Modi vs INDIA is battle between Hindutva and the idea of India

The war of words between the BJP and the Congress on the new alliance, I.N.D.I.A, has become bitter. Though it appears to be an electoral battle, it is a deep-rooted political and ideological battle between two competing streams of ideologies: Hindutva and the Idea of India. Many may disagree with the classification and try to reduce it to communalism and secularism, but a deeper look would reveal the futility of this classification. The Hindutva is in fact more than what we perceive as communalism, and the idea of India is more than what we perceive as communalism.

The discourse will lead us to the history of the independence struggle. It is necessary to do that for the simple reason that none of the parties involved in the battle can escape invoking the era when the people of India rose to break the shackles of slavery. The process has already begun when the Prime Minister invoked the legacy of the Quit India movement in his recent public meeting in Rajasthan and called for the ouster of corruption, nepotism, and appeasement, if he compares the slogans with his deeds, we would be surprised to see how he gathered the strength to make such an appeal. His actions against corruption were partisan and ineffective.

Everyone knows that the ED, the CBI, and other agencies are hunting opposition leaders and that too in a selective manner. The central agencies knock on the doors of those who can be useful in breaking up the opposition parties. The modus operandi has become too obvious to elaborate. A recent example is Ajit Pawar. He and his senior associates were in the net of central agencies and joined the BJP bandwagon to avoid action. It came soon after Prime Minister Modi declared that he would not spare those who were involved in corruption. Will his recent declaration in Rajasthan result in a similar outcome?

Modi’s invocation of Quit India may also deflect people’s attention from Manipur. The state has gone into a helpless situation, and its government does not seem keen on rescuing it. The statements from Chief Minister Biren Singh are highly provocative. They are aimed at harming the hard-earned peace in the northeast. He attacked the Mizoram chief minister for his support of the Kukis of Manipur. The Modi government seems to have turned its eyes from the fallout of disturbances in Manipur to neighboring provinces. The political battle in Parliament over Manipur is intricately related to the discourse of Hindutva versus the idea of India. The attack on I.N.D.I.A. is, in fact, an attack by Hindutva on the idea of India. And the BJP and the RSS are resorting to verbosity and falsehood. Their recent love of Bharat does not have any ideological basis. Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar rejects the idea of India being named as Bharat. He was for Hindustan and India, "But this new word, Bharatavarsha, could not altogether suppress our cradle name, Sindhus or Hindus, nor could it make us forget the love we bore to that River of Rivers—the Sindhu at whose breast our Patriarchs and people had drunk the milk of life.

Our frontier provinces, which bordered the course of the Indus, still clung to their ancient name, Sindhu Rashtra," he says, "Thus Hindu would be the name that this land and the people that inhabited it bore from time so immemorial that even the Vedic name Sindhu is but a later and secondary form of it. If the epithet Sindhu dates its antiquity in the glimmering twilight of history, then the word Hindu dates its antiquity from a period so remoter than the first that even mythology fails to penetrate - to trace it to its source," he argues. In his book ‘Hindutva’, he makes it clear who are Hindus and excludes those who profess religions other than Hinduism, What is going on in Manipur is nothing but an expression of Hindutva. The RSS has been active in the region and successful in communalizing Mateis.

The state and the central government are engaged in demonizing as drug mafia and intruders from Myanmar. Rahul Gandhi has rightly accused the Prime Minister and the BJP of setting Manipur on fire, "Narendra Modi knows it is their ideology that has set Manipur on fire. You have seen what all happened in Manipur and may be shocked that Modi didn’t utter a word. You all must have presumed the Prime Minister of the country would, after all, say something when one state of the country is burning. Some of you would have thought he would at least fly to Imphal and talk to people there.

Any other Prime Minister, a Congress Prime Minister, would have gone and stationed himself there," he says., If one wants to put the battle between the BJP and the Congress in perspective, one must recall Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. He writes in ‘Discovery of India’, it was absurd, of course, to think of India or any country as a kind of anthropomorphic entity. I did not do so. I was also fully aware of the diversities and divisions of Indian life, of classes, castes, religions, races, and different degrees of cultural development. Yet I think that a country with a long cultural background and a common outlook on life develops a spirit that is peculiar to it and that is impressed on all its children, however much they may differ among themselves.", What Nehru says is the idea of India.

The formation of I.N.D.I.A, the alliance of opposition parties, is an expression of the Idea of India. It not only expresses secularism but also democracy and equity. The clash between the I.N.D.I.A. and the BJP on the issue of handling Manipur is only an expression of the inherent ideological confrontation between the two. Prime Minister Modi’s evasion of Parliament should also be seen from this perspective.

(The author is a senior journalist. He has experience of working with leading newspapers and electronic media including Deccan Herald, Sunday Guardian, Navbharat Times and Dainik Bhaskar. He writes on politics, society, environment and economy)