As the nation celebrated 75 years of independence on the 15th of August 2022, social media woke up to a viral video where kids were seen stripping Bharat Mata of her Mukut (crown), tying a cloth on her head and making her do namaz. After substantial outrage, the Lucknow police ‘clarified’ that the video was actually one where all major religions were represented by the children, and it was an exercise that represented communal harmony. The teacher of the school said the same.
The video posted by the Lucknow police of the skit first shows Hindus bowing their head to Bharat Mata and worshipping her. Then, as Namaz plays in the background, kids wearing the skull cap emerge and strip Bharat Mata of her crown. They make Bharat Mata bend, sit on her knees and perform Namaz. Bharat Mata continues to kneel as kids dressed as Sikhs emerge amid the sounds of Ek Onkar. Next, the Christians emerge, who make Bharat Mata stand, take the cloth tied to her head off, extend her arms and tilt her head in the Crucifixion pose amid Church bells.
This skit was presented by the school as a lesson in communal harmony – perhaps signifying that Bharat belongs to all religions – Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians. That Bharat was a land where all sections could co-exist harmoniously even though our methods of worshipping her may be completely different.
Human beings, inherently, are a hopeful, dewy-eyed lot. We love to gaze at balls of hydrogen and helium, thinking about love and life. We gaze at large natural elevations of the earth and wonder about the futility of life, thinking of ourselves as small in front of the majesty of nature. We stand amid cloud bursts and think of all that is wonderful in life, while the clothes never dry and the air feels strangely moist.
We, naturally, look at people, and religions, and think about how worship, spirituality and religion are personal, sacred and just a part of a person’s existence that hardly defines them. But while we can afford to be dewy-eyed about rocks that have the capacity to crush humanity and rain that makes our clothes smell like rotten fish etc, can we truly afford to be dewy-eyed about Sarva Dharma Samabhava?
Sarva Dharma Samabhava is not a phrase that comes from Sanatan Dharma, as many would like us to believe. It was a creation by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi when the chasms between Hindus and Muslims started to get visible, given that the Muslims of the time were committing genocides against Hindus. MK Gandhi coined this phrase to essentially say that all religions are based on the same moral tenets, though they may take different paths to reach the same goal – the divine and therefore, all religions must be respected equally, that is, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism must all find equal respect.
This skit, in essence, preached exactly what Gandhi did – all religions are equal, all religions deserve equal respect and that each religion has its own way of expressing its patriotism of faith, does not mean that they don’t strive for the same universal truth.
However, upon scrutiny, the lofty dewy-eyed vision of Sarva Dharma Samabhava crumbles like a house of cards. If one watches the video without preset lenses, one sees that while Hindus worship Bharat Mata as she is, bowing their heads in veneration, all other religions change Bharat Mata according to their own faith, changing her civilisational and foundational character. The Muslims make her kneel to do Namaz, and the Christians crucify her. They make Bharat Mata bow to their Gods. The Muslims, to their Namaz that says there is no God but Allah, the Christians, to Jesus.
And that in itself busts the long-held myth that all religions perhaps aim to reach the same universal truth in different ways. The deification of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi unfortunately also led to the internalisation of several myopic views that he held. It is a fact, even if we bury our heads in the sand, that Abrahamic religions are out of congruence with Sanatan Dharma. While Sanatan Dharma in essence does believe that there can be several paths to reach the same truth, Abrahamic religions believe that all other paths and the truth they aspire to reach are false and must be annihilated for their truth to exist. Those who walk a different path are often denigrated as Kafirs or Heathens and the idols are called the manifestation of Satan himself.
One can quote scriptural references for Islam and Christianity that essentially talk about the destruction of everything Hinduism, a Polytheistic religion stands for. When two religions are considered the ultimate and only truth, where all other paths are to be destroyed, brutally so, and Hinduism alone is pluralistic and accepting of different paths, to say that all religions are based on the same tenets is patently incorrect.
Ram Swarup explained this dichotomy rather beautifully with a simplified example. He said that Hindus see their God through neighbours and their conduct while the Muslims see their neighbour through their Gods. Basically, when a Hindu sees his neighbour, who could be by all standards a good neighbour and a good person, he will think that his God must also be the same and his religion would teach tolerance and love. However, when a Muslim tries to evaluate his neighbour, regardless of the conduct of the said neighbour, it is his religion that determines what the Muslim will think of him. If he worships “false Gods”, he is an enemy. If he does not walk the same path, he is a Kafir. This essential difference between Abrahamic religions and Hinduism has to be underscored. All religions are not the same. All paths don’t lead to the same truth, therefore, all religions do not deserve the same or equal amount of respect. After all, how does one expect to get “equal respect” when the religion itself demands the annihilation of the one this respect is being demanded from?
In the skit, the fact that Muslims and Christians have to change the character of Bharat Mata and make her bow to their God instead of worshipping her in all her glory, turning her Islamic or Christian in order to accord her the respect she deserves, itself shows the futility of internalised tropes like Sarva Dharma Samabhava that MK Gandhi wanted us to internalise, so the people of a nation, Hindus, live with rose-tinted glasses forever.
The Liberals may just twist this entire argument to say that the skit only signifies how everyone sees Bharat Mata the way they want to picture her, but to make this argument, they should admit that the fundamental approach of how a Hindu sees Bharat and how Abrahamic religions see the nation are different – Hindu is willing to adopt her as goddess while others are to subsume her within a wider transnational concept, whether Ummah or a unified Christian world – But to admit that would tantamount to admitting that all religions are not the same when it comes to giving respect or even the assimilation needed for peaceful co-existence, and that honesty one can’t expect from liberals. They would never accept that it is this difference because of which Muslims don’t wish to chant Vande Mataram and Christians refused to salute the flag. While Hindus see India as a civilisational and cultural land of their ancestors, Muslims see it as Dar-Ul-Harb (to be turned into Dar-Ul-Islam) and Christians see it as a vast pool of sinners that deserve to be converted. With the truth too bitter to admit, the only thing that Liberals can possibly do is peddle hollow slogans like Sarva Dharma Samabhava.
The risks of these tropes become apparent when genocides of Hindus are committed in the name of Islam and icons like Gandhi tell Hindus to die with a smile on their face for the sake of the very ‘brotherhood’ that this trope was meant to promote. The cost of ignoring empirical evidence to live in a bubble that turns us blind to the truth is our blood colouring the pavements, as it did during the Direct Action Day, the Naokhali genocide or the Malabar Genocide of Hindus. It is Hindus who now need to decide if we wish to walk the path of Gandhi or Gopal Patha.
