THE SAFFRON WAVE: Democracy & Hindu Nationalism in Modern India by Thomas Blom Hansen 225mm, 293 Pages, Hardcover, 0 19 564574 X £24.99

This is an American tract, brought to the Indian readership by Oxford University Press India. And therefore, I am not surprised that the content and the concepts being propped through its pages are not typically American, but typically Western: What comes out of it all is the notion that an Independent, non-aligned India frightens the hell out of the Western power brokers.

India has been ‘blessed’ with many Western ideas and ideals through education [system founded and promoted by Western ‘liberal’ thinkers]: Religious tolerance, secularism, democracy, rule of law [in preference to ethics and righteousness] and even globalization. But then, we are also expected to apply these ideas and ideals exactly in the same mould as they do it in London and New York. To my mind, this is pseudo-intellectualism of the Western thinkers and the arrogance of the Western politicians, born of a presumption that we are mere toddlers and must walk by holding ‘big uncle’s finger’, otherwise we might tumble on the pavement.

This book is sheer simple and very partisan tirade against the BJP-led government, well researched and quotation-after-quotation laden, and heavily partisan. I have not seen a single such ‘critical’ document emerging from any US university presses about the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Israel, China or even Pakistan next door, regimes which can never be accused of being ‘fair and/or considerate’ to the minorities living within their domains.

Before some one starts waving an accusatory finger at me and plasters a label, saying that I am a ‘fundamentalist Hindu or a right-winger’, across my forehead, let me confess to being in absolute favour of democracy and secularism in India. I shall have no truck with any communalist party or their agenda. But I am not convinced of mere secular slogans raised by the post-Nehru Congressites or of the CPI-wallahs either.

Questions facing India, in real terms, are those of good, clean governance and not so much of the ‘saffron’ or ‘dove white’ caps. As far as I am concerned, RSS can carry on their Hindustva crusade and will have absolutely no impact on our national character till we are all in grip of ‘personal greed and aggrandisement’; VHP can carry on plans of rebuilding of the ram Temple and it will not rise above the parapet till the Hindu contractors give up their habit of mixing more sand than cement in making their mortar; and the issues like ‘Hindustva versus Secularism’ will continue to be the debating points till certain brand of ‘historians and intellectuals’ continue to doctor our history and invent a phoney past of communal harmony.

The whole difficulty arises in this debate because certain sections of our political chess-players, in their pathetic desire to maintain their patchy vote-banks, insist on denying the historical process of conquests, demolitions of the religious structures venerated by the vanquished communities and forced conversions, and this, in turn, ignites the anger of those who wish to assert their rightful and proud past. Even this Danish scholar admits freely that ‘the Hindu nationalism has emerged and taken shape neither in the political system as such nor in the religious field, but in the broader realm of what we may call public culture’— in an environment in which ‘a society, and its constituent individuals and communities imagine, represent and recognise themselves through political discourse’.

Certain arguments raised by Hansen give credence to all sane fears allied with the emergence of the ‘Hindutva’ deluge: He asks, and all sane people should ask, Is Hindu nationalism really

revealing the darkside of the middle-class culture and social world of educated sections of who have dominated Indian public culture and the Indian state for so long—the authoritarianism, the complacency and the fear of the underdog, the masses and the Muslims?

Fact is that democratic ideology has in its womb all those seeds of authoritarianism—‘majoritarian and moral backlash against excessive liberalism’ which recently has come to fore in the form of ‘reservations policies’, regional secessionist demands and Mandal Commission.

The ogres like ‘Sangh Parivar’, ‘Hindu Nationalism’ ‘VHP’ and such like would not have come about if the state tolerance of minority misdemeanours and continuous gnawing of the majority community’s structures through sneak conversions mounted by missionaries had not aroused majority community’s fears of dilution and loss of their inherent value-systems. In this context the so called ‘secular state’ was seen as colluding with these ‘cultural saboteurs’ political interlopers.

State of democracy in India is strong. BJP’s hold on power at the moment is tenuous. By attacking it right, left and centre, we are likely to stroke its embers. If our erstwhile power-brokers (who find themselves out of public favour right now) were to fight issue-based battles in their parliamentary life and let the democratically elected government function for a while, the dynamics of power themselves will dilute the ideological rigours of these ogres behind BJP. Prudence lies not in airing the embers, but starving them of the oxygen of attention. Past fifty years’ experience of national government proves that all ideologies go to dogs when their mouthpieces fall prey to taste of power. We’ve all heard it said—‘ power corrupts…’