By Inder Jit
(Released on 5 June, 1979)
How Delhi has acted not a day too soon in calling a series of conferences with the States to consider measures to curb communal violence and promote communal harmony. Appropriately, the Centre’s first meeting will be with UP and Bihar which have witnessed some blood-curdling incidents in the past few months. Aligarh, Jamshedpur, Banaras and Sambhal are but a few prominent names. The conferences, convened by the Union Home Ministry, will review administrative and preventive arrangements for tackling communal problems and disturbances. Among other things, the meetings will specifically and speedily deal with an aspect highlighted by Aligarh and Jamshedpur: adequacy of existing arrangements to prevent and deal with such disturbances in communally-sensitive areas, districts, towns and tehsils. But all those will not help much until we are willing to face facts and take a good, hard look at the states of our secularism.
Communalism and fissiparous tendencies have been on the increase over the past two years, worse, a lot more has been happening under the surface, causing grave concern among the thinking people. Mahatma Gandhi tactfully invented the word Harijan and prevented the Hindu community from splitting. Today, the Hindus are getting divided more and more along caste lines and between backwards and forwards, thanks to the Janata’s reckless infighting. One also hears of quiet moves to get the Scheduled Castes to break away from the majority community and join hands with the Muslims and others to ensure “a better deal” for themselves. Secularism no longer evokes the nationalist sentiment of the first years of freedom. Even many liberals among the Hindus are beginning to talk in an idiom and account which appears prime facie to be less and less secular.
Nothing has gone wrong with the liberals. As some classic unrivalled stories in the Panchtantra indicate, a being never changes his “swabhav” (nature and outlook) even if he gets transformed from a mouse into a beautiful bello. The background and education of the liberals ensure their basic commitment to the finer values of life and humanity. But over the past three decades something has gone wrong, very wrong, with the content of our secularism, slowly but surely. The concept got off to a good start under the Congress Party committed to secularism and nationalism. But distortions got introduced into it before long and one witnessed the distressing spectacle in which Mahatma Gandhi, who strove to give a positive and healthy content to secularism, came to be labelled as a Hindu. Things have deteriorated greatly since. Our secularism has increasingly come to acquire an unfortunate tilt as was the case with our non- alignment prior to March 1977.
Secular, according to Chambers, means “civil, not ecclesiastical; lay, not concerned with religion; not bound by monastic rules,” Secularism implies “the belief that the State, morals, education etc should be independent of religion.” A secular India, Nehru explained at the outset, did not mean a country without religion. It only ensured an institutional separation of the State from religion — and a balanced approach to all faiths. Yet, our secularism has, evolved an Indian connotation over the years and its own yardstick. By and large, a Hindu is today accepted as secular only if he is pro-Muslim and perhaps pro other minorities. He is lauded as “genuinely secular” if he is also critical of Hinduism and enthusiastically condemns the follow Hindu with or without reason ignoring the doings of rabid fanatics in other communities. One’s desire to uphold equal respect for various faiths and secure a fair deal for all counts for little. Speak of Muslim communalism, for instance, and you are promptly denounced as a Hindu chauvinist, if not worse.
UP’s unassuming Chief Minister, Mr. Banarsi Das, has rendered a national service in this context by his outspoken comment on the recent happenings at Dadri and Aligarh – and earlier at Sambhal. Briefly, Mr. Das made three points. First, Muslim communalism was as bad as Hindu communalism and he would not compromise with either. Second, the Muslim League, which was responsible for the country’s partition, was deliberately communalising and magnifying stray incidents to malign India as being “unsafe for minorities”. Third, Sambhal witnessed last year “a butchery” of Hindus. But “not a single Muslim raised his voice against it.” Not unexpectedly, some Muslim leaders have reacted sharply to Mr. Das’ penchant for calling a spade a spade… few have strongly denounced him, ignoring his stand on the RSS question and his general outlook. (Recently, Mr. Banarsi Das ordered the arrest of any Hindu who tried to prevent the Muslim in Bulandshahr from giving the azaan, traditional call to prayers.) But many top leaders and thinking people have welcomed his remarks.
Secular, according to Chambers, means “civil, not ecclesiastical; lay, not concerned with religion; not bound by monastic rules,” Secularism implies “the belief that the State, morals, education etc should be independent of religion.” A secular India, Nehru explained at the outset, did not mean a country without religion. It only ensured an institutional separation of the State from religion — and a balanced approach to all faiths.
Matters have alas been made infinitely worse by the politicians and the Press. Take the politicians first. Some Muslim leaders have not hesitated to play the communal card recklessly. On May 11, for instance, the day of the last violence in Aligarh, some Muslim leaders, including two MPs promptly issued a statement “condemning” firing on the students of Aligarh Muslim University and also denounced the PAC. None cared to check the facts which told their own story. Men of the PAC did open fire upon them. (According to an authoritative source, it is not uncommon for AMU students to keep katta — countrymade pistols — and Molotov cocktails.) Some 36 Hindu shops were burnt in the Shamshad and Zakaria markets on a “selective” basis. However, none of the leaders has cared to condemn Muslim communalism even after some prominent AMU professors have boldly set the record straight and expressed anguish over the behaviour and actions of the AMU students.
The truth is that we are today caught in a vicious circle which has been made a lot more malignant by our unstable and fragmented politics. Nehru’s commitment to secularism won him not only the description of being India’s “leading nationalist Muslim” but also the votes of the minorities and the Harijans. Together these totalled about 25 per cent of the votes polled and before long assured Nehru “a sizeable captive electorate” in any election. Nehru then required only some 17 to 20 per cent of the cast Hindu votes to rule New Delhi. This “happy situation” for the Congress continued after Nehru. In 1971, Mrs. Gandhi needed only an additional 18 per cent of the caste Hindu votes to win 352 of the 524 seats in the Lok Sabha and claim a massive popular mandate when, in fact, it was essentially a massive majority on a minority mandate – about 43 per cent of the votes polled. But the situation changed radically in 1977 when both Muslims and Harijans voted massively against the Congress for the first time.
The truth is that we are today caught in a vicious circle which has been made a lot more malignant by our unstable and fragmented politics. Nehru’s commitment to secularism won him not only the description of being India’s “leading nationalist Muslim” but also the votes of the minorities and the Harijans.
Expectedly, Mrs. Gandhi has been trying hard to win back the confidence of the minorities and Harijans as part of her overall strategy to rehabilitate her son, regain power and fight her and her son’s legal battle politically. Every single incident, communal or otherwise, has been consequently exploited for the purpose. Happily, for her and her Congress associates, both Mr. Raj Narain and the Press have provided not a little grist to their mills — the former by his “crusade” against the RSS even if in the process he has been busy cutting the nose to spite the face. The Press has unwittingly assisted in this to a great extent by going along with the latest “progressive” fashion of first playing up communal incidents and then denouncing them loudly. Most people in India have felt horrified by the Moroccan Ambassador’s amazing statement that Indian Muslims were being “exterminated” and subjected to “inhuman attitude” in several parts of India. But remarked a Socialist Ambassador from the West: “Why blame him. Look at your own Press.”
Most Hindus stand for a secular India in keeping with their heritage, inbuilt catholicity of their religion and its basic outlook of live and let live. But this situation may not last indefinitely if certain unhealthy trends continue to gain ascendency. Said a veteran nationalist: “It is all very well for vested interests to play the communal card. But this will not pay. Communalism of the minority will only make some Hindus more fanatic.” Undoubtedly, no quarter should be given to Hindu communalism. At the same time, secularism cannot be regarded as a one-way street. Each community must respect the sentiment of the others. Concerted efforts should be made to promote a secular way of life and shed the hangover of the British Raj and its politics of divide and rule. Communalism has been exploited far too long for political ends. This must stop so that we can be Indians first and Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and others afterwards. Clearly, the need of the hour is to move from pseudo to genuine secularism. — INFA