Letter to a Young American Hindu

May 25, 2007

[Here are some excerpts from a powerful essay by Vijay Prashad,

published this past Tuesday, May 22, 2007 by ZNet. It presents a

clear-eyed, well-focused critique of Hindutva (Hindu fundamentalism)

as it is currently manifesting in India and abroad. I cut out much of

the original -- mainly because it is a bit lengthy for an online

forum. But I tried to preserve the main thrust of the argument to

help you decide whether you want to tackle the whole thing (link

below). Hope you will, and would love to hear your comments. - DB]

Dear Friend,

In secular India, I found myself interested in all religions and

deeply schooled in none. ... Religion was colorful, and friendly. It

didn't represent either the harshest of personal morality nor the

resentments or distrust of others.

Some of my friends were better schooled than I in their various

traditions. Our diversity was not simply across religion, but also a

diversity of the density of our engagement with religion: agnostics

or religious illiterates were as welcome as those who were committed

to their faith.

My morality came from elsewhere than religion, from recognition of

the pain in the world. ... It struck me that while religious

festivals were beautiful, religions themselves were not adequate as a

solution to modern crises. But religion, as I came to understand

while reading Gandhi many years later, can play a role in the

cleansing of public morality. ...

In other words, politics should not be simply about power struggles,

but it must be suffused with moral concerns. It is not enough to win;

one must strive to create, what Gandhi called, Truth in the world.

Religious traditions are resources to guide us, as social

individuals, through the difficulties and opportunities of our lives.

They are not dogmas to tear people apart from each other. In a

powerful essay against compulsory widow segregation, Gandhi

wrote, " It is good to swim in the waters of tradition, but to sink in

them is suicide " (Navajivan, June 28, 1925). Let tradition be a

studied resource, not a set of inflexible, unchanging rules.

NOXIOUS HINDUTVA

The [bhagavad] Gita is a remarkable book, precisely because of its

history. ... The contradictory nature of the text allows every reader

to find something beneficial in it. It works as a mirror to our

reality. ...

All this is lost if one reads the Gita as settled Truth rather than

an experiment in truth. When Gandhi claimed to base his ahimsa

philosophy on the Gita, he faced opposition. ...

Those who criticized Gandhi for his " misuse " of Hinduism came from

the organizations of the Right. ... The Hindu Mahasabha (1915) and

the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (1925) provided this Right with an

institutional nucleus to sharpen the assault on both Indian society

and on the Indian freedom movement (whose undisputed leader at this

time was Gandhi).

The leadership of this Right considered Gandhi a " traitor " to

the " Hindu people, " and it was their cadre that murdered him in 1948.

The RSS, the spearhead of the new " Hindu nationalism " [desired] not

to do battle with the powerful British and its institutions, but with

the relatively powerless Muslim masses. ... The complexity of India,

its diverse heritages and its fluid cultural resources, was anathema

to the RSS and its doctrine of Hindutva (Hinduness).

The influence of Italian fascism and German Nazism pervaded the RSS,

[and its] noxious view of the complexity of Indian social life

appealed only to a few among the dominant castes who felt left out of

the new Indian republic.

INDIAN HONEYCOMB

That complexity is something that Gandhi and others well understood.

In 1992, the Anthropological Society of India [tallied] 4,635

identifiable communities in India, " diverse in biological traits,

dress, language, forms of worship, occupation, food habits, and

kinship patterns. It is all these communities who in their essential

ways of life express our national popular life. "

Strikingly, the scholars working under Singhâ€™s direction discovered

the immense overlap across religious lines. They identified 775

traits -- relat[ing] to ecology, settlement, identity, food habits,

marriage patterns, social customs, social organization, economy and

occupation -- [and] found that Hindus share 96.77% traits with

Muslims, 91.19% with Buddhists, 88.99% with Sikhs, 77.46% with Jains

(Muslims, in turn, share 91.18% with Buddhists and 89.95% with

Sikhs).

Because of this, Singh pointed out that Indian society was like

a " honeycomb, " where each community is in constant and meaningful

interaction with every other community. The boundaries between

communities are more a fact of self-definition than of cultural

distinction. This Gandhi knew implicitly. Unity was a fact of life,

not a conceit of secular theory.

Hindutva, or the ideology and movement of Hindu chauvinism, attempts

to do to this richness what agro-businesses do to bio-diversity. They

want to reduce the multiplicity and plurality of cultural forms into

the one that they are then able to control: a deracinated " Hindu, "

like a Genetically Modified form of rice or barley. The joy of

religious life, of social life, is reduced into a mass-produced form

of worship, cultivated out of hatred for other religions rather than

fellowship for humanity.

With the RSS and its parivar (family), we are no longer in the land

of religion. We are now in the land of power and politics, hate and

resentment.

Till the 1980s, the RSS remained on the margins of Indian politics.

Rejected at the ballot, the movement emerged only through

assassination and intimidation, through riots and mayhem, through

which it sought to define the political and social space.

In the 1980s, conditions changed ... to bring the BJP to power. The

Indian honeycomb began to breakup in this period. It was also in this

time that Hindutva went overseas with a new confidence.

YANKEE HINDUTVA

More than a decade ago, I used the term " Yankee Hindutva " to describe

the way Hindu chauvinism came into the United States.

To promote Indians as the " model minority, " who have a great and

ancient culture, and not combat the racism that devastates the world

of color and pits people of color against each other, is inadequate.

It simply lifts up one minority, us, and says that we shouldnâ€™t take

this nonsense because we are culturally great.

[Hindutva-based groups in the U.S.] are less concerned with the broad

problem of racism and of Indian American life, than they are to push

the Hindutva agenda in the U. S. and Canada. ... Yankee Hindutva is a

set of blinders, not an optic to see the world clearly.

[in the full version, there follows a great discussion of the war

to " define " Hinduism in U.S. textbooks, and also a look at Rajiv

Malhotra (a character whom we've discussed here at SS before) who is

currently operating something of an NRI (Non-Resident Indian) version

of Jerry Falwell, adept at manipulating the politics of religious

offense.]

*****

The Hinduism that cares more for its reputation than for its

relevance is no longer a living tradition. It has become something

that one reveres from a distance. To keep it alive, Hinduism requires

an engagement with its history (which shows us how it evolves and

changes) and with its core concepts (what we otherwise call

philosophy). ...

Submit all faith to experiments, to see how they are able to assist

one in the messy world we live in: to detach faith into self-

indulgence is to patronize those traditions. Thatâ€™s the nature of

experimentation, a far better approach to faith traditions than empty

reverence.

The choice lies between giving over the traditions you love to the

forces of hatred who might masquerade as the defenders of tradition;

or to the force within you, and around you, a force of love and

ecstasy, passion and pain to transform the world. What would you have?

Vijay Prashad

May 17, 2007.

SOURCE: ZNet | South Asia. " Letter to a Young American Hindu " by

Vijay Prashad; Pass the Roti; May 22, 2007.

URL: http://tinyurl.com/3as4d8

May 26, 2007

" Submit all faith to experiments, to see how they are able to assist

one in the messy world we live in: to detach faith into self-

indulgence is to patronize those traditions. Thatâ€™s the nature of

experimentation, a far better approach to faith traditions than empty

reverence. "

I really like that part

namaste

pr

May 27, 2007

My .02 cents:

Hindutva = sometimes deplorable, but serves the purpose of infusing pride in

the long emasculated Hindu Psyche.

Pseudosecularism = the single most reason in the last 60 years for the

portrayal of Hindu weakness to other religions; seems to prefer and put ahead

other religions and groups than their own.

JANARDANA DASA

Devi Bhakta <devi_bhakta wrote: