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Two new showrooms/office spaces, double height (135 sq m each with bath) for lease in upscale Campal/Miramar beach area, Panaji, Goa. Contact: goaengineer...@aol.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Folk religion and Hindutva: another view after the Goa campaigns Forcing compliance with a monolithic model of Hinduism runs counter to Hinduism's inherent strengths, argues VIDYADHAR GADGIL vgad...@gmail.com As the dust settles on the failed campaign of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS) and Sanatan Sanstha (SS) to intimidate the artist Subodh Kerkar into complying with their narrow vision of Hinduism, one aspect that has been overlooked is the attempts of these organisations to impose and enforce a Brahminical view of Hinduism as the only proper method of worship and devotion for all Hindus. The campaigns of the HJS and the SS over the past few years have not been restricted to attacking cultural expressions that they do not agree with. Over the past few years, particularly in the Goan hinterland, they have been systematically targeting folk religion and trying to force it to conform to this narrow Brahminical view. Ganesh Mandals across Goa have had run-ins with the activists of these groups, who take exception to the myriad ways in which Hindu folk religion depicts Hindu deities, and demand that these depictions should strictly follow Brahminical scripture. What makes all this much easier is a supine and compliant government, which, while claiming to be 'secular', responds with alacrity to the slightest whim of these groups. This creates a culture of impunity which makes the strategy of intimidation all the more credible and effective. Religion has many facets, and fulfils many human needs. Karl Marx has famously described it as the "opium of the people", indicating that institutionalised religion is a tool of oppression that is used by the elites to buttress their power and deaden and co-opt protest against exploitation, as can be seen from the fact that institutionalised religion has more often than not been an ally of the state and the elites and a supporter of the status quo. But while this characterisation by Marx is well known, Marx also recognised that religion is "the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification." Marx goes on to say that "religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." If institutionalised religion is the "opium of the people", folk religion is the "sigh of the oppressed creature", through which the underprivileged and exploited have sought to express their protest against injustice, in the absence of other ways to do so. Such traditions are present in all religions, and while institutionalised religion is favoured by the elites, folk religion has attracted the allegiance of the masses. Hinduism has always been particularly rich in folk expressions -- in fact, Hinduism is an amalgam of various folk beliefs and forms of worship that have been embraced and assimilated over the centuries. Thus, along with the better-known deities like Ram, Ganesh and Shiva that have a pan-Indian presence, we have local deities -- for instance, Sateri and Vetal in Goa. The bhakti tradition in Hinduism was an expression of the "sigh of the oppressed creature" and bhakti poet saints like Tukaram, Namdev and Kabir in their poetry depicted the sufferings of the common people and implicitly questioned structures of power that were instrumental in exploitation and oppression. These poets live on in the minds of the masses, hundreds of years after their death, and common folk are far more familiar with the writings of these poet saints than they are with scriptural Brahminical texts. Similarly, lower caste and tribal groups, living close to and dependent upon nature, have favoured folk deities that have come down from a past of nature worship and animism, and have also adapted and creatively reinterpreted other deities like Ganesh to fit their needs. Given this multiplicity of beliefs and practices, the Hindutvavadis' attempts to forge a monolithic Hindu identity -- something that has never existed through history, given the multiplicity of practices and beliefs (and lack of them) that go to make up the rich mosaic of Hinduism -- do gross injustice to the folk expressions of the masses. Hindutva has consistently resorted to passing off a narrow Brahminical view as 'true' Hinduism. This is no surprise, given the roots of the Hindutva ideology in the Brahminical RSS. From its earliest days Hindutva has consistently presented a Brahminical model as the ideal, including in Deen Dayal Upadhyaya's theory of 'Integral Humanism' (the philosophy that the BJP swears by, and which is nothing but a veiled justification of the caste system) down to present times. The gods and the forms of worship that it has promoted have also matched Brahminical ideals. The compulsions of electoral politics, and the need to forge a wider voting bloc beyond its traditional base of Brahmins and Baniyas forced the Bharatiya Janata Party to search for ways to extend its appeal. Various Dalit writers, including B R Ambedkar and Jyotiba Phule (in his famous essay 'Their Gods are not Our Gods') had shown that beliefs and practices among the lower castes were quite different from those of the upper castes. But rather than adapt rituals and deities in a way that would appeal to lower castes and tribals, or absorbing folk deities, the Sangh Parivar has projected particular deities for these groups -- deities that were subservient to the main deities of the Brahminical pantheon. Thus, rather than promoting Ram as the ideal for the lower castes, it has been Hanuman who has been valourised -- as the faithful servant of Ram -- clearly indicating to the lower castes that their proper role in the hierarchy was as servants of the upper castes. The same pattern was seen in the infamous Shabri Kumbh Mela in 2006, which sought to promote Shabri, a tribal woman who, according to legend, was a devotee of Ram, as a deity in the tribal region of Dangs in Gujarat. Promoted by the RSS, the three-day Shabri Kumbh Mela was clearly an attempt to Hinduise the tribal community -- but in a role clearly subservient to the upper castes. It is in this context that one needs to understand the efforts of the HJS and SS in relation to the depictions of Lord Ganesh. Among the prescriptions on the HJS website are the detailed guidelines regarding the proper mode of worship of Lord Ganesh, including the view that Ganesh idols should be sculpted only from clay or mud. It recommends making idols that are small in size, and warns against making idols for display, since "idols cannot be objects of exhibition". Finally, there is an injunction that "idols of Lord Ganesh should not have weird forms and attires". A perusal of the prescriptions would show that the vast majority of idols of Lord Ganesh would be considered improper, and SS activists have taken this to extremes. In one case, they opposed the depiction of Lord Ganesh with a flute, claiming that a flute is the instrument of Krishna. These prescriptions allegedly come from scripture, but a more careful examination would show that the ideal idol according to the HJS is the kind that is traditionally favoured by the Maharashtrian Konkanastha Brahmin community -- hardly a surprise, given that one such Brahmin, Jayant Athavale, is the head of the Sanatan Sanstha. This would be fine as far as it goes -- cults are most welcome to have their own views about how religious practice should be organised. But the problem is that the HJS and SS forcibly try to impose their views on people at large. Through this, they aim to create a monolithic Hinduism, which, in the long run, will strike at the very strengths that has enabled Hinduism to survive down the centuries -- its ability to accept and assimilate a wide variety of influences within its rich mosaic. First published in the Herald, September 4, 2009.