Source: The Hindu
I wanted to make a list of temples in India that may surprise the upper caste, urban-born-and-raised, degree-holding, top 10% middle class, and I spent quite some time doing it. Until I realised that there are literally hundreds of these and dozens of articles you can read online about these. I do not need to make a separate list.
There are temples to Ravana, Duryodhana, Narendra Modi, Amitabh Bachhan, and Sonia Gandhi. There are temples dedicated to rats and dogs, one even to a Royal Enfield 350cc Classic Bullet. There are temples where infants are thrown from rooftops, and those where the devotees offer clocks, another where they offer aircraft models, and even others where the Lord prefers Munch chocolates. And then, there are temples of Kaali, a goddess that is the centre of much recent controversy, where lewd songs are sung to please the goddess, and temples where Chinese food is the expected offering. Indeed, there are temples where liquor is routinely offered to the gods and goddesses, several Shiva temples where marijuana offerings and consumption is normalised, and meat and fish are considered de rigueur as prasad to Maa Kali in Bengal.
Then, there are parts of Hinduism where the devotee is naked and parts where they are expected to cover even their hair.
There are other, even more, bizarre and unusual temples, gods, and rituals & worship that exist around us in and outside India, all of which claim to be part of Hinduism. And not the fringe Hinduism. Mainstream Hinduism. None can claim to the one and only right way. For all those that claim that Hinduism is simply ‘a way of life’ and not an organised religion, this is how it looks in practice.
The problem that exists is this: While in the much-touted Sanatana Dharma, all of the above are valid ways to worship, all the gods and temples listed above (and more) are legitimate routes to communing with the divine, all the offerings and prasads are part of tradition and ritual and nothing to be surprised about, leave alone take objection against or be offended by, the only version of Hinduism that this government and its backers seem to consider ‘official’ and ‘authorised’ is that of the Benarasi or Puneri or Amdavadi or Bihari Brahmin and Baniya. It is the only ‘pure’ religion.
The problem with India is our completely unnecessary, fruitless, and impossible pursuit towards a notion of ‘purity’ that we claim is undefinable except by ‘I know it when I see it’, where the ‘I’ is the Puneri/Banarasi/Amdavadi Brahmin/Baniya.
This fight isn’t just for India and the idea of India that the liberals and atheists, the democrats and secular humanists, the rationalists and freethinkers, the social reformers and social justice warriors have to fight.
Make no mistakes. This fight is also about Hinduism. Indeed, this fight is mainly about Hinduism. The idea of India is simply collateral damage. If you are a true Hindu, if you consider yourself Sanatani, you need to realise that this regime, this government, this administration is the greatest ‘khatra‘ you and your faith has faced in the history of Hindu thought, belief, and practice.
But will you realise this truth? Will the Hindu come together as a force for good and stop this decline before it is too late? Will the Hindu organise and coalesce into a force to reckon with? Will the Hindu put up a joint front to stop the destruction of Hinduism? I say: fat chance. Why?
Because of the total of almost 1 billion Hindus in India, over 45% are OBCs, 19% SCs, and 11% ST. That means that the upper castes contribute about 25% of the population (this is, of course, an iteration from school admissions data, given how cagey every Indian government has been about a genuine caste census). In all probability, you, who are reading this, are from the remaining 25% (called the ‘General’ category, or by people like you, ‘Merit’).
That means that you will not intermarry with the other 75%, you will not hire them, you will not eat with them or let them eat from the same plates as you. Indeed, if one of them visits you, chances are you will find them ‘dirty’ and will serve them in paper or plastic utensils. Unless they are so highly qualified and well-to-do that you will have no other alternative but to treat them, at least superficially (and only superficially) as equals. Indeed, you will create explanations and justifications in your mind about how they are now, given their education and wealth, ‘practically Brahmin’ (insert Rajput or Baniya or whatever in place of ‘Brahmin’). You will grudge them seats in educational institutes and government jobs. You will smirk and snigger at their choice of colours and their symbols. You will mock their language and cuisine. You will turn up your nose at their fashion and likes in music & art. You will look down upon their political and social leadership and you will hold in contempt anyone from that 75% who has indeed made it big, like into a Supreme Court judge or a crack sportsperson or an IAS ranker or a renowned surgeon or a popular artist or a politician of import.
If they stay, you will expect them to rise no more over their assigned profession and station in life as dictated by their ancestors who you persecuted and subjugated. If they leave, you’ll call them traitors, forcible converts, and rice-baggers. They cannot win. In short, you will not consider them as part of the community, the biradari, the equivalent of the Islamic ‘Ummah‘. Why, again?
Because you do not consider them Hindu, or at least not Hindu enough. You think they do not understand ‘your’ religion. Because you believe, and very earnestly at that, that you and you alone are the sole purveyor of your religion and that only you get to define it. And they are but children, to be guided, herded, and instructed on the correct way, and when needed, punished, even while not treating them even half as kindly or well as you would actual children.
You are, in your obviously dissonant hypocrisy, in your intellectually stunted limitation, and in your moral bankruptcy combined with a narcissistic sense of misplaced self-importance, the enablers of this regime that is trying to usurp this ancient and mind-bogglingly diverse religion and appropriate it into their narrow, bigoted, and extremely short-sighted political philosophy where their compasses and templates are the monotheistic faiths as they existed about a few hundred years from their foundation. They are making you into everything you claim you aren’t, and are in fact opposed to.
And how do the 75% react? Unfortunately, and I have to be honest here, they seem to follow your lead. They seem to have bought your story hook, line, and sinker. They are being brainwashed into thinking that you are the sole arbiters of what is and what is not a Hindu. And you get to judge everyone and their faith and decide the degree of Hinduness each of their utterances and actions have.
They have lustily cheered you on and wholeheartedly voted for your kind of politics. They keep electing back the same people, even if the incumbents haven’t managed to procure something as basic as oxygen in the time of a pandemic, or medicine, or quarantining space, or even cremation grounds, even if a minister’s son mows down peaceful protestors with his vehicle in broad daylight on camera, even if your taxes are increased to a point that a substantial part of your income goes to the government even when you don’t even make enough to qualify to pay income tax, even if fuel is so expensive that you no longer use your scooter, even if all your money was one day arbitrarily cancelled and you were asked to beg for some of it just so you could buy food, even if your small business has gone bust because of a combination of inflation, lack of demand (which is funny, given that there is also inflation), and the muscling in on your territory by businesses so big, they can buy a government (or three), and even if there is a possibility to get up and rise against the very people causing such misery to them, and they know of such a possibility, but are brainwashed to a degree that they cannot see the obvious.
Do you think this is because they agree with your definition of Hinduism? I doubt it. From the looks of it, to me this is indistinguishable from Stockholm Syndrome.
The ‘lower’ 75% Hindus are hostages to the ‘upper’ 25%. Like how the Indians were to the British, even though the actual percentage of British Europeans on the Indian subcontinent was never more than a percent of the population. It was just that we were so convinced of their superiority and our inferiority that we did not think it in the realm of the possible to rise collectively and throw them out. When we did, it took very little time.
The 75% are the same. The 25% have managed to convince them that they belong where they are. That the overlordship of the 25% is for ther own benefit. That without this ‘supervision’, they’d regress and lose their position, so hard-earned, in ther world. That they’d be orphans. That indeed they are happy. That they would be worse off outside the system than inside it, however oppressive this system is. That they and their faith (as defined by the 25%) are not safe under anyone else but the 25%’s. That their very way of life is threatened, under ‘khatra‘ from every direction and everyone else.
Except the 25%. From whom the actual danger arises and is kept simmering constantly. Because if the pot stops boiling or the fire dies down, the 75% will realise that they’ve been had. And will then turn on the very people who have used their strength and numbers to rule over this land for millennia.
That will be the day the real khatra on Hinduism will vanish. Along with the Brahmanical version of the religion. And the true ancient Indian religion (that Hinduism is often conflated with), which is simply a celebration of nature and everything that she includes, will be reborn.
If indeed I, an atheist, had to choose a religion (under the threat of violence, basically at gunpoint) with which I can identify, it would be one with rituals and traditions that include lots of celebrations and festivals, food and drink, music, art, and dancing, and filled with kindness & generosity towards family, friends, even strangers. A religion whose sole motto is: to each their own. A religion that truly loves life. Like humans, in their short time on this planet, really should.
N.B: My views on what modern Hinduism has been for the past millennia (or more) have not changed.
