Whether constructing a 182m statue at a cost of Rs.2,500
crore is the wisest use of resources is obviously something that only
fine economists serenading the Gujarat model can explain
A
major problem Hindu nationalists have is the absence of national heroes
that they can claim, the narratives around whose lives they can stir
people. There are pre-independence social reformers, but they were
reforming Hinduism, implying that their faith wasn’t perfect and its
practices needed reforming. And the principles and ideals the reformers
championed, like equality between men and women, or equality of all
people, are not the topics the current crop of Hindu nationalists want
to talk about, unless they are talking about somebody else’s faith.
Adding
to the conundrum is the fact that the founding fathers and mothers of
India’s freedom struggle were largely cut from the Gandhian cloth and
believed in Gandhi’s inclusive ethos, precisely to challenge the
two-nation theory so dear to Muhammad Ali Jinnah. When you ask Hindu
nationalists who their heroes are, eventually they are forced to name
men with a rather narrow sectarian appeal: Jana Sangh stalwarts like
Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and Deen Dayal Upadhyay, Hindu Maha Sabha’s
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, and Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse. These
men have a large following, but in a big country, even exceptions run
into millions. And Godse apart, independent India has been magnanimous
enough to honour these men —there is a square in Mumbai named after
Mukherjee, a hospital named after Upadhyay in Delhi, and Parliament has a
portrait of Savarkar. Pradeep Dalvi’s Marathi play Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoy (It’s
me, Nathuram Godse speaking), which presents Gandhi’s assassin’s point
of view, has been banned in the past, but courts have revoked the ban,
and it has been staged off and on, sometimes performed with security
protection. In Anand Patwardhan’s epic film, Jai Bhim Comrade, we see people coming out of the theatre admiring Godse.
But
these Hindutva icons can’t rouse the nation. In his search for heroes,
the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi
has championed the saffron-clad Swami Vivekananda, whose 150th birth
anniversary falls this year. Hindutva activists have been wearing
Vivekananda masks at public rallies. But Vivekananda represents a
curious choice.
Over
the past two decades Hindutva gained many foot soldiers when its
leaders reminded them that they must reclaim the sites where their
temples once stood, but which conquering Muslim invaders destroyed,
building mosques at those spots. Ayodhya was the first; Kashi, Mathura
and others would follow.
What
would Vivekananda make of such zeal? In 1898 he returned to Belur after
a pilgrimage to Kashmir, and told a disciple a story. One day, while
worshipping, the thought arose in his mind: “The Mohammedans came and
destroyed (Mother Bhavani’s) temple, yet the people...did nothing to
protect her. Alas, if I were then living I could never have borne it
silently.” As he wallowed in sorrow, he heard a divine voice. The
goddess spoke to him, saying: “It was... my desire that the Mohammedans
destroyed this temple. It is my desire that I should live in a
dilapidated temple... What can you do? Shall I protect you or shall you
protect me!”
Indeed,
are Gods, if they exist, so weak that they need mere mortals to protect
them? If Hindutva adherents were to reflect on that parable, they’d
have to reorient their outlook, or seek another icon whose mask they
could wear.
Vivekananda
is not the only historic figure misunderstood by Hindu nationalists.
Now Modi is trying to turn Vallabhbhai Patel into an icon of a kind of
nationalism antithetical to the one Patel believed in. Patel banned
Hindutva’s ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,
and despite his political differences with Jawaharlal Nehru, Patel
accepted with grace when Gandhi chose Nehru to lead India.
When
Modi suggests that Patel, not Nehru, should have been India’s first
prime minister, he is questioning Gandhi’s choice. Modi’s desire to
elevate Patel is more about belittling Nehru (and, by implication
Gandhi) than honouring a hero the nation is forgetting. (And Patel is
hardly forgotten—from a large dam, an airport, colleges and
universities, including an educational township, in Gujarat, a stadium
in Mumbai, a police academy in Hyderabad, a prominent school and
colleges in Delhi, and roads in almost all major Indian cities, Patel’s
name appears everywhere in India, as it should). Whether constructing a
182m statue at a cost of Rs.2,500
crore—even if it is under a public-private partnership model—is the
wisest use of resources is obviously something that only fine economists
serenading the Gujarat model can explain and rationalize. Yes, other
political parties have also used state resources to build monuments
honouring their leaders, but isn’t the whole point of Modi’s narrative
that he is different? And isn’t the hero he is honouring the
standard-bearer of the Congress, not the RSS, nor the Jana Sangh, the
BJP’s predecessor?
But why is Modi obsessed with heroes? Bertolt Brecht comes to mind: in his play, Life of Galileo, Andrea laments: “Unhappy the land that has no heroes.”
But recall Galileo’s reply: “No, unhappy the land that needs heroes.”
