March 2002 Edition
Since the tragedy of India's partition, maintaining peace and harmony amongst India's diverse communities has often been a very tall order. Hardest of all has been the task of managing hostilities between Hindu and Muslim communities, and preventing the outbreaks of religious vendetta that shatter the lives of the unfortunate victims. The articulation of the two-nation theory and the creation of the state of Pakistan implied that so great was the animus between the two communities that it was virtually impossible for them to live together in peace in the same nation. And any time India's fragile peace is shattered by a communal riot, advocates of the two-nation theory gloat in smug satisfaction. But it should be noted that in the period leading up to partition, many (if not most) religious riots were actively instigated by British authorities who bribed goon squads associated with the Muslim League to achieve that aim. (See note below); From a propaganda point of view, such riots were essential to create the impression that Hindus and Muslims simply couldn't live together. But riots were also triggered to either distract attention from the growing freedom movement, or else to dilute and weaken the unity of Hindus and Muslims who were fighting jointly against the British.
In contrast, for those concerned with the task of decolonization in the Indian subcontinent, Hindu-Muslim unity has always been one of the essential pillars of any progressive national movement. While the creation of Pakistan was a cynical betrayal of the decolonization project, India's valiant attempt to build a secular polity in a desperately impoverished nation was a step of profound importance, and key to the rehabilitation of the Indian people from two centuries of bondage to an exploitative alien power.
But the task of reconstruction has not been at all easy, and from time to time the unity of the Indian people has been challenged by attacks from Pakistan - which to date has launched four major wars against India, to speak nothing of almost daily skirmishes along the Jammu and Kashmir Line of Control. But in every war, the Indian people have somehow managed to come together and resist Pakistan's attempts at damaging that spirit of pluralism and secular accommodation that is enshrined in the Indian constitution.
The proxy-war in Kashmir, where agents of terror armed and trained in Pakistan have infiltrated into the Jammu and Kashmir region and caused havoc for the locals has been another severe test for the Indian people. Since 1990, there have been several massacres of villagers - particularly women and children. Hindus and Sikhs have been targeted to create an atmosphere of terror so that they may be compelled to flee, just as the vast majority of Pundits fled the Srinagar valley earlier. Pilgrims from various parts of India to the shrines of Vaishno Devi have also been repeatedly targeted. Muslim villagers including women who have joined the hundreds of Village Defense Committees and taken up arms against the Pakistan-backed terrorist infiltrators have also been attacked. Elsewhere in the country, trains have been derailed and civilians have lost their lives when railway stations or bus stations have been blown up.
But rather than see these attacks as what they are - an assault on India's secular unity - a growing number of India's better-off Hindus have begun to see these threats through the prism of religious sectarianism - as a pathologically hostile Islam out to destroy the peaceful lives of meek and passive Hindus. The failure of the Indian government to respond adequately to the wave of terror in Kashmir (or the audacious December 13 attack on parliament), has only added to the frustrations and sense of impotence of such Hindus who feel besieged by Pakistan's unceasingly virulent campaign against India. The news of Hindus being forced out of their homes and traditional lands in Bangladesh simply adds fuel to the fire. Swept up in this growing sense of outrage, such Hindus are unable to discriminate between patriotic Indian Muslims and Pakistan-sponsored terrorists, forgetting completely the sacrifices of numerous Muslims who have also died defending the unity of India.
In large part, such a feeling of generalized hatred emerges from the inability to understand complex political realities. The Muslim-hating Hindu does not wish to see the subcontinent's difficulties outside the prism of Hindu-Muslim conflicts because the alternative is much more difficult to deal with. For that would involve greater awareness of class and ideological differences amongst Muslims, and it may also force them to see how Pakistan itself is not a really free nation, but that right from it's inception it has served the interests of the former colonial or imperial powers. To see Pakistan as anything less than a completely self-willed independent nation becomes very difficult - because it raises a very troublesome contradiction. If Pakistan's India-related policies are subject to external pressure, if they can be instigated or modified by other powers, then naturally, India's ire should be directed as much at Pakistan's external masters as at Pakistan's own ruling elite. That means that India's attention must be directed as much at the US and it's allies such as Britain than at Pakistan alone.
But this is a big problem for the US-enamored Indian elite, who regardless of religious affiliation is becoming more and more fascinated with the country that has brought upward mobility to so many recent Indian immigrants. Unwittingly indoctrinated by so-called "American Values" this elite desperately wants to see itself as part of the American milieu, and is becoming steadily less patriotic. Whereas elite Muslims (and some of their "secular" Hindu allies) respond to American pressures by apologizing for Pakistan and military rulers, and making phony excuses for the Pakistan-sponsored insurgency - strongly-Hindu identified elites become cheerleaders for any campaign the US wishes to wage against Muslim-identified enemies.
But the net effect of this within India is that the religious divide grows instead of shrinking. Rather than India uniting against it's myriad external threats, the Godhra massacre caused a part of India to implode. Seething with hatred, a section of Gujarat's Hindus went on a retributive rampage - destroying homes, businesses and precious lives. Only further investigation will tell if there was any external involvement in the Godhra crime, but the reaction of Gujarat's militant Hindus has led to tremendous insecurity amongst India's Muslims and greatly weakened India's ability to act with resoluteness in the face of external threats. To that extent, it highlights serious weaknesses in the world-view of such Hindu-identified layers of Indian society.
But the Gujarat tragedy also sends an important message to the country's Muslims. They cannot count on their safety if a section amongst them falls prey to external manipulation and participates in an act of terror or grave provocation against India's Hindus. Although it is actually somewhat comforting that the Godhra incident didn't snowball into an all-India tragedy, that may be cold comfort to Gujarat's Muslims, and is also unlikely to completely reassure Indian Muslims living in other states. Many Indian Muslims will be obliged to revisit the question of how to ensure their safety in the future.
In the past, it has almost been a given in India's secular movement that the burden of maintaining secular peace and harmony within India rested on the shoulders of Hindus, who as a "majority" needed to ensure the safety and protection of all minorities living in India. The notion of a Hindu "majority" towering over all other communities made it reasonable to argue that there can and should be an asymmetry in the standards of secularism for the two communities - i.e. the majority community ought to either win over or restrain revivalist elements as that might offend the minorities, but minorities need not be obliged to monitor sectarian or revivalist elements amongst their own because after all they are so much fewer in number. But reasonable as it all sounds, this premise is fraught with several dangers, and the Gujarat tragedy is just one of the unfortunate outcomes of such fuzzy thinking.
First, it ought to be acknowledged that Hindus are hardly all politically united. In fact the UP elections show quite convincingly the tremendous polarization that exists in Hindu India. That over 70% of the state's voters picked parties that had explicitly rejected the Ram Mandir campaign should make it quite clear that Hindu revivalism has it's serious limitations, and that just as Muslims are a minority in India, Hindu revivalists are also a minority - but with one important caveat - that they can easily outnumber Muslims in many cities and towns as was apparent in Gujarat. This is significant because it sheds some light on an apparent contradiction: On the one hand, such Hindus repeatedly claim to be "oppressed" in their own country. Such feelings come about because the majority of Hindus (and all other non-Hindus) don't really like them, and at a national level are able to constrain them, and block their militant revivalist agenda. On the other hand, where they have the benefit of numbers, they can act out quite aggressively. This requires a response that takes into account this peculiarity. Whereas at a national level, the secular restraint works quite effectively, at a regional or local level it risks falling apart completely.
This means that the classical Indian paradigms concerning secularism need a degree of fine-tuning and refinement. Whereas secular Hindus are frequently able to get more attention than Hindu revivalists in any media or university forum, on the streets - when things become out of control, the secular intelligentsia simply carries no weight. Given how aggressively vindictive some Hindus have begun to feel against Muslims, it is clear that no matter what well-meaning secular friends of the Muslim community might wish for or promise, secular Hindus become exceedingly ineffective when a riot actually breaks out. This is not to say that they deliberately disappear or are too cowardly to act. Most of the time they are simply caught off guard, and take time to get organized with any practical resistance, by which time too many lives have already been lost.
This means that the safety of most Muslims rests in the hands of those the secular leadership has interacted and dealt with the least. One of the contradictions of modern India is that even as Muslims have faced tremendous uncertainty when communal clashes have developed, at other times, Muslim voices have had ample opportunity to express themselves, and the Muslim intelligentsia has found many willing allies amongst India's Hindus to champion their cause.
But this has also helped in fostering an element of over-confidence and spreading a dangerous illusion: that Muslims (and their secular allies) need not deal with Hindus who are not allied to their causes and agenda. That Muslims need not worry about how they think, or how they may react. The notion that their strong alliance with secular Hindus will save them in a time of crisis has been belied too often for such complacency.
Precisely because in any outbreak of communal violence they will always pay a heavier price, locally outnumbered communities often have to take far greater precautions. Communal clashes rarely happen out of the blue; invariably they result from catalytic incidents. The preservation of peace and harmony requires prevention at all levels - in ensuring that incendiary incidents do not occur, and the reaction to them is immediately controlled. This may mean that for their own safety, minority communities may need to be extra vigilant and isolate irresponsible and provocative elements, rather than cover up for them. It may also mean developing relationships and alliances with Hindus who are not entirely in sympathy or agreement with them on all issues, but nevertheless wish to live and let live. Muslim communities that have seen the horrors of previous riots will invariably try to act in ways that might prevent future occurrences, making practical compromises when necessary and appropriate. But this is something the secular intelligentsia is often oblivious of. And so such coping and preventative mechanisms do not get reproduced elsewhere.
In some ways, secular Indians have done a disservice to Muslims by being too protective of them at a national level. By adopting the approach that Muslims do not need to change to ensure secular peace (because they are in a "minority"), but that all changes must emerge from amongst the Hindus (because they are in a majority), they have actually disarmed Muslims, and prevented them from taking the sort of action that might dissipate some of the tensions, or open direct negotiations with aggressive Hindu revivalists where local realities (due to the absence of strong secular movements) may necessitate such dialogue.
Muslims ought to be wary of secular Hindus, who in their misguided zeal have adopted an extremely paternalistic attitude towards them. Such secular intellectuals have adopted an approach that presumes that "minority" communities are incapable of meeting the same threshold of secular conduct as the majority, and that orthodox and reactionary elements amongst Muslims should not be criticized or challenged. In this type of paternalism, there is an unwitting implication that secularism isn't something that is inherently good or necessary for the "minority" community. It also suggests that secularism is a favor the "majority" community must bestow on the "minority"; that the "majority" should be more generous with the "minority" and be more forgiving towards it's sectarian lapses.
But the problem with this type of a theory is that it simply doesn't work in practice. Minority communities come to take the majority's secularism for granted, and don't feel the need to weed out sectarian or chauvinist tendencies amongst their own. This then fuels resentment in sections of the majority community who then demand the same "right" to react with their own brand of sectarian insensitivity.
Thus one-sided exhortations towards one community to be more secular than the other simply lead to a backlash and ultimately increase the likelihood of an uncontrollable outburst. The liberal approach, rather than actually help the minority communities, leads to a false sense of complacence that may suddenly and unexpectedly lead to complete helplessness and utter insecurity as a communal event snowballs out of control. This is not to say that secular Indians should encourage unfair compromises, or allow Hindus to dominate over Muslims. But rather, that past resistance to measures that lead to greater secularization and integration of Muslims into India's mainstream such as through common civil codes, more gender equality and greater participation in non-religious bodies ought to be overcome. Steps that integrate Muslims more completely into the mainstream of Indian society, ought to be encouraged rather than resisted.
It may also be noted that while many ordinary Muslims have quite high expectations of from the Indian state, which has a duty to ensure the safety of India's Muslims, in practice the Indian state has repeatedly failed to do so. Just as it has also failed in it's duty to implement numerous other laws - such as those designed to ensure the health and safety of workers and save them from workplace hazards, or prevent citizens from exposure to toxic chemicals and environmental pollutants, or to ensure the provision of basic and essential services without interruption. The Indian state is still a weak state, easily manipulated by a variety of commercial and religious mafias. Hence, the struggle to make the state more responsive to people's needs will thus have to be a fairly broad-based struggle, and will have to be fought on many fronts.
Since the state apparatus is drawn from living and breathing individuals who may harbor all manner of prejudices and false notions, much more work in raising consciousness will also be necessary. For any set of social principles to be consistently implemented through the writ of a state, they must also win the trust and adherence of broad sections of the public. It is here that the role of the "secular" intelligentsia - whether it be in the universities or in the media becomes vital, and needs to be examined more closely. What has been the credibility of the Indian secular establishment? Has it been able to articulate a vision of secular society that has broad-based appeal? Has the secular intelligentsia been perceived as being completely fair and even-handed by all sections of Indian society? Has it always been completely honest? Has it been willing to engage in free and frank debate or exchange of ideas with those who feel alienated from the secular mainstream? Has it won the public trust? These are some of the questions that will need to be more carefully examined and dealt with if India is to build a lasting secular milieu.
It may be worth recalling that the greatest successes of the secular project have been achieved when there has been unity in fighting for the national good. Since 1857, when Swadeshi ideas first made their appearance, Hindus and Muslims have shown exemplary unity in all the battles for Swadeshi. But as the politics of privatization and elite-driven economic liberalization takes hold, the Swadeshi spirit that had so united Hindus and Muslims during the freedom struggle appears be a distant and impossible dream in some parts of India. But there is evidence even from the Gujarat riots that amongst at least some of the rioters, there was an undercurrent of hostility to the way the cult of consumerism has been developing, and how it may create new and unacceptable inequities. The targeting of certain multi-national businesses points to anger at the general trajectory of the so-called economic reforms. Unfortunately, such disgruntled Hindus haven't been properly educated, and do not realize that their real enemy is not their Muslim neighbor but a state that has been steadily retreating from the goal of reducing social inequities and raising living standards across the board. But if history is any guide, it is not impossible for today's misguided to evolve, to even become the leaders of tomorrow. What is needed is the will and the perseverance to make change. India needs a new movement for social change - and if one gets going, there is no doubt that many currently caught up in the vortex of religious extremism will find a new and more enlightened direction for channelling their frustrations. Thus, even in this time of severe crisis, it is important not to be completely disheartened about future possibilities.
Undoubtedly, India must remain a nation where respect for pluralism, for differences, for social variety is respected. No community should feel unsafe or unwanted. India does not belong to any single group of Indians, least of all to any group of religious extremists. It belongs to a mosaic of linguistically and culturally varied communities. Let us leave no stone unturned in turning the fragile unity of India into something deeper and more enduring. Let us create an environment where Indians can fight for a common good - for an inclusive vision that transcends religious frictions and divisions - that holds great promise for the vast majority. Let us once again dream as did the greatest martyrs of the Indian freedom movement and work for the systematic reconstruction of our society on a new and better basis.
Note: See the 'Transfer of Power Documents' 1942-1947, India Office, London; (also available at the Jawaharlal Nehru Library, New Delhi); The documents describe in quite shocking detail how the British authorities engineered riots between Hindus and Muslims; bribed armed terrorists associated with the Muslim League; deliberately broke up meetings held by pro-unity Muslim leaders of the Congress; and ordered their police forces not to intervene in the wave of terror that led to the expulsion of Hindus and Sikhs from what is now Pakistan.
Also see: The Hindutva Agenda in the Context of the Gujarat Tragedies
Godhra - a Pakistan-initiated Conspiracy?
Secularism in the Context of the Two-Nation Theory - Hypocrisy in the Pakistani Media and Crimes against Minorities in Bangladesh
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