Anand Ranganathan, so eloquent as he is, should really be addressing all the grandiloquent things he does in the video-clip above not to PM Narendra Modi but to all those Hindu Voters who identified themselves with a huge subset of 60% of the total voting population that cast its votes against themselves in the 2024 elections.
If the Hindus felt the same way about themselves as Ranganathan does … well … would they have thumbed Modi down from 304 down to 243?
Ranganathan’s passionate cry is not likely to be received any longer in this country or abroad … and especially abroad … as a clarion call against injustice to the Hindu of India . More likely, he will be seen as being the shrill spokesperson (blessed with an unstoppable motormouth) of Hindu “supremacists”…. i.e. those whom the Constitutional Conscience-keepers of India go around labelling as “Hindu Majoritarians” .
Anand Ranganathan, it seems to me, suffers from some sort of intellectual constipation. He is perhaps yet unable to fully digest the verdict of the 2024 elections. The verdict is clear :
The Hindu macrocosm of India (of whom the Hindus of Ayodhya are indeed a truly representative microcosm) does not share Ranganathan’s vision of a “Hindu Rashtra”. Their vision is in fact symbolised by the new Parliamentary Membership configuration that has just been sworn in yesterday … It’s 54% Hindu and 46% non-Hindus in the House.
So Ranganathan, who is one of the most astute and percipient political observers in India today, will have to face reality. The Hindus of India are a very unique and complex people . Their view of themselves as a people is that of a “ardhanaari” — cultural transgenders with a truly schizophrenic Hindu self-identity that is wholly incomplete without being half non-Hindu.
Sudarshan Madabushi