This is good critique, and needs me to explain what I meant. Sometimes what one says in a quick analysis may be less than adequate to explain the deeper idea behind the article. I will try to do so in this bunch of tweets. But I plead guilty to using wrong western terminology
I don't believe in that we had or have a caste system; it is the wrong way to describe the complex institutions of varna-jati-kula-gothra which we used to manage our social relationships. Also, I don't believe in reducing ideology to the Left-Right binary. A mea culpa is due...
However, sometime when you want to convey a broader point to a larger group of people, you may use western shorthand. This is a pitfall that we all have to face when we use a colonial entity's language to describe our own situation today.
I partly disagree with the characterisation of Ram Mohan Roy, even while conceding his efforts to build a Hinduism on Christian lines was doomed. This is hindsight. We must understand each reformer in the context of his time and his own limited understanding of Hindu weaknesses..
Swami Dayananda Saraswati also erred in trying to reduce Hinduism to just scriptures. He rejected many things outside the Vedas as latter day interpolations. So his Arya Samaj, which was trying to counter Abrahamic conversions, ended up partly becoming a Hindu version of C & I
Simmilarly, RC Majumdar and Tilak were not colonised minds, but they accepted the Aryan-Dravidian theory. Today we know better. Tilak made Ganesh Chaturthi into a gaudy public event, but his objective was to present a counter to growing Islamic domination of public spaces
We have to understand their context and truth that seemed self-evident then. When the playing field has already been altered to suit Hinduism's critics, we have to battle on 2 fronts: we can choose our own terrain for future battles, but we cannot avoid fields chosen by rivals
To illustrate, we can say we won't fight the Pakistani jihadi state with the same low tactics adopted by them, but can we deal with this real threat by pretending that the war can be won with just high thinking and debate...Did Shri Krishna win Kurukshetra by just "right" belief?
Coming to the points about RSS, I agree with the thought that they have not tried to engage with Hindu tradition and practices before attempting to create a broader tent for both conservative and change oriented Hindus to find compromises that are essential to building unity....
But I would give the RSS is at least attempting to do the right thing. They do engage with more intellectuals now than they did in the past; they are beginning to understand that they don't understand many things.. this is was evident in how they changed their stand on Sabarimala
I do however believe that the RSS has understood the biggest challenge Hindus face: we are more likely to ally with the real enemy in order to defeat a local Dharmic rival. So, their attempt to reduce our internal fault lines, however inadequate, must be seen for what it is....
The fact that they are using faulty terms on caste and other things Hindu is, for me, a lesser crime than the positive idea that we have to learn to find samanvaya and common threads despite our differences. We cannot address real injustice by merely explaining our past better...
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