Segregate and rule
Communalism appears increasingly as a weapon of the advantaged classes and
castes
in India to subvert democratic and subaltern assertion
BY KHALID ANIS ANSARI
The demolition of the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992 by
right-wing Hindu organisations is instructive in many ways. While many tears
have been shed over this decisive blow to the Nehruvian consensus on
‘secularism’ and the irreparable damage that it has inflicted on Indian polity,
it has also set the stage for some wider and more far-reaching questions to be
asked now. Was there something essentially amiss with the principle of
‘secularism’ as envisaged by the founding fathers of the Indian nation state,
which led to its early demise? Should the demolition of the Babri mosque be
treated as an unwelcome aberration in the otherwise tidy world of Indian
secularism or as the logical culmination of the actual substantive forces at
work all along behind its veneer? In the following sections I shall attempt a
provisional discussion on these and other related questions.
Interrogating Indian secularism
Secularisation as a social process needs to be distinguished
from secularism as an ideology and it can be usefully acknowledged that
secularisation is not the product of that ideology alone but also an effect of
various other concrete material forces in action. To what extent secularisation
has occurred in Indian society and in what manner it has been assisted by the
official ideology of secularism is an aspect that warrants investigation.
We are all aware that the accepted wisdom about secularism/secularisation
emphasises the separation of state, or markets, from primordial identities and
the relegation of the latter to the private sphere. If this is what constitutes
genuine secularism then it can be argued that it was never put to the test in
India. Whether it should have been tried or not, especially in the wake of the
‘anti-modernist’ and ‘communitarian’ critiques of secularism offered by some
Indian academics (Ashis Nandy, TN Madan, Veena Das) or the experience with
secularism in other jurisdictions (Talal Asad’s critique of French secularism,
for instance), is another matter and beyond the scope of the present essay.
"In the case of India, the problem was not that the actions of a
secular state hell-bent on purging religious values from public life led to a
religious reaction. Quite the contrary, the state was never sufficiently secular
and made frequent concessions to religious forces for electoral gains" (Baber,
2006: 60). Moreover, in the economic sphere it was expected that a process of
rationalisation would take place and at least the "era of liberalisation once
again provoked predictions that the rationalities of contract would replace
custom and that acquired characteristics would replace ascribed ones as the
basis of market transactions". However, this did not happen and "...the larger
part of the modern Indian economy is regulated in significant ways by social
institutions derived from ‘primordial identity’ and that (although continually
contested) they are resistant or immune to change by means of macroeconomic
policy" (Harriss-White, 2007).
However, this privileging of primordial identities – whether in
their mediation in the accumulation processes (economy) and the capture of power
(state) or even as broad slogans for subaltern resistance – is not new to Indian
society. Far too many instances can be recalled from the pre-colonial period,
which underscore a tradition of subaltern discontent and assertion often
surfacing in the guise of primordial identities in India. But, arguably, these
identities were not overarching or fixed principles of social organisation and
the modes of organisation or mobilisation often varied with the context and
local power equations involved.
The colonial state on the other hand not only adopted these
collectivities but also transformed them to broad and closed categories. The
basic thrust of the colonial archive, enumerative technology (census) and
ethnographic surveys was in reifying and systematising the primordial
identities, especially caste and religion. This made the task of governance
slightly convenient and was in conformity with the British orientalist tradition
that viewed India as a communally compartmentalised society and often disparaged
and questioned its ability to work out a modern representative secular
democracy. No wonder this ‘politics of difference’ (Partha Chatterjee’s term)
was contrived in order to contrast the colonial state with the
mystical/spiritual/traditional/backward Indian society and to legitimise and
rationalise the former’s benevolent presence (Dirks, 2002).
One may trace the charitable use of ‘Hindu’ icons and symbols in
the nationalist movement since its inception. This was natural, as most of the
elite classes that represented and led the nationalist movement came from upper
caste Hindu locations. Besides, their cultural capital and superior articulation
made them the natural choice as leaders of the movement. (Historically, lower
castes were theologically barred from acquiring property and knowledge.)
However, this dominant Hindu symbolism also alienated the suppressed castes and
other religious minorities in no uncertain terms.
The extreme articulation of the ‘two-nation theory’ by MA Jinnah
and the demand for a ‘separate electorate for untouchables’ voiced by Dr BR
Ambedkar can also be seen as reactions to this dominant propensity in the
movement. Despite much rhetoric about inclusiveness and representativeness
utilised by the mainstream nationalist movement (represented by the Congress
party), the apprehensions that power would ultimately be transferred from the
British to the ‘Brahmin-Bourgeois’ (I borrow this term from Gail Omvedt, 2004:
422) sections of India were too real to be missed by the Dalit leaders. The
Muslim League on the other hand, which saw India in ‘communal’ categories and
shared this trait equally with the Congress (with the difference that while the
Congress claimed to represent all religious communities the League only
represented the Muslim interests), was also sceptical about the prospect of
power being transferred to ‘Hindu’ hands.
Hence the notion of secularism, as it evolved during the
nationalist movement, drew its vocabulary from its encounter with the colonial
discourse – India as a communally compartmentalised society incapable of
developing a working secular democracy – and also, a fact often underplayed,
from the assertion of suppressed castes and other identities from below.
Consequently, to have abandoned the notion of secularism would have vindicated
negative British opinions and would have appeared a retrograde step in the eyes
of the world. On the other hand, the adoption of the western notion of
secularism in any substantive way would have unsettled the politics historically
organised by the elite in non-secular terms (identities) that often obscured the
notion of ‘class’ and thereby their own privileged position. Thus the term
‘secularism’ was retained but was imbued with convenient meanings (Upadhyay,
1992).
Secularism largely came to mean, especially after the treatment
it received at the hands of MK Gandhi, a policy of religious accommodation which
envisaged the independent Indian nation state as a ‘coalition of communities’.
But rather than seeing the interests of these various communities as
irreconcilable, a fundamentalist position, it stressed their unity and heralded
the cooperation between them as the loftiest ideal. The phrase ‘sarva dharma
sambhav (let all religions prosper)’ best embodies this principle. It is
another matter however that in actual terms the notion translated into what
could be called majoritarianism in which "while all communities... would be
equal, one would be more equal than others – namely the majority ‘Hindu
community’" (Upadhyay, 1992: 817).
Hence secularism, which became the central plank of the
nationalist movement and later the free Indian nation state, has all along been
a euphemism for majoritarian nationalism. Subsequently, we have had a
representative politics which is organised predominantly along lines of
‘community’, defined in religious terms, in which the ‘majority community’ must
always emerge victorious. This majoritarianism provides a semblance of democracy
to a political system that claims to represent all identities whereas in
substantive terms it only caters to the interests of a small ‘minority’ of
dominant castes/classes. Interestingly, it becomes a cause of discomfiture to
advantaged classes when the same language of community is used by lower castes
to demand social and economic justice for themselves – the protests against the
implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations, for instance (Upadhyay,
1992).
It is interesting to note that while the views of Gandhi and
Nehru differed widely on most other issues they were the joint architects of the
Congress brand of majoritarian secularism. Can this be attributed to Nehru’s own
brahmanic social location? Dr Ram Manohar Lohia mentions an event in one of his
articles, in which "The president of the Indian republic [Dr Rajendra Prasad]
publicly bathed the feet of two hundred Brahmins in the holy city of Benaras" (Lohia,
1956: 101). He further writes: "Pandit Nehru is on record for having extolled
what he chose to call the ‘brahmanic spirit of service’. What Dr Rajendra Prasad
seeks to do by commission, Pandit Nehru achieves by omission" (Lohia, 1956:
104).
Michael Edwardes also remarks: "His [Nehru’s] hatred of
religious communalism had kept him from formal faith but had not prevented him
from trying to create a personal syncretism that would satisfy both his desire
for traditional roots in the Hindu world and his belief in progressive
socialism. …From the late 1950s Nehru had talked often in private conversation
about Hindu ideals and ideas though his uncompromising dislike of formal
religious expressions tended to conceal his growing religiosity" (Edwardes,
1973: 324-25). On similar lines, Dileep M. Menon has tried to unravel the late
Marxist leader of Kerala, EMS Namboodripad’s brahmanic readings of Marxism
elsewhere (Menon, 2006). The point I am trying to drive home is that we are all
constituted in complex ways by our identities and ‘social locations’. However,
to say that we are completely determined by them would be as absurd as to say
that they have no bearing on our politics at all.
However, the Congress brand of majoritarian secularism must be
contrasted with the outright Hindu communalism advocated by the sangh parivar,
especially the RSS. While the former uses secularism more as a pragmatic device
for power and oscillates from a seemingly neutral position to toying
occasionally with communal sentiments, for the latter the communal plank is its
raison d’être. This breach was evident enough in the assassination of Gandhi by
the votaries of outright Hindu communalism immediately after India gained
independence. However, it is a moot point whether the brand of secularism
practised by the Congress would be able to check decisively the growth of Hindu
fundamentalism.
‘Majority’ and ‘minority’ communalism: Two
sides of the same coin?
What went down with the dilapidated structure of the Babri
mosque was perhaps the faith in this brand of majoritarian secularism. So what
was the import of the demolition of the Babri mosque? Why did it happen? What
was its impact and after-effects? What was the motivation of its main
protagonists?
To begin with, the politics around the Babri mosque, whether
promoted aggressively by the saffron brigade or defended as a reaction by the
mainstream Muslim leadership, was not about faith but about identity. And given
the compelling correspondence that identities have with the distribution of
material benefits and power in our country, it was also about political economy.
In short, it was a blatant politicisation of religion for secular and worldly
ends.
The demolition of the mosque can be viewed as the defining point
in a process unleashed by the Hindu Right in order to address some major
transformations in Indian political economy from the mid-1980s onwards. The
first was the gradual opening up of the economy in the 1980s due to unavoidable
international economic pressures, a process finally culminating in the economic
reforms of 1991. With the growth rate for the first time crossing the aptly
named ‘Hindu rate of growth’ (3.5 per cent) in the middle of the 1980s, the
static and well-ordered caste society of India was witnessing untold pressures (Omvedt,
1995: 69-70). India was propelled into a world of change in an unprecedented way
and the cultural anxieties created by the danger of the advent of a modern (or
postmodern) consumer society was there to be utilised to the hilt by communal
and fundamentalist forces in every religious group.
The second and more immediate cause was the resurfacing of the
much repressed histories of caste with the implementation of one
recommendation of the Mandal Commission, quotas for OBCs in central government
jobs, by VP Singh’s government in 1990. The onset of a fresh wave of caste
assertion in North India (in the south the issue had arguably been settled long
before) could perhaps only be managed by resorting to religious communalism. No
wonder the 1980s witnessed increasing legitimacy for forces of both Hindutva and
Islamism in the wake of mobilisations around the Ram Janmabhoomi and Shah Bano
controversies.
These developments reflected that the dominant notion of
secularism was increasingly outliving its utility and what began as a process in
the 1980s was finally led to its logical conclusion with the demolition of the
mosque on December 6, 1992. Many ideological blinkers were discarded –
secularism as communal harmony (though seldom achieved in practice) was paving
the way for more discrete and robust versions of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Islamic’
fundamentalism. It is only ironical that when the mosque was being razed to the
ground the then Congress prime minister, PV Narasimha Rao, was busy taking his
siesta. In the final analysis, the demolition ensured that Indian polity will
continue to revolve around the axis of communalism for some time to come.
As we all know, religious communalism is sustained by the notion
of a ‘Hindu’ or ‘Muslim’ (or even ‘Christian’ or ‘Sikh’) monolith. It may
however be safely asserted that none of these communities is internally
homogeneous or monolithic. Almost all the religious blocs are internally
differentiated in terms of caste, class, gender or sect. In the case of Indian
Islam, for instance, conflicts have been noted between various sects, such as
Shia-Sunni or Deobandi-Barelvi, and castes, such as ashraf-ajlaf.
While the dangers of Hindu communalism – in its capacity to take state power and
turn it fascist – are evident enough, what is often underplayed in the ‘secular’
posturing against the Hindu Right is the role of ‘minority’ communalism in
legitimising the former. It is the notion of Muslims, Christians or Sikhs as a
monolithic and united community that is latched on to by Hindu fundamentalist
forces and used to mobilise and consolidate their constituency.
The Pasmanda movement, a movement of backward caste/Dalit
Muslims, has often stressed the role of the upper caste Muslim elite (ashraf
or ‘honourable’) in sustaining this fiction of a monolithic Muslim community –
though usually by default, as communal common sense or as a reaction to Hindutva
politics, but also at times consciously to secure material benefits from the
state by acting as self-appointed community spokespersons and falsely
demonstrating the weight of the entire community behind them. (I must stress
here that I am specifically underlining the role of only the elite amongst the
upper caste Muslims and not upper caste Muslims as a whole, as a substantial
number of them are poor and oppressed. However, there is a need to investigate
how they are related to the elite Muslims through kinship ties or patron-client
relationships whereby they are often unconscious carriers of the ashrafiya
ideology and value-system. Moreover, this perhaps holds true to a greater or
lesser extent for the poor and exploited upper caste Hindu sections as well.)
Increasingly, subaltern sections are beginning to see some merit
in the argument that this game of competitive communalism between majority and
minority communities has been carefully engineered and crafted by their elites,
mostly male and upper caste, to hoodwink them with insincere communal/religious
slogans and preserve and perpetuate their own class/caste interests. In a sense,
both ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ fundamentalisms share a symbiotic relationship
and both constantly feed and strengthen each other. This is what the information
secretary of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba had to say on the eve of the 1999 elections:
"The BJP suits us. Within a year they have made us into a nuclear and missile
power. Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is getting a good response because of BJP’s statements.
It is much better than before. We pray to god that they come to power again.
Then we will emerge even stronger" (cited in Yechury, 2008).
Hence it is virtually impossible to contest majority
fundamentalism without also challenging its minority version in any meaningful
way. And for that the premium mainstream minority politics puts on the notion of
‘community’ as being predominantly religious and monolithic needs to be
interrogated. In this context, various caste and gender movements among
minorities have emerged of late which are contesting this fiction and striving
for fresh solidarities that transcend and subvert their affiliations with
religious identities.
Caste and communal violence
But if the predominant religious definitions of community are
challenged and an alternative conception of community coloured by caste is
invoked, it completely overturns the notion of ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ as
utilised in Indian political discourse. It also radically transforms the notion
of oppressor and oppressed as held in the popular imagination.
In a reworked formulation of community in caste terms it is not
the majority Hindus who are the oppressors and the minority Muslims, Christians
or Sikhs the oppressed. Rather, it is the microscopic minority of caste elite,
irrespective of their religious affiliations, who become the oppressors and the
remaining population (bahujan, moolnivasi, indigenous peoples)
becomes the oppressed. Ali Anwar, the leader of the All India Pasmanda Muslim
Mahaz, said during a speech in Patna: "Hum Shuddar hain Shuddar, Bharat ke
moolnivasi hain. Baad mein Musalman hain (We are Sudras first; we are the
indigenous peoples of India. We are Muslims later)." It may be readily conceded
that this latter construction is not without its problems. It is too simplistic
and needs to be nuanced. However, it perhaps approximates more closely to social
reality than the religious definition of community that has been holding sway
for far too long in both academic and popular discourse.
A microscopic minority of caste/class elite cannot rule by
consensus and indoctrination alone although there will inevitably be much of
that. There are bound to be rebellious voices and in order to ‘hegemonise’ the
subject castes, periodic violence must also be resorted to. No wonder Amnesty
International described India as the world’s most violent country (Rajshekar,
2007: 114). Even the Gandhian insistence on non-violence was in a sense an
acknowledgement of the deep-rooted violence in Indian society. Whichever way you
look at it, the story of caste and the use of organised violence to
discipline/punish the suppressed castes are central to this phenomenon.
How could Hindu unity be achieved in the face of a thousand
fragmentations on the basis of the caste system? While Islam, Sikhism or
Christianity can claim to speak for equality of human beings (in their
theological texts at least) what options does Hinduism have when ‘hierarchy’ and
‘purity-pollution’ saturate its main texts? How would a majoritarian nationalism
survive, which does not even represent the majority of the ‘majority’ community?
These are questions that have constantly nagged the Hindu caste elite and so far
it has only been able to respond to them with customary violence.
To address these questions meaningfully, perhaps only two
avenues were possible. One course would have been to reject the caste system
entirely. But is not the caste system the soul of Hinduism, its indispensable
principle? Would Hinduism have survived then? Would the privileges enjoyed by
the upper caste Hindus have been preserved and perpetuated? What Ambedkar says
in this context is relevant here: "[The] philosophy of Hinduism is not founded
on individual justice or social utility... To the question what is right and
what is good the answer that the philosophy of Hinduism gives is remarkable. It
holds that to be right and good the act must serve the interest of a class of
supermen, namely the Brahmins. Anything which serves the interest of this class
is alone entitled to be called good" (cited in Thorat and Deshpande, 2001: 56).
The second course, the one which was actually resorted to, was
to construct the religious minorities as the ‘other’ and deflect the intra-Hindu
violence towards them. Dileep Menon expresses this view emphatically: "The inner
violence within Hinduism explains to a considerable extent the violence directed
outwards against Muslims once we concede that the former is historically prior.
The question needs to be: how has the deployment of violence against an internal
Other (defined primarily in terms of inherent inequality), the Dalit, come to be
transformed at certain conjunctures into one of aggression against an external
Other (defined primarily in terms of inherent difference), the Muslim? Is
communalism a deflection of the central issue of violence and inegalitarianism
within Hindu society?" (Menon, 2006: 2).
But one can go further and ask: Is it a deflection that is
abetted, often by default, by the upper caste elite of all minority groups by
providing a religious screen for what is essentially a class/caste conflict? How
does this aggressive Hindu posturing against the religious minorities facilitate
their own elite in rallying the masses behind them and in turn bargaining for
material advantages from the state? (I must briefly mention that caste
consciousness is present in varying degrees among all minority communities.
There are reports that in Kerala, Syrian (upper caste) and Dalit Christians have
separate churches. Similar caste cleavages between Mazhabi Sikhs and others have
been documented as well.)
In a sense, communalism shares an intimate relation with the
repressed histories of caste. The more caste assertion grows strong, the more
religious communalism is resorted to in order to check it. Is it not true that
between 1850 and 1947 communal violence has always followed periods of mobility
and assertion on the part of Dalits and other subordinated castes (Menon, 2006:
8)? Is it not true of the pogrom in Gujarat in 2002 when it was preceded by the
perceived threat of tribal conversion to Christianity and the ‘bleeding of
Hinduism’ (see Shani, 2007)? Is it not true of the recent communal clashes and
burning of churches in Orissa where violence has followed the demand for
reservations raised by Dalit Christians?
Paul R. Brass, a scholar who has explored in depth the subject
of so-called Hindu-Muslim riots in India, concludes that there is "a great deal
wrong with the kind of attention given to what are called Hindu-Muslim riots and
to the interpretations given to violence designated as such". Besides, most such
rioting "was neither spontaneous nor was it primarily conflict between Hindu and
Muslim crowds [...]". "On the contrary, [...] there existed in these
towns what I called ‘institutionalised riot systems’. [...] Moreover, it
was much more highly developed and elaborately organised within the network of
militant Hindu organisations radiating out from the RSS than from any comparable
network of Muslim organisations [...]." "In short, what are called
Hindu-Muslim riots in India are in fact more like pogroms and have recently, in
Gujarat and elsewhere, taken the form of genocidal massacres and local ethnic
cleansing as well." Further, he is very critical of the academic efforts on the
issue of communalism: "These discoveries led me in turn to adopt a critical
stance concerning the social science literature on the subject which, it seemed
to me, had got caught up in misguided efforts to categorise and classify the
various forms of collective violence and to probe the mentalities of rioters and
crowds without displaying much knowledge of how riots actually happen.
Pseudoscience substituted for ethnographic research" (Brass, 2006, emphasis
added).
One may wonder why there is a need to nurture ‘institutionalised
riot systems’ in various towns in India. It is slightly puzzling why academic
efforts are often ‘misguided’ and ‘pseudoscience’ often substitutes ‘for
ethnographic research’ when it comes to studying communalism in India. I
leave it to the readers themselves to visualise the implications of what Brass
is saying here and how the caste critique of communalism informs these questions
in turn.
Contesting communalism I: The instrumental
role of caste
One may concede that caste as it prevails today was in large
part a colonial construction; the same would also hold true for communalism (Pandey,
2005). However, Nicholas Dirks reminds us that "there is now no simple way of
wishing it [caste] away, no easy way to imagine social forms that would
transcend the languages of caste that have become so inscribed in ritual,
familial, communal, socio-economic, political and public theatres of quotidian
life" (Dirks, 2002: 5-6). Hence is there a case for retaining caste as an
organising principle in politics?
This question could elicit a tentative affirmative response for
three reasons. One, as already mentioned, we cannot wish caste away. Due to a
complex historical process, we have all come to be more or less constituted by
it. Rather than sweeping it under the carpet, we need to engage with it and
discuss it in a frank and forthright manner.
Two, it offers a necessary corrective to the overemphasis on
religious modes of organisation in our society. The instrumental role of caste
in contesting communalism can scarcely be discounted. Girish Karnad states this
clearly: "...the internal diversity resulting from the caste system may be our
main defence against a Hindu fascist state controlled by the traditionally
advantaged classes" (cited in Kalbag, 2007). (I shall mention two instances to
buttress this point further. The first was the absence of any major pogrom in
Bihar during the 15 years that Laloo Yadav, who championed backward caste
politics, was in power. The second is the recent formation of an organisation
named S-4 (Savarna Shoshan Sangharsh Samiti) in Bihar (Yadav, 2007). The
organisation claims to stand for the oppressed upper caste sections and,
curiously, includes upper caste Muslims (ashraf) in its fold as well.
This is an interesting development, as upper caste sections have traditionally
been conducting politics under the guise of religion and have often elided their
caste locations. This is the first time that they have openly started organising
on the basis of caste. These new solidarities on the basis of caste will
hopefully provide a necessary check on the forces of communalism.)
And three, the category of caste has a strong correspondence
with the actual distribution of power and material goods in Indian society. In a
loose sense then, caste also overlaps with the notion of ‘marginalised’ in our
country. If progressive politics is about the liberation of the marginalised,
caste must indeed be taken on board.
"Our question is: ‘Can we not use the institution of caste and
convert it into a democratic asset?’ Jati is a social capital and a rich
powerful centuries old institution which can be used not only for development
purposes... but also for political (electoral) purposes" (Rajshekar, 2007:
viii). Yet the story of caste will not automatically promise to be a sweet fairy
tale. It can and often does obscure substantial oppressions and repressions. I
would therefore stress that it must only be taken as a starting point and needs
to be complicated by other categories like class, gender, sexuality, nationality
and so on to make it a real liberatory exercise.
Contesting communalism II: The authentic
role of religion
Caste and religion are identities of a different order. Caste
has variously been seen as a racial, ethnic or tribal identity. In other words,
it is an ascribed identity. The hallmark of religion on the other hand has been
its ability to inspire and provide moral vision(s) to human societies. At best,
it should largely be seen as an achieved identity. "Religion is like a dress.
Anybody can change it any time. Even if our enemy wants to wear our dress, we
cannot stop him. Afro-Americans (blacks) are giving up their religious dress of
Christianity because that is also the dress of their oppressors – white American
Christians" (Rajshekar, 2007: 63).
Remarkably, quite often religious identity gets racialised as
well. In the context of India, Sumit Sarkar says: "The Muslim [is considered] as
ever proliferating, sexually prolific and lusting after Hindu women. Such
assumptions have entered deep into middle-class Hindu common sense in many parts
of the country... Communalism here veers close to everyday racism, with the
Muslim – like the black or coloured immigrant – felt to be a biological danger,
a threat simply by being born, giving birth – even dying. A highly respected
gentleman told a group of us investigating the Nizamuddin riot of 1990 that
every time a Muslim died a bit of Mother India’s soil was lost through his grave
while the self-effacing Hindu is cremated and does not waste space" (cited in
Baber, 2006: 63). On the same lines, many racial comments regarding Hindus can
be ferreted out from respectable Muslims, Christians and Sikhs as well.
Obviously, there is a visible tension between religion as faith
and religion as an identity marker. Moreover, in discussions around religion it
is the latter that monopolises all the attention, for instance, in the debates
around the Sachar Committee recommendations, thereby feeding into the
legitimisation process of communalism. I would contend that this notion of
religion as an overarching identity needs to be interrogated and abandoned in
favour of liberatory versions of faith. In this context, various versions of
liberation theology that are being experimented with in different religious
traditions are a welcome trend. Garaudy says: "Faith is not a promise of power.
It is the conviction that it is possible to create a qualitatively new future
only if we identify ourselves with those who are the most naked and downtrodden,
only if we tie our fate to theirs to the point that it is impossible to conceive
any real victory but theirs" (Garaudy, 1976: 97-98).
Let religion do what it does best – as an ethic that informs
human actions, as an intimate foundation that addresses the human condition, as
a sign that liberation is possible in the here and now, as a promise and faith
that things will be better one day. After all, "God exists wherever something
new is coming to life, in artistic creation, scientific discovery, love or
revolution" (Garaudy, 1976: 28). Let religion inform our human projects but let
us be identified by multiple social categories if only, in the final analysis,
to transcend and subvert them in favour of an integrated humanity founded on
peace and justice.
Conclusion
I have often asked myself that if a majority of Muslims are so
economically disadvantaged, what potential challenge could they pose to the
ruling sections of India. Why is there this exaggerated sense of paranoia about
Muslim identity in our country? By isolating Muslims as the whipping boy (or the
weakest enemy) and witch-hunting their youth (see Tehelka issues of
August 9 and 16, 2008) do the powerful sections in the country try to keep in
check all the other contradictions and solidarities, caste and gender, for
instance, whose retaliation could perhaps be unmanageable for them? Is the
discourse around the monolithic construction of Muslim identity the great
cementing force of this nation? This essay has partly been a provisional attempt
to address some of these questions.
To conclude, the spectre of caste assertion is haunting India.
Mandal II, the Ramadoss-Venugopal (AIIMS) row, the Orissa church burnings,
Kherlanji, the Babri mosque and the recent bomb blasts are just a few of the
forms it takes. At its heart lies a deep democratic discontent that signals a
remarkable story of exclusion of the marginalised from the system. Communalism
appears increasingly as a weapon of the advantaged classes and castes in India
to subvert democratic and subaltern assertion. Though its main driving force and
beneficiaries are the advantaged castes in the majority community, the story
remains incomplete without acknowledging the role of the largely upper caste
elite within the minority communities in abetting it. n
(Khalid Anis Ansari is a member of a research-activism group
called The Patna Collective. However, the views expressed here are personal and
may not necessarily be shared by the organisation. He can be contacted at
[email protected].)
References
Baber, Zaheer (2006),
Secularism, Communalism and the Intellectuals, Three Essays Collective,
Gurgaon.
Brass, Paul R. (2006),
‘Organised riots & structured violence in India’, The Hindu, August 23.
Dirks, Nicholas B.
(2002), Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India,
Permanent Black, Delhi.
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