Author: Jugular Vein/Jug Suraiya
Publication: The Times of India
Date: December 14, 2002
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/comp/articleshow?artid=31285063
If today Narendra Modi unfurls the
banner of victory in Gujarat it will be partly my fault. For I am what
I call a two-rupee liberal. Almost daily I face the two-rupee dilemma,
in the form of two elderly gents who sit on the steps of the pedestrian
subway outside the office.
They're too dignified to be called
beggars. The term 'mendicant', with its association of spiritually inspired
self-abnegation, might be more appropriate. One seems to be a Hindu, in
that he wears saffron. The other appears to be a Muslim, from his cap and
beard. They share the subway steps in an ecumenical amity that would put
many a secularist to shame. Including me. My embarrassment is caused by
determining how much to give each of them. If the coins in my pocket add
up to two or four, it's easy: Each one gets half. The problem arises when
I have only three rupees in change. Who gets the one buck, and who gets
two?
More often than not, the person
I assume to be a Muslim ends up with the two rupees. My reasoning, if you
can call it that, goes like this: In India there are relatively more, and
more affluent, Hindus to look after other Hindus, than there are Muslims
to look after Muslims. My liberal credo urges affirmative action, no matter
on how small a scale, to help the underdog. Or, as in this case, the undererdog.
But doesn't such prejudicial selection
militate against my secularism, which is the obverse and necessary side
of my liberalism? If my choice - no matter how well-intentioned - is based
on a communal premise, how secular is my secularism? Am I not guilty of
the sangh parivar charge of 'pseudo-secularism', and 'appeasement of minorities',
both of which are synonyms for illiberalism?
Big deal for a measly two rupees,
you'd say. I'd agree. Except that my two two-rupee dilemma is only a symptom
of a bigger problem, which has to do with the nature of liberalism and
that of its opposite. And what would that be? A liberal might be tempted
to call it fanaticism. But in doing so, the liberal would call into question
his own liberal credentials which include the legitimacy of the other's
opinion, so long as it does not violate the law of the land.
The liberal, for whom the means
are as important as the ends if not even more so, is forever questioning
his own motives. The conservative (or whatever else you call him), for
whom the ends are the means, is under no compulsion to trip over his own
feet. Which the liberal does regularly. Whether the issue is two rupees
or the need for a common civil code.
In the interests of gender equity,
as a liberal I'm all for a uniform civil code. But this is uncomfortably
close to the position the parivar takes, though for different reasons.
Averse to aligning myself with the conservative (fanatic?) parivar, I shilly-shally
on the issue, and end up sounding like Rajiv Gandhi on the Shah Bano case
- which everyone, liberal and otherwise, agrees was a shameful instance
of minority vote-catching.
The liberal position on the common
civil code is that, in the case of a minority community, it should be left
to that community to evolve a consensus within itself. According to liberalism,
minorities have to be protected from majoritarianism. Fine. But aren't
Muslim women a minority within the larger minority of Muslims as a whole,
and might thus doubly be in need of liberal protection, even if that protection
involves falling in line with what liberalism otherwise sees as an anti-Muslim
policy? To fight shy of this on the excuse that one doesn't want to be
seen joining ranks with Islam-bashers is to duck the question: How liberal,
really, is your liberalism? Protection of minorities is a secular/liberal
tenet. So is impartiality under law. What happens when these two tenets
collide?
A pregnant woman is being held captive
in a Nigerian prison until her baby is born whereupon the mother will be
stoned to death for adultery under a local Islamic law. Liberals have,
of course, denounced such cases of Islamic fundamentalism. But the overall
liberal view has been that moderate, or liberal, Islam must be the foremost
voice to be raised against the more radical forms of Islam. Why? Why should
I as a so-called Hindu liberal differentiate myself from a so-called Islamic
liberal in speaking out against inhuman practices no matter what supposed
religious sanction they have? And if I do, don't I justify the charge of
pseudo- secularism against people of my ilk, and thereby help to validate
the actions of people like Togadia and Narendra Modi?
So what's the answer? A 'hard' liberalism
to counter 'hard' conservatism - hell, why not just spit it out and call
it fanaticism? A liberalism that, like its opposite, refuses to heed any
voice other than that of its own monomania, refuses to see anything other
than its own delusions?
Jingling in my pocket the ideological
small change of my doubts, I walk towards the two elderly figures. What
shall it be today? Who gets the two rupees, and who gets one? Play it by
random chance? Put a stop to footling sentimentality and give neither of
them anything? Do exactly the opposite of what I think Narendra Modi would
do? But by doing that don't I, in effect, empower him? Become him?
