How Hindutva agents have shattered their own dreams

Hey, Hindutva militants, your ideology of Hindutva is - shock, shock - dividing the nation rather than uniting it; so are your dreams of turning this country into a Hindutva Rashtra, crashing?

It seems you are unwittingly creating, in your usual dense and crude ways, a Coastal Republic of India. This wonderful coastline envelops the South, from the Gulf of Kutch in the West (mainland Gujarat with the original Hindutva laboratory can never be part of this new Republic) that curves down south to the Konkan coast, touching coastal Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala; then snaking up on the east coast, to Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, to maybe even include the Seven Sisters of the North-East.

Will your Sangh pontiff, the RSS founders, have their dreams of an Akhand Bharat crumble even further?

Just look at what you have done with your murderous anti-beef bans, violent actions by anti-Romeo criminals, jagran morality and Hindutva prudery?

You have pushed the progressive coastal states to look the opposite of the medieval North, so is it any wonder that soon there may be a call to secede, to reassert the glory of Hinduism and Original India?

Here’s how you’ve blown it

Ram it in: Apparently, so flush with victory was the Sangh’s BJP president Amit Shah and PM Narendra Modi after the stupendous UP state elections, where they even installed a Yogi with a criminal record as chief minister, that the gung ho leadership went on a spree in West Bengal to militarise the pious Hindu festival of Ram Navami into doctrinal feud.

The prosperous Sangh-sponsored Sri Ram Navami Shobha Yatra let out the war cry of Jai Shri Ram (machoised from the original Jai Siya (Sita) Ram) for Hindutva with processions of men, women and children brandishing swords and trishuls all over the state.

But guess what, even though Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee sponsored her own processions to counter this hideous parade, she was categorical when she scoffed “Ram is not my god, and Ram puja is not connected with Bengal culture”.

And, so, militant Hindutva transformed a normally gentle spring festival of piety that also falls on Rama’s birthday into an illiberal, jingoistic, political war cry.

Even as Ram Navami is celebrated as Kalyanaotsvam in south India (marriage of Ram and Sita) and is like a wedding celebration with colour and sweets, or with readings of the Ramayana; masculine Hindutva has completely blipped out Sita’s primacy and her relevance in the scriptural sweepstakes.

Can’t wait till Hindutva militancy decides to divide India on Shaivaite (perceived as south) and Vaishnavite (north) lines, just like Sunni-Shia Islamists.

Steak out: The Sangh’s anti-beef criminals who have no respect for the Constitution and break every law in the country have revealed that they give a damn for their "Mother Cow" when they allow for the slaughter of cows in Goa, Manipur (with BJP governments), even Karnataka, where it ruled a few years ago.

It just shows that when it comes to the Coastal Republic and North-East, none of the Hindutva’s murderous ways work. So, you can dig into a medium-rare cow steak in a café in Goa, or indulge in succulent cow beef fry in Kochi, or have air-dried cow meat with bamboo shoots in Nagaland.

In Hindutva’s latest laboratory in Bengal, a defiant Mamata has introduced Meat on Wheelz, which will sell delectables from emu meat to quail. Of course, in typical sneaky Sangh mode, a group called All-India Fish Protection Committee has been spawned in Bengal, ostensibly to protect the fish, as it’s a divine Hindutva avatar, and thus start a political battle over seafood.

Ask the Sangh, and they’ll shrug to say it’s not part of them, just like they deny Hindu Yuva Vahini etc, and the hundred other Hindutva groups.

Even Muslim hardline leader, the SP’s Azam Khan, has been forced to sing that all slaughter houses, both legal and illegal, must be shut.

So, anyone who wants to eat, drink and live freely, the Coastal Republic is your dream destination.

Love Jihad: Yes, yes, there have been sporadic cases of Anti-Romeo Squads in Kerala where the RSS has had the fortune of existing the longest in the Deep South but has drawn a zero in the political sweepstakes, and apart from stray incidents, the Coastal Republic has roundly rejected the Anti-Romeo Squads, which has burnt and torn apart communities in western Uttar Pradesh, and other parts till date.

From Mangalore to Kerala to Meghalaya, matrilineal communities give women the first right of inheritance, property etc, which Hindutva bhakts may never comprehend or fathom in their wildest dreams.

Imagine a Kerala-like Kiss-in protest, where protesters snubbed the moral policing of Shiv Sena goons, in the North’s cow belt? Or where Manipur’s mothers marched naked in front of armymen to protest against the rape of Manipur’s daughters?

Even Hindutva’s fervent Dr Subramaniam Swamy, a Madrasi, is married to a Parsi and his daughter to a Muslim. There may be BJP male politicians in the north married to Hindus, but not the other way round!

Mosque busting: The joke among hacks soon after the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 was that if there was a Coastal Republic (yes, the seed of secession was sown as early as circa 1992), cultural exchanges would have tours of mosques and temples on the coast, while southerners could get a taste of smashing a mosque in the Hindi hinterland.

For illiterate bhakts, the oldest mosque was built in 629 AD in Thrissur, Kerala, and the Cheramun Jama Masjid stands on land donated by a Hindu Malayalee king, Cheramun Perumal.

The Kazimar Big Mosque in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, built in the 13th century, was on land gifted by the Hindu king, Kulasekara Pandiyan. Hindutvadis can claim that they were invaded and their lands conquered by marauding Mughal rulers, but are they going to smash New Delhi built by the British?

And so, even as Hindutva hordes threaten to smash the Gyanvapi Mosque in Benares to Jama Masjid in Agra, among a dozen others; the oldest synagogue in India stands solemnly in Kochi (built in 1567), even as Syrian Christians, Jews, Hindus celebrate each others’ festivals and feasts. Eat your heart out, Hindutvadis.

Stats meter: Here comes the crunch: In every human development index among states, the Coastal Republic beats hollow the cow belt and its neighbours, with higher education and literacy levels (Kerala at almost 100 per cent, Uttar Pradesh at a measly 60 per cent); family and child development in nutrition, health and hygiene, lower mortality rates (Gujarat is below the middle mark); higher industrialisation, low unemployment; smaller population; cleanliness; the list goes on and on.

Even as the Coastal Republic may generate more taxes for the Centre, a Tamil Nadu receives a paltry 40 paise for every rupee, while Bimaru UP receives Rs 1.8 per rupee!

Modi waives off Rs 36,000 crore of farmer loans in UP (nobody is grudging it, wish it was equitable), poor Tamil Nadu farmers desperate for a waiver and protesting for weeks in the Capital have to run naked in front of the PM’s Office to even get noticed.

So, you can see why the Coastal Republic, which celebrates diversity, equality, individuality, liberty, eccentricity, humanism; and strives to do better, cannot engage with Hindutva and its hate politics.

(Back in present Bengal, posters jeering Rabindranath Tagore as a British stooge who hated Hindus are being pasted on street walls, while saying writer Bankim Chandra deserved the Nobel Prize! Something like pitting Nehru and Sardar Patel. See the familiarity?)

So, Coastal Republicans, in deference to the Constitution, can we have a coalition at least?

PS: A reminder to Hindutva - it’s New Year’s Day today, April 14, for Malayalees, Tamilians, Bengalis and Assamese.

Also read: How I learnt that Hindutva is hypocritical