November  2003 
Year 10    No.93

Update


Trishul to darkness

India seems destined to pass through a dark tunnel before it sees light again

BY RAHUL BOSE

The last ten years or so of our country’s history have left secularists shell-shocked. How did this happen? How did secular, pluralistic India become an India threatened by a rabid minority of Hindus clad, figuratively, in saffron?

I have watched, read and listened to this question being debated at length in various fora across the world and have arrived at a few conclusions that I am sure will spark dissent and debate. Be that as it may, here are my observations. With one qualifier. I will be playing the devil’s advocate, but let there be no ambiguity about where my politics lie. I believe that this country is going through one of its greatest trials by fire and I declare myself to be on the side of any person, body or political entity that believes in the progress of all, with the exception of none, with no discrimination based on caste, gender, religion or race.

Firstly, whom did our founding fathers ask before they decided India should be a secular democracy? Before they decided that the British model of governance was what would serve India best? Was a referendum carried across the new nation? Was an exhaustive cross-section of people canvassed for their opinions on what the shape of new India should be? If that had been the case, I’ll wager that we might have had a substantially differently complexioned polity.

Consider the facts as they stood then. The radical political factions of both the Hindu and Muslim communities (with the willing machinations of the British) had got what they wanted. A fractured country. One great soul could only look on; mute with the horror of a million deaths, stricken by the knowledge that his doctrine of non-violence lay buried under the tangled mass of dead bodies that every train carried to and from the border of two new countries. In this climate, was new India ready to be a new, secular India?

Hold that thought. Now let us look at the UK and the United States. Two nations with a predominantly Christian population. Both heads of state attend church without paying lip service to other religions. The Leader of the Free World even goes so far as to invoke the Lord’s name when talking to his country folk. Christmas remains the biggest festival in each nation. Christian values as preached in the Bible permeate across the length and breadth of both countries.

So why can’t this be the case with India, the militant Hindu argues. Why can’t religious minorities accept the fact that India is a Hindu nation, where Hindu values shall dominate, and the name of a Hindu god shall be invoked? Who said being secular means bending over backwards for those in minority religions?

That is where this argument collapses. The crucial difference between the USA and the UK and where the sangh parivar wants to take India is that in those two countries nobody bends backwards for religious minorities. And while there is hate and divisiveness on issues of race, class and gender in both nations, when it comes to religious discrimination, there has always been space for the other. It is a different matter that 9/11 has changed this perception, but that has nothing to do with asserting the nations’ Christianness. It is against their laws to discriminate on the basis of religion, and barring the treatment of Black Muslims in the US in the pre-9/11 era, this has been largely implemented.

Not so in the sangh parivar’s idea of Hindustan. (I refrain from calling their version of this country Bharat.) No matter what its leaders may say when expounding their theories, in practice, their idea of a Hindu Rashtra is a nation where the right and might of Hindus prevail. And if you don’t like it, leave.

Which brings me back to my question. Would India have chosen to be a secular, pluralistic democracy if a referendum had been carried out in 1947? Debatable. But what is beyond debate is the fact that the militant Hindu is out to assert himself today. Out to prove this is his country. And nobody else’s. It is a sentiment exacerbated and catalysed by the shocking politics played in the name of religious minorities that has scarred this nation in the past. The 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The Shah Bano case. The rise of Bhindranwale. The 1992-93 Bombay riots. Babri Masjid. And imagine; in none of these cases was the sangh parivar in power.

So now, when they are, can we expect anything less? Events like the Shah Bano case have been manna from heaven for the saffron brigade ever since the Rath Yatra took off a decade ago. After that, all the uneducated, frustrated Hindu needed was a nudge to tip him off the edge. That nudge was, and still is, the fear that Hindutva (I differentiate between Hindutva and Hinduism) is in "danger". The rest was easy. Gujarat. Graham Staines. Prejudiced police forces. Textbooks reducing Emperor Akbar to a footnote. Make no mistake; there is more to come.

But I see hope at the end of this tunnel. (And believe me, this tunnel is going to get darker for the next few years). And it is this. Once India is pushed by a bloodthirsty few to the rabid Hindutva edge, and the hatred, bloodshed and counter-bloodshed gets us nowhere, the militant Hindu will realise that in all this Hindutva-versus-the-rest flux, two persons have paid the price. The Hindu in the village. And the Hindu on the street.

True, she, or he, like all impoverished Indians, has suffered through centuries. But it will be evident that all the blood shed on the nation’s streets has not changed their prospects in the slightest bit. They will realise that while earlier they were poor and oppressed, at least they had families, neighbours, parents. Now they are poor, oppressed and alone. They will sit alone and they will wonder. How much money will the bricks from that shattered mosque bring? Who will push up the sleeve of my saffron kurta and tie me a raakhi? How much comfort will a trishul provide in the cold, dark winter?

(Rahul Bose is a cine artiste).


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