By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Today, India’s prime minister’s annual Independence Day speech reflected how far political discourse has fallen in New Delhi.

Before his speech, PM Modi hoisted the ‘Tiranga’ at the iconic Red Fort in New Delhi. This was also Prime Minister's ninth Independence Day address to the nation from the Red Fort.

PM Modi hereby sported a Tricolour-themed turban for Independence Day, imbibing the ‘Har Ghar Tiranga’ spirit. If we look back, one notices that, unlike prior revolutions, India’s split from the British Empire came about through a political movement committed to nonviolence. The Indian National Congress, led by Mahatma Gandhi, organized peaceful demonstrations on an unprecedented scale. The mighty British Empire ultimately capitulated, encouraging anticolonial movements worldwide.

India has long commemorated this watershed moment on Aug. 15, headlined by the prime minister’s speech on the ramparts of the Red Fort in New Delhi. Leaders traditionally set aside partisan rivalries in these speeches, focusing on apolitical themes: the importance of Gandhi and the nonviolence movement, the resilience of India’s democracy, and the importance of tolerance and inclusion. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has mostly stuck to this formula, but this year’s speech signaled how Modi is trying to redefine what it means to be an Indian. Gradually moving away from what was pointed out in Why I killed Gandhi.

The RSS is an organization like a private army. This was also illuminated by James Crabtree’s 2018 book “The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age,” where, during an interview with Crabtree, Modi’s brother Prahlad the latter recalls that Modi started on his current path as a full-time volunteer and lived in the Ahmedabad headquarters of the RSS where he went “very deep into the RSS and its works of nation-building and patriotism” and “decided to dedicate his life to that.” (1) Modi then set up a unit of the RSS’s students’ wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, after which, Modi rose steadily in the RSS hierarchy, and his association with the organization significantly benefited his subsequent political career.

Underneath Volunteers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). gather for a large-scale congregation in Meerut.

According to Walter K. Andersen and Shridhar D. Damle, the RSS sought to draw upon the dense network of mutts, ashrams, and other organizations of monastic orders to develop political Hinduism. (2)With the gradual rise of the BJP, Muslims are particularly marginalized politically and pushed out of public institutions such as the police and the judiciary. Muslims hold just 4 percent of seats in the outgoing parliament, down from a peak of 9.6 percent in 1980. During Modi’s first term, expressions of anti-Muslim hatred have grown more common and acceptable in public life.

One symptom of this is a growing number of lynchings of Muslims concerning cows, animals considered sacred by orthodox Hindus. In September 2015, a Muslim laborer, Mohammad Akhlaq, was murdered by his neighbors in a village outside New Delhi on suspicion of eating beef. Afterward, officials seized meat samples from the victim’s home to determine if it was beef, which extremists argued would be a mitigating factor in his killing.

Between May 2015 and December 2018, at least 44 people, 36 Muslims, were killed across 12 Indian states. Over that same period, around 280 people were injured in over 100 different incidents across 20 states.

Earlier on 28 May 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu, and others paid tributes to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who popularized the term Hindutva. Today exemplified by Modi Savarkar, is loved by the Hindu right with centrists and Muslims,  Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists, in India, not to mention Kashmir, having a different opinion.

A key conclusion from this analysis is that Hindu nationalist ideas about identity, culture, and politics draw on and, to some extent, reflect the construction of ideas about the Indian nation and its cultural heritage in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nevertheless, I have suggested that the use of formulas and explicit religious symbols to draw the boundaries of national identity may be construed as distinctive. Two lines of thought, the obsessive concern with conversion and the aggressive asser­tion of ownership over sites projected as sacred - indicate this distinctiveness.

Yet even here, there is a degree of embeddedness in broader fields of thought. Perhaps the clearest post-independence example of this point is the restoration of the Somnath temple in 1947/8.

Conversion issues also indicate a broader reach for ideas associated with Hindu nationalism than the formal organizations of the Sangh Parivar. 

Like Savarkar's Hindutva, Godse's self-justification sees recent events against the backdrop of centuries of "Muslim tyranny" in India, punctuated by the heroic resistance of Shivaji, the Hindu emperor. He carried on a military campaign against the Moghul rulers in the eighteenth century with brief success. Like Savarkar, he describes his goal as creating a strong, proud India that can throw off centuries of domination.

Ripping up this vision of Gandhi was an important part of Savarkar's politics. Only then could he have thought of making his politics succeed. Savarkar had some advantages. The vision he espoused was easy to convey to those who shared his obsession with Brahmin ascendency in politics, projecting Muslims as enemies of their faith-based nationalism to unite various castes of Hindus without altering the hegemony of the traditional social elite.

Members of the RSS (the parent organization of Vishwa Hindu Parishad) and prominent Hindu thinkers in India and abroad were reportedly invited to Mumbai (then Bombay) in India in August 1964. According to published reports, it was decided that a new organization named Vishwa Hindu Parishad would be formed and launched two years later, in 1966, at a world convention of Hindus.

Soon after its inception, the VHP focused on the Ramjanmbhoomi (birthplace of Lord Ram) issue in Ayodhya, India. Hindu extremists allege that the Babri mosque is built in Ayodhya, in the western state of Uttar Pradesh, is the birthplace of Lord Ram (a revered Hindu God). Hindu fundamentalists, including the VHP, have propagated that the Babri mosque is "replaced" by a Hindu temple of Ram at the disputed site.

Later the RSS would support the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its chosen representative after Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee started his RSS organizer.

Today Godse is something of a hero on BJP and RSS websites. Picturing the atmosphere at the time Nehru, believed that the murder of Gandhi was part of a "fairly widespread conspiracy" on the part of the Hindu right to seize power; he saw the situation as analogous to that in Europe on the eve of the fascist takeovers. And he believed that the RSS was the power behind this conspiracy.

Not surprisingly, in his speech, Modi ticked the boxes by mentioning Gandhi and his commitment to inclusion, but he also departed from convention in essential ways. First, he celebrated more than a dozen freedom fighters who had adopted a violent approach to independence. These freedom fighters operated independently of Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, undermining Gandhi and nonviolence within India’s independence movement. By highlighting them in the speech, Modi subtly rebelled against the conventional narrative and Gandhi’s central role.

Second, although Modi touched on inclusion regarding geography and gender, he avoided mentioning secularism or religious tolerance. Instead, he defined Indians as Hindus: “This is our legacy. How can we not be proud of this heritage? We are those people who see Shiva [a main Hindu deity] in every living being,” he said. “We are people who see the divine in the plants. We are the people who consider the rivers as mothers. We are those people who see Shankar [another form of Shiva] in every stone.” For India, a country with 280 million non-Hindu citizens that has struggled with religious tensions since its founding, Modi’s religious interjections signal a break from the past.

Finally, Modi used the occasion to launch familiar jabs against the opposition Indian National Congress party while overlooking critical challenges facing the Indian state—including religious intolerance. He concluded his speech by slamming people who defend corruption and by condemning nepotism. But this was coded language that may sound like a threat to some Indian citizens: Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have weaponized charges of corruption and nepotism to go after political opponents and dissidents. Just days after Modi’s speech, his government conducted an anticorruption raid against Manish Sisodia, one of the prominent leaders of the opposition Aam Aadmi Party.

Modi’s Independence Day speech is emblematic of a more significant change under his rule, which has faced criticism for democratic backsliding—moving away from the very constitution that came shortly after its independence. The prime minister and the BJP are working to unshackle India from its liberal and secular moorings, advancing a new national identity that champions Hindu supremacy. This enterprise is antithetical to the very foundations of Hinduism, which is an inherently pluralistic faith.

A750 sq ft National Flag was displayed at historical Lal Chowk by Srinagar Sector CRPF. All civilians & force personnel came together to sing the National anthem: Srinagar Sector CRPF:

Modi’s BJP government is also undercutting India’s institutions in unprecedented ways. It has made a mockery of India’s rich tradition of civil liberties by charging activists and dissidents with crimes under colonial-era laws. One egregious example is the left-wing activists detained under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for alleged links to Maoist groups and allegedly fomenting riots. One of the accused, lifelong Jesuit activist Rev. Stan Swamy, died in custody last year. Furthermore, Modi and the BJP have co-opted much of the media and essential private sector actors. Journalists have faced intimidation and harassment; prominent nongovernmental organizations have been cut off from foreign funding, while others can receive overseas money only into accounts with a government-owned bank.

The 1947 Partition created two newly-independent states - India and Pakistan - and triggered perhaps the most significant movement of people in history, outside of war and famine. About 12 million people became refugees. Between half a million and a million people were killed in religious violence.

Not surprisingly, the most critical lessons from the independence movement seem to be lost on India’s contemporary leaders, as shown by their approach to religious pluralism and democratic institutions. Although India’s leading revolutionaries were committed to nonviolence, tensions between Hindus and Muslims marred the independence movement. These tensions pulled the British Raj apart, and two new countries emerged in its place: India and Pakistan. This week also marks the anniversary of the Partition of India, which triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters as Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were forced to flee in different directions across the new border. A few months later, India and Pakistan went to war over the status of Jammu and Kashmir—a disagreement that still plagues the subcontinent.

In the face of these tensions, India and Pakistan’s leaders charted opposing courses. India’s leaders advanced a progressive and modern vision for their new country, eschewing a national Hindu religion in favor of a secular identity. They worked hard to minimize religious tensions by speaking against communal strife and promoting religious protections. When Gandhi was assassinated in 1948—for supposedly being a supplicant to the Muslim community—his political heirs continued to push for a liberal vision of India. Working with the opposition, they produced a constitution that enshrined a liberal and secular democracy that remains in force today.

On the other hand, Pakistan struggled. The country’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, led the Muslim League that split from the Indian National Congress. But he was rarely straightforward in his vision for Pakistan: There is some evidence that he wanted a secular state, but he also called for an Islamic republic. When Jinnah died in 1948, he left behind a political mess. Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan’s first prime minister, rejected amendments offered by the opposition in his founding document, which became a precursor to the country’s 1956 constitution that gave Islam, its pride of place in the project of Pakistan. By turning to communalism, Pakistan has suffered as political actors stir religious tensions to benefit their ends. Without credible institutions or norms that allow political differences to be resolved, the country cannot maintain political order.

 

1) James Crabtree, The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age, 2008, p. 123.

2) The Brotherhood in Saffron. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism, 1987, p. 133.

 

 

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