Excerpts from J Sai Deepak’s take on ‘Majoritarianism’

….and how it is used to gaslight Hindus…

But before I share the excerpts, a short digression. When I first stumbled on this piece, I searched my blog for an appropriate post/category to add this to – either as a comment or as a stand-alone excerpt. Which would be have been straight-forward except for the fact that I could not find the word “Majoritarianism” on my blog at all.

The penny dropped when I realised that there had been almost a decade long hiatus in my blogging . It was during this time – and more so in the last few years – that this term has gained currency along with unfortunately, its negative connotations.

Read on to understand why (emphasis added).

….. I will limit the scope of the discussion to the contemporary casual and pejorative use of “majoritarianism” in Bharat as a catch-all term to gaslight Hindus.

First, to cry “majoritarianism” in a democracy, without making out a case of unconstitutionality, is to question the majority principle which forms the very basis of a democracy. Second, in the context of Bharat, “majoritarianism” has become a code to insinuate “Hindu majoritarianism”

…one would argue that the slur is illogical because it proceeds on the basis that since Hindus exist as a national majority, any expression of their collective will constitutes “Hindu majoritarianism” regardless of its constitutionality. Apart from betraying its imported origins and therefore the unoriginality of the allegation, those who cry “Hindu majoritarianism” conveniently ignore the fact that the expression of Hindu will is based on the undeniable and inseverable civilisational nexus between the Hindu worldview and this geography which the former worships as its sacred geography. Stated otherwise, the Hindu position is based neither on numerical majoritarianism nor on territorial nationalism, but on sacred civilisationalism wherein every inch of Bharat, as it existed, belongs to those who subscribe to the Bharatiya worldview and its values. But for this logic, how else can Bharat justify its continued claim over Muslim-majority Kashmir (including PoK), apart from relying on the factum of accession? After all, even a legal claim in the context of geopolitics is foregrounded by a more fundamental claim which could be cultural/civilisational, religious, linguistic or ethnic.

…. those who deliberately ignore the sacral aspect of the Hindu’s relationship with Bharat by reducing it to numerical majoritarianism, are guilty of mischievously presenting the Hindu position as one based on brute numbers. To do so with a non-Abrahamic global minority, which continues to weather the bottomless and genocidal territorial hunger of two monochromatic worldviews, is the textbook definition of gaslighting.

Read it in full here

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