Bridge the Divide: Hunger, Dissent and the Shrinking Democratic Imagination

 From Gandhi to Sonam Wangchuk, the politics of fasting reveals what happens when governments stop listening

By Ramphal Kataria

Abstract

The indefinite fast has occupied a unique place in the political history of India. It is at once a moral appeal, a form of self-suffering, and a democratic warning signal. From Mahatma Gandhi’s fasts against colonial rule and communal violence to Bhagat Singh’s prison hunger strike, from Potti Sriramulu’s sacrifice for linguistic reorganisation to Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand’s final fast for the Ganga, the fast unto death has emerged whenever institutional channels appear exhausted. The contemporary protest of Sonam Wangchuk raises a larger question: what becomes of a democracy when governments no longer consider dialogue with dissenters a political necessity? This essay traces the historical evolution of hunger strike as a democratic weapon, compares Indian experiences with Ireland, Britain, Turkey and the United States, and examines the changing relationship between the Indian state and protest movements. It argues that the health of a democracy is measured not by whether governments concede every demand, but by whether they recognise dissent as legitimate, engage it in good faith, and preserve the moral space in which disagreement can be heard.

A government may reject a demand; a democracy cannot reject the right to be heard.

I. When a Democracy Stops Listening

Reports of Sonam Wangchuk’s deteriorating health during his indefinite fast should disturb every citizen regardless of political affiliation. The issue is larger than one individual or one protest. It concerns the relationship between the Indian state and dissent. Competitive examinations, paper leaks, administrative accountability and the anxieties of students may be the immediate context, but the deeper question is whether governments still feel compelled to engage with those who challenge them.

The moral power of Wangchuk’s protest does not arise from physical force. It arises from vulnerability. A person who voluntarily embraces suffering places before society a difficult question: if institutions refuse to listen, what remains except the body itself? That question has echoed through Indian history for more than a century.

Democracy is not merely a system of elections. It is a continuous conversation between rulers and the ruled. Parliament, courts, media, trade unions, student organisations, farmers’ movements, women’s groups and civil society organisations exist because representative government cannot hear every grievance directly. Political theorists from Alexis de Tocqueville to Robert Dahl recognised that pressure groups are not a distortion of democracy; they are part of its circulatory system. When channels of communication narrow, protests intensify. When dialogue disappears, fasting becomes a final appeal.

II. The Ancient Logic of the Fast

The hunger strike did not originate with modern nationalism. In ancient Ireland, the practice of troscadh allowed a wronged person to fast at the doorstep of an offender, placing moral pressure upon him. Similar traditions existed in parts of the Indian subcontinent, where fasting could be used to demand justice from rulers or creditors. The logic was simple: self-suffering created a public moral obligation.

Modern politics transformed this custom into a weapon of resistance. Unlike armed rebellion, a fast does not seek to destroy the opponent. It seeks to expose the opponent’s conscience. Gandhi understood this distinction better than any modern leader.

III. Gandhi and the Politics of Self-Suffering

Mahatma Gandhi did not invent the fast, but he gave it unprecedented political meaning. For Gandhi, fasting was not blackmail. It was a form of satyagraha—truth-force—through which the protester purified himself while appealing to the moral imagination of the adversary. Gandhi fasted against British repression, against communal violence, against caste discrimination and even against his own followers when he believed they had strayed from non-violence.

His 1932 fast in Yerwada Jail against the British decision to create separate electorates for the Depressed Classes became one of the defining episodes of the freedom struggle. The fast compelled intense negotiations that culminated in the Poona Pact. Gandhi’s final fast in January 1948 sought peace between Hindus and Muslims in a city torn by communal hatred. It ended only when leaders across communities pledged to restore harmony.

The British Empire possessed armies, prisons and laws. Gandhi possessed a frail body. Yet the empire feared the political consequences of his suffering because it understood that moral authority can outlast coercive power. The colonial state often arrested Gandhi, but it rarely ignored him. Negotiation remained unavoidable.

The British imprisoned Gandhi repeatedly; they did not pretend he did not exist.

IV. Bhagat Singh, Jatin Das and the Prison Hunger Strike

The revolutionary tradition reached a similar conclusion through a different route. In 1929, Bhagat Singh, Batukeshwar Dutt and other political prisoners launched a hunger strike in Lahore Jail demanding equal treatment with European prisoners, access to reading material, decent food and recognition as political prisoners. The strike lasted for months.

The most tragic figure was Jatin Das. He refused food for sixty-three days despite severe physical deterioration. On 13 September 1929 he died in Lahore Jail. His funeral procession from Lahore to Calcutta became a national event. Thousands lined the railway tracks to pay homage. Bhagat Singh’s own fast continued for more than one hundred days before being suspended.

What gave these young men the strength to endure such suffering? Historians of political imprisonment often point to three sources: ideological conviction, collective solidarity and the belief that personal sacrifice could awaken a larger public. The body becomes bearable when the cause appears greater than the self. That is why hunger strikes frequently emerge in prisons, where every other instrument of protest has been removed.

Bhagat Singh’s fast demonstrated that even revolutionaries who believed in armed struggle recognised the extraordinary symbolic power of voluntary suffering. The British authorities eventually negotiated on several demands because the protest had become impossible to ignore.

V. Death and State Formation: Potti Sriramulu

Independent India inherited this political language. The most consequential post-independence fast was undertaken by Potti Sriramulu for a separate Telugu-speaking state. After fifty-eight days without food, he died on 15 December 1952. Massive protests erupted across the region. The Government of India soon announced the creation of Andhra State in 1953, setting in motion the larger reorganisation of states on linguistic lines.

Sriramulu’s death established a difficult democratic precedent. Governments realised that ignoring a fast unto death could produce greater instability than negotiating with protesters. The lesson was not that every demand must be accepted. Rather, delay and silence could transform a limited agitation into a mass movement.

VI. Punjab and the Politics of Fasting

The Punjabi Suba movement also employed fasting as a political instrument. Master Tara Singh undertook a fast in 1961 demanding a Punjabi-speaking state. The fast ended after assurances from Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, though the demand remained unresolved. Later, Sant Fateh Singh launched his own fast and threatened self-immolation if Punjab was not reorganised. The eventual creation of the present state of Punjab in 1966 emerged from a complex process involving negotiations, commissions, electoral pressures and mass mobilisation.

These episodes reveal an important feature of Indian federalism: hunger strikes rarely succeed in isolation. They become effective when combined with organisational networks, public sympathy and political bargaining. The fast acts as a moral catalyst rather than a substitute for democratic negotiation.

VII. Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand and the Ganga

In recent memory, no fast carried greater environmental symbolism than that of Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand, formerly Professor G.D. Agrawal of IIT Kanpur. A distinguished environmental engineer, he undertook multiple fasts demanding protection of the upper Ganga from destructive hydropower projects and ecological degradation. In 2018 he fasted for 111 days before dying on 11 October.

Sanand’s death was a profound indictment of the gap between official reverence for the Ganga and concrete ecological action. Governments of different parties had launched ambitious river-cleaning programmes, yet a scientist-monk felt compelled to risk his life to secure attention for environmental concerns. His fast demonstrated that moral authority can emerge from expertise as well as spirituality.

The question raised by Sanand remains unresolved: what does it mean when a republic celebrates a river symbolically while a respected scientist dies demanding its protection?

VIII. Hunger Strikes Beyond India

India is not unique. Around the world, hunger strikes have appeared wherever protesters confront powerful institutions.

Ireland

Irish republicans transformed the hunger strike into a global symbol. Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney died in Brixton Prison in 1920 after seventy-four days without food. His death generated international outrage and strengthened support for Irish independence. In 1981, Bobby Sands and nine other Irish Republican Army prisoners died during the Maze Prison hunger strike demanding political status. Sands was elected to the British Parliament while still fasting, demonstrating the extraordinary political force of self-sacrifice.

Britain and the Suffragettes

Women campaigning for the vote used hunger strikes extensively after imprisonment. The British government responded with force-feeding, a practice widely condemned as cruel and degrading. Public sympathy increasingly shifted toward the suffragettes as images of women being physically restrained entered political debate.

Turkey

Turkish prisons witnessed prolonged death fasts in the 1990s and 2000s against prison conditions and isolation policies. Hundreds died over several years, illustrating how hunger strikes can become tragic wars of endurance when negotiations collapse completely.

United States

Labour leader César Chávez used repeated fasts during the farm workers’ movement to reaffirm non-violence and draw national attention to the conditions of agricultural labourers. His 1968 fast lasted twenty-five days and received support from figures across the political spectrum, including Senator Robert Kennedy.

These international examples confirm a common pattern: the hunger strike emerges when protesters believe ordinary institutional channels have failed. Its power lies not in coercion but in the moral discomfort created by visible suffering.

IX. From Dialogue to Distance: The Changing Indian State

The central democratic question today is not whether governments should surrender to every protest. No responsible state can govern by permanent capitulation. The question is whether governments consider dialogue an obligation even when they intend to refuse the demand.

The contrast between different moments in recent Indian politics is instructive. During the 2011 India Against Corruption movement, the United Progressive Alliance government engaged repeatedly with Anna Hazare’s team despite deep disagreements over the Jan Lokpal Bill. Negotiations were often contentious and politically costly, but the government recognised that sustained public protest required sustained political conversation.

The farmers’ movement against the three farm laws between 2020 and 2021 lasted for more than a year, roughly thirteen months from June 2020 to November 2021. The Union government held multiple rounds of talks with farmer organisations, yet many protesters believed the negotiations lacked genuine flexibility. Eventually the Prime Minister announced the repeal of the laws. The episode demonstrated both the capacity of mass mobilisation to influence policy and the dangers of prolonged mistrust between state and society.

The emerging concern is that contemporary governance increasingly treats protest as a law-and-order problem rather than a political conversation. Barricades, detentions, internet shutdowns and preventive restrictions often appear before meaningful engagement begins. Even when talks occur, they are frequently episodic and tactical rather than continuous and institutionalised.

A republic is not weakened by listening to dissent; it is weakened when dissent is treated as an administrative inconvenience.

X. Is This Fascism? A Necessary Distinction

The term “fascism” is often used loosely in contemporary debate. Historical fascism involved one-party rule, suppression of elections, organised political violence, destruction of independent institutions and a totalising ideology centred on the nation and the leader. India remains a constitutional democracy with competitive elections, an active judiciary, opposition parties and a vibrant, if pressured, civil society.

Yet political scientists use the concept of “democratic backsliding” to describe systems that retain elections while gradually weakening institutional checks, concentrating executive power, marginalising opposition voices and narrowing the space for dissent. Scholars such as Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have argued that democracies often erode not through sudden coups but through incremental changes that normalise exceptional power.

Seen through this lens, the concern is not that India has become a classical fascist state. The concern is that democratic habits—consultation, tolerance of criticism, respect for autonomous institutions and willingness to negotiate with opponents—may be weakening. The language of nationalism can become a substitute for political persuasion, and majoritarian electoral success can be treated as a mandate to dismiss all dissent as anti-national.

That tendency deserves criticism precisely because it threatens the pluralist foundations of the Constitution

XI. Pressure Groups and the Democratic Order

Farmers’ unions, student organisations, environmental movements, women’s groups, trade unions and regional parties are often portrayed as obstacles to governance. In fact they are essential intermediaries between citizens and the state. Democratic theory recognises that elections occur periodically, while grievances emerge daily. Pressure groups aggregate interests, generate information and compel governments to justify their decisions publicly.

When governments stop engaging such groups, two consequences follow. Moderate leaders lose credibility, and more confrontational forms of protest gain appeal. The history of Punjab, Assam, Kashmir and numerous regional movements demonstrates that sustained refusal to negotiate rarely eliminates dissent; it often radicalises it.

The constitutional architecture of India assumes negotiation. Federalism, coalition politics, parliamentary committees, labour boards, university bodies and local governments all exist to channel conflict into institutions. A democracy that relies exclusively on executive command gradually empties these mediating structures of meaning.

XII. The RSS, BJP and the Question of Democratic Legacy

Any assessment of contemporary Indian politics must also examine the historical evolution of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Historians broadly agree that the RSS, founded in 1925, focused primarily on Hindu social organisation rather than leading the major mass campaigns of the anti-colonial movement such as the Non-Cooperation Movement, Civil Disobedience Movement or Quit India Movement. Individual members participated in various capacities, but the organisation as a whole was not a central force in those nationwide struggles.

After independence, the political tradition associated with the RSS evolved through the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and later the BJP. It participated in electoral politics, opposed the Emergency, and eventually emerged as a dominant national party. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement of the 1980s and 1990s became its most significant mass mobilisation campaign, reshaping Indian politics around questions of religion, identity and nationalism.

The democratic challenge today is not whether the BJP has the right to govern; repeated electoral victories have unquestionably given it that right. The challenge is whether overwhelming electoral strength will be accompanied by equal commitment to institutional restraint, transparency and accommodation of dissent. Majoritarian legitimacy and constitutional democracy are not identical. The Constitution protects opponents as well as supporters.

XIII. Transparency, Temples and the Public Trust Question

Debate over the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust reflects a broader national question: how should religious institutions that receive enormous public donations be regulated? The trust was created in 2020 following the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya judgment, and government officials serve on its board alongside religious representatives. RTI activists have argued that such institutional links justify greater transparency, while the trust has maintained that it is not a “public authority” under the Right to Information Act. The matter has been contested through legal and administrative proceedings.

It is therefore inaccurate to state categorically that there is “no audit” or that wrongdoing has been legally established. What can be said is that significant public debate exists regarding disclosure of donations, land transactions, decision-making procedures and the applicability of transparency laws. Comparable religious bodies—including the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams in Andhra Pradesh, the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board in Jammu and Kashmir, the Guruvayur Devaswom in Kerala and the Travancore Devaswom Board—operate under statutory frameworks that provide varying degrees of public oversight and financial reporting. Whether the Ayodhya trust should be brought under a similar regime is a legitimate democratic question requiring legal and parliamentary debate rather than unverified accusation.

Transparency is not hostility to faith. On the contrary, institutions built in the name of faith often command greater public confidence when their finances and decisions are open to scrutiny. The principle is simple: the larger the public trust, the stronger the case for public accountability.

XIV. How Democracies Become Authoritarian

Authoritarianism rarely arrives announcing itself. It advances through habits: treating critics as enemies, rewarding political defection, weakening independent institutions, concentrating media narratives, and converting electoral majorities into claims of moral infallibility. Citizens gradually become accustomed to the idea that disagreement is disloyalty.

India’s constitutional founders feared precisely this possibility. B.R. Ambedkar warned that constitutional morality required restraint from both rulers and citizens. Jawaharlal Nehru argued that criticism was indispensable to parliamentary government. Even leaders who enjoyed enormous popularity recognised that democratic authority must remain answerable.

The danger today is not simply the strength of one party. It is the weakening of the expectation that governments must explain themselves to opponents. Delimitation debates, party defections, investigative agencies, media concentration and restrictions on protest are all contested political questions. Taken individually, each can be defended as lawful. Taken together, they create a perception that power is becoming increasingly insulated from dissenting voices. Perception itself matters in a democracy because legitimacy depends not only on legality but also on trust.

XV. Sonam Wangchuk and the Future of Democratic Conversation

The immediate issue before the country is not whether every demand raised by Sonam Wangchuk or his supporters should be accepted. Governments may conclude that some demands are impractical, excessive or unsupported by evidence. Democratic politics allows disagreement. What democracy cannot afford is indifference.

A government confident in its position should have no fear of open dialogue. It should meet protesters, present evidence, explain constraints and justify its decisions publicly. If the demand is rejected, let it be rejected after hearing, reasoning and accountability. Silence is not strength. Distance is not authority.

The history of India’s great democratic movements—from Gandhi and Bhagat Singh to Sriramulu, Tara Singh, Anna Hazare and G.D. Agrawal—teaches a consistent lesson: the fast unto death becomes powerful only when people believe ordinary channels have failed. Every hunger strike is therefore also a referendum on the responsiveness of institutions.

A republic that forces citizens to speak through suffering has already lost part of its democratic imagination. The task before India is not merely to end one fast. It is to rebuild the habit of listening before another citizen feels compelled to place his body between power and conscience.

“The body becomes a political argument only when institutions cease to listen.”

“Gandhi’s fasts worked not because the British lacked force, but because they feared the moral consequences of ignoring suffering.”

“A democracy is judged not by how loudly the government speaks, but by how seriously it hears its critics.”

“The question is not whether every protest must win; the question is whether every protester remains visible to the republic.”

References

1. Brown, Judith. Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope. Yale University Press, 1989.

2. Gandhi, M.K. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Navajivan, 1927.

3. Nanda, B.R. Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 1958.

4. Noorani, A.G. The Trial of Bhagat Singh. Oxford University Press, 1996.

5. Singh, Bhagat. Jail Notebook and Other Writings. LeftWord Books, 2007.

6. Jalal, Ayesha. Self and Sovereignty. Routledge, 2000.

7. Guha, Ramachandra. India After Gandhi. HarperCollins, 2007.

8. Hardgrave, Robert L. The Dravidian Movement. Popular Prakashan, 1965.

9. Brass, Paul R. Language, Religion and Politics in North India. Cambridge University Press, 1974.

10. Singh, Khushwant. A History of the Sikhs, Vol. 2. Princeton University Press, 1966.

11. Agrawal, G.D. (Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand), public letters and memoranda on Ganga conservation, 2008–2018.

12. MacSwiney, Terence. Principles of Freedom. Talbot Press, 1921.

13. Beresford, David. Ten Men Dead: The Story of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987.

14. Purvis, June. Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography. Routledge, 2002.

15. Chávez, César. An Organizer’s Tale. Penguin, 1997.

16. Dahl, Robert. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. Yale University Press, 1971.

17. Levitsky, Steven & Ziblatt, Daniel. How Democracies Die. Crown, 2018.

18. Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Harcourt, 1951.

19. Ambedkar, B.R. Constituent Assembly Debates, 25 November 1949.

20. Supreme Court of India. M. Siddiq (D) Thr. Lrs v. Mahant Suresh Das & Ors (Ayodhya Judgment), 2019.

 

Sanatan Dharma vs India today

    A new debate has been perpetuated on the statement of Udaynidhi Stalin, a minister of Youth affairs and Sports Development in Tamil Nadu Government who happens to be son of M.K. Stalin, Chief Minister of that state. Addressing a conference in Chennai, he equated the Sanatan Dharma with dengu, malaria, fever and corona and further stated not merely to oppose it but eradicate it. His statement was endorsed by A. Raja, an another leader of DMK and Priyank Khadge who is son of Congress President Mallikarjun Khadge. His so called statement was grabbed by the BJP as if boon. The party picked the issue to malign the image not only of DMK but majority parties of newly constituted INDIA alliance branding them as anti-Hindu and against the basic concept of Indianess. It is deliberate conscious effort of the BJP to subvert the gains of opposition and setting a narrative for the forthcoming parliamentary election. The battery of national level spokespersons has been entrusted with the diatribe against the DMK and against the other opposition parties in proxy. Prime Minister Narender Modi pressed himself in this imbroglio sensing the gravity of the issue and asked his party and ministers to aggressively raise this issue with the public.

    Sanatan Dharma is a Sanskrit term that can be loosely translated as eternal religion. Over the time it is used as the synonyms to Hinduism in 19th century.  The word Sanatan appears in Bhagvad Gita in reference to knowledge of the soul which is eternal. The five basic participles of Sanatan Dhrama are Karma, Dharma, Moksha, Yoga and Ahimsa. Dharma generally refer to a structured religion or religious duties as in Islam, Christianity, Budhism which are monotheistic religions. The term Dharma in Hinduism refers to nature such as dharma of fire to burn, river to flow, air to blow. Abstractly, dharma is unchangeable nature of human beings irrespective of any religious affiliation. The term Hindu was coined by Persians for the people living beyond river Sindhu. Later on Greeks invaders referred the people of trans Sindhu or Indus rives as Indu and that slang into Indians over the time.

Thousands of years before the term Hindu came into existence, the term Sanatan Dharma finds reference in Vedas. The duties have been broadly classified into Sanatan Dharma( spiritual in nature and can not change from person to person) and Varnasharma Dharma (duties performed according to the system of four varnas i.e. social division and four stages of life). The latter part is the source of inherent contradictions, exploitation, ownership of resources, segmentation of the society in rigid social hierarchy, subjugation and evolution of caste system in Hindu Dharma. This bred into gross inequality, repression, exploitation of all kinds and shun the minimum rights of a human. The well chanted phrase of Goswami Tulsidas in Ram Charit Manas “dhol, gawar, pashu, shudra, nari. Sakal tadan ke adhikari (Drums, the illiterate, lower castes, animals and women deserve to be beaten to straighten). The great Tulsidas might have propounded this equation on the bases of conditions of that time but it denotes clearly that society particularly Hindu society was badly infested with inequality and repression.

Gandhi has campaigned against and commented on the caste system vigorously during the freedom struggle but he recognized it as an integral part of the society and preached the harmony amongst the castes. He wrote in Young India “From the economic point of view, its value was once very great. It ensured hereditary skills; it limited competition. It is best remedy against the pauperism and it had all the advantage of trade guide. Although it didn’t foster adventure or invention there, it is not known to have come in the way either. Historically speaking, caste may be regarded as man’s experiment or social adjustment in the laboratory of Indian society. If we can prove it to be success, it can be offered to the world as a heaven and as the best remedy against heartless competition and social disintegration born of avarice and greed.”

The view of Ambedkar on religion and the caste system were more vociferous as he had encountered the vagaries of caste and religion existing during his period. He said “ Religion must mainly be a matter of principles only. It cannot be a matter of rules. The moment it degenerates in rules, it ceases to be a religion, as it kills responsibility which is an essence of true religious act.” Ambedkar castigated the caste system prevalent in India and noted that “Caste is not a physical object like a wall of bricks or a line of barbed wire which prevents the Hindus from co-mingling and which has, therefore, to be pulled down. Caste is a notion; it is a state of mind.” Ambedkar commented on caste system in his famous book ‘Annihilation of caste’ saying that “ Caste is another name for control. Caste puts a limit a limit on the enjoyment. Caste does not allow a person to transgress caste limits in pursuit of his enjoyment. That is the meaning of such caste restrictions as inter-dining and inter-marriage.” He further extend his argument by saying “ Religion, social status, and property are all source of power and authority which one man has, to control the liberty of another.”   

Bhagat Singh criticized the Brahmanical theory of karma in one of his article ‘Problems of the untouchability’, which postulates that people are assigned caste or varna according to the merit of their last birth. He emphatically castigate this thought and practice in his famous book ‘Why I am an ashiest” where he says “well, you Hindus, you say all the present sufferers are belong to the class of siiners of the births. Good. You say the present oppressors' were saintly people in their previous births, hence they enjoy the power. Let me admit that your ancestors were very shrewd people; they tried to find out theories strong enough to hammer down all the efforts of reason and disbelief.” in the same book he criticizes the “varna system” and says that these rules and laws related with the varna system are the inventions of the privileged ones’ to justify their usurped power, riches and superiority.

Dravidian are influenced by iconoclastic and atheistic concept. They dissociate themselves from religious affiliations. They consider Hinduism as a Brahmanical and Sanskritic and proponent of irrationalism and foolish beliefs. E.V. Ramaswamy who is revered as Periyar and father of Dravidian movement who spearheaded the movement against caste and gender inequality. Periyar movement has been the guiding spirit of Dravidian movement which was an anti-caste movement and largely against the religion. Pariyar was critical to Ramayan as it upholds the caste principles. The movement and ideology of atheistic streak of Periyar was furthered by C.N. Annadurai and M.K.Karunanidhi.   

RSS is the chief patron and proponent of Hindutva philosophy which was initited by V.D.Savarkar. The mission of RSS is “The Hindu culture is the life-breath of Hindusthan. It is therefore, clear that if Hidusthan is to be protected, we should first nourish the Hindu culture. If Hindu culture perishes in Hindusthan itself, and if the Hindu society ceases to exist, it will hardly be appropriate to refer to the mere geographical entity that remains as Hindusthan. Mere geographical lumps do not make a nation. The entire society should be in such a vigilant and organized condition that no one would dare to cast an evil eye on any of our points of honour.”

It clearly establishes that there is unavoidable and inherent contradictions between those who propound the idea of Sanatan Dharma and the majority section of the Indian society which have been victim of this regressive, exploitative and traditional approach over centuries whether they are rational thinking people or Ambedkarites or followers of the great Dravidian movement or communists. The philosophy of the ancient Sanatan Dharma potentially would negate the advancement of the society through continuously and unabated struggles by the significant sections of the society. Adherence with the idea of perseverance of Sanatan Dharma would necessitate the acceptance of all maladies emanated from this whether it is caste system or gender inequality or basic principles of the Indian Constitution; chiefly sovereignty, fundamental Rights, directive principles of state policy, socialism, secularism, judicial independence, federalism etc. Ours is a democratic country with huge and varied diversity plurality  is the reality of India. An idea of certain thought like perpetuation of Sanatan Dharama will do more harm than good. It may suit some political parties or social organizations to advance their vested interests and might be a tool to grab the power but India is a vast and diverse  nation encompasses of different many religions, tribes, social groups of big and small size and all these have their own way of leading life with distinct thought and practices. The statement of Udaynidhi, a scion of Krunanidhi who inherited the ideology of opposition of the Hinduism from E. V. Ramaswamy, C.N. Annadurai and M.K. Karunanidhi, that compared the   Hinduism with dengu, malaria, fever and corona is not good in taste due to his selection of words and should have been avoided this slang but on the same time the statement of his, strongly underline the deliberate tendency to mitigate the progress and achievement made by the Indian societies through persistent struggles against the hegemony of the exploitative forces who had the power and resources and ruled over the masses for centauries and; these forces treated them worse than an animal. The diatribe of rightists  is indicative of this notion that these forces represented the  Sanatan Dharma in the society. The statement should have been taken in the broader perspective of the social development. The position taken by the BJP on this issue justifies the cliam of those who say the ideology of Sangh Parivar is against the scheduled castes, backward  castes, farmers and religious minorities. Let’s see how the far right thinking RSS conglomeration takes this new debate to counter the nascent formed opposition alliance of INDIA? It is to be seen how this debate strengthens the Hindutva ideology and give rich dividends in the coming parliamentary elections?