Gandhi's Ram Rajya: Inclusive, secular, and democratic

 Mahatma Gandhi talked a lot about Ram Rajya and the BJP and RSS are using this to show that Gandhi would have been okay with what they are doing now. In 2014, Modi said in an election rally in Ayodhya:

“Jab log Mahatma Gandhi ko puchha karte the ki raj kaisa hona chahiye… to Mahatma Gandhi ek shabd me samjha dete the ke agar kalyankari rajya ki kalpana karni hai to Ram Rajya hona chahiye. ( Trans. When people used to ask Mahatma Gandhi about what kind of rule should be...Mahatma Gandhi would explain it in only one phrase that if we want a Welfare State then it should be Ram Rajya).” 

A week after Ram Mandir's inauguration, CM Yogi Adityanath tweeted on Gandhi ji's anniversary:

Bapu's ideology calls for humanity, freedom, and harmony. His teachings pave the way for the realization of the concept of Ram Rajya and world peace.

 

Source: CNBCTV18

But is it true? Did Modi's and Yogi's want Gandhi's Ram Rajya? What Gandhi meant when he said he wanted Ram Rajya?

Mahatma Gandhi's Ram Rajya was not Hindu Raj

S. N. Sahu in his article Gandhi’s Ram Rajya Was No Hindu Raj in The Wire writes:

Speaking in Bhopal on 10th September 1929, Gandhi made it very clear that his idea of Ram Rajya was not theocratic in nature and scope  and remarked, ‘By Ramarajya’ I do not mean Hindu Raj”. “I mean by ‘Ramarajya’ the Divine Raj, the Kingdom of God… For me Rama and Rahim are one and the same deity”. Rahim, or the merciful, is one of the synonyms of Allah.

He added, “I acknowledge no other god but the one god of Truth and righteousness”. “Whether the Rama of my imagination ever lived or not on this earth, the ancient ideal of Ram Rajya is undoubtedly one of true democracy in which the meanest citizen could be sure of swift justice without an elaborate and costly procedure,” he added.

Muslims can understand Gandhi's Ram Rajya as Khudai Raj and Christians as the Kingdom of God

Gandhi ji tried to clarify further that Muslims should not be afraid of Ram Rajya as Ram Rajya is the same as the Khudai Raj. In Haimchar, Bihar, Gandhi ji said in 1947. 

My Rama is another name for Khuda or God. I want Khudai raj, which is the same thing as the Kingdom of God on earth.

 In the Harijan on 18th August 1946, he wrote:

When I visit the Frontier Province or address predominantly Muslim audiences I would express my meaning [of Ramrajya] to them by calling it Khudai Raj, while to a Christian audience, I would describe it as the Kingdom of God on earth (Source: A. K. Lal Secularism, p-106)

 Mahatma Gandhi's Ram Rajya was about freedom and democracy

Sahu further explains in Gandhi's own words that Gandhi's Ram Rajya was about freedom, without inequality, and a perfect democracy where there would be prompt and cheap justice and freedom of worship, speech, and the press.

Just two years before the attainment of independence, Gandhi outlined the religious and political dimensions of Ram Rajya. When one Sailendra Nath Chattopadhyaya asked him, “Why do you wish to live for 125 years, and what is Ram Rajya?”, he explained that his wish to live for 125 years depended on the quality of selfless service he would render. On the issue of Ram Rajya he explained that when  religiously translated this meant  Kingdom of God on Earth but its political components were “perfect democracy in which inequalities based on possession and non-possession, colour, race or creed or sex vanish.” He went on to add that in such a Ram Rajya “…land and State belong to the people, justice is prompt, perfect and cheap and, therefore, there is freedom of worship, speech and the Press.”

 

Mahatma Gandhi's Ram Rajya was about swift justice

Rishika Singh in her article With Ram Temple consecration in Ayodhya, recalling what Gandhi said about Ram Rajya in the Indian Express gives further evidence of Gandhi's Ram Rajya not being what Modi, the BJP, and the RSS are trying to make. She writes, "Gandhi's ideal State, 'Ramrajya', was not associated with a particular religion but was more about moral values – justice, equality, and truth, dispensed even to the most marginalised." It was never about the Hindu religion: 

He[Gandhi] wrote in the magazine Young India in the same year [1929], “Whether Rama of my imagination ever lived or not on this earth, the ancient ideal of Ramarajya is undoubtedly one of true democracy in which the meanest citizen could be sure of swift justice without an elaborate and costly procedure. Even the dog is described by the poet to have received justice under Ramarajya.”

Conclusion

As Professor Ira Bhaskar writes on Gandhi's assassination anniversary, the Ramrajya of Gandhi and Modi/RSS are completely different:

As a devout Ram bhakt, Gandhi’s idea of Ram and of Ram Rajya was a completely different one from the exclusionist and majoritarian Hindutva one that we see in circulation today. Gandhi’s Ram was a benevolent leader whose “ moral quality and habitual adherence to truth” were  key for the realization of the peace, plenty and harmony of an imagined Ram Rajya. Unlike Gandhi’s imagining of the new modern nation as one based on “Hindu and Muslim unity” which was for him “the cornerstone of swaraj,” the Hindutva project from the 1980s onwards transformed Ram into a virulent crusader of the rights of the Hindus against the minorities. In contrast, Gandhi stood for “minority rights, religious freedom, justice and forgiveness” and is one who sacrificed his life for communal amity. 

What January 22 is, what it isn’t: Pratap Bhanu Mehta

One of the most prominent intellectuals of India, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, writes about the spectacle everyone witnessed on 22 January. The following article feels like an obituary of another India, an India where the Indian Constitution was supreme, Hinduism was religious, and pride came after the achievement.

There are moments in history that appear to drive wave after wave of people in a great torrent of catharsis, ecstasy, emotion and an elevated group mood that almost all conventional analysis, historical categories, moral measures and political prognosis seem beside the point. It would be foolish to deny that the pran pratishtha of Ram Lalla in Ayodhya is one such event. Just in sheer magnitude, of the tens of millions of people mobilised, whose identity, emotions and hopes are, at least for the moment, oriented towards Ayodhya, this event has almost no precedent in history. It is a watershed moment. The pran pratishtha following the foundation stone of Ayodhya, marks the consecration of Hinduism as a political religion pure and simple. It is not just a moment where the state, which has pulled all its mighty power behind this event, ceases to be secular. It is also the moment where Hinduism ceases to be religious.

           Source: prokerala
 

The sheer spectacle of the event, now fusing modified but still traditional yama and niyama, with mass broadcasting and mass mobilisation, is itself considered an achievement. The spectacle is the statement: That Hindus have asserted their collective power, reclaimed their historical agency, and overcome the deep sense of insecurity, and despite some murmurings, for once managed to make something a show of unity. The BJP has kept its promises. Prime Minister Narendra Modi now donning the mantle of Hindu kingship, has the ability to get millions of people to play their parts for an audience of One, with all institutions, corporations, sects, civil society, media singing the same tune. It is a terrifying spectacle on any proper measure of democracy. But as a form of deference to mass sentiment it is now carrying its own democratic imprimatur. There is something quite astonishing about this mobilisation of power. You have to struggle to remember its ominous origins and shadows.

Some parties may contest the ceremony. But everyone has to rush to declare their allegiance to Ram. Even Opposition parties are obliged to pay allegiance to Ram in the form that ironically was best described by Iqbal when he called Ram the Imam-e-Hind. The Ram whose role in Indian cultural and spiritual life was one whose centre was everywhere and circumference nowhere, has now been anchored to a centre. Ram has been transformed from a radiant glow of righteousness, compassion, and imaginative power into something merely instrumental: A litmus test for national loyalty. We are now more valorous devotees of Ram — more than Tulsidas or Gandhi, who rejected the logic of retaliation. You now have to swear allegiance to this Imam-e-Hind, or else.

In many ways, Bhagwad Gita 17.18 captures the spectacle being made out of this ceremony perfectly. It goes: satkara mana puja artham tapah dambehna cheva yat/kriyate tadiham proktam rajas am chalam adhruvam (Penance and austerities performed ostentatiously out of pride for the sake of gaining honour and recognition are all in the mode of a passion. Its benefits are unstable and fleeting). This is both an accurate description of this mode of worship and a warning. It names this worship for what it is: A spectacle. But the fact that the passions and emotional resonances it produces are transitory is not reassuring in this context. It will require that the deep insecurities and needs this spectacle has tapped into be constantly satiated. The passion around Ram is not a form of ecstasy finding its final repose in a radiant calm. It is going to be one in a long chain where our pride will have to be constantly fed. This is because in an inversion of dharma, the relation between pride and its object is reversed. We no longer take pride in genuine achievement; generating pride is considered the achievement.

In the Mahabharata there is an evocative word, Dharma Dhwajii. It is a pejorative for those who make a show of their worship in what is a sign of lack of real faith. The term Dharma Dhwajii refers to those who, as it were, care about the flag more than they care about dharma. The Dharma Dhwajiis have, for the moment, won the political, cultural and emotional battle fair and square. It is the overwhelming power of this moment, and the fact that we now inhabit a political universe solely dominated by power, that expressing even ambivalence about this pran pratishtha seems more like blowing straws in a hurricane. Bearing witness, fighting for republican ideals, are all now reduced to self-satisfied snarks or expressions of sour grapes. There is no real ideological counterpoint.

Rallying around the dhwaja is clear. What dharma it portends is less clear. The content of this new Ramrajya, is, for a moment, founded in a logic of retaliation and blood, rancour and division, that India’s post-1951 constitutional ideals sought so hard to avoid. That project was, first and foremost, betrayed in many different ways by its own custodians. The Dharma Dhwajiis, with popular acclaim, have reduced whatever was left of the dharma of that republic to ruins. The only content to the new dharma one can see on the horizon is, ironically, to intensify the logic of the 1930s: To create an ethno nationalist state with its cult of power and violence, its worship of purity and concentration of power. This is a project that never ends well. It produced devastating wars in Europe, and the partition of India.

This time the partition is more intimate and close: It is running through families. It is also a fissure within Hinduism. Worshipping idols is central to Hinduism, no matter what deracinated intellectuals might tell you. It gave Hinduism a playful intimacy. But the idols we worship are no longer intimate; they are mega showpieces. More grievously, concentration on the idol was a path to self-consciousness. But now, as the philosopher, Arindam Chakrabarti, once wrote, the idol has been replaced by the I-doll, the worship of the “I”. We are consecrating our own collective narcissism in the image of God.

In the Ramayana, in any version, there is always a sense of sadness around Ram himself. Bhavabhuti captured it beautifully: Ram has been filled with the rasa of pity/ kept hidden by his profound demeanour/the sharp pain of it held deep within/ like a clay pot baking in embers. This moment of triumphalism is also accompanied by a pain that cannot even be expressed. It will cook in the embers of this moment. Ram’s dhwaja has been planted. But the question of dharma is met only with a yawning and ominous silence.

Hindu Civilizationism: Make India Great Again

Abstract

Hindu civilizationism is more than a century old phenomenon that has been steadily gaining strength. Its recent amalgam with populism has made it ascendant, popular, and mainstream in India. This paper explores how Hindu civilizationism is not only an essential part of the Hindutva and BJP’s narrative but also the mainstay of several government policies. The “other” of the BJP’s populist civilizationist rhetoric are primarily Muslims and Muslim civilization in India and the aim is to make India “vishwaguru” (world leader) again after 1200 years of colonialism. The evidence of this heady mixture of civilizationism and populism is numerous and ubiquitous. This paper analyzes topics such as Akhand Bharat, the golden age, denigrating Mughals, Hindutva pseudoscience, and Sanskrit promotion to highlight the evidence.

Article

1. Introduction

Civilizationism uses a religio-civilization classification of people to define national identity. Territorial nationalism is deemphasized as the nation is imagined beyond national boundaries. Citizens, who are considered part of the civilization-nation based on religion, are asked to defend or save their civilization which is considered under threat. The state becomes a means to achieve the objective which is civilizational longevity and success.

This civilizational rhetoric has become more common as populist leaders around the world have used it to attract voters who are dissatisfied with the dominant ideologies and established mainstream parties. Numerous authors have pointed out how rightwing populist European parties and leaders defined self and the other not in national but in broader civilizational terms. Christian civilization, Christian heritage, or Judeo-Christian civilization and traditions are considered in crisis and under threat from Islam and Muslims. The “patriots” are told they have only two choices, act or go extinct (Brubaker 2016, 2017; Kaya and Tecmen 2019; Ozzano and Bolzonar 2020; Yilmaz and Morieson 2021; Marchetti et al. 2022).

Populism is generally considered a thin ideology that attaches itself to rightwing or leftwing ideologies to give coherence, strength, and program to its rhetoric. Yilmaz and Morieson (2022a) have identified civilizationism as another thick ideology that populism attached itself to. Civilizationism, for them, is an idea that divides and categorizes people based on “civilizations” that are primarily based on religion. This is different from the usual division of people based on nations and populists’ framing of “the people” as people of a country.

Hindu civilizationism, like in many other countries, is closely associated with rightwing nationalism and populism. Hindutva (literally Hindu-ness) is a popular political ideology that defines Indian values and nationalism primarily in terms of Hinduism and Hindu civilization, lays claim that only Hindus have the right to rule in India, and aims to replace a secular Indian constitution with a Hindu state (Hindu Rashtra). Hindutva political parties, organizations, and social movements raised the flag of civilizationism before Indian independence in 1947, and more than a century later, they are still its torchbearers. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is just the latest and most successful of the political rightwing conservative organizations. In terms of making Hindu civilizationism popular, the BJP plays second fiddle to almost a hundred-year-old Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a militant Hindutva organization.

Hindu civilizationism, therefore, is not a new phenomenon. It started as part of Hindu revivalism in the early 19th century. Hindu revivalists, such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the founder of Brahmo Samaj, wanted to reform Hinduism and Hindu society so that it could rise above the social evils and iniquitous rituals and regain its position as a great civilization. Later, in the last century, civilizationist organizations were formed whose main objectives were political even when they were not working as a political party. For a long time, from the 1940s to the 1970s, these organizations and the political parties they supported remained unpopular. However, civilizationists started winning elections at the state level in the 1980s and won national elections in the late 1990s. They ruled India under Prime Minister Vajpayee (1999–2004) but as they did not have the majority of Lok Sabha seats, they were always dependent on other parties and could not fully implement their agenda. The second decade of the 21st century brought a sea change in their fortunes as, like many rightwing civilizationists in other countries, they discovered an affinity between their ideology and populism. The embrace of populism under Prime Minister Modi made them the supreme political force and, currently, Hindu civilizationism is the dominant ideology in India. PM Narendra Modi has trounced the opposition in the 2014 and 2019 national elections and he is by far the most popular leader in India, most likely to win the 2024 national elections (Pradhan 2022).

Modi riding a chariot reminiscence of ancient Hindu Gods, Avatars, Rajas and Hindu civilization

Source: Narendra Modi Twitter

During the last decade, Hindu civilizationism rhetoric has been rising steadily, with the support of populism. The people-elite divide of populism has been used to discredit the Congress Party and Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Similarly, the people-outsider divide, another regular feature of populist politics, was used to declare Hindus as the only original inhabitants of India and Muslims and Christians as outsiders. Fear, threat, and crisis were used by Modi, like other populists, to force ordinary Hindus to be afraid (Hindu khatray main hai: Hindus are in danger) and act as advised by Modi. Finally, Modi’s image as the only strong, decisive leader in India was carefully crafted, as in the case of many other populist leaders, to sway voters (Modi hai to mumkin hai: If there is Modi, then it is possible) (Sinha 2021; Saleem 2021; Saleem et al. 2022; Yilmaz and Morieson 2022b).

The othering of Muslims and other political forces as anti-nationals and non/fake Hindus is increasing in India. Hinduism has been presented as under threat from Muslims despite Hindus being close to eighty percent of the Indian population. Indians are being made to believe that Muslims and Westerners are again plotting to subjugate Hindus as they did many times during the previous twelve hundred years. The BJP has achieved what was unimaginable a few decades ago (Varshney 2019; Amarasingam et al. 2022).

However, it must be clear that Modi is not more civilizationist than previous civilizationists. The key difference between Modi and Hindu civilizationists of the 1960s and 1970s is the degree of populism, not the degree of civilizationism. Like Modi, Hindu civilizationists of the 20th century were also talking about Akhand Bharat, the golden Vedic age, oppressive Muslim/Mughal invaders, superiority of Hindu civilization, and Sanskrit promotion. Hindutva party manifestos of Hindu Mahasabha and Bharatiya Jana Sangh give ample evidence of civilizationalism (Saleem 2021). Populists are quite successful in the use of transnational solidarity today due to a number of reasons, such as revolution in information and communication technologies, globalization, increase in economic inequality and distrust in democratic institutions in numerous countries, rise in ethnic/religious attachments with the concurrent decline in liberalism, etc. However, they were not the first ones to use transnational solidarity. For instance, between 1987 and 1989, during the Ram Mandir movement, hundreds of thousands of bricks were donated for the eventual construction of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. These bricks were donated in response to a campaign by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindutva organization. The Ram Mandir movement and VHP campaign were pro-Hindutva and Hindu civilizationist. They were also transnational as bricks for the mandir were donated not only by people living in India but also by people of 55 other countries of the world (Udayakumar 1997; Hindustan Times 2021)....

In the following section, the prominence of Hindu civilizationism in present day India and Hindutva leaders’ consistent efforts to prove the grandeur and glorious achievements of Hindu civilization will be shown. The section will also demonstrate how Hindu civilizationism is being promoted by denigrating Muslim civilization and its achievements. Most of the papers on civilizationism focus on Christian-majority and Muslim-majority countries. This paper analyzes civilizationism in India, a Hindu-majority country. The key theoretical contribution of this paper is that it presents the evidence that civilizationism as a concept is as applicable and functional in a Hindu majority country as it is in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim majority countries.

Rest of the article can be read here.

Hindutva civilizational populist BJP’s enforcement of digital authoritarianism in India

 

Source: https://www.thefinancialexpress.com.bd/

Abstract:

The largest democracy in the world is now moving towards authoritarianism under the Hindutva civilizational populist prime minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s rule. This article focuses on digital rights in India that have seen a sharp decline in recent years. It explores the transformation of the internet and social media, from a relatively open and liberal space to a restricted one. This survey of India’s digital landscape finds that the rise of civilizational populist Modi and his eight years long rule have led to an upsurge in digital surveillance and control and has fostered an environment of online harassment and bullying for those who are critical of the BJP’s views and politics. The article uses a four-level framework (Full Network, Sub-Network, Proxies, and Network Nodes) to explore digital authoritarianism by the BJP government. At each of these levels, the Hindutva populist government has closed avenues of open discussion and exchange of views by enforcing new rules and regulations.

Read the article at the European Center of Populism Studies

Civilizationist Populism in South Asia: Turning India Saffron

Bajrang Dal Rally

Source: The Hindu

Abstract:

 The 21st century has witnessed a significant shift in how the concept of nationalism is understood. A political marriage between identity politics and populism has resulted in “civilizationism,” a new form of nationalism that entails an emotionally charged division of society into “the people” versus “the Other.” All too often, the divisive discourses and policies associated with civilizationalist populism produce intercommunal conflict and violence. 

This paper draws on a salient case study, India’s Hindutva movement, to analyze how mainstream populist political parties and grassroots organizations can leverage civilizationist populism in campaigns to mobilize political constituencies. In surveying the various groups within the Hindutva movement and conducting a discourse analysis of their leaders’ statements, the paper shows the central role of sacralized nostalgia, history, and culture in Hindutva populist civilizationism. By analyzing the contours and socio-political implications of civilizationist populism through this case study, the paper contributes to the theoretical understanding of the concept more generally.

Read the paper at European Center for Populism Studies website

India: Religious Freedom Issues. A CRS Report on Hindutva

The Congressional Research Service, a bi-partisan research wing of the US Congress, published a report on rising Hindu nationalism and its threat to minorities and human rights in India. Below are some of the key excerpts. The whole report can be read or downloaded from here.

For roughly 500 years before British rule became direct in 1857, the Asian Subcontinent had been dominated by Muslims politically. Many Hindu nationalists, along with some historians, assert that Hindu traditions and institutions were suppressed during this period. As the Indian independence movement grew in the early 20th century, some were energized to "correct" this historic trend. Secularism became a more-or-less enshrined value for the independent Indian state, although its conception in both theory and practice varies widely. 

Because Hinduism does not have a specific sacred text to which conformity can be demanded, "Hindu fundamentalist" is not an accurate term to describe a purveyor of "Hindutva" or "Hindu-ness." Moreover, as conveyed by one scholar, "India's diversity along linguistic, regional, and caste line means defining a 'Hindu culture' is problematic." For political parties such as the BJP and its antecedents, Hinduism as a concept is almost always concurrent with nationalism, the core belief being that India is an inherently Hindu nation, even if establishment of a strictly Hindu state is not a goal. In this regard, it is the proselytizing religions—Islam and Christianity, in particular—that can be characterized as representing a threat to the "Hindu nation." 

In simple terms, the key tenets of the Hindutva ideology are three: (1) Hindus are the rightful rulers of India, which is a Hindu nation; (2) the Christian and, especially, Muslim minorities are viewed with ambivalence because their religious allegiances are not indigenous to India (in a way that those of Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains are); and (3) caste divisions undermine Hindu unity. 

According to close observers, despite fronting an overtly Hindu nationalist party, Modi's 2014 national political campaign touched upon these Hindutva themes only minimally, and instead stressed development and good governance as its guiding lights. Yet Modi himself repeatedly has emphasized his view that "Hinduism is a way of life and not a religion." According to USCIRF, Hindutva "forms the basis of an exclusionary national narrative focused exclusively on the rights of Hindus." In commenting on the role of nationalism in Indian politics, a group of Australian academics offers that, "The Hindu nationalists seek not so much to preserve existing social hierarchies in Hindu cultures as they do to rewrite social order fascistically to the benefit of Hindu populations.".... 

The report provides a brief overview of the RSS and BJP's violent and controversial history and their aversion to Muslims.

The RSS has had a controversial history in India, including connections to the 1948 assassination of Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi.45 The organization has since been directly implicated in domestic terrorism. RSS members have been implicated in several incidents of "Saffron" (Hindu extremist) terrorism in India, including the 2007 Samjhauta Express bombings that killed 68 people on a train that runs between Delhi and Lahore, Pakistan. In 2011, former RSS activist Swami Aseemanand confessed to involvement in this and other attacks, contending that some high-level RSS leaders had prior knowledge and were complicit.46 In 2016, Maharashtra's former senior-most police official reportedly called for banning the RSS as "the country's largest terror organization."...

The BJP (along with its 1951-1977 antecedent, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh) has been a primary political purveyor of Hindutva in Indian society. Narendra Modi and current BJP President Amit Shah are credited with orchestrating the party's national surge after 2013.56 Throughout the country's history, India's Muslims have consistently favored the Congress Party over the BJP. While at least one-third of Muslim votes nationwide were cast for the Congress in the 21st century, the BJP's share of the Muslim vote dropped from 7% in 2004 to 3% in the 2009 cycle. Some surveys suggest that Modi's party and its electoral allies received up to 8% of the Muslim vote in 2014, with the main opposition Congress Party and its allies garnering 38%.57 Of 1,400 BJP members serving in various Indian state assemblies in 2017, 4 were Muslim. Muslims comprise about 19% of Uttar Pradesh's population, but 6% of its state assembly.58 Muslim representation in the Lok Sabha peaked at 10% in 1980 and lingered at about 6% until dropping to 4% in 2014.59 A 2016 assessment found that Muslims were vastly underrepresented in the legislative assemblies of BJP-controlled states, an imbalance only exacerbated by subsequent state-level wins for the party. The problem was starker when examining state ministers: at the time, only a single Muslim was among the 151 in BJP-controlled states.

A study by India's daily Hindustan Times found that, although only a small proportion of the more than 50,000 national and state-level politicians assessed were facing criminal charges for inciting religious violence or hatred (less than one-half of one percent), the BJP had the highest proportion (1.3%) of any party, more than triple that of the Congress Party. Moreover, the politicians facing such charges—including such high-profile figures as a federal cabinet minister and Uttar Pradesh's chief minister—were nearly five times more likely to win their elections than those not facing them....

 Religious Demographics in India

Source: CRS Report

The report explains that most of the political goals of the Hindu nationalists are about restricting minority rights, especially rights of the Muslim minority:

Hindu nationalists have a relatively short, but long-standing list of political goals. Many of these are found in the BJP's 2014 election manifesto.62 RSS leaders were mostly disappointed by the BJP-led government that ruled India from 1999 to 2004, in large part because then-Prime Minister Vajpayee and his lieutenants were not seen to be taking up core RSS issues. While out of power in the latter half of the 2000s, the RSS and BJP suffered a degree of mutual alienation; at one point in 2010 the then-RSS chief suggested that the BJP be dissolved and replaced by a new party. Yet the organization's leaders appeared to view the BJP victory in 2014 as crucial to the very existence of the RSS. Its leaders thus threw the full weight of their organization behind Modi's campaign while enjoying a correlate spike in participation in 2014.63 Leading Hindutva and widely-held RSS aspirations include

• scaling back laws and government programs designed to benefit the religious minorities, Muslims in particular;

• establishing a Uniform Civil Code (to replace current personal law based on religious customs and thus standardizing all national laws regarding such topics as marriage, divorce, and inheritance);

• repealing Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which grants limited autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir (a step that would, if implemented, allow citizens from other states to buy property in Jammu and Kashmir, see "The Kashmir Dispute," below);

• redrafting public school textbooks to remove what are alleged to be insults to Hindu gods and excessive praise of the subcontinent's past Muslim rulers;

• constructing a Ram temple on the Ayodhya site of the Babri Mosque that was razed in 1992; and

• preventing cow slaughter through legislation (cows are revered animals in Hinduism)....

Overall restrictions on freedom of expression are also on the rise in Modi's India according to the report:

 A major 2016 HRW report, "Stifling Dissent: The Criminalization of Peaceful Expression in India," contended that, "Indian authorities routinely use vaguely worded, overly broad laws"—a colonial-era sedition law perhaps the most abused among them—"as political tools to silence and harass critics." More recently, HRW warned that, "Journalists faced increasing pressure to self-censor due to threat of legal action, smear campaigns and threats on social media, and even threats of physical attacks."101 In September 2017, unidentified gunmen shot dead publisher and editor Gauri Lankesh, a vocal critic of militant Hindu nationalism, outside her home in Bengaluru. Evidence suggests the existence of organized campaigns to silence critics of the Hindutva movement, sometimes called "rationalists" for their opposition to the insertion of religion into politics.102 Indian journalists report coming under increasing pressure and bullying to remove stories critical of the Hindu nationalist government, and self-censorship by media organizations is seen to be a worsening problem by many.

Even before Modi's national elevation, his supporters were known for bellicose social media activity; in 2012, one former senior Indian intelligence officer wrote, "The style of the online blitzkrieg adopted by [Modi's] die-hard followers in India and abroad are reminiscent of the methods of the Nazi stormtroopers."104 The BJP has since been accused of cultivating "an army of cyber warriors to propagate its message of Hindu chauvinism and hyper-nationalism, and to launch vicious attacks on its opponents." "Modi's troll army" is, by some accounts, an orchestrated effort by the BJP to target critics on social media. Whether officially sanctioned or not, some of the most notable offenders—who openly celebrate the murder of critics for the mere act of exercising their right to free speech—are followed by Modi on Twitter.105 One U.S.-based commentator opined that, earlier in his prime ministership, Modi could afford to associate himself with "foul-mouthed trolls on Twitter," but his 2017 choice to allow Yogi Adityanath as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister "makes it much harder to argue that power will moderate the [BJP's] more feral instincts.

BJP government's committee to write a revisionist history of India

A Reuter's report last month, for the first time, revealed the existence of a committee of scholars appointed by the BJP government "to rewrite the history of the nation." The investigations for the report reveal that the revisionist history would be based on Hindutva ideology. Some excerpts from the report are reproduced below:

Minutes of the meeting, reviewed by Reuters, and interviews with committee members set out its aims: to use evidence such as archaeological finds and DNA to prove that today’s Hindus are directly descended from the land’s first inhabitants many thousands of years ago, and make the case that ancient Hindu scriptures are fact not myth. 

Interviews with members of the 14-person committee and ministers in Modi’s government suggest the ambitions of Hindu nationalists extend beyond holding political power in this nation of 1.3 billion people - a kaleidoscope of religions. They want ultimately to shape the national identity to match their religious views, that India is a nation of and for Hindus. 

In doing so, they are challenging a more multicultural narrative that has dominated since the time of British rule, that modern-day India is a tapestry born of migrations, invasions and conversions. That view is rooted in demographic fact. While the majority of Indians are Hindus, Muslims and people of other faiths account for some 240 million, or a fifth, of the populace. 

The committee’s chairman, K.N. Dikshit, told Reuters, “I have been asked to present a report that will help the government rewrite certain aspects of ancient history.” The committee’s creator, Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma, confirmed in an interview that the group’s work was part of larger plans to revise India’s history...

 Source: Reuters Investigates: By Rewriting History, Hindu Nationalists Aim to Assert Their       Dominance Over India

Referring to the emblematic colour of the Hindu nationalist movement, RSS spokesman Manmohan Vaidya told Reuters that “the true colour of Indian history is saffron and to bring about cultural changes we have to rewrite history.”

Balmukund Pandey, the head of the historical research wing of the RSS, said he meets regularly with Culture Minister Sharma. “The time is now,” Pandey said, to restore India’s past glory by establishing that ancient Hindu texts are fact not myth. 

Sharma told Reuters he expects the conclusions of the committee to find their way into school textbooks and academic research. The panel is referred to in government documents as the committee for “holistic study of origin and evolution of Indian culture since 12,000 years before present and its interface with other cultures of the world.” 

Sharma said this “Hindu first” version of Indian history will be added to a school curriculum which has long taught that people from central Asia arrived in India much more recently, some 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, and transformed the population. 

Hindu nationalists and senior figures in Modi’s party reject the idea that India was forged from a mass migration. They believe that today’s Hindu population is directly descended from the land’s first inhabitants. Historian Romila Thapar said the question of who first stood on the soil was important to nationalists because “if the Hindus are to have primacy as citizens in a Hindu Rashtra (kingdom), their foundational religion cannot be an imported one.” To assert that primacy, nationalists need to claim descent from ancestors and a religion that were indigenous, said Thapar, 86, who taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi for decades and has authored books on ancient Indian history. 

The theory of an influx of people from central Asia 3,000 to 4,000 years ago was embraced during British rule...

 According to the minutes of the history committee’s first meeting, Dikshit, the chairman, said it was “essential to establish a correlation” between ancient Hindu scriptures and evidence that Indian civilization stretches back many thousands of years. Doing so would help bolster both conclusions the committee wants to reach: that events described in Hindu texts are real, and today’s Hindus are descendants of those times... 

Culture Minister Sharma told Reuters he wants to establish that Hindu scriptures are factual accounts. Speaking of the Ramayana, the epic that follows the journey of a Hindu deity in human form, Sharma said: “I worship Ramayana and I think it is a historical document. People who think it is fiction are absolutely wrong.”  The epic tells how the god Rama rescues his wife from a demon king. It still informs many Indians’ sense of gender roles and duty. 

Sharma said it was a priority to prove through archaeological research the existence of a mystical river, the Saraswati, that is mentioned in another ancient scripture, the Vedas. Other projects include examining artifacts from locations in scriptures, mapping the dates of astrological events mentioned in these texts and excavating the sites of battles in another epic, the Mahabharata, according to Sharma and minutes of the committee’s meeting... 

Modi did not order the committee’s creation - it was instigated by Sharma, government documents show - but its mission is in keeping with his outlook. During the 2014 inauguration of a hospital in Mumbai, Modi pointed to the scientific achievements documented by ancient religious texts and spoke of Ganesha, a Hindu deity with an elephant’s head: “We worship Lord Ganesha, and maybe there was a plastic surgeon at that time who kept the head of an elephant on the torso of a human. There are many areas where our ancestors made large contributions.” Modi did not respond to a request from Reuters that he expand on this remark. 

Nine of 12 history committee members interviewed by Reuters said they have been tasked with matching archaeological and other evidence with ancient Indian scriptures, or establishing that Indian civilization is much older than is widely known. The others confirmed their membership but declined to discuss the group’s activities. The committee includes a geologist, archaeologists, scholars of the ancient Sanskrit language and two bureaucrats... 

After he was named culture minister in 2014 following Modi’s victory, Sharma, a doctor and chairman of a chain of hospitals, said he received guidance from the RSS. Sharma, a genial man with a wide smile, has a portrait of Bharat Mata, or Mother India, hanging above the doorway of a meeting room in his bungalow in central Delhi. Below it are portraits of past RSS leaders.

During the last three years, Sharma said, his ministry has organized hundreds of workshops and seminars across the country “to prove the supremacy of our glorious past.” The aim, he said, is to build a fresh narrative to balance the liberal and secular philosophy espoused by India’s first prime minister, Nehru, and furthered by successive governments for most of the nation’s post-independence history. 

The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, now controlled by Sharma’s ministry, these days mixes in sessions about right wing Hindu leaders and causes. At one such event in 2016, the president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Amit Shah, took the opportunity to lambast Nehru as a man influenced by the western world. “We have always believed that our policies should have the smell of Indian soil,” Shah said. It was time for a history of India that concentrates on “facts about our great past.”

Gau rakshaks' (cow protectors) rise under Modi/BJP: Is there a more sinister agenda?

In November 2017, Reuters published an investigative report Cash Cows: Emboldened by Modi's ascent, India's cow vigilantes deny Muslims their livelihood by Zeba Siddiqui, Krishna N. Das, Tommy Wilkes and Tom Lasseter. This report explains that, along with the physical threat, cow protection movement is also an economic threat to the Muslim minority. Due to the Hindus' aversion to the killing of cattle, the slaughtering, animal transport and hides businesses had been primarily in the hands of Muslims. These businesses are now all under threat. The slaughterhouses are being closed. The cow vigilantes not only beat and kill Muslims but also take away the cattle and these cattle are later sold to Hindus. So, assets are transferred from the poor indigent Muslim minority to Hundi majority, making Muslims more destitute.

Some excerpts of the report are reproduced below (full report can be accessed here):

The beating that ended Pehlu Khan’s life was televised nationwide. Cell phone video captured a group of men punching and slinging Khan around the middle of a road in north India, stomping on him and then slamming the 55-year-old farmer down on concrete as he begged for mercy. 

Khan had been stopped by the lynch mob of right-wing Hindus as he rode home from a market in April with two cows and two calves in the back of a truck. The crowd was furious at the sight of a Muslim transporting animals held sacred by Hindus, according to the accounts of his sons and two fellow villagers who were also attacked. Before the men beat Khan so badly that he later died, breaking his ribs in multiple places, they screamed that he was planning to slaughter the cattle for beef. 

Outside the frame of the video, something else was happening: Pehlu Khan’s cows were seized. They were hauled off to a nearby Hindu-run shelter that takes in cattle snatched from Muslims and sells them. 

Assaults meted out in broad daylight against India’s Muslim population, some 14 percent of the country’s 1.3 billion people, have sparked concern about the direction the country is taking under Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There has been another, less noted dimension to the violence: The theft from Muslims and redistribution to Hindus of cows that provide crucial income in the Indian countryside. 

Such scenes clash with India’s image as an investor darling in Asia and the pro-business message Modi broadcasts to foreign investors. But three and a half years after his electoral victory, the cow seizures illustrate how the nation’s right-wing Hindu factions that propelled Modi to power are now shaping India and stirring religious upheaval. 

Having stoked Hindu nationalist passions in his bid for the highest office, it’s unclear to what extent Modi can now control them. The bands of right-wing Hindus who seize the cows are operating essentially as private militias. They are undeterred by the prime minister’s public calls on them to end the violence. States governed by Modi’s party have seen a marked increase in cow theft from Muslims as well as funding for cow shelters that in many cases take in the stolen cattle. 

Interviews with nationalist Hindu leaders and militia members across the country reveal an impatience for Muslims to demonstrate obeisance to the Hindu majority. 

There are no official statistics for how many cows have been stolen from Muslims in incidents involving such groups since Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to national power in 2014. Reuters’ reporting across India, though, puts actual numbers on the extent of the cow theft. It also provides the first in-depth look at how the actions of cow vigilantes are leading to further economic marginalization of the country’s Muslim minority. 

In northern India, the leadership of just two of the main organizations of “gau rakshaks” – right-wing Hindu cow vigilantes, or literally “cow protectors” – said they have taken about 190,000 cows since the year of Modi’s election, some in the presence of police and almost every single one of them from Muslims, the reporting shows. 

Separately, Reuters surveyed 110 cow shelters or farms, known as “gaushalas,” across six Indian states that were led by BJP chief ministers from before or just after Modi’s 2014 election win. The survey found an increase of 50 percent in their cattle holdings - from about 84,000 head before Modi came to power in 2014 to more than 126,000 today.
The survey, conducted by phone and in person, covered a fraction of the thousands of cow sheds nationwide.It was not possible to determine how much of the 50 percent increase was due to cow vigilantes, because record-keeping in many cases is non-existent. But of the 110 cattle facilities surveyed, all but 14 said they receive cows from the Hindu vigilante groups. About a third said they sell or give cows away, nearly all to Hindu farmers and households.

In a separate survey, Reuters found that only three of 24 cow facilities in four states not ruled by a BJP chief minister said they sold or gave away cattle - mainly to Hindus - after receiving them. While cattle stock has risen about 40 percent in these gaushalas since Modi took office, only a small part of the increase was due to vigilantes. In many of the cases, cows were donated to the shelters for religious reasons or purchased from cattle markets for fear they would be slaughtered.... 

Cow slaughter is illegal in most of India, while committing cruelty to cattle by transporting them crammed into small spaces is outlawed across the country. Slaughtering buffalo, an animal not considered holy, is allowed, fueling a multi-billion dollar meat export industry that is dominated by Muslims. Penalties for killing a cow differ from state to state, with most ranging from six months to five years in prison....
People involved in snatching cattle from Muslims speak with a triumphant sense that their moment in history has arrived. “Everyone in this world is born Hindu. They are turned into Muslims when they are circumcised and Christians when they are baptized,” said Dinesh Patil, a district head of the Bajrang Dal group in the southwestern state of Maharashtra.

The Bajrang Dal organization is closely linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the nation’s umbrella right-wing Hindu organization. The RSS argues the purity of India was soiled by the foreign intervention of Muslims and then Christians beginning in the 8th century. The RSS helped create Modi’s political party, and the prime minister himself first attended the group’s meetings as a child.

At the complex he manages, Patil said that almost every one of the 1,700 cows grazing outside was “rescued by the Bajrang Dal” from “these Muslim slaughterers.” Patil described how a degree of law enforcement sanction is conferred on the cattle seizures: His group takes the cows and hands them over to the police, who then deliver the cattle to his facility. “The entire investigation and catching of the culprits is done by us,” Patil said.
The police, he added, “have to listen to us because the BJP is in power.” 

Told of Patil’s comments, Bipin Bihari, second-in-command of police for Maharashtra, said: “In a way their work supports the police. It eases our work. If they have some information on some illegal activities, they can share it with us, and we act on it. But they are not allowed to take the law into their hands.”.... 

Reuters found no evidence of a formal plan by the BJP to use cow vigilante groups to engineer the seizure and transfer of cows from Muslims to Hindus.

But in states where the BJP has taken power, cow seizures have ramped up. In the absence of official data on the number of cows taken, Reuters reporting and a review of past incidents show that the largest vigilante groups and the cattle seizures are concentrated in BJP-led states.

One organization of cow vigilantes in the northern state of Haryana has a golden cow with crossed swords and two AK-47s beneath it as its logo. The leaders of the Gau Raksha Dal, or cow protection group, say they have captured up to 120,000 across the country since beginning their campaign in 2013. Most of that activity was carried out after Modi’s victory in 2014, which was followed by a BJP chief minister taking office in Haryana later in the year.





Source: Cash Cows: Emboldened by Modi's ascent, India's cow vigilantes deny Muslims their livelihood

Dinesh Arya, state head of the Gau Raksha Dal, acknowledged his group is breaking the law. Arya produced a list of 27 criminal complaints lodged by cattle traders against his members that he said were still pending. “Seizing cattle is not legal and we know that well. We are not authorized to do this, it’s the police department’s work,” Arya said.

But he claims a higher calling: “Our religion has given us the right to stop our mother being butchered,” he said, referring to “gau mata,” or mother cow. “We have forcefully taken that right.” 

Outside his office, a truck converted into a “mobile cow ambulance” used to transport seized cattle bore a bullet hole – the aftermath of a recent gun battle with Muslim “cattle smugglers,” Arya said. 

Modi has at least twice publicly criticized cow vigilantism. “Do we get the right to kill a human being in the name of cow? Is this ‘gau bhakti’? Is this ‘gau raksha’?” he declared in a speech in June, using the Hindi phrases for cow devotion and cow protection. “Violence is not the solution to any problem,” he added. 

The Supreme Court has also addressed the issue. In September, the court ruled that central and state governments must deploy police officers to prevent cow vigilante violence.

On the ground, some Hindu activists aren’t heeding Modi’s calls. The leader of a group of cow vigilantes, which claims 10,000 members concentrated mostly in western and northern Indian states, said they were unmoved by the prime minister’s condemnation of what he called the vigilantes’ “anti-social activities.” 

“The cow protection movement totally belonged to the BJP before 2014,” said the group’s leader, Pawan Pandit, a part-time software engineer. “Now groups like ours have the momentum.” 

Pandit said networks of vigilantes operating under his Bhartiya Gau Raksha Dal – or Indian cow protection group – captured as many as 60,000 cows in the three years before Modi came to office. Since 2014, Pandit said, the group has grabbed more than 100,000 cows, often working with police.....

This lawlessness extends beyond the 18 states Modi’s BJP now controls directly or with coalition partners. In the southern state of Telangana, one of 11 states where the BJP is not in power, a man named Purushottam Gupta was arrested shortly after Modi gave a speech in August last year condemning cow vigilantes. Gupta had refused a court order to hand back 20 cattle seized by cow vigilantes and kept them with some 5,000 other cows at a facility next to the ashram where he is the de facto deputy head. Gupta said he was released the same day he was arrested and that the cows have yet to be returned to their Muslim owners.

India’s laws against cow slaughter predate Modi’s administration, and cow vigilantes were operating in India before Modi came to power. At the federal level, the BJP’s predecessor, the relatively liberal Congress party, funded the cow sheds via a federal animal welfare association at higher levels than Modi. Spending from the association’s four main gaushala grants, the primary source of federal funding for the facilities, was about 150 million rupees for the 2010-11 fiscal year, compared with some 58 million for 2015-16, the most recent period available. 

But at the state level, BJP politicians have in many cases sharply increased funding for the cattle shed facilities through government bodies. In Haryana, the state where Pehlu Khan lived, the Gau Seva Aayog, or cow protection commission, went from allotting 18.5 million rupees to cow sheds in the 2014-15 fiscal year, when a BJP chief minister took over, to more than 37 million for 2016-17. In Rajasthan, the state where Khan was killed, funding doubled from about one billion rupees in 2013-14, as the BJP captured the state, to more than 2.3 billion rupees in 2016-17, according to a state official... 

For Hindus, the cow has long been holy. In ancient scriptures, it is celebrated for its ability to nurture humanity and is compared to deities.  

During Modi’s Hindu nationalist administration, the cow has taken on additional political significance. In his campaign for office, Modi referred to the danger of a “pink revolution” under the relatively liberal Congress party, the domain of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. 

It was a play on Congress’ “green revolution,” under which agricultural output increased, suggesting the party had allowed the production and export of meat including beef to surge. 

Those in hardline Hindu groups supporting Modi frequently complain that Congress and its allies looked the other way when it came to illegal cow slaughter operations run by Muslims to gain favor with that community at the polls. Two spokespeople for Congress did not respond to questions from Reuters.

In May, Modi’s government banned the trade of cattle for slaughter. The measure mostly affected the buffalo industry, as killing cows for meat was already forbidden in most states. But the move was seen by many Muslims as a ploy to further squeeze them out of the multibillion dollar beef and leather industry, which employs millions in India. India’s Supreme Court in July suspended the government measure, effectively lifting the ban on the trade of buffalo for slaughter.

The list of cow rakshak attacks from September 2015 to June 2017 that caught media attention can be read in the article Una, Alwar and Delhi cow vigilantism: A list of 'gau rakshak' attacks since 2015 Dadri lynching. 

BJP's cow cabinets, cow ministries and cow departments to create cow-friendly ecosystem

Cow protection is a controversial but old issue in India. Under the British Raj, some sections of Hindu society pleaded for laws to prevent the slaughter of cows in India. After Independence, there was more pressure and so the rationalist and socialist Nehru agreed to introduce cow-protection in the Directive Principles of State Policy. The Article 48 of the Indian Constitution declares, “The State shall endeavour to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter of cows and other milch and draught cattle.”

Cow protection has achieved prominence since Prime Minister Modi took control of the national government in 2014. There have been new laws, the extension of quondam bans and public lynchings to protect cows. Hard-line Hindu organizations, like Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, trans. World Hindu Council) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, trans. National Volunteer Organization), have long campaigned for cow protection and cow protection was one of their major demands from the BJP (along with building of Ram Mandir (where once Babri mosque stood) and legislation for a common civil code).  Currently, the BJP's popularity and control of the national government and many state governments have made the once unthinkable, possible.

In January 2014, the state government of Rajasthan, belonging to the BJP, decided to set-up a separate ministry for the protection and preservation of cows. Cow protection was part of the BJP manifesto for the December 2013 state elections and it has been part of the BJP national program and overall Hindutva agenda, so it was not surprising but still a first. Previously, leaders of many Indian states have come up with cow protection laws that impose a fine or prison term for not only the killing of cows/cattle but also for transporting them to the slaughter houses. However, there was no department/ministry for cows (See India’s First Ministry for Cows). It was the Gujarat state that had the distinction of establishing the first Gopalan Department in India. The name Gopalan comes from Hindu religion. Lord Krishna was the eighth avatar of Vishnu (one of the principal deities in Hindu religion) and a supreme Hindu god in his own right. According to the legend, he was a cow herder and one of his names was Gopala which means “the protector of the cows.” 

Source: http://hindutva.info/lord-krishna-and-holy-cows/

The vision-mission of the new Gopalan Department is "To improve State's cow wealth so in near future cow rearing will emerge as a major economic activity offering immense employment opportunities."

The objectives of the department are:

Encourage Research to popularize use of Panchgavya.

Gaushala Development and conservation, up-gradation and improvement of cattle in gaushalas.

Value Addition of Cattle Products through processing.

Regulation of temporary Migration or Export of Cattle.

Fodder Management during Scarcity.

Registration of Gaushalas and their development towards self-sufficiency. (See Directorate of Gopalan)

After the establishment of Gopalan department in Rajasthan, there was a fear that other BJP-ruled states would follow suit but it did not happen, although some states increased sentences for cow slaughter and cow trafficking. For instance, Gujarat made the slaughter of cows punishable with life imprisonment in March 2017.

Now (September 2017), there is a talk of a national ministry of cows. Perhaps this new initiative was the result of the India's Supreme Court's suspention of a newly passed national law that banned the sale of cattle for slaughter nationwide (See India Supreme Court suspends cattle slaughter ban).

The push for a national ministry has come from hard-line Hindu organizations. It was reported that the VHP would petition Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Utter Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath for cow ministries at the center and the states. VHP’s Ayodhya-based spokesman Sharad Sharma said, “The issue of cow protection has always been dear to us. Now, we expect a dedicated ministry to support and boost an entire cow-friendly ecosystem.” Responding to questions about the VHP suggestions, BJP chief Amit Shah said, “Various suggestions have come. Discussions are on” (See VHP to push for separate cow ministry at the Centre and states).

Angshukanta Chakraborty has written a scathing critique of the impending decision (See No, Modi government. Cow ministry is ridiculous)

But a Union cow ministry for the whole of India? Is it really that unthought-of, given the broad tendencies that the Modi government has been displaying with brazen aggression, perfectly in line to promote and deliver by 2019 the dreamed-of goal of turning India into a Hindu Rashtra?

We have seminars on cow urine, dung being organised in hallowed institutions such as the IITs. IIT Delhi, last year, had a three-day seminar on the fabled anti-cancer properties of panchagavya, the concoction comprising cow dung, urine and other bovine derivatives. As we had said on DailyO then, it’s one thing to chance upon the anti-cancer properties, if any. It’s simply quite another to steer the whole course of research at a publicly-funded premier technology institute.

But again, not unexpected. Because we have a bevy of ministers and BJP leaders singing paeans to cow urine, including Nitin Gadkari, who wanted hospital floors to be washed with cow urine, to Devendra Fadnavis, and the latest joinees Shaina NC and Meenakshi Lekhi.

The logic behind cow ministry is all the more shrouded in mystery (beyond the usual political trappings) given we already have a National Institute of Animal Welfare, the Animal Welfare division under the Ministry of Environment and Forests. We have the Animal Welfare Board of India. In addition, we have the department of animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare. The rationale behind a cow ministry – not a cattle or livestock ministry – is unavailable, when not viewed through a highly saffronised cow protection-tinted lens.

Then why the sounding out of the BJP-led Centre’s plans of setting up a cow ministry? The historian Mukul Kesavan writes: “The cow is so totemic for the BJP that the murder of human beings in this animal's cause makes responsible leaders resort to silence, deflection, denial, defensiveness or arguments in mitigation that would shame the moral sense of a three-year old.” ...

In the new scheme of things, the gau rakshak is on the same pedestal as the soldier, and is therefore unchallenged in the nationalist pecking order. And even as PM Narendra Modi gently admonishes the fake gau rakshaks in his speech and tweets, after a highly impactful #NotInMyName protest in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar against Junaid’s murder, he nevertheless ensures the fake gau rakshaks are regularly confused for the good gau rakshaks, thereby making justice beyond reach for those at the receiving end of the cow zeitgeist.

Exactly as the foreign press writes disparagingly of the India story, calling Modi a “constant tinkerer”, “not much of a reformer”, ridiculing “Modi’s strongman economics”, repeatedly underlining that foregoing the economics of a secular, tolerant India would be tantamount to an economic downward spiral, such bitter pills are being spat out with the newfound arrogance of this fast becoming bovine theocracy such as ours. Only the cows themselves have little to gain from the politics in their name.

The ministry is still a suggestion and it may remain so for a long time but Hindu nationalism is definitely increasing as a separate ministry for cows is primarily based on Hindu religion. A separate ministry is also justified and considered necessary to:

• Increase milk production;
• Save several Indian cow breeds that are near extinction;
• To save cattle/cows from cruelty;
• To save Gou Mata (mother cow) that is the symbol of life in Indian culture.

But all these reasons camouflage the real reason, which is the rise of the religious right and religious nationalism. The irony is that despite all the laws, bans and lynchings, India is still the largest exporter of beef. Most of the beef is of buffalos but it is still beef:

Despite the various bans, India is the world’s largest exporter of beef, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. India exported 2.4 million tons of beef last year, compared with 2 million tons by Brazil. India alone accounts for nearly 24% of global beef exports. (See Why an Indian Hindu Group Wants a Ministry of Cows?)

Previously, The Haryana state, under a BJP government, established Haryana Gau Seva Aayog ( Haryana Commission for Serving Cows) in 2010 after passing The Haryana Gau Seva Aayog Act, 2010. The main objective was to oversee the strict implementation of laws that prohibit the slaughter and/or cruelty to cows. 

In November 2020, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan established a Cow or Gau Cabinet. It consists of six departments and five ministers, all suppose to work together for the "conservation and welfare of cows". 

Bharat mata ki jai (Victory for/to Mother India)

Is it necessary to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'? Is it a national slogan or a Hindu slogan? Are the people who refuse to say this slogan anti-India or anti-national or traitors? A new controversy is raging across India.

It all started when on March 3rd, (2016) Mohan Bhagwat, the chief (Sarsanghchalak) of the Hindu nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), spoke at an award ceremony at the RSS headquarters in Reshimbagh. During the speech, he said that the Indian youth should be taught to say `Bharat Mata Ki Jai' as some forces are telling the youth not to say nationalist slogans. This part of his speech was possibly linked to the JNU controversy, however, he did not make any direct reference to it.

Bhagwat's speech did not garner much attention until Asaduddin Owaisi referred to it in his speech in Maharastra on March 14th. Owaisi is the President of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen and a three-term member of the lower house of the Indian Parliament (Lok Sabha) from Hyderabad. At a rally, he said that he would not chant the slogan even if Bhagwat put a knife to his throat as nowhere in the Constitution it is written that one should say Bharat Mata ki Jai. He said that he would say 'Jai Hind' (Victory to Hind) but not Bharat Mata ki Jai.

Two days later, on March 16, a budget debate skirmish in the Maharastra Assembly led Waris Pathan, a member of Owaisi's party and an MLA from Mumbai, to say that he would say 'Jai Hind' but not say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' even at the cost of his life. The Maharashtra Assembly, where Hindu nationalists (BJP and Shiv Sena) are in the majority,  then unanimously suspended him for disrespecting the country. Shortly after his suspension, Pathan said to the reporters that he did not disrespect India:

I am proud of having been born in this country and god willing will be buried in the very earth here. I have not disrespected my country. And I cannot think of doing so. Jai Hind. Jai Bharat. Jai Maharashtra.

On March 17, the Shiv Sena's mouthpiece Saamana wrote a strongly-worded editorial in which it recommended not only revoking the citizenship of those who refuse to chant the slogan but also beheading of their heads:

Owaisi has insulted Bharat Mata. Now, Muslims should come out in opposition to Owaisi and hail Bharat Mata...Bharat Mata ki jai is a matter of inspiration and devotion to the country. Considerations of caste and religion should not matter on such issues...Owaisi has said that even if someone puts a knife to his throat, he would not say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai.'...Such people's heads should be cut off.

Since then, many other people have commented on this issue. Some have supported Owaisi's stance; others have criticised him but said that there should be no compulsion. If chanting a slogan cannot make a person a patriot, not chanting will not make her a traitor. A timeline of the controversy till April 5th can be seen here.

Why such opposition to 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' while there is universal acceptance for 'Jai Hind'? Are they not convey the same emotion? Some have argued that Bharat Mata slogan is linked with Hindu nationalism from the early twentieth century. A. G. Noorani explains in an article how India as mata/goddess Kali or Durga is fundamental to Hindutva. 

This is the record on “Bharat Mata”. When the upstarts of the BJP tell us that it is “anti-national” not to proclaim it, it is because they do not bear loyalty to Indian nationalism, but to Hindu nationalism or Hindutva.

Source: Indian Feminists.com

Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury,  a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament, however, castigated the politicians of all sides for using this Indian battle cry (Bharat Mata ki Jai) for political expediency and electoral gains:

However, in the entirely different world of the Indian Army, Bharat Mata ki Jai is a traditional, multi-faith battlecry, where soldiers of all denominations place their country before their religion. Roared through many voices, Bharat Mata ki Jai has sustained the Indian soldier on many battlefields as he closed with the enemy for the final reckoning ... But now, with elections to many state Assemblies underway, the battlecry of the warrior has been misappropriated by the political demagogues and turned into street slogans by the politician. These are the enemies within the gates whom the soldier may have to deal with if and when called upon to do so.