(Indian Express, March 07, 2006)
Dividing to rule
Yakub Qureishi can’t lead India’s Muslims. Muslim leaders must realise this
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Pratap Bhanu Mehta There are moments in history when a sense of opportunity begins to give way to an uneasy sense of foreboding. It is not in the too distant past that the violence in Gujarat, and the suffocating atmosphere that Hindutva forces created threatened to destroy public values in this country. Amid all the violence and moral mendacity there were silver linings: the violence did not spread beyond Gujarat; institutions like the courts at least tried to restore some sense of justice; civil society began to assert itself. The NDA lost the national elections.
One wishes that we could say that the NDA lost the elections because of some deep-seated revulsion against Hindutva. To make that claim would be to grossly misinterpret the results. Nevertheless, there was hope that perhaps there will be some reprieve from the logic of communal politics. But events on the ground suggest otherwise. Elected ministers like Yakub Qureishi in Uttar Pradesh are inciting political passions that could easily spiral out of control. The recent violence in a city with a history of exemplary communal relations like Lucknow is a reminder of how easily this poison can spread to new domains.
It is supremely ironic that even our dealings with Pakistan were never communalised in the way in which our dealings with America are acquiring a communal taint. Opinions on important matters like the future of non-proliferation in West Asia are being divided along lines of religious affiliation. And there is a cluster of potentially explosive issues simmering. The debate over the IMDT Act in Assam could, if improperly handled, explode in our faces. The ideological mobilisation of Hindutva, whether it be among the Dangs in Gujarat, or attempts in Rajasthan to emulate the Gujarat model, continue unabated. The SP and the BJP do share a lot more than we acknowledge: both have a stake in making politics in U.P communally polarised, and increasing local skirmishes in UP could be the harbinger of worse to come.
Instead of finding a smart political strategy to lay the long term foundations for detaching the practice of citizenship from the scourge of identity politics, our political class is managing to only reinforce communal identities. It would be the height of complacency to assume that just because the BJP is politically weak, Hindutva common sense is dead as a political ideology. Only the most complacent should assume that a powerful historical movement like Hindutva has simply disappeared. The elements are all still there. All that is lacking is a precipitating context. One hopes that context never comes, but it is not reassuring to know that at the moment this is only a hope, not an assured outcome of our politics. And only the most politically naive should assume that the old Congress, or Mulayam strategy, for asserting its secularism will be able to deal with challenges ahead.
This is where a sense of foreboding comes in. What Indian politics needed was a protracted period of cooling off in the deepest sense of the term. This cooling off is not simply about diminution in the politics of hate. It is about creating a process where the distinctions between minority and majority become irrelevant to the conduct of politics. The only stable and normatively defensible practices of citizenship would be ones that de-link religious identity from the policy decisions made by the state. Yet, it seems that at every turn, this identification is only being reinforced. It is nobody’s case that all forms of discrimination should not be ended, or that all communities should not be seamlessly integrated into public institutions. But a seamless integration is one where that identity is irrelevant, not where that identity is a vehicle for advancing claims.
The real tragedy is that most of those who claim to speak on behalf of Muslims have no interest in their actual well-being. If they had the genuine interests of Muslims they would more insistently stick to a politics of transcending identity than enumerating it. In another more politically innocent time, such enumeration could have its uses; but to suppose we live in innocent times would be the height of folly.
Is it too far fetched a scenario that someone like Mulayam could, in the near future make reservations along religious lines his main election plank? Just think of the kind of politics that would unleash. And if you think our secular parties will be able to politically resist such temptations, here is a reminder: various Congress states want reservations along religious lines. As loathsome as the Danish cartoons were, there is something distinctly odd in a government officially protesting to another government for publications of a private party in that state; or that the government feels compelled to explain its polices to groups organised along religious lines.
But there has also been a manifest absence of far-sighted Muslim leadership. And this is where the cartoon controversy can backfire. The sense of outrage and the need to protest is entirely justified. But the form of the protest only imprisons politics in the procrustean logic of identity. For the premise of the protest is that a whole people, civilisation, or another government, should be made accountable for the actions of a few editors who acted with impunity. But it is this very same logic that those who attack Muslims, at home and abroad, use: make a whole community responsible for the actions of a mad few. The need of the hour is to express allegiance to a principal without reinforcing the logic of community. One has to make a deliberate gesture to individualise each political action, to prevent it from becoming a contest between groups. There are few leaders that dare to speak so boldly, and in their lack of courage, the initiative will be seized by the worst elements across all communities.
Indian politics therefore now needs a more radical and defiant gesture, where we give our allegiance to a logic of rights than to community sentiment. This will cause some hardship. Only in a society where Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie, and James Laine can publish freely, will every faith — including its eccentric variants — be safe. But the sense of foreboding is this: Yakub Qureishi probably has very little support, yet our political parties will bend over backwards to capitulate to the kind of politics he represents. But in our politics secularism and communalism are joined at the hip. Both have acquired a stake in stoking communal passions to keep their own prospects alive.
The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi