Of saffron hues

Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
It seems quite a bagful as the mysteries hidden within the saffron’ jhola’ are beginning to unravel themselves with the passage of time. Heading into its seventh month in office, with its triumphant march in the States going unchallenged, the saffronites have made their intentions clear even as the prime actor in the unfolding drama Mr. Narendra Modi, continues to coo heart-warming homilies on development, good governance not to forgert “sarva dharma sambhav”.
In fairness to the Prime Minister it must be admitted that he is rarely reluctant to give us a glimpse of his preferred colour, depending on   the audience at his command. In other words ‘bhagwa’ (saffron or ochre, if you will )  is  the preffered choice as he brought  it home to an audience several thousand strong at an election rally in Jammu without even having to take resort to his party’s most favoured issue, abrogation of Article 370. He put the weight of his office behind it when he went on to assuage, if that be it, the feelings of Hindus and Sikhs from what is now Azad Kashmir and equally to grant voting rights for the State Assembly to the refugees who migrated from adjoining Pakistani territory to Jammu at the time of partitioning of the sub-continent nearly seven decades ago. They have hitherto voted only for Parliamentary seats. (Voting for the Assembly was barred to them to avoid conflict with the State subject restrictions).
Similarly, he chooses to look the other way -his pet theme: development -whenever one of his Ministers or RSS leaders tend to reveal their hand. This is no place to recount, nor is there any need to do so, given the frequency of such “revelations”. It is not unusual for his Ministers, for instance, to keep on making claims which have no scientific or historical back-up, to tell us that  the favourite mode of transportation  of the many heroic personages from the Mahabharat and Ramayan was the ‘viman’, the predecessor of what we mortals now call aircraft. Anu Shakti and thermonuclear weapons, and whatever today’s super powers may have in their arsenals, were routinely used in Mahabharat. Inter-planetary travel was like hiring a cab from Connaught Place to Karol Bagh, more seriously suggesting a rewrite of ancient and medieval Indian history, starting probably from the Ramayan and Mahabharat.
After all Vyas or Valmiki, the authors of two epics, were as much humans as the so-called historians   whom we have been taught to take seriously. So we are told. Not that anyone has ever challenged the Mahabharat and the Ramayan as two great epic narratives. Likewise, a BJP-ruled State might order the schools run by Christian missionaries in the tribal areas that they immediately install murtis/pictures of Maa Saraswati in their institutions so that the children are allowed to bow to the goddess of learning before getting past the images of Jesus and Mary; that they shall not refer to any of the teacher-priests as Father, like saying “yes, father”. A repetition of an earlier fiat that forbade the use of the word principal for head of a similar institution.
One step short, mercifully, of the Pakistani blasphemy law that attracts death penalty if one is perceived to have made blasphemous reference to Islam. Or, take the needless confrontation which the saffronites created over the land leased out to the Aligarh University by the freedom fighter Raja Mahendra Pratap a century ago. Can’t fathom reason why the Marxist revolutionary, who passed away in 1979 and who by no means was a saffronite, should suddenly have become an object of reverence for the RSS.
The saffronites of a sudden demanded that the university observe the Raja’s birthday annually on the campus like they do in the case of Sir Sayeed Ahmed Khan, the founder of the minority institution. Shades  of secularism! While the land donation or its lease is true, it is equally true that part of it is under litigation and most of the land for campus was given away by jagirdars, nawabs and rajas of the day. Raja Mahendra Pratap who himself gave away the land   never sought any returns or gratitude all his life including a term in the Lok Sabha in the late 50s. How come the Sangh Parivar suddenly chose to adopt the Raja as its own? The Raja, truth to tell is seen as a Jat icon, AMU is seen as a Muslim institution and the Jat-Muslim conflict in Muzaffarnagar continues to simmer in western Uttar Pradesh. The BJP would like to be seen as restoring the glory of a Jat Raja, even a raja without a kingdom and now dead.
For a party blessed with unprecedented success, I wonder sometimes why the BJP should feel so insecure? Why this obsession with obscurantism, of raising issues when priority with a governing party should be to deliver on the promises it has made during the poll campaign. A  well run party should always be ready to face the people  which means it should look to the future without seeking cover  in the past. The BJP has no need to invoke gods and goddesses, arouse passions, seek cover behind non-issues such as Sanskrit, plastic surgery having been practiced in India in pre-historic times, and all those Mandir-Masjid issues. It should allow its actions speak rather than a Mr. Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS Sarsanchalak lead it by the nose, as it were. It’s time the Bharatiya Janata Party realizes that being the ruling party of the country doesn’t give it the right to act arbitrarily, putting people into little boxes of the party’s choice, one box more patriotic than the other. Painting people into corners has never worked. The shibboleths of the past do not confer on you the right to make others conform to your worldview. Nor is cultural nationalism the answer to problems which we perhaps may have to contend with.
Narendra Modi, in his new avatar as the Prime Minister of a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and diverse entity as India, is in a position to steer his party on a path that not only holds the country together but also earn it the place of honour in the comity of nations which he so very much cherishes. If you ask me how come I am hopeful of a change of course, let me confess it is a hope that has found encouragement in the knowledge just acquired : Mr. Modi has , as the historian Ramchandra Guha has noted, the three portraits that adorn the Prime Minister’s Office are those of Gandhi, Nehru and Patel and not of Savarkar, Bhagat  Singh, his earlier icons along with Patel and the Mahatma. Far removed is this view from the earlier RSS one which saw Nehru as a bloated brown sahib and Nehruism an embodiment of all imperialist ideologies -Islam, Christianity, the white man’s burden and Communism that flooded the country in the wake of many foreign invasions. Looking for straws in the wind? Yes, I am. Or, am I? Rude and crude statements by two of Mr. Modi’s Ministers earlier in the week jolted me out of my self-induced sense of hopefulness. Sadhvi Niranjan Joyti, a godly person is she. Dressed in mandatory saffron she thundered at a public meeting that Ramzadas (Ram’s people) must side with the BJP and the Haramzadas (of illegitimate parentage) can go with others. Mr. Giriraj Singh the other Minister in question confessed his belief that he saw his Ram in Mr. Modi. The same day a church in the Capital city was set on fire by unknown people, generally presumed to be Hindu chauvinists of whom there is no dearth.

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