As in the Second World War the point of contention is the Aryan. What is the Aryan? “Who were the Aryans?’ is a less important question than what it meant to be ‘Aryan’?” says Romila Thapar. The concept of the Aryans has been a contentious historical subject as it has been used in various ways to suit a variety of ideologies. Today the Aryan is an ideological name of contention in the very idea of India. Is India Aryan? No race is pure to content anywhere in the world. But the Hindutva ideology lives and spreads by the High caste mentality of the Code of Manu the Brahminic hegemony. Aryan Myth is capable of destroying the very notion of India as a multi-cultural reality of modern world. But such a myth of principal identity has no history or scientific foundation but it slowly got a support of the vast majority in India. There is a decline not only from secularism and democracy in post-independence India but also in the understanding of the heritage even of Hindu India.
There are certain burning questions alive in India at this general election. The primary question we have to make sure is the question of man? Indians are a mix all races, colours, castes, outcastes, adivasis, tribals and aboriginals who get into all beliefs and religions. Will all these humans will be Indians or will these be outcastes who are untouchables and have no right of education? Does the Hindutva Party have a humanism which embraces all the humans in India? This is a question not only politicians but every Indian in the election time must pose and answer. The ruling party won elections with a massive majority, but the massive majority of what? The electoral system has its flaws. That massive majority was based on less than forty per cent of the vote. What has happened to the vast majority of Indians who were tolerant and brotherly to others and other religions? Why there is hate speech in many parts of India. Why do the Indians hate other religions, why there are so many hate speeches in India? Why the young and educated become fundamentalists? Why there is increasing sense of loss of identity? Why so many feel nostalgic within India? Why do lots of people believe in the lies that told by many politicians? What happened to the “argumentative Indian”? What happened to the dharma of the Indian, when a Muslim is lynched in public or a Harijan is beaten to death for keeping meat with him? Why the critical spirit and moral sense has evaporated?
These are not political questions but questions that make our human existence. Are we reaching a critical mass situation of what Hannah Arendt spoke of Rudolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, the “banality of evil” which was nothing but thoughtless herd mentality of the people? This is exactly what happened in Germany when the very intelligent people of Germany refused to think of the other in their midst. It is this ethos of the time that created the Nazis. The phenomenon of evil deeds, committed on a gigantic scale, which could not be traced to any particularity of wickedness, pathology, or ideological conviction in the doer, whose only personal distinction was a perhaps extraordinary shallowness. What is courage? and the question, ‘What is goodness?’ Has the market culture destroyed the humanity of our own? We are in the brink of tragedy. History may repeat lest we learn from history? Dr S. Radhakrishnan wrote, “The contributions of ancient Greece, of the Roman Empire, of the Renaissance of Italy to the progress of humanity do not concern only the inhabitants of modern Greece and Italy. They are part of the heritage of humanity”. Democracy does not succeed so much in preventing non-visibly explosive nastiness. Democracy should cover that your origin doesn’t matter. Only because democracies often fail, that is why multiple identities become very important. We can’t withdraw from politics, for it is the extension of our dharma. If all are equal citizens everywhere in India, all faiths are respected, there was a press without fear, no censorship from government, and no tyranny of advertising control. If all this hadn’t happened, people of India had won the election. Your vote is your power of dharma.