In Greek theology a distinction is made between akreibia- a rigid legalistic approach- and economia- a suave discretionary method of management. In India, there is a distinction between satya- which is substantive but apophatic and thus non-homiletic- and artha- hermeneutics as an Economic, indeed Game theoretic, activity as essential as 'tamas'- sleep, instinctual drives- for Human flourishing. Akreibia is rejected because all Law is considered purely conventional 'samskar'.
This three-fold division might appear to militate for a complete separation between 'satya' and the soteriology it motivates, and 'artha', the econo-political realm, whose operation improves, at least in material terms, the life of the instincts. However, precisely because Truth is apophatic whereas Compassion (karuna) militates for a suave economia, no such rigid division need actually obtain. The Buddha and Mahavira and the other great founders of Soteriological traditions, contributed greatly to improved 'economia' and thus a more comfortable 'tamas'.
Sadly, in India, as power over shaping the economy slipped from Indian hands, Economia- except of a parochial type- ceased to be something with which Indian Divines could engage much with. There were exceptions. Swami Vivekananda comes immediately to mind. But he died young. What was lacking in independent India was Divines with an accurate 'Structural Causal Model' of the Economy. By the late Sixties, one saw learned Upadhyayas spout pseudo-Marxist crap. This didn't matter very much if they got on with their spiritual studies and spread, by the mere perfume of their presence, habits of thrift, courage in enterprise, and stamina in altruistic endeavors, to their disciples. Still, it must be said, India seemed barren of an alethic theology with a sensible theory of Economics.
Thus, there was a time when Swami Agnivesh- facile and self-contradictory though his oeuvre undoubtedly was- appeared to be the Hindu equivalent of the 'Liberation Theologians' who were in vogue in the Seventies and the Eighties.
Then, quite suddenly, the Soviet Union collapsed. The Chinese Communist Party had already decided that 'to get rich was glorious'. What Marx actually said was 'to each according to his contribution'. The Poor, like the Stupid, we would always have with us. Create a Social Minimum by all means but don't give them another thought. The cult of what Swami Vivekananada had called 'Daridra Naryana' was one which perpetuated not Godliness but Poverty. Its votaries were virtue signalling imbeciles. Swami Agnivesh was one such. He even appeared on 'Big Boss'! The Arya Samaj was ashamed they had promoted that old fool.
Where did things go wrong for Agnivesh? He had risen rapidly in politics after becoming a Sadhu. For a Telugu Brahmin to become a Minister in Haryana is no small achievement. But the Haryanvis assumed he was bright and educated and that he'd use his knowledge of the Law and Commerce (he had been a lecturer) to some good purpose. Plenty of Sadhus turn out to be good administrators. Having the backing of the Arya Samaj should have enabled this supposed Man of God to have helped the highly pragmatic and productive people of Haryana to rise up. Sadly, Agnivesh wasn't really a Sadhu. He was a nautanki who wanted to create a tamasha. This he did by barging into some official banquet with a bunch of ragamuffins demanding they be fed! Clearly the man was suffering delusions of grandeur. Charisma is a gift. He didn't have it. But he was old enough to have found this out for himself. Not even a nautanki, he came across as an abusive hijra who had donned saffron robes rather than women's clothes.
Why did Agnivesh quit his Ministerial job and turn into a useless tosser? The answer is that he did not understand that India is very very poor. Making it richer is the only way to solve its problems. Sadly, by a paradox that Edwin Lim, of the World Bank, was to discover, setting up an NGO, perhaps grabbing a Jantar Mantar bungalow in the process, and gaining foreign backers so as to prevent Development paid better and garnered more fame than fixing India's ills. Agnivesh pretended that India was poor not because of low productivity but because some people were evil and others were too ignorant to see that this was so. To be fair, Agnivesh was only following in the footsteps of nutters like Mahatma Gandhi, Acharya Vinobha Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan. In the latter two instances, the problem with 'Bhoodan'- (i.e. voluntary land redistribution)- was that there was no Institutional follow through. Agnivesh's campaigns against child and bonded labor, too, could have helped some poor people. But he wasn't interested in doing the boring Organizational work. The 'rescued', more often than not, had to return to the same sort of labor. Meanwhile, Agnivesh had moved on to some other cause. While people believed he was a big wheel in the Arya Samaj, they were prepared to buy into his hype. But his luck was running out. It turned out, he had no disciples- Satyarthi, his protege, who got a Nobel Prize, was accused by him of embezzlement- and his fellow Sadhus considered him a crackpot with only a superficial knowledge of Hinduism.
This is not to say that ignorance of Hinduism is an obstacle to advancement as a Sadhu Mahatma. But one must have a solid base. Anna Hazare beat drunkards in his native village and thus secured such a base. He, not Agnivesh, presided over the big Gandhian movement- the Lok Pal agitation- of the last decade. Agnivesh was ignominiously booted out of that movement after he was caught on camera urging the Government to stand firm against 'Team Anna', whom he described as 'mad elephants'.
No one knows what happened to the 'Ombudsman', or Lok Pal, demanded by Hazare. Like all the various other panaceas demanded by agitators, nothing changed when the laws were changed. Why? The British had left. Only they cared about their laws.
The truth is Mahatma Gandhi had salience only while India was ruled by foreigners. Once the country became independent, Gandhi's financiers dealt directly with Ministers. Rather mysteriously, the Indian Government did little to prevent the Mahatma's assassination. Indeed, 3 autocrats with the same surname have, strange to say, been assassinated though protecting them would not have been difficult at all. It is not surprising that Rahul Gandhi has shown strategic brilliance in dodging the top job- or even the possibility of getting it.
Agnivesh's problem was that he was protesting against the fact that India was India. Indians shouldn't be so goddamn poor, innit? Because of poverty, the great mass of its people aren't even holding M.B.A or PhD! We must protest against this! The problem with this type of activism is that people have come to see protests against the shittiness of India as one of the causes of Indian shittiness. Swamies and Sadhus are not the problem. Plenty of them are strict disciplinarians and enjoy locking up or 'encounter killing' gangsters. If they are less corrupt than dynasts, Governance could improve. But if they are self-publicists with a Messiah complex, then- like Mahatma Gandhi- they start repeating stupid lies with such vehemence that they end up working a great mischief.
Teesta Setalvad, writing for the Indian Express, gives a sympathetic account of Agnivesh. But what she makes out to be his virtues were instead the causes of his downfall.
Swami Agnivesh’s unique persona brought special meaning to the saffron robe.
The reverse is the case. The Arthashastra, written over 2000 years ago, says that a lot of people wearing saffron are rogues, spies, or charlatans. Agnivesh confirmed that view.
Drawing deep spiritual and metaphysical strength from the faith of the Arya Samaj, a religion that was associated with power and hegemony and had no role in social transformation or justice was of no use to him.
Teesta means that the Arya Samaj was in the vanguard of Hindu revivalism. It welcomed converts to Islam or Christianity back into the Hindu fold. Agnivesh initially joined the Arya Samaj because he was worried about Christian proselytism. But the orthodoxy he found in Haryana was not to his more cosmopolitan Calcutta educated taste. Had he been a genuinely spiritual man he could have set up Orphanages and Schools financed by his devotees. Children rescued in the District would have been able to come up in such Institutions. But he wasn't genuinely spiritual. He was a political animal but without the charisma required to build up a cadre of dedicated disciples. Thus, all he could do was roam around seeking bandwagons to pile on to so as to add to his collection of press clippings. In the end, this hunger for celebrity led to his undoing. He suddenly popped up on Big Boss along with C listers like Shakti Kapoor.
Teesta, disingenuously, asks-
Through the 28 years of our association, what could have been the relationship between this Swami and a woman, an agnostic and her partner, Javed Anand the same?
The answer is a common hunger for publicity and money for their worthless NGOs.
This is probably best summed up in the tribute that he paid to our monthly magazine, Communalism Combat on its 10th anniversary in August 2003, a year after the Gujarat violence of 2002: “The passionate commitment that Communalism Combat exemplifies to disinfect the soul of India, countering the cancer of communalism with the antidote of trans-religious solidarity and uncompromising commitment to justice and equality, makes it the foremost bastion of inspired journalism in our times… this association is an engagement of true spirituality.”
True spirituality, it seems, consists in telling stupid lies about Modi. Common sense tells us that a sitting C.M does not want riots to occur on his watch. Yet these cretins made precisely this allegation and backed it up with lies. They were well rewarded for it but the problem with crying 'Wolf' is that people think you are an attention-seeking liar once the soi disant Wolf turns out to be a highly successful and respected two term Mayor of the Town.
Swamiji’s journey into Indian public life is best remembered through the efforts of the Bandhua Mukti Morcha established in 1981 that culminated into the Bandhua Mukti Morcha vs Union of India judgment, the passing of the law to abolish child labour in India and further explorations in the courts on the deepening of constitutional rights of the most marginalised.
What was the outcome? Did child labor go down? No. Kids rescued by Agnivesh, Shekhar Gupta tells us, had to return to the carpet factories or else starve to death.
This commitment never wavered and we saw him take this into the dark reaches of Chhattisgarh for peace talks with Maoists in 2010, where he was attacked by a Salwa Judum mob while on his way to provide relief to hapless villagers. The experience led him to file an affidavit in the Supreme Court, which had an impact on the judgment banning Salwa Judum a year later.
With the predictable result that the Maoist insurgency got worse.
But for those of us battling the corrosive cancer of communalism,
i.e., Narendra Modi who didn't just get re-elected in Gujarat, he became a two term P.M with a full majority.
it was the Swamiji’s vision of Indian society and state as a multi-hued and diverse, based on an unflinching commitment to secularism and rationality that was so special.
Indeed. It was so special, that even Anglicized Indians started voting for Modi- or giving money to the BJP. In 2014, NaMo was the only candidate any party put forward for the top job. Rahul Gandhi funked it. Congress and the Left were decimated in succeeding elections. Why? They were so special they deserved special education. But their special needs could only be catered for by a wealthy country. If you can't change your Nation, change the Nation you belong to- or at least become openly Anti-National.
He stood tall and proud in his Hinduism
telling everybody who cared to listen that Hinduism was shit
at the Allahabad’s Kumbh Mela, opposite the stall of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) reclaiming a faith that he saw being both militarised and hegemonised.
i.e. he saw Hinduism was standing tall and proud and protested vainly against this outcome.
He marched against the practice of Sati in Rajasthan
though it didn't exist
and he argued with his counterparts from other faiths, questioning notions of “Hell” and “Damnation” and exclusive evangelisation.
Did he persuade anyone that he wasn't a shithead? No? Sad.
His commitment to rationality within faith never wavered. “When the Kumbh fair takes place every year, many die in the stampede. People come to ‘wash their sins. I roam around the fair distributing pamphlets about how all this is a spectacle. How washing in dirty waters [of Ganges] won’t wash off one’s sins, but will cause disease!”
The problem here is that this fool wasn't a Doctor. He wasn't a Scientist. He was a Sadhu who had discovered that his Religion was crap. That's a good reason to stop being a Sadhu. Sins don't really exist in the way that germs do. The mental intention (sankalpa) to be purged of sin, however, is considered efficacious by every type of soteriology. No doubt, the details of how this should be done may differ. Agnivesh clearly believed that Hindu orthopraxy was useless. People should listen to his stupid shite instead. But nobody would do so. Why? He was now stupider and a more of a big fat loser than those of even humbler background and attainments that he met in remote places. Remember, compared to Modi, Agnivesh had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He had become a Minister in 1979. What had he achieved? Nothing at all- unless you count a three day run on Big Boss as compensating for being kicked out of Anna Hazare's Lok Pal agitation.
We had many disagreements, including over the interpretations of revivalist and reformist strains within faiths, but on no issues of real consequence was Swamiji ever on the wrong side.
Because, for Teesta and Agnivesh, no issues of real consequence exist save those involving their own inflated egos.
If there was one blip in this association, it was with events that led to some disillusionment and questions among other, fellow participants in a Peace Train from Delhi to Gujarat in 2002 weeks after the violence.
Agnivesh said Modi wasn't such a bad chap. He had gone 'off-script'. That was the blemish Teesta refers to.
Most relationships endured, however, even as the Swami emerged, albeit with flaws. Who among us, however, can be blemish-less?
Both Teesta and Agnivesh were accused of stealing money from their NGOs. Birds of a kind flock together.
Swami Agnivesh’s was an unwavering rejection of an exclusivist Hinduism — as also any such competitive rendering of Islam or Christianity (younger activists could learn from reading his Keynote Address at the World Conference of Religions, a century after Swami Vivekanand’s historic speech). He berated himself and other religious persons from Abrahamic faiths: “As a religious person, I have no hesitation in recognising that religions have failed human beings.”
Religion, Agnivesh felt, had failed him. He joined the Arya Samaj and, lo and behold!, became a Legislator nine years later. Two years after that he was a Minister. This is a man who dreamed of becoming President of India! But he lost his footing. Decade after decade, his stock declined. Why? India was beginning to rise up economically. Yup, that's right, Neoliberalism was the Satan which dashed Agnivesh's dreams. Boo to Neoliberalism!
In 1998, when the Kalyan Singh government was set to make Saraswati Vandana compulsory in UP’s schools, Agnivesh’s sharp detraction was unique. Praising what the Hindu goddess epitomised, he queried: “The wry humour of the situation becomes apparent when we recall that Saraswati is supposed to be the goddess of learning. UP is a state where illiteracy is endemic. Universal education for all children under 14 years of age, as mandated by the Constitution, has not been a priority with any of the successive governments this state has had since Independence… Could it be that the insult to the goddess of learning in keeping millions of people illiterate is sought to be compensated by forcing school children to do in ritual what the government won’t do in reality?… If we forfeit discernment at this juncture, Saraswati Vandana could well end up as a litany in the cult of political power…”
Either this man performed Saraswati Vandana or he didn't. If he did, why would he object to students learning to do the same? If he didn't, why not say so? It is reasonable to wish that something of no educational value to be omitted from School curriculums. It is not reasonable to wish to limit what is taught purely because some are too poor to receive that instruction. Notice that Agnivesh is imputing a vile motive- a wish to insult the Deity- to others without producing any evidence to justify the suspicion. Suppose he had said 'these people are only interested in Wealth which is the gift of Goddess Laxmi. That is why they want to insult Goddess Sarasvati' then there is some rhyme or reason to his allegation. But he supplied no such reasoning. He was merely insulting and disparaging people who were politically more successful than he himself had been.
In 2006, when Kashi first, and thereafter Mumbai, our city, was ripped by bomb blasts and terror attacks, it was Agnivesh, Father Frazer Mascarenhas and Mufti Fuzail-ur-Rahman Hilal Usmani, who delivered sermons of wise caution instead of allowing us to collapse into an abyss driven by hate.
This will be news to people who lived there at the time. Still it is good to know that these men of different faiths didn't take turns forcibly sodomizing each other. Say what you like, sermons serve a good purpose if they can distract those who give them from mounting each other incessantly.
No wonder, then, that it is the pallbearers of an exclusivist faith who – intolerant of a powerful symbol in saffron that spoke for a more eclectic Hinduism — who attacked him brutally in Jharkand in 2018 again, in an attempt at public humiliation, disrobing, even lynching.
Some ruffians beat up an old man. They weren't pallbearers, they were doing what ruffians do. No doubt, they got a thrill out of battering a guy who was once on Big Boss.
He escaped narrowly but the damage done to an 80-year-old’s health was near-fatal.
Which is why I appeal to all my readers to mount each other incessantly rather than turn up at my door to thrash me. Being beaten is bad for one's health.
Since 2014, he engaged publicly in a direct satire of obscurantist utterances from men in power, even those at the very top.
But it was he who turned into a laughing stock. The whole point of satire is to make people think your enemies are ridiculous. Like the gift of charisma, that of satire, was not given to this silly man.
Videos of these speeches drew support in far-flung villages and towns.
Which is how come NaMo got elected.
He can be seen in one expressing his utter disbelief at the Prime Minister’s contention that in ancient India, the Hindu deity, Ganesha, underwent plastic surgery and his head was replaced by an elephant’s. Or another, in which Agnivesh points out, “The PM said that the Kauravas (characters from a well-known Hindu epic, Mahabharata), multiplied themselves into hundreds. This, they achieved through stem-cell transplants”. Agnivesh laments: “Such lies, such pageantry, such superstitions, and India’s PM is perpetuating these! The country will move towards a deep abyss.”
But it didn't. Modi convinced the voters that he was himself an orthodox Hindu. Since Hindus are the overwhelming majority, Modi's party won power. By bad mouthing Hinduism, Agnivesh caused people to believe he was not a Hindu at all. He was merely a charlatan who had put on saffron robes for some egotistic end.
The physical attacks did not stop after July 17, 2018. In August, a month later, he was again seriously attacked, even by a woman as he went to the BJP headquarters in Delhi to pay respects to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The last such attack was in Thiruvanthapuram October last year when RSS cadres attempted to manhandle him at a function which the governor was also slated to attend.
Agnivesh's luck had run out. People thought of him as a punching bag. God was merciful to him. He died. This is the utmost Divine Mercy shitheads can hope for. In my case, it may be less deserved. Yet I willingly stake my soul on that Grace no creature should be denied.
For this saffron-robed modern-day Swami, the colour of the robes he proudly sported meant sacrifice, purity and commitment.
Commitment to what? The Truth. This is where the old egotist fell down.
In a life well and fully lived – one that should be celebrated—he brought a renewed faith in the colour saffron.
Says a self-confessed agnostic. Agnivesh could have done useful work within the Arya Samaj. He may have been a good Head Master or Warden of a Hostel. At the very least, he could have been a good pracharak. But only if he had deepened his spiritual knowledge. A man must grow in his Faith and his Vocation. Agnivesh preferred cheap theatrics. His trajectory confirms the judgment Chanakya made millenia ago. Many in sheep's clothing are wolves. More particularly when they keep crying 'wolf!' and no wolf appears.
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