Satyam Sai

“Hinduism" and the "mainstream"; how frequently are these words juxtaposed, and made synonymous, with each other by the ruling political party! "Mainstream": the word that would mean, in a democratic nation, the law-abiding democratic polity, is cunningly conflated, in the newspeak of our present government, with the religious majority; and those who don't belong to that majority become, by subconscious association and suggestion, anti-democratic, and breakers of the law. Ironically, saffron is the colour of our mainstream. Saffron, "gerua": its resonances are wholly to do with that powerful undercurrent in Hinduism, "vairagya", the melancholy and romantic possibility of renunciation. At what point, and how, did the colour of renunciation, and withdrawal from the world, become the symbol of a militant, and materialistic, majoritarianism? "Gerua" represents not what is Brahminical and conservative, but what is most radical about the Hindu religion; it is the colour not of belonging, or fitting in, but of exile, of the marginal man. Hindutva, while rewriting our secular histories, has also rewritten the language of Hinduism, and purged it of these meanings; and those of us who mourn the passing of secularism must also believe we are witnessing the passing, and demise, of the Hindu religion as we have known it.”
― Amit Chaudhuri, Clearing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature and Culture