10th Anniversary Issue
August - September 2003 

Year 10    No.90-91
POLITY


 


‘Exemplary media role’

Eduardo Faleiro

What leads human beings to kill and maim each other in the name of a higher cause? In the post-Cold War era, religious extremism has been the main source of violence. In India, terrorists have spread death and destruction in Kashmir and elsewhere. Last year, Gujarat witnessed massacres of unprecedented barbarism and cruelty not seen even during the days of Partition.

In Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and several other states, thousands of young men and women are being trained in the use of guns, trishuls and bombs. There have been repeated demands for banning the Bajrang Dal and other such militant outfits and dismantling their training camps but the Union government has regrettably turned a deaf ear to such demands.

The Charter of the UNESCO opens with the declaration: "That since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed." It is essential that education in our schools should include the values of tolerance and objective truth and respect for cultural pluralism. However, the Islamist Parties in Pakistan and the sangh parivar in India run innumerable schools that promote ideological indoctrination and hatred of internal minorities and external "enemies". Both control a large network of cultural institutions, literary associations, study circles, publishing houses and other such organisations. Both have an obsession with projecting a martial image of the nation and amassing modern armaments.

In Pakistan, students learn that the history of Pakistan begins with the conquest of Sind and southern Punjab by Mohammed Bin Qasim in 711 AD. Thereafter, Muslim invaders from the North-east, such as Mohammed of Ghazni, and kings such as Aurangzeb, loom large in the pages of history books. Centuries of the history of this region, covered by the Harappan-Indus Valley civilisation as well as the long span of Hindu and Buddhist rule, are ignored. In the post-Independence period, Pakistan is credited with defeating India in the 1971 war; General Zia is portrayed as the man of destiny who set in motion the Islamic revolution etc. (KK Aziz, The Murder of History).

The sangh parivar has similarly made the writing of history a battleground for defining India’s national identity. The historians of the parivar reject the established theory of the Vedic Aryan migration into India around 1500 BC. Accordingly, they claim that the Harappan-Indus Valley civilisation was not Dravidian but a precursor of the Hindu culture, with Sanskrit script, sacrificial altars, Vedic history and domesticated horses. On the basis of such "history", the sangh parivar categorises all Indians as outsiders except the Aryan Hindu race and those absorbed into the Hindutva fold. The Islamist parties and the sangh parivar are indeed mirror images of each other.

Forces of religious fundamentalism and extremism have been quite strong in most countries of South Asia over the last several years. In India, what is required to stem the tide of violence is an Opposition united on the platform of secularism and religious pluralism. The media has the crucial task of denouncing the senselessness of conflict and confrontation.

In this context, the role of Communalism Combat has been exemplary and such publications are indeed the need of the hour. There is no clash of civilisations, but the clash is between fundamentalism of all sorts and religion that fosters peace and tolerance.

(Eduardo Faleiro is a member of Parliament and a former Union minister).

 


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