Notwithstanding the fact that it is much maligned by certain political parties, the Left-leaning media & the so called Liberals - the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the political mentor of BJP, haz time & again proven that while the other side just talks on social reforms, it does actually walk the talk !
Fundamentally, there is a huge difference in understanding of what is considered ‘modern’ by the RSS, it's protégé the BJP & their sympathizers, and the other Left-Liberal groups.
For the RSS plus group, the rediscovery of some of the all-encompassing evolved values that existed in the ancient Bharatiya Civilizational context are timeless & so, adherence to them, can still be deemed as modern.
They don't believe that only because the British made lines on paper and because a written Constitution was framed in 1950, that India was born.
That may be true from the modern physical landmass that defines a country & the mass of people ruled by a government, but in itself, it is a severely incomplete definition.
The line drawings & borders thereof are compromised understanding at worst & a quick fix convenience at best.
A nation is also a common identity of people, united by common descent, history, culture, social practices or language, etc, inhabiting a particular territory.
And so India, simply because it was "born" on paper as a Republic on that fateful day, does not mean that it didn't exist before that.
For them, the indigenous Civilizational culture & values, which give a nation its collective mindset & conscience, lie beyond the ambit of any legislation. It too governs lifestyle at the conscious and unconscious level, all of which existed for several millennia before the written Constitution & continues to do so.
Further, they best serve the Indian way of life & so should take precedence over & above the many of the Western, including the coloniser's influences, especially while interpreting the Indian Constitution.
For the Left-Liberal groups, it's the other way around. They believe that the Civilizational values are a misfit in the 21st century & a nation can only function if it follows the written code, namely the Constitution.
To make it abundantly clear, it does not mean that the Civilizational Values that are dear to the RSS plus group & the Constitutional Rights guaranteed in the Constitution are necessarily at conflict — but, according to them, some of the absolute interpretations & applications that flow from the Constitution, need a deeper Indic reflection. They believe that there is scope for considerations that are found as much in the spirit behind the words, rather than just in the narrow absolute meaning of the words.
It might serve well to recall, that the original Indian Constitution, unlike any in the world, is very unique, in that, it is not just a written manuscript alone, but is adorned with paintings of Lord Ram & Vedic way of life, etc.
Among the most basic value-driven differences between the said Civilizationalists and mentioned Constitutionalists, is that the former are entrenched in the belief that Human Dignity is fundamental to one's being, while the latter are insistent that Human Rights are the key to preserving one's individuality.
For Civilizationalist, there's merit in accommodating faiths & is in favor of enhancing the all-encompassing value system found in the ancient scriptures, traditions, customs, or practices that were collectively inherent to our ancient Civilization.
On the other hand, the Constitutionalist, draw their interpretations from the dictionary meaning of the literary words in the said English manuscript. They seem to also be taking inspiration from the activist movement of the West, including their attitudes & methods.
One may recall, in the West, there have always been a lot of struggles against some or other entity or practice like - the Monarchy, the Church, the Morality Code, Slavery, Woman's Subjugation, etc.
If we include the Islamic world, then there too, there have been constant civil or sectarian wars. But unlike the Western world, in the Islamic theocratic regions, for the most part, the expectations of the protestors have been unmet & the religious authority continues to rein supreme as they're backed by the monarchies that ruthlessly suppress any dissent.
In order to figure out how all that impacts public life in India, let's first explore a bit of background with respect to the Indian Civilizational Pluralism vs. Constitutional Secularism.
In theory, both should be compatible with each other. In practice, they rarely are.
The former is about acceptance & accommodation of every faith, if its practice is to seek salvation, including no faith at all. So the essence is about letting each of the different practitioners of faith be left to their ways & methods.
Further, because there was no final claim or authority, there was no religious conflict.
In fact, in ancient India, the State heads took guidance from the religious scholars, offering them a social pedestal, higher than the rulers themselves.
That was the order.
However & on the contrary, the Western Constitutional Secularism came into being out of a conflict - that between the State & Church and order gave way to the law, which mandated a gap between the State & the Church.
As a consequence, over time, religion became subservient to the State in much of the Christian world or what then became the Western world. There are no real Christian theocratic nations anymore.
Having said that, the law did allow religious conversion from one faith to the other, sowing a recipe for future interfaith conflicts.
Now let's look at how the said differences manifest themselves in the public discourse & debate, especially when one talks of carrying on social reforms:
Several Indian states have now passed laws that stop religious conversion. The matter being challenged, there have been protests by the religious minority groups, asserting their rights to convert the other, including the majority faiths as enshrined by the Constitution, no matter how alien to the Indian Civilizational context.
The Supreme Court haz flagged it off as a serious matter, and now the word "propagate" for religious purposes is under intense scrutiny. At some level, it is a battle of denotation vis-a-vis connotation.
Take another example of offering women their true place in society.
In the Civilizational context, women in ancient India have always had an equal space in our society with many Goddesses & deities found in the scriptures. Their position waz only compromised with the advent of the thousand years of Mughal regime.
However, in the post independence context, the most basic duty in a democracy, like voting, waz easily accessible to women here to exercise.
In the Western world, however, inequality of women vis-a-vis men had found religious justifications.
And so, women there had to fight through what became known as the Woman's Suffrage Movement to claim such rights.
Further, social reforms that gave daughters an equal say as sons on matters of inheritance waz also easily accepted by the Civilizationalist.
However, the cost of not embracing some of the basic all-encompassing values is that we have a Constitution so uniquely shameful that it does not offer a Uniform Civil Code.
Today, not just a ban on face covering for young school girls, or the ban on instant Triple Talaq or ensuring a fair alimony to Muslim women that is strongly contested by the said Constitutionalist, but even what is the biologically safe marriageable age of a girl is under question before the courts
Moving on, let us focus on the issue of LGBTQ community's acceptance into society.
It waz with the blessing of the RSS & in the era of the first ever fully BJP-controlled government of India, that the British colonial penal code Section 377, which criminalized all sexual acts "against the order of nature", that it waz nullified.
So, while the RSS found references in ancient cultural traditions to accept & assimilate the LGBTQ community, in Western countries, the often disruptive & in-your-face LGBTQ rights activists had to resort to parades or other such aggressive postures to enact such a legislation.
It is clear that for the Constitutionalist, the law book is more of a weapon than a guide, one that is exploited to disrupt the order, in the name of upholding the law.
To the keen observer, it would become obvious that all social reforms are passing through the camp of the supposedly conservative RSS pluz group rather peacefully. The gap between what their stereotype seems & what their action shows, is growing.
By contrast, social reforms are met with street protests, including violence by the Constitutionalist. That's because their genesis is not in interpreting the Indian Constitution to run Indian society in the Indic context but is in the blind application of the Western model of protest.
It is time we recognize & expose the hyper-Constitutionalists & their supposed Human Rights fellows as Anti Human Dignity activists.
