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Vote Bank is the crumbs of polity
Hindus have majority, but no power
By Radha Rajan
India?s total isolation in the region and India?s political unwillingness to deal resolutely with neighboring countries lending their territory for anti-Hindu terrorist groups.
Currently ?pluralism and secularism? are the internationally legitimate and politically correct themes of statecraft and even intelligent Hindus have not made the distinction between Hindu rashtra and rajya and their inter-dependence, and compound this failure by equating both with an Abrahamic-religion driven theocratic state.
Nationalist Hindus must be fired by the passion of transforming this nation of Hindus into a Hindu nation, into a Hindu rashtra. And this cannot be achieved by aspiring to becoming a vote bank; this can be achieved only by aspiring for Hindu state power or Hindu ?rajya?. Had Hindus achieved self-conscious Hindu state power, the issue of Ramjanmabhumi would not continue to be a festering wound in the Hindu psyche.
Hindus constitute 83 per cent of the nation?s populace and they should not be aspiring for the crumbs of Indian polity. Hindus cannot aspire to become a vote bank; they must constitute the state; to put it unambiguously, state power must be wielded by self-conscious Hindus.
The Indian nation is the nation of Hindus but it is not yet a Hindu rashtra. ?Rashtra? in Hindu understanding implies territory with well-defined borders and the people inhabiting that territory. After ending colonial rule in 1947, in spite of being a nation of Hindus we did not put in place a Hindu ?rajya? whose core purpose is to protect sanatana dharma and the dharmi; in other words Hinduism and Hindus. Our failure to set up a Hindu ?rajya? may be attributed to the fact that?both the colonial British government, and the Indian National Congress which assumed leadership of the freedom movement in its last phase, discredited and/or ruthlessly put down all Hindu ex-pressions of resistance and rebellion.
Mahatma Gandhi with his ?passive resistance? and ?non-violence? stepped into the space vacated in the freedom movement and the Indian National Congress by Maharishi Aurobindo, Veer Savarkar and Lokmanya Tilak (towering Hindu thinkers all and votaries of armed resistance), and was solely responsible for de-legitimising both Hindu anger and all ex-pressions of Hindu anger ultimately leading to the political disempowerment of Hindus after Independence
Nehru who usurped the mantle of leadership of the Freedom Movement from Mahatma Gandhi in the 1930s, was actively hostile to everything Hindu
No leader of consequence of the freedom struggle, not even Maharishi Aurobindo, Lokmanya Tilak or Gandhiji explicitly articulated or delineated the concept of Hindu ?rajya? as being the ultimate objective of the freedom movement
And this despite that Maharshi Aurobindo had by far the most articulate description of the Hindu rashtra or the Hindu nation
After the advent of Mahatma Gandhi and then Nehru, there was no sense of self-conscious ?Hindu? political objectives to the Freedom Movement generally and to the Indian National Congress particularly, because there was no collective and conscious realisation of the nature of a Hindu ?rashtra? and the objectives of Hindu ?rajya? and therefore no intention or determination to achieve them
Currently ?pluralism and secularism? are the internationally legitimate and politically correct themes of statecraft and even intelligent Hindus have not made the distinction between Hindu rashtra and rajya and their inter-dependence, and compound this failure by equating both with an Abrahamic-religion driven/controlled theocratic state
Our dharmasastras accorded primacy to ?rajya? as the most important and ultimate, if not the sole instrument to protect and enforce dharma. ?rajya? comprises of seven components - Swamin-King, Amatya-Minister, Rashtra-Nation, Durga-Capital, Kosa-Treasury, Danda-Armed forces and Mitra - allied kings and kingdoms. Some classical texts name the seventh component as ?bala? which may connote the armed forces. In Kautilya, ?bala? however is implicit in ?danda?. The Hindu rashtra clearly is a component of Hindu rajya; it follows then that while Hindu rajya derives from the rashtra, the rashtra can be protected and actively defended ultimately only by the rajya.
Even a cursory examination of the acute problems confronting the Hindu nation will serve to emphasise that almost all of them have assumed threatening proportions only because even political-minded Hindus failed to grasp the critical importance of a Hindu ?rajya? and therefore fail, even now to aspire for it, leave alone put it in place. The fact that nationalist Hindus are seriously contemplating constituting themselves into a vote bank instead of becoming the state power themselves is indicative of the legacy of Hindu political disempowerment.
Problems confronting the Hindu nation
Complete and near total de-Hinduising of Indian polity resulting in politics of minority-ism and Hindu inability to influence Indian polity Indian polity?s cavalier attitude to territory and the failure to understand the need to monitor and keep under constant surveillance the character of the people living in that territory and therefore supreme indifference/ignorance about the critical importance of ?rashtra? De-Hinduised and/or virulent and hostile anti-Hindu state structures and administration Growing Muslim and Christian population percentage Aggressive evangelisation with the open support and endorsement of white western nations as instruments of their foreign policy Intensified jehad against Hindus and Hindu territory, of which one component is the unchecked infiltration of Bangladeshi Muslims into India Growing power of anti-Hindu marxist/maoist/naxalite groups The increasing possibility of a significant segment of overseas Indians espousing separatism or insurgence willingly acting or being used as agents against the Indian state and against Hindus in particular India?s total isolation in the region and India?s political unwillingness to deal resolutely with neighboring countries lending their territory for anti-Hindu terrorist groups The inability/unwillingness of Indian polity in these circumstances to withstand and challenge western notions of acceptable political idiom and policies which by default have been accorded universal and international status
The strategic intent of Hindu nationalism therefore can be summed up briefly as achieving self-conscious Hindu state power or Hindu ?rajya?, which will be used-
To transform this nation of Hindus into a Hindu nation protected by a self-conscious Hindu state To bring Indian polity in line with Hindu ethos and Hindu interests To protect, safeguard and retain all territories belonging to the Hindu nation as of 1947 To signal the Indian state?s determination to deal firmly with all forces inimical to the Hindu nation (Muslim intransigence, jehad, missionary Church, global Christianity?s control of powerful domestic institutions and corporate firms, Marxism and its avatars, and their international partners whoever they may be) To ensure Indian military and economic primacy in the region to realise and implement our strategic interests To evolve a foreign policy that actively promotes and pro-actively sustains our regional influence
Nationalist Hindus must be fired by the passion of transforming this nation of Hindus into a Hindu nation, into a Hindu rashtra. And this cannot be achieved by aspiring to becoming a vote bank; this can be achieved only by aspiring for Hindu state power or Hindu ?rajya?. Had Hindus achieved self-conscious Hindu state power, the issue of Ramjanmabhumi would not continue to be a festering wound in the Hindu psyche, Hindu polity would not have permitted cow slaughter in any part of the territory of this nation, our temples would not be controlled by non-Hindu and anti-Hindu politicians, no petty politician would have dared to arrest and incarcerate venerable Hindu religious leaders, the statue of a rabid anti-Hindu iconoclast would not have been allowed to be planted in front of a hoary Hindu temple, a European professing a religion alien to this soil would not have been allowed the social and political space to aspire for high constitutional posts; and above all, alien religions would not have been permitted unbridled license to alter the character and religious demography of the Hindu rashtra.
The answer to Hindu political disempowerment is not for Hindus to become a vote bank but to control and wield state power.
(The writer is director VIGIL, Chennai and a well-known author.)
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