Dinesh Amin Mattu, Media Adviser to Chief Minister, has said that Marxist thinking does not help but only deters somewhere the fight against communalism. He was speaking at a national conference on cultural pluralism at Loyola College in Manvi, Raichur district, recently. The event was organised jointly by Ladayi Prakashana and Loyola College.
“Karl Marx viewed India from a distance and did not realise the caste dynamics in Indian society. If he had visited India and saw society from close quarters, he would have thought differently and given us a different orientation. If you go by what Marx said, you cannot fight communalism. Complete rejection of religion cannot help the fight against communalism. Some people project themselves as more progressive by disgracing Hindu deities. The common people who have had faith in religion since generations cannot be changed overnight. Religion is a support stick for people. If you remove it, they will fall. You should provide an alternative stick before removing it. At present, we are not in a position to provide them with an alternative support stick called atheism.”
Making a clear distinction between contradicting cultural traditions in the Indian subcontinent in the past and present, Mr. Mattu obliquely attacked right wing forces for what he called protecting an “oppressive” culture.
“They express anxieties that a great Indian culture is being destroyed. They call for its protection. But, what culture that they want to conserve? It is the culture of depriving women from getting educated. It is the culture of preventing Dalits from entering temples,” he said.
Mr. Mattu summed up all the ongoing struggles in the today’s India as a fight between communalism that advocates cultural singularism and secularism that advocates cultural pluralism. He strongly advocated for devising newer tools to strengthen secularism so that it won its fight against communalism.
‘Cultural politics’
“Communalism is essentially cultural politics which cannot be countered by electoral politics. Cultural politics of communalism can only be fought by the cultural politics of secularism. The BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) advocates cultural nationalism which essentially means one nation, one party, one leader and one culture and [it] does not accept cultural pluralism. Cultural pluralism means democracy and cultural singularism means dictatorship,” he explained.
Co-opting the opposition
Mr. Mattu called upon the people to realise the designs of co-opting the Opposition by right wing forces so as to win over the vast masses of people attached to the Opposition.
“Social and religious reformers such as the Budha, Basaveshwara, Narayana Guru, Vivekananda, Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh and other reformers relentlessly fought communal forces and their efforts to impose cultural singularism. And the very same communal forces are now hailing these reformers who struggled to preserve India’s pluralism,” he said.
Earlier, Jogan Shankar, Vice-Chancellor of Kuvempu University, inaugurated the seminar. Fr. Francis D’souza presided over the function. Writer and publisher Basavaraj Sulibhavi was present.
‘Karl Marx, who viewed India from a distance, did not realise the caste dynamics of Indian society’
‘Some people project themselves as more progressive by disgracing Hindu deities’
‘People who have had faith in religion since generations cannot be changed overnight’
‘Religion is a support stick for people, if it is removed, they will fall’
