Prof Ram Puniyani
THE Hindu Rashtra (nation) agenda of the RSS Parivaar has been built upon several narratives through multiple mechanisms. Hindu festivals have been the occasions for promoting the combine’s agenda. Also highlighting some deities for ‘social-political messaging’ has been in the political arena in a major way.
The recently held Kumbh was a mega spectacle, which became more of a national event rather than a religious gathering. One major change for this year’s Kumbh is its heavy marketing as a cultural and developmental showcase. It was labelled as “The Greatest Show on Earth” for Hinduism. On such occasions organising the stay, cleanliness, and transport for devotees is a mandatory function of the state. This time what was witnessed was that the state got fully involved in the process of organising the event itself and the associates of the ruling party, like VHP, Dharma Sansads (Religious Parliaments) and individual sants/sadhus took the lead and initiatives in propagating the components of Hindu nationalist agenda and ‘Hate for Muslims’ at this congregation.
While the spiritual significance of the event is highly appreciated by the devotees, giving it a political colour was very significant this time around in the Kumbh. It is not the first time that Kumbh was organised. This time the occasion became the ground for enhancing the Hindutva agenda. The state government, while found to be inadequate in the management of the crowds, had advertised and invited the devotees in large numbers for quite some time. Crores of rupees must have been invested for inviting the devotees alone.
The event was marked by a directive to Muslim traders not to set up their shops and stalls. The reasons given were multiple, a fake one being stated by Swami Avimukteshwaranand that Muslims spit in the food and, thus have to be kept away. Many such misleading videos did rounds on social media. It is another matter that Muslims opened their mosques and madrasas and organised food for the desperate victims of the stampede. One recalls that during the Mughal period, to make the Kumbh more comfortable for devotees, many ghats (river banks for bathing) and toilets were built by them. According to historian Heramb Chaturvedi, Akbar had appointed two of his officers to look after the arrangements of the Kumbh.
The whole area was full of hoardings of Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath. This time around a large area was reserved for VIPs, leading to stampedes in which a large number of deaths occurred. The arrangement for transport was poor and this was reflected in the death due to a stampede at New Delhi railway station.
One upstart Swami, Dhirendra Shastri, whom Modi calls his younger brother, merrily said that those who died due to stampede are the recipients of moksha (emancipation). The water quality reached an abysmally low level with e.coli and high excreta content. To all the criticism about water quality and deaths, the chief minister commented that pigs are seeing the dirt, and vultures are counting the dead!
VHP used it as a golden occasion with its Margdarshak Mandal meetings. Their speeches were full of venom against Muslims. The usual propaganda about Muslims relating to population increase, infiltrators from Bangladesh and cow protection was repeated at various meetings ad nauseam. Hate spreaders like Sadhvi Ritambhara, Praveen Togadia, and Yati Narasinghanand Saraswati were having a field day with their speeches. They had large audiences. BJP has successfully made use of sadhus for its political agenda and got publicity at state expense.
One such saffron-clad sant reiterated the demand for Kashi and Mathura and claimed that such 1,860 temples have been ‘researched’, which need to be restored. Demand for the closure of madrasas and converting English schools to Gurukuls to create a Hindu world was also articulated.
In a book published in 2024, Irfan Engineer and Neha Dabhade draw our attention to the use of religious festivals as occasions to instigate violence. Our festivals have been pleasant social occasions, cutting across religious lines. Now the trend is to take out a process during Hindu festivals, pass through Muslim areas, change the green flag on the mosque to a saffron one, and dance with a sword in hand. At the same time raise hateful slogans against Muslims. In this book, the author duo points out the Ram Navami festival in particular in 2022-23. The violence covered in the book related to Howrah and Hooghly (2023), Sambahji Nagar (2023), Vadodara (2023), Bihar Sharif and Sasaram 2023, Khargone (2022), Himmat Nagar and Khambat (2022) and Lohardagga (2022).
Engineer concludes “Even a small group of Hindu nationalists masquerading as ‘religious procession’ could insist on passing through minority inhabited areas and provoke some youth using political and abusive slogans and playing violent songs and music, hoping that in reaction, a stone would be thrown at them. The state would do the rest by arresting a large number of members of a minority and demolishing their homes and properties within days without any judicial procedure.”
At another level, this right-wing politics has also brought up and promoted the goddess Shabri and Lord Hanuman in Adivasi areas. As anti-Christian violence plagued the Adivasi areas during the last three decades, these areas saw an intense attempt by Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (RSS progeny) to promote Shabri. Shabri Kumbh was held near Dangs in Gujarat. A Shabri Temple has been erected in these areas. That time Swami Aseemanand of VHP was working in this area. He was the one who was later accused by the Maharashtra ATS of being part of a conspiracy to explode bombs in Malegaon, Ajmer and Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad.
Why were Shabri and Hanuman promoted in these areas? Shabri was a poor woman who did not have enough food to offer to her Lord (Ram). So she offered berries after first tasting them herself. Contrast is clear in city areas we have Durga, Laxmi and Saraswati to worship, while for Adivasi areas it is Shabri. Similarly, Lord Hanuman (Devotee of Lord Ram) has been popularised in Adivasi areas. Quite interesting!
The impact of Hindutva politics on our festivals reflects a lot about their agenda. The way some of these are being weaponised, or the way Kumbh has been made a ground for anti-Muslim rhetoric or the way Shabri and Hanuman are popularised in Adivasi areas is worth pondering over.
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Ram Puniyani is an eminent author, activist and former professor at IIT Mumbai. The views expressed here are personal and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them.
