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is sheer escapism and worse (dishonesty) to talk of bride burning or
maltreatment of women among Hindus in this specific context. Apart
from the undeniable fact that Hindu women are coming into their own
in millions as a result of education and employment outside the
home, laws exist and more stringent ones can be enacted to deal with
such problems among Hindus. Muslim women cannot be given similar
protection under the existing dispensation. Moreover, no one can
possibly suggest that Hindus have insulated themselves from the
winds of change. On the contrary, Hindu society is being, as it
were, reconstituted and there is no organized resistance to it.
One of the greatest problems of Hindu
society, and, by that logic, of Indian society, is the fragmentation
of the Hindu social order into more and more castes. Inevitably, our
fundamental struggle is to restore a kind of unity, without which,
it makes little sense to talk of Hinduism. We have to produce a
sense of coherence in an order which has become,over the centuries,
increasingly fragmented and chaotic. All our social movements in the
last 200 years and all our political movements in the last 100 years
should be seen in that context. So viewed they would not look
divisive and, therefore, unhealthy. I do not, for instance, regard
Kanshi Ram and the Bahujan Samaj Party which he has launched as a
disaster in spite of his spiteful attacks on Brahmins who have
helped preserve our heritage under extremely trying circumstances.
This is part of a larger struggle to re- serve the process of
fragmentation and restore the original chaturvarna (fourfold) order
to the extent it is viable in the present context. The struggle is
going to be long and painful. It requires large minds and large
hearts to be able to accommodate so many currents which are
addressed to a common purpose being a new sense of coherence, a new
sense of unity without break in continuity.
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