We can clearly notice how the right wing is striving to conquer the minds of Indians. Several Hindu saints are steadily appropriated to its fold. Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) is already framed as protagonist of Hindutva. Narayan Guru (1856-1928) of Kerala is subdued despite his anti-Brahmanism. We can find blatant selective forgetting of their life, work and doctrine that contests the ideals and values that RSS and its affiliates are standing in our country. They even disfigured B R Ambedkar (1891-1956) by projecting him as a nationalist Hindu leader not withstanding his conversion to Buddhism in 1956 along with a sea of his followers (one million in number) in protest against Brahmin supremacy and caste oppression. We do not need expertise in some rocket science to understand that this deception is constructed to win the good will of the Dalits to their agenda and grab their votes for BJP. The attempts to saffronise history are another instance of their striving to socially engineer their hegemony and indoctrinate the young to the right wing’s divisive politics of hate.

The madness has reached its climax as we have some in their ranks who are even trying to re-write science claiming that what we call plastic surgery was already there in ancient India. They present Lord Ganesha to illustrate it. Some even claim that aeroplane existed in ancient times in our country and do not appear ridiculous to us. It is surprising that we have failed to discover this tweaking of our Holy men, History, Science to suit the right wing’s agenda. Why this apparently sharp surgical strike on wisdom can’t be viewed an insult to Goddess Saraswati? After all some among them saw demonetisation as act of Goddess Laksmi cleaning her house of black money. Others even saw the cross-border action of our military as being led by Goddess Durga. These interpretations were offered by Prajna Pravah, the intellectual wing of the RSS. As enlightened Indians, we need to unmask this abuse of Gods, Goddesses, Holy Men, History and Science to suit its dangerous political agenda of RSS and its affiliates. 

Has what Ram Punyani calls the saffronisation of the academia come to completion? It does not seem so. But we cannot ignore the tremendous investment of the Sangh towards it. One might trace a constant effort to weaken the institutions of higher learning by making them vehicles of ideological indoctrination has gathered momentum in our days. Besides, there have been some of their watch dogs that indulge in a kind of academic censorship and vigilantism. This was epitomised in the pulping of Wendy Doniger’s book, Hindus an Alternative History. We can notice that academic freedom is easily trampled and trivialised in our society. One might remember the case of AKRamanujan’s, Three Hundred Ramayanas: Three examples and Five Thoughts on Translation, being removed from the curriculum by Delhi University after protests by the AVBP, a student wing of the RSS. Several authors like Jeffrey Kripla, Paul Courtright, James Laine, Megha Kumar, Skekar Bandopadhyay suffered because their books were not acceptable to the tastes of the right wing. List seems endless. Along with this banning of books, essays, syllabi, we have seen banning of films like Padmavat.

All dissent is construed as anti-national and media has become the cheer leader of the ruling benches. Progressive and secular academicians are labelled and ridiculed as sickular. Academic dishonesty in a post-truth era seems to disturb only a few. Even if we feel the angst and wish to put things back into order, it would be like coming to a town after an earthquake. We will have to first assess the damage done and then seek corrective responses to address it. Such therapeutic responses will certainly meet active resistance from the Sangh Parivar. 

The appropriation, domestication and distortion of God’s, Holy Men, Histories, Science and academic freedom continue to painfully disturb several among us. Some of us acutely feel the pain about the erroneous projection of Swami Vivekanada as a Hindutva Icon. Our pain increases because the great Swami had visited the Rachol Seminary before going to Chicago to attend the world parliament of Religions. The distortion of the all inclusive legacy of Swami Vivekananda is clearly disfiguring his doctrine of universal brotherhood. As the September 11 arrives, we will be celebrating the 125th anniversary of the great speech of Swami Vivekananda in the parliament of world’s religions. It is time to reveal the real face of the great Swami defaced by the right wing forces in our country. The selective misreading and misinterpretations of Swami Vivekanada’s texts and speeches need to be addressed. It is amazing how his teachings on beef eating do not check the cow politics of the right wings. This fact only proves their selective misreading of Swami Vivekananda. It would not be easy to free the Holy Swami from the right wing as the RSS claims that its ‘man making’ and ‘nation building’ agenda is in line with Vivekanada’s ideals of renunciation and service. But how can the right wing forget Swami’s non-sectarian, non-partisan model of Hinduism? How can they forget his teachings on caste system? Maybe the 125th anniversary of the famous speech that enlightened much of the west is an opportune time to expose the hypocrisy of the right wing and free the great spiritual visionary from ideologies that only narrow is all embracing vision.

At a time when human life has lost its value in our society, Swami Vivekananda who taught us that ‘worship of man is a worship God’ is indeed relevant to our society and simultaneously becomes an anti-dote to the exclusive and hate ridden ideology of the right wing. But the question still remains who will call the bluff? Are we ready to choose light and shun aside the darkness of the right wing? 

(The author is Professor of Rachol Seminary)