Ashok Singhal: The last Hindu warrior

History has a unique way of manifesting itself. When Nehruvian pseudo-secularism had reached its zenith allowing religious minorities the unique freedom of thrusting their will upon the majority and extolling everything about minorities, good or bad, while condemning things that were avowedly Hindu and even allowing the minorities to thrust upon the nation their agendas based on religious conversion, nature created a force in the form of a balancer called Ashok Singhal. 

The conversion of Dalits to Islam in the 1984 Meenakshipuram incident was Singhal’s moment. Drafted into the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) by the then Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Balasaheb Deoras to tackle the alarming situation arising out of mass conversions, Singhal’s plan to tackle pan-Islamists and pan-Christians through aggressive Hindutva got a major fillip when the locks of the Ram temple beside the Babri Masjid were removed around the same time.

The rest is history. Almost seen as a saint in the Sangh Parivar for his simple lifestyle and single-minded commitment to the building of Ram temple at Ayodhaya, the 89-year-old Singhal’s departure removes from the Indian scene a man who changed the destiny of the nation by raising a counter to the unabashed appeasement of minorities with moves that were often controversial. After India’s partition the encouragement by the Marxist-leaning order to even the radical elements in the religious minorities was like a second blow to the Hindus who had suffered the first blow when they conceded a country based on religion from undivided India.

Significantly, about Pakistan, the prophecy of the great revolutionary and Hindutva ideologue Veer Savarkar stands true today: "India will never be able to live in peace till a state based on religious fanaticism remains its neighbour." 

Undoubtedly, Singhal is seen as a villain by ordinary Muslims and Leftists as a result of the communal riots and loss of lives that the Ram Janmabhoomi movement caused across India before and after the Babri Masjid demolition. He is seen as a greater villain by pan-Islamists because he stood in the way of their agenda. But for millions of Hindus who see India as their last land on Earth, he was a hero for his commitment to the Ram Mandir. For them he was an answer to two moot questions of devout Hindus:

1. After giving away Pakistan in the name of Islam, why can’t Hindus build a Ram Mandir in partitioned India?

2. Why can’t Muslims allow a temple to Ram at his birthplace when Muslim rulers before and even after Akbar destroyed innumerable Hindu temples? 

Singhal’s movement picked up in an atmosphere of deep minority appeasement marked by glaring examples. Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was the cradle of the Pakistan movement before Partition and yet the Congress government gave it special privileges in the name of protection of minority institutions. Worse, the Deobandis in the Congress who had all along opposed the Aligarh movement before Partition played a key role in getting it minority status in what was a most notorious example of promotion of pan-Islamism by the Congress government in partitioned India. 

In another example, Rajiv Gandhi, under the impact of the pan-Islamist Wahabi stream put barriers in the path of the uniform civil code, disregarding the advice of moderate Muslims by making changes in the Muslim Personal Law after the Shah Bano case. Some saw these examples of appeasements as attempts to create another Pakistan within India.

So, Singhal got public support for his movement. It will be a good lesson for historians and sociologists to study the rise of the Hindutva movement under Singhal after years of Muslim appeasement and even pan-Islamism encouraged by Congress leaders. The VHP established in mid-1960s by the then RSS chief Guru Golwalkar was a body for Hindu religious awakening through moderate means like preaching, distributing literature and bhajan-kirtan. But the unabashed appeasement of the Muslim community and even Islamist radicals and also the unhindered conversion activity of Christians produced a reaction in the form of an aggressive Hindutva under the VHP. It shows that had true secularism been practised in India after independence, the VHP would have remained a moderate body as before. 

But Singhal was not just a driver of Hinduism. He was also a committed social reformist who tried to bring fundamental change in the attitude of upper caste Hindus towards lower castes. To send a message of Hindu unity at a time when Dalits were not allowed in many temples in India he built about 200 temples in his life in selected areas of the country in which all castes were permitted to worship. They are meant to give a message of Hindu equality. Originally from a very rich business family from Allahabad where his ancestral mansion Mahavir Bhavan stands very close to Anand Bhavan of the Nehrus, Singhal’s evolution was most interesting. A metallurgical engineer, he was a very good singer, poet and could play Indian classical music instruments.

I met him many times in my career and while talking with him I found nothing aggressive about him. Rather, he explained the principles of Hindutva very scientifically as a man who had studied science. In a light and sensitive moment, he once shared with me how his mother was shocked when he decided to become an RSS pracharak and vowed never to marry. His sobbing mother had to be persuaded over a long period of time before she allowed him to become a pracharak – a case very similar to Adi Shankara's mother who didn’t want him to become a sanyasi and had to persuaded by the little Adi Shankara. 

Many in the Sangh Parivar believe LK Advani not becoming the prime minister was natural justice to the veteran leader as despite being the biggest beneficiary of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement he tried to break it after coming to power while looking for a secular image.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, however, enjoyed a good relationship with Singhal almost all through and succeeded in making him change his aggressive Hindutva posture many times. It was a tribute to Singhal’s flexibility as well as Modi’s power of persuasion no less than the close relations between the two. Modi’s tweet after Singhal passed away conveyed the warm relations between the two. 

But Singhal’s view on Islam was seen as disjointed by many. He didn’t distinguish between good and bad Muslims which raised the question where that would leave the patriotic Muslims. In today’s scenario, such an approach which leaves no place for good Muslims is most dangerous. It would strengthen the kind of ultra-Wahabism preached by the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group which is, in fact, killing Muslims, many of them moderates. But none can deny that Singhal played the biggest role in raising the Hindu consciousness to its highest level ever, after over 700 years of rule by non-Hindus over the Hindus.