(The Times of India, 8 May 2009)
by Harbans Mukhia
Used as we were in India to the horrifying spectacle of frequent communal riots every year, it is some relief to note that the recent past for over a decade and a half has been relatively free of this recurring nightmare. The last big spurt of rioting occurred in early 1993 in (then) Bombay in the wake of the demolition of the Babri masjid in far off Ayodhya. Since then, barring the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in February 2002, there has been relative quiet on this front, despite grave provocation by way of bomb blasts in temples, mosques, dargahs and markets. What could possibly explain this descent of sanity?
On December 6, 1992, when the Babri masjid was demolished by those bearing allegiance to the sangh parivar, for many of us reared in the tradition of secularism posited on the separation of religion and state which bordered on atheism the world crashed. All the values that we had held dear were under attack. Then, by and by news began to filter through in the papers that in one small town here, another big village there, common people local Hindus and Muslims had together undertaken to rebuild the temples and mosques damaged or destroyed in the wake of the events at Ayodhya.
Stories also reported that during the riots, several devout Hindus and Muslims had given shelter and succour to people of the other community. What marked out the denouement this time round was the combination of individual acts of humanity and generosity and collective and joint intervention to rebuild the religious structures, and to undertake to prevent their recurrence in their locality. Hope began to revive.
But the renewal of hope also raised questions about the nature of secularism in the Indian context. To understand it, we might distinguish between a proselytising religious (or non-religious) ideology and a non-proselytising one. Christianity, Islam and Marxism belong to the first category and Hinduism, to the second. A proselytising ideology is predicated upon its monopoly of the final truth, which by definition marks out all else as falsehood. Also implicated is inevitable conflict, and one ideology's ultimate universal triumph over all falsehoods. Triumph is embedded in the notion of the Day of Judgment, common to Christianity and Islam. Marxism also predicted the inevitable universal victory of socialism, and then communism one day.
Association with, and the use of, state power for that triumph is almost a condition. The spread of Christianity, Islam and Marxism were all aided by the state. However, post-Enlightenment, Christian society began to postulate separation between the church and the state, but not between religion and state. Muslim societies never accepted this separation and still do not. It is only the collapse of the erstwhile socialist regimes in the Soviet Union and elsewhere that has snapped the ties between Marxism and the state.
Hinduism does not formulate the notion of the final truth and, therefore, its ultimate universal triumph either through persuasion or conflict. On the contrary, it creates space for a great diversity of opinions and beliefs and their coexistence. It is the overwhelming presence of this ethos in India that also moderates others' zeal which marks out the all-encompassing Indian civilisation. The concept of either identification of religion and state or their separation did not have much relevance here.
At the popular level, this found utterance in the very moving poetry of medieval India's saint poets, both Hindu and Muslim. Theirs was essentially religious poetry, but one that encompassed universal religiosity in lieu of sectarian religions. In some ways, this tradition was pitted against any form of atheism, even as there was a strong atheistic streak in Hindu philosophy, so eloquently highlighted by the late professor Debiprasad Chattopadhyay in several of his writings. It was this ideology of universal religiosity that preserved social peace in India's medieval centuries, when the first recorded communal riot occurred only towards the end of the Muslim rule, in Ahmedabad, in 1693.
These are the values Mahatma Gandhi encapsulated in his personal as well as political conduct, which people in small towns and villages invoked when they undertook to rebuild damaged places of worship. This value system brought back peace in a highly fractured society. Atheistic secularism had lost ground substantially.
This is the ethos that is an eyesore for the sangh parivar, which models itself on the proselytising religions, and is keen to mobilise state power for achieving the ultimate victory of its version of Hindutva, the very antithesis of Hinduism, if indeed there is such a thing. For, we should remember that even the term Hindu is of Arabic origin.
Can this inclusive tradition survive the multifarious assaults on it? Optimism may derive strength from the fact that it has survived many severe assaults on it in the past, not least the partition of the country on religious grounds. However, caution is still in order inasmuch as history also records drastic changes everywhere. And these are inclusive of changes in people's mindsets, relationships and, not least, faiths.
The writer was professor of history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
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