Hindu Colours and Skin Blues

It was June 1996 and the 11^th Lok Sabha was in session,  Sushma Swaraj was speaking and a no confidence vote was being debated. Among many other things she said in India parents name their children Somnath (his  father has a right wing orientation) and his political orientation was left. Sushma Swaraj’s emphasis on name is to tie the political choices to lineage, family, religion and tradition. Through emphasis on name, Somnath, she intended to mock those who ‘belittle’ religion, misunderstand 'culture'. 21 years later, Sushma Swaraj’s party, the BJP is in power, she as external ‘affairs’ minister reacted to attacks on African nationals in the parliament, this year in April. She expressed her surprise that India is being bracketed as xenophobic and racist and treated such issues as more or less settled.

 

Can one ‘settle’ in this tradition without settling scores about skin, its colour, apart from bearing a name that reveals religion? Another leader Tarun Vijay belonging to the ruling party points towards the black skin and the acceptance the south Indians enjoy. Aren’t Indians brown, we racists, No?

 

Is there a link probably a chink in the tradition that manifests in attacks on Africans as our pious and honorable external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj has pointed out much eralier, while talking about names? Maybe its not name, then has the skin colour failed to link with our tradition? These issues needs internal settlement or external articulation? For the attack is acceptance, the ‘domestic’ mode of settlement is not confined to home, the domestic or the issues of domesticity alone. The 'domestic' issues harbour attack and accommodate violence. Is there an internal or external relation between docile and domicile with the name, the skin colour, the tradition, that is a prerequisite for Swaraj?

The fact that Africans were and are being beaten blue and black will not be erased by assertions and statements alone. Thinking traditionally, Hindu religion cannot or, should not have difficulty with black coloured skin. Krishna is black, shyam is his varna. Varna, jati, caste, is our common sense, practice and mode of being with our tradition. The Krishna that adorns the walls of Hindu households or stands pretty in temple, whether blue or black is always coloured. 

 

Raja Ravi Verma(1848-1906) decided to paint Krishna blue, and calendars, paintings and wall-papers carrying his image flooded India and the route to the consciousness of Krishna in modern India is through Verma’s imprints and lithographs. One imagines Krishna largely through these images. Krishna is deft and ambiguous, the word Krishna means black, but he is rendered blue. Was Raja Ravi Verma avoiding the racial import of the colour black associated with Krishna and so painted him blue? Or gods cannot bear the colour ordinary mortals have so Krishna is blue? Anyway, artistic sensitivities canvass more than just the colour, and cannot be framed within political correctness alone.

Those who attack people from Africa, why don’t they think of Krishna or are not reminded of him when they meet black people? The African BLACK is not the hindu black, the shyam? The sight of Africans gives them the blues, has modernity degenerated our tradition and our access to black?  Or Hindu colour codes different? It is critical to get the colour, right.

 

Has the lotus stem sprouted from recognition of this rot and the promise of revival of the Indian tradition? That the rise of Hindu tradition and political Hinduism will find a fix for this rot and reinvent is the creed that is being fostered by the ruling political party. So what are we going to do about and what are we doing to the coloured people is not random? There might be ‘issues’ with equating Hindu with the Indian, this deliberate equivalence has acquired political purchase. In fact its repeated and inconsistent equivalence of Hindu with India passes as inventiveness and marks a new resurgent India. Inconsistencies and contradictions are ‘academic’ issues not suited for real life? For the moment it seems what matters is that we connect to the tradition, how the issues pan out is secondary.

 

Societies aren't frozen entity or immune to influences form within and without and dynamism and vectors of change are sure signs of vitality. However, only the bulwark of criticality can address the pitfalls of blind imitation and the risks of social regression while allowing societies to innovate.

Lord Krishna and love go together in Hindu tradition and he is black, if not blue. His pastoral mooring are making news and on this front advancing the cause of protecting his herd-- the cows has taken center stage. Remember a law is due. Once the noun skin and its colour i.e. varna and the verb skinning is pieced together it would be feasible to bring everyone within the Hindu fold? How we make sense of the Africans, in this emerging larger picture of the rise of Hindu India, global India, the polite India, if you please is part of the same exercise? And exercise involves and engages limbs.

Lord Krishna is at ease with both violence and leela, though he is partial to raas-leela. Krishna condones, almost preaches violence but refuses to wield weapons in Mahabharata, the mythical great-war. His elder brother (bare bhai), also a non-participant in the great war, Balram uses the plough as a weapon and stands for Hal hee bal hai, bal hee hal hai(Plough is power, Power is solution) -- as a cure all-solution for issues that arise with collective life. Balram is not blue, he is order, an elder too. The pastoral moorings thus invoked may concretise as cow protection but they might as well take the form of farming. As the scale of farming gets bigger, the question of labour- black, indentured, dalit and migrant and their social position would inevitably come up. But have they? Modernity affects the tradition and community, as an anxiety it is not exclusive to pastoral life. Or the call for going back to an authentic community new. For example we know of romantics vouching for communal life and collective farming at the beginning of last century.

 

Important issues of this scale and nature aren't taking center stage or finding innovative articulations or are going through experimental stages. The identification of issues and forms of redressal has taken a banal form, violent twist and regressive turn.

Leela is not at fault but under western influence the leela has turned into eve-teasing and so a squad against it to guard society from ill influences and protect vulnerable women is the form response took in Uttar Pradesh, where recently BJP received an unprecedented electoral mandate. The western/English imported ideas have corrupted our tradition, so we name the squad as anti-Romeo, it sort of fits. One cannot be anti leela, it enjoys popular support and participation in Gujrat, but one can be anti Romeo. Some people in this country India are so cut off from our pristine tradition and culture that when leela is being reinvented right before their eyes, ‘they’ don’t even see it! Kaliyug, ghor Kaliyug. And kaliyug is about blacks, isn’t, we are ‘back’ with the blacks while we were moving our post. Rot is easily discernible but like garbage (shit if you prefer) readily regenerates. In order to move forward should we then ride the engine of popular culture, mainstream Bollywood, they have a song, Ram chahe leela, leela chahe Ram?

The other day Navratra got over. Occurring twice in a year in Hindu calendar, these ten days in north India, witness at least two parallel and crisscrossing traditions/tales vying with each other for attention and participation: the story of Rama and the story of goddess Durga. On the eight day, mahaasthmi, elders bow down and touch the feet of children, nubile girls, before puberty to be precise and seek their blessings. This year after the ritual, the following day, on Ramnavmi, once blessings were secured, children were gifted weapons to carry in the Ramnavmi procession. Bal leela at play? The Durga cult on the same day worships Kali, may the goddess Kali triumph over the evil-doers who hand over weapons to children. A black little black boy once wrote a poem called ‘coloured’, and is attributed to Oglala Lakota. It reads:

“When I'm born I'm black, when I grow up I'm black, when I'm in the sun I'm black, when I'm sick I'm black, when I die I'm black, and you... when you're born you're pink, when you grow up you're white, when you're cold you're blue, when you're sick you're blue, when you die you're green and you dare call me colored.”

 

Skin is alive in hindu tradition and ensures a ‘life’ in India. The colour milky white still features in matrimonial advertisements as a desirable quality. Goddess kali is for worshiping; her colour divine, white skin’s allure is for ordinary folks, the dichotomy is clear and it works. The Fairness cream has not died, it is much sought after. A good complexion and fair skin is the promise of a significant number of commercial products and they sell. The beauty industry knows how to tap the skin and keep it in circulation. It allows one in their spiritual moment to wonder-- would lord Krishna care what skin colour I have? In that moment the skin won’t matter, Is salvation colourless? Or Hindus secretly believe Krishna fancies the white, wasn’t Radha gori?

 

Partha Chatterjee, a scholar of colonial difference of India from western nations argues that our route to modernity was based on our cultural, religious differences. India, preserved its inner (ghar, spiritual) by guarding its religious observance and tradition and placed the white colonizer in the outer (bahar, material) realm in order to stand on its own feet and to mobilise the nation and organise its nationalist thought. This strategy worked in the colonial period. White and black are entangled in their coloured oppositional binaries, what about brown and black? Black and blue chime and rhyme as Krishna plays the flute. How did the black and brown got pitted against each other? Is it the skin that induces us to sin against a kin?

Today when Indians see an African in our midst, are they reminded of colonial masters and ‘white’ rule? Indians, one would expect would know what consciousness of skin means. Is the black the new foreign? Is black the new ‘white’ in India? They are foreign, aren’t they, the blacks. So were the whites. Swaraj and xenophobia go well together, is Swaraj convoluted or it is the reasoning? How is convoluted reasoning related to Swaraj? 

 

Substituting the white with the black and venting our anger against them or, on behalf of ‘white', honoring the skin, ours and theirs. Recreating and enacting the past in the present keeps the tradition alive. A violent act in the present breaks away from the past and charts out the contours of the future? We cannot change skin colours, but can substitute one for another, black for white. Black and white is clear and  no one can get more real. Our colour the varna is the part of our continuous and unbroken tradition going back as far as Krishna, his herds and his coloured skin goes. Aren’t we condemned to think about skin, even if it gets pretty ugly, whatever the period may it be?

                                        

Ashish Nandy argues that the colonial period saw a loss of self and tradition and we may rediscover the lost self through violence. Is violence then, towards the blacks not towards the white a route to rediscover a new Hindu self? Purging and cleansing what plagues and haunts our tradition today a necessity? 

 

We aren’t an independent Nation yet, for Swaraj requires reorganization of our society on more or less Hindu ways? The Hindu reorganisation desire is to right the secular 'taint' in the Hindu body politic, which demands accommodation for the Muslims. It would require an overhaul and reordering of the social relations. Those who sought failure of secularism are busy pointing out that Muslims are too religious and Hindus need to be more Hindu.

 

It's a zero sum game and gain in our tradition will offset what we lost in our colonized modern minds? If we haven’t, let’s regain and reinvent the tradition, reclaim the nation, Swaraj. A new age Swaraj possible without a guiding god? Adopt Krishna, for Krishna is shyam, he encompasses varna, stands for love and will not wield weapon in the great war but would preach. Krishna is not from upper caste and his ambiguity would account for contradictions plus he is great. With digitized modern financial transaction and Krishna being our soft mascot, the global brand, India’s rise to the superpower status is assured.

Blacks are known as those who sing blues and they sing in all hues. The colour black is all for blue! We, Indians beat them black and blue. So we are for Krishna or against him? Why mind a few glitches, Krishna is ambivalent, ‘new’ India is clear. 

 

Third-world societies search for an indigenous orientation whether black or brown a reflection of their colonial modernity? The turn toward a rooted, authentic and indigenous modernity  at its best has remained unfulfilled and at its worst a bane, forever churning the present to no end.