Shrinking space of Hinduism

By Kancha Ilaiah

THE DALITS embracing Buddhism in Delhi on November 4 became a national issue as it was made controversial. The Central Government, at the behest of the BJP's parivar organisations, used repressive measures making it more visible than it normally would have been. Why are the Hindutva organisations opposed to Dalits embracing Buddhism? For that matter, why should they oppose anyone embracing any religion or anyone converting to any other religion? The right to religion has almost become a natural right of all human beings. It is a fundamental right as well. In the history of religions the right to religion was never confined to national boundaries. The citizenship question is not related to the religion one belongs to or the religious views one holds.

It is a known fact that the Dalits - even the Shudras and tribals - never became part of any major religion with full spiritual equality. It is an elementary issue that the right to religion includes the right to priesthood, as it integrates a person fully into the religion. The Dalits have suffered untouchability and atrocities within the Hindu social order and they need to enter into a religion that grants them full religious rights. Even Hindu scholars concede that religion plays a key role in the development of the human personality. Caste hierarchy does not allow Dalits entry into popular Hindu temples. The resistance to such an entry was witnessed in Andhra Pradesh after the Government recently took up a Dalit temple entry programme. This gave the State machinery the titters. While the priestly class maintained a cold silence in public over such a programme, in private it instigated the upper castes to counter it in all possible forms.

In Hinduism two streams are operating now. One is the ritual- centred purely Brahmin-headed stream that handles temples and mutts. They have never declared that Dalits are Hindus and they should get all the rights within that religion. Nor did they say that there is no hurdle for Dalits' entry into temples or into a Vedapatashala (school for Vedic studies). In other words, this school believes that ritually they cannot grant equal rights to Dalits as they do not want to modify or change the Varnadharma theory that remains integral to Hindu scriptures. This is Hindu fundamentalism.

While Afghanistan's Taliban believed that no part of a woman's body should be seen in public, the whole world condemned the militia as fundamentalists and medievalists. Why are we not applying that norm to Hindu Brahminism, which does not allow Dalits into religious institutions with equal rights? This is a paradox of understanding religion itself. This mode of caste fundamentalism is not acceptable to any reasonably well-educated Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Backward Class person.

This mode of Brahminic fundamentalism forced almost an entire community in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh to embrace Islam. The history of the Bamiyan Buddhas itself shows that once Afghanistan was a Buddhist region and after Buddhism got rooted out it must have come under the influence of Hinduism. But as of now there are no traces of Hinduism there. In recent times we have seen that in India - by driving out a single caste, Brahmin Pandits, who did not convert to Islam, Kashmir became a totally Islamic region.

A major part of the North-East region has become Christian. Several sections of society converted to Christianity even in other parts of the country. In South India, a majority of the Dalits have moved into Christianity, but since the reservation benefits are attached to the Hindu religion they register themselves as Hindus in the census records. The former Prime Minister, Mr. V. P. Singh, created a legal channel by issuing a Government Order that all Buddhists based on their caste hierarchy could claim reservation. The government employees who embraced Buddhism at the Delhi rally did so because that did not affect their reservation position. Since Buddhism has the sanction of Ambedkar in the contemporary context, it exclusively became a Dalit religion. This is why the Bahujan Samaj Party leader, Mr. Kanshi Ram, privately confessed that he was not embracing Buddhism at this stage because that would affect his Bahujan formation. He said, ``I can embrace Buddhism with ten million people but all of them will be only SCs.'' If Mr. Kanshi Ram can take even a thousand OBCs with him when he embraces Buddhism he will bahujanise Buddhism and expand Ambedkarism. The indications are that such a day is not too far. Thus, because of Brahminic caste fundamentalism, the space of Hinduism is shrinking day by day within this very land.

The other stream of Hinduism is the RSS, BJP, VHP and other Sangh parivar organisations. This is the neo-Hindu school that looks at Hinduism in political terms. They say Dalits and STs (OBCs in their view need not raise the issue at all) are Hindus and propagate that when they have citizenship rights the other rights are not so important. The serious problem of right to religion is carefully relegated to non-debatable areas. Their agenda is to construct Hindus as a vote bank with a majoritarian ideology. They want to convince Dalits that their citizenship rights are being respected and hence they are being allowed to become Governors or even the President and the president of a party such as the BJP and so on.

However, with the parivar coming to power on the Hindutva plank, the Hindu religion began to face severe contradictions. The non- Brahmin forces within that organisation - particularly educated Dalits - seeking spiritual equality and dignity want equal rights in religion as well. They know that the priestly class is not at all ready for that change. A prominent BJP representative to the Durban conference on racism, Mr. Sangapriya Gautam, himself, in the course of discussions, said, ``Who asked the Dalit to be Hindus when they have their own Buddhism to be embraced any time?'' But when the educated Dalits decided to embrace Buddhism, the BJP and its allied organisations suppressed that right by using the state apparatus as they are in power. This is a challenge the Buddhists in the BJP have to address.

India's Dalits are like cats in a cage. For the first time in history, the Durban conference brought all the oppressed communities of the world face to face. There, the history of oppression, its intensity and the forms of brutalities of the oppressed communities were compared. No other community's oppression, sufferings match the history of sufferings of the Dalits. The Government that denied them the right to be heard, the right to register their historical agony in the world federal Government called the United Nations is not allowing them to get into religions that grant them equal rights. The BJP says Hinduism is a great religion and that the Dalits are part of it without even having the right to touch others. Since the BJP- headed NDA came to power, the priests, sadhus and sanyasis are feeling freer than ever before. They are holding state-sponsored sansads, melas (not only kumbha melas) with the full mobilisation of the international media. In this situation, if a Hindu rashtra is established what will be the position of the Dalits?

Though the VHP boasts of spreading Hinduism across the world it is shrinking in its own soil. It has no agenda to seriously reform Hinduism to take it out of the caste system. It has no agenda to rewrite the scriptures where the varna-jati systems do not find space. The Shankaracharyas and high priests have no programme to re-examine their understanding and practice. The Indian Christians and Muslims have begun to seriously examine the influence of caste in the church and masjid. The All- India Christian Council (AICC) is making appeals to churches to promote Dalits in all spheres of spiritual life. Where is such an appeal from any Hindu organisation? In the absence of a major reform in Hinduism, can political Hindus stop anybody moving in the direction of spiritual liberation? Would it not be as good as the Taliban trying to control women and convince the world that the militiamen are good human beings as well?

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