectual who says that people have lost interest in the so-called people’s movements. The question is why it is the case and how could people like Gandhi, not only draw attention of large masses but also could sustain such movements for very long time. This is exactly where Dharampal becomes very relevant today.

Let us remember how we talked about our freedom struggle. Normally we invoke people like Gandhiji, Nehru, Bose and the revolutionaries. Though there is a lot of discussion about these legendary figures and their role in resisting colonial regime, we seem uninterested to find out from what cultural resources Gandhi derived ideas of civil disobedience and non-cooperation. Dharampal’s work on this very issue shows the roots of Gandhian resistance. In his book, Civil Disobedience and Indian Tradition, Dharampal tries to examine the sources of Gandhian resistance. Some claim that Gandhi derived his ideas on civil disobedience from Thoreau, Tolstoy, Ruskin and other western intellectuals.

Others opine that it was Gandhi’s own invention, and he may have got this from Indian Itihasas from characters like Prahalada. Contrary to these claims, Dharampal recognises the Gandhi’s view through Hind Swaraj, wherein he says, “in India the nation at large has generally used passive resistance in all departments of life. We cease to co-operate with our rulers when they displease us”. Dharampal gets into various historical material to examine this claim.

To his surprise, he discovers that in 1680, there were records of peaceful protest against the rulers in Madras Pattinam. It is recorded that people protested in a novel way by using trumpets and other instruments. Further, Dharampal gives another account of a similar protest which spread like wildfire from Bengal to Banaras, Patna, Mursheedabad, Sarun and other places. This movement during 1810-11 were against certain tax levied on house and shops. In these passive resistances, people closed shops, stopped all kinds of transactions and production till the rule was withdrawn by the rulers.

Dharampal says, doing ‘dharana’ to attract the attention of the rulers was a common thing. Dharampal argues that Gandhi had an insight into this nature of Indian society and devised strategies of resistance through those ideas that could actually hold Indians together. Dharampal says that Gandhi had the ability to understand as how Indians act and react to various issues. He was able to find out the inner core of Indians and his call for independence movement was more successful. Not that Gandhi discounted the role of the revolutionaries in the independence movement, but that was not his way.

Dharampal further observes from the British records that the Moghul Sultans were wary of such civil disobedience movements by the Indians, and they were very guarded and extremely careful while levying taxes on house, businesses, or temples. There seems to be a fear amongst the Islamic rulers about these kinds of protests by Indians. There is another significant passive resistance in 1830, which Dharampal makes a note of wherein around 11000 farmers all over Canara region of Karnataka protested.

The list of the nature of resistance shown by Indians are plenty in 19th century. What do these records tell us? There are many things to learn today from these records that British documented. Primarily, these documents point us towards how Gandhi was drawing his resources from Indian traditions to develop a resistance to colonialism which was never heard hitherto. It also tells us that it is not possible to mobilise Indian people until and unless one shows them certain serious moral grounds which Indian society has been considering very crucial for centuries. It is also clear that the ordinary people from Indian culture, though labelled subservient and backward had an unbelievable mode of resistance against their rulers irrespective of whether they are Indians or invaders or colonial masters.

Given this attitude of Indians, one could see why a large majority of India disapproves of these resistance movements based on ideologies or identity politics. It is also the same ground on which entire India was hurt by witnessing the Republic day violence. Here we understand what insights Gandhi had about India. This is the reason why, for Gandhi, civil disobedience was not just a resistance but a “Satyagraha”, a way of being in this world. Today that Gandhian understanding can be seen in the response of Indians. This is also exactly the reason for which even in 21st century, Indians who are allegedly labelled as illiterate, backward villagers disapprove of these movements. It also tells us how one should think about building movements in India and why most of the ideological and identity-based movements do not succeed in India.

It is high time that our universities and other institutions of higher learning should open their eyes widely to not just appreciate the agile intellect of the phenomenon called Dharampal but also to challenge the contemporary image of India. This could be a mark of respect to such a giant scholar on his birth centenary.

Rashtrotthana Sahitya, Bengaluru has initiated publications of these texts by Dharampal under the title “Dharampal Classic Series”. Soon we will have the Kannada translation of most of his works under Kuvempu Bhasha Bharati, Government of Karnataka. These publications would open new vistas for a better understanding of India and her traditions.