Facing Extermination Characters
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OME years ago, in the city of Bombay, a young Muslim Splaywright wrote and staged a play that had gods — Hindu gods and goddesses — as major Facing Extermination characters. Such plays are not uncommon in India; some would say A Report on the Present State of the Gods that they are all too common. This one and Goddesses in South Asia also included gods and goddesses who were heroic, grand, scheming and comical. This provoked not the Ashis Nandy audience but Hindu nationalists, particularly the Hindu Mahasabha, a at least some Hindus felt that on that the particular style of interaction spent political force for a long time, day Hindutva might have won, but humans have with gods and in Bombay. This city is now being Hinduism had certainly lost. It had lost goddesses. Deities in everyday dominated by a more powerful Hindu because a tradition at least fifteen Hinduism, from the heavily Brahminic nationalist formation, the Shiv Sena. hundred years old (things might have to the aggressively non-Brahminic, It is doubtful if those who claimed been different in the pre-epic days) are not entities outside everyday life, they had been provoked were really was sought to be dismantled. During nor do they preside over life from provoked. It is more likely that they these fifteen hundred years, a crucial outside, but are a constituent of life. pretended to be offended and identifier of Hinduism — as a religion, Their presence is telescoped not only precipitated an incident to make their a culture and a way of life — has been into one’s transcendental self but, to political presence felt. After all, use Alan Roland’s tripartite such plays have been written in division, also into one’s familial India since time immemorial. and individualised selves and Vikram Savarkar of Hindu even into one’s most light- Mahasabha — a grandson of hearted, comical, naughty Vinayak Damodar Savarkar moments.2 Gods are above and (1883-1966), the non-believing beyond humans but are, father of Hindu nationalism who paradoxically, not outside the thoughtfully gifted South Asia human fraternity.3 You can adore the concept of Hindutva — or love them, you can disown or organised a demonstration in attack them, you can make them front of the theatre where the butts of your wit and sarcasm. play was being staged, caught Savarkar, not being literate in hold of the playwright, and matters of faith and pitiably threatened to lynch him. picking up ideas from the culture Ultimately Savarkar’s gang of Anglo-India to turn Hinduism forced the writer to bow down into a ‘proper’ religion from an and touch Savarkar’s feet, to inchoate pagan faith, was only apologise for writing the play. ensuring the humiliating defeat The humiliation of the young of Hinduism as it is known to playwright was complete; it was most Hindus. duly photographed and Since about the middle of the published in newspapers and last century, perhaps beginning news magazines. from the 1820s, there has been a Though Savarkar later deep embarrassment and claimed that Hinduism had won, discontent with the lived for he had not allowed a Muslim experience of Hinduism, the to do what Muslims had not Makhanchor: Krishna’s mischievous pranks, experience which paradoxically allowed Hindus to do with such as stealing butter reenacted by this child on the young Muslim playwright, Islam’s symbols of the sacred, Janmashtami No.99 (March-April 1997) 5 Savarkar’s victim, represented. is the same, as Ernest Gellner Vikram Savarkar is only the last believes, Hindu nationalist in a galaxy of people — Hindus, thought cannot be any different, non-Hindus, Indians, non- we are sure.5 If you, however, Indians — who have felt read the Hindutva literature, you uncomfortable with the over- will find in it a systematic, populated Indian pantheon, its consistent, often direct attack on richly textured, pagan Hindu gods and goddesses. personalities, their Most stalwarts of Hindutva have unpredictability, variety and all not been interested in Hindu too human foibles. For nearly religion and have said so openly. 150 years, we have been seeing Their tolerance for the rituals and a concerted, systematic effort myths of their faith has been even to either eliminate these gods less. Many of them have come to and goddesses from Indian life Hindutva as a reaction to or to tame them and make them everyday, vernacular Hinduism. behave. I am saying ‘Indian’ This rejection is a direct product and not ‘Hindu’ life self- of nineteenth century Indian consciously, for these gods modernity and its models of the and goddesses not only ideal Hindu as a Vedantic populate the Hindu world but European or, for that matter, regularly visit and occasionally Vedantic Muslim. That is why poach on territories outside it. until recently in no shakha of the They are not strangers outside Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh 4 India, either. By indirectly Bharat Mata: the imperialist goddess of Hindu or RSS, the voluntary force that participating in the effort to nationalists being used to exterminate the vast constitutes the steel frame of retool or gentrify them that has pantheon of gods and goddess Hindu nationalism, there could been going on for over one be, by the conventions of the hundred years, Savarkar was RSS, any icon of any deity except only following the tradition of Baptist reform movements, from Brahmo Bharatmata, Mother India. The evangelists like William Carey and Samaj to Arya Samaj, have been Ramjanmabhumi temple is the first Joshua Marshman and the rationalist dutifully picked up by formations till temple for which the RSS has shed religious and social reformers such as recently at the periphery of politics in any tear or shown any concern and Rammohun Roy and Dayanand India, such as the ones centering that concern, to judge by their Saraswati in nineteenth century India, around Hindutva. Today, participation in worship or rituals at who felt that the country’s main overwhelmed by the experience of the the temple, seems skin-deep. problem was its idolatry and the rather Ramjanmabhumi movement and the In 1990-91 I had interviewed at poor personal quality of its gods and destruction of the Babri mosque at great length the chief priest of the goddesses. These reformers wanted Ayodhya, we no longer care to read Ramjanmabhumi temple itself, Baba Indians to get rid of their superfluous the entire Hindutva literature Lal Das, a remarkably courageous, deities and either live in a fully produced over the last seventy five ecumenical man of religion who was secularised, sanitised world in which years. We think we know what they murdered soon after the mosque was rationality and scientific truth would have to say. If all nationalist thought demolished. He told me that during prevail or, alternatively, set up a proper the previous seven years of the monotheistic God like the ‘proper’ For nearly 150 years, we movement in support of the temple, Christians and Muslims had. Vikram have been seeing a no major political leader of the Savarkar was attacking in the movement had cared to worship at the playwright a part of his self no longer concerted, systematic effort temple, except one who had got a puja acceptable, but not easy to disown to either eliminate these done through a third party without either. gods and goddesses from herself visiting the temple. I may tell The early attacks on the gods and Indian life or to tame them at this point my favourite story about goddesses by the various Hindu and make them behave. the devotion to Ram of the Hindu 6 MANUSHI nationalists. Once, in the course of Gods and goddesses may campus. And Sabarimala, one of the his only visit to an RSS shakha, more potent deities in South India, is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi survive as potentialities even also known for his Muslim friend.) looked around and found on the walls in the most austerely Gods and goddesses are not of the shakha portraits of some of the monotheistic, anti idolatrous unknown even in starkly famous martial heroes of Hindutva faiths. monotheistic religions. They may not such as Shivaji and Rana Pratap. Being be there centre stage, but are waiting a devotee of Ram, Gandhi naturally just outside the doors of idolatrous faiths. They are not asked, ‘Why have you not put up a consciousness. Most of the anger permitted into the main hall, but they portrait of Ram also?’ Those were not against Satanic Verses was inspired are there, just outside the door, the days of the Ramjanmabhumi by the gratuitous insults Rushdie constantly threatening to enter the movement and the RSS leader heaped on some of Islam’s revered main hall uninvited, as in some of the showing him around said ‘No, that we figures, but a part of it might also have best known Indonesian mosques cannot do. Ram is too effeminate to been a response to the latent fear that where the entrance doors and serve our purpose.’ the banished might return. In boundary walls are guarded or I am not going to speak about particular, the non-Islamic or pre- manned by Hindu or Buddhist gods such tense styles of relating to gods Islamic forms of consciousness which and goddesses. (The reverse also and goddesses, which invites one to the book unwittingly invokes may or holds true. Some gods and goddesses fight their causes without caring for may not threaten ‘mainstream’ Islam, do have a special symbolic place for them. I am going to speak about gods but continue to haunt many Islamic anti-polytheism. Lord Thirupathi, the and goddesses who inhabit the world communities in those parts of the presiding deity nowadays of India’s that we live in, sometimes as house world where such forms are no longer high politics, has a Muslim son-in-law guests, sometimes as our neighbour’s one’s distant, integrated past.