Rattan Lal Hangloo*
The developments of the previous decade in India have given to Indians a lesson not easily misunderstood. The insane attempts by the arrogant state to attune every expression of the intellectual, cultural, and social life of Indians to the beat of a communal political machine and to stretch all human thought and action on the procrustean bed of a pattern prescribed by the Hindutva backed ideology has inevitably led to the internal collapse of all institutions, intellectual culture and complete freedom of expression in the country.
Rise of the BJP and the Hindutva Agenda
Before 2014, the corruption, unemployment, and inflation under the then-ruling Congress party were certainly unacceptable to all of us but it was intentionally blown out of proportion by the regressive electronic and print media (that ultimately got coopted as godi media) so much so that people supported BJP with the hope that it shall put an end to all the troubles of the time.
BJP also made tall promises for the resolution of all problems of people, including generous distribution of unaccounted black money supposedly to be brought back from foreign banks for distribution among Indians. Lacking any real background, Narendra Damodar Das Modi was elected to head the government as Prime Minister to replace the social conditions and prepare the way for a reshaping of India.
But soon the myth-making and superstitious belief building became the so-called collective intellectual and spiritual endowment of BJP, which has already been productive of much mischief and blocked any deeper insight into the unfolding of progressive or scientific social phenomena.
Be it the Central Secretariate or any other institution, the arrogant state soon emptied the workrooms and increased the number of priests and monks to pour religious fanaticism as an essential ingredient in the state’s functioning.
Even if the extent of this BJP influence is not uniform in every state or region of India, the consequences of its disastrous measures, such as the sudden demonetization, the extension of GST to people’s items of daily use including medicines, unrestricted growth of inflation or tremendous piling up of social wealth in the hands of small privileged few, breakdown of industries and institutions, has led to the continued impoverishment of a large number of people everywhere in India.
The state has sacrificed the general interest of Indians to the private interest of individuals and thus systematically undermined the natural social relationships within larger Indian society.
Dictatorial Crushing of Dissent
The dictatorial attitude of an arrogant state emerges from its discriminatory regional and social endeavours which are increasingly subordinating the innumerable expressions of Indian social life to lifeless forms. Keeping in view the treatment meted out to many political parties such as Aam Admi Party, Trinamul Congress, Congress, Biju Janta Dal, PDP, NC, RJD, Akali Dal, BRS/TRS, MIM, Shibu Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, YSR Congress or many other groups in North East, it values human personality only as it may be of use to the apparatus of the party or political power.
The consequence of this absurd functioning of such a state is the mechanising of the general socio-economic, cultural, and political life of the public. The apparatus of this arrogant state has become an end in itself, and the principal functionaries including the Chief Election Commissioner tolerate no other opinion that is not in unconditional agreement with the principles of this arrogant state.
Be it the suspension of duly elected parliamentarians or the closing of their mikes for raising legitimate issues, the BJP is neither respecting the principles of justice nor the established practices of political or public morality and this is the inevitable result of a system in which the power of an arrogant state is everything and man is nothing.
The degrading of the Hindutva ideology, the replacing of science with fatalism, the ruining of the country’s history by a multitude of misinterpretations, the misleading of public opinion, the muzzling of the genuine media/press and every other organ for the free display of sentiment among the people, the brutalizing of the people’s administrative institutions, and judiciary under pressure from an unintelligent party fanaticism, the ruthless suppression of the Kissan Andolan, the meddling of the state in the most intricate socio-cultural aspects of communities such as Shaheen Bagh, Hijab, Manipur problems, etc., the total abolition of the freedom of conscience both religious and political, the oppression of people for criticising the policies of the state, the spiritual poisoning of youth by a state sponsored propaganda of hate and intolerance on social networks, and the unscrupulous demagoguery of Sab ka sath, Sab ka vikas, and Sab ka vishvas has only threatened peace in the country.
Cultural and Economic Aggression Promoting Divisions, Disparities
Many Kashmiri Pandits perished from 1990 onwards under forced migration, but neither the abolition of Article 370 nor the demotion and bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir state helped their rehabilitation in their homeland. Instead, their agony was used to garner votes and whip up Hindu sentiments in the rest of mainland India for both parliamentary and assembly elections. This also helped to legitimize and perpetuate the arrogant state’s power in the last decade.
Back home Kashmir was defaced by enumerable killings and disappearances of innocents including our Kashmiri Muslim brethren too at the hands of the arrogant state security agencies and Pakistan-sponsored terrorists and still, there is no respite. From the Konan-Posphora rapes to the Pulwama episode, echoes can be heard everywhere even today.
Like the case of Kashmiris, the BJP weaponizes existing class, caste, and communal divisions for petty electoral benefits and creates more divisions.
Internally, it has split society in every region into hostile classes of Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and others who otherwise lived in harmony for ages, and today they are divided into hostile groups. It is not surprising if they confront one another filled with hate and their uninterrupted conflicts will shatter the very foundations of India’s social fabric shortly.
Society is being fractured into segments with a multitude of socio-economic policies unrolled by the BJP-led state. Even the recent budget details presented in 2024 reveal that the government’s economic system has divided the social organism into its separate components, dulling the individual’s social feeling and hindering his/her free development.
The Hindenburg revelations, if true, also point to this divisive tendency of creating a class of beneficiaries while the large mass of the country reels under hatred, poverty, inflation, intolerance, and unemployment.
Fountain-head of Arrogance & Aggression
The ruling concept of the BJP is derived from the darkest periods of history and is today carried over into India’s political realm to find expression in the fanatical persecution of everyone who is unwilling to surrender to the new political religion.
This development, and the constantly growing power of an unintelligent political bureaucracy that regiments and supervises the life of man from the cradle to the grave, have systematically suppressed the solidaristic collaboration of men and the feeling of personal freedom and have in every way supported the threat to human culture from the arrogant state. In transacting any and every executive business this arrogant state is going far beyond absolute monarchy in its lust for power.
For a decade, this arrogant state’s generous assistance to its political and socio-cultural agenda has been in sharp opposition to all the theoretical and practical assumptions that underlie the idea of the secular, welfare Indian state.
There is a serious spiritual and intellectual degeneration of humanity that is bleeding from a thousand wounds, a humanity that has lost its confidence in itself. That people today contemplate this catastrophic trend of affairs with little understanding merely proves that the forces that once freed India from colossal colonialism and revealed new roads for social progress have become almost non-existent. The vital deeds of our great predecessors are not honored even in tradition.
It is silly to hold the policies of Nehru and the previous governments responsible for this state of affairs so long as no one moves a finger to supplant the economic assumptions that underlie BJP’s doctrine to guide social development into other paths.
It would be fit to compare the Nehruvian vision with that of the BJP. It was the great merit of the liberal line of thought of Jawaharlal Nehru, and the popular movements that broke the power of absolute monarchy which for centuries had crippled all intellectual progress and sacrificed the lives of Indians and the welfare of the country to its feudal leaders and colonial master’s lust for power.
The BJP, on the other hand, has promoted a system that in every utterance of its life is ready to sacrifice the welfare of large sections of Indians or the entire nation to the selfish economic interests of a small section.
For this arrogant state, brute force is the simple recourse to keep on its feet a system that was long ago condemned by the course of events.
Lessons for BJP
The recent elections serve as a lesson for the BJP and remind it that its arrogant functioning and the system of governance it promotes is unsustainable.
The decline in the vote share of BJP’s last parliamentary election is not a reaction directed merely by the discontented sections of the population or against certain communal movements and currents of thought but it is a reaction as a principle, against Hindutva culture in general, against all the social and intellectual achievements claimed by the arrogant state for the past decade.
It is a reaction against forces that smother all freedom of thought, a response to leaders for whom the use of brutal force has become the measure of everything. It is a reaction against those representatives, who have reverence to the fanatical belief that all decisions in national and international life are to be reached only using dictatorial arrogance.
The recent parliament elections have sufficiently shown that even as the RSS-BJP impose their will on the larger public, they stand disunited internally. This is because Hindu congregations have always remained merely loose groups that rise to the pedestals of their priests and fake saints/swamis and dump them when they don’t suit the purpose. They now stand fully exposed.
Conclusion
The BJP has unleashed a senseless nationalism that fundamentally ignores all the natural norms of plurality, multi-culturalism, and constitutionalism, and has developed into a political religion in the guise of an aggressive state with a fascist attitude.
As long as we lack the courage to look this danger in the face and to set ourselves against an imposed system that is driving us irrevocably toward a social catastrophe, the best constitutional measures or protection are of no avail and the legally guaranteed rights of citizens lose their meaning.
*Professor Rattan Lal Hangloo has been Professor of History at Hyderabad Central University He is former Vice-Chancellor of Kalyani University West Bengal and University of Allahabad. He is currently Honorary Vice-Chancellor Noble International University Toronto Canada. He originally belongs to Village Hangalgund Kokernag Kashmir but is at present in Texas USA.
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