Whatever happened to NSS-SNDP Hindu alliance

Few months ago, NSS and SNDP, two dominant organizations in Kerala raised slogans with a strong sense of Hindu unity. Vellappally Natesan, General Secretary of SNDP and Narayana Panicker, General Secretary of NSS have declared to work together in the name of Hindu solidarity. Their positive statements gave a strong sense of resurgence among Hindus. For the most part, SNDP and NSS have always understood that they are inextricably intertwined. Members of both communities, both lay and leaders, maintained contacts with each other and strove to create a broader alliance for the common good.

Alarmed by the NSS-SNDP alliance, the powerful Marxist/Muslim/Christian clique began to exert concerted pressure and extraordinary threats to wreck SNDP-NSS alliance. The pseudo secular politicians, corporate media, and powerful Christian/Muslims groups posed unusual and violent threats to subvert Hindu unity movement. They have devised a grand hidden agenda to keep Hindus in passive subversive obedience and acceptance of political, economic and social dominance of deeply entrenched Marxist/Christian/Muslim cliques. They have every interest and plan in maintaining the statuesque.

Toady, it is almost inconceivable that NSS and SNDP could muster the will to mount so massive a show of Hindu unity. They know Hindus in Kerala are under siege and in shackles. No large-scale crisis seems to engage NSS leader Panicker. The once powerful claims of Hindu unity have lost its power to compel NSS to move forward. The excessive political and economic pressure from the Marxist/Christian/Muslim groups began to erode the structure of Hindu alliance created by SNDP and NSS. As a result, NSS and SNDP leaders gradually ceased to view Hindu unity movement is difficult and began to redefine their distinctiveness and policy priorities.                                                                                

The effects of these attitudinal shifts will have disastrous consequences for NSS and SNDP and will affect their ability to explicitly address the needs of Hindus as a whole. How to explain the fraying of social bonds between SNDP and NSS? Why can’t they work together and mobilize community members on behalf of Hindu causes?  SNDP and NSS have accomplished great things for their organizations, but today they no longer posses a sense of urgency for Hindu unity.

How did SNDP-NSS acrimonious differences benefit powerful interest groups with exclusive, fundamentalist ideologies?  Our enemies are able to achieve high levels of political, and economic gains through, violence, intimidation, threats, and muscle power. They have a long history of benefiting from creating social crisis and exploitation of Hindus.

Why Hindu Unity is Important

The need for Hindu unity hardly disappeared. Hindu Dharma is the cornerstone of our nation’s political, social, cultural, democratic, spiritual existence. Along with our spiritual, all-inclusive values, Hindu temples, religious institutions, traditions and darsanas cultivate the virtues that are essential for democracy. Together they form the basis for a healthy, strong kerala. Yet that foundation is being eroded through infighting, lack of unity, common purpose and goal directed strategies.

Today Hindus in Kerala are facing unusual and extraordinary threats by the policies of the Marxist government. Violent threats have always been used for scaring Hindus into passive obedience and acceptance of profit-maximizing policies of Christians and Muslims. With an even more fanatically Marxist party in power in Kerala, we can expect concerted efforts to wreck Hindu unity movement.

It is important to recognize that concentrated power in exclusive ideological groups (Marxist, Christian, Muslim) will result in more heinous crimes against Hindus. The powerful Marxist/Christian media indoctrinates secular Hindus. As a consequence, secularists no longer know what is good and what is bad for them. What is destructive is increasingly valued as good. Some of this is the result of mind manipulation, and some of it doubtless is social engineering driven by exclusive, fundamentalist ideologies. All of this has contributed to the post modern-sense of dislocation, of de-centering, and to the emphasis of the continuity of the present from the Hindu past. More and more of Hindu culture is getting lost in great confusion and our temples are vandalized, wealth is stolen and Hindus are cut off from its foundations.

The Marxists believe in the notion of success in the materialist and it presupposes the death of Hindu society along with the attachment of spiritual values. The Marxists treat Hindu religious beliefs as arbitrary and unimportant. Each time, Marxists came to power, they resorted to the full use of its cunning means to penalize Hindus and destroy Hindu cultural institutions. The Church and Islam, needless to say have always rejected rationalism, pluralism, and inclusive worldview and spiritual values. The Church claims its right for conversion of Hindus, and insists there is no substitute for it. Cores of rupees are pouring into Kerala for religious conversion of Hindus. The Church is using unaccounted foreign money for religious conversion, media manipulation, buying established business, grabbing forestland and bribing politicians.

It is important to recognize that concentrated power in the Marxists/Christian/Muslim groups will have extremely negative consequences for Hindus in Kerala. What then is the future of Hindus in Kerala? What new directions NSS and SNDP should follow? The crises Hindus face in Kerala require caste-based organizations to alter its facade and change its ubiquitous nature. There may be several reasons for NSS and SNDP leaders to terminate discussion on Hindu alliance. There may be various types of operating reasons, guiding reasons and auxiliary reasons or adopted reasons. But Hindus are not convinced of these exclusionary reasons of NSS and SNDP leaders. Hindus are not convinced or persuaded by their disappointing performance. NSS and SNDP may have some conditions that preclude them from working together, but these are not sufficiently important reasons to justify their obscurantism.  The promotion of NSS and SNDP as unique organizations is a tacit admission that the barriers that separate SNDP and NSS cannot be breached and Hindu unity as a policy goal has been abandoned. Hindus themselves however, are paying the real price. Hindus are politically powerless, economically deprived, culturally threatened, educationally discriminated and socially disadvantaged. And walking away from Hindu unity movement is an acknowledgement of the inevitability of those pathetic conditions. It is embracing denigration of Hindus in Kerala.

Today the world is changing. Times change and people change, their ideas change, develop and progress for the common good. Change and progress require the intellectual grasp of contemporary issues and the need to broaden perspectives and outlook in which, non-workable, regressive ideas abandoned and systemic ideas embraced. For example, Sankaracharya, Chattambi Swamigal, Sri Narayan Guru, and Mannath Padmanabhan challenged or set aside virtually every significant, regressive, narrow or sectarian principle and developed some broadest, most inclusive thought system possible. These respected, visionary leaders challenged lineage and traditions and rejected non-workable ideas, shock and barrel. NSS, SNDP, and Advaita Mutts exist today due to their intellectual process and organizational skills.

SNDP and NSS organizational leaders need to broaden their perspective from their narrow, sectarian interests to the broader intellectual plan-the terrain of ideology to a “higher synthesis”, a “collective will” with a set of shared Hindutva ideas and values. They need to communicate with Hindutva forces such as RSS, VHP and Hindu Aikya Vedi and integrate everyday activities with them for the common good of Hindus. We hope that SNDP and NSS will embrace the new era, a new future.

Responses