How Hindu Spirituality Shaped Indian Politics
From Gandhi to Rajaji to Vinoba Bhave, Hindu spiritual values formed the bedrock of their political thoughts and activism
There is a range of Hindu political leaders and thinkers who neither want to build a militant Hindu nation nor return to a golden Vedic past. Some simply wish to relate liberal ideas of freedom and equality to Hindu ideas and concepts; when Gandhi invokes Rama rajya or the rule of Rama, he clarifies that he is not calling for monarchy but the sovereignty of the people, based on pure moral authority. Some others tap into Hindu epics for supplying moral virtues to tame modern individualism or utilitarianism. While Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Tagore and Gandhi continue to be favourites, there are others who wrestled with how some Hindu ideas could supplement liberal politics.
Consider for example, Vinoba Bhave’s appeal to Hindu myths of gift giving or dana in his bhoodan movement; he intervened in the midst of a live debate on state-sponsored land reform on the one hand and communist-sponsored confiscation on the other with the explicit purpose of taming resentments and generating concord between classes and communities, and collected about four million acres through voluntary donations alone in a decade. Similar politico-ethical concerns informed the explorations into Hindu epics of another controversial and creative politician, C Rajagopalachari. While advocating moderate ambition and wealth creation, he also knew that religion was central to taming the competitive and acquisitive passions unleashed by capitalism and democracy.
Whether it was liberality or friendship, the ways in which these figures draw upon Hindu spiritual ideas and practices provide an alternative to exclusionary Hindutva as well as secularist ideologies. Unlike Hindutva ideologues, they do not attack other faiths and communities; unlike many intellectuals who only focus on rights, they do not neglect or slight the importance of generating virtues in a liberal democracy.
Two versions of Hindu spirituality as linked to modern politics
I argue that there are two different versions of how Hindu spirituality may be linked to modern liberal politics. The first vision draws from monistic Vedanta ideas and moves towards a tight fit between spirituality and politics. The goal is a union of the two spheres or at least subordination of the political to the spiritual realm. To this end, there are exhortations to anchor politics in first principles, transform human nature and realize genuine swaraj or self-rule. For instance, Vinoba suggested that the ultimate end of all government is freedom from government; (Ananda Kentish) Coomaraswamy argued explicitly that temporal power must be subordinated to spiritual authority.
More often than not, such a world view leads towards what Morris Jones called a ‘saintly political idiom’ of mutual aid, non-violence and collective enlightenment that fortunately remains on the fringes of Indian politics. When a charismatic leader such as Gandhi does not emerge, such idioms only give way to despair and cynicism regarding what actually exists. But this need not mean that Hindu spirituality has nothing to offer to politics in general and Indian politics in particular. When we probe the popular sources of the spiritual in these same thinkers, we catch sight of a subtler vision, one that counsels a loose fit between the two realms….Our thinkers mainly drew from Vedanta the doctrines of the supreme spirit, its immanence and transcendence and the human ability to go beyond worldly suffering through salvational wisdom.
However, when they confronted concrete political problems, they moved towards worldly meanings and implications of spiritual practices and enlisted more popular sources. For example, when Vinoba tried to elicit land gifts, (bhoodan tours), he invoked the famous myth of the Vishnu-Vamana and Mahabali and appealed to the desire for honour and glory in the rich and the mighty. Rajaji also evoked mythic and epic exemplars to unleash goodness and greatness within politics.
Vindoba Bhave and Bhoodan
Vinoba’s marches undermined the communist efforts to mobilize peasants in some parts of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. Contra the communists, Vinoba denied that class struggle was the only way to bring about land reforms. Though inspired by Gandhi, this movement did not mobilize the peasants to civil disobedience but tried to initiate the landed classes in trusteeship. Thus, the landless were cast as receivers and the landlords as givers at a time when communists were succeeding in mobilizing the former for their rights….Vinoba often clarified that he was not begging but asking for what the poor were entitled to.
Like Gandhi, he wanted to persuade the powerful landlords of their duties and obligations. By seizing the initiative, poor and marginal peasants would show that generosity was not the monopoly of the rich. For him, social justice need not be only based on a politics of resentment; it could also build from a politics of friendship and trust. In other words, targeting class enemies or caste enemies is not exhaustive of the project of social justice; identifying common goals and sustaining civic virtues is also necessary.
Vamana avatara ‘re-enacted’
In Hindu mythology, Vishnu comes as a Brahmin dwarf, Vamana, and asks for just three strides of land for a fire sanctuary from Bali, the demon king. Bali has conquered the ‘three worlds’ (earth, sky and the world below), ousted Indra, the king of gods and is accumulating more spiritual merit by giving away precious gifts at a sacrifice. Though forewarned by his teacher about the divine beggar, Bali protests the modest gift requested of him and offers gold, villages, jewels and so on. When Vamana insists on his three steps, he pours water saying, ‘I give’, whereupon the dwarf expands in size to cover the three worlds with his two steps and inquires about the third step.
Bali rises to the challenge and offers his own head. The myth illustrates not so much Vishnu’s greatness but Bali’s nobility….Though he did not say so, Vinoba’s walkathons, plagued as he was by duodenal ulcer, subsisting on milk, yoghurt and honey, armed only with his walking glasses, an umbrella and a walking stick could not have failed to remind people of Vishnu-Vamana, the ‘divine beggar’…. In 13 years of walking, from 1951 to 1964, he measured the motherland, for he covered all the states and almost every district. Just as Vamana tricks Bali, Vinoba also hoped to trick the landlords out of a sense of ownership by giving up in small steps….Exhorting the landlords to give only one-fifth, he was evoking the ‘kingly model’ of patronage implicit in the Bali myth. (The bhoodan tours) created an atmosphere of high drama where some landlords were compelled to show themselves as generous trustees rather than ruthless parasites.
How much generosity did Vinoba inspire? Maharaja Amar Singh of Bikaner gave 284,500 bighas. The raja of Palamu gave 102,001 acres, which was among the highest donations. The Nizam of Hyderabad donated pastureland and dry land. V.P. Singh, who rose to become India’s prime minister, was a big donor. Landlords in Purnea, from where some of the largest collections came, were known as bahubalis. This title is proof, if proof were needed, that bhoodan induced a re-enactment of mythic models of giving and receiving.
C Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) and the Sanctity of Friendship
Rajaji relentlessly argued for friendship as a key political virtue. Nowhere was this more evident than in his repeated calls for Indo-Pakistan reconciliation, going as far as to say that Indians must move beyond ‘the miserable misanthropy of anti-Pakistanism and fight the battle for friendship with courage’. Way back in the 1960s, he advocated moving beyond the obsession with Kashmir and forging a joint defence treaty with Pakistan….
When he argued for unilateral initiatives, Rajaji was careful to distinguish it from appeasement in general. He did not call for unilateral disarmament but for renouncing nuclear tests; he did not advocate military unpreparedness in the face of aggression but argued for building friendships through trade and diplomacy even with China. After India’s defeat against China in 1962, he observed, ‘Not peace at any price, which is an ignoble policy; but friendship at any price is a noble positive determination when that friendship is essential for the defence of freedom.’ In this vein, he discouraged social movements that stoked envy and class hatred. Justice was important but so was friendship among the people. As he put it:
Democracy can flourish only under certain circumstances. It requires conflict as well as social cohesion, called ‘affection’ by Aristotle. It requires conflict, for otherwise the Ins would never get out. It requires social cohesion, otherwise the Outs would be waging perpetual civil war as the Dravida Kazhagam in the South wants it. Social cohesion, Aristotle wrote, is more important than even justice. Developing classes and class jealousy for the purpose of votes is fatal to democracy.
Aristotle argues that friendship is more important than justice in preserving cities…. He argues that complete and genuine friendship is not possible where there is a large disproportion in wealth or virtue, that is, between unequals. In fact, Aristotle hints that where there is great disproportion, benefits must also be apportioned in such a way that the superior one receives more honor while the needy person receives more profit. From this angle, friendship is not possible in regimes where classes are too disparate in wealth or virtue such as aristocracies and oligarchies. It can only flourish where there is greater equality between the rulers and the ruled, such as polities and democracies.
However, concord or political friendship must be judiciously nurtured by legislators by promoting like-mindedness as to what is advantageous to the city as a whole. Clearly, Rajaji drew upon Aristotle in arguing for the significance of political concord in democracies.
But he was also led by the Indian epics to de-emphasize equality and celebrate spontaneity within friendships. Throughout the Mahabharata, the question of whether friendship is possible only between equals is raised and subtly negated in the Drona-Drupada, Duryodhana-Karna and Krishna-Arjuna relationships…. In Ramayana, Rajaji explored the spontaneity of friendship in some detail. The context is Vibheeshana’s defection from his brother Ravana’s side to Rama’s camp.
Vibheeshana appears to be a traitor and therefore not worthy of Rama’s friendship. His sudden advent and open appeal for sanctuary is suspected by some of Rama’s friends such as Sugriva. When the wise Hanuman demurs and suggests that it would be fine to accept him, Rama is gladdened….Rama’s friendship with Hanuman is even more fascinating, for it shows the dependence of the god-man on a monkey. Hanuman’s sweet and apt speech and superlative courage pave the way for Rama’s victory over Ravana…. Inequality is also the hallmark of Krishna’s friendship with Arjuna which is celebrated as the archetype of the divine-human relationship….Repeatedly, the epics suggest that inequality of virtue or wealth may be frequently set aside in making friends.
In this light, Rajaji claimed that friendship was governed by a spiritual law that was both simple and taxing; simple in that one must respond to someone who appeals and taxing in that one takes on the risk of discovering that one is chosen only for utility or pleasure….Rajaji suggested that the ‘law of friendship’ can soften utilitarian calculations and ideological differences. Periyar, Annadurai, Kamraj Nadar, who were all his political opponents at one time or another, were also his friends. Kamraj Nadar recalls that Rajaji would go up to most people unasked and unannounced; he was far above likes and dislikes, differences of opinion and age; he had the rare quality of respecting man as man.
At a collective level, affection cannot be left to develop on its own. Extant affections based on caste or community identity must be skillfully nurtured. Rajaji highlighted common and shared goods and activities focusing on the epics and popular religion. The love of one’s own language or community must be made reasonable so as to tame narrow-mindedness. Here, spontaneity and transcending inequality have a role to play in forging a broad concord among individuals of different groups and persuasions.
The piece is excerpted from Vasanthi Srinivasan’s 2014 book Hindu Spirituality and Virtue Politics (Sage Publications)