Himal, June 2009
The third Sikh ghallughara
[Reviewed] By: Pritam Singh
Terror in Punjab: Narratives, knowledge and truth
by Ram Narayan Kumar
Shipra, 2008
June marks the 25th anniversary of Operation Blue Star, the fancy name given by the Indian state to the military action it took at Amritsar’s Harmandir Sahib, or the Golden Temple, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, starting on 3 June 1984. A quarter-century on, how do we describe this action, and what meaning do we attach to it? Do we describe it, as the ideologists of the Indian state continue to do, as a holy task undertaken by the Indian military to clear the temple of the militants who had taken control of it? Or do we describe it, as some Indian nationalists and leftists do, as a sad and necessary action to defeat an imperialist conspiracy to disintegrate India? Do we celebrate it, as some Hindu nationalists do, as a successful assertion of India’s Hindu strength against the Sikh minority’s separatist aspirations? Or do we condemn it, as Sikh and Punjabi nationalists do, as a genocidal attack on Sikh dignity, assertion and identity? Perhaps we decry it, as most human-rights defenders and leftists do, as a human tragedy resulting in the deaths of thousands of human beings – pilgrims, priests, Sikh combatants and Indian army men.
The contesting descriptions of Operation Blue Star and the meanings attached to it are reflections of serious fault lines in the Indian society and polity. To say that there would never be a consensus on how to describe and signify this military action may be both unreasonable and ahistorical. But to say that there is little likelihood of a consensus in the foreseeable future would be alluding to an uncomfortable truth about the fractured nature of Indian nationhood. However this operation is described and whatever meaning is subsequently attached to it, one thing is clear: one day, everyone else might want to forget it – and, indeed, might succeed in doing so – but this will never be true of the Sikh community.
Operation Blue Star has become an integral part of the Sikh collective historical memory. It has become the third ghallughara (holocaust) in Sikh history – the first referring to the massacre of some 10,000 Sikhs in 1746; the second to the even larger massacre of Sikh men, women and children in 1762, when 30,000, 50 percent of the population, were slaughtered. Today, evidence gathered by this reviewer suggests that many (though not all) gurdwaras in India and abroad include references to the third ghallughara in their daily ardas, or prayers.
The most reliable estimates of the total number of deaths during Operation Blue Star are anywhere from 5000 to 7000. Yet a crucial difference between the third ghallughara and the previous two is that this massacre occurred in the Golden Temple, while the first two took place on open battlefields. This gives added religious dimension to the significance of the military action: a much larger number of Sikhs died during Partition, but the 1947 deaths are not seen in terms of attacks on and in defence of religion. In religious terms, the largest Sikh loss in 1947 was the fact that the Nankana Sahib gurudwara – marking the birth place of Guru Nanak, the founder of the faith – was suddenly located in Pakistan. This, too, was a loss that today figures in the daily ardas.
Non-violent dissent
Ram Narayan Kumar’s book is an attempt to trace the roots of Sikh dissent in India that eventually culminated in the armed confrontation in 1984. Kumar also deals with the post-1984 period of Sikh militancy and the Indian state’s success in countering this militancy. Kumar makes three important contributions to the existing literature on the post-1984 developments, by placing them in a larger historical context: first, that Sikh militancy has been defeated; second, that the upper-caste Punjabi Hindus had a decisive say in the strategic planning at the Centre in organising the Sikh defeat; and third, that the Indian intelligence agencies executed this planning by using complex and sometimes contradictory methods to prop up the armed Sikh opposition, and to infiltrate and manipulate that opposition in order to weaken and undermine democratic Sikh political formations, such as the umbrella formation, the Akali Dal.
Kumar, a human-rights researcher currently based in Kathmandu, documents and pays tribute to the Akali tradition of non-violence. He refers to the Akali Dal’s peaceful struggle for a Punjabi-speaking state, and makes an important point of historical value by highlighting that the Akali agitation of the 1980s for Punjab’s demands constituted “the largest non-violent movement in the sub-continent, including both the colonial and the independent periods, with over 150,000 volunteers courting arrest with in a period of three years.” He also points out that the Akali Dal was the only organisation that was able to sustain an uninterrupted non-violent movement against the 1975 Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi.
The extensive elaboration and documentation of this non-violent character of Akali struggles enables the author to expose the intellectual poverty of the international media in its narratives and unidimensional portrayals of the Sikhs and the Akalis as ‘militants’, ‘violent’ and ‘terrorists’. Kumar attributes this to the lack of resources made available to journalists to investigate relevant issues, and their consequent reliance on Indian government briefings and police handouts. Some space is also devoted here to a critical evaluation of the partisan and destructive role played by the Arya Samaj-controlled media in Punjab. (With origins in the late 19th century, Arya Samaj, a reformist and Hindu supremacist organisation has extensive cultural and political influence in North India, particularly in education and media in Punjab.) This aspect of Kumar’s work is especially fascinating, and confirms this reviewer’s own research on the anti-Sikh bias of government media (Doordarshan and All India Radio) and Delhi-based English-language dailies.
Drawing on more than two decades of research in Punjab, Kumar is able to provide impressive evidence that government agencies systematically encouraged and used extremist and fringe groups in Punjab to undermine the main democratic opposition structures of the Akali Dal against the ruling Congress party. He has complemented that evidence by sourcing material from the explosive confessions of a former intelligence officer named M K Dhar, whose 2005 book, Open Secrets, provides fascinating firsthand accounts not only of the intelligence agencies’ manipulation of extremist groups but also of their liquidation once these groups had been used or came to be considered a nuisance. While praise is due for Dhar’s moral courage in publishing this insider’s account of the role of intelligence agencies in conflict inflation and resolution, it is also important not to forget that it speaks about the strengths of the democratic spaces that such a book could be published, distributed, read and reviewed in India. From this point of view, recent moves by the Indian state to muzzle the voices of ex-intelligence personnel are dangerous signals.
A dual defeat
One criticism of Kumar’s book is that it denies agency and autonomy to the Sikh militant groups in the shaping of their political activities. Terror in Punjab presents these groups merely as pawns in the hands of Indian intelligence operatives. A better methodological approach might have been to accord the necessary autonomy to the growth of militancy and the groups advocating the militant path, and then to bring in the evidence of infiltration and manipulation to show the twists and turns of the activities of various militant activities. Such an approach would have ensured an integration of two processes: the emergence of militant groups in terms of their own ideology, history, factional politics and local conditions; and their manipulated use and liquidation by the Indian intelligence agencies and security forces.
The central point about the Sikh defeat deserves to be further probed in its various dimensions. It is admirable that Kumar has written this book to expose the victor (the Indian state) and defend the defeated (the Sikhs). In so doing, he has tried to reverse the oft-repeated claim that history is always written by the victors. It is even more praiseworthy that, despite having come from a non-Punjabi background, Kumar has chosen to articulate the perspective of Punjab and the Sikhs simply because he believes that it is important to recognise that the Sikhs have been unfairly treated by the repressive power of the Indian state. He emphasises further that the defeat of Sikh militancy has been justified by the writings of the overwhelming majority of the academic and journalistic accounts of the Punjab conflict, thus in a way handing the Sikh community a double defeat: military and ideological. Military suppression of Sikh militancy signified the military defeat, and the media/academe’s success in justifying the suppression of both the violent and non-violent forms of Sikh protest signified the ideological defeat.
If we ask Sikhs today whether they feel defeated, and whether the Indian state considers that it has defeated the Sikhs, we are likely to get an ambiguous answer. The Sikhs have indeed been defeated, at least militarily; but the collective Sikh pride prevents many from accepting this reality at the community level. Similarly, the Indian state is aware of its success in crushing the armed rebellion, but there is nervousness in openly admitting and claiming military success. New Delhi would like to suggest that it won the battle of Punjab by winning Sikh hearts and minds – but it knows this to be untrue. Therefore, both the Sikh community and the Indian state collude in camouflaging, for different reasons, the fact that the Sikhs have been defeated.
Fighting nationalisms
What should be the human-rights approach in dealing with this complex situation of defeat, which no one can claim? Kumar’s book is an attempt to put forward the position of truth, accountability and justice as a methodology to study and a tool with which to deal with this painful situation. Kumar believes truth and justice can heal the wounds – that is his hope. But he is simultaneously troubled that the truth will never be allowed to come out and that justice will never be done.
As for how to think about Operation Blue Star, first and foremost it was a massive human tragedy. It was a tragedy that could have been avoided if – and that is a big if – Indira Gandhi had had a larger vision to reach a political settlement with the Akali Dal. Most Akali Dal demands – regarding federal decentralisation, river-water rights, territorial readjustment and the transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab as its capital – could have been negotiated. In 1985, Rajiv Gandhi agreed to each of these demands, plus many more. It is a different matter that he implemented none.
Indira Gandhi’s political calculations – those of using the ‘Hindu card’ for electoral victories – led her to deliberately choose a dangerous path of confrontation, first with the Akalis and eventually with the entire Sikh community. She paid for this miscalculation with her life, but still left Punjab and India communally scarred and polarised. Sikh nationalism was defeated militarily, but Hindu nationalism was unleashed so powerfully that the Hindu nationalists now openly make claim to capturing the Indian state.
Regarding the demands that led to the Akali agitation of the early 1980s and subsequent developments, the situation today remains where we were back then. As far as accountability for atrocities is concerned, Kumar suggests that the Indian government take a bold step in following South Africa’s example, “by establishing a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the truth about the sordid world of counter-insurgency operations in Punjab which Dhar has revealed through his confessions and by placing the findings before the country through the publication of White Paper.” No one wants history to be repeated. The least anyone can do today is to remember those thousands – pilgrims, priests, politicians, traders, militants, policemen and soldiers – who became victims in the tragedy of the third Sikh ghallughara.
Pritam Singh is director of the Postgraduate Programme in International Management and International Relations at Oxford Brookes University, and is currently a fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi
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May 31, 2009
Religion in the Cross Hair / Punjab - Haryana High Court on the Side of Sikh Hardliners
The Times of India
31 May 2009
Girl who plucked eyebrow not true Sikh, says HC
TNN
CHANDIGARH: Endorsing a hardline stand by high priests of Sikhism who barred a young girl admission in a minority institution on grounds that she
violated a fundamental tenet of the religion by plucking her eyebrows, the Punjab and Haryana high court on Saturday ruled that the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee was fully justified in doing so.
Leaning on the side of a text-based, more conservative definition of who is a true Sikh and the importance of hair in Sikhism, the full bench of justices JS Khehar, Jasbir Singh and Ajay Kumar Mittal in a 152-page order said keeping unshorn hair was an essential and most fundamental component of the religion.
The order came on a plea by Gurleen Kaur and others who had challenged denial of admission into an MBBS course at the Sri Guru Ram Das Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Amritsar, a Sikh minority institution, on grounds that they plucked their eyebrows and trimmed their hair.
The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandak Committee (SGPC) had also ruled that she was not a ``true Sikh as she was plucking her eyebrows.'' The court said the requisite of maintaining Sikh `swarup' (appearance) was a permissible precondition for admitting students under the Sikh minority community quota.
The SGPC runs two medical colleges, two engineering institutes, one polytechnic, 40 degree colleges and 150 schools, most of them in Punjab.
Saturday's order, replete with references to Sikh history and Sikh model code of conduct, also noted that the Guru Granth Sahib is for guidance of Sikhs in their pursuit towards spiritual salvation. It does not deal with the code of conduct prescribed for Sikhs. It was the Sikh rehat-maryada (code of conduct) that dealt with issues like importance of unshorn hair.
It added that the Guru Granth Sahib made no reference to the terms amritdhari (Sikhs who wear the five Ks - kesh, kacchha, kanga, kara, kirpan - and who have partaken amrit), sehajdhari (who are learning to be Amritdhari Sikhs) and patit (who were born Sikhs but violated one of the tenets).
Reflecting on contours of Sikh identity, the bench held the cardinal principle of retaining unshorn hair was not only for adults but also for minors, as it was the adults who were required to maintain the hair of their children.
Although the bench took the view that unshorn hair was an inalienable part of Sikh swarup, it observed that keeping the kirpan was not as important.
The SGPC burst out in celebration moments after the verdict and its chief Avtar Singh Makkar said, ``We are happy with the judgment. Our stand that unshorn hair is of paramount importance for Sikhs has been vindicated.''
31 May 2009
Girl who plucked eyebrow not true Sikh, says HC
TNN
CHANDIGARH: Endorsing a hardline stand by high priests of Sikhism who barred a young girl admission in a minority institution on grounds that she
violated a fundamental tenet of the religion by plucking her eyebrows, the Punjab and Haryana high court on Saturday ruled that the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee was fully justified in doing so.
Leaning on the side of a text-based, more conservative definition of who is a true Sikh and the importance of hair in Sikhism, the full bench of justices JS Khehar, Jasbir Singh and Ajay Kumar Mittal in a 152-page order said keeping unshorn hair was an essential and most fundamental component of the religion.
The order came on a plea by Gurleen Kaur and others who had challenged denial of admission into an MBBS course at the Sri Guru Ram Das Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Amritsar, a Sikh minority institution, on grounds that they plucked their eyebrows and trimmed their hair.
The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandak Committee (SGPC) had also ruled that she was not a ``true Sikh as she was plucking her eyebrows.'' The court said the requisite of maintaining Sikh `swarup' (appearance) was a permissible precondition for admitting students under the Sikh minority community quota.
The SGPC runs two medical colleges, two engineering institutes, one polytechnic, 40 degree colleges and 150 schools, most of them in Punjab.
Saturday's order, replete with references to Sikh history and Sikh model code of conduct, also noted that the Guru Granth Sahib is for guidance of Sikhs in their pursuit towards spiritual salvation. It does not deal with the code of conduct prescribed for Sikhs. It was the Sikh rehat-maryada (code of conduct) that dealt with issues like importance of unshorn hair.
It added that the Guru Granth Sahib made no reference to the terms amritdhari (Sikhs who wear the five Ks - kesh, kacchha, kanga, kara, kirpan - and who have partaken amrit), sehajdhari (who are learning to be Amritdhari Sikhs) and patit (who were born Sikhs but violated one of the tenets).
Reflecting on contours of Sikh identity, the bench held the cardinal principle of retaining unshorn hair was not only for adults but also for minors, as it was the adults who were required to maintain the hair of their children.
Although the bench took the view that unshorn hair was an inalienable part of Sikh swarup, it observed that keeping the kirpan was not as important.
The SGPC burst out in celebration moments after the verdict and its chief Avtar Singh Makkar said, ``We are happy with the judgment. Our stand that unshorn hair is of paramount importance for Sikhs has been vindicated.''
Teesta Setalvad and Jakia Jafri depose at the SIT probe on Gujarat riots of 2002
Daily News and Analysis
Copyright Permission www.3dsyndication.com
SIT hears Jakia Jafri, Teesta | ||
They allege that at a Feb 27, 2002, meeting, the CM told cops to go easy on rioters | ||
DNA Correspondent. Gandhinagar | ||
In their hour-long deposition before the investigation team, Jakia Jafri and Setalvad told the SIT chief, RK Raghavan, about the meeting that was allegedly convened by Modi in the chief minister's chamber on the night of February 27, 2002. At the meeting, Modi had allegedly ordered that police officials should "lie low and allow people of Gujarat to express their anger". Speaking to media persons outside the SIT office in Gandhinagar, Jakia Jafri said, "It was because of the CM's instructions that the police did nothing to stop the rioters." Setalvad also told the SIT that information about the meeting convened by the chief minister in his chamber on February 27, 2002 was given by former minister of state, home, Haren Pandya, in his deposition before a citizen's tribunal on May 13, 2002. "I, along with at least five other members of the tribunal, was present at Pandya's deposition where he revealed the details of the order that the chief minister had given on the night of February 27," Setalvad said. Raghavan later told reporters that Setalvad was summoned by the SIT as part of its investigation into the role of Modi and other politicians and bureaucrats in the riots of 2002. • More on p2 & 14 |
May 30, 2009
Agenda for a government specifically to defend and promote secularism
Magazine / The Hindu, May 31, 2009
Expectations from a secular government
by Harsh Mander
The people have put their trust again in a secular polity. Will the new government live up to that trust?
Millions among the men and women who lined up patiently outside polling booths this hot summer have voted for a caring State, for inclusive growth and a secular government. The burden of expectations, therefore, that rests on the shoulders of the government in New Delhi — which has been returned with an emphatic expanded mandate — is daunting and diverse. In these columns this Sunday, I will try to reflect on possible elements of an agenda for a government specifically to defend and promote secularism.
In this most pluralist of countries in the world, the large majority of people of varied faiths have once again, during the recent general election, opted for politics which does not divide people on the basis of their beliefs and cultural practices. The government must shed its reticence and place high on its agenda the active further strengthening of the secular fabric of our land. It cannot allow itself to be confused and diverted any longer by spurious debates about “pseudo-secularism”. In an ancient tradition that has endured and evolved with the passage of millennia, people in India have practised secularism not as the denial of religious faith, but as equal respect for every faith — including always also the absence of faith. It is a way of life which is founded on understanding, respecting and indeed celebrating differences of belief and culture; one that does not mandate allegiance or subservience to any majoritarian system of mores and practices as a pre-requisite of full and equal citizenship.
Highest claim
In defending and advancing this precious tradition of uniquely Indian secularism moulded to the context of a modern democratic polity, for me the first and highest claim is of our children. Succeeding governments have declared their commitment to universalising primary and secondary education, and a bill that makes education a fundamental right has been delayed far too long in Parliament. But as the new government passes this bill, it must reflect also on the kind of education that it will guarantee to all our children.
It has taken privileged schools in the national capital six decades since Independence to open their doors for children of less privilege, but even this is only for separate afternoon classes of reduced standards and in the Hindi medium of instruction. The government must guarantee a fundamental right to education which is of the same standard to all children. It must also ensure that children born into diverse levels of wealth, caste, ethnicity and religious community, study in the same classrooms, shoulder to shoulder. Recurring bouts of communal violence have pushed more and more Muslim people into ghettoes. One outcome of this is that children of different faiths no longer learn together. This enables fostering of communal and caste stereotypes in young minds and hearts. The government must actively promote mixed schools of high educational accomplishment, where Hindu, Dalit, and Muslim students, and those of diverse faiths and ethnicities, study and play together.
Over many decades, an array of communal organisations has systematically penetrated into many forest settlements, villages and slums across the land. They have converted the classroom into a site of communal politics, in which communal, caste and gender stereotypes are actively promoted. Seeds of difference, suspicion and hate, based on diverse identities, are vigorously planted and often take deep root in impressionable minds. The government must regulate the school curricula of these communal and sectarian organisations, like Ekal Vidyalayas, Saraswati Shishu Mandirs, Banvasi Kalyan Ashrams, the Islamic Research Foundation, and other similar formations, and bring all schools under the regulatory purview of an empowered national autonomous body. It must also actively advance in all government and private schools teaching caste, communal and gender equity and tolerance, and what Nehru called “the scientific temper”.
The government must be consistent in its opposition to all forms of religious fundamentalism and obscurantism, majority and minority. Most religious fundamentalists, of every faith, have discriminated against women. If one major faith denies women rights to maintenance, another discriminates in inheritance and against widows. The government must demonstrate the courage to enable voluntary access of all to a gender-just common civil code.
In his first term, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh constituted a committee chaired by Justice Sachar to investigate into conditions of Muslims, and with painstaking empirical detail, the committee established that on most socio-economic parameters, Muslims stand on par with disadvantaged Dalits. Despite this, the government has not crafted a strategy to redress this enormous injustice comprehensively. A paramount priority of the government must be to enable an estimated 140 million disadvantaged citizens to advance in education, healthcare and employment.
The government must also redeem its unfulfilled promise to enact a law to prevent mass communal crimes. In communal pogroms such as in Delhi in 1984 and Gujarat in 2002, many public officials were guilty of complicity in mass crimes by simply failing to act effectively and promptly in controlling the violence. It is difficult to prosecute people in command responsibility like Chief Minister Narendra Modi for their manifest crimes against humanity, because failing to act is not explicitly designated a crime. Minorities in India can feel safe only by a law which holds governments and officials directly accountable to protect citizens from communal and caste violence, and penalises them for wanton failures to act.
Governments have also been partisan in extending rehabilitation to survivors of communal violence, again based on their ethnicity and faith. The law therefore must ensure a right to relief and rehabilitation for all survivors of communal, ethnic and caste violence on standards and levels which are binding on every government, regardless of who are the victims of the violence. The core principle of rehabilitation should be that the State government must ensure that survivors are restored at least to the situation they were in before the riots, and preferably better off.
Healing past wounds
There are many unhealed wounds of past communal massacres which a caring government must address. It must set up a special cell and mandate prosecution and legal aid for all survivors who wish to pursue justice. I have in recent years visited the sites of many communal carnages of the past; and found consistently that for the survivors, the suffering does not end even decades later. The government must set up a special fund for those widowed and orphaned by conflict in the last 30 years; also a special package for all widows, half-widows and orphans of Jammu and Kashmir and troubled States of the Northeast.
But even more important is for the government to acknowledge and redress grave mistakes of governments of the past. I think the time is ripe for a Congress government to institute a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the 1984 Sikh massacre in Delhi. Likewise, the wounds of the incendiary dispute around the mob demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 will continue to fester unless the Supreme Court of India is encouraged to pass a legally just ruling on a dispute that tore apart the nation for two decades.
The government which has been recently returned to power must remember that there can be no closure to innocent blood spilt, and no sense of equal citizenship, without justice done, and seen by all to be done. And there can be no healing without caring. Our secular polity is the most precious legacy of our struggle for freedom. It stands today contested and battered, but endures ultimately because our people live by secular convictions. The government must demonstrate the same conviction, and the compassion and courage required to restore secularism and equal citizenship as the foundations of public life in India.
Expectations from a secular government
by Harsh Mander
The people have put their trust again in a secular polity. Will the new government live up to that trust?
Millions among the men and women who lined up patiently outside polling booths this hot summer have voted for a caring State, for inclusive growth and a secular government. The burden of expectations, therefore, that rests on the shoulders of the government in New Delhi — which has been returned with an emphatic expanded mandate — is daunting and diverse. In these columns this Sunday, I will try to reflect on possible elements of an agenda for a government specifically to defend and promote secularism.
In this most pluralist of countries in the world, the large majority of people of varied faiths have once again, during the recent general election, opted for politics which does not divide people on the basis of their beliefs and cultural practices. The government must shed its reticence and place high on its agenda the active further strengthening of the secular fabric of our land. It cannot allow itself to be confused and diverted any longer by spurious debates about “pseudo-secularism”. In an ancient tradition that has endured and evolved with the passage of millennia, people in India have practised secularism not as the denial of religious faith, but as equal respect for every faith — including always also the absence of faith. It is a way of life which is founded on understanding, respecting and indeed celebrating differences of belief and culture; one that does not mandate allegiance or subservience to any majoritarian system of mores and practices as a pre-requisite of full and equal citizenship.
Highest claim
In defending and advancing this precious tradition of uniquely Indian secularism moulded to the context of a modern democratic polity, for me the first and highest claim is of our children. Succeeding governments have declared their commitment to universalising primary and secondary education, and a bill that makes education a fundamental right has been delayed far too long in Parliament. But as the new government passes this bill, it must reflect also on the kind of education that it will guarantee to all our children.
It has taken privileged schools in the national capital six decades since Independence to open their doors for children of less privilege, but even this is only for separate afternoon classes of reduced standards and in the Hindi medium of instruction. The government must guarantee a fundamental right to education which is of the same standard to all children. It must also ensure that children born into diverse levels of wealth, caste, ethnicity and religious community, study in the same classrooms, shoulder to shoulder. Recurring bouts of communal violence have pushed more and more Muslim people into ghettoes. One outcome of this is that children of different faiths no longer learn together. This enables fostering of communal and caste stereotypes in young minds and hearts. The government must actively promote mixed schools of high educational accomplishment, where Hindu, Dalit, and Muslim students, and those of diverse faiths and ethnicities, study and play together.
Over many decades, an array of communal organisations has systematically penetrated into many forest settlements, villages and slums across the land. They have converted the classroom into a site of communal politics, in which communal, caste and gender stereotypes are actively promoted. Seeds of difference, suspicion and hate, based on diverse identities, are vigorously planted and often take deep root in impressionable minds. The government must regulate the school curricula of these communal and sectarian organisations, like Ekal Vidyalayas, Saraswati Shishu Mandirs, Banvasi Kalyan Ashrams, the Islamic Research Foundation, and other similar formations, and bring all schools under the regulatory purview of an empowered national autonomous body. It must also actively advance in all government and private schools teaching caste, communal and gender equity and tolerance, and what Nehru called “the scientific temper”.
The government must be consistent in its opposition to all forms of religious fundamentalism and obscurantism, majority and minority. Most religious fundamentalists, of every faith, have discriminated against women. If one major faith denies women rights to maintenance, another discriminates in inheritance and against widows. The government must demonstrate the courage to enable voluntary access of all to a gender-just common civil code.
In his first term, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh constituted a committee chaired by Justice Sachar to investigate into conditions of Muslims, and with painstaking empirical detail, the committee established that on most socio-economic parameters, Muslims stand on par with disadvantaged Dalits. Despite this, the government has not crafted a strategy to redress this enormous injustice comprehensively. A paramount priority of the government must be to enable an estimated 140 million disadvantaged citizens to advance in education, healthcare and employment.
The government must also redeem its unfulfilled promise to enact a law to prevent mass communal crimes. In communal pogroms such as in Delhi in 1984 and Gujarat in 2002, many public officials were guilty of complicity in mass crimes by simply failing to act effectively and promptly in controlling the violence. It is difficult to prosecute people in command responsibility like Chief Minister Narendra Modi for their manifest crimes against humanity, because failing to act is not explicitly designated a crime. Minorities in India can feel safe only by a law which holds governments and officials directly accountable to protect citizens from communal and caste violence, and penalises them for wanton failures to act.
Governments have also been partisan in extending rehabilitation to survivors of communal violence, again based on their ethnicity and faith. The law therefore must ensure a right to relief and rehabilitation for all survivors of communal, ethnic and caste violence on standards and levels which are binding on every government, regardless of who are the victims of the violence. The core principle of rehabilitation should be that the State government must ensure that survivors are restored at least to the situation they were in before the riots, and preferably better off.
Healing past wounds
There are many unhealed wounds of past communal massacres which a caring government must address. It must set up a special cell and mandate prosecution and legal aid for all survivors who wish to pursue justice. I have in recent years visited the sites of many communal carnages of the past; and found consistently that for the survivors, the suffering does not end even decades later. The government must set up a special fund for those widowed and orphaned by conflict in the last 30 years; also a special package for all widows, half-widows and orphans of Jammu and Kashmir and troubled States of the Northeast.
But even more important is for the government to acknowledge and redress grave mistakes of governments of the past. I think the time is ripe for a Congress government to institute a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the 1984 Sikh massacre in Delhi. Likewise, the wounds of the incendiary dispute around the mob demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 will continue to fester unless the Supreme Court of India is encouraged to pass a legally just ruling on a dispute that tore apart the nation for two decades.
The government which has been recently returned to power must remember that there can be no closure to innocent blood spilt, and no sense of equal citizenship, without justice done, and seen by all to be done. And there can be no healing without caring. Our secular polity is the most precious legacy of our struggle for freedom. It stands today contested and battered, but endures ultimately because our people live by secular convictions. The government must demonstrate the same conviction, and the compassion and courage required to restore secularism and equal citizenship as the foundations of public life in India.
India's religiously branded hate politics
New Internationalist
May 2009 • Issue 422
Ripping up the rainbow
India was conceived as a rainbow nation of equal people and equal religions. Shoma Chaudhury on the religiously branded hate politics that has left the country fighting for its soul.
Incandescent: Hindutva zealots rage against the arrest of Sadhvi Pragya, a Hindu ascetic, under suspicion of a terror attack. Photo: SHAILENDRA PANDEY / TEHELKA
There was a faint chill of approaching winter as I got into a taxi late one night two years ago. Tehelka, the newsmagazine I work with, had just broken a major investigation. It was an hour past midnight. The airwaves were still crackling with the amplifying shames of the story as television anchors quizzed a conveyor belt of public figures on its implications.
In February 2002, 59 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya – the symbolically surcharged birthplace of Lord Ram – had been burnt alive in a train by a Muslim mob in the western Indian state of Gujarat. Over the next week, retaliatory Hindu mobs hacked and burned 2,500 Muslims across the state. As the world watched in shock, an impenitent government led by the rightwing Hindutva Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) put out smart theories about ‘action and spontaneous reaction’ – Hindu retaliation for Muslim crime – and refused to apologize.
A year later, though evidence of his culpability was piled high, Gujarat strongman Narendra Modi – an inscrutable fascist and skilled demagogue – was re-elected as chief minister of Gujarat on a mega vote: a terrifying reflection of popular Hindu sentiment in the state. Success can be a tremendous sanction. With the fig leaf of the popular mandate in his pocket, even India’s liberal élite began to look the other way.
Now four years later – coincidentally just as Mr Modi was gearing up for another election – our investigation had ripped off the scab. Going undercover for six months, our journalist had exploded the myth of ‘spontaneous reaction’ and nailed not just the State’s apathy but its active collusion in the pogrom of 2002.1 He caught an array of senior officials on hidden camera boasting about how they had burnt and killed Muslims in 2002 and how the state apparatus had not only looked away but often actively participated in the massacres. They spoke also of staged arrests, charade trials and government-manufactured witnesses bribed to lie.
Beneath the skin
We thought the story explosive. These were not just victims casting allegations; these were actual perpetrators owning up to the crime. The story would have detonated any mature civil society. At the very least, it would have warranted the dismissal of the government. But here, after the first excited burst of airtime, it fell into a paralytic well of silence. The government at the centre, now led by the Congress Party – supposed custodian of India’s grand secular-liberal ethos, a party that had steered India to independence and had inherited Nehru and Gandhi’s legacy – ducked for cover, too terrified of the ‘Hindu vote’ to go on the offensive. The Muslims of Gujarat cowered angrily, fearful of backlash. And Mr Modi? He won yet another landslide victory.
In the period since, Mr Modi has undergone a telling metamorphosis. Though he has refused to express even cosmetic regret, liberal media houses have invited him to their ‘leadership summits’; Ratan Tata – the internationally celebrated Indian corporate giant – has publicly endorsed his governance in Gujarat; other corporate czars have touted him as a prime minister-in-waiting, and even as news of continuing miscarriages of justice trickle in from his state, middle-class Indians now openly toast his probity and iron strength of purpose.
Gujarat is a symptom both of old passions beneath the skin and of new directions India is taking. A symptom of the raging chaos India can become if the rhetoric of pluralism and equal citizenship that gave it birth is leached further from its psyche.
That chilly night two years ago, as I pulled away from the television studios after the story broke, my taxi driver, a kindly man with a courteous air, asked me what all the fuss was about. I told him the brutal story. He listened patiently, then told a story of his own. ‘I was in Bombay from 1988 to 1996,’ he said. ‘The Muslims had become so aggressive, we Hindus couldn’t walk the streets. Even the police threw up their hands. That’s when Bal Thackeray [leader of the Shiv Sena, an extreme right, chauvinistic Hindu party known for vigilantism] took matters into his hands. He beat the Muslims, burnt their houses and stripped them. I was there. I saw it. Since then, there is peace. Now the Muslims don’t speak up. Many of them have left Bombay. Bala sahib did the right thing.’
The disembodied voice streaming out of the night stood for a vast hinterland of similar thought.
A soaring idea
Modern nations are usually built on a principle of natural logic. But India’s creation in 1947 as a polyphonic secular democracy was an act of unparalleled inspiration and audacity which defied logic. There was nothing that suggested such a nation could be willed into being; and survive. Quite apart from its many fractious and daunting multiplicities – ethnic, religious, lingual, caste, class – India was a Hindu-majority country. The birth of Pakistan – an Islamic state wrested out of a brutal Partition on either side of its border – could have been reason enough to bury the idea of India as a rainbow nation of equal people and equal religions. But inexplicably – flying in the face of logic and apparent reason – India’s founders persisted. And so, a soaring idea was born.
India: a modern democracy, straddling a billion people, a dozen major religions, more than 24 official languages, and hundreds of different dialects, castes and tribes, that went straight from centuries of colonial rule to complete and inclusive adult suffrage. In one fluid leap of the imagination. A Hindu-majority democracy that enshrined the rights of minorities as equal citizens.
Nobility, of course, has a way of sliding into the banal. As the first acetylene years after Independence receded, the idea of India was slowly reduced to clichés. ‘Unity in diversity’ is the one we all grew up on as schoolchildren. We laughed at its pieties and parroted its lessons – opaque to its hard-won significance. Still, it slipped into our bloodstream, unconsciously tuning our vision. India had remained a fractious nation, rumbling beneath the surface with unresolved tensions. If you were a Hindu, inevitably, you would have swum in an atmosphere of prejudice against Muslims. Mutterings against ‘these people’ and their dirty ghettoes, their mushrooming children and three wives, their covert allegiance to Pakistan. If you were Muslim, you would have both feared Hindu contamination and Hindu domination. Occasionally, you might have erupted in belligerent assertions. The wounds and resentments of Partition were still raw; new governments had added new mistakes. But still, the official line held – casting a balm of pragmatic courtesy over the faultlines. Unity in diversity: such clichés were bridges that pointed to a healed future. Everyone was nailed to that higher bar.
Fear and loathing
In the early 90s though, the vocabulary that taped the nation together was violently ripped apart by a chauvinist Hindu right-wing movement. In a tactically spectacular move, its charismatic leader LK Advani rode a chariot across the country urging Hindus to throw off their historical stupor – a stupor that had enabled centuries of Islamic and British colonial rule – and reclaim their rightful place as the dominant race in a modern nation.
These were not just victims casting allegations; these were actual perpetrators owning up to the crime
Advani’s exhortation had two main planks: the first was a call to hate Muslims, the second, a call to hate oneself. Hindus were injected with a deep self-disgust, upbraided for being effeminate, effete, accommodating, internecine. The ravages of medieval India were hauled out as evidence. You have always let others invade and subjugate you, you have let yourself and your temples be desecrated, roared the demagogues. From this humiliating story of emasculation and injury arose a belated, almost psychopathic desire for ‘masculinity’: an appetite for brute domination. Not a modern desire to confront differences through the rule of law, but a crude desire for reprisal.
Hinduism was being refashioned into Hindutva. An ancient, open, impossibly diverse religion, whose variants often shared nothing in common but a philosophical core, was being remoulded into an organizing principle for a European-style majoritarian nation-state.
The ironies, of course, were laughable. Both classical Hinduism and its many tribal and pagan versions have traditionally placed the female principle, Shakti – with all its complex attributes and gift for canny accommodations, argument and anarchy – as its organizing genius. Rejecting this unique trait, Hindutva ‘defenders of tradition’ seek to throw tradition aside and remodel Hindus along much more prudish, masculine and homogenizing lines, imitating aspects of Protestant Christianity and Islam – cultures they, ironically, profess to hate.
Chain of blood
LK Advani’s journey by chariot unleashed a causal chain that is still reverberating through the country two decades later. Its immediate call to action was the birthplace of Lord Ram, one of the gods in the Hindu pantheon and protagonist of the beloved epic, Ramayan. The story went that in the 16th century, a temple built on the exact birthplace of Lord Ram in Ayodhya was destroyed by a general in the Muslim invader Babur’s army. A mosque – Babri Masjid – was built in its place. The Hindu Right could not have chosen a more dangerous and potent rallying point. In urging Hindus to correct this ‘historic wrong’, Advani, and the political spectrum he represented, pressed a detonator. They ripped the founding story – the wise fairytale – that had taped the nation together.
Cultural tensions that had bubbled beneath the skin since Partition, finding release in occasional sputtering violence, were now given volcanic mouth. Brazen majoritarianism was legitimized. The self-defining clichés of unity slipped.
On 6 December 1992, thousands of saffron-clad Hindutva zealots stormed the Babri Masjid and hacked it to the ground – in full view of the world. Bloody riots broke out across the country; Bombay was the worst. A few weeks later, serial bomb blasts sponsored from across the border ripped through the city: the first of ominous Muslim retaliations. A lethal chain of ‘cause and effect’ had been set in motion. The burning of the train carrying Hindu pilgrims (by all accounts an accidental act of Muslim mob fury); the organized pogrom of Muslims that followed in Gujarat; the paranoid silence that greeted Tehelka’s damaging investigation are all a piece of that.
The genie was out of its bottle. Almost 18 years later, India is still fumbling for ways to put it back in.
Trick mirrors
If India were not such a vast and complex country, a giant causeway of trick mirrors, where each story is only as true as its counter story, you could be forgiven for thinking it is falling apart. Over the past year, Hindutva mobs have ransacked churches and killed scores of Dalit Christians in the states of Orissa and Karnataka (both ruled by the BJP or its affiliates). The immediate kindling: the brutal murder of a Hindu religious leader in the region. The combustion? Old lava beneath the skin: resentment against Christian missionaries and their project of conversion.
Equally, the past year has seen some of the worst terror attacks in the country. Serial bomb blasts in Delhi, Bangalore, Jaipur, Assam, Gujarat. Culminating – for now – in the assault on Mumbai on 26 November 2008. Two five-star hotels, one hospital, one railway station, one café, 24/7 television and the whole world as witness: ten boys holding a country hostage. The Hindu rage of 1992 seems to have found its Muslim doppelgänger. Ordinary people must now suffer alternating waves of hate and revenge.
Before the hate and revenge though, there is always the rhetoric. Identity politics has a way of spawning colourful characters, the silver-tongued orators who stir the simmering brew. A few months ago, working on an interview series called ‘Provocations – Ideas of India’, I began to seek out people with vastly, often violently, different views on India. Late one afternoon, I got a call from Prakash Sharma, the national convenor of the Bajrang Dal – one of the most disruptive rumps of the Hindutva bandwidth, accused of engineering the ransacking of Christians’ properties in Orissa. He was in Delhi and ready to meet me. It wasn’t the most opportune of calls. I was dressed for late summer in spaghetti straps; I expected him to be appalled.
It was a curious meeting. Sharma looked every bit the stereotype: a badger with bushy eyebrows, booming voice and hair-trigger aggression. But he also had an unexpectedly disarming capacity for irony. For three hours he equivocated about violence and Muslims. Hindus like him had nothing against Muslims per se, he said, but why did they live in such a closed universe? Why did they take their cultural cues from Arabia? Why did they cheer for Pakistan in cricket matches? Why were they bent on altering the country’s demography? Why did they refuse to assimilate? Hindus, he said, were a tolerant, liberal people. They had 320 million gods. To absorb one more Christ or Muhammad into the pantheon was child’s play. India was, after all, a Hindu country, so why couldn’t Indian Muslims just call themselves ‘Muhammad-believing Hindus’? You could counter his reasoning, but he did not represent reason, his area of operation was the subterranean, the irrational, the lurking id in you that said, yes, why don’t they assimilate? At one point, after a particularly heated exchange, he suddenly laughed and said: ‘Pardon me for shouting, I am from the Bajrang Dal, I am trained to shout.’ When I pointed out that he was leaping from issue to issue devoid of logic, he said humorously: ‘To leap is my job. I am from the Bajrang Dal’ – a self-deprecatory reference to his outfit’s acrobatic assaults. Through the afternoon he had not seemed the least uncomfortable about what I was wearing. As we left though, he held my photographer back and said, ‘Hinduize your madam a little, she doesn’t think like a Hindu.’
Peace train: Muslim clerics make a symbolic journey to promote communal harmony.
Peace train: Muslim clerics make a symbolic journey to promote communal harmony. Photo: SHAILENDRA PANDEY / TEHELKA
The fragrance of home
Exactly a week later, I walked up a narrow stairwell in a Muslim locality to meet Yasin Patel, a former office bearer of SIMI – the Students Islamic Movement of India. A politically strident organization, SIMI is widely held to be the nursery of Muslim radicalism in India. Within hours of any terror strike both government and media habitually put out stories attributing the strike to SIMI. It is a convenient scapegoat, an effective palliative.
India was, after all, a Hindu country, so why couldn’t Indian Muslims just call themselves ‘Muhammad-believing Hindus’?
However, a Tehelka investigation in July last year had made a dent in the consensus. It had exposed disturbing stories of scores of innocent Muslims arrested under the SIMI smokescreen.2 Yasin Patel was one of them. He had been arrested under a draconian anti-terror law and kept in jail for 22 months. His crime? Pasting a poster that said: ‘No Democracy, No Secularism, No Nationalism, Only Islam.’ He was Sharma’s counterpart – the extremist Muslim viewpoint. Intellectually, he was far more convincing. He argued cogently about the ills of nationalism and the charade of secularism. He lashed out at the Indian justice system, but swore allegiance to the rule of law. He was maddening and dogged about Islam’s position on women but incisive in his criticism of Hindu society – chaotic, casteist, misogynistic. Provocatively, he believed India could only progress under Islamic rule: red rag to the Hindutva bull. But at the end, in a suddenly plangent note he said: ‘See, Shomaji, actually there is no fight. I have been to the US and Saudi Arabia but when I go to Ahmedabad [his hometown in Gujarat] a kind of fragrance fills my soul. My home there has now become a terrible, dirty colony, but still in my dreams I see the Ahmedabad of my youth. One feels a great love for one’s birthplace, but you can’t hawala [whisk away] that love and turn an untruth into a truth. I am only demonstrating for you why Muslims cannot subjugate themselves in the way the Hindutva brigade would like us to.’
Tiring of rage
If Yasin Patel and Prakash Sharma were the only face of India, you could be forgiven for believing its cultural collisions were nearing an endgame. But for every story in India, the counter story is also true. Barely a week after I met Yasin Patel, 6,000 influential Muslim clerics issued a fatwa against terror and boarded a symbolic ‘peace train’ to Hyderabad – a metaphorical masterstroke that sought to reverse LK Advani’s divisive chariot trip two decades earlier. There is also a growing sense within the BJP that communal politics have now hit a point of diminishing returns. Inevitably, ordinary people have started to tire of the cost of rage. They want more governance, less hate. Immediately after the Mumbai terror attack of 26 November, four crucial state elections were held: terrorism did not feature in any of their electoral considerations. Most heartening, under relentless pressure from civil society groups, justice has begun its slow cycle in Gujarat. Several high-ranking police officers and ministers have recently been arrested for the pogrom of 2002. Narendra Modi is starting to look just a little lacklustre.
The point is, inclusiveness in India is not a luxury. Not an act of voluntary chivalry. It is a pragmatism this magnificent country demands of anyone who dreams of ruling it. It is the unique natural logic out of which we were born as a modern nation state. Each generation might wish to adapt the fairytale, polishing the plotlines, deepening the complexities. But the storyline has to hold, pinned to its visionary cliché: in India, the only unity is through diversity. There is no other route.
Shoma Chaudhury is executive editor and a founder member of Tehelka magazine (www.tehelka.com)
1. The Tehelka investigation into the Gujarat massacres is available online at http://tinyurl.com/2adzp5
2. Online at http://tinyurl.com/6gtn93
May 2009 • Issue 422
Ripping up the rainbow
India was conceived as a rainbow nation of equal people and equal religions. Shoma Chaudhury on the religiously branded hate politics that has left the country fighting for its soul.
Incandescent: Hindutva zealots rage against the arrest of Sadhvi Pragya, a Hindu ascetic, under suspicion of a terror attack. Photo: SHAILENDRA PANDEY / TEHELKA
There was a faint chill of approaching winter as I got into a taxi late one night two years ago. Tehelka, the newsmagazine I work with, had just broken a major investigation. It was an hour past midnight. The airwaves were still crackling with the amplifying shames of the story as television anchors quizzed a conveyor belt of public figures on its implications.
In February 2002, 59 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya – the symbolically surcharged birthplace of Lord Ram – had been burnt alive in a train by a Muslim mob in the western Indian state of Gujarat. Over the next week, retaliatory Hindu mobs hacked and burned 2,500 Muslims across the state. As the world watched in shock, an impenitent government led by the rightwing Hindutva Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) put out smart theories about ‘action and spontaneous reaction’ – Hindu retaliation for Muslim crime – and refused to apologize.
A year later, though evidence of his culpability was piled high, Gujarat strongman Narendra Modi – an inscrutable fascist and skilled demagogue – was re-elected as chief minister of Gujarat on a mega vote: a terrifying reflection of popular Hindu sentiment in the state. Success can be a tremendous sanction. With the fig leaf of the popular mandate in his pocket, even India’s liberal élite began to look the other way.
Now four years later – coincidentally just as Mr Modi was gearing up for another election – our investigation had ripped off the scab. Going undercover for six months, our journalist had exploded the myth of ‘spontaneous reaction’ and nailed not just the State’s apathy but its active collusion in the pogrom of 2002.1 He caught an array of senior officials on hidden camera boasting about how they had burnt and killed Muslims in 2002 and how the state apparatus had not only looked away but often actively participated in the massacres. They spoke also of staged arrests, charade trials and government-manufactured witnesses bribed to lie.
Beneath the skin
We thought the story explosive. These were not just victims casting allegations; these were actual perpetrators owning up to the crime. The story would have detonated any mature civil society. At the very least, it would have warranted the dismissal of the government. But here, after the first excited burst of airtime, it fell into a paralytic well of silence. The government at the centre, now led by the Congress Party – supposed custodian of India’s grand secular-liberal ethos, a party that had steered India to independence and had inherited Nehru and Gandhi’s legacy – ducked for cover, too terrified of the ‘Hindu vote’ to go on the offensive. The Muslims of Gujarat cowered angrily, fearful of backlash. And Mr Modi? He won yet another landslide victory.
In the period since, Mr Modi has undergone a telling metamorphosis. Though he has refused to express even cosmetic regret, liberal media houses have invited him to their ‘leadership summits’; Ratan Tata – the internationally celebrated Indian corporate giant – has publicly endorsed his governance in Gujarat; other corporate czars have touted him as a prime minister-in-waiting, and even as news of continuing miscarriages of justice trickle in from his state, middle-class Indians now openly toast his probity and iron strength of purpose.
Gujarat is a symptom both of old passions beneath the skin and of new directions India is taking. A symptom of the raging chaos India can become if the rhetoric of pluralism and equal citizenship that gave it birth is leached further from its psyche.
That chilly night two years ago, as I pulled away from the television studios after the story broke, my taxi driver, a kindly man with a courteous air, asked me what all the fuss was about. I told him the brutal story. He listened patiently, then told a story of his own. ‘I was in Bombay from 1988 to 1996,’ he said. ‘The Muslims had become so aggressive, we Hindus couldn’t walk the streets. Even the police threw up their hands. That’s when Bal Thackeray [leader of the Shiv Sena, an extreme right, chauvinistic Hindu party known for vigilantism] took matters into his hands. He beat the Muslims, burnt their houses and stripped them. I was there. I saw it. Since then, there is peace. Now the Muslims don’t speak up. Many of them have left Bombay. Bala sahib did the right thing.’
The disembodied voice streaming out of the night stood for a vast hinterland of similar thought.
A soaring idea
Modern nations are usually built on a principle of natural logic. But India’s creation in 1947 as a polyphonic secular democracy was an act of unparalleled inspiration and audacity which defied logic. There was nothing that suggested such a nation could be willed into being; and survive. Quite apart from its many fractious and daunting multiplicities – ethnic, religious, lingual, caste, class – India was a Hindu-majority country. The birth of Pakistan – an Islamic state wrested out of a brutal Partition on either side of its border – could have been reason enough to bury the idea of India as a rainbow nation of equal people and equal religions. But inexplicably – flying in the face of logic and apparent reason – India’s founders persisted. And so, a soaring idea was born.
India: a modern democracy, straddling a billion people, a dozen major religions, more than 24 official languages, and hundreds of different dialects, castes and tribes, that went straight from centuries of colonial rule to complete and inclusive adult suffrage. In one fluid leap of the imagination. A Hindu-majority democracy that enshrined the rights of minorities as equal citizens.
Nobility, of course, has a way of sliding into the banal. As the first acetylene years after Independence receded, the idea of India was slowly reduced to clichés. ‘Unity in diversity’ is the one we all grew up on as schoolchildren. We laughed at its pieties and parroted its lessons – opaque to its hard-won significance. Still, it slipped into our bloodstream, unconsciously tuning our vision. India had remained a fractious nation, rumbling beneath the surface with unresolved tensions. If you were a Hindu, inevitably, you would have swum in an atmosphere of prejudice against Muslims. Mutterings against ‘these people’ and their dirty ghettoes, their mushrooming children and three wives, their covert allegiance to Pakistan. If you were Muslim, you would have both feared Hindu contamination and Hindu domination. Occasionally, you might have erupted in belligerent assertions. The wounds and resentments of Partition were still raw; new governments had added new mistakes. But still, the official line held – casting a balm of pragmatic courtesy over the faultlines. Unity in diversity: such clichés were bridges that pointed to a healed future. Everyone was nailed to that higher bar.
Fear and loathing
In the early 90s though, the vocabulary that taped the nation together was violently ripped apart by a chauvinist Hindu right-wing movement. In a tactically spectacular move, its charismatic leader LK Advani rode a chariot across the country urging Hindus to throw off their historical stupor – a stupor that had enabled centuries of Islamic and British colonial rule – and reclaim their rightful place as the dominant race in a modern nation.
These were not just victims casting allegations; these were actual perpetrators owning up to the crime
Advani’s exhortation had two main planks: the first was a call to hate Muslims, the second, a call to hate oneself. Hindus were injected with a deep self-disgust, upbraided for being effeminate, effete, accommodating, internecine. The ravages of medieval India were hauled out as evidence. You have always let others invade and subjugate you, you have let yourself and your temples be desecrated, roared the demagogues. From this humiliating story of emasculation and injury arose a belated, almost psychopathic desire for ‘masculinity’: an appetite for brute domination. Not a modern desire to confront differences through the rule of law, but a crude desire for reprisal.
Hinduism was being refashioned into Hindutva. An ancient, open, impossibly diverse religion, whose variants often shared nothing in common but a philosophical core, was being remoulded into an organizing principle for a European-style majoritarian nation-state.
The ironies, of course, were laughable. Both classical Hinduism and its many tribal and pagan versions have traditionally placed the female principle, Shakti – with all its complex attributes and gift for canny accommodations, argument and anarchy – as its organizing genius. Rejecting this unique trait, Hindutva ‘defenders of tradition’ seek to throw tradition aside and remodel Hindus along much more prudish, masculine and homogenizing lines, imitating aspects of Protestant Christianity and Islam – cultures they, ironically, profess to hate.
Chain of blood
LK Advani’s journey by chariot unleashed a causal chain that is still reverberating through the country two decades later. Its immediate call to action was the birthplace of Lord Ram, one of the gods in the Hindu pantheon and protagonist of the beloved epic, Ramayan. The story went that in the 16th century, a temple built on the exact birthplace of Lord Ram in Ayodhya was destroyed by a general in the Muslim invader Babur’s army. A mosque – Babri Masjid – was built in its place. The Hindu Right could not have chosen a more dangerous and potent rallying point. In urging Hindus to correct this ‘historic wrong’, Advani, and the political spectrum he represented, pressed a detonator. They ripped the founding story – the wise fairytale – that had taped the nation together.
Cultural tensions that had bubbled beneath the skin since Partition, finding release in occasional sputtering violence, were now given volcanic mouth. Brazen majoritarianism was legitimized. The self-defining clichés of unity slipped.
On 6 December 1992, thousands of saffron-clad Hindutva zealots stormed the Babri Masjid and hacked it to the ground – in full view of the world. Bloody riots broke out across the country; Bombay was the worst. A few weeks later, serial bomb blasts sponsored from across the border ripped through the city: the first of ominous Muslim retaliations. A lethal chain of ‘cause and effect’ had been set in motion. The burning of the train carrying Hindu pilgrims (by all accounts an accidental act of Muslim mob fury); the organized pogrom of Muslims that followed in Gujarat; the paranoid silence that greeted Tehelka’s damaging investigation are all a piece of that.
The genie was out of its bottle. Almost 18 years later, India is still fumbling for ways to put it back in.
Trick mirrors
If India were not such a vast and complex country, a giant causeway of trick mirrors, where each story is only as true as its counter story, you could be forgiven for thinking it is falling apart. Over the past year, Hindutva mobs have ransacked churches and killed scores of Dalit Christians in the states of Orissa and Karnataka (both ruled by the BJP or its affiliates). The immediate kindling: the brutal murder of a Hindu religious leader in the region. The combustion? Old lava beneath the skin: resentment against Christian missionaries and their project of conversion.
Equally, the past year has seen some of the worst terror attacks in the country. Serial bomb blasts in Delhi, Bangalore, Jaipur, Assam, Gujarat. Culminating – for now – in the assault on Mumbai on 26 November 2008. Two five-star hotels, one hospital, one railway station, one café, 24/7 television and the whole world as witness: ten boys holding a country hostage. The Hindu rage of 1992 seems to have found its Muslim doppelgänger. Ordinary people must now suffer alternating waves of hate and revenge.
Before the hate and revenge though, there is always the rhetoric. Identity politics has a way of spawning colourful characters, the silver-tongued orators who stir the simmering brew. A few months ago, working on an interview series called ‘Provocations – Ideas of India’, I began to seek out people with vastly, often violently, different views on India. Late one afternoon, I got a call from Prakash Sharma, the national convenor of the Bajrang Dal – one of the most disruptive rumps of the Hindutva bandwidth, accused of engineering the ransacking of Christians’ properties in Orissa. He was in Delhi and ready to meet me. It wasn’t the most opportune of calls. I was dressed for late summer in spaghetti straps; I expected him to be appalled.
It was a curious meeting. Sharma looked every bit the stereotype: a badger with bushy eyebrows, booming voice and hair-trigger aggression. But he also had an unexpectedly disarming capacity for irony. For three hours he equivocated about violence and Muslims. Hindus like him had nothing against Muslims per se, he said, but why did they live in such a closed universe? Why did they take their cultural cues from Arabia? Why did they cheer for Pakistan in cricket matches? Why were they bent on altering the country’s demography? Why did they refuse to assimilate? Hindus, he said, were a tolerant, liberal people. They had 320 million gods. To absorb one more Christ or Muhammad into the pantheon was child’s play. India was, after all, a Hindu country, so why couldn’t Indian Muslims just call themselves ‘Muhammad-believing Hindus’? You could counter his reasoning, but he did not represent reason, his area of operation was the subterranean, the irrational, the lurking id in you that said, yes, why don’t they assimilate? At one point, after a particularly heated exchange, he suddenly laughed and said: ‘Pardon me for shouting, I am from the Bajrang Dal, I am trained to shout.’ When I pointed out that he was leaping from issue to issue devoid of logic, he said humorously: ‘To leap is my job. I am from the Bajrang Dal’ – a self-deprecatory reference to his outfit’s acrobatic assaults. Through the afternoon he had not seemed the least uncomfortable about what I was wearing. As we left though, he held my photographer back and said, ‘Hinduize your madam a little, she doesn’t think like a Hindu.’
Peace train: Muslim clerics make a symbolic journey to promote communal harmony.
Peace train: Muslim clerics make a symbolic journey to promote communal harmony. Photo: SHAILENDRA PANDEY / TEHELKA
The fragrance of home
Exactly a week later, I walked up a narrow stairwell in a Muslim locality to meet Yasin Patel, a former office bearer of SIMI – the Students Islamic Movement of India. A politically strident organization, SIMI is widely held to be the nursery of Muslim radicalism in India. Within hours of any terror strike both government and media habitually put out stories attributing the strike to SIMI. It is a convenient scapegoat, an effective palliative.
India was, after all, a Hindu country, so why couldn’t Indian Muslims just call themselves ‘Muhammad-believing Hindus’?
However, a Tehelka investigation in July last year had made a dent in the consensus. It had exposed disturbing stories of scores of innocent Muslims arrested under the SIMI smokescreen.2 Yasin Patel was one of them. He had been arrested under a draconian anti-terror law and kept in jail for 22 months. His crime? Pasting a poster that said: ‘No Democracy, No Secularism, No Nationalism, Only Islam.’ He was Sharma’s counterpart – the extremist Muslim viewpoint. Intellectually, he was far more convincing. He argued cogently about the ills of nationalism and the charade of secularism. He lashed out at the Indian justice system, but swore allegiance to the rule of law. He was maddening and dogged about Islam’s position on women but incisive in his criticism of Hindu society – chaotic, casteist, misogynistic. Provocatively, he believed India could only progress under Islamic rule: red rag to the Hindutva bull. But at the end, in a suddenly plangent note he said: ‘See, Shomaji, actually there is no fight. I have been to the US and Saudi Arabia but when I go to Ahmedabad [his hometown in Gujarat] a kind of fragrance fills my soul. My home there has now become a terrible, dirty colony, but still in my dreams I see the Ahmedabad of my youth. One feels a great love for one’s birthplace, but you can’t hawala [whisk away] that love and turn an untruth into a truth. I am only demonstrating for you why Muslims cannot subjugate themselves in the way the Hindutva brigade would like us to.’
Tiring of rage
If Yasin Patel and Prakash Sharma were the only face of India, you could be forgiven for believing its cultural collisions were nearing an endgame. But for every story in India, the counter story is also true. Barely a week after I met Yasin Patel, 6,000 influential Muslim clerics issued a fatwa against terror and boarded a symbolic ‘peace train’ to Hyderabad – a metaphorical masterstroke that sought to reverse LK Advani’s divisive chariot trip two decades earlier. There is also a growing sense within the BJP that communal politics have now hit a point of diminishing returns. Inevitably, ordinary people have started to tire of the cost of rage. They want more governance, less hate. Immediately after the Mumbai terror attack of 26 November, four crucial state elections were held: terrorism did not feature in any of their electoral considerations. Most heartening, under relentless pressure from civil society groups, justice has begun its slow cycle in Gujarat. Several high-ranking police officers and ministers have recently been arrested for the pogrom of 2002. Narendra Modi is starting to look just a little lacklustre.
The point is, inclusiveness in India is not a luxury. Not an act of voluntary chivalry. It is a pragmatism this magnificent country demands of anyone who dreams of ruling it. It is the unique natural logic out of which we were born as a modern nation state. Each generation might wish to adapt the fairytale, polishing the plotlines, deepening the complexities. But the storyline has to hold, pinned to its visionary cliché: in India, the only unity is through diversity. There is no other route.
Shoma Chaudhury is executive editor and a founder member of Tehelka magazine (www.tehelka.com)
1. The Tehelka investigation into the Gujarat massacres is available online at http://tinyurl.com/2adzp5
2. Online at http://tinyurl.com/6gtn93
Election 2009 Verdict: Whither Communalism?
Elections 2009 Verdict:
Whither Communalism?
Ram Puniyani
The results of 2009 general elections have thrown up a verdict where by BJP has lost lots of ground on electoral arena, its voting percentage has declined and number of seats have come down. Its calculations of coming to power as the head of NDA withered away. In 2004 elections despite the predictions by pollsters, its power declined and it gave way to Congress led UPA alliance. While BJP is ruling in many states and in couple of them it seems to have entrenched itself firmly for the time being, an overall atmosphere that BJP is on the decline is very much there.
BJP built its political fortunes on the foundations laid by RSS work of decades and the contextual economic and social changes which culminated during the beginning of 1980s. These related to changes in global political chessboard due to decline of Soviet states, leading to US becoming the sole superpower in the world. This in turn changed the dynamics of globalization, making it more adverse to the large sections of population. The changes which occurred due to lop sided industrialization in the country led to the rise of affluent middle classes. In this backdrop, the interest of affluent sections seemed to be to support the politics of status quo, with the political agenda to wean away the deprived sections from the path of struggle, by promoting the identity based politics. This might not have been a conscious planning, but this is what happened in the course of political changes. And Ram temple issue came to grab the nation and it threw the struggle for social issues to the margins. The rights based movements did face uphill task to keep afloat in this atmosphere, atmosphere seeped in divisive religious, social identities and enhanced religiosity all around.
BJP at this stage, mid 1980s, shifted from its ploy of Gandhian Socialism to Hindutva, Hindu nationalism. With Mandal coming to the fore, opponents of Mandal crystallized around BJP in a big way. The ascendance of BJP was assisted by the work of Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, wooing a section of Adivasis around BJP and Samajik Samrasta Manch co-opted section of Dalits around Hindutva politics. This ascendance was further assisted by opportunist forces, the ilk of George Fernendes, that earlier would not touch it even with a barge pole. With the assistance of these forces BJP controlled the levers of power for close to six years. It is during this period that the infiltration and impact of RSS ideology of Hindu nation, Hate minorities seeped much further. It is during this period that severe cultural and educational manipulations further intensified in the arena of education and social work.
BJPs’ ability to come to power thrice was due to a section of population opposed to the process of social transformation of caste and gender, added on by winning over a section of middle class, around aggressive nationalism, nuclear explosion, and threatening postures against Pakistan and at times bravado against the issue of terrorism. This section does not comprise the large masses. Affluent sections, those who benefit from ‘Shining India’ and some others did remain loyal to BJP, but remaining sections soon realized that the empty rhetoric of identity politics is not going to fill their empty stomachs and they voted against this Hindu Nationalist party during 2004 and later in 2009. Interestingly other political formations operating around other identities also faced a set back during 2009 elections.
Meanwhile BJP has tried to change its stripes and at times been talking Bijli Sadak Pani, and development agenda a la Modi. But can it hide the fact that it is the party whose break away factions beat up women; it is the party which inherently believes in what Varun Gandhi says. Its so called development talk is a mere electoral ploy. As they say you can’t fool all the people all the time, so BJP stands in its moment of truth, electoral vote share going down from the 22 odd percentages last time to nearly 18% now. At one level now the liberal space can be made stronger and those engaged in social movements can further strengthen their work.
So what happens to BJP in times to come? It is definite that it has brought in the polarization of sections of society through the ‘Hate other’ ideology. Its major faces symbolizing this divisive ideology have been Advani, Modi and Varun Gandhi in that sequence. This politics did lead to violence of mammoth proportions. It is not easy to write off BJP as it has already made its foundations around the ideology of Hindu Nation etc. And BJP is not a stand alone party. It is merely and electoral wing of RSS, the organization with hundreds of branches and offshoots, which will continue to work notwithstanding the defeat of BJP. Apart from these multiple organizations, RSS ideology and politics has also got entrenched in the educational, media and social channels of cooption. Social engineering and increased religiosity is another phenomenon strengthening communalism.
Communalism does not just mean the power of BJP in political arena. Divisiveness begins from propagation of the exclusivist ideologies of nationalism. The next layer is demonizing minorities through various layers of propaganda etc. This has been leading to sectarian violence and polarization of communities. Surely these processes are very much intact and thriving in the society. The ‘social common sense’, perceptions about minorities has been doctored to frightening proportions. The subtle, and word of mouth propaganda against father of the nation, against the values of Indian Constitution and a blind reverence to elite tradition has been pushed through broad and deep.
So as of now, the divisive politics is very much thriving, in the form of ideas, in the form of different organizations, which may be presented as ‘cultural’, ‘religious’, ‘social’ or what have you. Surely it is unlikely that Ram temple or any other emotive issues can now come to the fore powerfully. It is unlikely that they can repeat Gujarat or Kandhamal so easily, though one does not rule these cataclysms, as the land mines of such a politics have already been laid far and wide.
This type of politics knows that it can thrive through identity issues, through divisiveness, so those efforts may be intensified. RSS, BJPs’ political father, has already started telling BJP to go back to Hindutva, i.e. take up issues like temple, Ram Setu etc. There are studies which show that in the areas where communal violence takes place, rather is orchestrated, BJP becomes stronger. Same is the observation in current elections. Dominique Immanuel, a Human Rights worker and Communal harmony award winner, points out that despite an overall decline in BJP seats and voting percentage it has retained its hold where violence took place or divisive agenda was put forward. Mangalore, Udipi, Malegaon, Kandhamal, G. Udaigiri, Gujarat and Pilibhit are the areas in which saw the sectarian violence or propaganda or act of terror. In Kandhmal in the Loksabha segments where violence took place BJP candidate did very well. In many other places in the country, the constituencies where violence was orchestrated, BJP has romped home. What does this indicate?
RSS has already stated that BJP needs to come back to Hindutva agenda. A lot will depend on how RSS combine is able to whip up hysteria around that. A lot will also depend on how much secular forces can ensure the preservation of peace and amity all around. This is possible by restating the core idea of India, pluralism, values of freedom movement and values of syncretism. A lot will depend on how effectively the propaganda done by RSS combine can be effectively countered. Despite RSS instructions to BJP to ‘return to Hindutva’, Nation has to guard against such deviations and stick to the ethos of the country which thrive in diversity and inclusiveness.
--
Whither Communalism?
Ram Puniyani
The results of 2009 general elections have thrown up a verdict where by BJP has lost lots of ground on electoral arena, its voting percentage has declined and number of seats have come down. Its calculations of coming to power as the head of NDA withered away. In 2004 elections despite the predictions by pollsters, its power declined and it gave way to Congress led UPA alliance. While BJP is ruling in many states and in couple of them it seems to have entrenched itself firmly for the time being, an overall atmosphere that BJP is on the decline is very much there.
BJP built its political fortunes on the foundations laid by RSS work of decades and the contextual economic and social changes which culminated during the beginning of 1980s. These related to changes in global political chessboard due to decline of Soviet states, leading to US becoming the sole superpower in the world. This in turn changed the dynamics of globalization, making it more adverse to the large sections of population. The changes which occurred due to lop sided industrialization in the country led to the rise of affluent middle classes. In this backdrop, the interest of affluent sections seemed to be to support the politics of status quo, with the political agenda to wean away the deprived sections from the path of struggle, by promoting the identity based politics. This might not have been a conscious planning, but this is what happened in the course of political changes. And Ram temple issue came to grab the nation and it threw the struggle for social issues to the margins. The rights based movements did face uphill task to keep afloat in this atmosphere, atmosphere seeped in divisive religious, social identities and enhanced religiosity all around.
BJP at this stage, mid 1980s, shifted from its ploy of Gandhian Socialism to Hindutva, Hindu nationalism. With Mandal coming to the fore, opponents of Mandal crystallized around BJP in a big way. The ascendance of BJP was assisted by the work of Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, wooing a section of Adivasis around BJP and Samajik Samrasta Manch co-opted section of Dalits around Hindutva politics. This ascendance was further assisted by opportunist forces, the ilk of George Fernendes, that earlier would not touch it even with a barge pole. With the assistance of these forces BJP controlled the levers of power for close to six years. It is during this period that the infiltration and impact of RSS ideology of Hindu nation, Hate minorities seeped much further. It is during this period that severe cultural and educational manipulations further intensified in the arena of education and social work.
BJPs’ ability to come to power thrice was due to a section of population opposed to the process of social transformation of caste and gender, added on by winning over a section of middle class, around aggressive nationalism, nuclear explosion, and threatening postures against Pakistan and at times bravado against the issue of terrorism. This section does not comprise the large masses. Affluent sections, those who benefit from ‘Shining India’ and some others did remain loyal to BJP, but remaining sections soon realized that the empty rhetoric of identity politics is not going to fill their empty stomachs and they voted against this Hindu Nationalist party during 2004 and later in 2009. Interestingly other political formations operating around other identities also faced a set back during 2009 elections.
Meanwhile BJP has tried to change its stripes and at times been talking Bijli Sadak Pani, and development agenda a la Modi. But can it hide the fact that it is the party whose break away factions beat up women; it is the party which inherently believes in what Varun Gandhi says. Its so called development talk is a mere electoral ploy. As they say you can’t fool all the people all the time, so BJP stands in its moment of truth, electoral vote share going down from the 22 odd percentages last time to nearly 18% now. At one level now the liberal space can be made stronger and those engaged in social movements can further strengthen their work.
So what happens to BJP in times to come? It is definite that it has brought in the polarization of sections of society through the ‘Hate other’ ideology. Its major faces symbolizing this divisive ideology have been Advani, Modi and Varun Gandhi in that sequence. This politics did lead to violence of mammoth proportions. It is not easy to write off BJP as it has already made its foundations around the ideology of Hindu Nation etc. And BJP is not a stand alone party. It is merely and electoral wing of RSS, the organization with hundreds of branches and offshoots, which will continue to work notwithstanding the defeat of BJP. Apart from these multiple organizations, RSS ideology and politics has also got entrenched in the educational, media and social channels of cooption. Social engineering and increased religiosity is another phenomenon strengthening communalism.
Communalism does not just mean the power of BJP in political arena. Divisiveness begins from propagation of the exclusivist ideologies of nationalism. The next layer is demonizing minorities through various layers of propaganda etc. This has been leading to sectarian violence and polarization of communities. Surely these processes are very much intact and thriving in the society. The ‘social common sense’, perceptions about minorities has been doctored to frightening proportions. The subtle, and word of mouth propaganda against father of the nation, against the values of Indian Constitution and a blind reverence to elite tradition has been pushed through broad and deep.
So as of now, the divisive politics is very much thriving, in the form of ideas, in the form of different organizations, which may be presented as ‘cultural’, ‘religious’, ‘social’ or what have you. Surely it is unlikely that Ram temple or any other emotive issues can now come to the fore powerfully. It is unlikely that they can repeat Gujarat or Kandhamal so easily, though one does not rule these cataclysms, as the land mines of such a politics have already been laid far and wide.
This type of politics knows that it can thrive through identity issues, through divisiveness, so those efforts may be intensified. RSS, BJPs’ political father, has already started telling BJP to go back to Hindutva, i.e. take up issues like temple, Ram Setu etc. There are studies which show that in the areas where communal violence takes place, rather is orchestrated, BJP becomes stronger. Same is the observation in current elections. Dominique Immanuel, a Human Rights worker and Communal harmony award winner, points out that despite an overall decline in BJP seats and voting percentage it has retained its hold where violence took place or divisive agenda was put forward. Mangalore, Udipi, Malegaon, Kandhamal, G. Udaigiri, Gujarat and Pilibhit are the areas in which saw the sectarian violence or propaganda or act of terror. In Kandhmal in the Loksabha segments where violence took place BJP candidate did very well. In many other places in the country, the constituencies where violence was orchestrated, BJP has romped home. What does this indicate?
RSS has already stated that BJP needs to come back to Hindutva agenda. A lot will depend on how RSS combine is able to whip up hysteria around that. A lot will also depend on how much secular forces can ensure the preservation of peace and amity all around. This is possible by restating the core idea of India, pluralism, values of freedom movement and values of syncretism. A lot will depend on how effectively the propaganda done by RSS combine can be effectively countered. Despite RSS instructions to BJP to ‘return to Hindutva’, Nation has to guard against such deviations and stick to the ethos of the country which thrive in diversity and inclusiveness.
--
May 29, 2009
Identity Politics and Religious Conversions
Identity And Religious Conversion
by Tomichan Matheikal
28 May, 2009
Countercurrents.org
“We did not convert because we are poor. If I am poor but accepted by my community, there is no [social] terror in that poverty.... We did not convert for money. We converted because of the society that saw us as lesser, not worthy. We were ‘lower caste’, ‘untouchable’, ‘lowly’. Now we are Christian. Our god wants us. We can walk into his temple. We are worthy. You understand?” [Spoken by a Dalit convert in Orissa. Quoted in Violent Gods by Angana P. Chatterji, Three Essays Collective, Gurgaon, 2009]
The driving force behind religious conversions is, more often than not, a desire to live a “worthy” life, to have an identity that one can be proud of. The caste system being practised even today in Hinduism, despite all governmental efforts to eradicate it, is a major cause of religious conversions in India. Poverty and attendant exploitation is also another cause. But it appears that poverty and exploitation are intertwined with the caste system.
The caste system in India was seen by Dr Ambedkar, principal author of India’s Constitution, as the country’s greatest evil since it treated millions of people as subhuman by the simple fact of their birth. The man who tried his best to replace the discriminatory caste system with an egalitarian society, the Buddha, ended up as yet another god among the millions of deities in India. His teachings were suppressed by the Brahmins who feared that their stranglehold on society would be undermined.
Orissa is a state in India which witnessed much terrible violence in the name of religion and religious conversions. The violence still continues.
The Sangh Parivar organisations are opposed to the alleged mass conversions into Christianity of Oriya adivasis (tribal people) and others belonging to the lower castes. Many acts of outrageous violence have been perpetrated on the Christians and thousands of them are displaced from their hometowns. The Hindutva organisations allege that Christian missionaries allure the poor people with money and other enticements. How much water does the allegation hold?
Angana P. Chatterji, from whose book the introductory quote has been taken, has done a commendable job researching into the violence in Orissa. According to her, the adivasis and other lower caste people of Orissa seldom considered themselves Hindus. In her words, “The Paika Bidroha of 1817-1825, the Kol insurrection of 1831-1832, the Kanika agitation of 1921-1922, the Praja Mandal (peasant) Movement of the 1930s and 1940s speak powerfully of Adivasi and subaltern refusal to submit to cultural colonialism and Brahminical imposition” (199). Even in the 1990s there were conflicts between the RSS and Lakshmanananda Saraswati (who claimed to be working for the welfare of the adivasis and the lower caste people of Orissa). For example, the RSS and Lakshmanananda Saraswati opposed the adivasis when they fought for indigenous child rights (359). These Hindutva leaders did not want the adivasis to be organised. They opposed the adivasi struggle for Kuidina (a state for themselves). They tried to suppress the Kandhamal Nari Jagaran Samiti and the Kuidina Ekta Samiti. “They (the RSS and Lakshmanananda Saraswati) are dangerous people,” Chatterji quote some Kui people. “They want to kill our people like animals. They do not understand religious differences. They do not understand our connection to our land. We are neither Christians nor Hindus. We are Adivasi. We worship the Earth. There are Christian Kui’s. The Mission [church] never forced us to convert. Not in Kandhamal, before or after 1947...” (359)
Chatterji exposes the myth that the adivasis considered or were eager to consider themselves Hindus. In May 2006, at a convention attended by about 50,000 adivasis, the Bisu Sendra Tribal Council, which serves the tribal communities in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa, determined to ban Hindu customs and rituals, representations and priests from Adivasi spiritual and religious ceremonies (96).
Not different is the case with the lower caste people. Caste oppression has been a bone of contention for long in Orissa as in other parts of India. In Orissa, says Chatterji, “Dalit students and teachers have been denied employment and entry into schools and community events, and Dalit community members have been assaulted for participating in Hindu religious ceremonies” (69). Chatterji lists a number of incidents to show the disaffection between the people belonging to the higher and lower castes. Such incidents led to the conversion into Buddhism of about 3000 Dalits in Dec 2006.
Poverty
Poverty also plays its role in this complex issue. Orissa is one of the most backward states in India. In the words of Ramachandra Guha, “In 1999 Orissa overtook – if that is the word – Bihar as India’s poorest state” [India After Gandhi, Picador India, 2007, p.707]. The adivasis and the lower caste people were exploited economically in the attempts to set up various industries. The Utkal Alumina, which brought together Canadian and Norwegian firms with the Aditya Birla Group, led to the displacement of many adivasis from their land. 3000 acres of land cultivated by the adivasis was taken over by the Biju Janata Dal government and given to the industrialists. The same government also acquired land in Kalinganagar at much less than the market rate and handed it over to Tata Steel to build a factory processing iron ore for the Chinese market.
Apart from the capitalist industrialists are other exploiters such as the money-lenders who stand to benefit much by keeping the adivasis and the low caste people poor. All these exploitations have made Orissa a hotbed of Maoists. Christian missionaries also creep in with the intention of helping the poor and the downtrodden.
Solution
The solution seems to lie in two factors:
1. Put an end to the discriminatory caste system. This would engender a sense of respectability among the adivasis and the lower castes. Then there would be no need for religious conversion as a means of attaining respectability.
2. Give economic independence to the adivasis and the lower castes. This would put an end to the Maoist violence as well as the charm held out by poverty to Christian missionaries.
by Tomichan Matheikal
28 May, 2009
Countercurrents.org
“We did not convert because we are poor. If I am poor but accepted by my community, there is no [social] terror in that poverty.... We did not convert for money. We converted because of the society that saw us as lesser, not worthy. We were ‘lower caste’, ‘untouchable’, ‘lowly’. Now we are Christian. Our god wants us. We can walk into his temple. We are worthy. You understand?” [Spoken by a Dalit convert in Orissa. Quoted in Violent Gods by Angana P. Chatterji, Three Essays Collective, Gurgaon, 2009]
The driving force behind religious conversions is, more often than not, a desire to live a “worthy” life, to have an identity that one can be proud of. The caste system being practised even today in Hinduism, despite all governmental efforts to eradicate it, is a major cause of religious conversions in India. Poverty and attendant exploitation is also another cause. But it appears that poverty and exploitation are intertwined with the caste system.
The caste system in India was seen by Dr Ambedkar, principal author of India’s Constitution, as the country’s greatest evil since it treated millions of people as subhuman by the simple fact of their birth. The man who tried his best to replace the discriminatory caste system with an egalitarian society, the Buddha, ended up as yet another god among the millions of deities in India. His teachings were suppressed by the Brahmins who feared that their stranglehold on society would be undermined.
Orissa is a state in India which witnessed much terrible violence in the name of religion and religious conversions. The violence still continues.
The Sangh Parivar organisations are opposed to the alleged mass conversions into Christianity of Oriya adivasis (tribal people) and others belonging to the lower castes. Many acts of outrageous violence have been perpetrated on the Christians and thousands of them are displaced from their hometowns. The Hindutva organisations allege that Christian missionaries allure the poor people with money and other enticements. How much water does the allegation hold?
Angana P. Chatterji, from whose book the introductory quote has been taken, has done a commendable job researching into the violence in Orissa. According to her, the adivasis and other lower caste people of Orissa seldom considered themselves Hindus. In her words, “The Paika Bidroha of 1817-1825, the Kol insurrection of 1831-1832, the Kanika agitation of 1921-1922, the Praja Mandal (peasant) Movement of the 1930s and 1940s speak powerfully of Adivasi and subaltern refusal to submit to cultural colonialism and Brahminical imposition” (199). Even in the 1990s there were conflicts between the RSS and Lakshmanananda Saraswati (who claimed to be working for the welfare of the adivasis and the lower caste people of Orissa). For example, the RSS and Lakshmanananda Saraswati opposed the adivasis when they fought for indigenous child rights (359). These Hindutva leaders did not want the adivasis to be organised. They opposed the adivasi struggle for Kuidina (a state for themselves). They tried to suppress the Kandhamal Nari Jagaran Samiti and the Kuidina Ekta Samiti. “They (the RSS and Lakshmanananda Saraswati) are dangerous people,” Chatterji quote some Kui people. “They want to kill our people like animals. They do not understand religious differences. They do not understand our connection to our land. We are neither Christians nor Hindus. We are Adivasi. We worship the Earth. There are Christian Kui’s. The Mission [church] never forced us to convert. Not in Kandhamal, before or after 1947...” (359)
Chatterji exposes the myth that the adivasis considered or were eager to consider themselves Hindus. In May 2006, at a convention attended by about 50,000 adivasis, the Bisu Sendra Tribal Council, which serves the tribal communities in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa, determined to ban Hindu customs and rituals, representations and priests from Adivasi spiritual and religious ceremonies (96).
Not different is the case with the lower caste people. Caste oppression has been a bone of contention for long in Orissa as in other parts of India. In Orissa, says Chatterji, “Dalit students and teachers have been denied employment and entry into schools and community events, and Dalit community members have been assaulted for participating in Hindu religious ceremonies” (69). Chatterji lists a number of incidents to show the disaffection between the people belonging to the higher and lower castes. Such incidents led to the conversion into Buddhism of about 3000 Dalits in Dec 2006.
Poverty
Poverty also plays its role in this complex issue. Orissa is one of the most backward states in India. In the words of Ramachandra Guha, “In 1999 Orissa overtook – if that is the word – Bihar as India’s poorest state” [India After Gandhi, Picador India, 2007, p.707]. The adivasis and the lower caste people were exploited economically in the attempts to set up various industries. The Utkal Alumina, which brought together Canadian and Norwegian firms with the Aditya Birla Group, led to the displacement of many adivasis from their land. 3000 acres of land cultivated by the adivasis was taken over by the Biju Janata Dal government and given to the industrialists. The same government also acquired land in Kalinganagar at much less than the market rate and handed it over to Tata Steel to build a factory processing iron ore for the Chinese market.
Apart from the capitalist industrialists are other exploiters such as the money-lenders who stand to benefit much by keeping the adivasis and the low caste people poor. All these exploitations have made Orissa a hotbed of Maoists. Christian missionaries also creep in with the intention of helping the poor and the downtrodden.
Solution
The solution seems to lie in two factors:
1. Put an end to the discriminatory caste system. This would engender a sense of respectability among the adivasis and the lower castes. Then there would be no need for religious conversion as a means of attaining respectability.
2. Give economic independence to the adivasis and the lower castes. This would put an end to the Maoist violence as well as the charm held out by poverty to Christian missionaries.
Jamshedpur communal riots of 1964 and 1979
The Economic and Political Weekly
May 23 - May 29, 2009
Communal Riots and Jamshedpur
by Kashif-ul-Huda
April 2009 marked the 30th anniversary of the horrific communal violence in Jamshedpur, an episode that changed the city forever. An analysis of the events that led to the riots of 1964 and then 1979 by a resident of Jamshedpur at that time.
Much before Jawaharlal Nehru envisaged a vision of modern India, attempts to realise that dream were made in a remote area in Bihar surrounded by dense forest. It was a dream to build a modern industrial city with the essence of Indianness, i e, ethos of plurality, composite culture and a m odern world view. That was the city of Jamshedpur. It was a mini India.
Jamshedpur was a new vision for India. Its founder, Jamshedji Tata is reported to have instructed the planners of this city:
Be sure to lay wide streets planted with shady trees, of which every other should be of a quick growing variety. Be sure that there is plenty of space for lawns and g ardens; r eserve large areas for football fields, hockey fields and parks; earmark areas for Hindu temples, Mohammedan mosques and Christian churches.
Founded in 1919, Jamshedpur is the first planned industrial city of India. The plan was to promote the establishment of cor- porations and their eventual prosperity in an Indian setting. Jamshedpur continues to be the only Indian city that does not have a municipality and still, offers great services to its residents. It is a "prosper- ous" city that provides its residents with a ccess to good paying and stable jobs.
The Tata family has its companies all over Jamshedpur. All economic activities here are directly and indirectly linked to the Tata companies with Tata Steel and Tata Motors (formerly TELCO) being the two biggest employers. Employment and business opportunities here are open to all. This fact has facilitated the growth of Muslims and they have done very well here. Their prosperity and success in the city shows in the detailed designs of the mosques that they have built up over the years.
Jamshedpur's peace and prosperity a ttracted some of the best talent from all over the country and soon it became a microcosm of India. Languages and c ultures from all parts of India are proudly displayed. From Urdu mushairas to Bharatnatyam to Christmas parties, the dream of Jamshedji Tata was enthusiastically accepted by its residents. People of different faith, culture, and religion lived next door to each other in quarters p rovided by the companies.
1964 Riots
In 1964, violence erupted in several places in east India. The reason for this outburst was due to thousands of Hindu refugees from East Pakistan c oming to India to escape the anti-Hindu violence back home. The government of India engaged special trains to settle them in India. Tales of horror in East P akistan raised passions and many cities along the route of these special trains Calcutta, Jamshedpur, Rourkela, and Raigarh - saw anti-Muslim violence in which thousands - mostly Muslims - were killed.
It seemed as if the latest wave of com-munal violence was unfinished business stemming from the bloody Partition. An analysis of the results of subsequent elections - showing electoral gains by the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS) - would sug- gest that this violence was simply a ploy to make political capital. While both conclusions have elements of truth in them, there is a third dimension to it.
A local economic factor was also at play in the violence of March 1964. The new opportunities that opened up because of the 1960s wave of industrialisation allowed Muslims to move up the economic ladder. Violence tried to put a stop to this mobility. There is anecdotal evidence of some Muslims going back to their v illages and towns and not returning back to their jobs.
The violence in 1964 paid rich dividends to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates. They were finally able to take root in Jamshedpur and it was the Muslims who were at the receiving end. The BJS showed up for the first time in the elections held in Jamshedpur after 1964 and was able to garner as much as 10% of the votes polled in 1967. Many Muslims living in company quarters were killed and this gave way to Azad Nagar. A Muslim majority area
Azad Nagar, took shape on the edge of the city, on land sold by the adivasis. The Jamaat-e-Islami took an active part in s ecuring the lands for Muslims. They also fought court cases when the RSS tried to disrupt the Muslims' plans by attempting to set up temporary temples on lands ac- quired by the Muslims. Thus the 1964 v iolence, which saw an estimated 2,000 killed in Jameshedpur, Rourkela and C alcutta, mostly Muslims, helped estab- lish Hindu and Muslim communal organ- isations as champions for the rights of their respective communities.
Dina Nath Pandey, the man who was to play an important role in 1979 Jamshed- pur riots, first arrived on the electoral scene as a BJS candidate in the 1972 Bihar assembly elections, winning 10% of the votes, and rising to the third position for Jamshedpur East assembly seat. He was to win this seat in the 1977 elections as a Janata Party nominee.
1979 Riots
In April 1979, Jamshedpur witnessed Hindu-Muslim violence. Both Muslim and Hindu communal forces had found a receptive audience after the 1964 riots. The Sangh parivar tried to widen its base by starting outreach efforts among the adiva- sis. It was done slowly by introducing H indu deities and rituals. The Jamaat-e- Islami, on its part, was ready to lend a helping hand in the effort of the Muslims to r elocate to outside the city.
Establishment of Muslim bastis brought Muslims closer to the adivasi villages around Jamshedpur. Sabirnagar was one such basti close to the adivasi colony of Dimnabasti. These two bastis provided the spark that put Jamshedpur on fire in 1979.
There had been no reports of conflicts between Muslims and advasis. In fact, Muslim bastis were established on lands sold by the adivasis. In their attempt to "Hinduise" the adivasis, RSS tried to take a Ramnavmi procession in 1978 from Dimnabasti. This was the first time a Ram navmi procession was to start from Dimnabasti. The organisers insisted that the procession take a route that goes through Sabirnagar. The district ad- ministration reje cted their request and the high court ruled that though the road is a public thoroughfare and everyone should have access to it, the local administration has the authority to deny permission.
The matter did not end there. The RSS had a whole full year to campaign and spread the word that Hindus in their own country are not able to freely parade their religious processions. In 1979, they again attempted to take the procession from the same route. The district administration and Muslims suggested an alternate route that would have avoided Sabir- nagar and a potential source of a clash. However, the organisers of the Ramnavmi procession would have none of it and a stand-off ensued.
Tensions increased in Jamshedpur over this stand-off. By March 1979 almost ever yone knew that violence was imminent. RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras visited the town on 1 April. Jamshedpur erupted in violence 10 days later. The Jitendra Narain Commission of Inquiry was set up to investigate the riots. One thing they took into consideration was the speech given by Deoras in Jamshedpur. They held him and the RSS responsible for creating the climate that led to the c ommunal violence.
The commission blamed Deoras for en- couraging Hindu extremists to insist on the route that goes through the Muslim basti. The speech along with the camps organised during the conference helped in creating a militant atmosphere. Though there was no precedent of the Ramnavmi procession coming out of Dimnabasti and certainly not passing through the Muslim area, similar processions from other parts of the town were told by the Hindu leaders to be put on hold till the Dimnabasti issue was resolved. There were efforts to reach an agreement or come up with a compro- mise, while Hindus forced closure of shops to pressure the administration, a few of the leaders were arrested.
A pamphlet was issued by Sri Ramnavmi Kendriya Akhara Samiti on 7 April, which
was not only a declaration of communal violence but also openly detailed how and when it would happen. Hindus were told to come to Dimnabasti at 11 am on 11 April and take the procession from the route that was to go through Sabirnagar, a Muslim area. Once the procession had successfully passed through the area, then other processions would start later that afternoon. Meanwhile, a deal was reached and on 11 April, a procession did pass through Sabirnagar accompanied by some local Muslims. The procession was attended by very few and reached the main road safely.
But the danger was far from over. Processions crawled, an attempt was made to delay the progress till the 11 am mark when a large number of people were expected to join it. The procession stopped in the Mango area in front of a masjid. Now, the procession had grown to about 15,000 strong. Local MLA Dina Nath Pandey announced that the procession would not move forward till all Hindus who had been arrested earlier were released. The admi nistration tried to reason that any re- lease will take hours if not days but Pandey would have none of that, and did not budge from his decision.
Muslims were also prepared for the vio- lence. A stone was thrown at the procession and the violence started. In the next few days, 108 people were to lose their lives. Thousands of houses were looted. Muslims living in company quarters and predominantly Hindu areas were especially vulnerable to violence.
Though the district administration was praised for trying its best to prevent the violence, junior level policemen and B ihar Military Police were held responsible for not deterring Hindu mobs from attacking Muslims or attacking Muslims them-selves. All those who died in police fi rings were mainly Muslims.
A most horrific incident that occurred during these riots would be seared into the memories of people present. This was the burning of an ambulance full of w omen and children. About 60 were i nside this vehicle, a part of the caravan of vehicles carrying Muslims from the b esieged Bhaulbasa area to safety. This ambulance veered off the road to a side lane and was burnt. Only a few could s urvive to tell the tale of horror.
One prominent victim of these riots was Zaki Anwar, a professor. He went on a fast in Gandhian fashion a day before in an attempt to prevent the violence. A man of secular principles, he lived in a Hindu area and refused to leave his house during this frightening event. In the afternoon of the violence, he was dead. There were rumours that he was killed by Muslim fanatics, as they could not see any Muslim espousing secularism ideals. It does not matter who killed the professor. One thing is certain for sure, secularism and communal harmony died along with him that day in Jamshedpur. The city c ontinued to have fears every year on the occasion of Ramnavmi. Fortunately though, it never again resulted in a full- fledged communal riot. Maybe it was the sacrifice of Zaki Anwar that saved Jamshedpur from future riots.
This account of Jamshedpur riots is based on interviews with survivors, personal recollections, news reports published in The New York Times, the report "Communal Violence in India" published by Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, and the books, Riot After Riot by M J Akbar and Combating Communal Conflicts by Vibhuti Narain Rai. Kashif-ul-Huda (kashif(at)urdustan.com) is the editor of news web site www.TwoCircles.net and in 1979 was five years old, living in Jamshedpur and witnessed the 1979 riots in the town.
May 23 - May 29, 2009
Communal Riots and Jamshedpur
by Kashif-ul-Huda
April 2009 marked the 30th anniversary of the horrific communal violence in Jamshedpur, an episode that changed the city forever. An analysis of the events that led to the riots of 1964 and then 1979 by a resident of Jamshedpur at that time.
Much before Jawaharlal Nehru envisaged a vision of modern India, attempts to realise that dream were made in a remote area in Bihar surrounded by dense forest. It was a dream to build a modern industrial city with the essence of Indianness, i e, ethos of plurality, composite culture and a m odern world view. That was the city of Jamshedpur. It was a mini India.
Jamshedpur was a new vision for India. Its founder, Jamshedji Tata is reported to have instructed the planners of this city:
Be sure to lay wide streets planted with shady trees, of which every other should be of a quick growing variety. Be sure that there is plenty of space for lawns and g ardens; r eserve large areas for football fields, hockey fields and parks; earmark areas for Hindu temples, Mohammedan mosques and Christian churches.
Founded in 1919, Jamshedpur is the first planned industrial city of India. The plan was to promote the establishment of cor- porations and their eventual prosperity in an Indian setting. Jamshedpur continues to be the only Indian city that does not have a municipality and still, offers great services to its residents. It is a "prosper- ous" city that provides its residents with a ccess to good paying and stable jobs.
The Tata family has its companies all over Jamshedpur. All economic activities here are directly and indirectly linked to the Tata companies with Tata Steel and Tata Motors (formerly TELCO) being the two biggest employers. Employment and business opportunities here are open to all. This fact has facilitated the growth of Muslims and they have done very well here. Their prosperity and success in the city shows in the detailed designs of the mosques that they have built up over the years.
Jamshedpur's peace and prosperity a ttracted some of the best talent from all over the country and soon it became a microcosm of India. Languages and c ultures from all parts of India are proudly displayed. From Urdu mushairas to Bharatnatyam to Christmas parties, the dream of Jamshedji Tata was enthusiastically accepted by its residents. People of different faith, culture, and religion lived next door to each other in quarters p rovided by the companies.
1964 Riots
In 1964, violence erupted in several places in east India. The reason for this outburst was due to thousands of Hindu refugees from East Pakistan c oming to India to escape the anti-Hindu violence back home. The government of India engaged special trains to settle them in India. Tales of horror in East P akistan raised passions and many cities along the route of these special trains Calcutta, Jamshedpur, Rourkela, and Raigarh - saw anti-Muslim violence in which thousands - mostly Muslims - were killed.
It seemed as if the latest wave of com-munal violence was unfinished business stemming from the bloody Partition. An analysis of the results of subsequent elections - showing electoral gains by the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS) - would sug- gest that this violence was simply a ploy to make political capital. While both conclusions have elements of truth in them, there is a third dimension to it.
A local economic factor was also at play in the violence of March 1964. The new opportunities that opened up because of the 1960s wave of industrialisation allowed Muslims to move up the economic ladder. Violence tried to put a stop to this mobility. There is anecdotal evidence of some Muslims going back to their v illages and towns and not returning back to their jobs.
The violence in 1964 paid rich dividends to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates. They were finally able to take root in Jamshedpur and it was the Muslims who were at the receiving end. The BJS showed up for the first time in the elections held in Jamshedpur after 1964 and was able to garner as much as 10% of the votes polled in 1967. Many Muslims living in company quarters were killed and this gave way to Azad Nagar. A Muslim majority area
Azad Nagar, took shape on the edge of the city, on land sold by the adivasis. The Jamaat-e-Islami took an active part in s ecuring the lands for Muslims. They also fought court cases when the RSS tried to disrupt the Muslims' plans by attempting to set up temporary temples on lands ac- quired by the Muslims. Thus the 1964 v iolence, which saw an estimated 2,000 killed in Jameshedpur, Rourkela and C alcutta, mostly Muslims, helped estab- lish Hindu and Muslim communal organ- isations as champions for the rights of their respective communities.
Dina Nath Pandey, the man who was to play an important role in 1979 Jamshed- pur riots, first arrived on the electoral scene as a BJS candidate in the 1972 Bihar assembly elections, winning 10% of the votes, and rising to the third position for Jamshedpur East assembly seat. He was to win this seat in the 1977 elections as a Janata Party nominee.
1979 Riots
In April 1979, Jamshedpur witnessed Hindu-Muslim violence. Both Muslim and Hindu communal forces had found a receptive audience after the 1964 riots. The Sangh parivar tried to widen its base by starting outreach efforts among the adiva- sis. It was done slowly by introducing H indu deities and rituals. The Jamaat-e- Islami, on its part, was ready to lend a helping hand in the effort of the Muslims to r elocate to outside the city.
Establishment of Muslim bastis brought Muslims closer to the adivasi villages around Jamshedpur. Sabirnagar was one such basti close to the adivasi colony of Dimnabasti. These two bastis provided the spark that put Jamshedpur on fire in 1979.
There had been no reports of conflicts between Muslims and advasis. In fact, Muslim bastis were established on lands sold by the adivasis. In their attempt to "Hinduise" the adivasis, RSS tried to take a Ramnavmi procession in 1978 from Dimnabasti. This was the first time a Ram navmi procession was to start from Dimnabasti. The organisers insisted that the procession take a route that goes through Sabirnagar. The district ad- ministration reje cted their request and the high court ruled that though the road is a public thoroughfare and everyone should have access to it, the local administration has the authority to deny permission.
The matter did not end there. The RSS had a whole full year to campaign and spread the word that Hindus in their own country are not able to freely parade their religious processions. In 1979, they again attempted to take the procession from the same route. The district administration and Muslims suggested an alternate route that would have avoided Sabir- nagar and a potential source of a clash. However, the organisers of the Ramnavmi procession would have none of it and a stand-off ensued.
Tensions increased in Jamshedpur over this stand-off. By March 1979 almost ever yone knew that violence was imminent. RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras visited the town on 1 April. Jamshedpur erupted in violence 10 days later. The Jitendra Narain Commission of Inquiry was set up to investigate the riots. One thing they took into consideration was the speech given by Deoras in Jamshedpur. They held him and the RSS responsible for creating the climate that led to the c ommunal violence.
The commission blamed Deoras for en- couraging Hindu extremists to insist on the route that goes through the Muslim basti. The speech along with the camps organised during the conference helped in creating a militant atmosphere. Though there was no precedent of the Ramnavmi procession coming out of Dimnabasti and certainly not passing through the Muslim area, similar processions from other parts of the town were told by the Hindu leaders to be put on hold till the Dimnabasti issue was resolved. There were efforts to reach an agreement or come up with a compro- mise, while Hindus forced closure of shops to pressure the administration, a few of the leaders were arrested.
A pamphlet was issued by Sri Ramnavmi Kendriya Akhara Samiti on 7 April, which
was not only a declaration of communal violence but also openly detailed how and when it would happen. Hindus were told to come to Dimnabasti at 11 am on 11 April and take the procession from the route that was to go through Sabirnagar, a Muslim area. Once the procession had successfully passed through the area, then other processions would start later that afternoon. Meanwhile, a deal was reached and on 11 April, a procession did pass through Sabirnagar accompanied by some local Muslims. The procession was attended by very few and reached the main road safely.
But the danger was far from over. Processions crawled, an attempt was made to delay the progress till the 11 am mark when a large number of people were expected to join it. The procession stopped in the Mango area in front of a masjid. Now, the procession had grown to about 15,000 strong. Local MLA Dina Nath Pandey announced that the procession would not move forward till all Hindus who had been arrested earlier were released. The admi nistration tried to reason that any re- lease will take hours if not days but Pandey would have none of that, and did not budge from his decision.
Muslims were also prepared for the vio- lence. A stone was thrown at the procession and the violence started. In the next few days, 108 people were to lose their lives. Thousands of houses were looted. Muslims living in company quarters and predominantly Hindu areas were especially vulnerable to violence.
Though the district administration was praised for trying its best to prevent the violence, junior level policemen and B ihar Military Police were held responsible for not deterring Hindu mobs from attacking Muslims or attacking Muslims them-selves. All those who died in police fi rings were mainly Muslims.
A most horrific incident that occurred during these riots would be seared into the memories of people present. This was the burning of an ambulance full of w omen and children. About 60 were i nside this vehicle, a part of the caravan of vehicles carrying Muslims from the b esieged Bhaulbasa area to safety. This ambulance veered off the road to a side lane and was burnt. Only a few could s urvive to tell the tale of horror.
One prominent victim of these riots was Zaki Anwar, a professor. He went on a fast in Gandhian fashion a day before in an attempt to prevent the violence. A man of secular principles, he lived in a Hindu area and refused to leave his house during this frightening event. In the afternoon of the violence, he was dead. There were rumours that he was killed by Muslim fanatics, as they could not see any Muslim espousing secularism ideals. It does not matter who killed the professor. One thing is certain for sure, secularism and communal harmony died along with him that day in Jamshedpur. The city c ontinued to have fears every year on the occasion of Ramnavmi. Fortunately though, it never again resulted in a full- fledged communal riot. Maybe it was the sacrifice of Zaki Anwar that saved Jamshedpur from future riots.
This account of Jamshedpur riots is based on interviews with survivors, personal recollections, news reports published in The New York Times, the report "Communal Violence in India" published by Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, and the books, Riot After Riot by M J Akbar and Combating Communal Conflicts by Vibhuti Narain Rai. Kashif-ul-Huda (kashif(at)urdustan.com) is the editor of news web site www.TwoCircles.net and in 1979 was five years old, living in Jamshedpur and witnessed the 1979 riots in the town.
Hindu-Muslim Bhai Bhai in a Small Town in Bangladesh
The Economic and Political Weekly, May 23 - May 29, 2009
by Delwar Hussain (EPW, May 23 - May 29, 2009)
Following Partition, the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 and later the Babri Masjid demolition in India in 1992, the Hindu population in Bangladesh has been dwindling, targeted as it is by politicians and communalists
http://www.epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/13539.pdf
by Delwar Hussain (EPW, May 23 - May 29, 2009)
Following Partition, the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 and later the Babri Masjid demolition in India in 1992, the Hindu population in Bangladesh has been dwindling, targeted as it is by politicians and communalists
http://www.epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/13539.pdf
BJP: Political party or the Archaeological Survey of India
The Hindu, May 29, 2009
Reinventing itself: BJP’s dilemma
by Neena Vyas
Can the party ignore youth factor?
NEW DELHI: As the Bharatiya Janata Party braces itself for facing Parliament after its electoral defeat — and before that it has to choose its leaders in the two Houses — a problem staring the party in the face is how to re-invent itself and get rid of dead wood. A leader recently expressed the dilemma: “We have to decide whether we want to be a political party or the Archaeological Survey of India.” The suggestion was the party should decide between modernising itself in tune with a new generation of Indians and continuing to protect old monuments in the form of persons or ideas that were clearly outdated.
Meeting on Sunday
A meeting of the BJP Parliamentary Party has been called for Sunday and it is expected to formally elect L.K. Advani its leader in the Lok Sabha, which post will automatically make him Leader of the Opposition in the 15th Lok Sabha. Mr. Advani initially let it be known that he no longer wanted to hold on to that position which he enjoyed in the 14th Lok Sabha, but was “persuaded” within 24 hours to change his mind in the interest of a “smooth transition of power” at a later date.
What this episode suggests is that the BJP is not yet ready for the generational change and is simply putting off the inevitable for a better time — maybe, a few months or even a year from now.
The BJP should have no trouble indicating that Sushma Swaraj will be its deputy leader in the Lok Sabha. Some of the other heavyweights in the House are too senior for this job — Rajnath Singh is party president; Jaswant Singh was leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha in his previous term and cannot be expected to become a deputy leader in the Lok Sabha; Murli Manohar Joshi was a former party president and veteran leader; and Yashwant Sinha may see this position as not worthy of his status as a former Minister for Finance and External Affairs.
Rajya Sabha
In the Rajya Sabha, the BJP’s choice in all likelihood is between M. Venkaiah Naidu and Arun Jaitley. While no one in the party has any doubt that Mr. Jaitley will be an effective leader in the Upper House, problems could arise if a choice has to be made between his getting this position and retaining his job as the seniormost general secretary of the BJP. Besides the ‘Jinnah was secular’ formulation of Mr. Advani, a reason why he was forced to give up his position as party president in the last days of 2005 was that he was also the Leader of the Opposition. That went against the BJP principle of “one man, one post.”
The BJP may well be reluctant to let Mr. Jaitley get bogged down in parliamentary protocol, instead of focussing on party work and taking charge of political affairs in sensitive and important States.
The battle for leadership and primacy in the party will begin towards the end of the year when Mr. Rajnath Singh’s current tenure comes to an end. The BJP and its mentors in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh will have to decide who takes charge from him; if he has to continue as president, the party constitution, which disallows a second consecutive three-year term, will have to be amended. Already the buzz is that such an amendment is being talked about, but the final decision would depend on getting the RSS on board.
In the cat and mouse game, the race for the leader of the party in the Lok Sabha will begin as and when Mr. Advani steps down. Could the BJP ignore the “youth factor,” which has worked in favour of the Congress, and wait for two or three more years on this score?
Ideology
Another crucial issue is whether the BJP will persist with its hard Hindutva agenda or present a “moderate” face Vajpayee style. Mr. Jaitley has made known his preference for the “moderate” path, but Mr. Singh is expected to jump on the Hindutva plank, hoping, perhaps, to get the RSS on his side to win the argument.
The problem for the moderates will come from the RSS offshoots such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal and the “sants and sadhus” it has cultivated.
Reinventing itself: BJP’s dilemma
by Neena Vyas
Can the party ignore youth factor?
NEW DELHI: As the Bharatiya Janata Party braces itself for facing Parliament after its electoral defeat — and before that it has to choose its leaders in the two Houses — a problem staring the party in the face is how to re-invent itself and get rid of dead wood. A leader recently expressed the dilemma: “We have to decide whether we want to be a political party or the Archaeological Survey of India.” The suggestion was the party should decide between modernising itself in tune with a new generation of Indians and continuing to protect old monuments in the form of persons or ideas that were clearly outdated.
Meeting on Sunday
A meeting of the BJP Parliamentary Party has been called for Sunday and it is expected to formally elect L.K. Advani its leader in the Lok Sabha, which post will automatically make him Leader of the Opposition in the 15th Lok Sabha. Mr. Advani initially let it be known that he no longer wanted to hold on to that position which he enjoyed in the 14th Lok Sabha, but was “persuaded” within 24 hours to change his mind in the interest of a “smooth transition of power” at a later date.
What this episode suggests is that the BJP is not yet ready for the generational change and is simply putting off the inevitable for a better time — maybe, a few months or even a year from now.
The BJP should have no trouble indicating that Sushma Swaraj will be its deputy leader in the Lok Sabha. Some of the other heavyweights in the House are too senior for this job — Rajnath Singh is party president; Jaswant Singh was leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha in his previous term and cannot be expected to become a deputy leader in the Lok Sabha; Murli Manohar Joshi was a former party president and veteran leader; and Yashwant Sinha may see this position as not worthy of his status as a former Minister for Finance and External Affairs.
Rajya Sabha
In the Rajya Sabha, the BJP’s choice in all likelihood is between M. Venkaiah Naidu and Arun Jaitley. While no one in the party has any doubt that Mr. Jaitley will be an effective leader in the Upper House, problems could arise if a choice has to be made between his getting this position and retaining his job as the seniormost general secretary of the BJP. Besides the ‘Jinnah was secular’ formulation of Mr. Advani, a reason why he was forced to give up his position as party president in the last days of 2005 was that he was also the Leader of the Opposition. That went against the BJP principle of “one man, one post.”
The BJP may well be reluctant to let Mr. Jaitley get bogged down in parliamentary protocol, instead of focussing on party work and taking charge of political affairs in sensitive and important States.
The battle for leadership and primacy in the party will begin towards the end of the year when Mr. Rajnath Singh’s current tenure comes to an end. The BJP and its mentors in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh will have to decide who takes charge from him; if he has to continue as president, the party constitution, which disallows a second consecutive three-year term, will have to be amended. Already the buzz is that such an amendment is being talked about, but the final decision would depend on getting the RSS on board.
In the cat and mouse game, the race for the leader of the party in the Lok Sabha will begin as and when Mr. Advani steps down. Could the BJP ignore the “youth factor,” which has worked in favour of the Congress, and wait for two or three more years on this score?
Ideology
Another crucial issue is whether the BJP will persist with its hard Hindutva agenda or present a “moderate” face Vajpayee style. Mr. Jaitley has made known his preference for the “moderate” path, but Mr. Singh is expected to jump on the Hindutva plank, hoping, perhaps, to get the RSS on his side to win the argument.
The problem for the moderates will come from the RSS offshoots such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal and the “sants and sadhus” it has cultivated.
May 28, 2009
Ravidass Deras and Dalit Consciousness in Punjab
Ravidass Deras and Social Protest: Making Sense of Dalit Consciousness in Punjab (India)
by Ronki Ram
The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 67, Issue 04, November 2008, pp 1341-1364, Published Online by Cambridge University Press
Abstract
This paper argues that Dalit consciousness in Punjab emerged against the backdrop of the teachings of Ravidass, an untouchable saint-poet of the North Indian Bhakti movement who presented a middle path between assimilation and radical separatism for the construction of a separate Dalit identity. Dera Sach Khand Ballan, one of the most popular Ravidass Deras in Punjab, played an important role in concretizing this path by chiseling the markers of a separate Dalit identity in the state. The author assesses the long-term implications of the newly emerged Dalit consciousness in Punjab for the deepening of democracy in India.
Footnotes
Ronki Ram (ronkiram @ yahoo.co.in) is Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Political Science at Panjab University Chandigarh, India.
by Ronki Ram
The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 67, Issue 04, November 2008, pp 1341-1364, Published Online by Cambridge University Press
Abstract
This paper argues that Dalit consciousness in Punjab emerged against the backdrop of the teachings of Ravidass, an untouchable saint-poet of the North Indian Bhakti movement who presented a middle path between assimilation and radical separatism for the construction of a separate Dalit identity. Dera Sach Khand Ballan, one of the most popular Ravidass Deras in Punjab, played an important role in concretizing this path by chiseling the markers of a separate Dalit identity in the state. The author assesses the long-term implications of the newly emerged Dalit consciousness in Punjab for the deepening of democracy in India.
Footnotes
Ronki Ram (ronkiram @ yahoo.co.in) is Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Political Science at Panjab University Chandigarh, India.
Caste discrimination continues outside of India and violence erupts in India
For more information, contact:
Dr. Joseph D’souza, International President, Dalit Freedom Network
jdsouza@dalitnetwork.org
+44-771-035-2286
Dr. John Dayal, Secretary General, All India Christian Council
catholicunion@gmail.com
+91-9811021072
+91-40-2786-8908
For immediate release
Vienna Bloodshed of Sikh Dalits a Symptom of Deep Malaise
Caste discrimination continues outside of India and violence erupts in India
Global community exposed to caste discrimination
LONDON – May 28, 2009 – Several days after the attack on the top leadership of the Ravidass religious sect by orthodox Sikh terrorists in Vienna, world governments and the global human rights and human dignity community has apparently not understood the significance and implications of this incident. One high priest died, the head of the sect was injured, three persons were killed so far in the subsequent violence in India, several towns were placed under military curfew, and billions of rupees worth of public property was destroyed.
“This is not the first time caste tensions in India burst into bloody violence in Europe. Similar incidents happened in the United Kingdom and even in the United States,” said Dr. Joseph D’souza, International President of the Dalit Freedom Network. On May 24, 2009, a group of armed Sikh upper caste expatriates raided a place of worship in Vienna, Austria, where Sant Niranjan Dass, aged about 68 and head of the Dera Sachkhand Ballan of the Shri Guru Ravidass Sabha movement, was preaching. The movement is based near Jalandhar in Punjab state of India. He was grievously injured and his associate Sant Rama Nand, aged about 56, killed.
Guru Ravidass, the founder, was a key figure in India’s Sufi movement which rebelled against upper caste tyranny. A leather worker, Sant Ravidass was deemed to be an untouchable by the high castes. Though his hymns find a place in the Sikh holy book Guru Granth Sahib, Ravidass himself is the locus of devotion for a large number of the downtrodden and former untouchable castes.
“Although it appears prosperous, Punjab has deep caste chasms and class conflicts. The upper caste Jat Sikhs command the bulk of the land resources, and upper caste Hindus run the bulk of business and trade. The Dalits, formerly known as untouchables, have less than 5 [five] percent of the state’s resources,” said John Dayal, Secretary General of the All India Christian Council. Dalits are often kept out of the management of the Gurdwaras and other places of worship. Lower caste Sikhs have set up their own parallel places of worship in almost every village in Punjab. They have also evolved their own social customs and liturgy, which is an anathema to the upper castes.
“Expatriate Sikh populations seem to have carried these divisions to Europe and to North America, as have other Indian groups. In the liberal environment of the West, the Dalits prospered, and their prosperity added to jealousies back in India,” said D’souza.
Dayal said, “It is a tragedy that the Indian government is in denial about the contemporary ramifications of caste on India. Although there are exceptions, the Indian government’s resistance and high-octane diplomatic pressures stalled honest discussions on caste discrimination and birth-based inequity in international fora such as the UN Durban conference on racism in 2001 and recent meetings in Geneva.”
D’souza said, “We call on India to assist in an honest, international discourse on the implications of caste and to help devise systems to root out the 3,000 year old evil once and for all. The measures contained in the Indian Constitution are laudable, but, for want of other reforms or perhaps political will, they have not delivered full human dignity to the Indian Dalits of any religious faith. The Dalit Christians and Muslims remain the most deprived, shorn even of the token affirmative action programmes of the government.”
The All India Christian Council (www.christiancouncil.in), birthed in 1998, exists to protect and serve the Christian community, minorities, and the oppressed castes. The aicc is a coalition of thousands of Indian denominations, organizations, and lay leaders.
The Dalit Freedom Network (www.dalitnetwork.org), founded in the United States in 2003, partners with the All India Confederation of SC/ST Organisations and the All India Christian Council to support Dalits in their emancipation movement through education, health care, economic advancement, and human right advocacy. To contact the Dalit Freedom Network partner organisation in the United Kingdom: 39 Honor Oak Road, Forest Hill, London SE23 3SH; or see www.daliteducation.org or telephone 0208 464 7879 or mobile 0771 007 7871.
# # #
Dr. Joseph D’souza, International President, Dalit Freedom Network
jdsouza@dalitnetwork.org
+44-771-035-2286
Dr. John Dayal, Secretary General, All India Christian Council
catholicunion@gmail.com
+91-9811021072
+91-40-2786-8908
For immediate release
Vienna Bloodshed of Sikh Dalits a Symptom of Deep Malaise
Caste discrimination continues outside of India and violence erupts in India
Global community exposed to caste discrimination
LONDON – May 28, 2009 – Several days after the attack on the top leadership of the Ravidass religious sect by orthodox Sikh terrorists in Vienna, world governments and the global human rights and human dignity community has apparently not understood the significance and implications of this incident. One high priest died, the head of the sect was injured, three persons were killed so far in the subsequent violence in India, several towns were placed under military curfew, and billions of rupees worth of public property was destroyed.
“This is not the first time caste tensions in India burst into bloody violence in Europe. Similar incidents happened in the United Kingdom and even in the United States,” said Dr. Joseph D’souza, International President of the Dalit Freedom Network. On May 24, 2009, a group of armed Sikh upper caste expatriates raided a place of worship in Vienna, Austria, where Sant Niranjan Dass, aged about 68 and head of the Dera Sachkhand Ballan of the Shri Guru Ravidass Sabha movement, was preaching. The movement is based near Jalandhar in Punjab state of India. He was grievously injured and his associate Sant Rama Nand, aged about 56, killed.
Guru Ravidass, the founder, was a key figure in India’s Sufi movement which rebelled against upper caste tyranny. A leather worker, Sant Ravidass was deemed to be an untouchable by the high castes. Though his hymns find a place in the Sikh holy book Guru Granth Sahib, Ravidass himself is the locus of devotion for a large number of the downtrodden and former untouchable castes.
“Although it appears prosperous, Punjab has deep caste chasms and class conflicts. The upper caste Jat Sikhs command the bulk of the land resources, and upper caste Hindus run the bulk of business and trade. The Dalits, formerly known as untouchables, have less than 5 [five] percent of the state’s resources,” said John Dayal, Secretary General of the All India Christian Council. Dalits are often kept out of the management of the Gurdwaras and other places of worship. Lower caste Sikhs have set up their own parallel places of worship in almost every village in Punjab. They have also evolved their own social customs and liturgy, which is an anathema to the upper castes.
“Expatriate Sikh populations seem to have carried these divisions to Europe and to North America, as have other Indian groups. In the liberal environment of the West, the Dalits prospered, and their prosperity added to jealousies back in India,” said D’souza.
Dayal said, “It is a tragedy that the Indian government is in denial about the contemporary ramifications of caste on India. Although there are exceptions, the Indian government’s resistance and high-octane diplomatic pressures stalled honest discussions on caste discrimination and birth-based inequity in international fora such as the UN Durban conference on racism in 2001 and recent meetings in Geneva.”
D’souza said, “We call on India to assist in an honest, international discourse on the implications of caste and to help devise systems to root out the 3,000 year old evil once and for all. The measures contained in the Indian Constitution are laudable, but, for want of other reforms or perhaps political will, they have not delivered full human dignity to the Indian Dalits of any religious faith. The Dalit Christians and Muslims remain the most deprived, shorn even of the token affirmative action programmes of the government.”
The All India Christian Council (www.christiancouncil.in), birthed in 1998, exists to protect and serve the Christian community, minorities, and the oppressed castes. The aicc is a coalition of thousands of Indian denominations, organizations, and lay leaders.
The Dalit Freedom Network (www.dalitnetwork.org), founded in the United States in 2003, partners with the All India Confederation of SC/ST Organisations and the All India Christian Council to support Dalits in their emancipation movement through education, health care, economic advancement, and human right advocacy. To contact the Dalit Freedom Network partner organisation in the United Kingdom: 39 Honor Oak Road, Forest Hill, London SE23 3SH; or see www.daliteducation.org or telephone 0208 464 7879 or mobile 0771 007 7871.
# # #
Punjab: Defusion of tensions by pandering to godmen representing the warring castes
The Hindu, May 28, 2009
Editorial
The caste war in Punjab
Seven hundred years after a Dalit mystic began preaching the oneness
of God’s creation, Punjab has been set on fire by mobs fighting in his
name. Earlier this week in Vienna, Khalistan Zindabad Force terrorists
attempted to assassinate Dera Sach Khand chief Niranjan Dass, who
heads an order of followers of the poet-saint Ravidass. Punjab’s
Dalits — who make up a third of the State’s population — responded by
unleashing the most violent protest s the State has seen in years.
Behind their rage lies a century-old struggle for political rights. As
in the case of many other new religious movements in Punjab, the rise
of Dera Sach Khand was driven by Dalit deprivation. Born into the
family of a poor leather merchant, Ravidass is widely venerated; many
of his hymns are included in the Guru Granth Sahib. But where orthodox
Sikhs consider him to be a follower of Guru Nanak, Punjab’s
Ravidassiya order considers him to be a Guru in his own right. Back in
the 1920s, the revolutionary activist Mangoo Ram tapped Ravidassiya
traditions to found the Ad-Dharam movement. Dalits were, at the time,
deemed a non-agricultural caste, and denied the right to own land, the
currency of power in a rural society. Mangoo Ram saw in Ravidass’
teaching the intellectual tools for liberation.
Heirs to Mangoo Ram’s movement, Dalit orders like Sach Khand have
grown dramatically in recent years. In comparison with their
counterparts elsewhere in India, Dalits in Punjab are well off.
However, they continue to suffer social discrimination. Both the state
and the clergy have, for the most part, sided with upper-caste Sikhs —
pushing Dalits towards religious movements that voice their concerns.
Sikh neoconservatives have been attempting to stamp out the new
orders, which they insist are heretical. In 2007, tensions between the
clerical establishment and Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim
Singh almost precipitated large-scale violence. Worryingly, Khalistan
terror groups have been acting as the neoconservatives’ sword-arm.
Last year, the Delhi Police made four arrests in connection with a
Babbar Khalsa International plot to assassinate Dalit godman Piara
Singh Bhaniarawala. In June, 2008, the Punjab Police arrested alleged
Khalistan Zindabad Force operative Bibi Ranjit Kaur on charges of
planning to assassinate Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. Unless a serious
political effort is made to address the causes of the bitter
caste-struggle in Punjab, the end of the rioting seen this week is
unlikely to herald the return of peace. Politicians have so far sought
to defuse tensions by pandering to godmen representing the warring
castes. But the real challenge is to build a society founded on
respect for democratic rights.
Editorial
The caste war in Punjab
Seven hundred years after a Dalit mystic began preaching the oneness
of God’s creation, Punjab has been set on fire by mobs fighting in his
name. Earlier this week in Vienna, Khalistan Zindabad Force terrorists
attempted to assassinate Dera Sach Khand chief Niranjan Dass, who
heads an order of followers of the poet-saint Ravidass. Punjab’s
Dalits — who make up a third of the State’s population — responded by
unleashing the most violent protest s the State has seen in years.
Behind their rage lies a century-old struggle for political rights. As
in the case of many other new religious movements in Punjab, the rise
of Dera Sach Khand was driven by Dalit deprivation. Born into the
family of a poor leather merchant, Ravidass is widely venerated; many
of his hymns are included in the Guru Granth Sahib. But where orthodox
Sikhs consider him to be a follower of Guru Nanak, Punjab’s
Ravidassiya order considers him to be a Guru in his own right. Back in
the 1920s, the revolutionary activist Mangoo Ram tapped Ravidassiya
traditions to found the Ad-Dharam movement. Dalits were, at the time,
deemed a non-agricultural caste, and denied the right to own land, the
currency of power in a rural society. Mangoo Ram saw in Ravidass’
teaching the intellectual tools for liberation.
Heirs to Mangoo Ram’s movement, Dalit orders like Sach Khand have
grown dramatically in recent years. In comparison with their
counterparts elsewhere in India, Dalits in Punjab are well off.
However, they continue to suffer social discrimination. Both the state
and the clergy have, for the most part, sided with upper-caste Sikhs —
pushing Dalits towards religious movements that voice their concerns.
Sikh neoconservatives have been attempting to stamp out the new
orders, which they insist are heretical. In 2007, tensions between the
clerical establishment and Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim
Singh almost precipitated large-scale violence. Worryingly, Khalistan
terror groups have been acting as the neoconservatives’ sword-arm.
Last year, the Delhi Police made four arrests in connection with a
Babbar Khalsa International plot to assassinate Dalit godman Piara
Singh Bhaniarawala. In June, 2008, the Punjab Police arrested alleged
Khalistan Zindabad Force operative Bibi Ranjit Kaur on charges of
planning to assassinate Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. Unless a serious
political effort is made to address the causes of the bitter
caste-struggle in Punjab, the end of the rioting seen this week is
unlikely to herald the return of peace. Politicians have so far sought
to defuse tensions by pandering to godmen representing the warring
castes. But the real challenge is to build a society founded on
respect for democratic rights.
Relax dont let the conservative nationalism (and also rightwing) create a fear of impropriety
The Telegraph
May 28, 2009
Editorial
GUARD THE SONG
Must a nation always take itself dead seriously? And should every element in the ritual of nationhood be absolutely beyond irony or humour? Indian law seems to answer both questions with a rather firm yes, and has pulled up Ram Gopal Varma for “tinkering” with the national anthem in his forthcoming film. Bringing one’s right to freedom of speech and expression to this particular song would amount to disrespectful, and therefore unlawful, tinkering. Hence the censor board has unilaterally refused to clear Mr Varma’s adaptation of Janaganamana. So, the only thing one can do with the anthem is to stand up and sing it exactly as it has been written. This puts the song not only above any kind of creative freedom, but also above international copyright law, for the copyright on the songs of Rabindranath Tagore has expired in 2001. But when it comes to this song by Tagore, the National Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act forbids any liberties.
It is surely the sign of a modern and mature democracy that it can play with its rituals and symbols within the limits of civilized behaviour, and that these limits do not harden into the absolutely upheld letter of the law. The Indian nation does tend to take an inflexibly earnest view of what may or may not be done with its icons and emblems. This piety is usually directed at the national flag. A great deal of judicial time has been expended, for instance, in preventing someone from making a cocktail dress out of the tricolour. The common British practice of wearing Union Jack boxer-shorts would horrify most patriotic Indians, who find it impossible to imagine that there can be an entire spectrum of innocuous playfulness between proper and improper when it comes to the use of national emblems and names. There are Indians who have taken great offence at people refusing to stand up in a cinema-hall when the national anthem had come on as part of the action of the film that they were watching. A country that needs to be constantly, zealously and sometimes comically on guard against its flag, anthem or hallowed icons being used improperly could come across to the rest of the world as a rather insecure and humourless nation. The Indian democracy is old enough now to be able to relax into a bit of unseriousness without the fear of impropriety.
May 28, 2009
Editorial
GUARD THE SONG
Must a nation always take itself dead seriously? And should every element in the ritual of nationhood be absolutely beyond irony or humour? Indian law seems to answer both questions with a rather firm yes, and has pulled up Ram Gopal Varma for “tinkering” with the national anthem in his forthcoming film. Bringing one’s right to freedom of speech and expression to this particular song would amount to disrespectful, and therefore unlawful, tinkering. Hence the censor board has unilaterally refused to clear Mr Varma’s adaptation of Janaganamana. So, the only thing one can do with the anthem is to stand up and sing it exactly as it has been written. This puts the song not only above any kind of creative freedom, but also above international copyright law, for the copyright on the songs of Rabindranath Tagore has expired in 2001. But when it comes to this song by Tagore, the National Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act forbids any liberties.
It is surely the sign of a modern and mature democracy that it can play with its rituals and symbols within the limits of civilized behaviour, and that these limits do not harden into the absolutely upheld letter of the law. The Indian nation does tend to take an inflexibly earnest view of what may or may not be done with its icons and emblems. This piety is usually directed at the national flag. A great deal of judicial time has been expended, for instance, in preventing someone from making a cocktail dress out of the tricolour. The common British practice of wearing Union Jack boxer-shorts would horrify most patriotic Indians, who find it impossible to imagine that there can be an entire spectrum of innocuous playfulness between proper and improper when it comes to the use of national emblems and names. There are Indians who have taken great offence at people refusing to stand up in a cinema-hall when the national anthem had come on as part of the action of the film that they were watching. A country that needs to be constantly, zealously and sometimes comically on guard against its flag, anthem or hallowed icons being used improperly could come across to the rest of the world as a rather insecure and humourless nation. The Indian democracy is old enough now to be able to relax into a bit of unseriousness without the fear of impropriety.
Myths about how the minority community votes
The Telegraph, May 28, 2009
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MUSLIM VOTE
This year’s Lok Sabha polls exposed once again the numerous myths about how the minority community votes, writes Zoya Hasan
By now, the factors responsible for the awesome verdict in favour of the Indian National Congress and its allies in the 2009 elections are clear. The primary factor appears to be the overriding view among large sections of the electorate that only the Congress could provide a stable, secular government. The second factor was the track record of the United Progressive Alliance, particularly its pro-poor policies and social welfare measures, which played a central role in changing the dynamics of voting. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and farm-loan waiver were the game changers. The third factor was the strong support of Muslims for the Congress in West Bengal, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, marking an end to the post-Ayodhya estrangement of Muslims from the grand old party. The implementation of some welfare programmes for Muslims over the past five years — reflecting a shift from identity to development — also went a long way in creating goodwill for the Congress.
This election has again exposed numerous myths about the Muslim vote. Conventional wisdom says that Muslims tend to vote en bloc for candidate or party because of communitarian unity. This is not true. This election shows that there is nothing like a unified Muslim vote, just as there is nothing like a Hindu vote. There is no difference between large sections of Hindus and Muslims and their wish to support an agenda of inclusive development, secularism and stability.
The Congress gained more Muslim votes this time because Muslims, like many other voters, were keen to ensure that the Bharatiya Janata Party did not stage a comeback. The fear of L.K Advani becoming prime minister, not to speak of Narendra Modi as a possible contender for the top job, weighed heavily in favour of the decision to support the Congress as the party most capable of defeating the BJP. The shift in Muslim votes to the Congress cut across class divisions among Muslims in urban and rural areas. These fears also explain the substantial support of Muslims for the Congress and its allies even in the strongholds of the fabled third front. The Left’s decision to align with the ex-partners of the BJP in the mistaken belief that this would prevent them from returning to the BJP’s fold lacked credibility. This decision may have encouraged a large scale shift of not only Muslim but also unattached secular votes to the Congress and the concomitant decimation of the Left in West Bengal and Kerala.
Muslim voting preferences clearly indicate that religious sentiments are not paramount when it comes to exercising the franchise. Issues of livelihood, education, secularism and security matter more than the counsel of clerics or pan-Islamic passions. Indeed, the resounding defeat of candidates sponsored by clerics in different states substantiates this tendency. In Kerala, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s attempt to garner the support of Muslims by courting the fundamentalist leader, A.N. Maudhany, proved counterproductive with a large proportion of secular and Muslim votes going to the Congress-led alliance. Equally, the Left’s anti-nuclear-deal stance was just not enough to neutralize Muslim discontent with regard to policies on land, livelihood and education in West Bengal. In this respect, the Muslim vote is not different, and not more ‘strategic’, from the secular vote, which would go to parties that can defeat communal outfits or can provide a measure of welfare and dignity to the deprived.
With the exception of a few elections, Muslims have not voted en bloc for any single party. Rather, they have voted for whichever party was likely to offer them economic and political inclusion and security. Like everyone else, Muslims exercise their vote overwhelmingly on party lines, and not on the basis of identity of the candidate regardless of the party he/she belongs to. This is the reason why large numbers of Muslims contesting as Independents lost from dominantly Muslim constituencies in these elections. In Uttar Pradesh, Muslims voted for the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. Even though the SP did not manage to get a single Muslim candidate elected, it could not have won 23 seats without their support.
Although Muslims have played a decisive role in increasing the tally of the Congress and its allies, only 5 per cent of the elected members of parliament are Muslims. The number of Muslim MPs has declined from 35 in the 14th Lok Sabha to 30 in the 15th Lok Sabha. Of the 30 winning candidates, 11 belong to the Congress, four each to the BSP and various Muslim parties, three each to the Trinamul Congress and the National Conference, and one each to the BJP, DMK, CPI(M) and JD (U), apart from one Independent. There are no Muslim MPs from 19 states and six Union territories. The SP, RJD and TDP have no Muslim representative in the Lok Sabha.
The decline in the number of Muslim MPs ought to be a matter of serious concern since Muslim representation is already much lower than the proportion of their population might warrant.
The legislative under-representation is due to a combination of institutional and political factors, especially first-past-the-post electoral system, which favours minorities that are geographically concentrated and, conversely, disfavours minorities such as Muslims who are demographically dispersed. In addition, Muslim representation is likely to be affected by the fact that some of the constituencies in which Muslims are concentrated are reserved for scheduled castes which means they are denied the opportunity of contesting elections from these constituencies in which they form a large proportion of the population.
Another well-known reason is the under-nomination of Muslim candidates by parties. National parties had given fewer tickets to Muslims this time than in previous elections. Many of those who were given tickets lost because of the split vote. The chances of Muslim candidates were greatly damaged by the new Muslim parties whose candidates could not win a single seat but succeeded in cutting into the votes of more winnable candidates nominated by national or regional parties. It is gratifying that Muslim voters rejected attempts by these sectarian parties at stoking religious identity for electoral gain.
A basic premise of representative democracy is that all those subject to policy should have a voice in its making. Political representation is valuable not only in itself — it can give a legitimate voice to minorities in the political arena — but also has instrumental value because it can help them influence policy decisions that can decrease marginalization of minorities. The only way to significantly increase representation of deprived groups is through positive action. For Muslims, the most practical option is for parties to give more tickets than are given to them at present from winnable constituencies. There are no reservations for the backward castes in legislatures, but their representation has gone up because post-Mandal, parties demonstrated the political will to increase their representation by giving them a large number of tickets. The time has come to begin a public debate on the merits of alternative electoral systems such as proportional representation or its variants in which parties win seats in proportion to the votes they poll and are thus more representative of voter choices and diversity of the electorate.
The author is professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and member of the National Commission for Minorities
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MUSLIM VOTE
This year’s Lok Sabha polls exposed once again the numerous myths about how the minority community votes, writes Zoya Hasan
By now, the factors responsible for the awesome verdict in favour of the Indian National Congress and its allies in the 2009 elections are clear. The primary factor appears to be the overriding view among large sections of the electorate that only the Congress could provide a stable, secular government. The second factor was the track record of the United Progressive Alliance, particularly its pro-poor policies and social welfare measures, which played a central role in changing the dynamics of voting. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and farm-loan waiver were the game changers. The third factor was the strong support of Muslims for the Congress in West Bengal, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, marking an end to the post-Ayodhya estrangement of Muslims from the grand old party. The implementation of some welfare programmes for Muslims over the past five years — reflecting a shift from identity to development — also went a long way in creating goodwill for the Congress.
This election has again exposed numerous myths about the Muslim vote. Conventional wisdom says that Muslims tend to vote en bloc for candidate or party because of communitarian unity. This is not true. This election shows that there is nothing like a unified Muslim vote, just as there is nothing like a Hindu vote. There is no difference between large sections of Hindus and Muslims and their wish to support an agenda of inclusive development, secularism and stability.
The Congress gained more Muslim votes this time because Muslims, like many other voters, were keen to ensure that the Bharatiya Janata Party did not stage a comeback. The fear of L.K Advani becoming prime minister, not to speak of Narendra Modi as a possible contender for the top job, weighed heavily in favour of the decision to support the Congress as the party most capable of defeating the BJP. The shift in Muslim votes to the Congress cut across class divisions among Muslims in urban and rural areas. These fears also explain the substantial support of Muslims for the Congress and its allies even in the strongholds of the fabled third front. The Left’s decision to align with the ex-partners of the BJP in the mistaken belief that this would prevent them from returning to the BJP’s fold lacked credibility. This decision may have encouraged a large scale shift of not only Muslim but also unattached secular votes to the Congress and the concomitant decimation of the Left in West Bengal and Kerala.
Muslim voting preferences clearly indicate that religious sentiments are not paramount when it comes to exercising the franchise. Issues of livelihood, education, secularism and security matter more than the counsel of clerics or pan-Islamic passions. Indeed, the resounding defeat of candidates sponsored by clerics in different states substantiates this tendency. In Kerala, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s attempt to garner the support of Muslims by courting the fundamentalist leader, A.N. Maudhany, proved counterproductive with a large proportion of secular and Muslim votes going to the Congress-led alliance. Equally, the Left’s anti-nuclear-deal stance was just not enough to neutralize Muslim discontent with regard to policies on land, livelihood and education in West Bengal. In this respect, the Muslim vote is not different, and not more ‘strategic’, from the secular vote, which would go to parties that can defeat communal outfits or can provide a measure of welfare and dignity to the deprived.
With the exception of a few elections, Muslims have not voted en bloc for any single party. Rather, they have voted for whichever party was likely to offer them economic and political inclusion and security. Like everyone else, Muslims exercise their vote overwhelmingly on party lines, and not on the basis of identity of the candidate regardless of the party he/she belongs to. This is the reason why large numbers of Muslims contesting as Independents lost from dominantly Muslim constituencies in these elections. In Uttar Pradesh, Muslims voted for the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. Even though the SP did not manage to get a single Muslim candidate elected, it could not have won 23 seats without their support.
Although Muslims have played a decisive role in increasing the tally of the Congress and its allies, only 5 per cent of the elected members of parliament are Muslims. The number of Muslim MPs has declined from 35 in the 14th Lok Sabha to 30 in the 15th Lok Sabha. Of the 30 winning candidates, 11 belong to the Congress, four each to the BSP and various Muslim parties, three each to the Trinamul Congress and the National Conference, and one each to the BJP, DMK, CPI(M) and JD (U), apart from one Independent. There are no Muslim MPs from 19 states and six Union territories. The SP, RJD and TDP have no Muslim representative in the Lok Sabha.
The decline in the number of Muslim MPs ought to be a matter of serious concern since Muslim representation is already much lower than the proportion of their population might warrant.
The legislative under-representation is due to a combination of institutional and political factors, especially first-past-the-post electoral system, which favours minorities that are geographically concentrated and, conversely, disfavours minorities such as Muslims who are demographically dispersed. In addition, Muslim representation is likely to be affected by the fact that some of the constituencies in which Muslims are concentrated are reserved for scheduled castes which means they are denied the opportunity of contesting elections from these constituencies in which they form a large proportion of the population.
Another well-known reason is the under-nomination of Muslim candidates by parties. National parties had given fewer tickets to Muslims this time than in previous elections. Many of those who were given tickets lost because of the split vote. The chances of Muslim candidates were greatly damaged by the new Muslim parties whose candidates could not win a single seat but succeeded in cutting into the votes of more winnable candidates nominated by national or regional parties. It is gratifying that Muslim voters rejected attempts by these sectarian parties at stoking religious identity for electoral gain.
A basic premise of representative democracy is that all those subject to policy should have a voice in its making. Political representation is valuable not only in itself — it can give a legitimate voice to minorities in the political arena — but also has instrumental value because it can help them influence policy decisions that can decrease marginalization of minorities. The only way to significantly increase representation of deprived groups is through positive action. For Muslims, the most practical option is for parties to give more tickets than are given to them at present from winnable constituencies. There are no reservations for the backward castes in legislatures, but their representation has gone up because post-Mandal, parties demonstrated the political will to increase their representation by giving them a large number of tickets. The time has come to begin a public debate on the merits of alternative electoral systems such as proportional representation or its variants in which parties win seats in proportion to the votes they poll and are thus more representative of voter choices and diversity of the electorate.
The author is professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and member of the National Commission for Minorities
May 27, 2009
Bhagat Singh writings on combating communalism, untouchability
http://www.sacw.net/article929.html
“Man does not live by politics alone”-Lenin
S Irfan Habib unveils the revolutionary Bhagat Singh’s literary side
Little is known about the revolutionary nationalists beyond their daring exploits leading to supreme sacrifice for the motherland. All of them were not merely bundles of emotion, ever ready to kill or die for the freedom of India. Quite a few of them were serious thinkers, besides being active revolutionaries. They read voraciously about the world politics and wrote extensively about Indian politics, economy, society and culture. Bhagat Singh, one of the most heroic amongst them, was one such extraordinarily gifted young thinker and writer.
His intellectual legacy needs to be remembered in these troubled times, both in India and Pakistan. He fought most of his battles, intellectual as well as otherwise, in Lahore, till he was hanged on the outskirts of the city. I strongly feel that Bhagat Singh’s revolutionary bequest is our collective memory and should not be divided by political borders.
The body of serious writings, philosophical, thought-provoking and critical, which Bhagat Singh has left behind, would place him in the ranks of Keats and Shelley who died as young. Unfortunately, romantic poetry puts you on a pedestal, whereas hard words, painfully true words, which questions society and systems are too uncomfortable to remember. Bhagat Singh not only set high standards as a great martyr, he also left behind a rich legacy as a journalist who worked for Kirti, Arjun and Pratap, well known papers of their times. Hardly anything is known about his vocation as a scribe and the issues he dealt with in his articles. These focused on the various aspects of the nationalist struggle, combating communalism, untouchability, students and politics, world brotherhood etc. This piece is an attempt to set up Bhagat Singh as a potential role model for the aspiring journos.
Bhagat Singh did not merely wish to free India from colonial bondage but dreamt of independent India, which would be egalitarian and secular. This was reflected in his revolutionary activities as well as in his commitment as a sensitive journalist. I have chosen some of his articles to illustrate his priorities and obligations as a young scribe.
In the June 1928 issue of the Kirti, published from Amritsar, Bhagat Singh wrote two articles titled Achoot ka Sawaal (On Untouchability) and Sampradayik Dange aur unka Ilaj (Communal riots and their solutions). What Bhagat Singh wrote in 1928 appears to be contemporaneous even in 2008, which unfortunately proves how precious little has been done to resolve these questions. In the first piece, Bhagat Singh starts by saying that “our country is unique where six crore citizens are called untouchables and their mere touch defiles the upper castes. Gods get enraged if they enter the temples. It is shameful that such things are being practised in the twentieth century. We claim to be a spiritual country but hesitate to accept equality of all human beings while materialist Europe is talking of revolution since centuries. They had proclaimed equality during the American and French revolutions. However, we are still debating whether the untouchable is entitled for the sacred thread or can he read the Vedas or not. We are chagrined about discrimination against Indians in foreign lands, and whine that the English do not give us equal rights in India. Given our conduct, Bhagat Singh wondered, do we really have any right to complain about such matters?”
He also seriously engaged with the possible solutions to this malaise. The first decision for all of us should be “that we start believing that we all are born equal and our vocation, as well, need not divide us. If someone is born in a sweeper’s family that does not mean that he/she has to continue in the family profession cleaning shit all his life, with no right to participate in any developmental work”.
For him, this discrimination was directly responsible for conversions, which was a burning issue even in the 1920s. Despite his anti-colonialist fervour, he neither spewed venom against the missionaries nor did he instigate Hindus to kill and burn all those who had accepted the new faith. He was rather self-critical when he wrote “If you treat them worst than animals then they will surely join other religions where they will get more rights and will be treated like human beings. In this situation it will be futile to accuse Christianity and Islam of harming Hinduism”. Bhagat Singh was convinced that “no one would be forced or tempted to change faith if the age old inequalities are removed and we sincerely start believing that we are all equal and none is different either due to birth or vocation”. All those who have organized pogroms against the hapless Christians in Orissa should pause to ponder about the views of the revolutionary they claim to revere.
As a young writer, just out of his teens, Bhagat Singh was profoundly stirred by the communal upsurge of the 1920s. Expressing his anguish in the second article, he held some of the political leaders and the press responsible for inciting communalism. He believed that “there were a few sincere leaders, but their voice is easily swept away by the rising wave of communalism. In terms of political leadership, India had gone totally bankrupt”.
Bhagat Singh felt that journalism used to be a noble profession, which had now fallen from grace. Now they give bold and sensational headlines to incite people to kill each other in the name of religion. There were riots at several places simply because the local press behaved irresponsibly and indulged in rabble-rousing through their articles. Not much seems to have changed since Bhagat Singh wrote these lines. He categorically spelt out the duties of journalists and then also accused them of dereliction of duty. He wrote that “the real duty of the newspapers is to educate, to cleanse the minds of people, to save them from narrow sectarian divisiveness, and to eradicate communal feelings to promote the idea of common nationalism.Instead, their main objective seems to be spreading ignorance, preaching and propagating sectarianism and chauvinism, communalising people’s minds leading to the destruction of our composite culture and shared heritage”.
Bhagat Singh’s disenchantment needs to be placed in the context of the developments during the 1920s, which included the birth of the RSS and the Tablighi jamaat. Both these communal platforms further polarised the political leadership as well as the press, particularly the Hindi and Urdu press of the times. Its ugly manifestation can be seen today in the emergence of Hindutva in India and the increasing Talibanisation of Pakistan, both of them threats to peace and harmony in their respective nations.
(S Irfan Habib holds Maulana Azad Chair at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi. His most recent book is To Make the Deaf Hear: Ideology and Programme of Bhagat Singh and His Comrades)
“Man does not live by politics alone”-Lenin
S Irfan Habib unveils the revolutionary Bhagat Singh’s literary side
Little is known about the revolutionary nationalists beyond their daring exploits leading to supreme sacrifice for the motherland. All of them were not merely bundles of emotion, ever ready to kill or die for the freedom of India. Quite a few of them were serious thinkers, besides being active revolutionaries. They read voraciously about the world politics and wrote extensively about Indian politics, economy, society and culture. Bhagat Singh, one of the most heroic amongst them, was one such extraordinarily gifted young thinker and writer.
His intellectual legacy needs to be remembered in these troubled times, both in India and Pakistan. He fought most of his battles, intellectual as well as otherwise, in Lahore, till he was hanged on the outskirts of the city. I strongly feel that Bhagat Singh’s revolutionary bequest is our collective memory and should not be divided by political borders.
The body of serious writings, philosophical, thought-provoking and critical, which Bhagat Singh has left behind, would place him in the ranks of Keats and Shelley who died as young. Unfortunately, romantic poetry puts you on a pedestal, whereas hard words, painfully true words, which questions society and systems are too uncomfortable to remember. Bhagat Singh not only set high standards as a great martyr, he also left behind a rich legacy as a journalist who worked for Kirti, Arjun and Pratap, well known papers of their times. Hardly anything is known about his vocation as a scribe and the issues he dealt with in his articles. These focused on the various aspects of the nationalist struggle, combating communalism, untouchability, students and politics, world brotherhood etc. This piece is an attempt to set up Bhagat Singh as a potential role model for the aspiring journos.
Bhagat Singh did not merely wish to free India from colonial bondage but dreamt of independent India, which would be egalitarian and secular. This was reflected in his revolutionary activities as well as in his commitment as a sensitive journalist. I have chosen some of his articles to illustrate his priorities and obligations as a young scribe.
In the June 1928 issue of the Kirti, published from Amritsar, Bhagat Singh wrote two articles titled Achoot ka Sawaal (On Untouchability) and Sampradayik Dange aur unka Ilaj (Communal riots and their solutions). What Bhagat Singh wrote in 1928 appears to be contemporaneous even in 2008, which unfortunately proves how precious little has been done to resolve these questions. In the first piece, Bhagat Singh starts by saying that “our country is unique where six crore citizens are called untouchables and their mere touch defiles the upper castes. Gods get enraged if they enter the temples. It is shameful that such things are being practised in the twentieth century. We claim to be a spiritual country but hesitate to accept equality of all human beings while materialist Europe is talking of revolution since centuries. They had proclaimed equality during the American and French revolutions. However, we are still debating whether the untouchable is entitled for the sacred thread or can he read the Vedas or not. We are chagrined about discrimination against Indians in foreign lands, and whine that the English do not give us equal rights in India. Given our conduct, Bhagat Singh wondered, do we really have any right to complain about such matters?”
He also seriously engaged with the possible solutions to this malaise. The first decision for all of us should be “that we start believing that we all are born equal and our vocation, as well, need not divide us. If someone is born in a sweeper’s family that does not mean that he/she has to continue in the family profession cleaning shit all his life, with no right to participate in any developmental work”.
For him, this discrimination was directly responsible for conversions, which was a burning issue even in the 1920s. Despite his anti-colonialist fervour, he neither spewed venom against the missionaries nor did he instigate Hindus to kill and burn all those who had accepted the new faith. He was rather self-critical when he wrote “If you treat them worst than animals then they will surely join other religions where they will get more rights and will be treated like human beings. In this situation it will be futile to accuse Christianity and Islam of harming Hinduism”. Bhagat Singh was convinced that “no one would be forced or tempted to change faith if the age old inequalities are removed and we sincerely start believing that we are all equal and none is different either due to birth or vocation”. All those who have organized pogroms against the hapless Christians in Orissa should pause to ponder about the views of the revolutionary they claim to revere.
As a young writer, just out of his teens, Bhagat Singh was profoundly stirred by the communal upsurge of the 1920s. Expressing his anguish in the second article, he held some of the political leaders and the press responsible for inciting communalism. He believed that “there were a few sincere leaders, but their voice is easily swept away by the rising wave of communalism. In terms of political leadership, India had gone totally bankrupt”.
Bhagat Singh felt that journalism used to be a noble profession, which had now fallen from grace. Now they give bold and sensational headlines to incite people to kill each other in the name of religion. There were riots at several places simply because the local press behaved irresponsibly and indulged in rabble-rousing through their articles. Not much seems to have changed since Bhagat Singh wrote these lines. He categorically spelt out the duties of journalists and then also accused them of dereliction of duty. He wrote that “the real duty of the newspapers is to educate, to cleanse the minds of people, to save them from narrow sectarian divisiveness, and to eradicate communal feelings to promote the idea of common nationalism.Instead, their main objective seems to be spreading ignorance, preaching and propagating sectarianism and chauvinism, communalising people’s minds leading to the destruction of our composite culture and shared heritage”.
Bhagat Singh’s disenchantment needs to be placed in the context of the developments during the 1920s, which included the birth of the RSS and the Tablighi jamaat. Both these communal platforms further polarised the political leadership as well as the press, particularly the Hindi and Urdu press of the times. Its ugly manifestation can be seen today in the emergence of Hindutva in India and the increasing Talibanisation of Pakistan, both of them threats to peace and harmony in their respective nations.
(S Irfan Habib holds Maulana Azad Chair at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi. His most recent book is To Make the Deaf Hear: Ideology and Programme of Bhagat Singh and His Comrades)
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