Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

India’s most serious bout of communal rioting and killing for a decade has raised awkward questions about the impartiality of the government, and cast an ominous shadow over a looming confrontation with Hindu extremists - the group that murdered India’s philosophical father M.K. Gandhi in 1948.

Opposition politicians, who accused the government of being slow in cracking down on the Hindu rioters, demanded the resignation of Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat.

Modi, seen by some as a possible future leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu fundamentalist party of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee who heads the ruling national coalition, spoke of the “understandable” anger felt by the rioters. Not surprisingly, Modi received no missives from the federal government. Instead, the government spoke on behalf of the law-breaking law-enforcers.

Interestingly, the fundamentalist Hindu BJP rode to success on a myth that the city of Ayodhya is where, according to the epic “The Ramayan,” a Hindu god named Ram was born. Presently, these fundamentalists want to turn this myth into stone by building a 200-pillar football sized temple dedicated to him on the site of the Babri mosque, charging that it was built over a Ram temple, allegedly demolished in the 16th century.

Hindu revivalists are forging something subtler, more significant and potentially far sturdier than stone: They are creating a new narrative of Indian history, aimed at righting alleged slights from previous centuries. In 1992, a Hindu fundamentalist mob, led by BJP stalwarts, tore down the historic mosque, and more than 2,000 Muslim Indians were killed in riots that followed. Recent clashes have killed 700 more.

The headlines obscure a deeper struggle to appropriate India’s past, and thus define its future. Every country has its myths, shared narratives that weave together the conflicting threads of its past and point the way forward. Some of these stories are true, some aren’t; some unite nations, some promote radical change, and others are manipulated for self-serving ends. The U.S. has its Puritan tale about immigrants coming to a new world in search of religious freedom. Ancient Romans believed that Aeneas founded their city as an instrument of providence. In India, Hindu revivalists are revising the nation’s founding myths. They contend that India is essentially Hindu, and its Muslims and Christians have been misled about their identity. Hindu fundamentalist groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), or World Hindu Council, argue that Hindus should assert themselves through aggressive nationalism and that “Hindu interest is the national interest.”

These shrill cries also cloud India’s claim that it is a “secular” state, showing no favor to any religion. However, this myth was destroyed by the BJP itself when the state argued in the Supreme Court to allow Hindu worship at the site of the destroyed mosque. Earlier, the BJP-led state government announced compensation for Hindu victims only, although Muslims suffered the maximum number of casualties.

Ironically, the train that was carrying the Hindu hardliners was called the Sabarmati - the name of Gandhi’s ashram. And much of the subsequent anti-Muslim rioting occurred in Gandhi’s home state of Gujarat.

Interestingly, there are many interpretations of Hinduism claiming that the VHP’s focus on Ram and Ayodhya is a modern lie, which they declare is more a propaganda tool aimed at uniting Hindu voters from a multitude of sects, castes and linguistic groups. Hinduism is not monotheistic, but the VHP is taking a cue from monotheistic religion in order to create a monotheistic deity, and then lord over it and through him lord over all others. In order to push this agenda, the VHP selected the Hindu god Krishna, insisting there is no reason that Muslims should say Krishna is not their god, because according to the VHP, he is the god of every Indian. Conversely, Gandhi, himself a deeply religious Hindu, drew on Islam and Christianity as he preached tolerance, nonviolence and material simplicity.

But the VHP’s goal did not end with the destruction of the Babri Mosque. Hindu revivalists have also targeted mosques in Mathura and Varanasi, two other holy Hindu sites. Mathura is presently being touted as the mythological birthplace of Krishna. In fact, the VHP has marked 30,000 sites they say “Hindus have lost.” But even Hindu historians do not agree with the claim that Ayodhya has the deep Hindu history the VHP asserts, questioning the very base argument establishing the VHP’s desire to spread Hindu dominance over Muslim sites.

Romila Thapar, a professor emeritus at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University and the author of a widely read history of ancient India, calls the VHP’s version “historically baseless fulminations.” Some historians even question whether the Ayodhya mentioned in mythology is the same city as modern day Ayodhya. Johns Hopkins University historian Gyanendra Pandey says modern Ayodhya may have originally been called Saket and may have changed its name in order to identify itself with the city in the Ramayan.

But even more startling than the VHP’s historical revisionism is that the VHP had been successful in brainwashing a section of India’s rural population into believing that the country would have become independent several years before 1947 had the Mahatma been killed earlier.

The VHP rejects nonviolence. The revivalists equate it with weakness, and say that when Hindus were weak, Muslim and Christian invaders took over. In portraying a martial Ram, the VHP says that if only Hindus were strong, the country would be respected, prosperous and successful. It is this emphasis on military power that prompted the BJP-led government to order a series of nuclear tests in 1998. “The BJP and the more nationalistic people that emerged in the last few decades have categorically said the Gandhian approach to the world gets no respect anymore,” said George Perkovich, author of “India’s Nuclear Bomb.”

Coupled with a more physically aggressive Indian outlook, the current anti-Muslim campaign reminds one of Nazi Jew-bashing. VHP cadres recently circulated a letter among “fellow Hindu brothers” asking them to “impose economic and financial sanctions on Muslims and anti-nationals”.

Although a larger than life statue of Gandhi stands in Washington D.C., the U.S. has never questioned the rising Hindu fundamentalism in India. Instead, America’s Christian Right seems to gravitate closer to India’s Hindu Right. America is home to the “VHP of America,” a U.S. group that supports the Hindu fundamentalists.

Another sign of just how much U.S.-India relations have warmed in recent months, New Delhi is considering a proposal for joint naval patrols in the Straits of Malacca. Indian officials say U.S. Pacific forces commander Adm. Dennis Blair proposed last year that India help guard the vital strait and surrounding seas. 

The matter is now before India’s cabinet committee on security, they add. American frigates have been patrolling the Strait of Malacca since shortly after the September 11 attacks on the United States to protect oil tankers and merchant ships in Asia’s busiest shipping lane. Military analysts warn that terrorists or pirates could close the strait by sinking a supertanker, adding a one-week detour for ships moving from the Indian Ocean to East Asia.

Added to India’s increasing belligerence against its Muslim citizens, its nuclear posturing and alliances with the Christian Right in the U.S., defense ties between Washington and New Delhi have burgeoned since the U.S. last year lifted sanctions imposed in the wake of India’s nuclear tests in 1998. All this does not bode well for Muslims or for India itself.

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