Author: R Jagannathan
Publication: Firstpost.com
Date: October 13, 2011
URL: http://www.firstpost.com/politics/bhushan-has-right-to-speak-but-what-he-has-spoken-is-wrong-106586.html#en
Nothing can be more despicable than the physical
assault on Prashant Bhushan on Wednesday, where three goons claiming to belong
to the Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena roughed him up for his views on Kashmir.
Quite apart from using Bhagat Singh's iconic
status in this country for completely nefarious ends, they have actually ended
up giving fresh legitimacy to Bhushan's views on a referendum in Kashmir.
Like anyone else, Bhushan has a right to air his views, and they have to be
combated with counter-views, not blows and violence.
Bhushan's views are actually symptomatic of
the new illiberalism of India's liberal elite. It is dated, and completely
out of sync with today's realities. They are, in fact, worth refuting at some
length.
But first an aside. For a man who says his
prime focus is to get the anti-corruption Jan Lokpal Bill passed, Bhushan
has actually given lot of comfort for those who want to divide the Anna movement.
I doubt if his views on Kashmir will get crowds out on the streets anywhere
in India outside Kashmir Valley. This was needless distraction for the anti-corruption
movement.
To come back to the main argument, this writer
would like to emphasise that liberals have to learn a new kind of liberalism
for the 21st century. Most liberals - or at least people who call themselves
liberals - grew up in the 20th century when the state was growing more powerful
by the day, and the individual less and less significant. But is that the
reality today?
Today, the state is receding in most places.
While the power of the state continues to grow, the countervailing power of
individuals and small, committed groups is growing twice or thrice as fast
- thanks to the velocity of information, the web, knowledge about lethal weapons,
et al. A small group of committed Al Qaeda radicals have, in less than a decade,
reduced the US to an economic mess and a nation frightened out of its wits
about terrorism.
A small group of BBM users was able to outwit
the London police force when they went into their orgy of looting two months
ago.
For the last seven years, the UPA government
has been ruling the country by kowtowing to every social group and is completely
unable to take sensible decisions on energy pricing or subsidies for fear
of what the people will say.
A small group of Team Anna partisans brought
the government of India to heel in a matter of weeks. Liberals may not be
amused by this careless trampling over democracy by street power, but this
is the new reality that liberals must confront.
In this scenario, there may be no obvious
villains or heroes. Heroes are those who happen to be in the right place at
the right time in terms of public mood, and villains are those who happen
to stand their ground when the herd is thundering off in a different direction.
Self-determination is passé. It is
often disguised bigotry. When the state was all-powerful, national and regional
liberation struggles had the halo of freedom and legitimacy. There was an
implicit assumption that majorities must be crushing minorities and so freedom-fighters
must be right. Moreover, there was the superpower rivalry aiding the effort
of getting one group to fight another.
Today, we are all minorities because majorities
and minorities are merely contextual and circumstantial. There is no monolithic
majority in any country - in India or anywhere else. In the US, there is supposedly
a WASP (white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) majority, but look how they themselves
are locked in deathly combat over what the government should do, how to tax
the rich, or how to bring the budget in balance.
Or take India. This is supposedly a Hindu-majority
country. But is it? If you take the Dalits and tribals out, Hindus - or at
least people willing to definitely identify themselves as Hindus in the religious
sense of the term - may be just about half the population. But add the porous
nature of our borders, the influx from Bangladesh, and the larger sub-continental
numbers, and Hindus would actually be a minority in south Asia - which is
one contiguous geography. A majority can be manufactured only if you distill
geographies to your preferred ideas.
Even Muslims and Christians are not monoliths,
and they have their own minorities - they have not only embraced caste and
region, but also have their own pet definitions of who is a Muslim: Bahais
and Ahmaddiyas are Muslim minorities within Islam.
Exclude religion, and the number of majorities
and minorities multiply. Women are a minority in India. Gays are minorities,
too. The pious are minorities in an increasingly irreligious India.
The point one is driving at is simple: no
matter how you cut up a people, you are always going to have someone who is
a minority. The dream of having your own state with your own majority is a
flawed dream, and the sooner it is killed the better.
So what is the logic of giving Kashmiris the
right to self-determination? The logic that there is a so-called Muslim majority
in the valley? If being Muslim is reason enough for self-determination, Bangladesh
would not have been born.
Our liberals like to talk of the Israeli atrocities
on Palestinians, but will turn a blind eye to the uprooting of half a million
Pandits from Kashmir Valley. Why not give them their own homeland in Kashmir,
too? Why not a homeland for the Shias in north Kashmir, or a Buddhist republic
in Ladakh? Why not create a 100 Dalitistans all over India - after all, who
is worse oppressed than the Dalits in India?
The logic of dividing states on ethnic and
religious lines is quite simply driven by an underlying bigotry that is masquerading
as the right to self-determination.
There is no case for a referendum on Kashmir
- and the majority there must learn to live in a diverse and secular India.
We know the price we paid by agreeing to partition. Do we want to pay the
same price again? A referendum will only give legitimacy to bigotry. Bigotry
cannot be allowed to be legitimised by referendums. Or else, Modi's Gujarat
would not have had to worry about 2002.
Which brings us to the next issue that concerns
liberals: human rights.
Human rights abuses are the inevitable result
of small groups turning bigotry into cause célèbre. Whether
it is the US in Iraq and Afghanistan or the Saudis in Bahrain, or the Chinese
in Tibet or Indians in Kashmir, the reality is that insurgencies and terror
unleashed by small groups cannot be handled by the army or heavy handed police
action. There has to be a political approach coupled with firm and fair police
action.
The state is both too powerful and too weak
to deal with determined groups without trampling on human rights. It is too
powerful in the sense that it can pounce on ordinary people in search and
destroy missions. But it is too weak in the sense it cannot ultimately ask
its armed forces to sacrifice themselves for a national cause without giving
them some immunity. This combination of strength and weakness is always deadly
in undermining human rights.
Consider how easily President Obama is able
to order the murder of American citizens who are part of the Al Qaeda or how
some hapless villagers in Pakistan's tribal areas are subject to incessant
drone attacks. Compared to that, India's presence in Kashmir is practically
benign. We have not allowed any Indian to settle in this part of India in
what must be construed as the highest act of self-denial by Arundhati Roy's
so-called army of occupation.
The reality is human rights violations will
happen in all such situations where determined groups confront the state violently
- and being liberal in these circumstances means treating the state and violent
groups on a par when it comes to human rights abuses.
It is easier to fight the state on human rights
abuses than small groups - which can recoil on human rights campaigners. The
reality is that human rights campaigners are more afraid of terrorists than
the state. When non-state actors take the law into their own hands-as various
RTI activists have found out to their cost-human rights campaigners are the
first victims.
True liberals must, therefore, maintain equidistance
from all violators of human rights. By merely targeting the state, they are
no different from Team Anna which says 'Don't vote for Congress in Hisar',
when the real battle is against corruption.
By backing the so-called Kashmir referendum,
India's liberals are essentially backing an illiberal, non-secular nightmare.
Prashant Bhushan is plain and simply wrong.
