Equal Rights for Hindus : The Time is Now (Part 2)

On Autumnal Equinox, 21^st September 2019, Hindus organized a conference in Delhi devoted to the discrimination against Hindus in the Constitution, and, on this bedrock, also existent in India’s laws and effective policies. This was called to formulate demands addressed to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Formally, it was the work of an ad hoc group, the Hindu Charter (www.hinducharter.org).

In Part 1, we covered the following aspects : Discrimination against Hindus in the Constitution; Hindu schools can be nationalized or subjected to other Government controls from which minority schools are exempt; Article 30 is a constant invitation to the Hindu sects to leave Hinduism; When put on the spot, the fact is that there is very little commitment among even activist Hindus to abolish these discriminations. Read on.

Summary of Point printed earlier : 4. What to do ?

If you want to achieve any goal, you must be coldly realistic. Let us face the fact that there is very little commitment among even activist Hindus to abolish these discriminations. This is an instance of a situation with which leaders ought to be familiar. Some policies have popular appeal, but other policies, though the best-informed and most prescient leaders see how necessary they are, just don’t ring a bell among the people.

Yet, if a leader explains the need for abolishing these discriminations, every parliamentarian of the BJP (and many others too) will fall in line. Many don’t think it is a priority, some had never thought about it, but no one will object to it.

Once religion comes into the picture, the going gets tougher. This was clear from the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) controversy earlier this year, about the welcome to be given to non-Muslims oppressed in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Here, the enemy had it easy to deduce BJP ‘fanaticism’ from the obvious ‘inequality’ between religions in the Citizenship Amendment Act.

This inequality between oppressed communities and the oppressor community had its justification, but the mere mention of inequality counted as criminal to most outside observers.

Well, here you don’t have to accept the burden of a word that triggers negative knee-jerk reactions. Here you don’t have to justify inequality, only to advertise equality. Who could be against equality ?

That the Constitution discriminates against Hinduism, and that this has large-scale consequences for the transmission of Hinduism to the next generation, is one of India’s better-kept secrets. Most academics suppress this information and pretend loudly that India is a ‘Secular’ state, i.e. a state with equality of all citizens before the law.

It is not, and the good implication is that for secularists it will be hard to object to a reform that would turn India into a secular state, in which no religion is discriminated against.

5. But …

Of course, the secularists are going to resist this normalization of India’s interreligious relations. They will for the first time be put in a position of openly having to defend inequality, but some will find a way of stooping that low without getting a bad conscience. Thus, some will say that in order to achieve equality, a little bit of inequality is necessary. That is the principle behind America’s ‘affirmative action’.
So, they will claim (and we already have heard some professors, when pressed to pronounce on this, affirm it) that as a majority, the Hindus owe the minorities something. But in a secular state, there is no such thing as a minority : There are only equal citizens. To insist nonetheless on this point, they will allege that the American white majority has kept the black minority as slaves, ergo majorities commit injustice against minorities (an unjustified generalization); ergo in India too the majority has oppressed the minorities.

Well, we have news for them : No, the Hindus have never oppressed Christians nor the Muslims. The reverse, yes. So, if inequality can be justified as a compensation for past injustice, then it is the Christians and Muslims who must pay compensation.

But we should not go that far. For the present and future, simple equality will do.

6. Conclusion

The achievement of equality is not the end. Once the state has created a level playing field, civil society has the task of using the opportunities that arise. Hindus will have to take initiatives. A religion that relies on state patronage will become weak.

Hindus should not want (and fortunately, by and large don’t want) to replace a system discriminating against them by a system where they can discriminate against others. Just equality will do, and then let the best principles and way of life win. But that very limited goal of equality is really necessary and is now becoming urgent.

This can change. One of my farthest memories about Indian politics concerns the accession to power of the Janata Party, prepared by Jayaprakash Narayan’s mass campaign that galvanized the opposition against the seemingly invincible Indira Gandhi. In the coming years too, we might see the rise of a leader who manages to unite and motivate the opposition.

If the BJP loses power, many Hindus will rue the missed opportunities. What are the chances that an avowedly secularist Government will care about justice for Hinduism and take the initiative to revise Articles 25-30 ? Crying and gnashing of teeth, that is what many Hindus will feel when they realize that the seemingly timeless window of opportunity has passed, and that an ever-shrinking Hindu society has little chance of ever bringing it back.

– Dr Koenraad Elst (Courtesy : VoiceOfIndia.me, 11.12.2020)
(Dr Koenraad Elst is a historian, linguist and self-declared Orientalist from Belgium who regularly visits India to study and lecture.)

What are the chances that an avowedly secularist Government will take the initiative to revise Articles 25-30 ?