10th Anniversary Issue
August - September 2003 

Year 10    No.90-91
GRASSROOTS


 


‘CC has functioned in the belly of the beast’

Rajen Prasad

Anniversaries are occasions to re-evaluate, reflect and rededicate oneself to the cause that one has set before oneself. They are also occasions that function as markers
against amnesia. The tenth anniversary of Communalism Combat is precisely such an occasion. It began in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the subsequent Bombay riots and completes a decade of successful publication in the aftermath of the Gujarat carnage.

The turbulent decade has been the gloomiest one in the history of independent India. It has witnessed the unprecedented rise of the divisive ideology of Hindutva, which has pushed the right-wing majoritarian party, the BJP, to lead an opportunistic alliance to power — first for 13 days, then for 13 months and now, possibly, for a full term of five years.

This period, which in actual fact began with Advani’s Rath Yatra in 1991, has witnessed a trail of blood all over the country, the minority population living in terror and secular opinion unable to assert itself forcefully. The sangh parivar has come to control a majority of state institutions in the field of education and culture, to propagate hate-ideology and to distort intellectual priorities. The ICHR, ICSSR, UGC, IGNCA, NCERT and NFDC have been filled with people of RSS background or sympathies.

Funds have been sanctioned for courses on Vedic rituals and astrology in a number of universities. The RSS-run Shishu Mandirs, numbering around 25,000, are spreading venom against the religious minorities. India’s cultural icons, MF Husain and Dilip Kumar have been attacked with impunity, film shootings disrupted, film shows and cricket matches not allowed to be held.

The ideology of the sangh parivar treats all differences as antagonistic and wishes to homogenise the great variety of Indian cultural tradition under the rubric of ‘cultural nationalism’. With their control over the state apparatus, they are now pushing this view into the official textbooks, particularly history textbooks. The propagation of communal ideology seeks to negate the glorious legacy of our freedom struggle as also the social revolution in thought underlying this long struggle, constituting a rejection of "inegalitarianism of tradition and the irrationalism of inherited orthodoxy"; termed the long-revolution by Prabhat Patnaik.

"…The propagation of communal outlook is the concentrated expression of the assault on rational discourse; it does not constitute the entirety of this assault. Or, looking at it differently, in terms of the real counterpart of these ideas, the attack on the secular foundations of the State is not merely a phenomenon in itself, but is an integral part of the social counter-revolution I talked of earlier. Combating communalism, preserving the secular foundations of the State, are urgent tasks that have to be undertaken not merely in the interests of the minorities; they are not even tasks whose urgency arises merely because one cannot be free as long as someone else is oppressed; their urgency lies in the fact that communalism is integral to counter-revolution." (1)

It is in these dark times that Communalism Combat has continued publication. Not only that, it has continued publication from Mumbai, a city controlled and governed by the lumpen elements of the Shiv Sena and BJP combine. It has functioned in the belly of the beast. It has provided a rallying point for those who hold that silence means complicity in these times. Communalism Combat’s role in providing information about the activities of the parivar and a forum for rational discourse can hardly be over-emphasised.

The courage and single-mindedness with which it pursued the demand for implementation of the recommendations of the Srikrishna Commission, which inquired into the Bombay riots, is exemplary. The exhaustive report on the Gujarat carnage is proof that paucity of resources cannot deter a determined and committed set of people. It needs to be noted that Communalism Combat had forewarned that Gujarat was waiting to happen, with four cover stories and several special reports prior to the carnage.
This has also been a decade in which innumerable groups and individuals all over the country have continued to act in most adverse circumstances. This has also been the decade in which the BJP has been unable to regain UP electorally. It is only through cynical manipulation that it holds on to power in that populous state.

With the exception of Gujarat, the secular political parties have been able to hold the BJP at bay electorally in almost all the states that have gone to the polls. Contrary to the opinion expressed by a number of contributors to Communalism Combat, I believe that the fight against communalism is a political one and not something that can be settled between NGOs and the sangh parivar.

This has also been a decade in which artists have integrated the anguish and pain of the victim in their work, poets and writers have not remained mute witness, scholars have made incisive analyses, journalists have reported courageously. Above all, they have come out on the streets to register their protest and the resolve to combat communalism. (2).

Communalism Combat has played a pre-eminent role, meeting the challenge of the parivar, culturally and ideologically. We too have in our own ways tried to meet the same challenge. But the task of meeting the political challenge lies ahead. Let us, with all our differences, pool our resources and join hands to defeat the looming threat of communal fascism.

(Rajen Prasad is with SAHMAT, Delhi).

(1). Prabhat Patnaik, ‘Introduction’, Against Communalisation of Education, SAHMAT & Sabrang 2001 p.8.

(2). See recent SAHMAT publications, Das Baras (A Collection Of Poetry Since Ayodhya), Communalism Civil Society and State, and The Republic Besmirched.


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