Putting the useless to use: The divisive politics of the word ‘Hindutva’

People in India have been known to put to imaginative use things that for them do not serve their intended purpose.

A statue of Lord Hanuman at the Pampa Sarovar in Dangs district, Gujarat. A file picture.  | Photo Credit: SAM PANTHAKY/AFP

Some four decades ago, an American academic who was working on a book with me expressed his desire to “do something” for the marginalised communities in India. He discussed with me the immediate needs of Adivasis, whose population he knew was large in Gujarat. At that time, the promotion of the solar cooker was an emerging trend. He ordered two dozen solar cookers and asked me to take him to some Adivasi village. I arranged for a tempo and we travelled 350 km south of Baroda, where I lived, to reach the Dangs district on the border with Maharashtra.

The Kunkna Adivasi people in the village were courteous and welcoming. My scholar friend got photographs taken of him giving away the large solar-cooker boxes. He had a great sense of fulfilment for having satisfied his altruistic instinct.

A year later, on my way to Maharashtra, I stopped by the village to see how the women had managed the solar cookers. In some houses, the tin box was used to store clothes, in others potatoes, peeled coconuts, and dried chilly. In two houses children had kept school textbooks and paintings in the cooker boxes. For cooking, all families stuck to the age-old firewood. “There is so much of firewood in the nearby forests, why waste a precious store box for cooking,” they said.

I realised that the American philosopher—and I too—had not thought through the material context to which his idea of “smart energy use” was taken. The solar cooker was useless for the villagers; but they had used it imaginatively to improve their lives.

I have often experienced this phenomenon in my work with Adivasi and nomadic communities. The Bajania women around Baroda lived by selling vegetables. They carried baskets on their heads and moved from door to door shouting out vegetable names. Struck by the idea of giving them hand carts, I plunged into crowd funding from my friends, got the carts made and had them collected by the women. A few days later, I noticed that the women were back to carrying the vegetable baskets. I was furious. My donor friends were even more furious, having been cheated of the ego-satisfaction in bringing about a transformation through their charity.

When I examined the reasons, I discovered that in order to go about with a mobile cart, it was necessary to obtain a “cart number” that was written on a tin-seal and affixed on the “vehicle”. I asked them why they had not obtained the numbers. They said, “But that requires an address.” I said, “So what is the difficulty?” “The village panchayat is unwilling to issue it as people in the village think that once a certificate is given, we may camp here forever.” The Bajanias are a Denotified Tribe and had been branded as a criminal tribe in the past.

On realising that I had rushed into action without examining all aspects of their difficult life, I asked them to return my pushcarts. They pleaded with me to let them keep the carts. “What use are they to you?,” I asked. They showed me: they had turned the carts into mobile beds by extending them on both sides with pieces of tin, discarded plywood, and rotten planks. Covered with patchwork quilts, these indeed made wonderful beds for folk that had to sleep on the ground in the open outside their ramshackle “houses”.

In the introduction to his 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde stated that all art is useless. In making the somewhat shocking statement his intention was to point out how arts are intensely admired even if they have no utility value. In the instances I described, I am not talking of the non-useful objects as any kind of art. Rather, I want to point out a widespread Indian trait of accepting the utterly useless and putting them to a radically different use. This brings me to the use of “Hindutva” by common citizens.

The first use of the term by V.D. Savarkar speaks of it as self-assertion by people for whom India is their territorial location (pitrubhumi) as well as the location of the birth of their religion (punyabhumi). I have asked innumerable individuals about their pitrubhumi. In almost all instances, the individuals named the birth place of their fathers; as for their punyabhumi, they named shrines and pilgrimage places. Many Adivasis and nomadic people said that they had no land of their own, being literally bhumihin, landless.

Hindutva activists attempting to damage tombstones in the graveyard atop Bababudangiri hill, a 2017 picture. | Photo Credit: Prakash Hassan

Asked if the two were the same, the response was a sense of bewilderment and confusion. I went about trying to find out how people responded to the Hindutva idea of “nationality”, I tried simplifying the Sanskrit terms Savarkar used and asked people to name the “birthplace” of Hindu “religion”. The response ranged from names of places and ancient texts, to names of rivers, saints, or thinkers. Given this huge gap between Savarkar’s ideological formulation and what the people knew, it is only to be expected that the contrived thesis about “natural citizens” of Hindu rashtra (as against the “less loyal citizens whose religion was not born in the present territory of India”) was used in many strange ways, some comical and others with tragic consequences.

I have heard several India-born academics now resident in Western countries and legal citizens of those countries, claiming how they have contributed to the rashtra-nirman of the Hindu rashtra. Their own circumstances fly in the face of Savarkar’s formulation. Going by it they need to be placed in the class of “suspect citizens of their respective countries”. They take great pride in the Sanatan texts, but the mention of animal sacrifice and the practice of beef eating in early ancient India cannot be discussed with them.

While the supporters of Hindutva are busy engineering mob-lynching and intimidating those who question them, changing names of roads and cities to wipe out traces of other religions that have been part of India’s society and cultural life for centuries, Indians have put it to use in many different ways.

Highlights

• Hindutva politics has brought to the surface many social infirmities and baser instincts.
• But the people have received the rise of Hindutva as a reminder that the Constitution is the ultimate foundation of modern India as a nation, society, and mindset.
• Terms like “communal harmony”, “federalism”, “fearlessness”, “freedom of expression”, and “constitutional values” have been uttered far more frequently in recent years.
• Since the idea of Hindutva was really not useful for a rapidly modernising and democratic India, people have been silently moving away from the idea of rashtra, by seeking solace in pararashtra or in regionalism.

Some have used “Hindutva” as an opportunity to strengthen their caste affinities and promote sect formation. Millions have turned pilgrimages into family outings remembered in shared family videos and selfies. In Gujarat, one of the side effects of the 2002 riots was the illegal grabbing of land and property belonging to Muslims. During the post-riot years, terms like artha (material gains) and kama (sensory satisfaction)—two of the four aims of life prescribed by some Hindu schools of philosophy—started gaining a wide currency. After the Gujarat model became national in 2014, terms like saam, daam, dand, and bheda have become more popular than they ever were.

Hindutva politics has brought to the surface many social infirmities and baser instincts. It has also helped the self-promoting of mediocrity. But the people have received the rise of Hindutva as a reminder that the Constitution is the ultimate foundation of modern India as a nation, society, and mindset. Terms like “communal harmony”, “federalism”, “fearlessness”, “freedom of expression”, and “constitutional values” have been uttered far more frequently in recent years.

At the same time, one sees the emergence of an idealist young generation that is creating songs, fiction, cinema, theatre, and literary works celebrating humanism, equality, and freedom. Savarkar’s formulation was driven by his own tendentious understanding of history as well as an acute dislike for Gandhi’s non-violent struggle for swaraj. Translated into the political agenda of the BJP, aimed at generating alienation between Hindus and non-Hindus, people have, on the one hand, turned it into a ludicrous ecosystem of misinformation and greed, and on the other responded with greater love for the Constitution and democracy.

Since the idea of Hindutva was really not useful for a rapidly modernising and democratic India, and since people are sharp enough to understand that Hindutva is used for turning politics into a farce, they have been silently moving away from the idea of rashtra, by seeking solace in pararashtra or in regionalism. The resilience of regional parties and the defeat of the politics of polarisation in Karnataka are an indication that the divisive politics of Hindutva are not of much use to the people of India.

Ganesh Devy is Obaid Siddiqi Chair Professor, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bengaluru.