Communal Riots in Secular India
Paper No. 5577
Dated 09-Oct-2013
By R. Upadhyay
Since no honest effort was ever made in secular India to bridge the
gap of communal mistrust between the two major religious communities that was
primarily due to historical wrongs, one should not be surprised that communal
riots continue to occur frequently.
The repeated
blame games of all the political parties over this social menace as seen
recently in Kistwar of Jammu and Kashmir state and in Muzaffarnagar and its
adjoining districts of Uttar Pradesh without tackling the issue in all its
aspects gives the impression that the parties are only practising political
gimmickry!
Medieval Legacy:
Is it not an irony that in post-British India, the country’s
political leadership in pursuit of votes and vote banks is carrying forward the
violent medieval legacy only for their political interests and dividends that
come from such riots?
The pre-medieval invaders of
India generally settled in Indian soil and merged in the cultural cauldron of
this land. But the Islamic conquests were different. The conquerors indulged in
mass killings, forced conversions with the superimposition of an alien
Arab-Turk-Perso culture all in the name of religion. This created a permanent
conflict between the two major religious groups. The creation of Pakistan in the
name of religion and the failure of post independence Indian rulers to bridge
the gap between the two communities have only exacerbated the distrust between
the two communities.
Praising their faith as God’s
final and perfect religion, these conquerors declared that it was their divine
right to conquer the non-Muslim world and to superimpose their culture on the
people of the conquered territories. This mindset of the invaders clashed with
the spiritual beliefs of the conquered people and thus created a permanent
chasm. One cannot but agree that this was not just a conflict of religion but a
conflict of civilization between the ruling class and the ruled.
The invaders had earlier succeeded in their mission in
Persia and other gulf countries and rejected Judaism and Christianity as
defective variants of Islam but the response of the natives in India was
different and the ruled continued their resistance all through. Since then, the
socio-cultural division between the two communities had remained a permanent
feature of Indian society.
Nobel Prize winner V. S.
Naipaul in his book Half a Life observed that “Islam has had a calamitous effect
on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy
your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say “my ancestral culture
does not exist, it does not matter”.
The British
Rule and its narrow objectives.
After the end of
the imperialistic Islamic rule in 1857 and shift of power from the Muslim rulers
to the British, there was a marked change in the attitude of the Hindus also
towards the former as well as the new ruler. While “the Hindus looked upon the
British rule as deliverance from Muslim yoke, and considered English education
as a blessing, the Muslims in their eagerness to preserve their religion and
religious views rejected English education”. (Muslim Politics and Leadership in
South Asian Sub-continent by Yusuf Abbasi, page 13).
The British ruler did not like to resolve the conflict between the
two communities. They looked at the whole issue as a law and order one and
emphasis was on communal harmony to prevent a break down in law and order and
nothing more.
The post-Mogul historians repeatedly
wrote about the Indo-Arab composite culture of this land but ignored the wounded
psyche of the natives. Though the Hindus and Muslims were living together for
more than a millennium both the groups always remained in social isolation from
each other. At the instance of Mahatma Gandhi, the Hindus joined the Khilafat
Movement launched by the Muslims against the British for restoration of Ottoman
Empire but this unity was also a temporary one.
Partition & thereafter:
The Indian
National Congress had opposed the two-nation theory tooth and nail but its
leaders succumbed to the pressure of Muslim League leaders who gave a call for
Direct Action in 1946 that led to widespread communal riots in the
sub-continent. These riots were said to be one of the immediate causes of
Partition.
When India emerged as an independent
democratic and secular republic, the then ruling Congress only tried to
philosophise the Hindu-Muslim issue by repeating the same Marxian theory of
composite culture by ignoring the fact that the “pang of toothache cannot be
borne by philosophical speculation”. Of course the term secular was not
incorporated in the constitution at the time of its framing, its spirit was
secular. But instead of formulating a practicable policy to resolve the
historical communal conflict, the ruling political party carried forward the
same policy of the earlier rulers. Ironically, the Marxists and Left-liberal
intelligentsia also supported them.
Revival of the
Muslim League politics by the Muslim leaders and their parties:
This resulted in the Muslim League reviving the
movement for the separate identity of the Muslims on the basis of religion which
was nothing but a fight for a shared political power on the basis of a separate
religious identity. For them, democracy and secularism were alien to their
faith. “Democracy is a concept completely alien to the Muslim psyche to the
extent that there is no equivalent terminology for it in Arabic or other
languages spoken by Muslims (Understanding Mohammad – A psychobiography of
Allah’ Prophet by Ali Sina, a Canadian Muslim of Iranian descent). They ignored
the concept of common national identity as accepted by other minorities like
Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians (Parsis) who hardly had any communal conflict
in this secular country.
Had the ruling
establishment been bold enough and abandoned the concept of minority and
majority in framing the constitution, the Indian Muslims like their counterparts
in other non-Muslim majority democratic countries of the world would have
resigned themselves to being equal citizens. They would have either opted for
Pakistan or accepted the concept of common law for all. But our constitution
makers ignored the hard historical fact of religion which was the main reason
behind Partition and again divided the people into majority (read Hindu) and
minority (read Muslims) on the basis of religion by incorporating some articles
which provided special privileges to the latter. This generated a communal
consciousness in both the communities and also revived the secreting historical
wounds in the psyche of the majority community particularly when the ruling
establishment remained more concerned with the communal demands of the
minorities. Emergence of other communal organisations could not be prevented.
Vote Bank Politics to the Fore:
In between Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to Manmohan Singh, a number of
commissions and councils like National Integration Council, Minority Commission,
Rangnath Mishra Committee, Sachchar Committee were set up by the Central
Government but such efforts could hardly resolve the communal conflict in the
country. These exercises rather prompted almost all the political parties to go
for competitive bidding to go for “vote banks” in the elections. Distribution of
communal sops to the minorities particularly in pre-election year by the so
called secular parties only accelerated the identity politics played by the
minority religious leaders.
By and large only the
vote-seeking political parties are blamed whenever there is any communal riot.
But the so called secular media should be held equally responsible for not
agitating against the vote bank politics being played by the political parties.
If only the government had not interfered with the Shahbano case, things could
have been different today. But it was not to be as vote bank politics appeared
to be more important and crucial for survival of some of the political
parties.
Keeping alive the communal issues like
over a decade old Gujarat riots, arrest of Muslim suspects in terror cases,
arrest and conviction of Batala House encounter in 2008 and 2013 respectively
suggest that the Muslim leaders have made it a strategy to flex their muscle on
any issue which goes against the Muslims.
The Batla
Encounter
Within a month of the Batala House
encounter in September 2008, various Muslim organisations organised a meeting in
Jama Masjid Delhi on 14th October and condemned the arrest of Muslim youths who
were suspected as accused in this encounter. It may be mentioned that Shahi Imam
of this mosque in his invitation letters had highlighted the “bomb blasts, blame
game, illegal arrests, and torture of Muslim youths” and also alleged: – “ the
highly discriminatory actions of State police forces and central intelligence
agencies have let loose a reign of terror to which Central government has turned
a blind eye”. He felt that “if we don’t unite by closing our ranks to meet this
challenge, history will never forgive us”. The meeting made this encounter a
political issue which is still persisting.
Surprisingly, even the then Jamia Milia Islamia Vice Chancellor
Mashirul Hasan a widely acclaimed campaigner of ‘moderate and tolerant Islam’
joined the communal polarisation move and offered to provide legal assistance to
the two arrested students of the university. He even led a street march in
support of the Islamists.
Thus, with a sustained
campaign the Muslim leaders succeeded in convincing the community members across
the country that their community members killed in the police encounter and
arrested were innocent and not terrorists. They went to the extent of preaching
that the death of Mohan Sharma was caused by the bullet fired by his own
colleague either deliberately or by accident.
Revisiting Pre Partition Scenario:
The
increase in communal riots since the beginning of the new millennium on the eve
of election years namely 2004, 2009 and 2013 shows that India is revisiting the
pre-partition challenge of the communal flame engulfing the country. But the
most unfortunate part of the scenario is the role of political parties,
‘secular’ intelligentsia, journalists, writers and academics in running down the
image of the country in the world.
If the people of
the country in general and ruling class in particular do not take lessons from
the historical wrongs committed by Indians who brought defeat and dishonour to
the nation either to save their throne or skin, we are bound to fail in bridging
the gap of communal mistrust in the society. The prevailing dissatisfaction of
the Muslim community and consequent unrest is a dangerous sign for both the
internal and external security of the country.
The
answer lies in a strong political will of both the state and central leadership
to shed their politics of vote bank and one sided approach in handling the
communal riots as otherwise the country will continue facing the challenge of
the medieval legacy. Muzaffarnagar riot will not be the last and we will only
see more riots in future.
(He can be reached at
e-mail ramashray60@rediffmail.com)
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