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Kashmir and Neighbors |
Nation-Building India-Problems of Pluralism | Nation-Building | India-Social and Economic Transformation | Pakistan- Political Pandemonium | Pakistan-Search for Economic Stability Sometimes characterized as the “world’s largest democracy”, a “bourgeois republic”, “a welfare state” or with some other label, India is committed, in the more than five decades of its existence, to the democratic form of government. In terms of socio ethnic dimension, the country is composed of large segments of religion, language and caste, and within the socio-economic context, it oscillated, in the past, between and Indian brand of “socialism” and the preferences of powerful new industrialists. As a compulsion of its cultural heritage, the Indian society has to show a deep sense of commitment to pluralism. Within the Indian context, fundamentalism denotes an attitude to stick to the scriptures in their puritan form, at times accompanied by force to preserve one’s ideals.[1] Communalism implies prejudice against another group with the intention to marginalize, subjugate or eliminate it. The most salient aspect of the social problem in India is communalism, the point at issue between the hindus and the Muslims. At the base of the socio-economic structure, however, is the caste system, made up of several rigid concentric circles subject to change, however, due to industrialization and urban growth. This subsection aims to evaluate the consequences of the communalist phenomenon on Indian politics. Communalism[2] is not adherence to a certain religion or an entanglement with a religious group; it does not uphold conservative values, not even an unscientific defence of bigotry. It is not a matter of priety, nor devotion to moral ends. It is a convenient abuse of religion, or perception of other communities as opponents, using a religious community against others to acquire or enhance power and wealth. It is against secularism and democracy. Nehru once described it an Indian version of fascism. As the Indian Muslim poet Muhammad Iqbal said, “Juda ho deen siyasat se to reh jaati hai changezi” (If values be divorced from politics, treanny is inevitable”).[3] Although an open democratic order, as in India, allows all or almost all views to be defended and organized, thereby laying the masses open to undemocratic and segregative forces as well, the invigoration of communalism is likely only with the backing of certain political circles. To prevent a challenge to inter-communal harmony, and therefore to national identity, of which secular culture is a foundation stone, is a worthy ordeal as much as to create a genuine democracy is a great experiment. |
Many
Indians describe their administration to be “par excellence a
secular state”.[4]
For them, secularism is not a concept to which India was a stranger in
the course of their long and chequered history. It is in accord with the
best traditions of the culture of the soil. The caravan of secularism
(and democracy) had made, indeed, progress for quite some time. Asoka
was Buddhist but there was no distinction between Buddhists and others.
Akbar was a Muslim but Hindus and Muslims held the highest civil and
military offices in the state without distinction. To characterize Asoka
and Akbar as strictly secular rulers would be a misnomer, but it would
not wrong to describe them as accommodative of cultural diversities
while running the administrations of the state. After
independence, the Indian leaders proclaimed that the edifice of the
Indian state would be raised on the principle of secularism. There were
some differences of perspective among them, however, over what
secularism meant in the Indian context. Gandhi equated constitutional
phraseology only to sarva dharma shambhava (equal treatment of
all religions). He was tolerant because of his Hinduism, not in sprite
of it. He possessed a dauntless courage based on faith in human
goodness. Jinnah called him “ a hindu leader”, but he fell prey to
the bullet of a hindu while proceeding to the sammati de Bhagwan” (Both
Ishwar and Allah are your names, may the Lord give auspicious harmony to
all) was sung. Nehru wanted secularism to be an ideology for the
Constitution and helped to promote the kind of transformation that
Europe had undergone.[5] He
severely critized the anti-secular trend in his own party and strongly
attacked the Jan Sangh as a reactionary grouping. He wrote several
letters to the Chief Ministers not to associate themselves with any
religious ritual in their official capacity. But the Jabalpur riots
(1961) shook him, and he later associated secularism in India with equal
distance from all religions.[6] Two
competing political tendencies, the Hindu Mahasabha on the Hindu side
and the Muslim League on the Muslim side, contested the “composite
culture” theory of the Indian National Congress leaders. When the
Muslim League, which insisted until independence to be the sole
spokesman of all the Muslims disappeared from the Indian scene, Maulana
Abul Kalam Azad, who believed that there was “no greater hindrance
than narrow-mindedness”,[7]
convened (1948) the Lucknow meeting of the Muslims, which decided that
henceforth there would be no exclusive Muslim political party in India.[8]
Since then, the Muslims formed various regional and national
organizations, none of which was an exclusive Muslim political party
only for their own co-religionists. Azad refused to contest from Rampur,
a Muslim majority constituency, in the 1952 elections stating that he
could not represent the Muslims only. The Indian Muslims have shown
great faith in the Constitution of the country. The
Indian Constitution[9]
carefully balanced, on paper, the rights of the individual in regard to
religion and the authority of the state to exercise its regulatory power
in the larger interests of the community. There is no established state
religion, and citizenship is unrelated to the faith of the individual
(Article 5-7). Everyone is equally entitled to freedom of conscience and
the right to freely profess, practice and propagate his or her religion.
Every regions denominations has the right to maintain institutions for
religious purpose and to manage its own affairs. No one may be compelled
to pay taxes for the promotion of any religion. No religious instruction
may be provided wholly out of state funds (Article 25-28). The 42nd
Amendment of the Constitution (1976) includes the word “secular” in
the Preamble.[10]
According to the Constitution, the state, which is a political
association concerned only with the social relations between its
citizens, belongs to them all. These provisions enshrined a befitting
pledge to India’s minorities for which the country’s greatest son
had laid down his life. The Muslims, who were satisfied with these
provisions, made every effort to contribute their share to the
development of the society at large. |
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However, secularism is not so much a matter of state policy; it is more a frame of mind and an attitude in everyday life. Secularism may be a target concept; secularization, on the other hand, is a process. Secularism demands unfaltering belief in the “god of knowledge”. It accepts no authority but that of nature, adopts no methods but those of science, and respects no rule but that of conscience.[11] It believes in undivided guidance in the torch of secular truth which provides lasting “illumination in the areas of darkness”.[12] The Indian tradition is certainly helpful for the working of democracy and secular state with a stress on tolerance, separation of political and religious functions, and the absence of an organized church for the majority community. But some members of the present generation find themselves ground between two stones: a famine of faith posing as secularism on the one hand, and communalism masquerading as religion on the other. Indian democracy, even taken with its faults, avoided so far the most blatant abuses of Pakistan. But narcissistic comparisons should not prevent critical self-examination. The rise of communalism in India necessitates a short reassessment of the working of the political system. Not only communal riots between the Hindus and the Muslims increased rapidly during the recent decades, police atrocities, established by several official inquiry commissions, started to occur beginning with the seventies. Muslim families were burnt alive in their homes or shops. Although Hindus were also assaulted, the main victims were Muslims.[13] Because of its oceanic range, Hinduism is often portrayed as a creed that cannot be communalized. It is described an anadi (without foundation), arupi (without form), and nirbandha (without ties). The view that Hinduism, in contrast to Islam, is naturally oriented towards secularism overlooks some similarities easily observable in the “Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh” (RSS) and the Jamaat-e Islami Hind(JIH), representing some Hindu and Islamic groups respectively.[14] The RSS identifies the nation with the Hindu society and proclaims that only the Hindu has been living there as the child of the soil.[15] The RSS is opposed to a secular state and composite culture. Hindu rashtra (nation) embraces all the people whose culture bloomed in greater India from the Himalayas to the southern seas. Its core is Hindutva. The rest are aliens, traitors or second-class citizens. The RSS, which places singular emphasis on morality derived from Hindu values, includes the whole Sangh Parivar or all political, cultural, student and labour organizations. It remained passive for a few years after Gandhi’s assassination but started (1951) to support Jan Sangh as its political front, and later sided with Janata (1977) and the Bhratiya Janata (1984). Similarly, the Jamaat-e Islami, founded (1941) by Maulana Maudoodi, believes in the supremacy of Islam and Muslims against all others as well as in the establishment of an Islamic state. After partition, the Jamaat was divided into two organizations, one for Pakistan and the other for India. The headquarters of the Jamaat-e Islami Hindu(JIH) was shifted to Delhi. For years, communally inclined publications on both sides built tensions, provocateurs preyed on sensibilities, and the militants of the opposing groups clashed. Forced by circumstances, the RSS and the JIH eventually joined forces to struggle against the common enemy-secular and rational thinking. Communalism, used by the political parties of India to achieve their own political goals, caused alienation in the society. Such trends were bound to generate explosive respercussions in Kashmir. The Babri Masjid-Ramjanambhoomi episode in Ayodhya[16] and the demolition of the historic mosque (6 December 1992) on “Black Day” (Swabhiman Divas) continue to cast a “long, menacing shadow over Indian polity”,[17] It was a criminal act, a defiant violation of the court, a tragedy that brought to mind Gandhi’s assassination. The Muslims were terribly alienated on this score.[18] “Ayodhya”, as the name indicates, was a place of “no war”. While the perpetrators felt emboldened to flaunt it as a step towards Hindutva[19] and Hindu rashtra, the non-communal parties, in contrast to the condemnation of the communal mind in one voice after that “Black Evening” of 30 January 1948, used the crime to abuse their rivals instead of asserting secularism and democracy so vital for India as a nation. It was an attack on the nation itself rather than only on the Muslim community. Some Hindus believe that the Moghul Emperor Babur, who never visited Ayodhya, raised a Ram or Vishnu temple to the ground to build the Babri Masjid on its place. Ayodhya has about 6,000 temples, whose panda (Hindu priest) claim that theirs is the original Ramjanam temple. There is even doubt that the present Ayodhya is the same city of the Ramayan era. Neither several old classics mention that a temple there was destroyed to build a mosque, nor any Hindu-Muslim dispute occurred over it for so many centuries after the construction of the Babri Masjid, until very recently. No matter what had actually happened in history, all places of worship were to stay intact as India had inherited them on Independence Day. In a midnight operation in the year 1949, a group of people, silencing the guard, put Hindu idols inside the mosque, which remained closed for thirty-five years (1951-86)under court orders. Guru Golwalkar, whose name as the Sarasanhchalak of the RSS came into prominence with the murder of Gandhi, instructed his followers that India was exclusively a Hindu nation, and “Vishwa Hindu Parishad” (VHP), founded in 1964, championed the demand that the lock be opened for use of the building by Hindu worshippers. Several Dharm Sansads (Religious Parliament) declared the demolition of the mosque. While some top executives assured the nation that the Babri Masjid would not be destroyed but a Ram Temple would be built at Ayodhya, thousands of Shiv Sena[20] activists arrived, and Sang Parivar organizers divided the city into sectors to plan and supervise the expected operation. While the protest rally of the Babri Masjid Action Committee (BMAC), supposedly to represent Muslim leadership but actually comprised of the equally communal-minded individuals, was fired at by the state police, the Kar Sevak “volunteers” rehearsed the method of breaking on nearby rocks as an exercise for dismantling the mosque. When the demolition commenced, part of the mob was also attacking twenty-three other mosques and Muslim houses killing about 2,000 people. By late afternoon, the Babri Masjid was no more. The Ayodhya episode, standing at the apex of a hate complex, also assaulted the immemorial Indian legacy, detaching itself from the national consensus and shaking the foundations of the secular democratic motherland. Led astray by bigots and swashbucklers, the power-seekers behind the tragedy wounded India’s open society while intimating its Muslims citizens. The communalist elements, and together with them, the country to a certain extent, are passing through a decade of aggressiveness. While there may be misperceptions in the different segments of any pluralist society, more so in India’s extremely complex pattern, enlightened leadership is accountable for correct policies and their appropriate application. The Muslims of India are also expected to play a stabilizing, and not a belligerent, role in bolstering the composite culture, from which millions of Hindus and Muslims will benefit. The Muslim priority should be to help sustain a democratic and secular culture rather than reaching the throats of Hindu communalists for the sake of a non-functioning mosque. To protect the religious minorities and to make recommendations to ensure effective enforcement of laws and safeguards, the Parliament of India passed (1992) the National Commission for Minorities Act, which reconstituted the Minorities Commission set up a decade and a half ago, both with the mandate to review measures and submit annual reports. The commission for Linguistic Minorities investigates into matters relating to the safeguards for linguistic groups. A National Minorities Development and Financial Corporation was also set up to provide economic and development activities for the benefit of backward sections among the minorities. The Ministry of Welfare shouldered the administration of legislation for the wakfs (Muslim pious organizations), the central council of which established the Maulana Azad Education Foundation to promoted education for the backward sections of the Muslim minority. What remains is the dedicated implementation of these objectives. |
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Indian intellectuals frequently call for a deep analysis of secularism, enshrined in the Constitution and united action communalism and in favour of a reconstruction of an ideology of nation-building and a secular state.[21] It falls on the contemporary Indian compatriots, Hindu and Muslim, to evolve serious strategy to defend and strengthen secularism and complete Nehru’s great vision. Narasimha Rao, the Prime Minister during the Ayodhya affair, was not the progenitor of the problem, but the end recipient of the daunting challenge which demands a united approach. Secularism is not something which is good if it delivers the minority vote but something to be shunned if it does not. If India is the largest democracy, it should rest on freedom, equality and rights, all three asserting the sovereignty of the people. Every citizen cannot practice his or her religion unless the society is committed to the norm of freedom. The notion of sarva dharma sambhava will not carry much weight if the nation does not uphold equality. The state is also expected not to discriminate against any religious community or bestow privileges on one or the other. A return to the Gandhi-Nehru line should be: “We don’t just tolerate other faiths, hum sweekar karatay hain (we welcome them)”.[22] [1] Z.M. Khan, “Religious Fundamentalism in Indian Context”, World Focus, New Delhi, 232 (April 1999), [2] From a well-known leader of enlightened public opinion in India: Rasheeduddin Khan, Bewildred India: Identity , Pluralism, Discord, New Delhi, Har-Anand Publications, 1994. [3] S.N. Mishra, “India’s Tragic Impasse”, Secular Democracy, New Delhi,XXIV/5 (August 1995), [4] Sampurnanand,
“Secularism in India”, The Emerging World, [5] For the social and intellectual aspects of the declining hold of the Church and its doctrines on European society. [6] An Indian writer who claims that secularism had deep roots in the Indian society: K.M. Panikkar, The Foundations of New India, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1960. [7] Shanker Dyala Sharma, Aspects of Indian Thought, New Delhi, Sterling Publishers, 1993, [8] On Azad’s three passions, namely, India’s freedom from british rule, Hindu-Muslim unity, and passion for learning: V. N. Datta, Maulana Azad, New Delhi, Manohar, 1990. [9] A comprehensive examination of the Indian Constitution: Moolamattom Varkey Pylee, India’s Constitution, New Delhi, S. Chand and Co., 1992. An alternative: R. Joshi, The Indian Constitution and Its Working, New Delhi, Sangam Books, 1986. [10] For ‘some aspects of the Muslim problem of the 1970s’: Natalia Giorgevna Prussakova, “O Nyekotorih Aspektah “Musul” manskoy Problem’ v Sovremennoy Indi (70-e Godi)”, Zarubejniy Vostok: Religiozniye Tradisii I Sovremennost’, Moskva, Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1983, [11] Paper submitted to the International Seminar in Commemoration of the Centenary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, 14-16 February 1990: Turkkaya Ataov, “Religion in the Age of Science”, A.U. Siyasal Bilgiler Fakultesi Dergisi, Ankara, XLV/I-4 (Ocak-Aralik 1990), [12] B. N. Puri, “Secularism-Western and Eastern-A Study”, World Affairs, New Delhi, I (December 1990), [13] Zafar Ahmad, “RSS Versus the Jamaat”,ibid., [14] Irfan Ahmad, “RSS Versus the Jamaat”, [15] Des Raj Goyal, Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, New Delhi, Radha Krishna Publications, 1979, Also see M.S. Golwalkar’s following books: Bunch of Thoughts, Bangalore, Vikram Prakashan; Thoughts on Some Current problems, Bombay, Hindustan Sahitya Publications, 1957. Some RSS publications: We or Our Nationhood Defined, Nagpur, Bharat Publications, 1939; Why Hindu Rashtra, Bangalore, Kesari Press; Not Socialism But Hindu Rashtra, Karnataka, RSS Publication, 1964. [16] In this analysis of the Moradabad massacre (1980), the slaughter of Uttar pradesh harijans (1981) and the Ayodhya controversy, the following author, with commitment to secularism, rejects religion as a symbol of hate: M.J Akbar, Riot after Riot: Reports on Caste and Communal Violence in India, New Delhi, Penguin India, 1988. Especially on Ayodhya: Sarvepalli Gopal, ed., Anatomy of a Confrontation: Ayodhya and the Rise of Communal Politics in India, London, Zed Books, 1993. [17] D.R. Goyal, “Babri Shadow Over India”, Secular Democracy, New Delhi, XXIV/9 (December 1995), [18] Due to that demolition and related developments, India’s relations with some OIC states came under strain. A.K. Pasha, India and OIC Strategy and Diplomacy, New Delhi, Centre for Peace Studies, [19] Popularized by campaigners exalting Hinduism as India’s “true national faith”. [20] An analysis of Shiv Sena chauvinists and other terrorist groups: Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, India: a Million Mutinies Now, London, Minerva, 1991. On the preferential treatment in employment opportunities: May Fainsod Katzenstein, Ethnicity and Equallity: the Shiv Sena Party and Preferential Politics in Bombay, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1979. [21] For instance: Subrata Banerjee, Secularism and Indian Polity, New Delhi, Josih-Adhikari Institute of Social Sciences, 1987, [22] Bhavdeep Kang, “Born-Again Hinduism”, Outlook, New Delhi, 1 February 1999,
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