The Hindu

“Now with the publication of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and its revelations about the Opus Dei organization, Hindus have to go on high alert about Christian missionaries from abroad,” argues Subramanian Swamy in his Hindutva manifesto, Hindus Under Siege: The Way Out. In a way, the whole thesis of his book could be judged from this sentence alone. He uses conspiracy-theory fiction–I'm sorry, Brown, with a prose befitting his name, is not literature–to emphasize a factual point. By the same logic, we should be equally on high alert, perhaps more so, against T-rex, now that it is more than 20 years since Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park came out. One would incline to regard Swamy in a better light had he referred to something out of The Mahabharatha as illustration here. But hey, this fellow has a degree from Harvard, so he must have something important to say, right? Turns out, with the exception of the part relating to the economy, not much indeed.

An India renamed Hindustan would give the nation the focus necessary for a “renaissance”, he writes. But if you have any issue with the name, he makes it clear that Hindustan doesn't mean land of Hindus, only that it is one where the culture is Hindu in character. And in any case, Hindustan is etymologically secular. Any questions? He even blames rampant corruption in our society on our deviance from our core Hindu values. I thought greed was an equal-opportunity employer. He asks every Hindu today to become virat Hindu, someone who would “retaliate when attacked”. I don't have a problem retaliating when our enemy attacks us, but should that only come from a religious motif? He harps on about this mindset and has even said in an article that such a mindset is a prerequisite to both national character and personal character. Does he seriously mean to say that any non-Hindu, or say even a Hindu who is a non-believer, lacks those qualities? Can he not see it is downright ridiculous? Or does he chose to ignore the manifestations of such a mindset in the form of Mr. Thackeray and his henchmen? Such bigoted views are in line with terms such as 'Christian compassion', as if some noble qualities in humans are strictly proprietary. One of the chief trump cards of religion is the flawed belief that it is the de facto fount of morality. Swamy, like other proselytizers from other faiths, seems to be no exception in this. In the article, which is essentially a precis of the book, he goes as far as proposing disenfranchisement of citizens who refuse to acknowledge our Hindu ancestry. This is more regressive and radical than what any of the right and the evangelicals here in America have come up with.

His claim that the "continued rise in the share of Muslims and Christians in the total population is a threat to the Hindu foundation of the nation" (in the book) and his asking Hindus to rise "above caste and language" (in the article) is nothing short of a call to a theocratic state. Any notion of having a 'wall of separation between Church & State' is quashed by his assertion that Hinduism doesn't have a church. Quite conveniently he choses to ignore the U.S. Constitution, upon some of whose principles the Indian model was drafted, and which doesn't have one church either (unlike Church of England for example). Although he confesses that state and religion must be separate, he wants to establish what is called an Acharya Sabha, comprised of dharmacharyas, for creating a “vigorous Hindu unity”, in addition to the two other houses. He also writes, for instance, on the treatment of Hindus in Tamil Nadu that "all this is happening while Hindus are in power in the government." He is particularly enraged by the case against the chief of mutt at Kanchi as if to suggest religious heads are immune to criminal acts.

The book is not only poorly argued for, but is also poorly written. Swamy's writing is archaic and longwinded. He, whenever possible, pats himself soundly on the back, as when he predated Manmohan Singh's economic policies of 1991 two decades earlier to that, and when he initiated India's nuclear bomb debate. What is really sad is to see such zealots forming the intellectual opposition in India. As long as the Janata Parties continue to push the Hindutva pill, they can expect the Congress-led coalition to survive any number of graft scandals.