Indian Identity

by Sudhir Kakar

  Wherever I go, I say, ‘Muslims, live and prosper among us. Live like milk and sugar. If two kilos of sugar are dissolved in a quintal of milk, the milk becomes sweet!’ But what can be done if our Muslim brother is not behaving like sugar in the milk? Is it our fault if he seems bent upon being a lemon in the milk? He wants the milk to curdle. He is behaving like a lemon in the milk by following people like Shahabuddin and Abdullah Bukhari.d I say to him, ‘Come to your senses. The value of the milk increases after it becomes sour. It becomes cheese. But the world knows the fate of the lemon. It is cut, squeezed dry and then thrown on the garbage heap. Now you have to decide whether you will act like sugar or like a lemon in the milk. Live among us like the son of a human being and we will respectfully call you “uncle”. But if you want to behave like the son of Babar then the Hindu youth will deal with you as Rana Pratap and Chatrapti Shivajie dealt with your forefathers.’ Those who say we are against the Muslims lie. We are talking of the birthplace of Rama, not constructing at Mecca or Medina. It is our birthright to build a temple to our Lord at the spot he was born.

  We have religious tolerance in our very bones. Together with our 330 million gods, we have worshipped the dead lying in their graves. Along with Rama and Krishna, we have saluted Mohammed and Jesus. With Vasudhe Kuttumbkam as our motto, we pray for the salvation of the world and for an increase in fellow feeling in all human beings. We have never said, ‘O World! Believe in our Upanishads. Believe in our Gita. Otherwise you are an infidel and by cutting off the head of an infidel one gains paradise.’ Our sentiments are not so low. They are not narrow-minded. They are not dirty. We see the world as our family.

  Here, in the construction of the Hindu identity, we see the necessary splitting that enhances group cohesion. The process involves idealizing on the one hand and scapegoating and persecutory processes on the other. What is being idealized is the Hindu tolerance, compassion, depth of insight and width of social concern. These are the contents of a grandiose Hindu group self which makes the individual member feel righteous and pure. It raises each member’s sense of worth for belonging to this group.

  The increase in self-esteem can be maintained only by projecting the bad, the dirty, and the impure to another group, the Muslim, with which one’s own group is then constantly compared. This process is at the root of scapegoating and, as Rafael Moses reminds us, this indeed is how the original scapegoat was conceived of in religion: the animal was driven away with all the community’s badness inside it so that the community of believers could remain pure and clean (like milk, I am tempted to add).19 Of course, as a good vegetarian Hindu, Sadhavi Rithambra conceives the Muslim scapegoat not as an animal but as a lemon. As we shall see below, the Muslim is not only the object of scapegoating but also the subject of persecutory fantasies in the collective Hindu imagination.

  Today, the Hindu is being insulted in his own home. The Hindu is not sectarian. How could he if he worships trees and plants! Once [the Mughal emperor] Akbar and [his Hindu minister] Birbal were going somewhere. On the way they saw a plant. Birbal dismounted and prostrated himself before the plant saying, ‘Hail mother tulsi!’ Akbar said, ‘Birbal, you Hindus are out of your minds, making parents out of trees and plants. Let’s see how strong your mother is!’ He got off his horse, pulled the tulsi plant out by its roots and threw it on the road. Birbal swallowed this humiliation and kept quiet. What could he do? It was the reign of the Mughals. They rode farther and saw another plant. Birbal again prostrated himself saying, ‘Hail, father! Hail, honoured father!’ Akbar said, ‘Birbal I have dealt with your mother. Now, let me deal with your father too.’ He again pulled out the plant and threw it away. The plant was a nettle. Akbar’s hands started itching and soon the painful itch spread all over his body. He began rolling on the ground like a donkey, with tears in his eyes and his nose watering. All the while he was scratching himself like a dog. When Birbal saw the condition of the king, he said, ‘O Protector of the World, pardon my saying that our Hindu mothers may be innocent but our fathers are hard-bitten.’ Akbar asked, ‘Birbal how do I get rid of your father?’ Birbal said, ‘Go and ask forgiveness of my mother tulsi. Then rub the paste made out of her leaves on your body and my father will pardon you.’

  I mean today that the long-suffering Hindu is being called a religious zealot today only because he wants to build the temple. The Muslims got their Pakistan. Even in a mutilated India, they have special rights. They have no use for family planning. They have their own religious schools. What do we have? An India with its arms cut off.f An India where restrictions are placed on our festivals, where our processions are always in danger of attack, where the expression of our opinion is prohibited, where our religious beliefs are cruelly derided. We cannot speak of our pain, express our hurt. I say to the politician, ‘Do not go on trampling upon our deepest feelings as you have been doing for so long.’

  In Kashmir, the Hindu was a minority and was hounded out of the valley. Slogans of ‘Long live Pakistan’ were carved with red-hot iron rods on the thighs of our Hindu daughters. Try to feel the unhappiness and the pain of the Hindu who became a refugee in his own country. The Hindu was dishonoured in Kashmir because he was in a minority. But there is a conspiracy to make him a minority in the whole country. The state tells us Hindus to have only two or three children. After a while, they will say do not have even one. But what about those who have six wives, have 35 children and breed like mosquitoes and flies?

  Why should there be two sets of laws in this country? Why should we be treated like stepchildren? I submit to you that when the Hindu of Kashmir became a minority he came to Jammu. From Jammu he came to Delhi. But if you Hindus are on the run all over India, where will you go? Drown in the Indian Ocean or jump from the peaks of the Himalayas?

  What is this impartiality toward all religions where the mullahs get the moneybags and Hindus the bullets? We also want religious impartiality but not of the kind where only Hindus are oppressed. People say there should be Hindu-Muslim unity. Leave the structure of the Babri mosque undisturbed. I say, ‘Then let’s have this unity in the case of the Jama Masjidg too. Break half of it and construct a temple. Hindus and Muslims will then come together.

  You know the doctors who carry out their medical experiments by cutting open frogs, rabbits, cats? All these experiments in Hindu-Muslim unity are being carried out on the Hindu chest as if he is a frog, rabbit or cat. No one has ever heard of a lion’s chest being cut open for a medical experiment. They teach the lesson of religious unity and amity only to the Hindus.

  In Lucknow there was a Muslim procession which suddenly stopped when passing a temple where a saffron flag was flying. The mullahs said, ‘This is the flag of infidels. We cannot pass even under its shadow Take down the flag!’ Some of your liberal Hindu leaders and followers of Gandhi started persuading the Hindus, ‘Your ancestors have endured a great deal. You also tolerate a little. You have been born to suffer, take down the flag.’ Luckily, I was also there. I said to the leader who was trying to cajole the Hindus into taking down the flag, If I took off your cap, gave four blows to your head with my shoe and then replaced the cap, would you protest?’ This is not just our flag, it is our honour, our pride. Religious impartiality does not mean that to appease one you insult the other. Hindu children were riddled with bullets in the alleys of Ayodhya to please the Muslims. The Saryu river became red with the blood of slaughtered kar-sevaks. We shall not forget.

  It is true that for the strengthening of cultural identity, belief of the group members in an existing or anticipated oppression is helpful, is not necessary. Yet for the 800 million Hindus who are relatively more advanced on almost every economic and social criteria, to feel oppressed by Muslims who are one-eighth their number demands an explanation other than one given by the theory of relative deprivation. This theory, as we know, argues that a group feels oppressed if it perceives inequality in the distribution of resources and believes it is entitled to more than the share it receives. There is
a considerable denial of reality involved in maintaining that the Hindus are relatively deprived or in danger of oppression by the Muslims. Such a denial of reality is only possible through the activation of the group’s persecutory fantasy in which the Muslim changes from a stereotype to an archetype; he becomes the ‘arch’ tyrant. As in individuals, where persecution anxiety often manifests itself in threats of the integrity of the body, especially during psychotic episodes, Rithambra’s speech becomes rich in the imagery of a mutilated body. Eloquently, she conjures up an India—the motherland—with its arms cut off, Hindu chests cut open like those of frogs, rabbits, and cats, the thighs of young Hindu women burnt with red-hot iron rods; in short, the body amputated, slashed, raped. It is the use of metaphors of the body—one’s own and of one’s mother (India)—under assault that makes an actual majority feel a besieged minority in imagination, anchors the dubious logos of a particular political argument deeply in fantasy through the power of mythos.

  They said, ‘Let’s postpone the mid-term elections till the Hindu’s anger cools down.’ I say, ‘Is the Hindu a bottle of mineral water? Keep the bottle open for a while and the water will stop bubbling? It is 900,000 years since Ravana kidnapped Sita and challenged god Rama. But to this day we have not forgotten. Every year we burn his effigy and yet the fire of our revenge burns bright. We will not forget mullah Mulayamh and his supporter Rajiv Gandhi. I have come to tell the young men and mothers of Bhagyanagar, listen to the wailing of the Saryu river, listen to the story told by Ayodhya, listen to the sacrifice of the kar-sevaks. If you are a Hindu, do not turn your face away from the Rama temple, do not spare the traitors of Rama.

  After the incident on the ninth of November, many Hindu young men came to me. ‘Sister,’ they said, ‘give us weapons to deal with mullah Mulayam.’ I said, ‘Why waste a bullet to deal with a eunuch?’ Rama had become tired shooting his arrows. Ravana’s one head would fall to be immediately replaced by another. Vibhishna [Ravana’s brother] said, ‘Lord, you will not kill this sinner by cutting off his heads. His life is in his navel.’ My brother Hindus, these leaders have their lives in their chairs [of power]. Take away their power and they’ll die—by themselves. They are only impotent eunuchs. When Rama was banished from Ayodhya many citizens accompanied him to the forest and stayed there overnight. In the morning, Rama said, ‘Men and women of Ayodhya, go back to your homes.’ The men and women went back but a group of hermaphrodites, who are neither men nor women, stayed back and asked, ‘Lord, you have not given us any instructions.’ Rama is kind. He said, ‘In the future Kaliyuga you will rule for a little while.’ These, neither-men-nor-women, are your rulers today. They will not be able to protect India’s unity and integrity.

  Make the next government one of Rama’s devotees. Hindus, you must unite in the coming elections if you want the temple built. Hindus, if you do not awaken, cows will be slaughtered everywhere. In the retreats of our sages you will hear the chants of ‘Allah is Great’. You will be responsible for these catastrophes for history will say Hindus were cowards. Accept the challenge, change the history of our era.

  Many say, Rithambra you are a sanyasin. You should meditate in some retreat. I tell them raising Hindu consciousness is my meditation now and it will go on till the saffron flag flies from the ramparts of the Red Fort.i

  The feeling of helplessness which persecution anxiety engenders reverses the process of idealization, reveals the fragility of the group’s grandiose self. The positive self-image of the Hindu—tolerant, compassionate, with special insight into the relationship between the divine and the natural worlds, between human and divine—exposes another, negative side: the specific Hindu shame and fear of being too cowardly and impotent to change the material or social conditions of life. Indeed, we should always look closely at a group’s specific form of self idealization to find clues to its particular moment of self-doubt and self-hatred. What a group most idealizes about itself is intimately related to its greatest fear. For the Hindu, the positive self-image of tolerance has the shadow of weakness cleaving to it. Are we tolerant or are we merely weak? Or tolerant because weak?

  The crumbling self, with its unbearable state of helplessness, demands restoration through forceful action. Rithambra channels this need for agens into a call for collective and united action in the political arena. She holds out the possibility of some kind of self-assertion through the coming electoral process where all the persecutory anti-Hindu forces, from within and without the Hindu fold, can be engaged and defeated. With this prospect, the negative self-image begins to fade, the group self becomes more cohesive. The Muslim, too, though remaining alien, becomes less demonic and more human, although still a cussed adversary.

  They ask what would happen to the Muslims in a Hindu India? I tell them the Muslims will not be dishonoured in a Hindu state nor will they be rewarded to get their votes. No umbrella will open in Indian streets because it is raining in Pakistan. It there is war in the Gulf then slogans of ‘Long Live Saddam Hussein’ won’t be shouted on Indian streets. And as for unity with our Muslim brothers, we say, ‘Brother, we are willing to eat sevian [sweet noodles] at your house to celebrate Eid but you do not want to play with colours with us on Holi. We hear your calls to prayer along with our temple bells, but you object to our bells. How can unity ever come about? The Hindu faces this way, the Muslim the other. The Hindu writes from left to right, the Muslim from right to left. The Hindu prays to the rising sun. The Muslim faces the setting sun when praying. If the Hindu eats with the right hand, the Muslim eats with the left. If the Hindu calls India ‘Mother’, she becomes a witch for the Muslim. The Hindu worships the cow, the Muslim attains paradise by eating beef. The Hindu keeps a moustache, the Muslim always shaves the upper lip. Whatever the Hindu does, it is the Muslim’s religion to do its opposite. I said, ‘If you want to do everything contrary to the Hindu, then the Hindu eats with his mouth; you should do the opposite in this matter too!’

  After the laughter subsides, Rithambra ends by asking the audience to raise their fists and repeat aftter her, ‘Say with pride, we are Hindus! Hindustan (India) is ours!’

  The conclusion of Rithambra’s speech complements its beginning. Both the beginning and the end are concerned with the issue of drawing the boundaries of the group of ‘us’ Hindus. Whereas Rithambra began with a self-defmition of the Hindu by including certain kinds of Hinduisms—as personified by heroes, gods and historical figures—she ends with trying to achieve this self-definition through contrasts with what a Hindu is decidedly not—the Muslim. At the start, the boundary was drawn from inside out; at the end, its contours are being marked off by reference to the ‘them’, the Muslims, who lie outside the psychogeographical space inhabited by ‘us’. It is, of course, understood that ‘their’ space is not only separate and different but also devalued. In her enumeration of differences Rithambra cleverly contrives to end on a note which associates the Muslim with certain denigrated, specifically anal, bodily parts and functions.

  I have suggested here that the construction/revival of the new Hindu identity in the text of Rithambra’s speech follows certain well-marked turnings of the plot which are motivated, energized, and animated by fantasy To recapitulate, these are: marking afresh the boundaries of the religious-cultural community, making the community conscious of a collective cultural loss, countering internal forces which seek to disrupt the unity of the freshly demarcated community, idealizing the community, maintaining its sense of grandiosity by comparing it to a bad ‘other’ which, at times, becomes a persecutor and, finally, dealing with the persecutory fantasies, which bring to the surface the community’s particular sense of inferiority, by resort to some kind of forceful action.

  In describing these psychological processes, I am aware that my own feelings toward the subject could have coloured some of my interpretations. This is unavoidable, especially since I am a Hindu myself, exposed to all the crosscurrents of feelings generated by contemporary events. My own brand of Hinduis
m, liberal-rationalist (with a streak of agnostic mysticism) can be expected to be critical of the new Hindu identity envisaged by the sangh parivar. Thus, to be fair (the liberal failing par excellence), one should add that the Hindu is no different from any other ethnic community or even nation which feels special and superior to other collectivities, especially their neighbours and rivals. This sense of superiority, the group’s narcissism, its self-aggrandizement, serves the purpose of increasing group cohesion and thus the enhancement of the self-esteem of its members. Rafael Moses, reflecting on the group selves of the Israelies and the Arabs, asks: ‘And is perhaps a little grandiosity the right glue for such a cohesion? Is that perhaps the same measure of grandiosity which is seen in the family and does it serve the same purpose, thereby strengthening the feeling of specialness and of some grandiosity which all of us harbour in ourselves?’20

  The sangh parivar cannot be faulted for fostering a Hindu pride or even trying to claim a sense of superiority vis-a-vis the Muslim. These are the normal aims of the group’s narcissistic economy. Perhaps we recoil from such aims because narcissim, both in individuals and groups, is regarded with much misgiving. A person who is a victim of passions, sexual and aggressive, may be pitied and even seen by some as tragically heroic. An individual propelled by narcissism, on the other hand, is invariably scorned as mean and contemptible. Whereas the perversions of sex may evoke sympathy, the miscarriages of narcissism, such as a smug superiority or an arrogant self-righteousness, provoke distaste among even the most tolerant. The question is not of the sangh parivar’s fostering of Hindu narcissism (which, we know, serves individual self-possession) but of when this narcissism becomes deviant or abnormal. The answer is not easy for I do not know of any universal, absolute standards which can help us in charting narcissistic deviance or pathology in a group. One would imagine that the promotion of persecutory fantasies in a group to the extent that it resorts to violence against the persecuting Other would be deviant. Yet we all know that a stoking of persecutory fantasies is the stock in trade of all nations on the eve of any war and continues well into the duration of hostilities.