Hindutva as an ideology as false consciousness

Radhakanta Barik

Marx defined ideology as false consciousness.  Hindutva as an ideology is the ruling class ideas. This is where Indians are suffering from false consciousness. Religious sentiment is getting exploited by the BJP. Hindutva has no association with Hinduism. Hindutva is hundred percent false consciousness. Their rule exploits public for a period of six years. Opposition win explains the politics will return back to performance. Hindutva is creating a false propaganda in the name of Sonar Bangla and they do not understand what is sonar or Bangla. Sonar is a creative moment which reflect in their literary and artistic traditions and Bangla a language has grown with the coming of many creative writers who hate Hindutva as a false consciousness and real consciousness brings many elements as Tagore defined a Bengali has three things: Hinduism of the Bhakti and Islam of Suffiana and Christianity of modernity. Hindutva is going to face its waterloo in Bengal election.

His birthday is being celebrated as the Kisan day. This is the day kisans are standing at the gates of Delhi but Modi does not understand their problems. Charan Singh was a kisan leader. It is a well researched work by Journal of Peasant Studies which gave a special issue on his work for farmers. He as the Revenue Minister of UP under Pant went to Deradoon and spent one week over making the Land Reforms bill to create peasant proprietorship in UP. Today Modi government needs to study his work on peasantry and find the answer to the problems for which farmers are on a war path against his three agricultural laws Modi does not understand the concept of peasant proprietorship which is a critical element of rural society. By implementation of these three laws peasant will lose their ownership of land and land can be acquired by the industrialists. Lack of understanding of history creates false consciousness which guides agricultural laws.

 On his anniversary one remembers a kisan leader of India. EPW held a discussion on the issues related to agricultural laws and they invited experts from various fields such as Professors working on agriculture explained the point that the laws are going to affect the farming community in India. They are sixty percentages of people of India. They are small and marginal farmers who depend on procurement price of the government to realise their price to some extent. The freedom of selling anywhere has been given to farmers of Bihar who suffer worst as they sell two important grains like rice and wheat at Rs 1200 in free market whereas procurement price is much higher. Average farmer's income is the lowest in Bihar it is somewhere Rs three thousand. This government wants to reduce all farmers of India from Punjab to Tamilnadu to Rs three thousand income. Hindutva a deadly ideology for increasing inequality between the rural economy and industrial economy. All of them agree that the these agricultural laws are faulty and against the federal constitution of India must go.

Hindutva does not serve the children of India and its mother land. Perhaps they have learnt from Ram that when he deserted his wife in the jungle when she was pregnant. Lack of food must have made her anemic as in the jungle food was not available. Her children grew with underweight because of malnourishment and under nutrition. This is happening in India today as the budget for women and child development has got slashed which resulted in creating anemic mothers and underweight children. In the states ruled by BJP are worst sufferers according to NFHS data. The study conducted on child malnutrition by the NFHS shows some startling information regarding health of a child and related to health of mother and family in general. These indicators show that during the last six years of Modi rule children and women have suffered worst. The weight of the child has declined and mother is suffering from anemic. As the income of these families have come down which resulted in the poor nutrition for the children, this creates stunted growth and low weight for children. Intervention by the Indian state has been very poor in the context of improving the status of children and women. During ten years of the UPA rule there was a steady increase in quality of health of children and suddenly started in declining during the Modi regime. Mostly the BJP ruled states are doing worse than the other states in the context of child nutrition. Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani, the minister for child and women development needs to be responsible for it. A class ten pass may not understand the importance of health of child and women.

Prime Minister's speech in AMU needs to remind Modi whether he is keeping his words. No religion can remain behind. This gist is very clear that in all fields be it education, jobs and business they need to be at par with the other communities. On the contrary this is the only community having low representation in education, health services and other services in India. His slogan 'sab ke sath sab ka bikash' remains on paper. On the contrary the various laws like CAA, NRC have reduced the Muslim community to the second class citizens but it is good to see there was a massive protest against these laws. Today Muslims are fighting with other communities in fighting for annulment of agricultural laws. A brave community fought with others in 1857 and other movements led by Gandhi, Nehru Patel and Azad are today in the BJP rule in the centre are experiencing hitches as citizens.

Law making process is a complex one in a democracy like India where the Ministry takes up the matter and prepares a rough draft and sends it to the Ministry of Law and Justice those who look various clauses of the draft and prepare a note and send it back to the Ministry. The Minister can put this bill in either of houses of the Parliament. If it is affecting the wider section of a society then the bill goes to the Select Committee to look into draft and give suggestions for further improving the law. Then it goes to the both the houses of Parliament. In the case of Agricultural bills the whole law making body has shifted to the Ambani farm where the best lawyers sat together and prepared the law. Knowing well that it is not an easy bill which may not be passed in the Rajyasabha then they horridly did it while opposition members got expelled. This is a shame on Indian parliamentary system that Modi in consultation with Ambani passed the law.

Parliamentary democracy demands the sovereignty of parliament as it is the representative body of people of India. The history of Parliament tells us that no representation no tax which was the slogan of French revolution. This made the British Parliament the sovereign body. Indian democracy is the West Minister democracy where parliament is the sovereign. Then the executive has no power to cancel the winter session of the parliament. This is the time when farmers are sitting in Delhi and they want that parliament needs to discuss the laws passed without discussion. This is the time when parliament session is going to play an important role in discussing the issues affecting people of India. This is wrong on the part of executive to take a decision on cancellation of the parliament session.

Rural India has accepted two festivals Xmas and New Year's day without any hesitation. Forty years back in an interior village a labouring family who is my relative requested for Rs hundred from the landlord's family for celebrating these days. Both are my relatives. Once the landlord put a question why do you require money and then he answered that he wanted to celebrate Xmas and New Years day. He wanted to buy meat for the occasion. In rural Odisha meat is not easily available and that day and goat meat was available for public feast. Punjab is more advanced today and they may be celebrating these days for a century at least as the Missionary colleges and hospitals are there. Today they are fighting a battle against the most brutalized regime and hope on the road the festivals get celebrated. India needs to celebrate single festival according to Modi related to Ram Mandir. They do not understand the implication of cultural diversity of India.

 Modi-Shah have a view of a single Nation and a single law by abrogating the Art 370 from Kashmir has derived from Mein Kampf that Hitler discussed it in the first Chapter that Austria a German speaking state should not have a separate existence as it should be merged with Germany. Imposing of Hindi comes from it. He doesn't believe in Cultural pluralism. Language as the basis of a nation is derived from Hitler.

The present kisan movement has been dominated by the rich peasantry which is wrong as many parts of India the class of rich peasantry have vanished. A study conducted thirty years back by Prof Jagannath Pathy in his work Elite in Odisha which collected the number of farmers above ten acres land in three districts such old Cuttack, Puri and Balesore only 150 families. This must have disintegrated further with the family size today after thirty years. Farmers having about two acres of land are active in rural Odisha depend on procurement price and rice to be procured by the government. It is not the rich farmers need this demand of procurement price as told by the Modi government but the small farmers have been demanding this demand. The present government of Odisha introduced the procurement policy in 2004 after which the small farmers are active today in countryside. It is interesting to note here that it is the productivity of land is helping these small farmers to survive in the present market economy. They are able to take care of large number of labouring families in Odisha which explains that they came back to their villages who used to work in Surat. It is the small farmers pushing their children to go as migrant labour to work in Surat.

The way Supreme Court has behaved in the case of kisan agitation which proved to be a joke in the history of jurisprudence.  Former Justice of Delhi High Court Justice Rekha Sharma in her article in Indian Express raised a point that the Supreme Court should have suspended the agricultural laws till the final judgment comes.Furthermore the Court could have a regular hearing over such an important case but to the contrary the Court has gone for winter vacation.   Indian judiciary at lower level is functioning as an autonomous organ. Karnataka High court has stayed the decision of Karnataka BJP government to drop criminal cases against their ministers. There are 61 cases against their ministers. The judiciary at the high court level shows its mettle by not dropping the cases against the ministers. In the case of UP the chief minister of the state Yogi dropped 35 criminal cases against him which is illegal but he did it. Allahabad High court needs to review the cases as there were criminal cases against Yogi including murder, inciting communal riots and many more heinous crimes against him. The Supreme Court of India needs to learn from the Karnataka high court to stand independent of the Modi government specifically the PM Cares Fund and Raffael case and Election bond all these cases against Modi government are lying with the highest judiciary for years.

Modi and his ministers are busy in creating a rift in the kisan agitation but it is not an easy task as kisans are in a death trap unless they win the battle they are going to die and their land is going to be grabbed by Ambani and Adani as they are shirks and their bellies are not yet full and they are waiting to make money out the land which is going to be used as mode of primitive accumulation. From labour to land they are interested in primitive accumulation which will make them the world's richest people. Modi is helping them and he is crazy to help these people that is the reason he is running to temples and Gurudwara. He may go to church and Mosque as he is desperate to help his friends and land lords. This happens in the village that some people lose land for keeping the landlords happy. Modi is having the same psychology to help his landlords.

 Life in middle East has turned worse after the Arab Spring. It was a movement encouraged by the Americans and people jumped into it. It resulted into a fundamentalist force to win and formed the government. They were anti poor and anti people. The same thing happened in India to the Anna movement. Both these movements were on corruption issue which resulted in mass protests in Delhi which resulted in a right wing government led by Modi and Indian people are suffering from the worst as their income has fallen and their basic rights have shrunk. The Anna movement got sponsored by the RSS and American interest which resulted in a right wing government in India.

Prof Radhakanta Barik (retd), Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi

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Frontier
Dec 21, 2020