January 24th, 2024

 There are a lot of balls in motion since yesterday. I was trying to figure out how to sell my car for cash, and apply for a golden visa-while trying to recover from a cold. In the morning, we had an invite to Radha's for a Hanuman Pooja- something she does once a year since she is a devotee of Hanuman. My wife is too, and so we were all-in. On reaching, it was a familiar mix of bengali families many of whom we had met at their residence a few times before. Some made a special appearance but clearly were not into the rituals. Again, a very familiar bengali phenomenon. The closest to rituals a bengali gets is during Durga Puja- and this is possibly only because the tedium of  rituals are compensated by the binge partying that goes on for 5 days with lots of excellent food and drink. It has always intrigued my how for away Bengalis were from traditional religion. We always have had a contra-line to religion historically.  Raja Ram Mohun Roy and the Brahmo Samaj was founded on similar non-hindu or non-ritualistic lines. He was responsible for pointing out the several ills plaguing the Hindu system- including ancient customs where the wife immolated herself  immediately after her husband's death, infact in the same pyre. Somehow because Bengalis were at the forefront of reforming the hindu religion, it seems to have created a relative apathy for the faith and a overwhelming awareness of its ills and practically no awareness  or concession of its strengths. The next question that I wondered about was why the reformers were Bengalis and not, say Punjabis or Tamils? And from what I gathered, the answer lay in the British empire's early relationship with Calcutta. The English administered their empire from Calcutta and hence recruited Bengalis into their expatriate bureaucracy by the droves. Thus Bengalis got very close to the extant British culture, more so than other sub-groups in India. They spoke English, typically very proper English ( I suggest reading anything by Nirad C Choudhuri), and thus became slightly influenced by Western thought. One can argue that they were being dominated by the whites, so why would they warm up to their faith? Fair Point-may be it was Stockholm Syndrome. In any case, it only helped the hindu faith. Left to its own devices, the guardians of the faith would always be too blinkered by their fervour to ever consider any reform. But the downside is that the Western Thought crept into their collective consciousness and the hindu civilizational provenances became decidedly blurred in them. I always noted that we ate an English breakfast at home. Friend Eggs on Toast- almost every day. Whereas in other parts of India breakfast was mostly an Indian affair with Poorts,sabjis, Pohas, Parathas, Upma and so on. All of this had a positive slant back in the day, very much in favor of Bengalis. However, since 2014 and even before, as India's economic might slowly began to recover the thousand years of controlled debilitation, so did its national consciousness - which is to say, its Hindu consciousness. A right-wing government at the helm meant that anyone who did not stay with the program as far as hindu resurgence went, basically was othered. Bengalis, thus, came to be pushed to the other side by the rest of the nation. It is interesting to note that economics, politics and cultural consciousness are a triad- they work in tandem and cannot be studied in isolation. The resurgence of India's "hindutva" is the product of economic progress. It had started before the hinduness peddlers arrived, and hindu peddlers have thrived since then mainly because the economy has continued to thrive. The confidence of this belligerent stance of the government is well supported by the international significance of its economy. That leaves the question of culture.  Indian culture has always been variegated. However, whenever a culture moves firmly on the monolithic path one can be sure it is happening owing to a stronger emphasis of identity politics- a conscious decision to somehow purge the other. Now, to be fair, Hindus boast about the fact that even within hindus you have the time and space to follow a multitude of cultural norms. Yet, in reality, these types of sound bites tend not to be practiced as much on the ground when trying to drive a political agenda. 

My views on this hindu resurgence are simple. I see no reason why hindus should be ashamed or otherwise reluctant to follow their faith with pride. But not with belligerence. Unfortunately, that is the side effect of the former. We have been marginalized so much to the one end of the spectrum that just to get to the center we have to veer all the way right- with all the attendant ugliness that entails.  Shouting " jai shri Ram" at a muslim's face is just obnoxious. Nobody of that ilk, that rabid mob of random youngish men on two wheelers that pervade the dusty roads of this massive nation, have any understanding of what Ram stood for. Imagine what Ram would say to them when  he saw their behavior! Is there a way, though, to right the wrongs of the past without this ugliness? I guess not- there is no case in history where anything meaningful has been achieved with grace and goodwill. These do not even work in the corporate workplace or even  within the hierarchy in the community. Such is the sorry state of humans- but Jordan Peterson will tell you this also is the state of affairs within lobsters. All living creatures naturally form hierarchies on the basis of competence. And if one is at the top of this hierarchy , it wields power. And when it wields power, it can do both good and bad- with little or no consequence. Hence they tend to do something bad as well. And this generates massive amounts of systematic inequities in the respective ecosystem. There, I have described the real problem all living things face.