- Vincent Kundukulam
The 2024 Parliamentary elections are at our door and BJP claims that Christians will in large numbers support its candidates this time than ever in the past. I am not competent to judge the veracity of its revendications but I would like to bring the following points into the notice of all those who wish to see India remain as a democratic country.
Aim of BJP is to Transform India into a Hindu Rashtra: The avant-gardes of Hindutva ideology believes that to preserve the Hindu Scriptures and cultures in India it should become a Hindu Nation. According to them they have every right to make the national life based on Hindu dharma: “For it is the forefathers of the Hindu people that have set up standards and traditions of love devotions for the motherland … It is they who shed their blood in defense of its sanctity and integrity. That the Hindu people alone have done all this is a fact to which our history of thousands of years bears testimony. It means that only the Hindu has been living here as the child of this soil” (M.S. Golwalakr, Bunch of Thoughts, 162). Their ambition does not stop with building up a Hindu nation in India alone. If circumstances permit, they like to dominate the whole world. Once, P.N Oak, wrote the following in the VHP monthly called Hindu Vishva: “The whole world was Hindu in the olden times and many of the prominent non-Hindu shrines of today were veritably Hindu temples. The Dome of the Rock and the nearby AL Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem were Krishna temples; St. Paul’s in London was a Krishna Mandir; Notre Dame in Paris was a Durga temple; Kaaba in Mecca was a Vishnu temple; all these and other prominent churches in the world were Hindu in the beginning but later got proselytized as Christian and Muslim”. (Saffron Mission, 209-210)
Hindutva excludes non-Indian religions from Hindu Rashtra: This is evident from the explanation given to the term Hindu by Savarkar in his book Hindutva, who is a Hindu? He points out three characteristics to demarcate who a Hindu is. a) Hindu is the one who considers India as his motherland and homeland; b) He is the one who partakes in the lineage of the Hindu race; c) Hindu is the one who respects, recognizes and considers as his own the Hindu culture, history, heroes, art, literature, customs, festivals and sacraments that prevailed in India. But Savarkar gives a fourth condition to become Hindu: He is the one who considers Bharat not just as the homeland but also as the holy land. By this he excludes all those who are converted to Islam and to Christianity from Hinduism because according to him, they can never see India as their holy land. To them, the Holy land is far off in Arabia or Palestine.” (Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? 110-113)
The Status of non-Hindus in Hindu Rashtra: “There are only two courses open to the foreign elements, either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture, or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race. That is the only sound view on the minority problem. From this standpoint, sanctioned by the experience of old shrewd nations the foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e. of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge into the Hindu race or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment not even citizen’s rights (M. S. Golwalkar, We or Our Nationhood Defined, 47-48)
How do Christians will be treated in Hindu Rashtra: M.S. Golwalkar has dedicated three chapters in Bunch of Thoughts to explain that Muslims, Christians and Communists are internal threats to Hindu Rashtra: “So far as the Christians are concerned, to a superficial observer they appear not only quite harmless but as the very embodiment of compassion and love for humanity! They run schools and colleges, hospitals and orphanages. The people of our country, simple and innocent as they are, are taken in by all those things. But what is the real and ulterior motive of Christians in pouring crores of rupees in all these activities? …. So long as the Christians work for the spread of Christianity, they will remain here as hostiles and will have to be treated as such.” (Bunch of Thoughts, 248.256)
