Tucked away in the vastness of the Gangetic plains, 90 kilometres northeast of Prayagraj, and roughly the same distance northwest of Varanasi in eastern Uttar Pradesh, lies Brahminpur, a hamlet, as the name suggests, of Brahmins. Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math — one of the four seats of spiritual authority in the legacy of Adi Shankaracharya — was born here as Umashankar Pandey in 1969. The seer was in the forefront of the campaign for a temple for Lord Ram in Ayodhya, but he turned into a strident critic of its consecration in January this year.
There are several hamlets by the same name in the region. Sitting beside a pedestal fan in the sizzling summer air, Girijashankar Pandey, the brother of the Shankaracharya, said all that mattered in this election, or any election, was whether one supported or opposed cow slaughter. As the discussion turned to the Ram temple, Mr. Pandey echoed the seer’s concerns.
Role play
The consecration ceremony and the central role Prime Minister Narendra Modi played in it had been criticised as a transgression, from two different perspectives. The Hindu orthodoxy thought it was a violation of ‘adhikari bheda’, or the distinction of roles. A constitutionalist disapproval of the ceremony was also about role distinction — whether the chief executive of a secular republic could preside over a religious ceremony.
Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati has made a distinction between ‘political Hindus’ and ‘sanatani Hindus’, claiming to represent ‘sanatani’ Hindus, in videos available on his Facebook page. Far from being an opponent of Mr. Modi, he said he was indeed an endorser. For no other Prime Minister in history has respected the sentiment of Hindus like Mr. Modi. The seer particularly mentions the disabling of Article 370, and the changes to the citizenship law to make the point. His opposition to the consecration was based on ‘dharma shastras’, and his authority to interpret it. “If there are a thousand people at a place, and one of them faints, whose view will be sought? You will go for a vote or look for a doctor?” he asks, seeking to emphasise the role of the expert, in relevant matters, as opposed to populism. The Brahmin priest, and the institution of the Shankaracharya, should have the last word on matters of the temple.
The confluence of political Hinduism or Hindutva, and religious orthodoxy, in popular mobilisations has often created an illusion of inseparability between the two, but it is not always what it seems.
Tensions between Hindutva and Hindu orthodoxy have a long history. V.D. Savarkar, who wrote the founding text of Hindutva, fell foul of the Brahmin fraternity in Maharashtra over his campaign for the intermingling of all castes. Political Hindus understood the power of numbers in a democracy. “The tenets of Hindutva are consistent with democracy,” declared Savarkar. The orthodoxy sought to assert the supremacy of knowledge, the text, the rule of law. During popular mobilisations, particularly the Ayodhya movement, both strands came together. Both sides possibly thought they were using the other.
Political Hindus did not want to offend the orthodoxy but they were clear about their “bottom of the pyramid” political strategy to expand their electoral appeal among the subaltern masses. The year 2024 turned out to be an inflection point, with Mr. Modi nearly exclusively addressing subaltern Hindus.
“Everyone takes us Brahmins for granted,” said Baba Dubey, who quit the Samajwadi Party after he was denied a ticket from the Jaunpur constituency. A former MLA and a prominent leader of the community in eastern U.P., he was campaigning for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but reluctantly. “The BJP and all other parties are interested only in the votes of OBCs and Dalits,” he said. “The BJP thinks of us as its bonded labour, and the Congress-SP [Samajwadi Party] thinks the same of the Muslims.”
Orthodoxy and democracy
Hindutva is more dynamic than its critics, who resort to literalist interpretations of its texts, often tend to suggest. When democracy made numbers, not knowledge, the source of power, it turned to where the numbers are. Originalism — of religious orthodoxy and constitutionalism — questions the deviation of political Hinduism from the standard of ‘dharma shastras’ and republican precepts , respectively. Both question the populism of Hindutva, but their parallels cannot be stretched. What matters for democracy is the popularity or the lack of it, of constitutionalism — not orthodoxy. For populism, people become the sole, and the most authentic source of legitimacy.
The text, the ancient, or the modern are or is secondary. Correspondingly, there are new interpretations of both the scriptures, and the Constitution, that validate the new claims of popular sovereignty. The Supreme Court of India cleared the modern legal path to the temple; and priests solemnised the consecration — regardless of what many experts of the Constitution or the ‘dharma shastras’ would say.
Experts are sceptical of the popular. What matters for the debate on democracy is the gulf between the secular experts and the masses. Secular experts think politics should be based on facts, logic and law; not faith and feelings, as Hindutva populism suggests. The surge of populist stereotypes calls for efforts to counter them on the basis of facts. Arguments based on values and ethics could only be abstraction, and hence numbers and data have been elevated to a pedestal of infallibility. In the United States, experts marshalled numbers that claimed to prove migration and global trade — two targets of populist ire — were beneficial for the country.
In India, the Sachar Committee, which studied the socio-economic conditions of Muslims, sought to disprove the charge of “appeasement”, using research and data. As it turned out, the appeasement charge found more takers since the publication of its report. In fact, the report itself turned out to be another, and the most definitive proof yet of Muslim appeasement, according to the BJP — that too, allegedly, at the cost of Hindu subaltern groups. That is how it has played out in the 2024 campaign.
Numbers bending to populism
It is true that democracy is not only about numbers, but also about a culture, values, norms and rule of law. The inverse is, however, truer, — in the absence of numbers in support, no value or norm can survive in a society. The claim that there are politically neutral facts that should be the basis of all politics is itself facing a crisis. Not only the court and the priest, even the numbers bend to populist storms. A recent case in point is a paper by a government adviser who presented real data on Muslim population trends in the service of communal polarisation. Severely crippled in their capacity to communicate to them, secular experts lament the ignorance of the masses, and look down on their feelings. Secular experts probably have the argument but not the numbers — and this divide between the popular and what is right is only widening, regardless of the election outcomes in many democracies expected this year.
People believe in gods they cannot see and doubt the data they can see. This is not new, however unscientific and irrational they may well be. We see wars and genocide that are irrational, the real and dreadful consequences of faith and feelings. Faith can move mountains, inspire people to suicidal missions, and of course win elections. In fact, it can well be argued that all politics is based on faith in an unseen tomorrow, often rationally inconceivable. Blessed are those who know it, and cursed are those who do not. To achieve what data and numbers cannot, ideals need cultural carriers.
varghese.g@thehindu.co.in
Published - June 03, 2024 07:20 pm IST
