(Siddharth Varadarajan is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Public Affairs and Critical Theory, Shiv Nadar University)The Gita is one of India's - and the world's - oldest and greatest philosophical texts, and the range of ethical, moral and ontological questions it raises are as relevant to humanity today as they were to the ancients.
More than the Upanishads or even the Vedas, the Gita is also seen by many Hindus as the one book that is most central and relevant to their religious beliefs. Medieval saints like Jnaneshwar embraced the Gita for they saw in its conception of
bhakti a way of democratizing access to God for the toiling castes who had hitherto been held in thrall by Brahminism.
Whether religious or atheist, Hindu or non-Hindu, a follower of
Advaita or any of the other schools of Indian philosophy, bigoted or democratic, there is hardly any Indian who does not consciously or unconsciously revisit the universalist arguments Krishna and Arjun had on the battlefield of the Mahabharata, who does not find himself or herself confronted with the same set of solutions to the dilemmas that life constantly poses, who does not remain conflicted by the challenges of
dharma - duty, obligation, and responsibility.Having done so, this is not to say that some or even many may reject the decisions Arjuna finally took. Ambedkar famously saw in Krishna's logic nothing but a defence of killing and war for the sake of property.
Narendra Modi is the Prime Minister of India and the job he has comes with a definite sense of dharma. During his visit to Tokyo, he presented Emperor Akihito with a copy of the Gita, a simple but elegant gift. I don't know what significance Modi himself attached to the book but the manner in which he later taunted "secular friends" by claiming they were likely to object to his choice of the Gita as 'communal' suggests the PM has not digested or understood the contents of the book very well.
At one level, this ought not to surprise us. We know, for example, from the 'do your
rajdharma' advice Atal Bihari Vajpayee gave him in 2002 that Modi was seen as someone who forgets or is unsure about what the duty and obligations of a ruler really entail.
We know from the Gita, and from the late Prof Bimal K Matilal's explorations of the Mahabharata's moral dilemmas, that Krishna regarded
dharma as something that was fluid and flexible. "But this flexibility," Matilal writes, "never means the 'anything goes' kind of morality." Rulers confront all kinds of situations and challenges so rajdharma has to be adaptable and contingent. But there is a limit to what can be considered morally acceptable. In 2002, Vajpayee hinted in his own way that the limit had been crossed; 100 days into office, Modi still does not understand where the line has to be drawn.
Apart from taking down a straw man - no "secular friends" have in fact objected to his gift of Gita, nor have there been any TV debates on the gift as he apprehended - Modi is guilty of using his office (and the occasion of a state visit overseas) to play politics and introduce into the public sphere a toxic suggestion that diverts from the actual problem of communalism which he refuses to address. His words are intended to encourage the sense of grievance that the Sangh Parivar manufactures and purveys among Hindus: that their religion and identity is somehow under attack.
On August 15, the Prime Minister declared from the Red Fort that there should be a 10-year moratorium on communalism, communal politics and violence. Days later, the Uttar Pradesh unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party - which is now led by his hand-picked nominee Amit Shah - began an inflammatory campaign accusing the Muslim community as a whole of raping Hindu women and targeting them for religious conversion. The party may have dropped a reference to the hoax of 'love jihad' but a formal resolution passed states: "Instances of misbehaviour with women of one section by men of one particular section, whether just coincidence or by design, is a matter of concern."
Acting in concert, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh - the very organization which Modi served directly for years and still swears by -- is drumming up hysteria over the issue and has devoted the latest edition of its organ,
Panchjanya, to this sort of hate-mongering. Yogi Adityanath, the Gorakhpur MP chosen by the BJP to be the face of its campaign in the upcoming by-elections to the UP Assembly, has also directly attacked the Muslim community as a whole for inciting riots and trying to drive Hindus away from their homes.
Instead of wasting time assailing his secular friends for a transgression they have not committed, shouldn't the Prime Minister follow his
rajadharma and put an end to the poisonous political campaign that his party and his
parivar are waging? Does he not have a duty to protect the people of UP and India, including all Muslims and Hindus who will suffer as and when this hate politics turns violent?
In the Gita, Krishna gave Arjuna the moral courage to fight a war against his own kith and kin for the cause of
dharma and righteousness. Read the Gita again, Mr. Prime Minister. And try to summon the courage to act firmly against the bigots in your own
parivar.
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