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Proud to be Simple-Minded

What the BJP has always striven for, the goal my friend Ashwin Mahesh Fringe in the Mainstream explains so well, is to turn essentially complex questions into simple ones. Everything is reduced to simple tests: nationalism, being Indian, being Hindu, the lines along which those concepts meet. The BJP has long known the power of this kind of simplicity, and it has set out deliberately to promote it.

Thus you have the rhetoric of the past decade or so. A sample: If you are not outraged by the existence of that Babri Masjid, you are not Hindu. If you want to live in this country, you will have to sing Vande Mataram. Hindus have just one home in the world, where else can they go but India? Muslims and other non-Hindus are violent anti-nationals who get their inspiration from abroad. Hindus are essentially tolerant and are now tired of being pushed around.

Simplest of all, these assertions must not be questioned.

One aspect of all this is quickly dealt with: on the electoral evidence, most of India thinks the BJP's message is wrong. Even if we assume all the votes the NDA coalition got at the last elections were for the BJP, that's about 40 per cent of the electorate. Let's assume all those votes came from Hindus. The BJP must ruminate over the thought that its message of unthinking simplicity to Hindus cannot attract even a simple majority of the 82+ per cent of this country who are Hindus.

And I know a lot of those who remain unattracted by the BJP: devout, caring Hindus all. Yet they were not affected by the existence of that mosque. They see more to being Hindu, being Indian, than singing a song. They are not blind to the inequities and bigotry in other religions, but neither are they simple-minded enough to believe that some people in India are automatically traitors because they profess those other faiths. They see the deep fissures Advani's rath yatra has produced in the country; they are profoundly worried over a future riven by those fissures.

So by some just as simple measure, as these people not Hindus? Not Indians?

Yes, the BJP likes simplicity. Ashwin himself spells out the mantra the party peddles: "We are proudly Indian, and proudly Hindu, and whatever we may do to accept others in this fold, there is absolutely no reason why we should be forced to dilute this view of ourselves -- this is a simple message, and largely contains everything that the BJP consciously states come election time."

Indeed, that is what the BJP states. It wants simplicity, and better still, unquestioned. Of course, those who find the BJP's tactics repulsive have a far more difficult task than the BJP: persuading people that things are more intricate than that simple recipe indicates. But mere simplicity does not make the BJP message right. Nor does it mean the BJP's critics will shy away from that difficult task. (As Kalpana Sharma writes in The Hindu: "The line between 'Hindu' and 'national' has never existed for those who believe in Hindutva. We cannot permit this to become the norm.")

Citizenship is not, cannot be, must never become, a simple thing. Especially in a vast, varied country like India, but anywhere really, it must ask questions of us constantly. (Think about it: why do you fill out a long, detailed form when you want a passport? Why not just say "I'm proudly Hindu" and go home with the little blue book?). We must ask questions ourselves. Perhaps many of us don't want to ask questions, or can't be bothered. Still, citizenship demands it. Such questioning, such scepticism, is the very soul of the idea of being a nation. For it is only by asking questions that you come upon those other attributes being a citizen offers: justice, accountability, rights, responsibilities, freedom. These things don't bloom just because you are "proudly Indian and proudly Hindu." But they will bloom when enough of us go beyond that mantra -- see through it, in fact -- and demand them.

This is not to say that being "proudly Indian and proudly Hindu" is a curse, or that this view should be "diluted." Hardly. But is it enough? Is pride enough? Is it enough to bring the country good governance? Is it enough to fight the evils that plague India today, from crime in politics to poverty? Is it enough to identify and punish the people who commit crimes, at least some of whom themselves claim to be "proudly Indian and proudly Hindu"?

Is it enough to build a country on?

After all, another man once peddled a similarly simple message too, about pride in Germany and in being Aryan. He too made it acceptable to think certain others in Germany were anti-national fanatics who were intent on staying outside the mainstream of German culture. He too knew, very well indeed, the seductive power of simplicity.

But look where Hitler took Germany: into rubble and destruction, into committing some of the most abominable massacres the world has known. It was no country he built on his simple message. It was a deeply perverted and evil mirage. This man was, far and away, Germany's greatest traitor.

To the BJP's supporters who will leap on me for the comparisons to fascism and Hitler, I say: my point is not to raise the spectre of some Indian strain of Nazism running wild. My point is that simple messages about citizenship have an inherent danger. Simplicity is no nationalism. It is no recipe for an India.

So what is? What makes an Indian?

First, you make your life here, or you formed it here. Second, you live by the laws of the country. You may have objections to some of them, which you work to change, but you live by the laws of the country. Third, you understand the innumerable strands that are woven into India today: the Vedic and Moghul and British past; colourful culture and pitiful poverty; some of the world's most innovative people and half the country unable to read and write; I could go on but I think you understand. Fourth, you question everything: from politicians to achievements to simple messages to coaching classes to patriotism to me. Everything.

No, it's not the "proudly Indian and proudly Hindu" chorus that you will hear from the BJP. Thinking about and putting down those ideas, I know how difficult they are, how complex a formula they add up to. But I cannot emphasize enough, that's what citizenship must be. That is when, that is why, citizenship is stimulating, satisfying, fulfilling and ultimately desirable.

Being Indian must demand things of us. That's how we will constitute a strong, prosperous and wise India.

Dilip D'Souza