By Justice Markandey Katju–
(Justice Markandey Katju is a former Judge, Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman, Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own)
Saffron is a sacred religious color among Hindus, and on January 22, 2024, a large part of India was saffronized. From a legal and Constitutional secular country, India has been transformed into a de facto Hindu nation, with minorities living as second rate citizens, with constant fear of atrocities and oppression (Hindus are 80% of India’s population).
How did this happen? This will be explained in this article.
For long, Indians boasted of their country being secular, even after the Partition in 1947 on the basis of the two nation theory (that Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations), and despite the newly created Pakistan declaring itself an Islamic state.
Now all of this has changed.
Ever since the right wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (or BJP, whose leaders come from the rabidly anti-Muslim and anti-Christian organization, the RSS), came to power in 2014, there was a steady saffronization of India, with atrocities and discrimination inflicted on minorities, particularly Muslims, not to mention the saffronization of State institutions.
This trend reached its culmination on January 22, with the ‘Pran Pratishtha’ ceremony of the Hindu god Ram in a newly built temple in the town of Ayodhya in UP, performed by the Prime Minister Modi among a gathering of invitees. Many opposition parties, such as the Congress, refused to attend despite being invited, saying it was a political stunt organized with an eye on the forthcoming parliamentary elections.
Hindus are idol worshippers. They believe that when an idol of a god is made, it remains just a piece of stone until life is instilled into it by a certain ceremony called the ‘pran pratishtha‘.
Ram is a prominent god, and a Ram Janmabhoomi agitation was launched by the BJP many years ago when it was in the opposition (the Congress was in power).
Those involved in the agitation alleged that, on top the site of the birthplace of Lord Ram in Ayodhya there stood a Hindu temple for centuries, but it was demolished in the 16th century and the Babri mosque was built by Muslim invaders there.
They demanded the construction of a Ram temple on the same site, which obviously implied demolition of the Babri mosque.
The result of this agitation was the demolition of the mosque on December 6, 1992 by a huge mob of fanatic Hindus. Much later, in 2019, the Indian Supreme Court, by a flawed verdict, allowed Hindu organizations, backed by the BJP, to build a Ram temple on the site.
Thereafter, huge funds, including State machinery, were utilized in the construction of a huge Ram temple in Ayodhya, in which the Prime Minister did the pran pratishtha ceremony of the Ram idol yesterday. All Indian TV channels showed the event prominently.
Only those that had received invitations were allowed to attend, but Prime Minister Modi asked all Indians to celebrate the event wherever they were located.
Government offices, educational institutions, etc, were shut for the day, and it was declared a public holiday by the Central and many state governments.
I live in a flat in Noida, a township adjacent to Delhi, across the river Yamuna. When I got up in the morning yesterday, I heard chanting on loudspeakers ‘Bolo Shri Ram’, singing of bhajans, and blowing of shankh (conch shells) which is done in Hindu religious ceremonies.
Later in the day, I had to go to Delhi for some work. While travelling in my car, I saw saffron flags everywhere. There were cars, three wheelers, people on scooters and on foot with bhagwa (saffron) flags, and many processions of saffron-clad people shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ (Hail Lord Ram).
The railings on the sidewalks were covered in saffron cloth, and there were huge hoardings featuring Lord Ram’s portraits. At night I saw and heard fireworks, as if it were Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. The same must have happened across much of India.
The truth is that, the secularism enshrined in the Constitution has been torn to shreds, and India has really become a Hindu nation, in which minorities must live as second-class citizens and suffer the consequences.
This was inevitable once the then Congress party leaders Gandhi, Nehru, Patel etc, accepted Partition in 1947 on the basis of the bogus two-nation theory.
Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, was no doubt pressing for Partition ever since the Lahore Resolution of the League in 1940. But it was the Congress leaders’ eventual agreement and capitulation on the issue which resulted in the diabolical Partition.
Therefore, they are equally, if not more, to blame than Jinnah, and I regard them as criminals, as they were complicit in the greatest tragedy of India in its long history.
Once India was divided on the basis of the bogus two-nation theory, and an Islamic state Pakistan was created, it logically followed that sooner or later India would become a Hindu state.
For many decades after Independence, the pretence and façade of being secular was maintained (with an eye on the large Muslim vote bank, particularly in north India), but this could not go on indefinitely, and the pigeons have now come home to roost.
The real issues of India are abolition of its massive poverty, unemployment, appalling level of child malnutrition, skyrocketing prices of food and other essential commodities, an almost total lack of proper healthcare and good education for the masses, etc. I have written about this regularly on indica here, here, and here.
Instead, what is being depicted as the real issues are building temples, cow protection, and putting Muslims in their place.
The most important issue today is building Hindu temples after demolishing the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, the Shahi masjid in Mathura, and thousands of other mosques which were allegedly built after demolishing Hindu temples.
India is indeed going backwards instead of forward.
