How are we to understand the politics of statues and the mandir that seem to be gaining momentum in our country? Are BJP and its affiliates in the Sangh moving towards a grand self defeat? Are we facing a situation that puts faith over law? Have we forgotten that government has to be neutral before religions? Maybe secularism is dead long time ago in our country. How could we challenge the Supreme Court? We saw it in Kerala in the context of the Sabarimala judgment and now we are facing temple politics.
Everyone has forgotten the criminality of the demolition of Babri Masjid. Last year the Supreme Court framed charges for the vandalisation and demolition of the Masjid. Are we descending into chaotic tyranny of the majority? The aspiration for a temple is right only within the Constitutional framework. Maybe we have to reflect on these issues dispassionately. Congress got trapped into corruption and did not deliver development to the people and the people of India be punished for its excesses. After all its development rhetoric and Congress bashing, unfortunately, BJP with no development to show has paradoxically walked full circle and reached where Congress was in 2014.
The politics of statue is elitist though the mandir issue appears to have a mass appeal, both are grounded into a what maybe called victimhood and legitimate themselves thereof. A sense of victim generates a sense of innocence as well as complexly constructs others as villains. It is within this victimology that we may trace how the desire for statues as well as the mandir has become restoration of something precious that is strongly felt as lost.
BJP seems to nurse a hope that in this sense of reclamation of the lost glory, it stands to gain electorally. This is why we will find that victimology will be constructed from different directions and will intensify in the coming days. The right wing narrates that we have been victims of the invading Islamic rulers and the colonisers. PM Modi’s ridicule of 70 years of Congress also constructs that we have been victims of Congress. We have been systematically fed on victimology. All right wing politics is based into victimology. The statues and the temple are both outgrowths of the victimology. The question therefore becomes acute and we have to address it deep reflection fearless.
What is the real benefit of the statues and temple? Besides some psychic and spiritual benefits what would they really do to us? Temple we must have but as a fruit of peace and justice. The political discourse around statues and temples seem to lead as to ask: Are we being given the cake of Maria Antoinette when we are crying for bread? It seems so. If one reads the discourse of the opponent carefully we can discern it.
Buried into a sense of victimhood, we seem to be seeking freedom from it by seeking recognition. It appears that statue and mandir politics is a cry of recognition. It is a desire to fit in within an idealised order of things. The idealised order of things always comes from the other side. This order of things is not one that emerges from within. One has to fit into this external order of things. This order of things gives us bench marks that we have to live for. The desire that is being triggered from the other side has be understood and addressed. The cry for recognition has taken us to the point of murder and killings. To recognise one self as a Hindu one is sometimes drawn to kill a Muslim.
We cannot become proud Indians based on borrowed models like tall statues and ‘grand temples’. The grandeur of the sense of having the tallest statue in the world is merely a statistical achievement and will not change anything of great significance for us. Having the tallest statue in the world does not seem to promise any great index in our quality of our existence. We have gained little or nothing beating the rival statue of Buddha in China to become the custodians of the tallest statue in the world. Maybe our poor tribals from the surrounding villages where the statue is standing knew it when they rejected the tallest statue in the world. Some of us are also in tune with the view of these villagers but do not muster courage to speak up. We cannot meaningfully propose a different view without having to feel unHindu and unIndian about it. Often these and other views are construed as anti-Hindu and anti-India views. As a result dissent and dissident has no room in our society.
We seem to impose an Oedipal interdiction upon us. This is why it is important to become an anti-Oedipus. We have not made a social contract with the State for a stoic silence when the poor children of our mother India are being fooled and looted. The drama around the statues and the mandir threatens to become the opium of the masses. In these moments of confusion, perhaps the teachings of Basavanna, the great founder of Vir Shaivism in Karnataka might provide us direction. He writes, “The haves make temples for Shiva, Ayya, what can I do? I am poor. My legs are pillars, my body the temple and my head the golden pinnacle. Koodalasangamadeva, listen, the sthavara comes to an end but the jangama does not.” As living walking temples, we are sacred and we need to care for the God living in us only then we shall be able to truly worship God in temples of stone. The recognition that the politics of temple provides is short lived. Our desire for such recognition is insatiable. This is why we can find so many aspirations of other statues soon after the tallest statue in the world was solemnly installed. It is only by becoming aware of this insatiable desire (as the Buddha will teach us) that we can find freedom from it.
(The author is Professor at Rachol Seminary.)
