Rituals between religion and politics: the case of VHP’s 2001-2002 Ayodhya-campaign

Erik Reenberg Sand

doi:10.30674/scripta.67290

Abstract

The present paper deals with rituals in a political discourse, namely the rituals employed by the right wing, Hindu nationalist movement, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), in its campaign for a Rama temple in the north Indian town of Ayodhya. As is probably well-known, VHP is part of a group of organizations known as the Sangh Parivar, or sangh family, which also includes the presently ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the ultranationalistic organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS. The rituals of VHP are instruments of the construction of an ideal Hindu society and part of an encounter between Hindu-nationalist tenets and the secular, political establishment. However, the rituals employed by VHP can not be said to represent a separate ritual genre, since they are not different from similar, traditional Hindu rituals. What makes them different is their context and their motives, the fact that they do not serve ordinary material, eschatological, or soteriological aims, but rather political aims, as well as the fact that the ritual agents in this case do not seem to have a satisfactory juridical legitimacy to perform the rituals.

Highlights

The sources used are different from those ordinarily used within studies of the history of religions, namely running coverage in Indian newspapers combined with the web pages of the organizations concerned, especially VHF
From a more political angle, Neera Chandhoke (2000), in a comparatively recent survey article about the Ayodhya campaign, has a very useful characterization of the VHP-rituals when she says that the history of India since the mid-1980s, when the Ramjanmabhoomi agitation was intitiated, has been marked by "a cynical abuse of the religious idiom" and characterizes parts of the campaign as "politics as theatre, replete with symbolism and suffused with ritualism"
The use of the pilgrimage idiom is found in the events which I am about to describe, I shall mainly focus on another overall ritual idiom which has been effectively used by VHP in its Ayodhya campaign, namely the set of rites employed in connection with the building and construction of houses and temples

Summary

Introduction

The sources used are different from those ordinarily used within studies of the history of religions, namely running coverage in Indian newspapers combined with the web pages of the organizations concerned, especially VHF. The use of the pilgrimage idiom is found in the events which I am about to describe, I shall mainly focus on another overall ritual idiom which has been effectively used by VHP in its Ayodhya campaign, namely the set of rites employed in connection with the building and construction of houses and temples.

Results

Conclusion