It appears that India is still haunted by modernity, colonialism and coloniality. The modern world as well as modern India is a co-invention of the colonizer and the colonized. Colonization was based on the what Anibal Quijano termed coloniality of power. Coloniality of power produced power differential that is viewed as colonial difference by Quijano. Colonial difference justified colonization as it inferiorized the colonized and presented colonization as civilization or modernization. While at several levels, colonization takes up the project of universalism of modernity, it also divided human-beings and put the colonized particularly the blacks below the invented ‘human line’.
Contestation of coloniality of power requires us to contest universalism of modernity and embrace diverse ecologies of knowledge within a paradigm of pluriversalism. It is lazy reason that forgets the diverse ways people work to give meaning to their existence and understanding of the world. Modernity reinforced lazy reason and we can see how it led to the erasure of otherness into the sameness of the Eurocentric imperialism.
We in India are still under the weight of universalism of modernity . This is why we seem to be under the regime of the one which is understood in an monadic uniformity. The politics of Hindutva is a child of modernity and is actively striving to reduce India into a single universe , the Hindu singularity. Modernity has put India under the cultural political force that mimics the colonizers and has been view as Sankritization/ Brahminization.
The emergence of Hindutva has accelerated Sankritization as well as given biting teeth to it . Hindutva in its pursuit of Hindu singularity has taken the form of Indicide where the diversity and plurality of our culture and civilization is simply made to die into a blackhole . The indicide is not just a destruction of cultural plurality of our country, it has become necropolitical and is simply administrating death, and has taken up itself to decide who will live and who has to die in India. Hence while the colonization has ended, coloniality has not ended and we in India are facing dual colonialities: global coloniality and neo-coloniality of Hindutva forces.
Coloniality of power is refusing to die. It is continuously producing power differential by attacking the condition of equality dynamically produced by the constitution of our country. This is why we have a crisis of representative democracy. The executive leader, our honorable Prime Minister does not seem to behave as the Prime Minister of all Indians but appear to conduct himself as a Hindu Samrat.
Maybe it is within this matrix of power differential that we may try to understand the proposal of draft of the constitution of the Hindu Rashtra at the Maha Kumbh 2025. The place of the minorities envisaged by the said constitution puts them below ‘human line’ and appears to mimic the colonial dehumanization of the colonized. Moreover, it appears that the need for a Hindu Rashtra is triggered from outside. It seems to manifest a mimetic desire. This is because its proponents count 127 Christian , 57 Muslim , 15 Buddhists , and 1 Jewish nations and based on it seems to nurture a desire to mimic these countries. Hence, the form of what is named as the Hindu Rashtra is from outside while the matter might be indic.
Indeed, what is dreamed as a Hindu Rashtra appears to be a thirst of recognition of the outside world. As it draws its model or form the colonial Europe, imperial America and hegemonic Israel , it seems to be a neo-colonial project and is set to marginalize the minorities, women, tribals and the Dalits of our country. Hence, we have the challenge to work to deimperialize India at several levels. The deimperializing of our country has the imperative to contest the power differential that is robbing away the condition of equality sort to be dynamically created our constitution.
The new constitution of the Hindu Rashtra clearly does not have any structure to produce condition of equality or level playing field for all Indians. It appears to be sanctifying and constitutionalizing the tyranny of the majority. Not all are born in India de jure . Only the Hindus are de jure citizens of the Hindu Rashtra. It seems to be a nation of unequals. It will dynamically produce the condition of inequality and seems to be reproducing the divided society in the image and likeness of Manu Smriti. Therefore, the constitution of Hindu Rashtra is nothing but revival of coloniality of power and imperializes a hierarchically ordered society.
This is why perhaps, we may have to modify Lokmanya Tilak’s slogan ‘Swaraj is my birth right and I shall have it’ to ‘My birth is my Swaraj and I shall have it’. The new conditions robs the birth right of Indians and belonging to India is based on religious affiliations. Being born in India, to be India is my birth right and it is a grave injustice to characterize citizenship based on affiliations to religion or culture. We live in a religio-cultrural plural India and it is Indicide to reduce India into a Hindu singularity. Hence, we have the challenge to fight this neo-colonialism tooth and nail.
