Rumblings of Hindu revivalism under Indian PM Modi

Nine weeks after Indian prime minister Narendra Modi assumed office, heading a Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, trends of apparent bigotry have begun to emerge.

Two BJP-aligned legislators from the idyllic holiday state of Goa have said they were confident Modi would develop India into a Hindu nation. Other senior party associates propagated Hindutva or Hindu hegemony, openly and privately.

Modi has not reacted to the rumblings, which include veiled threats by senior Hindu leaders against India’s Muslim community, which comprises about 14 per cent of India’s population of 1.25 billion.

The shadow of the 2002 Muslim pogrom in Modi’s western home state of Gujarat, of which he was chief minister until he became prime minister, still hangs over him. He was never indicted for the unrest in which some 1,200 people died but his inability to control the rioting raised disturbing questions.

“India seems to have elected to office a nationalist Hindu family over a domineering political dynasty,” said political analyst Seema Mustafa. She was referring to the BJP and its numerous right-wing offshoots that replaced the Nehru Gandhi-led Congress Party in May following general elections.

But it is in the field of schooling that the BJP’s apparent Hindu agenda is emerging.

In Gujarat the BJP provincial government has mandated the work of Hindu scholar Dinanath Batra as supplementary reading in some 30,000 schools.

Batra, an 85-year old Hindu xenophobe, wants to overhaul India’s education system, which he claims has been “distorted by Marx and Macaulay”, a reference to the 19th century British colonist who introduced the English language and culture to India.

“We should reject western education because it has not given our ancient wisdom its due” Batra said, demanding that the federal education ministry stop teaching foreign languages and remove all English and Urdu words from school textbooks in Hindi.

Batra, who heads the Indian education policy commission, is associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or national volunteer corps, India’s powerful but shadowy Hindu revivalist organisation, the BJP’s founding mentor.

Proscribed
Created in 1925 as a right-wing, paramilitary volunteer Hindu organisation, the RSS, which Modi joined as a teenager, has been proscribed twice since India's independence in 1947 for its extremist beliefs and concomitant activities.

Its fundamental role is to defend Hinduism by keeping it “pure” from outside influences such as Islam and Christianity. The assassin of Mahatma Gandhi reportedly subscribed to RSS tenets, murdering Gandhi because of his secular approach to India’s minority, Muslim community.

Batra’s beliefs echo RSS ideology. Besides rejecting western values, he also dismisses foreign inventions and technological claims and uses stories of gods, demons and ancient saints to interpret Indian history.

More recently Batra was responsible, after a protracted legal battle, for forcing the publisher Penguin to withdraw a book on Hinduism by US Indologist and Sanskrit scholar Wendy Doniger.

Flying chariot
The self-professed historian and custodian of Indian traditions and values maintains that the world's first aircraft was the "flying chariot" used by mythological Hindu god Lord Rama. A rudimentary motor car existed too, he has said, in prehistoric, Vedic India as the "Yantra Rath" or horseless chariot.

Television and stem-cell research, Batra claims, date back to the Mahabharata, the major Sanskrit epic of ancient India.

Another claim involves a childless royal couple in ancient times being blessed with offspring following prolonged worship of cows. Traditionally Hindus consider cows holy and worship them.

Batra’s numerous books also contain moral and political prescriptions. These include depicting India’s geographical boundaries in keeping with the RSS’s idea of an Akhand or Greater Bharat (India) that encompasses Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and even Mynamar.

He strongly recommends that birthdays should not be celebrated by blowing out candles on a cake, as that is a western practice. Instead, Batra suggests wearing traditional clothes, holding community prayers, reciting mantras and feeding cows.

Leading Indian historians have dismissed Batra’s books as “fantasy”. Delhi-based S Irfan Habib described them as “hilarious but scary”. Romila Thapar, who specialises in ancient India, dismissed Batra’s works as “absurd”.