The gross over reaction of the Sangh Parivar to the letter of Archbishop of Delhi, Anil Couto, dated 8 May 2018 and addressed to all parish priests and religious institutions in the Archdiocese of Delhi asking them to pray for ‘our nation’ seems to be well calculated. The letter begins with the observation: “We are witnessing a turbulent political atmosphere which poses a threat to the democratic principles enshrined in our Constitution and the secular fabric of our nation.” The letter then requests the 138 parish priests and 5 religious institutions within Delhi to observe “a Day of Fast every Friday . . . offering our penance and all our sacrifices for our spiritual renewal and that of our nation.” Assuming that the request is complied by all the 138 parish priests addressed in the letter, it is still a very tiny number.
Christians (including Protestants who are not addressed in the letter) are 0.87% of Delhi’s population. The Hindu supremacists project the letter as a huge problem even when this very tiny section of the population which hardly counts politically was addressed! However, by responding to an otherwise innocuous letter, the BJP leaders have made it a national issue reaching out to a much wider audience.
The Hindu supremacists have problematised the timing of the letter—just one year before the General Elections, as well as the observation of the Archbishop about the “turbulent political atmosphere which poses threat to the democratic principles enshrined in our Constitution and secular fabric of our nation.” The two most important persons after the PM Narendra Modi in the BJP and in the NDA Government responded to the letter. Rajnath Singh, Minister of Home Affairs, said, “there was no discrimination against anyone”. The letter made no claim to the contrary. Amit Shah’s response was: “polarising people in the name of religion” was “not appropriate”. The letter remotely doesn’t seek to polarise in the name of religion. In fact it calls upon people to pray for principles enshrined in the Constitution and preserve the secular fabric of the nation. Both the leaders, and other Hindu supremacists, read something that is not there in the letter or want to deliberately draw conclusions to give it a political colour.
Elections are one year later and the letter will be forgotten by most people. Even if remembered, a very tiny section could hardly influence the outcome of the elections. Besides, elections are almost always round the corner in some state or the other and such a letter could always be problematised whenever written.
Turbulent political atmosphere
The surge in hate spouted by the Hindu supremacists against non-Hindus is visible to all. To the Hindutva followers, the test of nationalism is neither in following Constitutional values nor in respecting rule of law nor in respecting democratic institutions like the legislature or judiciary. Their test of nationalism asserts supremacy of the privileged upper caste Hindu traditions and is proved only if one says jai shri Ram, Bharat mata ki jai and singing Vande mataram which, often, they themselves cannot sing. Variants of these like jai Hind which is the tradition in the security forces, or hoisting the national tricolour, would not do. Expressing nationalism through constitutionally acceptable methods and plural traditions but which are not in conformity with the desires of Hindu supremacists becomes ground for them to indulge in violence and hate crimes. Violence against Muslims, Christians, Dalits and women are on the rise. Social hostilities based on religion are on the rise, particularly as the Hindu supremacists find an enabling environment where politically influential leaders and even ministers spout hatred against Muslims and Christians. Muslims are often advised to take permanent residency in Pakistan, an enemy state according to Hindu supremacists. Pakistan is projected to be patron state of Muslims in India. The BJP President Amit Shah publicly asserted while campaigning during Bihar Assembly elections—‘Pakistan will celebrate if BJP loses elections in some innocuous Indian state’. Beef eaters (read: Muslims and Christians) are advised to emigrate to Pakistan (Anil Vij, Minister in Haryana).
A Minister in the Central Government Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti publicly stated that Hindus were Ramzade (progeny of Lord Ram) and the rest—Muslims, Christians, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis, atheists who do not accept Lord Ram to be their God—are haramzade (bastards). The Sadhvi continues as minister and she was not even reprimanded. Maneka Gandhi, another Union Minister, said the profit from cow slaughter was financing terrorism. Sakshi Maharaj, BJP MP, asserted that Madrasas (religious schools run by Muslims) were terrorist training centres. The person who asserted that Hindus should forcibly marry 100 Muslim women (and convert them to Hinduism) for every Hindu woman who chooses to marry a Muslim man (and gets converted to Islam), has been made Chief Minister of UP.
Attacks on Churches and prayer meetings of Christians have dramatically increased. Instead of arresting the criminals, they are sought to be protected by categorising the attacker/s as mentally disturbed person/s. Mob lynching of Muslims and Dalits on accusations of consuming beef or slaughtering cows have grown manifold in the last four years.
Mohd. Afrajul was hacked to death and then burnt alive in Rajsamand (Rajasthan) by Shambhulal Raigar, a follower of Hindu supremacist ideology. He videographed the incident and uploaded it for popularity. Junaid Khan and Mohammed Akhlaq were lynched to death. Recently a Dalit youth Mukesh Vaniya was beaten to death in Rajkot for refusing to clean up a factory premise belonging to an upper caste. Those who lynched Pehlu Khan to death in Rajasthan have been discharged and the accused freed. Survivors of mob lynchings have on the contrary been charged.
Communal conflicts have escalated. Communal violence has increased in Bihar since Nitish Kumar aligned with the BJP to form the state government. Massive Ram Navmi processions were taken out in March 2018 in several towns through new sensitive routes passing through minority areas in order to provoke and resulting in communal violence. In Kasganj, Muslims celebrating Republic Day were asked to halt their Indian flag hoisting to make way for a bike rally of Hindu supremacist and on requesting them to wait a little, they sparked off a communal riot. In West Bengal, there were riots during Muharram and Ram Navmi. Religious festivals are becoming tense moments for communities.
Table 2: Number of Communal Incidents in the Years 2014–2017
| Year | No. of Incidents | Deaths | Injured |
| 2014 | 561 | 90 | 1688 |
| 2015 | 650 | 84 | 1979 |
| 2016 | 703 | 86 | 2321 |
| 2017 | 822 | 111 | 2384 |
Source: Ministry of Home Affairs’ reply in Parliament
Crime against women are on increase. Rape in Kathua was motivated by religious hostility and the Hindu Ekta Manch organised massive demonstrations in defence of the accused. A BJP MLA in UP has been arrested for raping a child and later beating her father to death along with other accomplices. We could fill pages with sordid cases. If these are not turbulent times, what else could be? The PM of the country has by and large remained silent on all these issues.
Pew Research Centre, an independent non-partisan polling and research organisation, has been publishing its annual Global Restrictions on Religion Report since 2009. In their research, India ranked fourth in the world in 2015—after Syria, Nigeria and Iraq—as having the highest social hostilities involving religion. India’s ranking worsened sharply since 2014. The report comprises of two indices—the Government Restrictions Index and the Social Hostilities Index. While the former measures government restrictions on the free practice of religion, the latter looks at hostilities between groups around the issue of religion. The Social Hostilities Index looks at 13 indicators including crimes motivated by religious hatred, mob violence related to religion, communal violence, religion-related terrorist groups, using force to prevent religious groups from operating, the harassment of women for ‘violating’ religious dress codes and violence over conversion or proselytising. India ranked ‘very high’ on the index with an index value of 8.7 out of 10, 10 being the worst. Syria ranked at 9.2, Nigeria at 9.1 and Iraq at 8.9
Real reason
Hindu supremacist leaders problematise the Archbishop’s letter as polarising and influencing voters. Such a conclusion would be a very remote possibility, and as pointed out above, would not influence the outcome. However, appeal by varied Hindu God men is far more direct and materially influences electoral outcomes. To give just a few examples, Haryana Chief Minister and several ministers visited controversial godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s Ashram and he is known to have appealed to his followers to vote for the BJP. The Ashram was a beneficiary of Haryana Government funds. Another controversial godman Asaram was visited by the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, BJP leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee and other leaders (for votes obviously) and his Ashram in turn has been a beneficiary of government largesse in the form of land and the State turning a blind eye to illegal activities going on within the Ashram.
Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali empire rapidly expanded after the BJP came to power. Patanjali’s Acharya Balkrishna has become the 8th richest person in the country with a 173% rise in his wealth to Rs 70,000 crore. Patanjali has secured the second place in Indian FMCG market share in under 5 years, according to Hurun India Rich List 2017 (BT Online 2017). The rapid growth is because Baba Ramdev is openly associated with the BJP and has been given government land at highly concessional rates in several states ruled by the BJP. The Haryana government invited the Digamber Jain monk Tarun Sagar to address the State Legislative Assembly for 40 minutes. In his address, he asserted that relations between religion and politics should be like those between husband and wife. Just as the wife needs to serve the husband and the husband needs to protect his wife, politics should serve religion. In his words, “Rajniti par dharam ka ankush zaroori hai. Dharam pati hai, rajneeti patni. Har pati ki yeh duty hoti hai apni patni ko sanrakshan de. Har patni ka dharam hota hai ki woh pati ke anushasan ko sweekar kare. Agar rajneeti par dharam ka ankush na ho toh woh magan-mast haathi ki tarah ho jaati hai.” The Monk’s assertion is against both the Constitutional principle of equality of genders and secularism.
When other parties approach Imam Bukhari for Muslim votes, then that becomes anti-secular and even anti-national (although election results do not bear out that Muslims vote according to the diktats of Imam Bukhari or for that matter any other Muslim religious leaders). In the 2014 General Elections, Rajnath Singh hobnobbed with Shia religious leaders. It is difficult to believe that during election time such a visit by the BJP leader was only a courtesy call without any electoral and political motive.
The BJP is not worried that the innocuous letter by the Archbishop will contribute in any way towards losing even a few votes. Its real objective in problematising the letter is that it wants to create a fear among the majority community about (non-existing) unity within the minority community. They scare the majority community that unity within minorities would lead to assertion of ‘their’ culture and dilution of the Hindu culture or ‘Hinduness’ of the nation. Minorities struggle for secularism and space for their culture, which is perfectly in accordance with our Constitutional principles, but is against the political ideology of Hindutva. It is the secularism and loyalty of the minorities to the principles enshrined in the Constitution that worries the Hindu supremacists and the BJP. The BJP leaders have always ridiculed secularism as assickularism. The BJP has problematised Archbishop’s letter mainly because being from the minority community he has dared to speak up for Constitutional principles and the secular fabric of our nation.
The revered ideologue of Hindutva—M.S. Golwalkar—wanted that minorities should dream of nothing but the glory of Hindu (read upper caste) nation and Hindu upper caste traditions and symbols. The objective of Hindu supremacists is to relegate the minorities to the status of second class citizens. Bharatkumar Raut, former Rajya Sabha member of Shiv Sena—a party that subscribes to Hindutva ideology—even wrote an article demanding that the Muslims be disenfranchised—a demand which is a punishable offence under section 153B of the IPC.
It is the idea of equality of all citizens that scares the BJP though it pays lip service to sabka saath sabka vikaas (with everyone and development of everyone). Even if this slogan is sincerely implemented, it would actually negate the democratic principles enshrined in our Constitution. It only asserts that if the infrastructure of an area is developed, all communities would benefit ‘equally’. However, that is not true. If a road passes through a village, those people having vehicles would benefit more than others; and which village gets the road is itself a political decision and may be based on which community or caste forms the majority in the village.
What kind of new India do we want to build? Do we want to build an India where lynch mobs undermine the rule of law and have the freedom to do so because they belong to the majority religion, while those who stand up for democratic principles enshrined in our Constitution and the secular fabric of our nation are questioned because they belong to minorities?
