Whose Hindu way' is really open to all who live in India?

If Hindu rashtra becomes inevitable, how should India’s Muslims and Christians go about taking evasive action, and will they be the only ones that need to? We are not talking about the reasons why such an eventuality could descend on us sooner or later. It’s not about Sitaram Yechury losing the crucial vote on the Communist Party’s anti-BJP strategy in the decision-making central committee. It’s not even about Rahul Gandhi being made to believe (falsely) that his temple-hopping got him the votes in Gujarat, when it was actually three unrelated youngsters who shored up the campaign.  When the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won, what then? What should Muslims and Christians do? Or, for that matter, what can the Dabholkars, the Kalburgis, the rationalist followers of Gauri Lankesh and Govind Pansare do to take evasive action? Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the ideological guru of the idea of Hindu rashtra, said adopt the Hindu way of life and be saved. That was an offer Hitler didn’t make to the Jews. The question is, what constitutes his Hindu way? The search is as desperate as the answer is elusive.

One can become a Muslim by reciting the kalima, and a Christian by a similar process. One can go to Buddhism or adopt the Sikh way, more or less with a degree of clarity about the house rules. There is no such clarity with Hinduism. Our history teachers told us that Hindus could not be fundamentalists as there are no fundamentals to follow. There’s no single book, no overarching ritual either. You can be an atheist and be a Hindu if I am right. So what is the Hindu way? What are its do’s and don’ts? Ahsan Jafri wrote paeans to Meera, Buddha, Nanak all his life as a Nehruvian dreamer. He was chopped to pieces and his remains burnt by the mob that attacked his house in Ahmedabad. Before him Rasoolan Bai’s home was burnt down in the same city under Congress rule. She hardly sang a song without reference to Ram or Krishna. That evidently didn’t help her. What is the trick they missed out on, something to comply with Golwalkar’s breathtaking generosity that could have saved them from mob?

If I remember right, Khushwant Singh once put the question to Guruji, as Golwalkar is known. He replied that Christians should stop converting Hindus. When asked about Muslims, he said: “What about Muslims?” The answer left the usually unstoppable writer neither here nor there. So, again, what is the Hindu life insurance policy for those under threat in a future Hindu nation? We know from unimpeachable historical accounts that brahmins in ancient India ate beef. We know from newspaper accounts that Nepali Hindus today slaughter bullocks for religious ritual and to eat the meat. Are these people living in ignorance? Hindu rashtra, we are told, is about nationhood. If religion could be the basis of nationhood, India and Nepal would be one country; Sri Lanka and Myanmar would have one Constitution. Pakis-tan exemplifies the problem of religion-based nationhood. The so-called Muslim glue is not working.

A feature of Hinduism is its Vedic heritage. But Vedic culture was not a proselytising one. If anything, Vedic texts were guarded jealously by the priests. Should Muslims and Christians be allowed to learn the Vedas? I ask since Wendy Doniger learnt the Vedas, and she learnt them as good as the best in the Hindu fold. But her book was forcibly pulped by a latter-day Hayagriva. Hindus use the Gita as a book that law courts admit to take their oath on. The trouble is Gandhiji loved the Gita and so do Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Whose Hindu way should the worried Indians follow to live and prosper in their own country?

By arrangement with Dawn