Through this short essay, I will be looking at the Dalit atrocities and the persecution of Muslims in India, and how the two groups’ subjugation is linked with a sole collaborator.

India has perpetrated two kinds of violence – physical and intellectual against two of its minorities groups – Dalits and Muslims. Towards Dalits and other lower-caste Hindus, the violence is in the form of atrocities – rapes and murders where the accused seemed to be invisible in the eyes of the laws.

Towards Muslims one of the ways in which they are forced to face violence is in the name of mob lynchings, the other ways in which many innocent Muslims have been targeted by the national security agencies is to tag them as terrorists. Adivasis have been murdered by state and police or private players as they threaten the expanse of capitalism by resisting the occupation of their homes – forests lands or hills that are rich in natural resources. The branding of Adivasis as Naxals and their subjugations in form of killings by security forces is systematic violence that India has been perpetrating towards some of its citizens.

The violence – physical and intellectual, is the nothing else but the ugly manifestation of Hinduism. The physical violence is perpetrated by the individuals, society, law and public institutions. Or at this violence is abetted by the public institutions as these spaces are already occupied by the group of people who are in the majority – caste Hindus or upper-caste Hindus. The intellectual violence can be described as the thought processes, the narratives in the media about the majority and the minority communities, the hegemony of the educational and intellectual spaces by the Caste Hindus who for their majoritarian agenda try to propagate in the intellectual space for their ideologies.

While many believe that the physical or intellectual violence is the characteristics of Hindutva, an ideology that formed and got strengthen in recent times, I would say that it is naive to think Hindutva is any different from Hinduism. Hinduism and Hindutva are one and the same. They are the two faces of a battered coin!

Two manifestations, one more highlighted in certain times, the other in other times. One way to understand this duality is to think of Hinduism as the social and religious institution that creates the category of ‘others’: there are two others in Hinduism – one which is outside the folds of Hinduism and one which is, as it claims, within the folds of Hinduism. The latter is the group that is the outcome of the centuries-old caste system that is synonyms with the Hinduism.

Hindutva, on the other hand, has its ways of evincing in the nationalistic rigours and neoliberal-capitalist economy. Hindutva promises a majoritarian rule, as a reminiscent or in fact a transformation of Brahminism, in the present nation-world scenario, and to validate and rationalize its rule, it requires a group of citizens to be downgraded to a secondary or inferior level.

The past few years of central and state governments which are ruled by BJP as they are the face of this Hindutva have been termed as the dark age by many activists where fascism has spread its fangs. But this ‘fascism’ is not a product of BJP/RSS alone – it is a superimposition of Upper Castes hegemonic ideas and capture on public and private institutions in India since the inception of the nation.

Author – Manish Gautam