Author: D. Kandiah
Publication: The Island Newspaper, Sri Lanka
Date: June 28, 2000
I refer to Yasmin Tambiah's second letter to the editor ("Reply to D.
Kandiah on Hindutva") that appeared in the Island Newspaper on May 24,
2000. I find it odd that she lives in Australia, writes to a Sri Lankan
newspaper but largely confines her discussion to India. I am amazed at
her obsession with Hindutva in the context of the uncertain political situation
here in Sri Lanka. The Jaffna peninsula is once again a zone of war with
several thousands displaced. The civilians face a precarious future there.
The lives of several thousand combatants are also at stake. The number
of female-headed households dependent on relief handouts has increased
while the rural economy has come to a standstill in much of the North.
Many have lived in welfare camps in the Vanni for the past 15 years and
children have grown up not knowing life outside these camps. Sri Lanka
is on a war footing.
She dismisses Hindutva as an "exclusivist religious nationalism". I
disagree. Hindus constitute 85% of India's population. I feel that it would
not be wrong if India were to concede a significant role to Hinduism on
condition that it also protects religious freedom, guarantees equal opportunities
to all its citizens and upholds social justice. Hinduism is not a monolithic
religion. Its internal heterogeneity will ensure tolerance and respect
for diversity. The United Kingdom, Norway, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines
remain liberal polities despite having an official religion.
This said, the constitution of the BJP upholds secularism and supports
equal rights for all religions. The BJP proposed a uniform civil code to
replace the different religion-based codes that govern marriage, divorce
and inheritance in India today. This would have transformed the legal system
into a secular institution. However, the Congress endeavoured to communalize
the debate in its attempts to garner minority votes. India's Prime Minister,
Minister of Finance and Minister of External Affairs are liberals. The
founding Vice President of the BJP is a Muslim. The party flag of saffron
and green epitomizes the recognition of both Hinduism and Islam. The BJP
is akin to Europe's mainstream Christian Democrats in that it is a centrist
party with a conservative faction. The BJP also widened the scope of affirmative
action for India's scheduled castes. It supports the unity and territorial
integrity of Sri Lanka unlike Congress-led governments that prevaricated
on the issue. It is not the rabid fundamentalist party intent on turning
India into a theocracy as alleged by the Indian left.
The Nehruvian order entailed a denunciation of Hindu ethos as irrelevant,
backward and anti-minority. Hindu activists condemned this depreciation
of Hindu norms, values and institutions in the post-independence secular
framework. The Indian version of secularism had an implicit bias. The leftist
academics used state funds to publish works that singularly vilified Hindu
traditions. Hindu refugees from Kashmir were uncared for while illegal
Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh obtained welfare coupons and citizenship
papers overnight. The government imposed administrative restrictions on
private Hindu schools but exempted minority religious schools from these
restrictions. It revised the Hindu legal code (and rightly so) but left
the Shariah intact. The allegedly secular government supported Christian
missionary welfare outfits but did not extend the same concessions to Hindu
social service institutions. It subsidized the Hadj but failed to support
Hindu and Sikh pilgrims travelling to Pakistan.
The English language press gave wide publicity to recent attacks on
Christian missionaries in India. These unfortunate incidents took place
in the context of a massive foreign-financed campaign to convert the impoverished
and destitute in India. The means used to evangelize were often fraudulent.
Moreover, sections of the media had exaggerated the attacks on missionaries.
The rape of nuns in Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh two years ago was one such instance.
High-level police investigations subsequently revealed that the rapists
were in fact recently converted Christian tribal youth. Likewise, sections
of the media described the armed robbery of Catholic schools and a subsequent
road accident involving nuns in Mathura in April this year as a communal
hate crime. The independent Minorities Commission of India investigated
the issue in depth and concluded that the incident was one of ordinary
theft and a motor accident, rather than an act of calculated religious
violence. These are just two of the several instances of intentional media
exaggeration.
The recent wave of Christian-Muslim riots in Indonesia and Nigeria led
to thousands of deaths. These events, however, elicited less international
press attention when compared to the murder of Graham Staines in Orissa
in 1998. The attacks on Christian missionaries were no different to recent
attacks on immigrants in the United States. The international media largely
ignored the incidents in the United States.
Yasmin Tambiah is wrong to condemn Buddhists as responsible for the
1983 ethnic riots in Sri Lanka. The Catholic-dominated areas of Negombo,
Wattala, Ja-Ela and Kotahena were the worst affected riot zones. Muslim
youth in Colombo indulged in looting and theft after the initial wave of
arson and destruction of Tamil property in July 1983. It is unfair to blame
Buddhists alone for the 1983 riots. I reiterate that the Hindu-Buddhist
inheritance is the best guarantor of religious tolerance and accommodation.
Ms. Tambiah implies that Hindu activism is a phenomenon next door. She
is unaware that it has had a long history in Sri Lanka as well. The Hindu
school system in the North in the 1860s is a case in point.
Ms. Tambiah's description of events in Kanpur is a deliberate distortion
based on inaccurate media sources. She relies on partisan newspapers that
leave no room for dissent or alternative points of view. The Hindu Newspaper,
unlike 'The Island', does not provide a forum for lively debate. The elite
"Times of India" is pro-Congress. She needs to broaden her newspaper references
to include other English and local language newspapers in India. But then
again, she might not be able to read an Asian language!
She has the temerity to equate white racism with South Asian immigrant
indifference against the Australian Aborigine. The colonizers in Australia
initiated a blatant policy of racial genocide and the indigenous peoples
continue to face a bleak future there. The South Asian immigrant had no
role whatsoever in the predicament of the Aborigine. I refuse to continue
this discussion with Ms. Tambiah any longer since she, I believe, is not
conversant of recent events in India and Sri Lanka. Ms. Tambiah is a fitting
ally to India's secular Marxists in their knee jerk depreciation of all
things Hindu.
