The colour saffron

AT the three-day annual conference of SAHMAT held from August 4 to August 6, attention was called to the inroads being made into the country's pluralistic ethos by the so-called "saffronisation" (read communalisation) of education.

I was amazed and inspired by the minds and the organisational capacity of the coordinators. They have been trying for the past 12 years to resist the overwhelming of India by bigots. They have shown commonsense in welcoming all shades of political opinion except, what they call "saffron."

Words and images have an invidious and an awesome power, but those who use them to defend or advocate even the best of causes are sometimes amazingly insensitive to their nuances and associations.

Language usage is not a matter for the cognoscenti alone, after all - everybody speaks, everybody listens. The first time I heard the term "saffronisation" being applied to the terrible and shameful phenomenon of Hindu dogmatism and bigotry, I wondered how it was being translated into Indian languages. Soon enough, the word began to be used in every context where Hindutva needed to be countered, and the whole debate about communalism sickened ordinary Indians in whose collective consciousness the "saffron" or ochre robe of renunciation occupies a certain place. It is definitely pushing many into the Hindutva camp. The excesses of zealots tend to have this kind of effect.

Granted that Hindu temples especially in certain parts of the country, and especially in the recent past, fly orange flags. It does not immediately follow that that orange, or "saffron" is the colour of that complex pattern of beliefs, practices, ethics and attitudes that goes by the name of Hinduism. Much more profound is the awareness among the population that "saffron" or brownish ochre is the colour worn by those who have given up worldly life.

To wear coarse unbleached cotton, sometimes dyed orange, or allowed to fade, was to announce yourself as a person who no longer lives a householder's life, and is cutting himself/herself off from society for a life wholly devoted to seeking and/or service to others.

The Muslim sufi, the Hindu or the Buddhist monk or sanyasi, and now Christian nuns in India are identified as "holy" persons by this colour, or by something approximating it, including off- white.

Renunciation or tyaga has an immense meaningfulness in all parts of the subcontinent. Intelligent people never mistook it for just "cutting loose". Some who wore saffron/ochre have been serious about giving up material comforts and positions of power in a search for psychological/spiritual insights. Others are at best pathetic losers in the rat race of samsaara, parasites, drifters and daydreamers. At worst they have been frauds. But frauds, of course, do not restrict themselves to any colour. We have had them wearing pure white khadi, too.

The crude attempts to impart a pro-Hindutva perspective to history for clearly political reasons do not by any stretch of imagination deserve to be given the "saffron" colour. At a time when the outrage against the communalisation of education and the social sciences needs desperately to be on target, the unfortunate term "saffronisation" has boomeranged badly. It has become a brutal lathi to beat secularists with. At the Sahmat Conference it hurt to hear even our finest and most respected historians, all of them presumably proficient in Indian languages, exposing themselves this way and damaging an invaluable cause.

Ultimately, though, I think words begin to have an impact at a personal, individual level. To reach the sahmat or cultural consensus for which we yearn, we must no longer suffer ("Sah mat" means do not suffer.) the misuse of our traditions even by ourselves.

We may or may not want to go the spiritual way called the "raja marga" by Thyagaraja (whose name means "King of Renunciation", one of Shiva's names), or even acknowledge that it exists. We may prefer to struggle up the rocky road of rationalism and taste success building bridges of science and technology and excavating tunnels of psycho-analysis. Or at some time in our lives, we may find ourselves trying every which way, to reach a sane and compassionate understanding (sahmat, again) of ourselves, and of our society.

VASANTHA SURYA

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