Let’s clarify at the onset itself: all Hindus do not support CAA and NRC. Some however do with unflinching rigidity. What is interesting though is that a large section–owing to emotive reasons of belonging–buys into CAA’s “benevolent” logic while downplaying NRC (primarily due to its procedural complexity and potential outcomes). Overall, this prepares the “different-priorities soup” we seem to be stuck in.
Leaving orthodox positions aside, there is a moral vagueness in the stand taken by the ilks of Chetan Bhagat, which in turn opens up the Pandora’s box of contestations about nationalism in India. It is another debate that many in this group take the ethical dimension out of the issue and stick to the consequentialist logic (i.e. bigotry is bad because it can impact India’s reputation abroad).
Chetan Bhagat tries to accord a shape to an idea of “good Hindu”: one who doesn’t necessarily hate Muslims, but gives preference to Hindus’ right to nostalgia and belonging vis-à-vis India. His views on “Love Jihad” and other controversial issues betray the similar attitude of speaking from the high horse of being a “good Hindu”.
A “good Hindu” argues that Muslims (if persecuted) have a buffet of “Muslim countries” to choose from, while Hindus have no option but to look towards India. What this claim does is that it distorts the very foundational premise that India as a nation stands on.
While we can’t have any qualms about a persecuted Hindu seeking refuge in India–he/she is welcome–but to deny this courtesy to a persecuted Muslim amounts to brazen partisanship and impropriety.
All this may not formally redefine India in its constitutional document, but it surely does that in the minds and hearts of India’s billion plus citizens. Chetan Bhagat probably doesn’t realise that he is actually tying himself in knots–not being able to provide convincing answers.
Bigotry and militaristic politics are not preserves of a single country. For long, a multitude of nation states have been nurturing their dreams of theocracy and cultural superiority. But what made India distinct in South Asia was its commitment to an ideal of inclusiveness and acceptance.
And unless we realign the idea of India with that of Pakistan, Afghanistan or Myanmar, the precariousness and incoherence in the argumentation of Chetan Bhagat and his ideological alter egos will hardly be lost on anyone.
Moreover, the benefit of doubt Chetan Bhagat gives to the government is emblematic of the fear to take on the State directly, to call spade a spade (which nonetheless we can understand).
The battle of belonging
Though social-historical context plays a role in the evolution of state, there has been a deliberate attempt at creating a confusion between Indian civilization and Indian nation. The antiquity of the former is hardly disputed, while that of the latter hardly settled.
The Brahmanic, Buddhist, Jain and Islamic political regimes have had their own respective propositions regarding India and its national status. Yet, history and scholarship show that Indian nation (in its modern avatar) is a 19th century invention, not a (re)discovery of something already existing for epochs. It was not history that created a nationalistic imagination in India, but the other way around. There had never been a single “Indian nationalism” before 19th century.
While a “composite Indian nationalism” was taking shape, because of certain historical warps, a spiritual flavour was accorded to it by Vivekananda and Aurobindo. Though predominantly Hindu-oriented, this spiritualisation didn’t immediately express itself as anti-Muslim.
With Muslim separatism gaining traction, the spiritual nationalism became exclusively Hindu in the hands of Savarkar and then Golwalkar. That was when an alternative model of Hindu nationalism mooted on the pattern of Muslim nationalism was born.
Yet in 1947, two nationalisms had their way: Muslim nationalism (of Pakistan) and the composite Indian nationalism (of Gandhi). Surely for some Muslims Pakistan was created, but a vast majority decided to stay back in India. This proved to be the catch. It created anxiety among Hindu nationalists who were already forced to shelve their demands for Hindu-Rashtra. For decades this current of Hindu nationalism has survived, and finally burgeoned in a big way in the last six years.
The idea of Hindu nationalism is that for being an Indian one needs to be a Hindu. The idea of India, as enshrined in its Constitution, is that for being an Indian one needs to be a human. “National” has a political connotation in India rather than cultural (unlike in Pakistan).
And thus–to all those conforming to Chetan Bhagat’s perspective–as long as India abides by its Constitutional ideals and its foundational philosophy, any attempt at “Hinduising” its policies and priorities (and then moralising them) would fall flat.
Remember, in an Indian scenario, we are imagining a “nation state” amidst compelling realities of a “state nation”. If the intransigence about asserting Hindu-ownersip of India continues (even in Chetan Bhagat’s sugar coated way), and if there are really some “patriots” influenced by any exclusivist brand of nationalism, then it requires them to go back to the drawing board and reconceptualise the “idea” of India. But that might be possible only by destroying the existing one.
Even if someone manages to go that far, will there remain any “concept” of India–as we have known it–in order to be reworked? Chopping off the branch on which one stands is not a good idea. Chetan Bhagat listening?