Author: Angana Chatterji
Publication: The Daily Times
Date: December 22, 2002
The tyranny of dogmatic Hinduism
and Islam promotes and sustains cycles of violence in South Asia. The crusade
of Islamic fundamentalism in the region is a recognized fact in response
to which there is an increasing, and often strategically ineffectual, assemblage
of force and political will. Hindu militancy in India is yet to receive
similar scrutiny. Its rampage on secular India has been growing, with devastating
consequences. The current elections in Gujarat are testimony to this.
In Gujarat, the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) won 127 of 181 seats. The BJP, compliant in the post-Godhra
slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat, has been exonerated. The judge and jury
have been the electorate, organized and delivered by the Hindu supremacist
movement. In Gujarat, the party has rewarded the Hindutva movement's use
of hate and terror to divide and conquer. In return the BJP has been repaid
with votes. What does this mean for India?
The BJP heads a 20 party coalition
at the center. It has instigated and utilized Ayodhya and Gujarat for considerable
electoral gains. It is aided by, among others, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
(VHP). The VHP (World Hindu Council) is Hindutva's ideological platform,
intent on consolidating its singular and violent mission to pulverize India
into a Hindu extremist state. It is rallying to slay the opponents of Hindutva,
and those committed to a secular India tolerant of the faithful and irreligious
that inhabit its reality. Hindutva is well mobilized, well funded and well
armed. Its ideology is venomous, its propaganda effective. Most Indians
are watching their ascent in horror. The international community is silent.
The conditions for a Kristallnacht are in place.
In a recent press conference, the
VHP has declared that Muslims and other minorities will be subordinate
citizens in India. In a democracy, the majority community has an ethical
responsibility to enable affirmative action so disenfranchised minority
class and ethnic groups can overcome institutionalized injustices. While
the disbursement of affirmative action has been less than ideal, the Hindutva
movement interprets its very existence as an absurd 'accommodation' of
minority demands.
Indian nationalism has been built
at the prerogative of the Hindu elite, even while the Indian state confers
rights to diverse individuals and communities within its borders. This
has made India a vibrant democracy and a difficult country to govern. The
disempowered have organized to demand that the state grant them their rights.
India is a nation where 350 million live in conditions of poverty. Poor
rural women labor 1.5 workdays. The police are often complicit in perpetrating
social violence. Gay, lesbian and transgender communities, the elderly
and disabled, have few rights. Educational opportunities for adivasis (tribals)
are appalling. Irresponsible development displaces the poor without any
refuge. Sikhs have faced persecution, Muslims, dalits and other minorities
are often ostracized, and Christians have been forcibly converted to Hinduism.
The response by the state and its citizens has been inadequate, at best.
Forces of resistance continue to
challenge the dominance of the Hindu elite and middle class. In response,
Hindutva revivalism seeks to consolidate the power of the majority through
militant reform that defines Hindu majoritarianism as Indian nationalism.
This majoritarianism makes secularism subservient to Hindu nationalism.
Such an agenda requires that Hindutva assimilate the plural traditions
within Hinduism to create a narrow centralized code that promises to unite
Hindus. These principles are philosophically Brahmanical and universalistic,
in action segregationist. This strategy thwarts the complex search for
cultural identity that confronts the vast diversity of Indians living at
the intersections of pre and post modernity, inequitable modernization
and globalism. To realize its mission, Hindutva defines minority interests
as oppositional to Hindu, and therefore national, interest. The struggles
for justice of groups organized around ethnicity, religion, class, caste,
tribe, gender, or culture become hostile to national unity. Hindutva is
anathema to democracy.
Hindu militancy is on the rise,
and minority groups are the major victims of this sectarian violence. Delhi,
1984, Gujarat, 2002, Ahmedabad, 1969. Hyderabad, 1981, Bhiwandi, 1984,
Moradabad, 1980, Assam, 1983, Aligarh, 1978, Ayodhya, 1992. On and on.
Muslim minorities in India are a primary target of Hindutva's wrath, whose
master narrative de-emphasizes Hindu-Muslim coexistence, and creates grievous
misrepresentations of Indian Muslims as monolithic, anti-national, violent,
and without exception allied with Islamic fundamentalism. In the Hindutva
imagination, the village Muslim whose identity is shaped by kinship, region,
language, and culture becomes synonymous with the Taliban.
It is terrifying that so many have
responded with such vigor to the call of Hindutva. What counter movements,
what capacity building, are necessary to disrupt this campaign of hate
and genocide? How can the agenda for a tolerant and democratic India be
made central to all action at the grassroots level, within institutions,
political parties, trade unions, social movements, schools and universities,
non governmental organizations, families and neighborhoods, public and
private life?
Secularism in India has been fraught
with contention. Secularism as a strategy to oppose communalism is increasingly
defunct. Critics of the modern nation state and purists dispute secularism
as impossible and imposed. Hindutva argues that secularism will destroy
Hindu India. With increased communalization, secularism has become a bargaining
tool in national politics, used to deceitful advantage by most political
parties, a pretense useful in appeasing minority groups. Secular reform
with a conscience has been marginalized within the Indian polity to accommodate
Hindu hegemony. It limits necessary conversations regarding religious reform
or a meaningful role for faith in our times.
If India is to endure, it is crucial
that we conceive a nation where a profusion of cultures and histories coexist
with equal rights, weaving a script for citizenship and change that is
multicultural, hopeful, and pregnant with possibility. Inclusive and respectful
of all.
[Kristallnacht, or "the Night of
Broken Glass" is the pogrom carried out against the Jewish people in Germany
and in the acquired territories of Austria and Sudetenland in 1938. The
Nazi Regime orchestrated the pogrom.]
