A PERSISTING CONFUSION OVER IDENTITY

A recent comment has brought up an old question: who gets to decide religious identity? It's tougher to answer in a land where harmony is stressed over uniformity

- BALBIR PUNJ

WHILE speaking in the Lok Sabha on Monday (July 1), Rahul Gandhi said, "Aap Hindu ho hi nahin (You are not Hindu)." The line was directed at the BJP benches, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his cabinet colleagues, fellow members of the House and, by extension, the millions of voters who supported the saffron outfit.

Rahul's words indicated three thingshis sense of entitlement, ignorance of Indian ethos and disrespect for democratic norms.

Can Rahul or anybody else decide who is a Hindu? During the just-concluded Lok Sabha polls, 23.59 crore Indians voted for the BJP. There are likely to be millions more who support the BJP, but couldn't vote for their favourite party for various reasons. A majority of them identify themselves as Hindus. With one utterance, Rahul seemed to strip them of this identity.

Who can make such a statement? Only someone with an acute sense of entitlement. Unlike Abrahamic religions, Hinduism is timeless (hence also sanatan), catholic and pluralistic. There is no centralised authority in Hinduism, and none has any right to pass such edicts regarding the faith.

Identity can work differently for the Abrahamic faiths. For example, the Ahmadiyya sect in Pakistan has been 'shunned' from Islam, and its followers are routinely persecuted because their belief system differs a little from the mainline Shia-Sunni doctrines. These two sects are also perpetually locked in internecine wars because of their conflicting theological beliefs. Ironically, Ahmadiyyas were at the forefront, along with communists and the Muslim League, in striving for an independent Pakistan. Doesn't Rahul somewhat sound like a similar establishment voice when he decrees in Lok Sabha who is a Hindu and who isn't?