sacw.net
October 2, 2005
MINORITIES IN SOUTH ASIA
by K.N.Panikkar
The increasing infringement of the rights of minorities in the countries of South Asia during the last two decades has been a matter of considerable concern. The success of fundamentalist forces to gain access to state power in varying degrees of control and thus to exercise influence over the government have brought about a social and political climate inimical to the interest of the minorities. At the same time liberal support which is crucial for the well being of the minorities had become substantially weaker and uncertain. The partition of the subcontinent had already undermined the sense of security the minorities had enjoyed and had jeopardized the social peace which characterized the community relations. The momentum acquired by fundamentalism during the last two decades has worsened the situation. In fact, the history of minorities in South Asia is a history of increasing discrimination and deprivation and undermining in the process the historical tradition of living together, even if with differences. This experience naturally foregrounds the question about the rights of the minorities and the safeguards necessary to ensure them.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights adopted in 1966 had laid down that
in those states in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language .
The above prescription by the Covenant underlines the cultural rights of the minorities which is indeed critical, but not exhaustive in fully defining the South Asian experience. For the debilities from which the minorities in the countries of the region suffer from are not limited to the cultural; they are as much victims of social and economic discrimination. Whether minority as a category based on religion, language, ethnicity etc would fully encapsulate the problems faced by such groups, therefore, becomes doubtful. Moreover, the minorities, whatever their constitutive factor, are not homogenous entities, but highly differentiated groups, socially, culturally and economically. In other words the category of minority is a totalizing concept, reflective only of partial social reality. When the question of minority became a political issue during the national movement, although internal differences were sought to be erased, the limitations of the concept was not altogether overlooked . Yet, minority as a category became part of the political practice and discourse. It raises the question as to how a minority is constituted.
Constitution of Minorities
The numerical strength is a necessary, though not a sufficient condition for the constitution of a minority. A group with numerical disadvantage may exist without experiencing itself as a minority, either politically or socially or culturally. The constitution of a minority is primarily contingent upon two factors. First, the self perception of the group as a minority in relation to other groups in society on the basis of certain experienced disadvantages and second, discriminatory or hostile treatment meted out by the majority. In this context the role of the nation state becomes quite central. The minority consciousness develops and legitimized when discrimination, if not persecution, is experienced. A community Œbegins to perceive itself as a minority when it feels disadvantaged in the context of the nation state; and the claim for minority rights gets strengthened when a case of discrimination‚ is convincingly made . The formation of the minority through such a process is integral to politics and the exercise of power, regardless of the system in which they are practiced. In the light of this it is arguable that minorities did not exist in pre-colonial South Asia . Surely, different religious groups did exist, but they were neither culturally nor politically disadvantaged nor victimized. For in matters of patronage discrimination on the basis of religion was not pursued by medieval governments, headed either by Hindu or Muslim rulers. Such a policy of non-discrimination was rooted in the social reality of commonly shared quotidian life experience anchored in mutual accommodation and respect. As a consequence, although different religious groups existed with different religious and cultural practices, there were no minorities. The minority was the creation of popular politics during the colonial period.
The colonial manipulation of religious division in South Asia considerably contributed to the process by which the minorities came to be constituted as a distinct group. The infamous British policy of pitching one community against the other was at the root of the anxiety articulated by the minorities when the anti-colonial struggle gained momentum. Sir Syed Ahamad Khan‚s call to the Muslims to keep away from the Indian National Congress led national movement was an expression of this anxiety. In a future political set up guided by democratic principles, it was feared, that the minorities would be deprived of power and privileges. However flawed such a perception of democracy might be the fact remains that it contributed to the internal consolidation of Muslims and also led to distancing themselves from other communities. In the name of allaying this apprehension, colonialism created safeguards in the form of separate electorates which only helped to increase the chasm between the communities. Every step for constitutional reform undertaken by colonialism reinforced community consciousness to such an extent that by the time the British decided to withdraw from India they left behind a society of warring communities. Hence the communal carnage at the time of independence which not only left permanent scar on the psyche of both the communities but also vitiated inter- community relations.
The ways in which the interests of the minorities were to be safeguarded figured prominently in the debates over the constitution in both India and Pakistan. While political representation on the lines provided by the colonial rule was not favoured by the nationalist elite, the claim for cultural rights and religious freedom were considered necessary . Therefore, provision was made in articles 25 to 30 of the Indian Constitution for the protection of cultural rights and religious freedom of the minorities. Their political rights were assured by the secular- democratic character of the polity. In Pakistan, Mohamad Ali Jinnah declared in his speech to the Constituent Assembly that, Œyou may belong to any religion or caste or creed, there is no discrimination between one community and another, we are starting with this fundamental principle that we are citizens of one state.‚ Following this principle the 1973 constitution provided for religious freedom and protection of minorities . Thus both India and Pakistan pledged to respect cultural plurality, religious freedom and political equality. However, in practice these principles were often violated or even discarded.
The distribution of minorities in South Asian states was such that the members of almost all religious denominations were present in one state or the other which created a peculiar chemistry of minority consciouness. The Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains and Parsees in India; the Hindus and Christians in Pakistan and Bangladesh and Muslims and Christians in Sri Lanka have minority status. Such a situation led to reciprocity in the treatment of minorities and safeguarding of their rights. The idea of reciprocity had found articulation during the debate over minority rights in the Constituent Assembly in India. Participating in the debate Mahavir Tyagi who later became a member of the Nehru Cabinet, had suggested that consideration of minority rights should be postponed until Pakistan‚s stand on this question became clear. Responding to it, Dr.B.R.Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution, had asserted that the rights of the minorities should be absolute rights. They should not be subjected to any consideration as to what another party may like to do to the minorities within its jurisdiction . Nevertheless, after independence reciprocity has been the dominant principle which influenced the treatment of minorities in South Asian states. The way the minorities are treated in one country finds a resonance in another. The extra territorial identity attributed on the basis of religious belonging often leads to reprisals against minorities and their institutions. When the Hindu fanatics destroyed the Babri Masjid in 1992 Hindu temples became targets of attack in both Pakistan and Bangladesh. In Pakistan one Hindu was killed and several others were injured and at least two dozen temples were destroyed in scattered incidents of violence against the community . In Bangladesh reprisals took place at a national scale .This in turn led to revenge against the Muslims in India. This extra ˆterritorial identification has considerably vitiated the condition of the minorities. Most unfortunately the minorities are constantly called upon to prove their patriotism, be it at the time of war or at the time a cricket match. The extra- territorial identity has made the minorities extremely vulnerable in all South Asian states. A letter to the Editor in the widely read English newspaper Dawn, decried the popularly shared notion that by Œvirtue simply of being Hindu, they may be willing to work as Indian agents to the detriment of Pakistan. In other words, their patriotism is to be doubted. This way of thinking deserved to be discarded not only because of its validity is dubious, that its persistence invites fiction to become reality, but because Indian seduction is something which many Pakistani Muslims may also be susceptible. Pakistani Hindus pose much less of a threat to our national integrity than some Muslim forces currently operating in the country do.‚ This statement is also true of the Hindus and Muslims of India. Despite the exemplary record of the Muslims in almost all walks of life the Hindu fundamentalists continue to question their patriotism and loyalty to the nation.
Attitude of the State
In all South Asian states minorities are relatively poor. One of the reasons for their plight is the indifference and neglect of the state. A good example of this attitude of the state is reflected in the minority‚s share of government employment, which in almost all cases does not match their numerical strength.. It is possible that disabilities historically inherited like the relatively limited access to modern education and poorer social position might have contributed to it. But fifty-eight years is a sufficiently long period to overcome these disadvantages. In India the representation of Muslims in government administration is abysmally low. Among the central government employees the Muslims constitute only 4.41 per cent. The situation in the state governments is slightly better with the Muslims accounting for about six percent. But these percentages are drastically reduced in superior cadres. In class IV employees the Muslims constitute 5.12 percent, in class II three percent and class I only 1.61 percent. Muslims also suffer from similar disability in other fields of economic activities . The situation prevails in other South Asian countries is not substantially different. In Pakistan discrimination against non-Muslims is quite apparent. In the army, for instance, non-Muslims rarely rise above the rank of a colonel and even they are not assigned to sensitive positions. It is so in the civil service also .That state has not found a way to ensure their legitimate share in governmental opportunities is a matter which adversely affects social relations.
Although the minorities are constitutionally entitled to equal rights, in actual practice this principle is not always respected. Both Pakistan and Bangladesh had begun as secular states where no discrimination on the basis of religion would be tolerated. Mohammad Ali Jinnah had envisioned Pakistan as a secular state where ŒMuslims will not be Muslims and Hindus will not be Hindus, not in a religious sense, but in a political sense, as citizens of a secular, democratic Pakistan‚. Bangladesh when it came into being was fashioned as a secular republic. But both these countries soon changed track to adopt Islam as state religion which automatically placed the minorities in a disadvantageous position. Naturally what followed was discrimination against the minorities in political practice. In Pakistan, for instance, franchise rights are limited for the minorities. The non- Muslim voters can elect only ten members to the 217 seat lower house of parliament. Moreover, they can only vote for their co-religionists. In the upper house which is more powerful the minorities have no representation. The democratic rights of non-Muslims are thus severely restricted . The minorities have been protesting against this discrimination and restriction .
The Pakistan government has enacted a series of laws which are particularly repressive for the minorities. For instance, the Blasphemy law enacted in Pakistan in 1986 which provides for punishing those who offend the Koran with life in prison and death penalty for those who insult the Prophet. Since its enactment, dozens of Christians have been killed for having slandered Islam, 560 people have been accused and 30 are awaiting trial. The law is often invoked by the fundamentalists in pursuit of their conservative agenda. Using it for settling personal vendetta and for appropriating property are also quite common . The religious affairs minister, Ejaz ul Haq admitted that in the last 18 years the law has been abused. From 1927 to 1986 there had been only 7 cases of blasphemy, but from 1986 to 2005, 4000 cases have been reported. The Christians who indulge in theological debate and discussions have born the brunt. The death of John Joseph, the Bishop of Faislabad, who took his life to protest against the case of Ayub Masih‚s death sentence for blasphemy, has sharply brought out the iniquity of the law . An unfortunate consequence of the law is that it discourages, even prevents, critical enquiries into theological matters. The protests organized by the minorities were of no avail.
The laws enacted for the prevention of terrorism in India has been extensively used to terrorise the minorities. The majority of those who have been arrested and jailed under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities ( Preventive) Act [ TADA], 1985 and Prevention of Terrorism Act [ POTA], 2001 belong to minorities. In Gujarat those arrested under POTA are almost entirely drawn from the Muslim community . They have been kept in jail without trial and subjected to inhuman treatment and severe torture.
The Hindu fundamentalist organizations in India like the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad have been trying to impose an unofficial blasphemy law in an effort to curb critical religious thought and secular cultural interpretation of tradition. Those who have been engaged in such efforts have been intimidated and even physically attacked. An exhibition based on multiple texts of Ramayana put up by a cultural organization of Delhi was attacked and dismantled, the paintings of M.F.Hussain was disfigured for attempting an unconventional interpretation of Goddess Saraswathi, Deepa Mehta, a film maker was not permitted to shoot a film on Hindu widows and a series of other incidents have taken place during the last few years. These incidents caught the public eye because prominent people were involved in them. But intimidation and coercion impinging upon the human rights of the minorities are fairly widespread. Such tendencies are manifest among the Muslims also. A liberal Muslim theologian in Kerala, Chekannur Maulavi, was abducted and murdered by fundamentalists.
Attack on Minorities
In all South Asian countries minorities have been subjected to physical intimidation and attack which over the years have become so well organized that they have assumed the character of a progromm. In India, the Sikhs, Muslims and Christians have been the targets of attack by the members of the majority community. As a sequel to the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 thousands of Sikhs were killed and their property was plundered all over the country. Even after twenty years and a dozen or so enquiries those who were responsible for the crime have not been brought to book. The attack on Muslims and Christians by the Hindu fundamentalist groups are far too many to recount. These attacks are characterized by two main features. First, overt and covert support of the government and secondly, popular participation cutting across caste and class lines. These tendencies clearly manifest in the carnage unleashed by the Hindu fundamentalists against the Muslims in Gujarat .
The collusion of the government and fundamentalist forces have led to a near anarchic situation for the minorities in Bangladesh. In a submission before the Human Rights Commission Bina Rai Biswas, an activist from Bangladesh, gave a graphic account of the atrocities to which the minorities are subjected. According to her the violence against the minorities ranged from burning alive to death, gang rape of children and elderly women, attack on temples, churches and orphanages, looting, unlawful and forced land grabbing and eviction and forced conversion to Islam . Many of them were left with no other alternative but to migrate, mostly by using illegal means. In Sri Lanka too the Christian and Muslim minorities have been the targets of physical intimidation and attack .
One of the strategies of fundamentalists to marginalize the minorities is to cast them in the role of the enemies of the nation. Several methods are adopted for this purpose. Among them their demonization through a reinterpretation of their role in history has had an abiding impact. The Hinduisation and Islamisation of history in India and Pakistan respectively undertaken with the connivance of the governments is a part of this agenda. The main purpose of the rewriting of history and the revision of textbooks promoted by fundamentalist forces in these countries has been to achieve this objective. In India it is a major project of Hindu fundamentalism which was sought to be implemented through the government agencies like the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR). By establishing through the reinterpretation of history on the lines of P.N. Oak and N.S.Rajaram
the Hindu civilisational character of Indian past the minorities are located as outsiders whose presence is at best tolerated but not welcome. A series of historical events are invoked from the invasion of Mohamad Gazni to the rule of Aurangazeb to demonstrate the historical wrongs the minorities have done to the nation. The political sense the fundamentalists made out of the demolition of Babri Masjid was that it rectified a historical wrong committed by the Muslims. And many more are yet to be rectified. History thus serves as an ideology of Hindu fundamentalism to exorcise the minorities from the body politic. The carnage in Gujarat was preceded by a long process conscientisation of the Hindu Samaj about the wrong done to their ancestors by the minorities.
The Islamic states of Pakistan and Bangladesh have also reordered their history which impinges upon the religious freedom of the minorities. Reviewing the textbooks prescribed in Pakistan the Institute for Sustainable Development Policy and the Human Development centre have examined the textbooks used in Pakistan. These reports point out how in the name of history 'students are forced to read a carefully crafted collection of falsehoods, fairy tales and plain lies'. The school curricula are clearly biased against and hostile to the minorities. The Hindu, for instance, 'rarely appears in a sentence without the adjectives 'conniving' or 'manipulative' . Moreover the textbooks are so designed that the Hindus are forced to learn about Islam and Islamic rites, even if they do not so desire .
Given the discrimination and relative backwardness the minorities suffer, although in varying degrees in different states, a course of action from within which would ensure the well-being of the minorities is called for. Understandably the ongoing response is not univocal but polyphonic; it betrays a variety of tendencies. A powerful attraction is minoritarianism which promotes a genre of politics based on internal consolidation of the community. Another tendency, particularly when faced with the pressure of majoritarianism and the aggression associated with it, is to resort to militancy. Both these tendencies are reinforced by ghettoisation which is initially adopted as a means of self- defense. Ghettoisation, however, has very deleterious social, psychological and political consequences. What induces the minorities to congregate in Ghettos is a sense of uncertainty and fear which breeds communalism and violence. In states like Uttarpradesh and Gujarat in India Ghettoistion has taken place so extensively that internal Œborders‚ have come into being, demarcating residential areas of different communities. The fundamentalist forces which thrive on the religious obscurantism and cultural backwardness of the communities spare no effort to encourage these tendencies which keep them bound together and isolated. At the same time the state, because of political reasons, tends to compromise with the fundamentalist forces and thus help perpetuate the influence and leadership of obscurantist forces.
In these circumstances the minorities in South Asia require a new deal, both from the state and civil society. The state should ensure equality, both in principle and in practice and should create conditions to enable their economic and cultural advancement. At the same time the civil society should realise the importance of recognizing the rights of minorities in a democracy and evolve methods for defending them. The minorities on their part have to chart out a path different from community consolidation, social obscurantism and political isolation. In such a course of action the emphasis should be on realizing the rights of citizenship through struggles for secularism and democracy. It would involve a rejection of religious leadership, without necessarily rejecting religious faith, and authoritarian and communal political ideologies and practices. The future of minorities in South Asia would depend upon the success of such a struggle.
In conclusion, let me go back to where I had started. I had begun by referring to the importance of intervention for influencing the state and the civil society to protect the rights of the minorities. The state has not been the best guarantee of minority rights; instances of vacillation are not wanting, nor occasions when the intervention of the state went against the interests of the minorities. The rights of the minorities, be it in the field of education, employment or cultural freedom, can not be safeguarded without the active support of the state. If the state is indifferent or hostile the minorities can hardly progress, even survive. Therefore it is importance to ensure that the state remains secular.
At the same time the consciousness of the civil society is a crucial factor in the well being of the minorities. Enough has happened in the countries of South Asia during the last two decades to suggest that the society is vulnerable to religion centered populist propaganda. A consequence of this has been the marginalization of the minorities in public space and the denial of civic opportunities to them as has happened and continue to happen in a state like Gujarat. This is an extremely grave matter which impinges upon democratic practice. The discrimination that minorities face is, therefore, not a problem of the minorities alone; it is a democratic problem. It is imperative that the struggle for the rights of the minorities should be integral to the struggle for democratization, secularization and for social justice.
In conclusion, let me go back to where I had started. I had begun by referring to the importance of intervention for influencing the state and the civil society to protect the rights of the minorities. The state has not been the best guarantee of minority rights; instances of vacillation are not wanting, nor occasions when the intervention of the state went against the interests of the minorities. The rights of the minorities, be it in the field of education, employment or cultural freedom, can not be safeguarded without the active support of the state. If the state is indifferent or hostile the minorities can hardly progress, even survive. Therefore it is importance to ensure that the state remains secular.
At the same time the consciousness of the civil society is a crucial factor in the well being of the minorities. Enough has happened in the countries of South Asia during the last two decades to suggest that the society is vulnerable to religion centered populist propaganda. A consequence of this has been the marginalization of the minorities in public space and the denial of civic opportunities to them as has happened and continue to happen in a state like Gujarat. This is an extremely grave matter which impinges upon democratic practice. The discrimination that minorities face is, therefore, not a problem of the minorities alone; it is a democratic problem. It is imperative that the struggle for the rights of the minorities should be integral to the struggle for democratization, secularization and for social justice.
[This is the text of Keynote address delivered to the workshop on the Condition of Minorities in South Asia held at Delhi from 16 to 19 September 2005]
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