BJP Is Not A Hindu Party

By Nirmalya Deb

03 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org

There is a skewed notion in liberal circles about the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) being a Hindu party championing the cause of Hinduism and the Hindu way of life. Nothing can be as remote from the truth as this belief is. Political, and by the same token, electoral opportunism has nothing to do with faith, belief or ideology. One senior BJP leader told The Telegraph, October 9 that now that Lalu Yadav has painted himself into a corner with his remark that Hindus too eat beef it is time for the BJP to launch a crusade to assuage hurt Hindu feelings. Hindu feelings have been accorded primacy in four Indian states where beef is presently banned. Hurt Hindus can’t stand the sight of an innocent man in western Uttar Pradesh supposed to have had a beef lunch or a Kashmir MLA who was roughed up for hosting a beef party in his hostel or the hapless truck driver in Jammu whose vehicle was set afire October 10 on the suspicion of ferrying beef.

Hindu assertiveness as manifested in BJP’s cow politics is a lethal instrument of electoral polarization. But what is this Hindu identity after all? Hinduism is a religion but it is also a historical area of study and academic activity. Historical truths are not the whims and fancies of a majority community and cannot be thrust down the throats of a malleable citizenry no matter how big the campaign is. Research has proved the incontrovertible fact that there is ample evidence in the Vedic texts of cow and bullock slaughter and consumption of beef by Hindus that can’t be wished away by the government of the day. Considerable historical research has gone into delineating the evolution and transition of Hinduism in the Vedic and post-Vedic ages down to the age of the Epics and schism with the upsurge of Buddhism and Jainism – religions propounding the virtues of vegetarianism for the spiritual life basing their judgments on entirely different grounds compared to the belligerent bullies of the RSS. Brahminical ascendency and exclusivism are attributed as reasons why beef gradually came to be denounced as heresy in religious terms compared to the early Vedic age. Moreover, agricultural opulence and incremental systematisation of planned farming also significantly altered Hindu culinary culture.

True Hindu identity as opposed to the electorally expedient and opportunistic version of it that the BJP has latched on to is built on the principles of tolerance to dissention and harmonious coexistence. The Akhlaque episode is no flash in the pan and the cow has remained on a strategic spot in the BJP’s political chessboard for the last three decades. None of us can be accused of missing the wood for the trees: Sangh ideologues are bent on interpreting Indian history in a way that suits their present political programme of rapid and ruthless communal profiling across states. For example, the Mughal rule is deprecated as a period of foreign domination with special emphasis on the earlier Mongol invasion of Mahmud of Ghazni and the plunder of the Somnath Temple. The Rig Veda is sought to be traced back to 8000 BC in an effort to establish the antiquity and heritage of Hinduism! Emperor Aurangazeb’s reign is decried as a period of Hindu oppression because of the imposition of the notorious ‘Jijiya’ tax. The list goes on.

If the Mughal dynasty was the epitome of foreign domination in Indian history the Aryans who invaded India sometime around 2000 to 1800 BC were also foreigners. One of the reasons of the decline of Indus Valley civilization is attributed to the Aryan invasion by historians, although no conclusive archaeological evidence exists. Emperor Babur, historical evidence suggests, had asked his son the young prince Humanyun not to eat beef. If Babur was a “foreign ruler”, he was at the same time a very liberal one quite unlike the BJP MPs of the day. The Mughal rule was a period of considerable achievement in Indian history as regards administrative and political cohesion achieved and established in a large part of the country.

The period of Akbar’s rule, over and above its political and economic achievements, is a glorious chapter of communal harmony, tolerance and peace in Indian history. The Mughal rulers were surprisingly secular when it came to governance. Taxes were levied on both temples and mosques and there was fair representation of Hindus in even Aurangazeb’s administration. In fact Aurangazeb’s real historical achievement is integration of almost the whole of the country under centralized rule. He was greatly enamoured of the sublime Ajanta and Ellora carvings and Indian art in general – a far more complex historical figure than the RSS’s projection of him as an Islamic bigot. Temples, books, works of art and rare merit – gems of human creative achievement – have been destroyed by fanatics in all religions throughout human history. Is Mahmud of Ghazni’s invasion and plunder of temples at all relevant in modern, secular, democratic India?

The revivalist movement within Hinduism in the 19th century was besought with crisis and was, basically, an urge to reaffirm identity under colonial hegemony. The modern revival of Hinduism in Swami Vivekananda’s practical Vedanta, which effort was championed by the other great Indian modernist Rabindranath Tagore, is conspicuous by its absence in the Sangh version of Hinduism. The “assimilation” of all religions, as Swamiji presciently observed in his famous lecture at the Chicago parliament of religions, is the guiding light of Indian civilisation and this belief was the ideological energy that sustained many leading lights of the national freedom movement. In slim tracts on nationalism and Indian culture, Tagore noted that Hinduism champions the cause of universal bonhomie and tolerance.

Towards the end of his small essay on materials found in the Rig Veda related to beef consumption in ancient India, BR Ambedkar quotes Vivekananda as endorsing that beef was freely consumed by Hindus in ancient India. The post-colonial, progressive, secular experiment of sustaining multicultural India as a functional democracy is also an experiment to purge Hinduism of the historical scourge of caste and extract from it the subtle essence of tolerance and respect for diversity – even dissent – that has been the core of the religion for close to 2000 years. The BJP, a self-proclaimed Hindu party, in being averse to this great experiment of developing a magnificent multicultural civilization is also directly negating the very principles of the religion it seeks to glorify.

Nirmalya Deb is a journalist from Odisha