In the symphony of politics, moralism, religionism, and regionalism, a child called Constitutional morality is the new poster boy. Many experts have held it to be the system which will take India forward in upcoming decades and centuries.
Voicing his opinion explicitly against this dictum, voices like J Sai Deepak have often held it to be a colonial mindset in repackaged form. His prognosis is that replacing India’s civilisational identity with constitutionalism (and civic nationalism) would make it vulnerable to hostile takeovers.
Without disagreeing with his predictive power, it is easy to see what he may have missed, but also why he is right.
Constitutionalism and Constitutional morality have brought certain features which are definitive to turn out to be bête noire for them. One argument could be that it is not a big deal for any nation to let a few chunks of constitutional morality go for a fission experiment.
The argument is bolstered by the fact that the average age of a Constitution – often termed the founding document of a country in modern times – is 17 years, while the Indian Constitution has survived for more than 75 years. It may be intriguing to let a few of them go to make way for the larger document to survive.
It is not easy and can’t be done without damaging the social fabric and civilisational identity of this land called Bharat. The identity here includes geography, culture, and a way of living which Hinduism is often termed as.
The issue at hand for all of us is the consequences and devastating aspects of that fission. In 77 years, Constitutional morality has become a key feature of the neck-guarding policies and politics around certain features of politically independent Indian society.
People aware of legal X (formerly known as Twitter) have seen debates around Constitutional morality being invoked in high-profile cases. These cases include bail pleas and other legal queries related to Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid, various other ‘activists’, Sanatanis demanding their civilisational right to worship on and protect their millennia-old heritage, and the WAQF Act among others.
Before these cases, it was hard to find these terms beyond offline legal groups of court and law school premises. It has to be something related to the politics of the day because all of these cases are politically relevant too.
Recent Maharashtra elections were fought around the issue of illegal WAQF land and community-based unity of both Hindus and Muslims. It found resonance in Jharkhand too – albeit of lower intensity.
While Muslim Imams and Madrasas appealed to vote for the community, going to the extent of even saying that it could be the last election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) kept it simple with its slogan “Batenge toh Katenge” – referencing the slaughtering of Hindus and other minorities going on in Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, the opposition kept a stunned silence on the issue. No big statements, no big press conferences or any volunteering effort could be seen from them. Even if it was for vote-bank purposes, people would have welcomed it. But no. On the contrary, Yogi Adityanath’s “Batenge toh Katenge” was born out of emotional intensity and a feeling for the possible grief of more than a billion people.
Despite aligning with a secular party, the BJP did not change its motto while in opposition, Uddhav Thackeray was seen apologising for demolishing the Masjid which emphasised Hindus’ subservience to four decades old skewed definitions of old moral standards.
Consequently, the BJP won 132 seats on its own, giving a strong message that an appeal to core values garners more momentum and victory.
But the main headline came from its aftereffects. Parties whose leaders wrote essays and spoke about Constitutional morality started to break the unspoken rule of it. They spoke on the plight of Bangladeshi Hindus.
The most significant move came from Congress. The party’s Media and Publicity Department Chairman took note of and expressed deep concern over the insecurity faced by religious minorities in Bangladesh. Citing Hindu monk and former ISKCON priest Chinmoy Krishna Das’ arrest as an example, it asked the Modi government to pressurise the Bangladeshi government to safeguard minorities.
Priyanka Gandhi, aspiring to be like Indira Gandhi, appealed to the Modi government to intervene in order to ensure the safety of minorities in Bangladesh.
बांग्लादेश में इस्कॉन टेंपल के संत की गिरफ्तारी और अल्पसंख्यक हिंदुओं के खिलाफ लगातार हो रही हिंसा की खबरें अत्यंत चिंताजनक हैं।
मेरी केंद्र सरकार से अपील है कि इस मामले में हस्तक्षेप किया जाए और बांग्लादेश सरकार के समक्ष अल्पसंख्यकों की सुरक्षा सुनिश्चित करने का मुद्दा मजबूती… https://t.co/Cuu0dBO3nr
— Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (@priyankagandhi) November 27, 2024
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) also joined its former rival in the chorus. Its Supremo Arvind Kejriwal emphatically announced that the whole of India is united in solidarity with Sant Chinmoy Krishna Das Ji and also described his arrest as unjust. The enthusiastic former activist sought the Modi government’s intervention on this issue.
बांग्लादेश में अन्यायपूर्ण तरीके से गिरफ्तार किए गए संत चिन्मय कृष्ण दास जी के साथ पूरा देश एकजुटता के साथ खड़ा है।
केंद्र सरकार से अपील करता हूँ कि इस मामले में हस्तक्षेप करके चिन्मयदास जी को जल्द से जल्द मुक्त कराएँ। https://t.co/DIBcRPvGSH
— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) November 27, 2024
Two AAP leaders, namely Manish Sisodia and Saurabh Bharadwaj, met Vrajendra Nandan Das, Communication Director of ISKCON, in Delhi. Bharadwaj termed Das’ imprisonment as inhuman while Sisodia gave unequivocal support to the Modi government for doing whatever was in its capacity.
However, the most unexpected twist came when Mamata Banerjee, whose political career is resting on the bed of arrows laid down by Islamists, also condemned the arrest. She also described it as an international matter and refused to interfere with the Centre’s decision.
Her party Trinamool Congress (TMC) termed it unacceptable. Its National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee said that whatever the Modi government decides on the issue, TMC will give full support to the government.
Despite being good and welcomeworthy, all these statements have a serious common lacuna. If one scans them word-by-word, the phrase ‘minority’ often appears in their statements, especially Congress. The real question is: what does the minority mean in the Bangladeshi context?
According to the 2022 edition of the US government report on International Religious Rights in Bangladesh, the country’s minorities include Hindus, Christians, Shia Muslims, Ahmadi Muslims, Baha’is, animists, ISKCON members, agnostics, and atheists.
That is where the trick, or fraud, really exists. Hindus have to be seen along with all other identity groups under the grave danger of Sunni extremists running like wolves with blood in their mouths. Otherwise, Hindu lives don’t matter at all. Just to give it a Hindu touch, support for the ISKCON disciple has been added.
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In all likelihood, it doesn’t really matter for the adherents of one section of the Indian political class that Hindus are targeted because they belong to a class of the human race. It also does not matter that Hindus are targeted because they are considered supportive of a democratic regime which took Bangladesh to economic heights. It also does not matter that they stand as a symbol of resistance to the whole global order living in terror since 9/11.
Such acts of gross negligence convey that their lens for looking at Hindus from a humanist angle is long gone. For them, Hindus, as Hindus, do not entice a sense of motherly love and fatherly protection, instead, it seems to invoke a feeling of repulsion among them, even when it is common knowledge that most Bangladesh-based Hindus belong to the castes these political parties claim to protect in India.
By raising their voices for minority rights and not clearly stating that they are advocating for Hindus, they have, in effect, sworn allegiance to the Indian Constitutional order but have also posed the question: can there not be a plea to protect Hindus without adhering to Indian Constitutional morality?
Or is it that Hindus are being looked at as the second biggest majority in Bangladesh? – a probability of which is extremely low.
The other explanation for their well co-ordinated response on the plight of Bangladeshi Hindus is that by establishing that Hindus are under attack by Islamists, the decades-old narrative of secular parties would take a big hit.
Secularists, both before and after Indian independence, have claimed that Muslims are in danger because Hindus are in the majority. It is based on the fear of numbers and is baseless considering the nature of Hinduism and Islam. While Hindu texts prescribe offence for the defence of Dharma, Islamic Mullahs want expansion through multiple means.
However, the narrative that Muslims are in danger among Hindus dominated the Fundamental Rights aspect of the Constitution, political debates, and mass media consumption via screens, radio magazines and newspapers.
For many of us who grew up in the last three and a half decades, Muslim areas were secluded places where one had to change the natural order of their behavioural pattern, only because the system taught us that they deserve more respect.
All of this was predicated on the fact that Muslims deserve more protection. Innumerable instances of bloodshed by Aurangzeb, Tipu Sultan, or the Moplah pogrom were described as something else because reality would put the narrative under grave danger.
The fear came to the forefront again in the case of Bangladeshi Hindus. If it were described as anti-Hindu violence by parties claiming to be flag-bearers of secularism, the intelligentsia sitting at the fence would be forced to look at history with the lens of sympathy towards Hindus. In the long run, it would mean the destruction of the ecosystem.
This ecosystem has been trying to hijack the definition of Constitutional morality, and it would have been no time before ‘minority appeasement’ would be termed a part of obeying Constitutional morality. For an indefinite period, such attempts are highly unlikely to be made since the BJP’s victory in Maharashtra and the reasons behind it are going to bring more voices speaking in support of Bangladeshi Hindus.
The issue ultimately boils down to electoral outcomes. It is easy to see through their pathetic attempts at invoking the failed approach of soft Hindutva. Electoral losses have resulted in these parties rolling back on their anti-Hindu radical agendas. However, the pace has been extremely slow.
Parties project themselves as pro-Hindu, get votes, and then go back into their shells. In 10 years, only a few blips of pro-Hindu statements are there to show, despite losing dozens of elections. But it will happen if Sanatanis persevere.
The voice on ballot papers is a pressure and a massive one. It can change the way a party works, force its workers to join other parties, and make parties go abroad to seek help. Why can’t it change the narrative around Hindus?
Hindus need not stop until their rights as Hindus are secured, and Constitutional morality also contains principles of state protection of Hindus.
