Posted by on March 21, 19102 at 17:08:12:
A Camp Meeting Celebrates the Vision of a Hindu India
By CELIA W. DUGGER
After an hour of toe touches, deep knee bends and push-ups, the volunteers sat cross-legged in the dirt and lay down their long bamboo staffs to listen raptly to their leader, K. S. Sudarshan. He inspired them with a vision of India as an ancient and tolerant Hindu nation, but warned that the country was threatened from within by Christian churches that he described as foreign dominated and funded.
Although Christians have lived in India for 2,000 years and make up only 2 percent of its one billion people, he raised the specter of Christian conversions diminishing the dominance of Hindus and leading to secessionist movements. He criticized Christian and Muslim Indians who have refused, in his eyes, to embrace their Hindu heritage. He called on Christians to sever links with ''foreign'' churches and set up a Church of India. And he condemned Roman Catholic missionaries who believe that only their path leads to salvation.
''How can we allow such people to work here?'' he asked from his podium high above the ground. A larger-than-life likeness of the Hindu god Krishna loomed behind him.
Fifty-three years after India gained its independence from British rule, Mr. Sudarshan's movement is still agitating for a redefinition of the nation's founding secular values. They were enunciated in the 1950 Constitution, which guarantees ''the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion.'' And they were ardently defended by India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who believed that religious minorities could retain their identities and still be loyal Indians.
In contrast, the Hindu nationalist ideology defines India as a Hindu nation whose people share a common geography, culture and ancestry. In this view, Muslims and Christians were converted from Hinduism and need to be reintegrated into the Hindu mainstream -- a theme first sounded in the 1920's and articulated by Mr. Sudarshan today.
After the closing ceremony, thousands of volunteers, all dressed in paramilitary-style khaki shorts, white shirts and black caps, rushed from their rigid grid on the field toward the dignitaries sitting on red velvet couches in the blazing sun. A group of them surrounded Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, who started in the R.S.S., moved to the Bharatiya Janata party, and is now believed to be in line to inherit the mantle of leadership from Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who joined the R.S.S. back in the 1940's.
As orders blared from a tower of loudspeakers, Mr. Advani joined the rows of men in making the movement's salute (hand held stiffly across the chest, palm down) on the count of one, lowering his head on two and dropping his arm on three.
His presence here was another tantalizing clue in one of the country's favorite parlor games: Are the R.S.S. and the B.J.P. -- the political party that is part of the Sangh Parivar, or R.S.S. family -- hand in glove or at each other's throats?
The answer seems to be a little of both. There is a natural tension between them. Mr. Sudarshan's movement, which is striving to build a Hindu nation from the grass roots up, is purist in its ideology. The ruling party, which is striving for political power, has set aside many of its Hindu nationalist planks to win the support of regional parties with secular outlooks. It is no longer pushing for the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of a demolished 16th-century mosque in Ayodhya, for example.
But the movement and the governing party also need each other. The party relies on the movement's vast network of committed volunteers at election time. And the movement enjoys a measure of political influence because of its close ties to the party.
''The relationship is a bit like that between the Christian Coalition and the Republican Party,'' said Ashutosh Varshney, a political scientist at Notre Dame and an expert on India.
More than half a million boys and men attend the daily meetings of the R.S.S. in 45,000 local branches all over India. The group's appeal is part Boy Scouts, part crusaders. Many became volunteers for the daily physical exercise, sports and camaraderie, but were later fired by the association's idea of nationhood.
The camp here in Agra was an organizational feat, subdivided into many smaller neighborhoods where sanitation, roads, electricity and cooking facilities had all been installed by the association.
At 4:30 this morning, a bugle woke the swayamsevaks, or volunteers, while a full moon still dangled over the grounds. By 6 a.m., as dawn broke and a pinkish-orange orb of sun rose, they had lined up for exercise drills. Afterward, they sang a song calling on the volunteers to awaken to threats from India's enemies and traitors. The high-pitched voices of young boys cut through the low hum of the men's singing.
Many of those here were new recruits. Rajkumar Gupta, 13, could explain little of the group's ideology. He studies in a school run by an affiliate of the association. He and the 160 students in the school had come with their teachers ''because the school told us to.''
Abhinay Kumar Sharma, 15, was attending his second camp and he had learned some of the association's thinking. ''The Sangh is here to fight social evils, for example, conversions to Christianity,'' he said. ''This is a Hindu nation and conversions are divisive and this will lead to the division of the country.''
Lal Singh, a 65-year-old farmer, echoed the same theme, saying: ''Conversion is wrong. This is against our culture. And in these other religions, this sense of humanity and service to man is not there, while it is in our religion.''
Yashpal Singh Nayak, 26, a traveling perfume salesman, worried that extended families are breaking down into nuclear families and that women are leaving their faces unveiled in front of elders and males. ''If it continues like this,'' he said, ''it will be a serious threat to Indian culture.''