Few doubt that the BJP-led NDA would have tasted a defeat in Bihar but for the terrible performance by the Congress in the Assembly elections. If the Congress had won even half the 70 seats it fought, or had it contested in only 35 constituencies leaving the other 35 to the RJD and Left, then too the outcome may have been different. There have been predictable and stray critical voices within the grand old party after the rout – and some nauseating retorts by loyalists — but there is no visible sign of lessons being learnt and acted upon.
The main problem with the Congress is that it has lost its original character and old social base but thinks ahead of every election as if nothing has changed. The once semi-socialist party gave birth to a rightwing economy a long time ago when PV Narasimha Rao was the Prime Minister and Manmohan Singh the Finance Minister.
Acts of Symbolism
The BJP is only taking forward the open economy with an ideological vengeance. As for secular values, the Congress seems more interested in fighting for Hindu votes with acts of symbolism that includes temple-hopping by Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi during elections. There is less interest in standing up for values, which would demarcate it from the BJP. If the Congress remains a pale shadow of the BJP, it is unlikely to sail very far.
Of course, it is not easy for any political party to ignore the strong pro-Hindu noises injected by the BJP. But it should be borne in mind by political actors that the mass of Hindu society remains fairly secular and is not at home with the Hindu aggression one now gets to see. This is one reason why the pro-BJP-pro-Hindu voices find it necessary to be loud and at times crude — ‘Now we can marry those fair looking Kashmiri girls.’ Yet a peep into the past shows that Hindu sages who remained ringed by godliness were never communal.
Although not a spiritual person, even Veer Damodar Savarkar, the poster boy of Hindutva, never hesitated to show his independent mind when it came to Hindu religion. Unlike, say, Mahatma Gandhi who was a devout Hindu, Savarkar was hardly a practising Hindu in the religious sense. He opposed cow worship, saying it made no sense. And he abhorred the idea of consuming cow urine.
When orthodox Hindus cried blasphemy on hearing his views, Savarkar had replied: “Your blasphemy’s far, far greater; just see how you’ve crammed 33 crore deities into a cow’s belly.” As for Vedas, Puranas and Upanishads, he suggested that Hindus should ‘respectfully’ place them in their closets and go for science books instead. (Savarkar: The True Story of the Father of Hindutva by Vaibhav Purandare) The point is not whether one agrees with Savarkar; the issue is that even someone like him did not mind speaking his mind on Hindu religion without caring how it would be received.
Respecting Religions
The late Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati, the 68th Pontiff of the Kanchi Kamakoti Pitam in Tamil Nadu and one of the most revered saints of this era, was known to respect all religions though he was an orthodox Hindu and had strong views on religious conversion.
In 1964, for example, when the Hindu Mahasabha planned to show black flags to The Pope in Mumbai, he urged people to treat leaders of other religions with respect and not to show hatred. A decade earlier, in 1953, the sage – who was an epitome of religious harmony — said in an address in Kumbakonam that Muslims who came to India were no doubt guilty of excesses and conversions but added that once they settled down to rule, they learned to treat all citizens alike irrespective of whether one was a Hindu or a Muslim. “Some of their rulers were even better than Hindu rulers.” (Embodiment of Truth Vol II, Kanchi Mahaswamy, The Hindu Publication). Would one secular politician dare to say this today?
The Kanchi sage had made it a point not to have food after sunset on Sundays. Many thought it had something to do with the Hindu religion. Years later he revealed that he began this after the 1947 riots at Naokhali. “I don’t want this country to be in the grip of such violence ever and am doing the only things I can do – pray and fast.” Unfortunately for the sage, he did see the terrible anti-Sikh violence in 1984 but missed the 2002 bloodshed in Gujarat. The saint took Samadhi in 1994.
Recalling Kalam
His successor, Jayendra Saraswati, followed these ideals. The late President, APJ Abdul Kalam, once told an audience that he was having a meeting with the holy man when the latter looked at his watch and urged the President to offer his mid-day namaz at a mosque just outside the main gate of the Kanchipuram matt and then return. “Blessed is the country where a Hindu Pontiff reminds a Muslim to perform his namaz,” the President said in admiration.
Lahiri Mahasaya was undoubtedly the greatest yogi India perhaps ever produced. He spread the fragrance of Kriya Yoga from his Banaras residence until his last breath. At a time of orthodoxy, he did not hesitate to count Muslims and Christians too as his disciples.
According to Paramhansa Yogananda (Autobiography of a Yogi), one of Lahiri Mahasaya’s highly advanced pupils was Abdul Gufoor Khan. The yoga master underlined that Hindus, Muslims and Christians should be loyal to their respective religions. A Muslim should perform his namaz without fail, he would say, just as a Hindu should sit in meditation and a Christian should go down on his knees — both four times a day.
It is not that the Congress never had or has no shortcomings or negatives. But despite its aberrations, it spoke for an India in a manner where no religious community felt threatened. The party seems to be afraid of speaking on those lines now – at all organisational levels.
(The author is a senior journalist based in New Delhi)
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