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| Sunday, 30 May 2004 |
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Importance of being Sonia by Wilfred Jayasuriya Though the media gives an explanation for Sonia's victory as the revolt
of the poor against the capitalist policies of the Vajpayee regime, just
as the local media gave the same explanation about the downfall of Ranil,
isn't there an inadequacy to that explanation, mainly because it is based
on the premise that men are driven primarily or only by economic motives?
Was there any sign at all that people in India were more dissatisfied by
their economic state in the last five years than before? Especially in the case of India with its traditions and its ancient religion and society it should take more than economic interest to select a foreigner of another religion and race to be the leader of one's country. How come all those ancient inhibitions were overcome and Sonia, labelled as one who does not belong, is made the representative of the nation? Wouldn't they have asked from the Congress party, "Can't you find one native Indian to lead you? My viewpoint may find some interest. Basically my position is that Sonia was elected, not in spite of being an Italian Catholic, but because she was one. The argument proceeds as follows. India is Hindu and Hinduism and caste are inextricably united. Hinduism's world view or other-world view is the theory of karma. Karma says that one is born into one's status or caste because of one's actions in the last life. What one does in one's life now will result in the status or caste one is born into in the next life. So one is helpless to determine one's status or caste in one's present life. This is different from the view that is presented in Christianity that faith and good work and the love of God and neighbour enable one to attain peace and happiness not only in the next world, but also in this life. The kingdom of heaven is built on this earth. In the eyes of God all are equal. Everyone is a child of God. It is that equality which is the basis of democracy because everyone is unequal otherwise. The politics of a Christian society, however deplorable examples there may be in history, were and are different in this basic sense from the politics of a Hindu society based on inequality by birth. For ages there have been no escape from the politics of Hinduism as far as the low caste and oppressed are concerned. They are not merely victims of Man's injustice but also of the karmic law, the world-view devised by the Brahmins, who retained the first place for themselves thereby. It was the arrival of the British and the creation of the British rule of law and the state, based on freedom from the iron law of karma, that brought relief to the oppressed and the low caste. Accompanying this liberation was also belief in another world view or conversion to another faith. Or alternately a separation of the state from religion, however tentatively, in the form of the secular state. Or a belief in Christian love and practising it while being a Hindu, notionally, as in the case of Mahatma Gandhi. With the arrival of the BJP or the Vajpayee regime the state, from being a secular state, became a Hindu state. The ideology was called "Hindutva" or being Hindu. Non Hindus such as the Muslims were the victims of this ideology. This victimisation of Muslims was not peculiar to the BJP. It was also practised by the Congress but not legitimised as by Hindutva. The unspoken aspect of Hindutva was the consolidation of caste domination by emphasising the ideology based on karma. The rich became richer having been born to the effects of a good karma. When one visits Chennai and sees how contentedly the woman in a saree sits on the ground by the hotel steps, waiting for the next round of sweeping that she has to undertake with her clutch of ekels, or how the other woman sits on the pavement with her child beside her, she dressed in a green saree with a mango leaf motif, but a beggar nevertheless, as will her child be, one sees how well the traditional world view holds them in thrall, but in contentment of mind if the bodily needs are satisfied. There is no dream of being equal with the others who keep their foot on the step and enter the hotel, as she sits by it, on the ground. India is a stable society because the British ruled it well and left a framework of order, which combined with the inherited karmic ideology gave a sense of meaning to the populace. But the British are gone. There is no symbol of another world view. Those who like the Christian evangelicals tried to present another more hopeful world view to the 'low' caste were attacked and burned. Those who, like the Muslims, believed in another world view than the karmic view were kept down. By force. There was however Mother Theresa who appeared to be someone from another planet but she was not a political figure. So she was honoured at her death by the President of India and the Prime Minister of India because they saw no challenge to their basic world view from her. No unethical conversions charge on her. Of course the whole battery of laws and programs against conversions in India was a creation of Hindutva, to prevent Sonia from ever challenging Hindutva. But what if the masses of the poor whose hands made middle class BJP India rich, working in those factories and fields, never given a chance in this life to be equal to the others who were born to higher castes, what if all those low caste and poor, who voted for the Communists and the leftists, saw in Sonia and her foreignness, her race, nation and religion a sudden chance to get rid of the shackles that karmic ideology and Hindutva had imposed on them, because she was not one who was born into karma and caste but was born free? How if they saw her as the promise of liberation from the strongest shackles that hold down man, "the mind forged manacles" of karma, caste and Hindutva? And what if they voted for her seeing her as a promise, which had never appeared before in their lives? |
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