Why can't the Hindu Right accommodate dissent?

On February 17, three office bearers of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) unit resigned from their posts lodging a protest against the government for filing sedition charges against Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and others.

Members of the ABVP, a student unit affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), while clearly critical of the alleged "anti-nationals", were equally cut up with the Centre. On International Women’s Day, some of these ex-ABVP members participated in a meeting to burn sections of Manusmriti at JNU.

Also read - 'We are not government's mouthpiece': JNU ABVP leaders resign

It was revealing. The Facebook post that Pradeep Narwal, the ex-joint secretary of the ABVP in JNU put out explaining his and his co-signees’ position objecting to their parent organisations, is perhaps a sui generis footnote in right-wing politics in India today. It smudges the broad brushstrokes that stereotype an apparent Leftist stronghold like JNU.

The note shows that the ABVP unit in JNU is a little different from its doppelgangers in other universities – it has the spunk to disagree with its forebears. It demonstrates how the ABVP – of JNU – is more representative of the largely democratic, inclusive and dissenting ethos of JNU, than the reptilian realpolitik of ABVP units elsewhere.

For these members to be able to censure the government and yet demur with the Left on campus, is the kind of nuance their patrons are found wanting on in these polarising times.

The ABVP’s argument reflects, more importantly, the status of inner-party differentiation within the overall Hindu Right. The moderate religious voice that is deferential to all other persuasions is getting choked. Regardless of contextual differences, we really are living in an era where religious-political debate is sliding into the quicksand of extremism.

Also read: Why I swear by JNU's nationalism above anything else

In India, Hinduism (with its many shades) is losing out to Hindutva. In South Asia and the Middle East, Islam is ceding space to Islamist hard-liners. Post-LTTE Sri Lanka is manifesting a rigid Buddhism. In migration-hit Europe and parts of Latin America, Christian fundamentalism is ransacking Christianity. Most of these are religions or religious systems with long-established traditions of syncretism and exchange with other faiths.

In today’s India, the rise of the hard-line Hindu Right has corresponded with an economic slowdown and meandering employment generation. An intellectual victim of these religious-economic forces is the moderate religious viewpoint that is respectful of difference, mindful of rule of law, and trusting of constitutional values.

Today’s moderate Hindu, gets little play in the panoply of religious politics. Hindu believers who may criticise Hinduism and casteism run the risk of being labelled as liberals – a pejorative term in current discourse.

Is there more to Dalits than their Dalitness? Rohith Vemula’s suicide note is a plea for a categorical, category-defying, individual independence. Is it necessary for a Dalit person to be always reverential of Ambedkar or Phule? Bombay intellectual and social activist Asghar Ali Engineer remained a devout Muslim, while battling the Islamic orthodoxy and bigotry within his own Dawoodi Bohra community. Whither the moderate? Whither the critical insider?

The argument extends to conservatives and moderates on others fronts: political economy, for instance. The RSS championed the idea of a Hindu nation, but that notion also had a socialist-lite ingredient which spoke of generating a strong locally rooted economy. (This week, the RSS-affiliated Swadeshi Jagran Manch, expressed shock at the government's decision to accede to 100 per cent direct investment in e-commerce.)

Also read- JNU row: Moditva on the the wane, it's Hindutva stupid

Around the turn of the millennium, when political discourse on economy took an emphatic neoliberal swerve, one of the biggest critics of globalisation and liberalisation – outside of the Left – happened to be senior BJP leader KN Govindacharya. In a matter of some years, he found himself sidelined in the BJP for his critiques.

The Hindu Right has been unable to provide space for internal appraisers like him. Is it a problem of ideological latitude?

Also read: Dear BJP, I'm a Hindu and I reject Hindutva

Commentators on the Right – ranging from MG Vaidya to Prof Makarand Paranjape – have reproached the Left and liberals for circling the wagons of the countrywide conversation on India’s past, present and future. Offline and online there is a perception of a "liberal mafia"and a "left hegemony" cartelising the media, academe and power circles that shape opinion making. But when the hard-line Hindu Right is confronted with criticism, it has responded with force and vitriol instead of reasoned debate.

It’s a screaming paradox: The Hindu Right has the numbers and the voters but doesn’t possess the intellectual tools, training and wherewithal of the Left and the liberals. The Left and the liberals have the intellectual literacy but are drawing a blank in terms of popular following.

However, educating the Hindu hard-liners on civil discussion norms is a far greater challenge than foreseeing a return of the Left and Left liberal parties in power.

The Left and the liberal parties have had a history of intense internal contestation. These collisions helped produce the Communist Party of India and the breakaways, Communist Party of India (Marxist), and the Communist Party of India – Marxist-Leninist, outfits.

Also read: How India needs to rescue its liberals from the Left

The Indian National Congress has had a rich internal and external interaction with the Left, the liberals, and regional and caste-based interest groups – many of which have been its trenchant critics.

India has seen many Marxisms, a slew of socialisms and a number of caste and region-based political modulations. Political parties have no choice but to map and match the complexity of India. Thus, internalising a consensus principle has gradually become a political given.

In comparison, what has been the history of the Hindu Right? How open has it been to dissenters? What space does it accord for legitimate internal alterations?

In any history of the dwindling of the moderate position, we cannot gloss over the role of the Congress or Congress-led governments. Disagreements inside a faith are also an important tradition of that faith.

Atheists, rationalists and superstition-fighters like Govind Pansare, MM Kalburgi and Narendra Dabholkar, were murdered in states ruled by the Congress. (Clearly, the notion of religious extremism cuts across parties.)

The work of these thinkers was to disabuse citizens of charlatans and chicanery. They may not have been believers, but they were functioning in a way as reformers of religious systems and enshrining a rational scaffold to the religious structure. For the rise of extremism, the Congress has a lot to answer for.

Thus, all these matters make the JNU ABVP letter of protest significant in so many ways. A critique of this sort could have come only from those who have been organically exposed to the political culture of JNU, participated in its politics and married it with their education there.

"...There's a difference between hooliganism and nationalism…" they wrote, and that "… There is a difference between interrogation and crushing ideology and branding entire Left as anti-national."

Unlike most hard-line Hindutva right-wingers, they have found a way of establishing their viewpoint through the democracy of dissent.

Can the Hindu Right accommodate dissent?