It has taken an issue over laddus on the Tirumala Tirupati temple for the Supreme Courtroom to lastly emphasise that faith needs to be stored separate from politics. “We count on Gods to be refrained from politics,” declared the court docket in its order on allegedly contaminated Tirupati laddus.
In the end, the highest court docket has sought to appropriate, at the least by one sentence, the snowballing religion-isation of Indian politics. Nearly each occasion is being compelled to put on faith on its sleeve. Within the decade of BJP dominance, the journey from so-called “minority appeasement” to a aggressive majority appeasement has been achieved. The apex court docket has, by its order, at the least compelled some warning on the more and more prepared recourse to gods and goddesses to attain on the poll field.
Curiously, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, who first went noisily public about his suspicions that Tirupati laddus had been being made with animal fats, has by no means been an overtly non secular politician or worn faith on his sleeve. In truth, he’s at all times prided himself on his technocratic strategy and on being India’s first “tech-friendly” CM. So why did Naidu abruptly really feel compelled to play by a non secular playbook and degree the allegation that ghee used to make holy prasadam was contaminated by animal fats below the earlier Jagan Mohan Reddy dispensation in Andhra?
The primary a part of the reply is that Naidu, now a BJP ally, was taking part in well-worn cynical politics and settling scores along with his arch rival Jagan Mohan Reddy by pigeon-holing and stereotyping Reddy (who occurs to be a Christian) as a minority group politician and asserting his personal majoritarian credentials.
The second a part of the reply is that even liberal technocrats are being compelled to play by the Hindutva playbook. Only a few are nonetheless as courageous as Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee who has coined a pithy phrase of recent multiculturalism: “Dhormo jaar jaar, utsav shobaar (All of us have the suitable to our separate faiths, and we have a good time all festivals collectively)”.
The traces between religion, god and politics have greater than blurred during the last decade. The SC now says gods should be separate from politics. However the identical Courtroom in its 2019 Ayodhya judgement, whereas acknowledging that the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 was an “egregious violation of the rule of legislation,” nonetheless unanimously allowed the disputed land (acquired by unlawful means) to be returned to the Hindus and for a Ram Mandir to be constructed on it as a result of the “religion and perception of Hindus… are within the Janmaasthan (sic) of Lord Ram.” The identical court docket in 1995 held that Hindutva is a lifestyle and in 2016 refused to rethink that judgment. It’s the identical Courtroom which allowed the Archaeological Survey of India to look at the Gyanvapi mosque complicated in Varanasi. When the mosque’s lawyer contended that the demand to look at the mosque was frivolous, the CJI mentioned, “What’s frivolous to you is religion to the opposite facet.”
The courts’ unwillingness to attract crimson traces on “religion” and “devotion” in civic and public life has meant that politicians have seen this as permission to nearly bury the constitutional best of faith being a non-public matter and never a matter of state or authorities coverage. The Structure expressly forbids discrimination primarily based on faith, but the ruling BJP has been notably responsible in continuously interesting to non secular sentiments of 1 group towards one other to grab the so-called Hindu vote. Modi’s politics relies on blurring the traces between religion and politics, as seen in all his speeches from the notorious 2002 “Hum paanch unke pachees” to his 2024 speech in Banswara during which he mentioned “they’ll snatch your mangalsutra.” The BJP-RSS have laboured during the last decade to show the cultural Hindu right into a political Hindu. However what’s troubling is that this so-called Hindu “political consciousness” is spreading to events aside from the BJP.
One other BJP ally, the once-secular Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, lately introduced plans to develop temples in Sitamarhi. Actor turned politician, Andhra Pradesh Deputy CM Pawan Kalyan, chief of the Janasena Occasion, was as soon as an ally of the Left and displayed posters of revolutionary Che Guevara at rallies. At present Kalyan sports activities a crimson tilak and saffron clothes, is a self-styled defender of Sanatan Dharma and within the forefront of the Hindus-in-danger laddu outrage. The Congress authorities in Himachal Pradesh, pushed on the backfoot on the Hindu plank by the BJP’s high-pitched protests over a mosque in Shimla, introduced that distributors ought to mandatorily show their names on stalls. It was borrowing from UP CM Yogi Adityanath’s announcement that each one avenue distributors on the kanwar yatra route ought to show their names. Authorities coverage on avenue distributors needs to be targeted on meals security requirements. As a substitute, an try was made to inject non secular color within the public’s meals decisions.
In the course of the 2023 Karnataka polls when Congress promised to clamp down on the Bajrang Dal, Modi urged voters to chant “Jai Bajrangbali” whereas voting. The Congress responded in sort by additionally chanting “Bajrangbali ki jai.” In Bengal the BJP focused Mamata Banerjee as “anti-Hindu,” accusations that didn’t stick given Banerjee’s deep roots within the Bengali cultural ethos. By dubbing all types of minority welfare as in some way “anti-Hindu,” the BJP is forcing Opposition events on the backfoot and pushing aggressive Hindutva-isation in events not as culturally deep-rooted because the TMC or DMK.
The BJP did not win in 2024. Hindutva suffered a defeat in its Ayodhya bastion and in giant elements of UP. However as an alternative of the 2024 end result spurring a rollback of religion-based politics, the BJP’s model of Hindutva is changing into disturbingly all pervasive. Too many politicians immediately are falling into the laddu entice. It could require greater than a one-line court docket remark to stir a change of path. Civic constitutional participatory citizenship transcending non secular religion should develop into the defining badge of identification in twenty first century India.
The author is a journalist and Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha, All India Trinamool Congress
