Book review:
Communalism, Caste and Hindu Nationalism: The Violence in Gujarat
by Ornit Shahni
ISBN 978-0-521-86513-5 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-68369-2 paperback
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521683692 ]
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Frontline
Volume 25 - Issue 10 :: May. 10-23, 2008
BOOKS
Origins of hatred
A.G. NOORANI
How caste conflicts turned into communal violence in Gujarat.
NOT long ago L.K. Advani famously declared that "studies on the working relationship between the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh] and the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] have been done, unfortunately, in large number by foreigners. In the Indian media [sic.], any writing of all this is absurd, even amusing." That he did not care to mention Indian academia shows his scant respect for swadeshi scholarship. He must be held to his words.
Two decades ago, Walter K. Anderson and Shridhar D. Damle accurately described the nexus in their book The Saffron Brotherhood. "It is questionable if the BJP could survive politically without the RSS cadres." Advani's sack from the BJP's presidency and reinstatement, both by the RSS, prove the point.
But if the foreigner is so insightful about the nexus, his research on the Sangh Parivar's complicity in riots and pogroms merits equal respect. He cannot be accused of "pseudo-secularism", a term coined by K.M. Munshi, or "minorytism", coined by Dr. Gopal Singh. (Advani can never be original. He needs intellectual crutches.)
Ornit Shani is lecturer in Asian Studies at Haifar University in Israel, the Parivar's favourite foreign country. Her work is based on intensive field work in Ahmedabad on several visits. Besides conducting interviews, she worked in its libraries, the archives - there and in Britain - and various institutions such as the Municipal Corporation and the Ahmedabad Mill Owners' Association. On solid research is based incisive analysis and an original theme. Why did distinct groups of Hindus, deeply divided by caste, mobilise on the basis of unitary Hindu nationalism? Why was the rhetoric about the threat from an impoverished Muslim minority so persuasive?
It is shameful to talk of Muslim appeasement when Muslims are underprivileged, discriminated against and, in large sections, impoverished. Her thesis is that intensifying caste tensions found expression in the pogrom against Muslims. Go back to 1990. Threatened by V.P. Singh's decision to implement the Mandal report, Advani responded immediately by launching the rath yatra to unite Hindus on an anti-Muslim agenda.
It is amazing how "caste conflicts turned into communal violence" as in Gujarat in 1985 and in India in 1990. The theory of Hindutva appealed to the upper castes and the urban middle class. "The disposition of all-Hindus against Muslims was formed as some segments of forward-caste Hindus found the cause of their own `limited' mobility in these governments' preferential treatment of minorities. Communalism grew, then, in the interstices between the interrelations of caste and class. The threat that Hindu nationalists claimed to be posed by Muslims actually expressed a fear about the peril of violating the Hindu social and moral order from within."
INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP
Muslim girls in a closed shop, during the communal violence in Ahmedabad in March 2002.
The rise of communalism and the formation of a "Hindu identity" since the 1980s are described in this book as ethno-Hinduism. They were driven by tensions between members of minority groups among Hindus. The author examines how communalism is related to caste and to the state's reservation policies and their discourse. This analysis of the interconnections between caste, class, communalism and the state is developed gradually in the book.
The book argues that "both caste and communal conflicts, despite the potential contradiction between them, ? stem from similar social processes, and that caste is inextricably linked to the rise of communalism since the 1980s". It was caste conflicts that fostered communalism in the 1980s and 1990s.
"While militant Hinduism assumes and tries to promote the principle of a unitary Hindu identity, caste conflicts demonstrate deep divisions among Hindus. Furthermore, the Hindu caste groups that propelled Hindu nationalism were also the primary generative forces behind caste agitations. Indeed, the rhetoric of Hindutva about the appeasement of Muslims by the state, and the attempt to portray them as a threat to Hindus, has appealed primarily to upper-caste and urban-middle class Hindus, who are particularly anxious about compensatory reservation policies for lower- and backward-caste Hindus."
Shifts in the caste order were related to the rising antagonism against Muslims fostered by the Sangh Parivar. The state helped by its inaction - as in Mumbai in 1992-1993 - or by active participation as in Gujarat. There was, as Shani puts it, "a massacre of Muslims in many parts of the State". This is what Advani calls "communal violence" in contrast to "mass killings" at Godhra.
The book describes the background with its politics of reservation and caste, the 1985 Ahmedabad riots and "the making of ethno-Hinduism". Shani was in Ahmedabad at the time of "the 2002 pogrom". It was foretold. "The state apparatus revealed themselves to be totally mobilised to the benefit of Hindu nationalist forces. In many instances the police led Hindu rioters in their onslaught."
The BJP was in political decline when the Godhra incident took place on February 28, 2002. The State government "has yet to provide evidence to support its claim that the Godhra incident was a pre-meditated terrorist attack".
Narendra Modi went to town on this cry as did his leaders in Delhi. For "once the Hindu-Muslim divide that rested upon intangible hostilities became less acute the underlying tensions among Hindus surfaced" and "once the tensions along the boundaries of difference among Hindus had come to the fore, the ill-defined sectarian boundaries, which upper-caste propagators of Hindu nationalism exploited to mitigate the rising aspirations of the lower and backward castes, regained political relevance".
It remains to be seen how in the months to come the BJP resolves its differences, now that it has done its worst in Gujarat.?
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