By Inder Jit<\/p>\n
\n(Released on 25 February 1986)<\/p>\n
Strong splendid words have been spoken once again to warn the nation of the mounting menace from communalism. This time the alarm has been sounded by the President, Giani Zail Singh, in his address to the two Houses of Parliament last week. He said, \u201cCommunalism continues to pose a serious threat to national unity. It is being reinforced by religious fundamentalism and fanatacism.\u201d Not long earlier, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi told the Congress Centenary session: \u201cWe proclaim and celebrate the unity of India. It is a fact of transcending significance. But is it not also a fact that most of us, in our daily lives, do not think of ourselves as Indians? We see ourselves as Hindus, Muslims or Christians, or Malayalees, Maharashtrians, Bengalis\u2026. And we shed blood to uphold our narrow and selfish denominations\u2026Political parties, State Governments and social organisations promote policies, programmes and ideologies which divide brother from brother and sister from sister\u2026 Is this the India for which Mahatma Gandhi and Indira Gandhi sacrificed their lives?\u201d
\nIndira Gandhi also spoke sternly against communalism. Some seven months before her assassination, she declared in the Lok Sabha that communalism was the \u201cbiggest divisive factor\u201d in India and they must all unitedly fight it. She was speaking on an adjournment motion in the Lok Sabha on violent developments in Punjab and Haryana. Two days later, she again thundered on the subject and described communalism as the \u201cIndian version of fascism.\u201d She also called upon all the parties \u201cto unite at least to root out this evil.\u201d Ironically, however, she failed to respond adequately and constructively to the basic thrust of a thought-provoking speech on the adjournment motion by Mr. Charan Singh. Significantly, Mr. Charan Singh made his suggestion for combating communalism in 1983 also when the House debated an adjournment motion on the Punjab situation following the killing of Atwal, a DIG of Police, near the Golden Temple. I then regretted that Mrs. Gandhi was not in the House and the country had been denied the opportunity of getting the Prime Minister\u2019s responses.
\nCommunalism was expected to die a natural death when, following independence, India chose to become a secular democracy. Yet this has not happened. We do not seem to have learnt the bitter and bloody lesson of partition, an outcome of rabid communal politics. Communalism has continued to grow and flourish even though Jawaharlal Nehru, too, spoke strongly against it time and again. In fact, it has been allowed to be exploited for too long in the calculated and pernicious pursuit of power. Policies of divide and rule have continued to be recklessly followed and one community pampered in preference to the other. Secularism implies an institutional separation of the state from religion \u2014 an impartial approach to all faiths. But it has generally come to imply a pro-minority policy. 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. If, on the other hand, he speaks of Muslim communalism, he is promptly denounced as a Hindu chauvinist, if not worse.
\nConscious of the havoc that communalism might cause again, India\u2019s Constituent Assembly (Legislative) took a welcome step of basic importance to India\u2019s secular polity. It unanimously adopted on April 3, 1948, a resolution seeking to eliminate communalism from India\u2019s body politic. The resolution was moved by Mr. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar, who later became Speaker of the Lok Sabha. It was supported by an impressive list of members, headed by Jawaharlal Nehru, then Prime Minister and leader of the House, and including Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Giani Gurmukh Singh Musaffir,Prof. N.G. Ranga and Mr. Tajamal Hasan. What Nehru said then is still like a breath of fresh air today. But before quoting him I would like to recall another little known fact. The Assembly resolution went far ahead of the Government and the Congress Working Committee resolution adopted following the Mahatma\u2019s martyrdom. The Government resolution merely stated: \u201cThere is no place in India today for any organization preaching violence or communal hatred\u2026 No such organization will, therefore, be tolerated.\u201d
\nAt least one member, Haji Abdul Sattar Haji Ishaq Seth tried to water it down. He argued during the debate that the ban should be imposed only on organizations \u201cpreaching violence and communal hatred\u201d as emphasized by the Government earlier. But Nehru preferred to go along with Mr. Ayyangar\u2019s resolution. In fact, Nehru\u2019s mind was made up from the word go. He took the floor soon after Mr. Ayyangar and said: \u201cSir, before this debate proceeds any further, I should like to indicate the attitude of Government in regard to this resolution. Government welcomes this resolution and desires to say that they wish to do everything in their power to achieve the objective which lies behind this resolution. After the eloquent speech of the honourable mover I need not say much about the desirability of this resolution. As a matter of fact, it is an inevitable policy which an independent country must adopt\u2026 Even in the past, those of us who accepted any measure of communalism erred and acted unwisely and we have suffered greatly for our unwisdom.\u201d
\nNehru then said: \u201cIn the past conditions were different. But when a country is functioning independently, there is no alternative except to follow this (policy). The only alternative is civil conflict. We have seen as a matter of fact how far communalism in politics has fed us: all of us remember the grave dangers through which we have passed and the terrible consequence we have seen. In any event, now there is no other alternative\u201d and we must have it clearly in our minds and in the mind of the country that the alliance of religion and politics in the shape of communalism is a most dangerous alliance, and it yields the most abnormal kind of illegitimate breed. .. the combination of politics and religion, resulting in communal politics is a most dangerous combination and must be put an end to. It is harmful to the country as a whole; it is harmful to the majority, but probably it is most harmful to any minority that seeks to have some advantage from it. I think even the past history of India will show that.\u201d Loud applause greeted Nehru\u2019s declaration. Everyone was happy.
\nMost sadly, however, Nehru did not implement the resolution, moved two months after Mahatma Gandhi\u2019s assassination. Worse, Nehru ignored his own earlier stand and gave respectability to communalism. This happened when the Congress formed a coalition Government with the Muslim League in Kerala in 1960. Nehru, I learn, did oppose a coalition with the League when it was first mooted by U.N. Dhebar as Congress President and the proposal was dropped. But it was revived successfully and put through by Indira Gandhi after she took over as the party President. To the great horror of thinking Congressmen and others, Nehru justified his party\u2019s coalition with the League on the plea that the League in Kerala was different from the League in the north. Clearly, the pursuit of power took a heavy toll. Nehru was forced by his close advisers to accept a combination of politics and religion and thereby virtually give communalism a new life and a new thrust. What is more, the policy has willy nilly continued despite pious platitudes against communalismmouthed ad nauseum by top leaders.
\nHopes of a ban on communal parties were revived behind the scenes in mid-1984\u2014 after \u201cOperation Blue Star\u201d.Mr. G.S.Nihal Singh Wala, a courageous Congress-I member of the Lok Sabha from Punjab, gave notice of a brief bill providing for such a ban. The bill comprising four clauses defined communal party as \u201ca party based on religious community and sectional appeal to serve its communal interests and whose activities are against the interests of the nation.\u201d Clause 4 also provided for a ban on \u201cthe use of religion and places of worship for political purposes.\u201d The statement of objects and reasons of the bill said: \u201cCommunal forces are creating disintegration in the country and disaffection among various communities. Some parties have taken to exploiting religious sentiments for political ends and are pressing various claims as members of different communities rather than as Indians.\u201d The bill was due to be introduced on July 27, 1984. But it was not. The powers that be suddenly changed their mind. The reason? Developments in Hyderabad. The Congress-I under Indira Gandhi decided to seek the help of the Majlis Ittehadul Musalimeen to bring down NTR, an exercise which later ended in a fiasco.
\nWhere do we go from here? It is time to cry a halt to the dangerous drift and take overdue action. We cannot swear by secularism and yet allow communal parties to function and push the country towards more trouble, even havoc. (Some leading communalists and mullahs are reported to be secretly talking in termsof another homeland!) Secularism cannot be a one-way street. Each community must respect the sentiment of the other. Concerted efforts must, therefore, be made to promote a secular way of life and shed the hangover of the British Raj. We must undoubtedly ensure that there is no oppression of the minority. At the same time, we must also ensure that there is no oppression of the majority. India needs a ban on communal parties in the first instance. We missed the chance of imposing a ban following the assassination of the Mahatma. We threw it away again when we chose to slur over the tragic lesson of Punjab for petty political gain. Mr. Rajiv Gandhi needs to take another hard decision to safeguard India\u2019s unity and independence before it is too late. Double talk and double think will not do.\u2014 INFA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Inder Jit (Released on 25 February 1986) Strong splendid words have been spoken once again to warn the nation of the mounting menace from communalism. This time the alarm has been sounded by the President, Giani Zail Singh, in his address to the two Houses of Parliament last week. He said, \u201cCommunalism continues to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-189275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-features"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}