‘Ghar Wapsi’: “What an idea Sirji”

I have been hearing about this whole Ghar Wapsi idea that the VHP is propagating, and I think this “fabulous” concept should not be restricted only to religion or faith, but expanded to all areas of life!

Here are half a dozen ideas for Ghar Wapsi programmes:

1. Corporate Ghar Wapsi
   Ghar Wapsi of all multinational corporations, mining companies, retail chains, and other global concerns. Let them return to their native countries and towns and set up their outlets, call centres, mines, and everything else there.

2. Telecom Ghar Wapsi
   Ghar Wapsi of all mobile company users back to landlines — and to our very own BSNL. So, no more mobile phones, never mind smartphones — only landlines!

3. Footwear & Apparel Ghar Wapsi
   Maybe even Reebok, Nike, and other global brands should be shunned, and we should all return to dear old BATA (mind you, it too is a foreign MNC!) — or better still, to handmade leather chappals.

4. Food Ghar Wapsi
   From burgers back to vada pav. No more Subway, KFC, Burger King, Chinese restaurants, and the like — only Indian food!

5. Transport Ghar Wapsi
   Ghar Wapsi to older, animal-based modes of transport — no more mechanised vehicles like buses, trains, or flights.

6. Medicine Ghar Wapsi
   Ghar Wapsi from modern medicine — let us revert exclusively to age-old healing systems, including traditional healers and Ayurvedic practices, where surgeries are said to have happened without anaesthesia.

You may say this is ridiculous. But if it is ridiculous in the areas of industry, health, and economics, then it is equally so in religion. If it is acceptable in religion, then it should be equally acceptable in all other areas too.

How Far Back Do We Go?

If the proponents of Ghar Wapsi could tell us the historic date to which we must return — is it 2,000 years back? If so, then we may have to go back to no mechanisation, no electricity, only kingdoms and clans fighting among themselves, and so on.

If we are to do Ghar Wapsi, why only for religion? Let us do it for all areas of society — transport, communication, industry, governance, food, and politics.

Right to Choose Is the Right to Liberty and Life

At an individual level, when we take away the right to choose and say a person cannot decide what they believe in or practise, it threatens the basic rights of freedom and liberty. He or she may have made that choice for spiritual, material, or social reasons — but it is their right.

Tomorrow, if I say that a private mobile company is “stealing” BSNL customers through advertising, gifts, and special offers — and therefore it is manipulative, coercive, or wrong — you would laugh at me.

If I argue that a few decades ago these companies did not exist in India, and therefore they are foreign and unacceptable, you would say it is the individual’s choice whether to fall for marketing gimmicks. Perhaps that person genuinely finds their services better. Who am I to police them?

Just because my parents’ generation bought Prestige, BATA, BSNL, or VICCO, I am under no obligation to do the same.

The same applies to faith, religion, and beliefs. Just because our ancestors followed something does not obligate us to do the same. If individuals or communities have changed their beliefs for material gain, social liberation, or spiritual reasons, it is their choice — whether to change or to remain.

Having a systematic programme to “cleanse” them and bring them back takes away liberty of choice. It assumes that people cannot think or act for themselves — and that the “morally superior” must decide for them. This is a dangerous trend that devalues people and communities.

We all have friends who are practising Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. We also have friends who do not believe in God or religion. Each has journeyed according to their experiences and convictions.

For some, it is what their families have always practised. For others, it is a deviation from the “normal.” But that is the beauty of freedom and democracy, is it not?

Ghar Wapsi That Should Be Championed

Nonetheless, there are forms of Ghar Wapsi we could truly champion:

1. Indigenous Justice
   Ghar Wapsi of all indigenous peoples displaced by successive governments in the name of mining, dams, forest conservation, and more. Give them back their lands, homes, livelihoods, and communities.

2. Ecological Living
   Ghar Wapsi to a sustainable way of life — living in harmony with nature. Farmers should be given opportunities to practise organic cultivation rather than depend on cash crops and genetically modified seeds that harm the soil and increase dependence on chemicals.

3. Anti-Consumerism
   Ghar Wapsi from a consumerist lifestyle that destroys our environment and future — to a sustainable, contented lifestyle that leaves fewer carbon footprints.

4. Family & Community
   Ghar Wapsi to family and community living — where we have time for each other and are not caught in the rat race of life, globally connected yet locally disconnected.

5. Social Harmony
   Ghar Wapsi to a more tolerant and inclusive way of living — if and wherever that once existed — where religions and faiths were not tools for division and domination.

In Summary

Let us have a Ghar Wapsi:

• From injustice to justice

• From violence to peace

• From oppression to freedom

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by Thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”
— Rabindranath Tagore

Happy Homecoming this New Year — to such a life!