No one has made Hindus less of everything they claim to be (peaceful, tolerant, scientific, inclusive, flexible, open to change, not slaves to a single book or ideology, non-violent, patriotic, rational, having and offering freedom of choice and worship even to the extent of accommodating atheistic streams, being able to absorb all external influences and beliefs into its core, varied, diverse, etc.) than the current regime that wants to believe these very characteristics to be their virtues.
No one has made Muslims more of everything they fight to disprove about themselves (violent, rigid, intolerant, regressive, living in the past, bounden to a single book, stubborn about centuries-old ideas of diet and dress, clannish, tribal, exclusive, ghettoised, misogynist, insecure, unreasonable, given to being secretive, anti-national and pro-Muslim even when those Muslims are villains, etc.) than the current regime that accuses Muslims of all of the above vices.
Needless to say, none of the abovelisted virtues and vices is actually representative of the believers on either side. It’s just a list of things that, as explained, each side either believes they are or they do not wish to be. Unfortunately for everyone around, this regime is accentuating the vices and repressing the virtues.
In the meanwhile, having been refused any other identity but their immediate religious one, the Hindu and the Muslim have only two choices ahead of them:
1. Reject that identity, defy the present dispensation, and move away from what they are being forced to accept as theirs so as to protest the imposition of the stereotype;
2. Reinforce that identity, go further into it, and own it as a protest against the insistence that nothing other than that defines them.
The more educated (I have used this word very carefully here) Hindus and Muslims are trying to do the former. The less educated are unfortunately doing the latter, because that seems to be the immediate reaction from the gut.
So, while the educated Hindus are distancing themselves from this new Hindutva, it is being adopted by the uneducated lot, thereby changing the character of the faith itself, making the what passes as ‘Hinduism’ today less and less what most practitioners of the religion would have recognised as their religion. That means with each passing day, a garden-variety Hindu is getting less and less Hindu, either if they are educated (and thus moving away from today’s Hindutva), or if they are not and are practising some extremist variant of the religion that is unrecognised as everyday Hinduism. So, we have fewer and fewer Hindus, which is ironic because this regime wants more and more of them!
On the other hand, while privileged Muslims are fighting hard to stay moderate and conciliatory, the not-so-privileged ones are being forced to become more and more hardline by being pushed into a corner and being constantly reminded of their religious identity rather than being recognised as humans with multiple facets to their personality, making what passes as ‘Islam’ today more and more like the Islam of the past and less and less the progressive cultural and spiritual movement that most of its leading practitioners and the enlightened amongst their leaders 100 years ago would have recognised. That means with each passing day, a garden variety Muslim is getting more and more radicalised, moving toward the fundamentalist and regressive parts of their religion, indeed becoming in a way, more and more Muslim, which is ironic once again because this regime wants fewer and fewer of them.
Indeed, as I have said again and again:
Nobody has made more Hindus less Hindu than a regime that wants more Hindus; nobody has made more Muslims more Muslim than a regime that wants fewer Muslims.
P.S: Talk of what Hindus and Muslims were 100 years ago reminded me that today’s RW isn’t much different from the RW 100 years ago, except it is in power and has control of all the institutions of democracy: the press, the judiciary, the police, the army, the treasury, the legislature, and the mind-space of the people via online media. And I have come to believe (and unfortunately accept as inevitable) that the end will also be the same as what happened to us then: a Balkanisation of this beautiful multicultural, multilingual, multicoloured, ancient land, just like the split that was a result of the polarisation then. Just like there are dozens of mini-Savarkars and Golwalkars that are born and are active in public life today, there will be, soon, as many mini-Jinnahs and Suhrawardys. And many more Godses. How many more Gandhis would we need to produce to counter that? And how many more Nehrus, Patels, Azads, Ambedkars, and Kamarajars? How many more Udhams and Bhagats? Do you think the Indian soil has that kind of fertility left in it? Or am I merely fantasising?
