Hindutva onslaught by way of unleashing of Kashmir agenda poses the most formidable challenge to liberal ethos.

Kashmir draws battle-lines between ideologies of Bhagat Singh and Savarkar

The decision of the BJP government to dissolve what was the state of Jammu and Kashmir by revoking Article 370 of the Constitution has at one level seems to have triggered the battle between the ideologies represented by the revolutionary Shaheed  Bhagat Singh and Hindutva icon V D Savarkar. It is a battle between humanism and liberalism on the one side and sectarianism and bigotry on the other.

The revocation of Article 370 was the very edifice on which the Jan Sangh, the parent body of the BJP, was founded in early fifties by Syama Prasad Mukherjee rooted in the Sangh Parivar, the organisation that came into existence to articulate the ideology of Savarkar that is Hindutva.

Bhagat Singh was pro-people revolutionary ideologue as against his projection of a gun wielding young romanticist. He was the man with a pen who advocated politics and ideology that were pro-people. He walked to the gallows along with his associates Rajguru and Sukhdev raising the slogan ‘Inquilab Zindabad’. It is this slogan that sums up his political thought.

It is his pen that distinguishes Shaheed Bhagat Singh from his associates. And it is the pen that continues to scare the ruling elite and the Right forces whose political face now is the BJP. It is pertinent to mention that pictures of Shaheed Bhagat Singh adorn the offices of the BJP at many places but that Bhagat Singh is the man with the pistol. One won’t find books containing the writings of the revolutionary in these offices.

Hindutva talks of homogeneity and does not recognise India’s diversity. Everybody born in India is a Hindu as per this articulation.

This is the agenda that has now been unleashed with the BJP having started the process to fulfil its Hindutva based promises in its manifesto.

This beginning has been made at the time when the economy is under stress but the ‘nationalist’ feelings are high. Country’s political discourse stands diverted from economic stress to Kashmir.

Most of the political parties, especially the regional ones that used to talk of federalism, have succumbed under pressure of this nationalism or prefer to play safe.

But then Bhagat Singhs are always rare.

It is also pertinent to recall that Bhagat Singh and his associates fought not just for the freedom of the country but also for the establishment of socialistic pattern of society.

On the other hand, Savarkar wrote four letters of apology when he was interned in Cellular Jail in Andaman, the jail that was known as the Living Hell. He did not participate in hunger strikes by the freedom fighters and this is on record.

The difference between army invasion of Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) in June 1984 and Jammu and Kashmir August 2019 is the ideological churning that has now been sparked with the much abused seculars and liberals taking position. They have to as the battle is much broader and they would be the next target.

This battle had otherwise started with the systematic attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi when it was portrayed as the centre of the ‘tukde tukde gang’.

Battle-lines have been drawn and demolition of Jammu and Kashmir as a state has set the Hindutva agenda in motion.