The slippery slope of Sanatana Dharma

The responses to Udhayanidhi’s comments reflect a North-South fault line, rooted in caste and the political mobilisation capabilities of the BJP and Opposition

The diverse responses to Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader and Tamil Nadu minister Udhayanidhi Stalin’s comments on Sanatana Dharma reveal political fault lines that can have a bearing on election outcomes. Southern India has been relatively cool to Udhayanidhi’s criticism of Sanatana Dharma whereas he has been viciously attacked by the Hindutva parivar in the North. 

Udhayanidhi Stalin compared Sanatana Dharma with diseases such as dengue and malaria and called for its eradication while addressing a conference of Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers in Chennai(ANI )

The North-South divide was most evident in the responses from within the Congress: Karnataka minister Priyank Kharge and Karthi Chidambaram, a Lok Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) from Tamil Nadu, defended Udhayanidhi whereas former Madhya Pradesh chief minister (CM) Kamal Nath and Maharashtra state Congress chief Nana Patole distanced the party from the DMK leader’s statements. The DMK and the Left ecosystems in the South have sought to frame the controversy within the discourse of anti-caste politics. However, outfits such as the Samajwadi Party (SP), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and Janata Dal-United, which claim the legacy of Lohiaite social justice politics, and the Bahujan Samaj Party, have been silent or muted in their response despite Udhayanidhi linking his criticism of Sanatana Dharma to the practice of caste and his father, Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin, backing him.

This divergence in response has to do with the distinct political histories of southern and northern states, of course, but also the nature of the growth and transformation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) across India.

Udhayanidhi compared Sanatana Dharma with diseases such as dengue and malaria and called for its eradication while addressing a conference of Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers in Chennai. The BJP interpreted his remarks as a call for “genocide” of Hindus. Some reports even suggested that Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi asked his ministers to give a proper response to Udhayanidhi. First information reports (FIRs) were registered against Udhayanidhi and Priyank Kharge in Rampur, and some quarters issued threats of physical violence.

The controversy did not ruffle feathers in Tamil Nadu because Udhayanidhi, who has no pretensions to ideology, was only reiterating the Dravidian movement’s criticism of Sanatana Dharma. Not many believers in the state identify their “Hinduism” with Sanatana Dharma. Popular Hinduism in southern India draws its energy mostly from practices rooted in non-Sanskritic traditions or Sanskritic traditions that have been reformed. Interestingly, the conservative groups had used Sanatana Dharma as a shield to oppose even mild reforms to inhuman practices such as controlling access to places of education and worship. Mahatma Gandhi called himself a Sanatani Hindu and asked conservatives to authenticate their claims to caste privilege with evidence from sacred texts. For instance, during the 1924 Vaikom Satyagraha, a movement to allow all castes access to the roads near the Vaikom Mahadeva temple, Gandhi told the custodians of the temple that he, a Sanatani Hindu, would accept their stance if they provided backing for caste discrimination from the Vedas or Upanishads. The conservative Sanatanis ignored Gandhi’s pleas.

The Vaikom Satyagraha was a turning point in other ways too. It transformed Periyar EV Ramasamy, a Congress leader then, into a critic of Sanatana Dharma and pushed him to embrace the anti-caste Self-Respect movement that provided the ideological basis for the Dravidian movement and its political offshoots such as the DMK.

Self-respecters offered the idea of Samadharma, social norms based on the idea of equality, as a counter to Sanatana Dharma, which they said was invested in a moral order rooted in the institution of caste. Samadharma was posted as a civilisational and cultural alternative with an egalitarian vision of society to Sanatana Dharma and the caste society. Tamil Nadu has not eradicated caste or caste violence, but political common sense in that state has largely rejected the sanctity of caste and the ideological apparatus that was invoked for the purpose, Sanatana Dharma.

In Kerala, Sree Narayana Guru offered a radical interpretation of the Advaita philosophy that rejected the institution of caste. His disciple and a major voice in Kerala’s enlightenment tradition, ‘Sahodaran’ Aiyyappan, proposed the idea of samabhavana (equality/brotherhood) as an alternative to the caste society that nurtured graded inequality. In the Karnataka region, the Vachanakaras had spread the idea of an egalitarian society for centuries. In short, Sanatana Dharma has been perceived in southern India as an ideological armature that supports the caste order. Few believers relate to it as a code of Hinduism, and hence, do not see any imperative in questioning Udhayanidhi’s critique. And finally, the BJP in southern India does not have the mobilisational capabilities or intellectual resources to forcefully articulate its stance.

It is a different story in the North, where the BJP has been successful in conflating Sanatana Dharma with Hinduism itself. The Opposition in the North is wary of framing this debate in terms of anti-caste politics. Parties such as the SP now fear that the BJP could successfully smear it as anti-Hindu if it argues against what is projected as Hindu dharma. The SP’s censuring of Swami Prasad Maurya when he described Ramcharitmanas as a text that supports the caste order is an example of the party’s reluctance to confront the BJP on such matters. Opposition leaders may battle on instrumentalities such as caste quotas but prefer to stay silent on subjects thought of as related to the Hindu faith. This may be true even of the Trinamool Congress, which the BJP has accused of Muslim appeasement.

One reason for the reticence of these parties may be the transformation of the BJP into a party inclusive of all Hindus. The party is shrill and strident in its anti-Muslim rhetoric, but it has ceased to be the exclusive preserve of upper caste Hindus. The BJP and RSS have become sensitive to the caste question, and the party has been successful in dividing the backward castes bloc and winning over some of the numerically smaller groups. The social engineering in its leader/cadre base, the government’s unabashed identification with Hindutva causes, and its deployment of a muscular religious nationalism have allowed the BJP to seek the custodianship of Hinduism. In PM Modi, it has a leader with the language and legacy to force its case. Parties opposed to the BJP in northern India appear to be short on both resources and conviction to counter its narrative. The South is a different story, as of now, despite the decline of many radical social movements into transactional power blocs.

The views expressed are personal