The Daily Times (Lahore), 15 November 2003
When the majority runs riot
by Farish A Noor
Even if 99 per cent of the population of a country thinks that the earth is flat or that two plus two makes five, they remain wrong. There are times when the voice of the dissenting minority — always hated and suspected — is the only remaining check
“The future of Bharat (India) is set. Hindutva is here to stay. It is up to the Muslims whether they will be included in the new nationalistic spirit of Bharat. It is up to the government and the Muslim leadership whether they wish to increase Hindu furore or work with the Hindu leadership to show that Muslims and the government will consider Hindu sentiments. The era of one-way compromise of Hindus is over.”
The quote above comes from the official website of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and for those who have visited the site there is worse to come. Such bellicose sabre-rattling pyrotechnics is typical of the ideologues of the BJP led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Though the man claims to be a peace-loving poet and humanist at heart, the limits of his humanism stopped short while Muslims were being massacred and their homes burnt in the north Indian state of Gujarat not too long ago. The poet-leader was then busy launching his collection of poems, while the homes of Indian Muslims — who were, it must always be emphasised, Indian citizens — were being razed to the ground by other fellow citizens who happened to be Hindus, goaded on by their zealous leaders who speak the language of communalism and sectarianism, and preying on the collective fears of the Hindus — much of it invented and exaggerated.
The irony of it all is that the BJP’s sweeping demands for the Hindu-isation of Indian society and the erasure of its pluralist culture and history is being done through a discourse of democratic majoritarianism. This is the argument that simply because a community happens to be a majority in a country, then its voice must be heard — even if it means drowning out the voices of others — and its demands have to be met — even if it means negating the equally valid demands of others. The net result of this perverse abuse of democratic principles and mechanisms is the rule of the majority over the rest, leading, in many cases, to mob rule and the relentless persecution of minorities who are cast as the outsiders within.
But those of us who live in the Muslim world should be familiar with such rhetoric and tactics by now, for the Muslim world is not immune to such demagoguery either. How many times have we come across desperate Muslim leaders whose only claim to fame has been the cry ‘Islam in danger!’ and who have tried to rally support behind them with the appeal to defend Islam and to impose the will of Muslims on the rest of the body politic?
Indeed, one does not even have to attempt an in-depth analysis here: Even a cursory survey of the discursive strategies of the BJP and some of the more radical Islamist groups in Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia will show a similar pattern at work. In all these cases we see similar factors coming to the fore: generally unrepresentative and unpopular governments being challenged by radical groups from the margins who claim to have a miraculous solution to the ills that affect the nation as a whole.
More often than not a cultural analysis is offered to solve what is fundamentally a structural-economic problem: While countries like India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia may be affected by the adverse effects of globalisation, uneven development, breakdown of state and public institutions, the remedy offered by the communitarian zealots is as simple as it is false: Simply emphasise our cultural identity and use it to unite the nation as a whole.
In India, the Hindutva fascists have tried to gloss over the very real differentials of power, wealth and class that have divided Indian society by emphasising Hindu unity and cultural hegemony instead. In the Muslim world the tactic is the same though the remedy comes under a different brand: Muslim unity and hegemony is seen as the cure for the divisions in society, and all the problems will be solved when Muslim culture and values dominate all sectors of society, commerce, culture and politics.
At present in Malaysia the Pan-Malaysian Islamic party is attempting to push ahead with its brand of Hudud law, which its critics claim to be nothing more than a political gimmick to up the stakes in the Islamisation race and to impose its brand of Islam on the rest of the nation. The ideologues of the Islamic party claim that they have the right and the need to do so because Islam is the destiny of Malaysia and it is the will of the majority.
While it is true that Muslims make up nearly 60 per cent of the population of Malaysia today, the question remains: what about the rest of the country, 40 per cent of which happen to be made up of Christians, Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus and Sikhs? How are they to locate and establish their identity in this new monochromatic social order that the radical Islamists wish to construct? And what of the principles of the Malaysian constitution itself, which guarantees freedom of religion and pluralism for the nation?
In the end these questions will come to naught — whether in India or in Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, we can see that the fragile sinews of democratic culture are being strained to the limit by the demands of increasingly sectarian and communitarian groups, all in the name of democracy and the will of the majority.
But majoritarianism does have one major flaw, and that is that it does not guarantee the truth value of any claim. Being essentially normative in character, majoritarian demands may seem true in the spirit of the moment, but its epistemic value remains shifting and contestable. Even if 99 per cent of the population of a country thinks that the earth is flat or that two plus two makes five, they remain wrong. There are times when the voice of the dissenting minority — always hated and suspected, forever struggling to get itself heard — is the only remaining check, ensuring that the democratic culture of a nation remains healthy and intact. But the minorities are being stamped out now, as the demagogues and ideologues of populist politics push their way and the barricade of democracy is overrun.
Dr Farish A Noor is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist
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