[Reader-list] hard, soft and banal hindutva

[A. Mani]

October 18, 2011
Anna is the icon of banal Hindutva
Mail Today, 17 October 2011

Anna is the icon of banal Hindutva

by Jyotirmaya Sharma

The ethical compass of his followers is skewed

DOES ANNA Hazare have an ideology? Despite the surfeit of emotion that
Hazare generates, this is a legitimate question that ought to be
asked, understood and answered. That he is no democrat in the sense
the word ‘ democracy’ is normally understood is a foregone conclusion,
something that even his most vocal admirers would admit. He brings to
debate and discussion the rigour and predictability of a military
drill. His model of rule, governance and statecraft is that of
undiluted paternalism, something even his secret admirers would admit.

That he is medieval in his outlook, one who would like people who he
doesn’t like to be flogged in public, hanged in public and humiliated
in public, is no great secret waiting to reveal itself. His world is a
simple world that divides people into friends and foes and proceeds to
pass moral strictures against his foes.

Character

Neither is he too bright: calling actions evil can be polarising, but
he calls people evil which is polemical and arrogant.

He does not have the mental facility to focus on actions rather than
the agents of such action. He feels he has neither the capacity for
error nor the capacity for self- deception. For him, rhetoric is a
substitute for explanation and not a demand for explanation.

Hazare doesn’t think twice before abusing words like ‘ evil’ and ‘
corruption’. The excessive use of the words stifles thinking rather
than promoting it.

By demonising the idea of corruption, he has managed to externalise
the idea altogether as something other people do. And by other people,
he simply means those who do not agree with him or do not attend his
rallies. The poison of his rhetoric poisons our lives; it undermines
our trust in people and institutions and robs us of our freedom to
debate and dissent. He is a non- violent terrorist: he does not bother
about collateral damage in carrying out his mission.

Having said all this, the question still remains whether Hazare
belongs to the Hindutva camp. Notwithstanding Digvijaya Singh’s
relentless rhetoric on this question, or Mohan Bhagwat’s open avowal
of support, or Hazare’s own disagreement with Prashant Bhushan on the
Kashmir issue, the question of Hazare’s seeming affinity with the
Sangh Parivar needs careful analysis. One doesn’t have to belong to
the RSS or the VHP or the Bajarang Dal or the BJP to be formally part
of the Sangh Parivar.

Analysts have often categorised Hindutva into ‘ hard’ and ‘ soft’
varieties. It is, therefore, important to understand that there are
people who have formal allegiance to Hindutva as represented by
institutions and organisations mentioned above, but there are those
who might vote for the BJP not because of an ideological position that
they take but because of resentment towards a particular party or
dispensation.

Going beyond the categories of ‘ hard’ and ‘ soft’ Hindutva, there is
a third, and as yet not discussed, category of Hindutva.

This is ‘ banal Hindutva’. Its features are a love for abstractions
rather than action, self- righteousness over self- improvement,
inflamed nationalism, easy judgement, moral sanctimoniousness over
moral understanding and a gnawing sense of inferiority and victimhood.

Type

It manifests in the form of the person who regularly violates traffic
lights, spits in public places, raves and rants about the state of
education in India and then sends his children abroad, speeds in his
car as if there was no tomorrow and yet complains of the fast life in
the West, bribes his way through in life but gets tearful when Vande
Mataram is sung.

This sort of person does not have the application or the courage to
question seriously the status quo, nor does he have the tenaciousness
required to join a political party and work for a cause or an
ideology.

He wants a comfortable existence, dislikes disorder of any kind, finds
dissent and debate in his own circles to be a waste of time, and is
happy to fit several air conditioners in his own home while signing
petitions to save the ozone layer.

He is a misogynist at home but a serious champion of 33 per cent seats
for women in Parliament.

He relentlessly speaks of India’s great Hindu traditions but knows no
more than what he gleaned from Amar Chitra Katha comics. He swears by
Hindu tolerance yet makes no effort to have a Muslim or a Christian
friend; more so, he secretly detests them.

Being afflicted by this moral and ethical schizophrenia, he hides
behind the rhetoric of the eternal Hindu civilisation, the dream of
making India, which for him means Hindu India, an economic and
military superpower, being the number one side in cricket and tracing
the origins of all things good and noble to India. If confronted with
questions of violence, cruelty and hypocrisy in India, he blames it on
Western education, Christian missionaries, the Taliban, Pakistan,
America, the rise in population, democracy, the Left and the
intellectuals.

Hazare is the leader of ‘ banal Hindutva’.

He has no moral centre and his scruples are his misunderstandings. He
typically is the kind of person described so eloquently by Hannah
Arendt in her account of Eichmann’s trial: the pathetic, selfserving
individual, who attains to a position of power and influence by
accident.

Fallout

He is not demonic but just spectacularly mediocre. And he attracts a
sizable number of those who are either his kind, or, if they are not
necessarily mediocre, are just plainly opportunists, who find a state
of political and moral anarchy convenient for their own ends. He is
attractive because he does not challenge anyone intellectually or
morally. All he asks anyone is to bask in his moral superiority.

Like Krishna asking Arjuna to suspend everything and come unto him,
Hazare too wants us to suspend judgement and follow him.

Will ‘ banal Hindutva’ replace the more formal versions of the Hindu
nationalist ideology? The answer is that it is unlikely.

What Hazare is knowingly or unknowingly doing is to become the
informal recruitment centre for the harder versions of Hindutva. By
making ‘ banal Hindutva’ honourable, Hazare has begun the process of
making the harder versions of Hindutva more acceptable and legitimate.

The collateral damage, as stated earlier, will be Indian democracy.
But does he care?

The writer is professor of politics at University of Hyderabad

WRITE TO THE EDITOR letters at mailtoday.in or editorsoffice at mailtoday.in
_____________________________________________________________________________




Best

A. Mani



-- 
A. Mani
CU, ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS
http://www.logicamani.co.cc