Tharoor is just an excuse

By KUMAR KETKAR

It is not as if the phrase ‘Hindu Pakistan’ is being used for the first time. Similar terminology has been in vogue among liberal and Left intellectuals for nearly four years. ‘Hindu Taliban’, ‘Talibanisation of India’, ‘fatwa culture in Hindu society’, ‘saffron jihadis’ and ‘Hindu terrorists’ are some of the expressions that have been part of the political discourse for quite some time.
Not only the Left, but even independent commentators among the Rightists (some of them from American think-tanks and even from the economic school of Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati) have appealed to Narendra Modi personally to rein in these fanatic forces to prevent the ‘Pakistanisation of India’.
Then why did all hell break loose when Shashi Tharoor used this phrase in the same vein?
Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman went to the extent of saying that the Congress, and Rahul Gandhi in particular, were “communalising” the 2019 election campaign? She warned that if this led to riots, the responsibility would have to be borne entirely by the Congress. She forgot that the BJP is in power in 22 states, and the primary responsibility of the state governments is to maintain law and order and an atmosphere of communal harmony.
It is not a coincidence that the government decided to distribute the Bhagavad Gita in schools the same week that this controversy erupted. Reciting the Gita is being made compulsory. The Ramayana Express has been launched the same week. Yogi Adityanath’s plan to revive the Ram Mandir movement has become the campaign theme in Uttar Pradesh.
The Kashmir issue has aggressively become about the Hindu-Muslim divide and not about ‘Kashmiriyat’ or ‘insaniyat’. Indeed, the dissolution of the PDP-BJP alliance, romantically welcomed when formed as a “unique experiment in Hindu-Muslim bonhomie” and a “secular innovation of the Modi government”, has proven to be a precursor to divisive politics on the eve of elections.
Perhaps this atmosphere was what provoked Nobel laureate Prof. Amartya Sen to say in anguish that India has taken a “quantum leap backwards” in the last four years.
In the US, the term ‘liberal’ began to be used as a political or ideological abuse over three decades ago. Like most lifestyles and ideas, this trend too has arrived in India riding on the NRI diaspora, and has entrenched itself among India’s new (and even old) middle class.
It’s this middle class that’s currently big on accepting the idea of Hindutva – be it academics, lawyers, doctors, chartered accountants, architects, historians, economists or other professionals. Given this scenario, it would perhaps be unnecessary to formally announce the creation of a Hindu Rashtra. What can be achieved de facto need not be achieved de jure, such as by changing the Constitution!
In fact, the Sangh Parivar would be happy to project Hindutva as an inclusive and secular ideology. By then, all institutions from the University Grants Commission to the Indian Council of Historical Research, from the NIA, CBI and IB to the NITI Aayog, the bureaucracy (with or without lateral recruitment) to most of media will be controlled, directed or influenced by this “inclusive, liberal and secular” Hindutva. So why would you need to change the Constitution?
Ironically, this middle class has been the biggest beneficiary of the Manmohan Singh-led liberalisation, and before that, the Rajiv Gandhi-led computerisation. Whether it is Silicon Valley or multinational companies elsewhere, top tech and management jobs have come to Indians, thanks to the IITs and IIMs built over the ‘condemned’ last 70 years.
Today, the Congress and the UPA have become objects of hate. But it is not the neo-liberals who brought foreign capital and foreign brands — from Coca Cola, McDonalds to Honda and Mercedes – to India, but the liberals in the Congress party.
The Congress stands ridiculed and abused by the Sangh Parivar, which opposed liberalisation, and before that, even computerisation. Liberalisation was a ‘conspiracy’ of the Congress to bring back the East India Company ethos, said S. Gurumurthy of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, the RSS affiliate. Today, Narendra Modi, the icon of ‘swadeshi’ and ‘swadharma’ in the past, has convinced himself and also the middle class that he is the harbinger of the economic transformation of India.
The whole effort is to integrate the idea of Hindutva with the liberal economy. Unless the real or imagined enemy is identified and eliminated, project ‘New India’ will not succeed.
That’s why this strident attack is being made on Shashi Tharoor and Rahul Gandhi, though what they’ve said is nothing new. The political debate must remain in the frame of Hindutva, and not on the non-performance of the government during the last four years.
That strategy is clear now. Tharoor is just an excuse.