Difficult to define yet tangible when lost, the accepted
ethos that Indians aged 30
plus absorbed and took for granted as we grew up was a general atmosphere
of non-
discrimination. (The absence of Dalits from the rainbow, however, did and
continues to severely limit this inclusion.)
The street that led into the home, especially in cities,
throbbed with the myriad realities that are India. The home welcomed the
variety that the outside world brought in. Friendship and food
intermingled through difference. The classroom accommodated children from
different languages and faiths, the only real barrier being the one
created by privilege. Bindi, Punjabi dress, lungi, skullcap, beard and
burkha made comfortable if not cosy adjustments.
December 6, 1992 brutally changed all that. The sinister
campaign that allowed India and Indians to acquiesce or watch in mute
horror as a 400-year-old place of worship was torn down in broad daylight
in full public view (BBC was the only television channel to carry the
visuals that Sunday afternoon) did not merely challenge the ethos of
non-discrimination. It shut doors, kept people out, even as it allowed
hatred into the home and classroom. This could not have happened
overnight; we gave it space, inch by inch, for several years. Until the
ground fell from beneath our feet.
How do we breathe that air again? Feel the shared space of
non-discrimination? As India, a country of over a billion people, hurtles
towards becoming the world’s youngest nation (40 per cent of the
population are under the age of 15), one way, we thought, was to launch
active campaigns on the issue of non-discrimination. While specifics and
details of these programmes are being worked out, we are proud and happy
that the authors of our cover story this month will be some of the active
players in these campaigns.
In September 2006, as we went to press with our troubled
prognosis on Karnataka, who knew that violence would erupt from October 2,
Gandhi Jayanti, a day dedicated to peace and communal harmony? Coastal
Karnataka has been festering for the past few years and with the cynical
move of the Janata Dal (Secular) to ally with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
and form a government in that state earlier this year, the region was
gifted a minister in charge, Nagaraj Shetty who, on being sworn into his
constitutional post, stated that Narendra Modi was his role model! Before,
during and after the Mangalore violence there have been brutal attacks on
the minority in neighbouring districts and through all of this two issues
emerge that are potentially extremely worrying. One, the behaviour of the
Karnataka police (see Investigation: Mangalore) and two, the complicit and
incendiary role of the media. Both raise issues of professionalism and
ethics. Both reflect a growing absence of the rule of law in ‘mainstream’
India.
The first week of December is when the sangh parivar’s
efforts to create an Ayodhya in the south result in a procession at the
Sufi shrine of Bababudangiri. Since 1998, a collective of secular
individuals and groups, the Karnataka Komu Souharda Vedike, has been
mobilising statewide on the issue, drawing thousands into the battle for
secular values and our syncretic traditions. This year, too, over 350
peace activists assembled there to observe the sangh parivar’s attempts to
disturb public peace on the eve of the planned Datta Jayanti procession.
Peace activists were arrested by the local police on the morning of
December 2. Refusing to give in to the police’s attempts to impose
‘conditions’ on their release, the activists went on a hunger fast. They
were finally released at midnight. The sangh parivar’s Datta Jayanti
programme was not allowed, an improvement on years past, when the
administration allowed both the sangh procession and the secular
mobilisation.
As we approach the end of the year, this brings us close
to five years since the Gujarat genocide of 2002. Five years of bitter
struggle against an unrepentant government and administration. Year 2007
also brings elections to the state of Gujarat. A true test for political
parties that swear by secularism (even if this is only done to win the
critical vote) will be the kind of fight they put up in Gujarat next year.
All right-thinking Indians will be watching.
—Editors
