This is about two emails this past week from someone who is evidently a Hindutva activist. One gloats about the economic prosperity of Hindus and Jews in the United States to the exclusion of others. The second message quotes a BJP leader as slamming the Indian budget for being partial to the country’s impoverished and marginalised Muslims. Both emails mask a disturbing complex.
Usually there are two crucial elements in any rightwing pseudo-nationalist mobilisation. The first plays on a siege mentality of the majority community by blaming its current woes on a small group of alleged tormentors, and the other harks to an innate superiority of the besieged that has to be restored to the levels of its glorious past. Often the mythical past has to be conjured with broad-brushed distortions to make the narrative credible for contemporary consumption.
In the globalised world, decades after the defeat of classical fascism in Europe half a century ago, this trajectory from the imagined past to a perceived glorious future has tended to take a more circuitous route. The ubiquitous foreign hand comes into play together with perceived enemies lurking menacingly beyond the national boundaries. A well-aimed opportunism is unleashed, which enables two aggrieved parties or more from diverse corners of the world to join hands to battle a common perceived foe. The bizarre alliance between Zionist Jews as opposed to the left-liberal variety and Hindutva zealots as opposed to the secular-liberal Hindu expatriates is a case in point.
In a globalised world domestic battles between the left and the right can often play out on foreign shores. Pakistan’s battle with mullahs at home finds an echo not just among Pakistani expatriates abroad but also among the global allies ranged behind the battling teams. This is just as true of the left-right tussle under way in India. Expatriate Indians from the Gulf to the United States are locked in an ideological struggle with each other with the blessing or even active participation of their foreign associates. I used the word opportunism above because not too long ago rightwing Hindus would idolise Nazism whereas they today stand shoulder to shoulder with Zionism. (The most outrageous version of ideological turncoats, of course, are those who once bred today’s “terrorists” as God-fearing mujahideen of the anti-Soviet campaign fame only to dump them as mediaeval and barbaric wretches when their role was over.)
Last week I got the following message in an email sent by someone called Dinesh Agrawal who seems to be an ardent Hindutva advocate. The message, based on an article by someone called S. Rajagopalan, reflects not only a shared “Hindu-Jewish” affinity in the United States but also aspires to imbue the two communities with a shared class character. How far these similarities are valid is for the readers to judge but let me quote from the message to help divine its import. “Well-educated and rich in US? Has to be a Hindu”, says the caption. It then posits that “Hindus in the US truly have something to brag about — they are the most educated among all religious groups and have the second highest income level, next only to the Jews.”
A good 43 per cent of Hindus are earning over $100,000 a year, compared to Jews who are marginally ahead of them with 46 per cent, according to the US Religious Landscape Survey, conducted by the Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. “How significant the take-home pay of the two communities is can be judged from the fact that just 18 per cent of all Americans make more than $100,000 annually. The landmark survey, based on interviews with a nationally representative sample of over 35,000 adults, projects that Hindus top the education charts with 48 per cent having post-graduate degrees. The Jews follow with 35 per cent, while the national average is just 11 per cent. Hindus, who account for just 0.4 per cent of the adult population in a country of 303 million people, can also boast of better matrimonial harmony on the basis of one important yardstick — they have the lowest divorced/separated rate (5 per cent) among all religious groups.”
It is of course another matter that Jews account for 1.7 per cent, while Muslims at 0.6 per cent are just a little more than the number of Hindus who stand at 0.4 per cent. What the email does not share is the fact that atheists and agnostics in the United States total more than the three communities put together. It is equally true that more than one-quarter of American adults (28 per cent) have left the faith in which they were raised in favour of another religion — or no religion at all. Another crucial fact the email did not share was that the Landscape Survey confirms that the United States is on the verge of becoming a minority Protestant country; the number of Americans who report that they are members of Protestant denominations now stands at barely 51 per cent.
A telling comment on the exclusivist Hindu community can be gleaned from the fact that among people who are married, nearly four-in-ten (37 per cent) are married to a spouse with a different religious affiliation. Whereas Hindus and Mormons are the most likely to be married (78 per cent and 71 per cent, respectively) and to be married to someone of the same religion (90 per cent and 83 per cent, respectively). Another disparaging reality concerning other communities is that Mormons and Muslims are the groups with the largest families; more than one-in-five Mormon adults and 15 per cent of Muslim adults in the US have three or more children living at home.
“The budding Hindu-Jewish relationship presents a view that counters a popular perception of New York City — not as an open door to immigrants seeking a better life, but as a political way station, where some people come or stay not to make money but to engage in politics from afar,” observed a report in The New York Times way back in 2001.
That relationship is obviously intact. That is why the resignation in January this year of Arun Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, as president of the New York-based M.K. Gandhi Institute of Non-Violence he founded following a furore over his critical remarks about Jews and Israel comes across as part of the ongoing left-right struggle that overseas Indians are engaged in. This would not be too different from their debate previously in South Africa when one wing of Indians stood firmly with Nelson Mandela and the other joined hands with the Apartheid regime in the notorious tricameral parliament.
“Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the holocaust experience,” the 73-year old Gandhi scion wrote: “Jews not only want the Germans to feel guilty but the whole world must regret what happened to the Jews. The world did feel sorry for the episode, but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on, the regret turns into anger.”
Gandhi added: “The Jewish identity in the future appears bleak. Any nation that remains anchored to the past is unable to move ahead and, especially a nation that believes its survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs.”
When his blog posting was swarmed by angry messages, some calling him anti-Semitic, Gandhi was contrite. “My apology for my poorly-worded post... I do not believe and should not have implied that the policies of the Israeli government are reflective of the views of the Jewish people.” Even as the left-right battle is fought on foreign shores, the “siege mentality” nurtured by Hindutva acolytes as part of their tactical posturing was in evidence again in India last week. The second email by Dinesh Agrawal was about this. “Attacking the essence of the budget, BJP on Saturday dubbed it as a ‘totally political’ document aimed at pleasing a particular minority community ahead of the general elections, which could be held early,” the message said, quoting an agency report.
Senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha had not only raised questions over the $15 billion loan waiver package for farmers, he also accused the government of pursuing appeasement of Muslims. The claim was laughable since Sinha’s ire was directed at a paltry sum of 10 billion rupees allocated to the Minority Commission, which incidentally includes Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis and so on and not just Muslims to look after. Arun Gandhi noted that any nation that remains anchored to the past is unable to move ahead and, especially a nation that believes its survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs. There is a universal truth in the assertion that applies to all countries alike, including India and its rightwing ideologues.
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