The Hindu right wing on social media is in a state of perpetual despair. Perhaps as a habit they may whine and rant everyday but on many an occasion their expressions border on paranoia. As a matter of fact it cannot be discounted that certain amount of whining is a dog whistle in pursuing elevating their status within their social media circles. Perhaps to many of them, it goes without saying, the feeling one obtains is social media status is directly proportional to the ranting about the government and in increasing demonstration that they are not ‘blind bhakts’.
Despite the conspiracy theories they seek to smell every other second, there is some justification that the Hindu symbols and practices are under attack. The attack is being executed by a complex that is deeply interwoven in the left liberal narrative that pervades the society. The mother narrative the entrenched narrative seeks to propagate is usually harmless and thus find support across the society. Once the mother narrative takes root, the child narratives start appearing as linked to the pursuit of the mother narrative. A case in point would be clean air and thus lower air pollution as mother narrative, something that finds consensus across. The child narrative propagated under the guise of the mother narrative is the air pollution due to bursting of Diwali crackers. The left liberal complex has indeed made rapid progress in dethroning the established practices and creating in the guise of modern liberalism a set of deracinated Indians. There is without doubt a backdrop that makes it essential for the Hindus to reclaim their narrative that has a history dating back thousands of years.
The current thinking revolves around political agency. One votes for the government that is supposedly pro-Hindu and expect the same to work in the interest of the Hindus. The government is solely responsible for the same and the rest of its support base would just complain about the shortcomings that keep on emerging. It doesn’t matter the extent of progress but complaints keep mushrooming and rising. Furthermore, any damage on the side of the Hindus is unacceptable the cause of the same squarely seems to lie on the government of the day. Any war, on the entrenched narrative in particular, will involve lot of collateral damage. Moreover, the casualties are bound to be high. There has to be an acceptance of the same as the Hindu groups go about reclaiming their predominant position.
Many options exist for the Hindus in seeking to protect themselves from siege across domains both on religious and ideological front. Some of these have been discussed at length in this post. Barring Shintoism in Japan, hardly any religion has survived through a defensive mechanism. Hinduism is up against two powerful religions and one social ideology that are increasingly strident in their pursuit of the global conquest. Perhaps the best way would be to the understand the structure of these religions and thus plan the strategy.
One reason, discussed in the post cited above, lies the distributed nature of Hindu societal organization. There was no centralised hub that functioned through radiating spokes. Any attack and destruction of this hub implied a destruction of the spokes. Yet the Hindu society through its distributed nature could decouple certain nodes which would wage a counter action thus regaining significant ground most of the times. Both the Abrahamic religions have a centre around which they revolve. Interestingly, though Protestant sects do not have a kind of hub and spoke model, but they are increasingly losing support base relative to Catholics. The reason is perhaps the emergence of numerous independent nodes that have an uneasy existence with the other nodes. There is a competition to woo people from one node or vertices to another node. The links are usually a movement from one to another rather than a connection between the two. This Darwinian competition often generates into a game of chicken and on other occasions a Prisoner’s Dilemma. There too builds up a sense of fatigue in the intrigues of inter-cluster battles.
Therefore, a right opportunity for the Hindus in their pursuit to reclaim their lost heritage and riches would be to attack the hubs around which the fulcrum of Abrahamism exists. A destruction of these hubs would be to create downward spiral in their following. Hindus are not known to proselytize, but the context and circumstances should not deter the pursuit. When circumstances demanded, Arya Samaj led by Swami Dayanand did undertake a ‘shuddi’ programme which did reconvert into Hinduism something a precedent for the current round of ‘ghar-wapasi’. Precedents of attacking the hubs exist. A couple of instances from the military parlance would be suffice.
Robert Clive’s fame did not happen overnight in Plassey but happened a few years earlier. Intervening the succession wars in Arcot, British forces were subject to siege in what is today’s Tiruchinapalli. It was Clive who suggested an attack on the Nawab’s capital Arcot. Seeing his capital under attack, the Nawab withdrew forces from Tiruchinapalli thus giving a way out for the British and the rest as they say was history. In 1965, when Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar across Jammu, Indians had very few options. Any approach similar to defensive operations like in 1962 or 1948 would have been disastrous. The 1948 was one of the moments where luck favors but it was unlikely to happen twice. The only option for the Indian forces was to take the battle to the Pakistani territory and hence the attack on Lahore. Lahore was too prestigious to let go and thus Pakistan had to redraw its strategy thus giving Indian forces a breather and time for the counter-action.
Analogous to the same would be the Hindu ‘ghar-wapasi’ being extended beyond the domestic frontiers into global arena. There are sporadic cases of the same like with ISKCON etc. but they are more of operating silos than an organized effort through numerous nodes. There needs to be hydra headed approach to counter the enemy. The current approach is more akin to defensive operations more of a rear guard action than one manifesting an exuberance and confidence of a civilization existing since thousands of years. VS Naipaul titled one of his books as India: A Wounded Civilization. India needs to heal its wounds. The wounds are not healed through smelling conspiracy at every stage, every moment of the existence but a counter offensive that takes the battle right into the door steps of the enemies. It certainly demands sacrifice, would incur high casualties but there is no other alternative. A continuation of defences is only possible until all gates are breached. The gates are bound to be breached as observed in loss of civilizational territories like Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia etc. Hinduism cannot afford to lose more and thus demands a change in mind-set, a change in strategy, a change in direction. Nothing else suffices.
Thoughts on Theory and Practice 