Toward an Additional Social Order

This refers to the article, ‘of lions and dogs’ (IE, September 19). The author argued to inform misunderstood stand of Swami Vivekananda to the RSS ideologue however in this nobility he failed to mention dehumanization through animal imagery and metaphor of Vedantic brain and Islamic body which may give birth to additional oppressive social order in India. The article rightly conveyed the idea of defining aspects of Hinduism through the lens of Swami Vivekanand and criticized RSS understanding, misinterpreted version of Hinduism. Despite in an attempt to visualize the defining line of fascist, communal, divisive idea of Hindutva and tolerant Hinduism, the imagination could not capture these lines as a spectrum of Hindu Rashtra from a soft colour of saffron to a hard. 

The controversial statement of RSS chief ‘if a lion is alone, wild dogs can invade and destroy it’ was pronounced at World Hindu Congress in Chicago. The irony is that the conference was organized to commemorate 125^th anniversary of historic address of Swami Vivekanand, where he boldly addressed the people as a lion to awake their consciousness. Even though the idea of Vivekananda was enshrined from Upanishad, the RSS went to next level of dehumanization and misinterpret it to unite Hindus (lions) against few sections of society (wild dogs). This was not the first time, someone intemperately depicted human as a wild dogs or other animal imagery. Such depiction and metaphorical indication of a section of society as lacking humanness lead to hate and violence. If Vivekanada tried to awake conscious of human being through imagery of lion to feel their being not as a weak and fragile then RSS chief has done his job to utilize wild strength to unite Hindu and fight for Hindu Rashtra and depicted the dissenter as invading wild dogs. The author D. Raja could not envisage that both of the leaders have dehumanized, one to awake the human however another to invoke Hindus.

The article ended with another adverse statement of Swami Vivekananda, saying India needed the Vedantic brain and Islamic body. This statement confirmed hierarchical social order where certain section of society born from head and other from different parts of body of Brahama i.e caste system. Now this idea of Vedantic brain and Islamic body may give rise to hierarchical religious order in Indian society, which can be interpreted as head the higher and body as the lower. In this way, hierarchical caste strata within religion and religious hierarchy within Indian society will give rise to future double hierarchical society.           

Link of the Article:

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/rss-mohan-bhagwat-swami-vivekananda-chicago-speech-of-lions-and-dogs-5363376/