 |
||
|
||
|
||
Introduction: The minorities are also obligated to empathise with the sensibilities of the majority.
Many have reacted against the three appeals issued by RSS chief KS Sudarshan in recent months.
The first was the call to defeat anti-Hindus. More recently, he asked Christian churches to become swadeshi and the Muslim people to Indianise themselves. So far there has been no enquiry for an explanation as to what could have inspired the appeals. Was it an anxiety or could it be an aspiration or a combination of the two?
In the absence of an understanding, the Hindus will continue to snap at the anti-Hindus who incidentally are not either Christian or Muslim. They are those Hindus who are proud of their names like Somnath, Sitaram, Kestogopal and Harikrishna, who flaunt their pedigree, who acquire their passports by declaring themselves Hindu. Yet, who make it their whole time business to run down Hinduism. Even the description of anything as Hindu often provokes them to dismiss it as communal. Although, sitting in coalition government with the Muslim League they pass off as secular. Meeting church leaders and visiting the Shahi Imam are permitted to be secular but addressing a gathering of VHP is objectionable.
The call for swadeshi churches is not a suggestion to pray or worship any differently. The truth espoused by Jesus is universal and is not expected to be fractionalised by national frontiers. But that is different from proselytising or converting, say, the Nagas and the Mizos and instigating them to separate from the rest of India.
The visit to India last year of His Holiness the Pope left behind supranational waves. His exhortation to convert more Indians to Catholicism was audacious. In the background was his conviction that there was a harvest of souls to be got in the 21st century Asia as was in Africa the previous century. Proselytising, focussed on Adivasis in the villages and Dalits in the cities, is seen as social aggression by most Hindus. The argument often offered is that if we do not want our co-religionists to become Christian, then why don't we look after them better so that they are not tempted to change.
That everyone, poor as well as rich, should be cared for is a legitimate contention. On the other hand, there are some Christian families, in India as well as overseas, who happen to neglect their children. Even then how would the parents feel if their children were seduced away by aliens? Incidentally, the proselytisers do not go anywhere near Muslim bastis where also poor and illiterate people live. Why not, if, as they claim, their purpose is to care for and/or cure the suffering humanity?
The minorities should be treated well and their members, as equal citizens. Their grievances should be heard. But must the majority view bend backwards to assuage every minority whim? Do the minorities have no obligation to empathise with the sensibilities of the majority. This is common sense which happened to be thrown overboard by Mahatma Gandhi when he assumed the leadership of the Khilafat Movement in 1919. It was a retrograde cause just as was the Muslim Women's Bill, 1986, on divorce and alimony, which overthrew a Supreme Court Judgement.
If I were a Muslim, I would have felt hurt at the way the Babri Mosque was demolished. But should I not emphathise with the anguish of my Hindu brethren who have lost thousands of temples since Mahmud Ghazni began raiding India. The Hindu anguish has recently been recognised by Professor Mushirul Hasan when he called for a reconciliation between the communities.
True, unlike especially the Muslims, the Hindus have been fragmented. They do not have a religion or a code of worship in the Judaic or Western sense. They have a faith, an explanation of life and a multitude of rituals, none of which provides that cement of unity. In ancient and medieval times, religion and ideology were, in practice, synonymous. As a result, Hindu India had to make do without the bond of an ideology. With the advent of nationalism, however, the picture has been changing and the void in the Hindu lack of collectivity cannot be taken for granted.
All responsible Indians would like that the new consciousness is constructively channelised and not allowed to go into the arms of extremism or militancy. Herein the role of the minority leadership would be greater than that of the Hindus.
The Hindus and Muslims have at the worst of times killed one another, on normal days growled at one another. At their best, they have shaken hands like acquaintances. They have never felt like siblings who can laugh and weep together. If we are to be happy as one nation, we must speak frankly, vent our respective grouses and root out the venom of the past.
Nothing upsets a contemporary Hindu
than supranationalism or prime loyalty beyond the borders of India, be
it Mecca or Rome or be it Soviet Moscow or the communist Beijing. For instance,
the Hindu would expect his Muslim or communist compatriots to be articulate
on Kashmir or at least about the illegitimacy of Pakistan being a party
to the dispute. Altaf Hussain, the Mohajir leader of MQM, has reportedly
attacked the concept or nazaria-e-Pakistan and described the division of
the Indian subcontinent as the biggest blunder in the history of mankind.
The Hindu wants to know if his Muslim compatriot agrees with Mr Hussain.
|
||
|
||
|
||