If you are active on Twitter you must have heard terms like ‘Trads’ and ‘Raitas’ – the latter not being the Arvind Kejriwal type and is also spelt as Raayta or Rayta – further peppered with other terms like ‘IT celliya’ and ‘RW Fahminists’ and many more such. These are broadly the labels Indian RW (Right Wing) has given to various groups amongst themselves, which may or may not be accurate. But who cares about that, for the label ‘RW’ itself is not that accurate to define the broader bunch.
More than two years back, when such differences started getting visible and these terms were frequently thrown in, there was an article on OpIndia that tried to demystify what was going on. It was written by a colleague of mine and I think it did a fairly good job, though it was not simple. Or let’s say, it was not simplistic i.e. not for dummies. Even now, an average social media user is still confused about these terms. Therefore, I, being the saviour of humanity, am trying to put together a dummies guide to understand these terms.
(click here to skip reading around one-third length of the article that gives some history and context to the whole issue, and straightaway go to some simplistic definitions of various shades of RW)
The immediate trigger to put this guide together is due to the news and noise around the ‘Bulli Bai’ app, which has been largely blamed on ‘Trads’ by everyone. The app compromised the privacy of various social media users, primarily of Muslim women working in media outfits. The slang ‘Bulli’ itself refers to Muslim women. The app aimed to mentally harass them by misusing their pictures and subjecting them to the humiliation of being an object of ‘availability’ on the app.
A Bollywood actress named Swara Bhaskar, who is better known for her anti-Hindutva politics than acting, tweeted and blamed the app on ‘Trads’ while another publication, mockingly called ‘Naxal Laundry’ by most of the RW people, tried to explain this Trad vs Rayta ‘strife’ in one of their articles. Well, I definitely hope to do a better job than these jobless people in explaining what this strife is and what these terms denote.
A little history and context
Indian RW or non-Left has never been a homogenous group at all, though the liberal media paints them as such. While the history of such differences is literally more than a century old – with Hindutva groups like RSS or icons like Veer Savarkar not believing in rigidity or infallibility of the caste system while others, including even Mahatma Gandhi, finding nothing wrong in it (and caste system is just one of the points of differences, there are many more with Hindutva groups like the RSS accused of not following real Hindutva) – for this article, we will stick to only the Modi era of Indian political history, especially post 2014.
It so happened that the various shades of the RW – most of the people not even aware or caring about what shade they belong to – rallied around Narendra Modi for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. They saw hope in him and expected him to undertake various activities and projects, not all of which was promised by Modi or the BJP at any point of time. But that’s how hope and love work; it is not based on some written contract, and many times it’s just one-sided.
These included various groups – the free-market guys (because UPA was becoming more and more socialist in their policies), the free speech guys (UPA had brought a draconian IT law and many folks were slapped with police cases and even arrested earlier for mocking UPA, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and others), the dudes who just hated Congress for various reasons (corruption, Nehru-Gandhi family, local policies), people who were worried about Islamists and other anti-Hindu forces getting stronger (‘Islamophobes’ for liberals), the poor and socially backwards who identified with a ‘chaiwala’, the youth who ironically found more in common with Modi than ‘youth leader’ Rahul Gandhi, and obviously, the RSS folks, the BJP cadre, and Modi’s own growing personal fanbase.
The amalgamation of all such hopes from varied groups gave Modi an unprecedented electoral victory in 2014. No, it was not because of some Prashant Kishore or one campaign technology.
Obviously, not all of these hopes were going to be realized, as some of them were in conflict with each other – say aspirations of the poor vs free market economics, or protection of Hindu sentiments vs free speech, and many other permutations and combinations – and that became the reason of visible ‘differences’ among a varied group that was painted homogenous though it never was.
There were people who were dissatisfied, some said so openly, some did not. Some recalibrated their own expectations and hopes instead of being dissatisfied. Some turned rogue. Some advocated trusting Modi without micro-analyzing him for every step, while some started doubting everything about Modi.
One dissatisfied vocal group was of those who thought (and continues to think) that Modi has gone too soft on Hindutva agenda and his government is just as bad as any Congress-led government as far as civilizational issues are concerned. Some folks from this group even term him ‘Maulana Modi’. You can find such taunts going back to 2017 to the least. This group is broadly branded as ‘Trads’, but they are not a homogenous group either. We’d come to that soon.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Modi not only repeated but bettered his 2014 performance. Unless you are an idiot who thinks EVMs were hacked, this only meant one of the three things; one, the various groups that posed faith in Modi in 2014 continued to support him i.e. they continued to believe that Modi can deliver on their original respective hopes, two, many recalibrated their own expectations due to various reasons and their original hopes changed to something else, or three, Modi could create new support groups based on new hopes.
Personally, I believe that cross movements between various groups have continuously happened, while new entrants have come among various groups (rather than some ‘new hopes’). Some have left too, obviously, but sum total of all these movements was positive and thus 2019 saw a better performance. it’s not easy to estimate which of these groups comprise what strength and online chatter definitely give a lopsided impression of respective strengths in the real world.
Nonetheless, in the virtual world, since 2019, the same is getting repeated. Some again are dissatisfied, while some are not, and all that jazz. The differences have become more visible of late, and everything is clubbed as Trad vs Raita. So now let’s come to what they are.
What is Trad vs Raita or who are Trads and Raytas
Primarily it’s a reductionist debate, something which has always ailed any narrative about the Indian Right Wing. As explained earlier, the Indian RW is too diverse to be clubbed into two buckets called Trads and Raitas. However, if one must force-fit a vertical split, this might indeed be argued to be the broad division.
Trad or Trads are short forms for ‘Traditionalists’ which would mean that Trads believe or follow traditions (traditional Hinduism to be precise) while Raita is derived from Raita Wing, which is a mocking wordplay on the ‘Right Wing’. Mocking, because those who mock are least concerned about the Right vs Left ideological divide. They primarily see the fight as Hindus vs the rest ‘civilizational war’, not some Right vs the Left ideological debate.
Theoretically, people who primarily associate themselves with ideas like free market, free speech, constitutional patriotism, social justice, secularism, feminism, etc. and would want these ideas – typically developed and shaped by the European thinkers in the ‘age of enlightenment’ – and consider these to be guiding principles while arguing that Hindu ethos are not in conflict with these ideas, are Raitas, while Trads are those who would primarily associate themselves with Hindu ethos and would not mind rejecting some of these supposedly universally accepted virtues like secularism, feminism, free speech, etc. if they are argued to be against Hindu ethos.
Now that’s a complex issue to settle as the entire debate rests on how to define Hinduism and thus Hindu ethos. And that’s where these two broad categories will always have opaque boundaries.
For example, I self-identity (oh yeah, we have an entire spectrum here and some fluidity is surely allowed) as a Raita with a soft corner for Trads. Primarily I would not accept too liberal a definition where almost any guy can claim he or she is a Hindu just because they have a ‘Hindu sounding name’. In the words of Yashwant Sinha, koi bhi ch***a Hindu ban jaata hai. A case in point is the recent ‘Dismantling Global Hindutva’ event where many of the speakers went on to spew venom against Hinduism, veritably calling for its annihilation, and yet claiming that they can’t be accused of bigotry or Hinduphobia because they too are Hindus. Bullshit! At the same time, I’m not too comfortable with a very narrow definition of Hinduism either where entire groups like Arya Samaj or Hindutva groups would be termed non-Hindus as they don’t believe in some shastras or the traditional caste system.
The politics of Trad vs Raita
Now this entire difference or fight is definitely not just about definitions and is not as scholastic as I could have painted. Many folks aren’t even aware of such nuances. And politics gives you that cloak where you can still feel good about knowing all without caring for details.
Some of the public stances taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi doesn’t exactly go well with the definition of Trad that I put above. Say, him calling the constitution of India a holy book, or his ‘sabka saath, sabka vishwas’ (which is about social justice as well as secularism) as guiding principles can’t be harmonized with the outlook of Trads, which puts Trads and BJP supporters at loggerheads. This one is the most visible strife as of now. However, it’s not new, because as I had said earlier, you can find ‘Maulana Modi’ jibes going back to 2017 and even earlier.
However, the politics of it has resulted in creating a perception that any person who hates Modi as well as who hates ‘liberals’ is a Trad, while anyone who supports Modi is a Raita.
That’s a wrong perception. There indeed exist people who can self-identify themselves as Trads, or ‘conservatives’ let’s say, and are Modi supporters too. Because it’s not like Modi has no respect for traditions or traditional Hinduism at all. Funnily that is all he is accused of by liberal and international media, that he has destroyed secularism by not only openly flaunting his faith but by giving state sanction to traditional Hindu rituals. He has the blessings and support of many Hindu seers and dharmacharyas, who definitely know traditional Hinduism a bit better than you and me.
Then there are people unhappy with Modi who have got nothing to do with being Trad, but because of their stand on Hindu politics. Their grouse is not Modi respecting constitution or ‘sabka saath’, which they can live with, but with Modi not doing enough to ‘destroy’ the anti-Hindu political (not electoral) forces and instead of putting all political and personal capital in areas they believe doesn’t help Hindu politics and causes. Their anti-Modi rants can thus make them appear like Trads.
The various shades of Trads and Raitas
Since it was supposed to be a dummies’ guide, let me quickly point out various types of folks who can be put in these broad buckets of Trads and Raitas. Let’s start with Trads.
The Trads
The most talked-about and currently in soup due to ‘Bulli Bai’ controversy is a group that I don’t think understands the nuances at all, but definitely is most vocal. With the caveat that online abuse indeed is not an exclusive feature of any one group (just say something against Virat Kohli or ‘farmers’ and you’d see), I’d have to admit that this group is abusive and uses harassment and intimidation as tools (again, not the exclusive domain of this group only). They have been made representative of Trads, and the onus has been put on other kinds to denounce them and disown them. Some are doing, some refuse to because it has parallels with what the Left used to do with broader Hindu voices – pick a strawman. I don’t really know what they stand for, because as I said, I don’t think they understand nuances or academic/theoretical reasons for the divide, but they just hate Raitas and non-Hindus. Possibly they consider Raitas as non-Hindus. Though abuse is their identifying feature, a more apt sub-division could be ‘Totalitarian Trads’.
Then obviously there are Trads who are Trads due to the theoretical or philosophical divide, which I had tried to simplify earlier. Their framework and guiding principles are not modern liberal ideas, but what they identify and celebrate as original Hindu ideas and ethos. They can be further subdivided into two groups; one that is more academically oriented with a focus on ‘Decoloniality’, which etches out the framework better and is coming up with a new articulation, while there are others who think they have enough articulation already and it’s just time to go ahead and have that civilizational nation-state (and berate Modi for not implementing it already). Since the ideas were always there, but articulation is new, maybe we can call them the ‘Resurgent Trads’.
And these are not the only two types though I wanted to put them for dummies guide. There are folks who fall in between these two types, and who are literally traditionalists – say, who are emotionally attached to rituals and heritage and don’t need any internet or new articulation to justify their emotions or beliefs. Some might not even know in detail about shastras, sampradayas, or various Hindu philosophies, though they would be more aware than a typical ‘Raita’.
And there are the ‘political trads’ who saw an opportunity in some folks being dissatisfied with ‘Modi not being Hindu enough’ and are there because there are political gains to be derived. Plus as I said earlier, people who are conservative and ritualistic, technically Trads, but happy with Modi are also there.
The Raytas
Now coming to shades of Raitas, since it’s primarily a negative label, there are can be various shades, basically, anyone who is not a Trad but is a supporter of Modi. However, that is not accurate as I had explained earlier. But still, let us try to broadly sub-categorize the Raitas too.
The most ubiquitous one is the ‘liberal Hindu’. They don’t find the ideas, or at least the guiding principles behind ideas like secularism, feminism, free speech, etc. wrong, they just want “true and fair” versions of these ideas and they don’t like the “woke” versions of these ideas. They are most likely, though not necessarily, be unaware about shastras, their own sampradaayas, or some case even caste (possibly aware, but won’t care). However, unlike just the ‘liberals’, the liberal Hindu doesn’t think those aspects – shastras or Hindu philosophies – etc. have no place in modern life or scheme of things. Let us put it this way – they want Hindu primacy, but could baulk at the idea of ‘Hindu supremacy’.
Then there is the group that can be termed as ‘political Hindu’. It’s support for Hindu politics minus formal affiliation to Sangh or any other organization. Ahem ahem, like Sanghis who never went to a Shakha. They may not be as much ‘liberal’ as the aforementioned group and their primary concern is that Hinduism must prevail and come stronger in coming years. They see the current times as crucial, with Hindus being pushed into a civilizational war (that’s where they could have something common with Trads, though strategies and end goals would differ from those of Trads).
Further, those ‘political Hindus’ who have a formal association (known or suspected) with the Sangh or the BJP or any other associated organization, are often termed as ‘IT celliyas’. They are accused to be primarily be driven by political compulsions than ideological beliefs. And then there are people who are genuinely fans of the phenomenon called Narendra Modi. They could be accused of being ‘paid’ like ‘IT celliyas’ are supposed to, but it’s indeed genuine (manufactured by propaganda in the eyes of liberals) admiration and complete faith in Modi that gets them clubbed as Raita, even though they may not fit in the above categories.
