While pondering over the raging controversy over ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ I remember how I was pleasantly surprised on my first morning in Dehradun when I heard a girl chant fervently ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ at a prayer meeting of a school in my locality.   Since then I have been hearing it every morning. It rather arouses me from sleep.  I still feel the thrill.

I fully agree with Guru Golwalkar, the second RSS chief, as he joined issue with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on the same nationalistic slogan years ago.  When Nehru was greeted with the roar of Bharat Mata Ki Jai on his arrival at the public meetings he asked the people to explain to him what Bharat Mata connoted. He used to explain to them himself what he thought of Bharat Mata. He said the millions of the people inhabiting this land were the true Bharat Mata and so victory to Bharat Mata meant victory to the people of India.  Guruji protested, saying that it was not good to dilute the sentiment the people felt for the country as enshrined in the cry

‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’. If the people were prodded to cease being moved by the picture of Bharat as the Mother the emotion would die down and with it, the idea of sacrifice for the country would die too in due course.

I could not have agreed more with Guruji. That was true when Guruji said so and even now, many years after, the same holds true. ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ still retains its thrill.

Yet, when the controversy on the same keeps raging I am wondering whether the nationalistic slogan should be shoved down the throat of one and all and even on those who are stubbornly reluctant to chant it on religious or other grounds.

There are many Hindus who hate to be forced to cry the nationalistic cry under threat. But the real problem is with the Muslims in the RSS view of things.

RSS was born at a time when the Hindus were facing the gory challenge of   Islamic aggression. The Hindus were disorganized as a grim civil war was staring them in the face. They were being massacred; the women were being raped; their households were being torched and plundered. It was the momentous need of organizing the Hindus that inspired Dr K B Hedgewar to found RSS. The timing was significant as it was clear that Congress, going out of its way to flatter the aggressive section of the Muslims into building a joint front of the Hindus and the Muslims against the British Imperialism, was unable to rise to the monumental challenge thrown by the fractured history of the land.

It was a terrific insecurity that begot RSS at a tumultuous crossroad of the sub-continent’s history. Now, it is not insecurity that is gnawing at the RSS, but rather a pleasure to force the Muslims to do things they are not ready to do in order to whip up Hindu majoritarian passions.  It is a kind of insecurity too, as without whipping such passions off and on, the saffron brigade would lose its raison d’être and would be robbed of its much-flaunted Hinduized identity.

What is the essence of Indian nationhoodIJ Sri Aurobindo defined it wonderfully. “The different world religions representing different world cultures that have already found a habitation in India will remain here always, form elements of common national life, and contribute to the evolution of the composite culture of modern India. The Hindu culture, however, on account of its age and superior numerical strength, will always form the ground work of this composite Indian culture and civilization. The dominant note of Hindu culture, its sense of the spiritual and universal, will, therefore, be the peculiar feature of this composite Indian nationality.” This complex conception of multi-cultural, multi-religious India’s peculiar nationalism- ‘composite culture’ with inclusive Hindu note leading it would ‘evolve’ through the contributions of ‘different world religions’-seems to perfectly fit in with the existing social reality as well as with the futuristic lofty mission that the true Bharat Mata personifies.  This is, however, an antithesis of the militaristic Bharat Mata as RSS is projecting.

This composite culture is the true Bharat Mata whose praise we must all sing-Hindus and Muslims and others. The non-Hindus should not be crushed into being like Hindus. Bharat Mata-all embracing, all-absorbing and all-bearing-has given place to the non-Hindus too in her infinitely plastic and inclusive bosom. Forcing them to chant the slogan would defeat her great futuristic mission and RSS would not be happy if it happens.