What Ganga-jal oath means for India

One phrase in a message Tulsi Gabbard sent me four years ago I shall never forget. “Our world is in dire need of servant leaders,” she wrote. I was reminded of it again when a few days after Tulsi announced her campaign to seek the Democratic nomination for US president in 2020, the papers carried a picture of police personnel detailed for duty at the Ardh Kumbh mela in Allahabad (sorry, Prayagraj) with their left arms extended in smart salutation but their right hands cupped in a curiously unmilitary gesture. Being in Adityanath’s Uttar Pradesh, they were taking the oath in Ganga-jal.

The connection is that Tulsi is the first Hindu member of the US Congress. It’s a theoretical connection for no matter how piously UP’s chief minister drapes himself in saffron, it will be a long time before his state will live down Justice AN Mulla’s comment that “the police force in Uttar Pradesh is an organised gang of criminals”. Someone or other — the National Human Rights Commission one day, Markandey Katju another — always recalls that indictment. No one expects a Ganga-jal oath to be any more binding than the oaths that are commonly sworn every day in thousands of law courts up and down the country.

My concern is what Ganga-jal portends for the national psyche. I am all for Narendra Modi’s commitment to Hindus in Muslim countries. They were Indians once and have become foreigners only because of high-level statecraft in which they played no part. Moreover, they are at the mercy of unsympathetic populations and regimes. If India doesn’t care for them, who will? But Hindutva through the backdoor is a different matter. Ganga-jal oath-taking might be dismissed as another Indian ritual like blowing a welcoming conch shell or lighting a lamp to inaugurate an exhibition but if it continues, all the ceremonial of the state will become exclusively Hindu.

It wouldn’t have been permitted in Tulsi’s country where any attempt to impose Christianity is struck down as transgressing the First Amendment to the constitution which forbids Congress to “make” any “law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...”. This was demonstrated in 1988 when the American Civil Liberties Union and the Jewish War Veterans objected to a 65-ft cross at Camp Smith near Pearl Harbour in Tulsi’s Hawaii. The cross was dismantled after a federal court ruled it violated the constitutional separation of church and state, and replaced with an 80-ft flagpole which still flies a huge American flag. History was repeated in 1997 when the Hawaii Citizens for the Separation of State and Church complained that the 37-ft white steel cross at Schofield Barracks, built with public funds was a “blatant and obvious violation” of the First Amendment. When the attorney for Hawaii Citizens heard that the federal court had ordered the cross to be dismantled, he declared, “If this is true, the action sends a strong message that the wall between state and church stands tall and forbids government from endorsing Christianity in particular over other religions.”

The wall between state and temple is being blasted as surely as the Babri Masjid was demolished. If this continues, India will one day be overrun by old, diseased and dying cattle. Gangs of toughs will roam the country butchering anyone they don’t like because they are alleged beef-eaters, while other thugs attack bars, discos and dance halls. The reinvented past will truly be another country. Rewriting history will be the most important nationalised industry aimed at inventing an ancient post-modern miracle whose seers and sants miraculously anticipated every single Western scientific discovery before it had even been discovered.

I much prefer Tulsi Gabbard’s concept of “servant leadership” where the leader “embodies the spirit of aloha (love, affection, peace, compassion and mercy in the Hawaiian language); one who actually loves and cares for others and our environment.” It saddened me that there’s little likelihood of her propagating that enlightened mission from the White House. Then I read her clarification, “Sometimes people think I’m just referring to ‘political leaders,’ but I’m not. By ‘leaders’, I mean everyone who is in a position to influence others — whether they be judges, business people, educators, doctors, bus drivers, parents, journalists, etc.” As for herself, she asks, “Am I going to have the attitude of a loving servant and well-wisher or the attitude of a self-interested exploiter?” It’s a question every Indian politician should have to address.