Any word that describes a particular, important aspect of society has its own history, meaning, culture, and ideology. Not just that, but the community’s ways of being is also hidden in this word. Thus, for all these reasons, the word is part and parcel of the lives of a community.
For example, let’s take the word secularism. There is a struggle of delineating religion and dominion behind this word. It has Buddhism’s love for humanity, the essence of Basava religion, blood of Gandhi’s assassination, and this country’s constitutional motivation.
The word that stands in opposition to this word is Hindutva. Even the word Hindutva has its own history: upholding the varna system, re-enforcing the caste system, protecting the interests of upper castes, ostracising a variety of communities, nurturing communal instincts, oppressing Shudras and women, seeing Dalits as impotent are all part of manuvada.
Indians now stand in a position to choose between these two oppositional words, each of which have their own histories, knowledge, and character. Their decision will turn the fate of this country.
My inspiration to talk about the importance of this is an interview of Prime Minister Vajpayee, who as usual used his skill of weaving words. Answering a question on secularism and nationalism, Vajpayee said, speaking in Hindi, “Bharatiya aur hindutva ka arth ek hi hai. Par main Bharatiyata kehana pasand karoonga. Hamare yahan Hindutva wale bhi hai.”
“The meaning of Indianness and Hindutva is the same. But I like to use the word Indianness. We have proponents of hindutva living here in our country.”
Even though he has weaved words in a terrible manner before, he is a self-proclaimed poet, isn’t he? Vajpayee possesses the magic to weave words that a poet needs. But sadly, in reality, Vajpayee doesn’t have the peculiarities of a poet’s heart.
This is because he has a parochial attitude when it comes to the complexities of a word. He negates the different aspects that a word possesses. He sucks out the character that a word possesses and makes it utterly useless. Vajpayee, who disrespects the culture constituted in a word, is no poet at all. Even then, he is able to conceive of a way to erase all the complexities that words carry.
Try, again, to understand the sentence, “the meaning of both the words – hindutva and Indianness is the same” through Hindutva ideology. According to the proponents of Hindutva, as everyone is now aware, the ones who aren’t part of or haven’t joined Hindu religion, the ones who do not accept the importance of Hindu religion, and the ones who do not accept the ideology of Hindutva, aren’t Indians at all.
Now, Vajpayee has gone one step further by saying that hindutva and Indianness means the same. Try to look at his statement with a different view. According to him, the ones who do not accept Hindutva aren’t Indians. If that is so, since I have been born and live in this country and I do not accept Hindutva, which country do I belong to? If people like me aren’t Indians, then who are this country’s citizens? Not just that, which dominion do the followers of Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism belong?
Not just Christian-Muslim minorities, the ones who were outcasted by Hindu priests such as Lingayats, Okkaliga, Kuruba, Dalits, which country are they from, if they are not Indians?
Just because someone knows how to weave words, one neither becomes a poet nor a statesman. Vajpayee is a living example of this. Because a poet is not someone who just weaves words – a poet knows the peculiarities when it comes to the craft of language, she is someone who harvests and protects both the language as well as the sentiment behind the words. Only then the meaning of a language expands and grows instead of deteriorating. A word gets its life only when it is part of a community’s way of life, only when it has a deep relationship with people’s lives.
For example, let’s take the word nationalism. It can express, at the same time, a broad meaning and a short-sighted narrow feeling. In the expansive sense, nationalism expresses a community’s way of life, rituals, notions, history among other things. Even though one might not know each other, it suggests that they are the inheritors of all the aspects of a nation. But when you restrict this word to a particular religion in a country like India, which has multiple cultures, religions, languages, and other complexities, it becomes absolutely short-sighted. If we do this, one would be erasing about 98% of the culture that exists and thus disrupt and disintegrate everything.
This is the difference between Indianness and Hindutva. Indianness is a word which is broad and expansive, inclusive of everyone and everything. It contains intangible thoughts and notions as well as the tangible land, water, wealth – thus, a signifier of the world itself. The word that is in opposition to this is “Hindutva”. This is a narrow word which separates and divides people, denying the lives of many communities who are living in harmony, and imposes a monoculture of one language and one religion.
By equating these two words, self-proclaimed poet Vajpayee, committing disservice to language, has taken the Hitler’s path. Vajpayee, an anti-national enroute to corrupting the word “Indianness”, is prospering today. Because of Vajpayee’s actions, a man who seems to have mastered the tact of repeating a lie times until it seems indistinguishable from the truth, our lives will become meaningless if the word “Indianness” loses its meaning in a year.
The responsibility to stop this ideological onslaught lies on all of us. We have the weapon to make this happen in front of us. Elections. If we want to throw it in Vajpayee’s face that Indianness doesn’t mean Hindutva, then we need to reject BJP everywhere, both in our states and in the entire country.
Source:
Translated By Sudhamshu Mitra, Primary Editor, Sneha Visakha
Translated to English from Kandahage
Volume 1, Page 133, Lankesh Prakashana (2012).
