Events & Issues

New Delhi, 17 August 2016

70th Year of Independence

MINORITY Vs MAJORITY COMMUNALISM

By Syed Ali Mujtaba

In the 70^th year of India’s independence, while celebration of the country’s development is being lauded and rightly so, we still need to ponder over as to where we are heading with regard to the communal situation.  

In the backdrop of the development graph as the yardstick, wherein the country has achieved many milestones, we could have healed the wounds of partition in the 69 years’ time period that has elapsed so far. However, if we look at the social scene, we see there is widespread dissatisfaction and bitterness among the Hindus and Muslims against each other and this symptom seems far from receding.

Clearly, while we have united India on the developmental plank, we are divided it at the societal level. The old camaraderie among Hindus and Muslims that was based on shared language, culture and centuries cohabitation looks bruised and battered with both the communities still not comfortable with each other.

Communal riots, terrorist attacks and discrimination on the basis of religion show no signs of receding even in the 70^th year of Independence. This undercurrent of social divide is thoughtfully nourished and nurtured by vested interests, who have ever to gain by the divide and rule policy, akin to the British rulers.   

While the partition of India was a result of power struggle between the Hindus and Muslim leadership, which of course should be a distant history, its legacy sadly continues to haunt the nation.   Human agony is deliberately embedded among both the communities and worse nurtured, building a sense of insecurity and a fear syndrome. This regrettably has been the running theme since the past over 60 decades.  

Muslims in India, according to various reports of Commissions and Committees, are at the bottom of the nation’s economic development, socially marginalized, and electorally innocuous. But instead of looking at them with empathy, they are demonized as competitors to gain power in India.

This make-believe hype against the Muslim community, which has no rationality, is consciously built by a certain section of the political elite of the country and it is drummed by the like-minded media outlets that control the channels of mass communication.  

If one has to narrate the history of the growing communal situation in the country, there are many events that have been recorded as a precursor to the Partition of the country. Impartial historians are of the view that it is not only the Muslims who were responsible for the partition, but the blame squarely rests on the Hindu community as well, who thoughtfully built a sense of insecurity among the Muslims, which eventually forced them to demand partition.    

Well that’s history and it’s futile to fight for something that is behind us. However, instead of stitching the open wounds of Partition, we continue to nurse them very painstakingly even after decades of independence.  

To understand this, we just have to scratch our memory and trace the rise of the BJP that openly aspires to change the Nehruvian model of secularism based on equality of religion and impose its ideas of Hindu supremacy in the country.

In 1984, the BJP could win only two seats in the Indian Parliament but in 2014 the same very party got an absolute majority winning 282 seats. How was this possible? The answer is simple: it is because of the growing sense of insecurity among the Hindu community due to the unchecked growth of minority communalism that led to erosion of secular values among them and consolidation of Hindu votes.  

To understand this pathetic phenomenon we can begin from 1986, when the Rajiv Gandhi government passed the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act. This Act was passed to undermine the secular ruling of the Supreme Court on the controversial Shah Bano case.

Some Muslim communal elements saw the apex court ruling as an attack on the Muslim Personal Law and prevailed over the government of the day that had absolute majority in Parliament to pass an Act that undermined the secular character of the country.

Two years later, the same Government banned the book “The Satanic Verses” of Salman Rushdie to appease the same Muslim elements. Although these two powerful events were Muslim specific and had no bearing on the Hindu community, these triggered an opposite reaction among the Hindu community and that led to the growth of majority communalism and was manifested in the Ayodhya movement.   

The opening of the gates of the Babari Masjid was an act of appeasement to the growing majority communalism but this act actually undermined the Nehruvian secularism that had bottled up the growth of Hindu communalism.

The well-planned demolition of the 500-year-old Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 and the communal riots that followed shattered the secular edifice of the nation. It actually laid the edifice of majority communalism that was tooth and nail opposed by Gandhi and Nehru through their words and deeds.

Later, the post Godhra riots in 2002 that saw the brutality against the Muslims made a mockery of secular democratic values in India. With it the slogan of peaceful co-existence and unity in diversity, which was painstakingly built over the years, came under sharp attack.

At the moment, what we see is secular democratic forces becoming dumb witnesses to majority communalism that is running amok, reminding us of the gory days of partition of India. If we have to save secular Indian democracy, we must fight both minority and majority communalism alike. The lesson learnt so far is if a secular democratic State subscribes to a policy of appeasing minority fundamentalism, it can’t control majority communalism. This is a brute reality that translated into votes in the 2014 elections.

In the 70^th year of independence, if we still continue to criticise one another and keep mum over the communal developments, we can neither be truly secular nor truly Indian. Let us resolve to cherish the values of a secular, democratic India and banish communalism from the face of our motherland. --- INFA

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