Book review: When Dalai Lama backed VHP formation and other stories

Chennai: The rise of the ‘Hindutva’ ideology on the wings of the ‘Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP)’ since the mid-1980s’, its expansive phase in the ‘Ram Janma Bhoomi Movement’ tagged with other ‘Sangh Parivar’ outfits, which eventually brought the BJP to power in several States and then at the Centre, first as heading a coalition led by Shri. A.B. Vajpayee and L K. Advani, and later under Narendra Modi, is by now a fairly well documented story by contemporary scholars.

Perhaps not so well known are the many nuances, small twists and turns underpinning this broader narrative, which draw from a diverse set of sources, as wide ranging from centuries-old Hindu mythology, medieval era ‘Bakthi’ traditions that still form the bedrock of Hindu theism, a humid historical phase since the British colonial period that set the ‘Sanatanists’, the Hindu hardliners and the Hindu orthodoxy firmly against anything associated with Islam, to culminating in a systematic anti-Gandhi tirade.

In this new space of the politics of ‘Hindu Nationalism’, of considerable interest is the role of Swami Satyamitranand Giri, an inspiring leader of the VHP and founder of the ‘Bharat Maata Temple’ at Haridwar, who “had a strong following among the Gujarati Patels in India and overseas”. Equally noteworthy is a nugget that Swami Satyamitranand, along “with the Dalai Lama (the Tibetan Spiritual Guru)’, the head Ladakhi Lama, three Shankaracharyas and two former vice-chancellors of the Banaras Hindu University, were among those who supported the formation of the VHP.”    

The present book under review, “Devi, The Goddesses of India”, jointly edited by reputed academic scholars, John Stratton Hawley, Chair of the Department of Religion at Barnard College and until recently director of the Southern Asian Institute of Colombia University, and Donna Marie Wulff, associate Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University, abounds with such ringing sociological insights and historical trends, both anchored in a deep, religious, seemingly metaphysical re-articulation of the Hindu religious identity and Indian State as a ‘Hindu Goddess (Bharat Maata)’.

The trend itself is nothing new, picturing the Nation as a “loving Mother surrounded by her devoted children”, the theme of a ‘militant Hinduism’ drawing sustenance from an earlier history of Bengal by Sarala Devi, during British rule, and the dramatic performance of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s anti-British novel, ‘Anandamath (“Monastery of Bliss)’, analyses the scholar Lise Mckean, Managing Editor of ‘Public Culture’, and a researcher in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, in her seminal essay titled, ‘Bharat Maata- Mother India and Her Militant Matriots’ in this collection of essays.

Thus ‘patriotism’ came to be suffused with a “complex heritage of the mythological elaboration and the ritual worship of Hindu Goddesses (Devi, Sakthi) that is particularly strong in Bengal,” writes the author. However, she notes that this “invented tradition (of imagining India as a Hindu Goddess),” was never static, as borne out by subsequent historical developments. This dynamic sub-text has been read variously by different interest /class /caste groups including ‘secular Nationalists’ like Nehru to the ‘Hindu Nationalists’ of today; so much so with a better economically empowered Indian middle class, ‘Hindu Nationalism’ has been on upswing.

Nonetheless, says the author, it was the VHP in 1983 that brought Veer Savarkar’s “Hindutva” back to life with its ‘Ekatmata Yajna’, a six-week event, in which “Shrines mounted on the back of trucks took Bharat Maata, Ganga Maa (Mother Ganges) and Lord Shiva to the people for mass rituals of public worship and included as well was a mobile Bharat Maata temple.” It was a clarion call for a religion-based ‘cultural unity’ and was followed by an “updated version of the Rath Yatra”, through cities, towns and villages, from the Haridwar in the North to the southern tip of Kanyakumari. And Swami Satyamitranand plays an “extraordinary” role as a VHP leader, more than even Shri. Ashok Singhal, particularly in raising a temple for ‘Bharat Maata’, at Hardwar, to “popularize Hindu nationalist ideology”.

With Savarkar’s tactical declaration that everyone was “originally” a Hindu, irrespective of being from an ‘other’ religion, the Dalai Lama’s blessings to the formation of VHP, by implication, should come as no political surprise, notwithstanding the relationship between VHP and the RSS, having its own dynamics. Savarkar’s nationalist tenet, asserting that “Sanatanis, Jains, Buddhists, Arya Samajis and Sikhs are all Hindus is enshrined in the level of the temple that is specifically dedicated to saints and religious teachers,” says Lise Mckean.

In sum, the VHP’s project in the mid-1980s’ was the first big one in post-Independent India to apply the “principles of Hindu nationalism”. The political consolidation by the BJP was on that sub-structure, though it now displays a new patriarchy at the top, a spirit repugnant to the centuries-old cults of ‘Mother Goddesses’ or ‘Devis’ as manifested in many parts of India, where including Bengal and South, primacy is accorded to the feminine divine forms. Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswathi and Amman are no mere names.

Lise Mcken, on a cautionary note though, rounds off saying that the Hindu nationalist movement is positing a narrow, binary dilemma, either/or, now/ never choice for the people, by combining the ‘Bharat Maata’ cult with Hindu militancy. This has serious implications for a pluralistic society.

Lord Vishnu and Sri (Goddess Lakshmi) are inseparable and yet Goddess Lakshmi is accorded an ‘autonomous’ status, whether it be Ranganayaki in Srirangam or Padmavathi in Tiruchanur near Tirupati, alongside the mystical Tamil poetess Aandal in the Vaishnavite tradition in Tamil Nadu - happily there is no Vairamuthu echo in that section.

There is then the amazing reverence for the ferocious, yet beautiful all-evil slaying Durga in Bengal, benign all-embracing mysticism of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, one of the most vibrant forms of feminine worship in South, Chottanikkara Bhagavati Amman in Kerala, the evergreen charm and love of the Radhe-Krishna cult running from Bengal to Gujarat, to current western views on Goddess ‘Kaali’, in the context of gender issues and new interest in ‘Goddess spirituality’ in taking on traditional patriarchic Gods.

All these and other absorbing essays in this thought-provoking volume straddles the multiple dimensions of Indian society itself through the centuries, with its multi-layered semantics in religion from Rig Vedic times (Wendy Doniger’s piece on the Hindu mythology surrounding the Rig Vedic Goddess Saranyu who she says “stands at the watershed of the Indian Goddess tradition” is brilliant), to popular culture, art and films of our times. This exceptional volume comes as both a treat and a sobering lesson.