A voter from Rajasthan recently said “laabh toh bahut mila hain Congress Sarkar se, lekin Hindu ki tarah hi vote karunga (I have benefited a lot from Congress government’s schemes, but I’ll vote like a Hindu”). A superfluous reading of this statement is that the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) have successfully captured India’s “Hindu vote”. Before that proposition is objectively dissected, we must concede that the RSS-BJP have shifted the nation’s political centre so comprehensively that many feel compelled to operate on their terms (or in juxtaposition to them). That is why many privately practising Hindus are now performative in their religiosity, make metaphysical distinctions between Hinduism and Hindutva and are reduced to props to the RSS-BJP’s politicisation of religion (as in the Ram Mandir’s inauguration).
But that citizen’s innocuous statement did raise four fundamental questions that progressive forces are skirting around. First, does India’s silent majority see itself as primarily Hindu (obfuscating all other socio-economic and political identities)? Second, does this identification determine political alignments? Third, do Hindus see their socio-political, economic and religious interests as contradictory to all other religious communities? And, finally, how can progressive parties win the “Hindu vote” (if it exists) without resorting to performative religiosity?
