Political Diary
New Delhi, 22 March 2016
Bharat Mata Ki Jai
NEW RULES OF
PATRIOTISM
By Poonam I Kaushish
A
tempest in a tea pot or a great Mother India wiggle? A nationalistic question
which depends on whether one wears his love for motherland on his sleeve or not.
Whereby all true-blue Indians are counted on the basis of shouting slogans or
refusing to chant. Thereby hangs a patriotic tale.
It
all started with Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin
Owaisi’s defiantly asserting, “I won’t chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai even if you put a knife to my throat’, in Hyderabad early this
month. Defending his unabashedness by adding, “It is nowhere in the
Constitution”. Taking a lead from
Owaisi, the MIM’s Maharashtra MLA Waris Pathan echoed the same during the
debate on the Governor’s address.
Predictably,
this got all the perceived secularists and supposed communalists patriotic
blood boiling who collectively ganged up to play policeman. Resulting in
Pathan’s suspension for the rest of the Assembly’s Budget session on the ground
of ‘collective feeling’ of all Congress, BJP, NCP and Shiv Sena MLAs, no matter
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi’s accusing the Hindutva brigade of “destroying
relationships” in the name of the flag!
Questionably, did Owaisi and Pathan rake up a needless
controversy over Bharat Mata Ki Jai? Was
it to rebuff RSS Chief Bhagwat’s claim that young Indians must be taught to
chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai. Or did they
have another agenda? And why did all other Parties rise to the bait and
denounce them? Given there is no rule under the Constitution or Parliament rule
book to suspend a legislator for refusing to shout a slogan?
Obviously, all Parties were collectively playing to the
gallery as elections to five State Assemblies roll out next month. While Owaisi’s
MIM has eyes on the minority vote banks, the others all want a piece of the
majority Hindu vote pie. Further, Owaisi wants to emerge as the Muslims sole
leader by trashing Messers Mian Mulayam, Lalu-Nitish as also the Congress.
It does not matter by projecting himself as the community’s
sole saviour; he is playing into the BJP hands by dividing Muslim votes and
pushing Hindus in to the Hindutva brigade’s arms. Big deal if his outburst paints the minority
community as anti-national.
In
a milieu when allegations and allegiances are marked on the basis of slogans
shouted or the refusal to chant one, not many recall that this slogan emerged
during India’s
freedom struggle and was reverential as Bharat Mata was shown as an icon, a
goddess, a mother.
Though
it is extremely difficult to pin-point when this slogan first came into
existence, the genealogy of the figure of Bharat
Mata has been traced to a satirical piece titled Unabimsa Purana (‘The
Nineteenth Purana’) by Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, first published anonymously in
1866. Bharat Mata is identified in
this text as Adi-Bharati, the widow of Arya Swami, the embodiment of all that
is essentially ‘Aryan’.
The
image of the dispossessed motherland was portrayed in Kiran Chandra Bandyopadhyay’s
play, Bharat Mata performed in 1873.
During the Swadeshi movement in 1905, Abnindranath Tagore painted an image of
‘Banga Mata’ a beautiful young ascetic but decided to title it as Bharat Mata. Which, many saw as the
amalgamation of the abstract ideal of nationalism, art, human form and the
divine spirit.
In
its original sense, Bharat Mata is
the personification of India
as Mother Goddess which was conceptualized in Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s
novel, Anandamath, loosely based on what is known as the Sannyasi rebellion of
late 18th century. Since then, Hindutva has reclaimed and greatly magnified the
Bankim Chandra idea of Bharat Mata.
The
Bharat Mata icon quickly acquired
wide ranging visual forms, becoming dressings of calendars, lithographs, dhoti borders, match box labels and
cartoons. With nationalist leaders seeking to deepen the anti-colonial struggle
and acquire a mass base they resorted to religious symbols to connect to
people.
For
free India’s
first Prime Minister Nehru Bharat Mata Ki
Jai was not just about land and geography but also about peasants and
people themselves. Bringing things to such a pass that today patriotism is
judged by evoking Bharat Mata which
has become a symbol of Hindutva cultural nationalism.
Not
only does it achieve a Hindutva imagining of India, it also casts Muslims as a
community who are unable to partake of this form of patriotism.
Conversely
Muslims view it differently. Rightly or wrongly they
feel that to shout this slogan would tantamount to worshipping the deity Bharat Mata. Since Islam is a strictly
monotheistic religion which disallows idol worship, any demand on Muslims to
assert this slogan is akin to asking them to flout the fundamental tenets of
their religion.
Specially against the backdrop that a
temple was built in Bharat Mata’s
honour in Varanasi in the early 20th century and another decades later in
Haridwar.
Over
the decades Muslim animus towards proclaiming Bharat Mata Ki Jai has reared its head time and again. Moreover,
even if they were to chant Bharat Mata Ki
Jai, a fear persists that a more outrageous demand would be made on them.
They also know their position in the Sangh’s vision of India --- it is
one of subservience or of living under the threat of being made to feel
inferior and insecure.
For the Sangh Parivar, Muslims chanting the slogan or
refusing to do so is a test of their loyalty to the nation. As it stands the RSS
conducts every event with blazing banners of Bharat Mata holding a saffron flag --- and not the Indian tricolour.
The Goddess is mounted on a lion, the vahan
of Goddess Durga.
For the die hard Hindutva brigade, today patriotism is
judged by evoking Bharat Mata which
has come to symbolize Hindutva cultural nationalism. Not only does it achieve a
Hindutva imagining of India,
it also casts Muslims as a community who are unable to partake of this form of
patriotism.
Undoubtedly, 2016 is not 1905. We need to understand India’s
multi-pluralistic character and pulsating democracy wherein civil society is
neither rigid nor frozen in time, but is constantly evolving. True, one slogan
cannot make or mar the future of a nation or its people. Nonetheless, Bharat Mata Ki Jai is our national
slogan and symbol of national pride, on par with Jana Gana Mana.
The minority community too must realize that in secular India there is
no place for fundamentalism, be it Hindu or Muslim. All our patriots. Else its
regressive and orthodox social agenda will prevent Muslims from making full use
of the windows of opportunities, social cohesion and change offered by a
democratic State.
Instead it will present a fait accomplice and perfect foil
to parochial groups with vested agendas to play up the politics of victimhood
and feather their own nests. This has to be prevented at all costs.
It is high time we stopped trivializing and trashing it. All
secular minded Indians must collectively chorus a slogan which ignited
patriotism, galvanised Indians to gang up against British Raj to throw the firangis out and won India its
freedom. Let us not demean it in the hands of our political drumbeaters! -----
INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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