Page One

My hinduism lost in India’s deadly nationalism

Staff
Thursday March 07, 2002

EDITOR'S NOTE: Fueling the worst Hindu-Muslim violence in Indian in nearly a decade is a new Hindu nationalism that adopts the militaristic rhetoric of today's world leaders. PNS Associate Editor Sandip Roy fears that an older form of Hinduism that could accept, absorb and change other cultures is being lost. Roy (sandiproy@hotmail.com) is host of “Upfront” – the Pacific News Service weekly radio program on KALW-FM, San Francisco. 

 

 

By Sandip Roy 

Pacific News Service 

 

SAN FRANCISCO — When the bland bureaucratic form demands I write down my religion, I dutifully print HINDU. A religion I call my own with as little thought as I claim my parents – a given. 

Then the stories pour in of Hindu mobs barricading terrified Muslims in a schoolhouse in Gujarat and setting them ablaze. Of holy men with matted hair and saffron robes descending on the hot dusty town in Ayodhya with their iron tridents. They are Hindu, too – perhaps more Hindu than I. I look into the face of their Hinduism and realize I almost envy it, cloaked as it is in such certainty. My Hinduism, which is more about a culture than a temple, is civilized but effete in comparison – a cut flower in a crystal vase. 

Who is the real Hindu? What happened to my Hinduism? 

Much has been written about the rise of Hindu nationalism in India.  

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), once an outcast in Indian politics because of its Hindu chauvinism, is now in power. Not just in power, but presiding over a coalition with some of the very parties that not so long ago refused to associate with it, and caused the first BJP government in 1996 to fall in just 13 days. 

What does this mean? That India is finally declaring that the 1947 act of partition that created the Muslim state of Pakistan in effect created a Hindu state named India? That secularism was just a fig leaf plastered onto that Hindu state, and finally, inevitably, it is slipping off?  

That Hinduism is being reincarnated as a muscular nationalism hell-bent on settling scores from centuries ago? Against Muslim invaders, British traders. 

Dare I say it – Hinduism is becoming a certain kind of man, proclaiming a type of male certainty. Certainty – as in you have to be for us or against us. Certainty, as in smoking the enemy out of their caves. A single muscular line, like a missile that cannot be deflected from its purpose. 

Is this a Hinduism that Gandhi might have recognized? Gandhi, too, was Hindu. Gandhi was from Gujarat as well, where the communal riots now rage with unspeakable ferocity. But now he is a portrait on the wall of a bureaucrat, forever staring at the back of the bureaucrat’s head.  

When Time Magazine was choosing its man of the century, I was deluged by e-mails from Indians trying to make sure I went to Time’s Web site to vote for Gandhi. It was strange – their enthusiasm was no indicator of the resonance Gandhi had in their lives. He was merely our best bet at having an Indian named the person of the century – a commodity. 

Where is Gandhi now? Or Nelson Mandela? Or all the other leaders whose certainty was not a single-minded heat-seeking missile? Whose message was about looking into the eye of the opponent to see if they could see themselves in there.  

I don’t know if they could play any of the extreme sports our world leaders play now. After Sept. 11, the rhetoric has been so much more about nationalism, taking care of our own, closing doors, sealing borders, us vs. them, weeding out terrorists, “you can run but you can’t hide.” Bush, Putin, Arroyo, Sharon, Vajpayee – each a player more certain than the next of the destiny of the nation each leads. This new Hinduism is in tune with the world's rhetoric – black and white in its certainty, defining itself by how it can teach someone a lesson, show them who is boss. 

But there was another Hinduism that was about absorption. Absorbing conquerors, their music, their food, their poetry – and yes, their seed, their vices, their greed.  

That Hinduism is now derided as passive, unable to compete in the world. It cannot spearhead agitations or mobilize mob armies. But it still exists – not necessarily in secularists like me.  

Up in Marin County (yes, where else?), I met a master Indian musician, the sarode player Ali Akbar Khan. Now 80 years old, his name immediately reveals his Muslim parentage. Yet his sister is named Annapurna, a Hindu mother goddess. Now Khan teaches Indian classical raagas with mellifluous names like “Purbasree” in San Rafael, in a room whose window has the stained glass image of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of the arts and learning. 

I wanted to ask him if he was Hindu or Muslim. He said he was a musician – music to him was next to God. In some strange, romantic way, I felt more in touch with my Hinduism that night than I had in a long time.