Sixty-one years ago as the independent sovereign nation of India dawned on the global horizon, its leaders led by a visionary Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru boldly declared that the new nation will be a secular democracy. In these sixtyone years, despite frequent travails and tribulations in an ethnically and religiously diverse nation, where at least six major religions and thirteen major languages flourish, as India’s neighours have faltered, India has continued to thrive as a modern, secular democracy.
After struggling to control religion based violence for years as India adopted a free market economy system to usher in the era of rapid industrialization and foreign investment, it got hit by waves of terrorism. In recent years and more so in the last few months, a string of serial terrorist bombings in several cities has put both the public and the ruling power structure on edge.
India’s law & order forces and police have not been succesful in stopping the frequent acts of random terrorism. At the same time many human rights activists have observed that instead of painstakingly investigating the instances of homeland terrorism and apprehending the culprits, the police offen resorts to brutal tactics. They find scapegoats from among the poor people and slum dwellers, a large number of whom are the religious minorities.
Simultaneous with terrorism the other five hundred pound gorilla in India’s living room that threatens its rapid progress as a world class nation is religion based violence. Thus Muslims and Christians – India’s major religious minorities – find themselves at the receiving end of this mayhem in many instances, and when seeking justice from law & order authorities they find limited recourse. In quite a few such instances police investigations are negligent, enquiries lack transparency and the findings of enquiries are not implemented, e.g. the widespread anti-Muslim mayhems in Gujarat in 2002 and in Mumbai in 1992.
The most recent such occurrence has been the large scale mayhem targeting poor Christians living in remote small towns in the states of Orissa, Karnatak and Gujarat by extremist religious groups like Bajrang Dal in the last couple of months. In Orissa alone 45 churches were attacked, 50 people were killed and 18,000 houses were destroyed in recent months by the rampaging followers of Bajrang Dal, the anti-minority sectarian group, as India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh prepared to meet President Bush in Washington DC.
As India’s rapidly growing economic and technological base transforms the nation into a world class powerhouse, of necessity, it needs to take strong action to subdue both of these five hundred pound gorillas, namely terrorism and religion based violence.
The nation’s rulers have to bite the bullet; take stringent actions to curb terrorism in public places; make the police accountable and transparent to the common citizens; ban and subdue extremist sectarian groups regardless if they belong to the majority or minority religious communities; bring to justice all who have indulged in sectarian violence regardless if they are powerful government officials or politicians.
Photo: Laxmi Street, Pune
@Sridhar,
You have answered your question yourself. Turkey is a prime example of a Muslim nation and a secular state.
Also, just because the ideals of Islam do not get reflected in real life does not mean that they cannot be put into practice through determined efforts.
Airplanes and telephones were also once thought to belong to LALALAND, but they WERE invented and now probably those who believe we can do without them could be talked about as those living there.
Regarding hatred towards Islam, I said “you would not have SEEN so much hatred against Islam.” I was not implying that your suggestions implied any hatred towards Islam, I was only saying that people hate Islam becuase they have not been exposed to its reality.
It is only after the partition of India in in 1947 that some Hindus started seeing India’s Muslims as being similar mostly to the Arabs and a bit similar to the Iranis. Starting in 1970s the Hinduttavawadi political parties whipped up a massive PR campaign to paint Indian Muslims as sharing many characterestics with Arabs. The fact is that Indian Muslims share almost no characterestics with Arabs. Indian Muslims’ affection, as that of other non-Arab Muslims of the world, is only for the cities of Mecca and Madina for purely obvious religious reasons; and their very limited attachment to the Arabic language is only for better understanding their religion.
Look at the last 100 years of the Mughal empire (1857 – 1757), Hindus never associated Indian Muslims with Arabs, even though in those years also a significant number of Indian Muslims went on Hajj & Umra pilgrimages to Mecca and Madina. In the religious Indian Muslim folklore and literature there is hardly any mention of any great praise for Arabs in general, even though there is much mention of Mecca and Madina.
Kaleem,
It is not post-1947, but starting from the 1980s that you saw an Arabization of Indian Muslims (though I would contest the claim that Hindus see India’s Muslims as similar to Arabs). But to the extent that this Arabization has happened in the perception of non-Muslims, it is worth asking why? Hasn’t there been a greater self-identification of Muslims (across the world and in India) with Arabs? Both because of great numbers of Indian workers going to the Gulf and the use of petro-dollars to fund religious activities in India. This could be observed in dress patterns (greater adoption of burkhas/hijab even amongst Muslims who traditionally did not use them, e.g. in Kerala and use of Saudi-style Keffiyeh scarfs when these were unknown in India even a generation ago), in religious observances (active campaign against Sufi practices and uniquely Indian “innovations”), in manner of speech (replacement of the term “Khuda Hafiz” with “Allah Hafiz”, changing the spelling of “Ramzan” to “Ramadhan” etc.) etc. Why blame others, when there has been a massive shift in self-identification?
This is not to say that misattribution by others is justified. But I am contesting the claim that it is all misattribution. I do think there has been a real shift in recent years, though this is not unique to India. In Indonesia, Malaysia, Africa and many other parts of the world, the spread of gulf dollars, either through funding of local institutions by Arabs or through the immigration of workers into gulf countries, there has been a movement away from indigenous forms of Islam towards a more homogenous Arab version. There is still a lot of heterogeneity, but the trend is towards Arabization everywhere.
Kaleem and Girish,
While this is also quite off the topic of “striking a balance”, I have to say that historically your observations do not quite hold value:
Here are my observations:
- During Aurangzeb’s reign the distinction between muslims and non-muslims was a matter of POLICY of the administration. It favoured muslims over non-muslims, encouraged people to convert using cash and promises of employment. Also, when attempting to enforce his fatwas (edicts), he encountered a lot of rebellion from Sikhs, other Islamic sects, and neighbouring Hindu kingdoms. This may have lead to a the rise of the Hindu identity. Here’s the link:
“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurangzeb#Aurangzeb.27s_reign”
- The formation of the Muslim League in 1906 as part of its ideals was to enforce the DIFFERENCEs between muslims and their hindu brethen and therefore demanded seperate voting and liberties. Jinnah did not agree with either the asceticism of Gandhi or the secular socialsim of Nehru. The Campaign for Pakistan was based on seeing Hindus and Muslims as 2 distinctly different cultural communities. Here’s the quote by Jinnah himself at the Lahore declaration of 1940:
“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_League#Early_years”
- The RSS was formed in 1925 to promote the Hindu Identity and protect the “Hindu” culture (or whatever they understood of it):
“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashtriya_Swayamsevak_Sangh#Activities_during_partition”
Hence even before the Indian Independence of 1947 muslims and non-muslims were inclined to seeing and more importantly APPRECITATING differences between each other, either willingly or as gullible PAWNs of their supposedly political representives.
What you see today is this appreciation of the differences identified well over 300 years ago in its MOST extreme form. So, it is unlikely to go away any soon!
I pray everyday for India and Indians to remember what it is that has kept this amazing civilization together for so long; its ability to make all kinds of belief systems co-exist. I cannot imagine an India without any of these religions; I think it would be terribly boring to not have Mehras, Subramaniams, Rodrigues, Khans, Rehmans, Singhs, Samsons and Wadias all in one building.
Let the moderate voice in every community (majority and minority) be heard more often. By the way, let’s remember that the majority of Indians may be Hindus but they are certainly not a monolithic community, just like Indian Islam is not monolithic and there are many strands within. So our religious identity cannot be our primary identity; our civic identity must be our primary identity because anyway no two people believe the same thing in any of our religions.
The more we debate openly, without constantly worrying about stepping on someone’s toes (whether Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh or Parsi) the more irrelevant our religious identities can become. By irrelevant I don’t mean unimportant, but certainly not as important as having our basic needs met as Indian citizens. I just want to say that it makes me very sad to see problems like illilteracy and poverty being communalized by making it seem like this or that minority community is particularly bad off in this regard. The truth is both these basic problems cut across all religious divides and we need to solve them together. That, and the cleaning up of our governance, would prevent extreme ideologies from having any sway over sections of all our communities.
Sudha,
You have struck a very positive note, and I quite like what you have posted.
Yes, we very much have a need of people who think in terma of harmony and working towards progress.
As you stay with the group., you will find different kinds of people which will make it very interesting for you.
Thanks, Milind. I am enjoying reading everyone’s posts.
You said this in an earlier post:
“in a pluralistic society that is the only way out. Religion HAS to be a private affair primarily because we have not learned how to peacefully coexist in a
pluralistic society.”
Religion should be a private affair, but what I love about India is that it is allowed public expression. I like to see how people celebrate festivals important to them.
I also disagree that we have not learned to coexist peacefully; our pluralistic society is the oldest continuous one of its sort. As Shashi Tharoor once said, india has only minorities, because Hindus themselves are such a diverse community with a multitude of beliefs, gods and even the presence of agnostics. So i would say we are an extremely pluralistic society that almost takes it for granted most of the time. When was the last time you were somewhere where everybody spoke the same language, had the same faith and had the same ethnic background? I don’t think I’ve ever been in that situation in India.
Any conflicts now are purely economic: think about it. In Kandhamal, it is tribals (coincidentally Christian) fighting for their right to land. The recent Kashmir crisis was triggered by the land transfer issue. Owning land and living off it is what is a sensitive issue, and religion is just an easy instrument.
I went to a convent and many, many of my friends were Muslim. But I never gave it a thought. It seemed only natural that I hang out with people I got along with. That is the mark of a pluralistic society and I’m very proud of India for being one. I’m also proud of Indian civil society (it’s getting a lot of flak in this blog) for being ready to question the state and its instruments about its actions against Indian Muslims.
and one more thing, in a country as large and heterogeneous as India, democracy can only remain a work-in -progress. we can never resolve everything because the needs of so many different groups will constantly change, shift. A good democracy is one which constantly changes with its people.
also secularism, one of the posters said was a foreign concept and so doesn’t work for us. It is not a foreign concept. Secularism in India has just always meant something different from the west…it has meant equal importance for all religions. And rightly so.
In Europe you still have Christian parties, by the way, that are in government and they oppose things like gay marriage etc. and frankly, Bush refers to his God everytime he talks about Iraq, so i don’t think their secularism is faith-free either.
so I guess the bottom line is I feel very optimistic about India. It’s one of a kind.
Sudha,
It is all very well to propose that festivals be celebrated publicly, and that everybody should enjoy this.
However, in a communally dysfunctional society, it often becomes a recipe for disaster. Time and again, religious processions are attacked, which totally detracts from the gaiety the occassion is supposed to generate.
Yes, India is one of a kind, but we all have to work actively to prevent it from descending into a circle of violence.
Sudha,
Like you I also feel very optimistic about India’s future in the midst of religion based violence and terrorism that have become real dangers in everyone’s life in India every day. But the fact remains that our political parties and politicians are failing to come to grips with these problems that the ordinary citizen faces daily. They refuse to take unbiased actions based on genuine reports of unbiased judges; or to institute unbiased enquiries in instances of religion based violence or terrorism.
Such soft attitudes of govt and political parties towards grappling with these serious problems flies in the face of enterprising Indians who are rapidly transforming India into an industrial and economic powerhouse.
The population anmd demographic composition of India is such that neither majority Hindus can cow down the religious minorities nor the minorities can create big mayhem against majority Hindus. But this situation is bleeding the ability of the nation to move forward as it should. The situation needs not an endless posturing, manipulation and debate but effective actions.
Kaleem and Milind,
I do agree with you. There is a serious crisis of confidence in many parts of the state machinery because of the lack of transparency (why can’t interrogation rooms have video cameras for instance?)
I also completely agree that the political posturing is tiresome and clearly only done to score points (like Amar Singh on the Jamia encounter issue).
I am also very very angry that we are taking so long to take action in Orissa. It’s a disgrace!
I am furious that the Bajrang Dal didn’t get banned a long time ago.
So I am as despondent about these issues as you.
I just think that sometimes when we fail to notice what does get done well, efficiently, impartially, we are in danger of perpetuating a self-fulfilling prophecy. (As the old aphorism goes, for everything that is said of India, the opposite is also true.
Kaleem, The few hardliners do not make the majority.
The ones who want to cow down minority need not be heeded and the ones who want to bleed majority for Jannah also need not be heeded.
These few voices will fade out soon. This nation has never encouraged extremists. Even the most extremist rulers came here to become part of culture here. Sooner or later this is going to happen.
Please read B Raman’s Indians are killing Indians as to how Bajrangis will sooner or later touch the Indian Psyche to be actually finished out.
And here is an article from a Muslim blogger. I liked this gentleman’s appraoch.
http://rethinkingislam-sultanshahin.blogspot.com/2008/03/making-of-islamist-suicide-bombers.html
I dont know whether my last comment got through or my internet played trocks but in essence I want to say let Hindus work to bring hindu hardliners into centre and Muslims work for Muslim hardliners to centre.
In this effect I liked B Ramans Article Indians are killing Indians and I liked this Muslim blooger who has quite objectively analysed some topics. Maybe a case in point to ask him to write on this blog as well.
Kaleem, The few hardliners do not make the majority.
The ones who want to cow down minority need not be heeded and the ones who want to bleed majority for Jannah also need not be heeded.
These few voices will fade out soon. This nation has never encouraged extremists. Even the most extremist rulers came here to become part of culture here. Sooner or later this is going to happen.
Please read B Raman’s Indians are killing Indians as to how Bajrangis will sooner or later touch the Indian Psyche to be actually finished out.
And here is an article from a Muslim blogger. I liked this gentleman’s appraoch.
http://rethinkingislam-sultanshahin.blogspot.com/
Kaleem,
Maybe what’s missing, and needs to be changed, is ordinary citizens engaging with the politicians, public servants and elected officials on a regular basis. That missing link needs to be established and the public servants need to hear from ordinary citizens.
Mahesh,
I agree with you. The respective communities need to work hard at reining in their respective hardliners.
It is the SILENCE of the majority that encourages the fringe elements.