Are Hindu Nationalists Tearing Apart India’s Unity
A march of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh members. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
July 29, 2023
The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) is “at the center of power” in India, writes Walter Russell Mead in the Wall Street Journal this week. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined the RSS at age 8…” The Hindu nationalist ideology of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, Mead says, is sourced from the RSS.
“What drives Hindu nationalism is less antagonism against Islam than fear for the future of India,” he adds. The Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires fell apart and the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia disappeared almost overnight, says Mead.
India though has never been an empire nor was it a construct of an ideology as was the case with the Soviet Union.
Mead, a columnist for the Journal, is a Professor at Bard College, New York. He wrote the column after participating in a conference in Udaipur, India, organized by the India Foundation, “with a group of Hindu nationalist intellectuals and political figures aligned” with the RSS.
Mead accepts the RSS’ claims of protecting India’s unity, ignoring fresh evidence which undermines such claims.
Last week, for instance, India’s Supreme Court heard a petition by the Archaeological Survey of India to conduct an excavation to determine whether the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, was built in the 17th century on the site of a demolished temple.
In 1992, Hindu Nationalist mobs tore down the Babri Masjid, a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya, also in Uttar Pradesh. More than a thousand people were killed in Hindu Muslim clashes which erupted across India following the mosque’s demolition.
Modi played a leading role in the movement launched by Hindu Nationalists in 1984, seeking the mosque’s demolition. The movement helped the BJP win elections in several states, including Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. Later this year, Modi is expected to open to the public a Ram Temple, built on the site of the demolished mosque.
“For decades, Hindu nationalists have laid claim to several high-profile mosques, arguing they were originally Hindu temples, or holy sites desecrated by Muslim emperors hundreds of years ago,” according to a report on the Gyanvapi mosque in The Washington Post. “Their demands…have gained traction under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.”
Mead makes no mention of this latest effort by Hindu nationalists to escalate Hindu Muslim tensions for purely political gains, which pose a major threat to India’s unity and security.
A march by Bajrang Dal, the street force of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Mead is also silent on the alleged rape of two Christian women, who were dragged naked by a Hindu mob in Manipur. The horrific violence, with video cllips posted on social media, was criticized by media around the globe last week, including in The Wall Street Journal.
Since the violence in Manipur began in early May, at least 125 have been killed, dozens of women and girls have been raped and 40,000 displaced from their homes. The northeastern state is ruled by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
As The Guardian reported, civil rights activists believe rape and sexual violence has been systematically used as a weapon in “revenge attacks” against women from the Christian Kuki community by Hindu Meitei mobs.
The Meiteis account for slightly more than half of the state’s 3.7 million population. They live mostly in the valley that includes the state capital Imphal. They have long sought Scheduled Tribe status in order to qualify for government jobs and jobs at government-run institutions, including banks and insurance companies, as well as seats in medical, engineering, and other educational institutions, which are reserved for tribals.
Policy analysts point out that granting tribal status to the Meitei would mean fewer jobs and education seats for Kukis, Nagas and other tribals who currently qualify as tribal candidates. The Kukis, 90% of whom are Christians, and other tribes account for roughly 40% of Manipur’s population. The Kukis live largely in the hilly areas surrounding Imphal.
Modi’s government has sent 30,000 army and other security forces to patrol the state. However, the violence continues.
Manipur is in a remote part of Northeastern India, which itself is connected by a narrow land corridor to India. Manipur shares a nearly 250-mile border with Myanmar. The Kukis are of the same ethnic lineage as Myanmar’s Chin community.
India and China share a 2,100-mile-long border and the two armies clashed briefly in December last year. China claims that large parts of India’s northeast, especially the state of Arunachal Pradesh which it calls “South Tibet”, is part of China.
So now, in addition to Kashmir which borders Pakistan, there is a second vital border state torn apart by religious conflict, in large part fueled by Hindu nationalists. Hence it is odd that Mead states that “he left Udaipur more hopeful than when I arrived,” about RSS’ role in using the ancient Hindu religion and culture to “bring a united and self-confident India into the 21st century.”
In fact, in 2021, several former chiefs and senior officials of India’s armed forces wrote to Modi stating that calls by some Hindu nationalists to launch a genocide against Muslims “not only constitute serious breaches of internal security, but which could also tear apart the social fabric of our nation.”
Muslims in India total around 200 million, roughly 14% of the country’s 1.4 billion population. Launching a genocide against Muslims has been part of Hindu Nationalists ideology for nearly a century.
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), who led a Hindu nationalist group from 1937 to 1943, was an admirer of Nazi Germany. He wanted the Hindus to deal with the Muslims in India in a manner similar to how the Nazis treated Jews, according to several researchers.
“A Nation is formed by a majority living therein. What did the Jews do in Germany? They being in minority were driven out of Germany,” Savarkar wrote, according to research published by Marzia Casolari, an Italian historian. The “Indian Muslims are on the whole more inclined to identify themselves and their interests with Muslims outside India than Hindus who live next door, like Jews in Germany,” Savarkar added.
The 2021 letter by retired officials of the Indian armed forces, which was published by The Wire, added “in view of the current situation on our borders, any breach of peace and harmony within the Nation will embolden inimical external forces. The unity and cohesiveness of our men and women in uniform…will be seriously affected by allowing such blatant calls for violence against one or the other community in our diverse and plural society.”
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