Why Hindutva Politics found a fertile ground in 1980s. A crisp article, exploring those decades.
There was lot of Hindu anxiety brewing through the decade of 1980s. But what was the source of this anxiety??
Hindus, through their historical experience have come to guard three things.
1. Hindu Unity
2.Hindu’s sacred Geography, Bharat
3. Demographic hegemony
On all these counts, India was facing problem. How??
1. The Hindu unity was being threatened by the rise of middle-caste political consciousness, politics of reservation through Mandal reports in 1978 and peddling of Identity politics by several parties, having potential to atomize Hindu society.
2. Secondly, movement of Khalistan and then in Kashmir, which targetted minority Hindu population and at the same time threatened the integrity of sacred geography, created immense anxiety amongst Hindus.
3. Thirdly, it was Assam during 1980s which was burning on account of massive migration from Bangladesh and altering of demography. This too created deep sense of anxiety and an urgency to shed moderation in politics.
All this factors converge and complement to produce an anxious community. Any political party with ears on ground could sense these vibrations. And congress was the first party to sense it. How??
The politics of Hindutva took a definite push from just one incident of 1981, when around 600 Dalits of Meenakshipuram village in TN enmassed converted into Islam, in a much publicised ceremony. This was the pinch which awakened the Hindus of new reality of Modern India.
The first party to sense this was the Congress. G.K. Moopanar, a Congress MLA from the area, immediately responded that he regretted the attitude of such Harijans who embraced Islam. He formulated a plan to stop conversions, claiming that he reflected Indira Gandhi’s sentiments.
The union home minister, Zail Singh, said that the conversions ‘is a matter of concern to all’, and that a central government probe was on. Another Congress minister cited the role of three crores rupee from an Arab country for conversion purpose.
It was part of Indira Gandhi’s larger strategy to woo Hindus from the 1980s onwards. The most visible illustration of this was the Virat Hindu Samaj (VHS), created by Karan Singh, a congressi and son of the last Hindu king of Kashmir, after the Meenakshipuram conversions.
BJP, then under Vajpayee was pushing for Gandhian Socialism within the Party and hence could not sense this upswell and upsurge of Hindu anxiety. He visited Meenakshipuram after 5 months when almost all parties hv done that.
Vajpayee then in 1980-81, was trying to distance BJP from RSS, to pose as an acceptable party to be accepted by anti-congress groupings. Sensing these developments, RSS re-ignited VHP, which was dormant since Anti-Cow slaughter movement of 1967.
Later incidents like Shah Bano and Babri Demolotion, have been much talked about in relation to Hindutva Politics, but the early years of 1980s are never touched upon, which saw the swell of Hindu anxiety.
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