Ramjanmabhumi: Hinduizing Politics and Militarizing Hindudom 113heady wine of modernism" and "the burden of our unfortunate mediae-
val age" as some of them, and holds that all the degeneration began when
the "Purdah settled like a pall upon Northern India."^12
To redeem the "innocence," one needs to be aware of one's "somaticity,"
as they together form the psycho-physical aggregate of human personality.
In Hindu thinking, "the body has never been regarded as purely physical"
or "antithetical to the essence of man," for that matter, and hence the body
becomes "the foundation for all human endeavors." Conspicuously, cul-
tivation of the body becomes vital to reach physical goals such as health
and strength, and also to achieve spiritual goals. So the bodily activities in
Hindu culture, such as ritual, chant, recitation, dance, iconography, erot-
ics, and the martial arts, are not merely physical, but constitute a founda-
tion for attaining any goal within the reach of man. "The body may not be
the end, but it certainly stands at the beginning."^13
The somaticity of the Brahmin belief system is the insistence on physical
preparation for spiritual discipline; in other words, cleanliness for holi-
ness. The Brahmin must discipline the body and senses by rising early,
bathing in cold water, and performing surya namaskara (sun worship) and
cleanse the mind by sandhya (sunset) worship, meditation, yoga, practic-
ing brahmacharya (celibacy), learning Sanskrit, and so forth. This psycho-
somatic wholeness, of which the importance of the body is part, has to
be maintained because "Manu says that the duty of the Brahmins is the
protection of the treasury of Dharma."^14 Such a divinely ordained duty of
defending Dharma invokes the need to be pure (including physical purity,
inner-self purity, environmental purity, etc.), and that means warding off
the corrosive effects of lower-caste people, women, Muslims, modernity,
and so forth.
More than the naturally endowed innocence and the daily reality of
somaticity, it is the inherent weakness, or concern for strength, that has
been tormenting the orthodox Brahmin psyche. The 1920s witnessed a pre-
occupation with the trained male body. Shraddhanand, a Hindu Mahas-
abha leader, issued an appeal in 1923 entitled "Save the Dying Race" and
wrote "Hindu Sangathan, Saviour of the Dying Race" in 1924. The evoca-
tion was that the much divided, physically weak, and dying (low-caste)
Hindu was surrounded by an overwhelming and expanding presence of
Muslims. The situation was a contest between two bodies. Piyush Ghosh,
the editor of Amrita Bazar Patrika, declared in April 1925, "Bengalees as a
nation were degenerating and were a dying race. Physical culture was the
only remedy to this race-degeneracy." In the same month, Lajpat Rai asked
his audience to be like Arjuna as he faced his beloved enemy, Bhisma.
The above concern about the condition of the lower castes emanated not
from any reformatory zeal but from the sheer unreliability of lower castes
in times of actual combat as a result of the growing Brahmin and non-
Brahmin conflict. The literate upper-caste Hindus hence felt the need to