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Through the prism of prejudice

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Like the average Hindu, the average Hindu policemen also believes that Muslims, generally, are cruel and violent by nature

It is not very difficult to identify reasons behind the discriminatory beha-vior of the police. The conduct of an average policemen is guided by those predetermined beliefs and misconceptions which influence the mind of an average Hindu. Like the average Hindu, the average Hindu policemen also believes that Muslims, generally, are cruel and violent by nature.

In the course of my study, I spoke to a large number of policemen working with different ranks. I was amazed to find that most of them seriously believed that apart from being cruel and violent, Muslims were untrustworthy, anti-national and easily influenced by a fanatical leadership and could indulge in rioting at the slightest provocation. Generally the policemen were in agreement that Muslims initiated riots. When I confronted many of them with the question as to why Muslims should start a riot as they suffered more, they replied with arguments that an average Hindu would use.

It is but natural that after being convinced of the mischievous role of the Muslims in riots most policemen do not have any doubts regarding the ways and means to check them. They sincerely believe that there is only one way to control a riot and that is to crush the mischief-mongering Muslims. Whenever an instruction is received from the state government or senior police officials to deal with the rioters firmly and ruthlessly, these instructions are interpreted in a prejudiced and biased way. Firmness and ruthlessness towards rioters is interpreted as firmness and ruthlessness towards Muslims. The various forms of firmness have distinct meanings: arrest means arrest of Muslims; search means searches of Muslim houses; and police firing means firing on Muslims.

Even in those riots where Muslims suffered from the very inception of rioting or where the killings of Muslims was totally one-sided, the policemen gave a very interesting picture of their way of thinking. It is not only during riots that they would believe that the riot was caused by the mischief of Muslims. While talking to some of the policemen posted in Bhagalpur (1989) and Bombay (1992-93), I was amazed to find that the perception of Muslims being violent and cruel was so deeply in-built in their psyche that even after admitting the disproportionate destruction of Muslim life and property, they had many “reasons” to deny the suggestion that “naturally non-violent and pious Hindus” were in any way responsible for the damage to the Muslims.

It is a common sight in the towns of northern India that the reinforcements sent  from outside during communal tensions, make their lodging arrangements in temples, dharmshalas and parks in Hindu localities or the space available in Hindu homes and shops

It is this psychology of the policemen which guides their reactions during communal strife. While combating riots, they start searching for friends among Hindus and foes among Muslims. It is a common sight in the towns of northern India that the reinforcements sent from outside during communal tensions, make their lodging arrangements in temples, dharmshalas and parks in Hindu localities or the space available in Hindu homes and shops. When the shops are closed during curfew, food, tea and snacks are supplied to them by Hindu homes. Members of the majority community, who in normal times may keep a distance from the police just like the members of the minority communities, suddenly see policemen as friends during communal tensions.

It is their natural expectation of a ‘friendly’ police that it will not use force against them. Whenever, the police uses force against Hindus, their reaction is that of an amazed and cheated group. The FIR lodged by Sri Ajit Dutta, D.I.G. during the riots of Bhagalpur (1989), very candidly underlines this mentality. It’s perusal reveals the interesting incidents of a law-breaking mob of Hindus, congregating on the road during curfew hours, expressing its dismay and anger when Mr. Dutta threatened them with police firing.

I am reminded of a similar personal experience at Allahabad (1980) when in Gadiwan Tola, I warned a Hindu mob bent upon rioting, that we would open fire if they did not disperse. I found that the crowd did not take it seriously at first and thought it was a joke. Subsequently, when they heard me ordering the head constable to open fire from his carbine, there was a clear look of disbelief and surprise in their eyes.

How far this deeply entrenched perception of Muslims being solely responsible for the riots and strict behavior towards them being the only way to quell a riot, affects the reactions of a policeman, may be illustrated with the example of Hashimpura where the savagery and horrifying non-professionalism of the police behavior is a matter of national shame.

The riots in Meerut (1987) were unprecedented in the toll of human life and for the long period of continued and unabated violence. The magnitude of the riot which started on May 17, 1987 can be gauged from the fact that to deal with it, the services of about 50 gazzetted police officers and magistrates, along with more than 70 companies of P.A.C., para-military forces and army were pressed in. The policemen deployed here harboured all the above mentioned beliefs and prejudices. When their tremendous round-the-clock vigil could not control the violence, some of them resorted to an act which could have not been imagined.

Being fully convinced that riots in a civilised society could be ended only by teaching the Muslims a lesson, one section of the P.A.C. picked up more than two dozen Muslims from a locality known as Hashimpura on the 22nd of May, where house-to-house searches were going on and killed them at two places in Ghaziabad, after transporting them there in one of their trucks.

I was Superintendent Police, Ghaziabad, at that time. After receiving the information, I got two cases registered against the P.A.C. The cases were handed over to the Uttar Pradesh C.I.D. After eight years of investigations, a charge sheet has been filed against the erring personnel of the P.A.C., only recently (1995).

Why should the P.A.C. commit such a detestable act? I had the opportunity to talk to a large number of policemen deployed in Meerut in this period during my tenure as S.P., Ghaziabad (1985-88) as also during the course of the present study. I wanted to understand the motivating factors behind such a heinous offence. The analysis of the psychology of these men will help us appreciate the relationship between the police and members of the minority communities.

Firmness and ruthlessness towards rioters is interpreted as firmness and ruthlessness towards Muslims: arrest means arrest of Muslims; search means searches of Muslim houses; and police firing means firing on Muslims.

Most of the policemen posted in Meerut in 1989 thought that the riots were the result of Muslim mischief. They were also of the opinion that Meerut had become a mini-Pakistan because of the stubbornness of the Muslims and that it was necessary to teach them a lesson in order to establish permanent peace in Meerut. They were badly affected by rumours which suggested that Hindus in Meerut were totally vulnerable to Muslim attacks. Their belief that Muslims of Meerut deserve a suitable lesson resulted in Hashimpura.

Instances like Hashimpura worsen the inimical relationship between Muslims and the police. This relationship is clearly visible during communal tension. We find that many riots start with a Muslim attack on the police. Quite often the presence of the police in a surcharged atmosphere fills Muslims with anger. Reacting to the demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, angry mobs of Muslims in other cities, venting their feelings of resentment on the street initially chose the police as their targets rather than ordinary Hindus.

There are many examples of communal rioting in which the trouble started as a clash between the police and the Muslims and then turned into a Hindu-Muslim conflict. The Idgah incident of Moradabad (1980) is an important example of this trend.

The most interesting example of the hostile relationship between Muslims and the police can be found in the behavior of a police party entering a Muslim locality during communal tension. The briefing, preparation and weaponry of this party intending to enter a Muslim locality for arrests, or searches, or even normal patrolling is as if it is going to enter enemy territory. I have seen many such groups and always found them full of apprehension and fear.

Their behavior is not without reason. Alertness on their part is necessary as they may be attacked at any time. Who is responsible for these feelings of distrust and enmity? Perhaps the seeds are to be found in the terms ‘we’ and ‘they’ used by police officials for Hindus and Muslims during their conferences, organised to devise ways and means to deal with a communal situation.

Reporting of facts, investigation into and prosecution of participants in communal riots is another area where we find a clear communal bias in police behavior. The reporting of facts is done at various levels. Intelligence reports being prepared at the level of police stations and intelligence units to be sent to government and senior police formations are normally affected by this bias.

For example, I have found one interesting thing in the lists of communal agitators being maintained at various police levels in Uttar Pradesh. For most of the officials responsible for maintaining such lists, a communal agitator means a Muslim communal agitator. Even during those days when Hindu communal forces were active in the movement of Ram Janambhoomi movement, it was very difficult to find names of Hindu inciters in the list.

What damage this bias can inflict on police professionalism can be understood from the incident of the destruction of the Babri Mosque. It is evident from the charge-sheet filed by the C.B.I. that the demolition of the mosque was the result of a well-planned conspiracy. None of the intelligence agencies could report this fact before the 6th of December, 1992.

A very heinous examples of this bias in reporting facts is available at Bhagalpur (1989). One hundred and sixteen Muslims were killed in village Logain on the 27th of October 1989. This brutal massacre was enacted by the Hindus of Logain and the neighbouring villages. Logain village is 26 kilometres from the district headquarters of Bhagalpur, with the police station only 4 kms away at Jagdisgpur. The Muslims killed were buried in the fields and cauliflower was grown over their dead bodies.

Out of the 181 Muslim inhabitants of the village, 65 survivors and their attackers went to many places, including Bhagalpur town, and reported this ghastly incident. Details were published in local and national newspapers. Inspite of this, the district and police administration of Bhagalpur kept denying any such happening till the 8th of December 1989, when a police party led by Sri Ajit Dutta, D.I.G. ,dug some of the dead bodies out of the fields.

Vibhuti N. Rai

(Excerpted from the writer’s recently published book, ‘Combating Communal Conflicts —Perception of Police Neutrality During Hindu-Muslim Riots in India’)

Archived from Communalism Combat, March  1998, Year 5  No. 41, Cover Story,

Cry Coimbatore

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Thirteen bomb blasts ripped through Coimbatore in mid-February, claiming innocent lives two and a half months after an anti-Muslim pogrom
 

It was 30 minutes before BJP president, L.K. Advani was scheduled to address an election rally at Coimbatore, at 3.50 p.m. on February 14. A mere 250 metres away from the rostrum put up at T.V. Samy Road — D.B.Road Junction, the first of 13 bombs exploded killing 46 persons and injuring more than 200.
 

In the days that followed 10 more were killed. Six were killed during a pre-dawn swoop by policemen at a multi-storeyed residential premise on Thirumal Street at 2.50 a.m. on Sunday, the day after, allegedly at a hide-out. According to the official version, the bomb attempted to be hurled at the raiding policemen actually killed the seven accused. Local civil liberties groups are investigating this particular case as the police version seems to have many loop-holes. Four teenaged Muslim boys died in a stray blast three days later.
 

Advani cancelled the meeting scheduled to be held in Coimbatore. He issued a statement backed by other party colleagues claiming that he was the target of the bombs — a part of an ISI conspiracy acting in tandem with terrorist Muslim groups. The BJP accused the ruling DMK government of being soft on Islamic extremists despite persistent demand for action against them by the BJP and its affiliate, the Hindu Munnani. Incidentally, the Hindu Munnani has been indicted, by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) along with sections of the local police for its direct participation in the anti-minority pogrom last November (see CC, February 1998). Policemen in uniform had aided Hindu communal elements in converting the government hospital at Coimbatore into a macabre war theatre, thrashing and stabbing Muslim victims brought there for treatment. Even innocent rickshawallahs who transported them were not spared. The seventh of the 13 bomb blasts that ripped Coimbatore on February 14 was placed at the same Coimbatore Medical College hospital, killing two innocent nurses. Not surprisingly, the acute communal polarisation caused by the bomb blasts led to a resounding victory for the BJP candidate in Coimbatore.
 

To tackle the emerging situation, The Federation of All Muslim Organisations in Coimbatore (formed in the aftermath of the November 1997 violence) observed an Anti-Terrorism week between March 7 to March 14. The campaign involved wall writings, wall posters and street corner meetings and culminated in a public meeting on Match 14. The Federation has also been assisting the police in apprehending known activists of some communal organisations and also detecting bombs. The Federation has also entered into a dialogue with non-communal Hindu organisations in an effort at creating lasting communal peace and unity in Coimbatore.

Hindu organisations in an effort at creating lasting communal peace and unity in Coimbatore.This action of the Federation assumes significance given the reaction of the Coimbatore public and police machinery once the bombs went off. Soon after the first explosion, Muslim commercial establishments and houses in the city in Hindu-dominated areas were attacked, looted and set on fire.On the night of the blasts, the government banned two organisations, the Al-Umma and the All-India Jihad Committee. Al-Umma leader S.A. Basha and 12 others, some from the Jihad Committee, were arrested.

The next day a highly sophisticated 80 kg car bomb was found and defused before it could go off. Arrests began immediately thereafter. Over 800 people have been arrested from the city, adjoining areas and districts as well as elsewhere in the state, besides nine others from Trissur in Kerala state.According to official reports, about 550 pipe bombs, 200 gelatin sticks, 1200 detonators and 1000 petrol bombs have been recovered.

Large-scale exodus of people, especially Muslims from many parts of Coimbatore, some of whom have left for adjacent Kerala, has been evident. Muslim families have also been forced to vacate houses rented by the landlords, many of whom were operating in abject fear and some facing threats., Some of these evacuees are staying elsewhere in the city, many with Hindu friends.

During combing operations the police have been responsible for many indiscriminate arrests without adequate proof, of innocent Muslims. A maulana, suffering from a mental illness, under treatment for the last four years (he had last been to the doctor on February 24 ) was arrested. under the same crime number.

Archived from Communalism Combat, March  1998, Year 5  No. 41, Cover Story,

Sri Lanka – Will Buddha’s Lions Make Peace with Tamil Tigers?

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The countdown has begun. In less than 50 days, the Sri Lankan government has to put before its people, and Parliament, a devolution package which will hopefully end th 14-year-old ethnic war that has killed over 50,000 people and uprooted lakhs from their homes. With decades of a virulent Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism having given birth to the equally bloody-minded Tamil Tigers, the war-torn nation now seems to face a bitter option: Full regional autonomy along communal lines – Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim – or continued civil war whose only end-result can be the country’s Partition.

​Teesta Setalvad reports from Sri Lanka
 
Three years ago, when Chandrika Kumaratunga stepped into the Presidential Palace at Colombo and convincingly addressed the Sri Lankan nation in both Tamil and Sinhala, it genuinely seemed as if Sri Lanka had negotiated a critical turn. Eleven years of a full-scale war, raging between the Sri Lankan army and its own Tamil-speaking people (ordinary civilians have been targets as much as Tamil militants) had taken a bitter toll.
 
She appeared like a breath of clean, fresh air, a rare breed among politicians unafraid of speaking the language of peace and reconciliation. In that highly charged and deeply communalized pre-election campaign of October 1994, she and her People’s Alliance (PA) had stoicly, and alone, offered the promise of peace.
 
Today, the countdown for this government has, in a metaphorical sense, begun. Within 45 days, that is, by end-November at the latest, the ruling government is politically and morally bound to place before the Sri Lankan Parliament, and its people, a full-fledged devolution package that, it is hoped, will grant substantive autonomy to the Tamil-speaking peoples of the island. Interests of the other minority group, the Muslims (largely Tamil-speaking) will also have to be met considering the deeply fractured and communalised state of Sri Lankan society and state. (The LTTE inspired eviction of over 70,000 Muslims within 48 hours from the northern province of the island in 1990 has resulted in an uneasy relationship between the two Lankan minorities).
 
Will this government deliver? And will the Sri Lankan people accept the unit of devolution? Put crassly, how will the new borders be drawn, will they be more just and reflect new, sometimes bitter grass-root socio-economic and political realities? Or will it be just another imposition of a majoritarian, Sinhala-Buddhist vision that will not merely be unacceptable to over 26 per cent of the non-Sinhala speaking population, but will in all probability escalate violence and brutality to new heights?
 
Thirty-six months of harsh reality have washed away much of the 1994 pre-and post-election euphoria. The Promise of Peace came as a welcome breather then. It allowed a cross section of the Sri Lankan people to dream again. Enthusiastic groups of ordinary people who joined the symbolic peace train from Colombo to Jaffna in 1994 reflected this.
 
But the harsh reality of the months that followed has put the theory of justice and peace to bitter practical test. Between November 1994 and February 1995, when the island enjoyed a brief respite from shelling and gunfire, three rounds of talks took place between the government and the LTTE. Before any significant progress could be made, the LTTE, threatened by the success or progress made through these initial parleys unilaterally broke the ceasefire. What followed soon after was the bombing of foreign ships and ambushes on innocent civilians by militants, claiming to represent the interests of all the Tamil people.
 
At this critical juncture, the fledging PA government failed the litmus test. Unable to silence the war-mongers within the ruling cabinet and contain the deep-rooted communal prejudice of the Sinhala Buddhist majority (76 per cent of the island’s 18.2 million-strong population), it capitulated. Forgetting that the path to peace is lined with thorns, not roses, it reverted to a conservative and aggressive position.
 
After the brief lull the war in the North and the East against its own people, was resumed in June 1995 by the Sri Lankan army and it continues today with the blessings of the ministry of internal affairs and defence. A full one-fourth of the annual government revenue earnings are swallowed up in sustaining this war. The war was earlier accompanied by a cruel economic embargo that deprived ordinary Tamilians of basic goods. (Though the embargo was lifted, in theory, by the ruling PA government, control and corruption by the Sri Lankan army even today denies these goods to most Tamil-speaking people).
 
The army operation is cynically termed Operation Victory Assured. Unfortunately, even this government that had set itself an agenda for peace has been unable to cease hostilities against its own people, launched systematically by successive Lankan governments’ decades ago.
 
News of the brutal bombings and killings by the Tamil Tigers make headline news, worldwide. Images of these and other atrocities by the LTTE on innocent civilians have dominated and clouded the south Asian and the world psyche. But brutal violations by the Sri Lankan state backed by its majoritarian Sinhala Buddhist ideology have remained buried and forgotten. Collective amnesia has successfully hidden repeated pogroms by the Sri Lankan – read Sinhala Buddhist – state against its own people.
 
This 14-year-old war – that is how all Sri Lankans term the ethnic conflict on the island – has altered significantly its demography. The population of the North-East has dropped from 1.7 million in 1987 to 9, 00,000 in 1992; that is, it dwindled by 47 per cent in barely five years. Of this drop in Tamil-speaking people by 8, 00,000, official figures reluctantly admit as many as 50,000 dead or missing. An estimated 5, 00,000 have left the country with a 4, 00,000 strong Tamil Diaspora in Western Europe alone.
 
Others live in camps outside the north and east of the country, refugees in their own land. More than 70,000 Tamil-speaking Muslims from the Northern provinces who became victims of the LTTE Vendetta in 1990 now live, reduced to penury, in southern parts of Sri Lanka. Another 1,00,000 displaced Muslim refugees are also victims of the war.
 
Even in the originally Tamil-dominant northern and eastern districts where the 14-year-old war rages, a systematic “colonisation” by Sinhala-speaking people (brought in by the army to occupy land owned by the Tamil minority there, even when other unoccupied land can be found in other provinces) has altered the ground situation gravely.
 
Two thousand five hundred years ago, a radical and non-violent challenge to tyrannical and oppressive Hindu-Brahmanical practices was posed by the Gautama Buddha who espoused a new spiritual and religious doctrine with a strong secular element – Buddhism. The stupas of Both Gaya and Sanchi within India are historical reminders of the location of the birthplace of Buddha, and Buddhism. But the sad historic reality is that Buddhism and Buddhists were driven away from the land of their birth – a testimony to the tenacity and the tyranny of Brahmanism.
 
Tragically, at the southern tip of the Indian peninsula, this doctrine of the oppressed has metamorphosed itself and assumed a rigid and tyrannical form of its own. The Sinhalisation of Sri Lankan Buddhism – 7th century A.D. historical texts speak of many  Tamil-speaking, Buddhist scholars translating ancient works from Pali – was critical in linking a religion with the language of the majority of Sri Lankans.
 
 Today, no Buddhist in Sri Lanka speaks any language but Sinhala. Appropriating historical myths in constructing a superior Sinhala race with Aryan antecedents (due thanks to the European Orientalist tradition — see box) which has prior claim to the land and soil of Sri Lanka is matched by the project for the Thamil state of Eelam (home-land) that in no less measure advocates an exclusivist and communal construction of its citizenship.
 
History is the playing field for communalist ideologues, historians and ordinary citizens alike, from every community in Sri Lanka today. Sinhala, Tamil or Muslim (Moor or Malay) nationalism have successfully perpetuated a myth of its origin vital to any communalist ideology founded on notions of “purity of the race”. (see box).
 
Political patronage of Buddhism as the state religion with the Sangha (monastic order of Buddhist monks) being given special advisory status to the government after Sir Lanka attained independence in February 1948, followed by Sinhala (only) as the official language policy adopted through the Language Bill passed by Parliament in 1956 gave successful political expression to this deep-rooted exclusivism.
 
The modern Sri Lankan nation was constituted and continues to manifest itself as a Sinhala-Buddhist nation. Stark and imposing figures of the Buddha clutter the Sri Lankan landscape. A seemingly innocuous plaque at Colombo’s international airport greets visitors, “Reserved, for Clergy Only.” And Buddhism, already the state religion, is likely to retain this special status in a reserved category as a central subject, sitting there uneasily with categories like Defence and Irrigation under the revised draft of the “reformed” Constitution of Sri Lanka.
 
A popular Sinhala short story depicts the plight of a middle-aged woman, traumatised for days, her world shattered after she is accidentally told one day that Gautama Buddha was not Sri Lankan but Indian.
 
The state in Sri Lanka is a mirror of the deep-rooted communal divisions that have sharply polarised civil society. Sinhala-Buddhist and Tamil-Hindu categorise the most distinct of these divisions. The many other distinctions – between Muslims and others, between upcountry and low country Sinhalese and Tamils (the Tamil elite from Jaffna that epitomise the Tamil Tigers have consistently excluded both the 80,000 Tamil tea plantation workers ‘of Indian origin’ that are even today without citizenship and the Tamil-speaking Muslims from its vision of separate statehood) –, add confusion and complexity to this communalisation.
 
Different versions of history are taught in Sinhalese and Tamil-speaking schools. The communalisation of text books in Sri Lanka is acute, and has been the subject matter of extensive studies by scholars like Reggie Siriwardena who have shown how Sri Lankan history and the traditions, situation and contributions of non-Sinhala Buddhist communities have been falsified for many years by those who control the Sinhala press and prescribe text books.

Recently, a cartoon published in a popular English daily, The Island, after an elephant had crushed two civilians to death in Kandy, caused an outcry among academic circles in Colombo. The caption below the cartoon read: “How was the elephant wise enough to know that these people were Tamils?!”

 
For the Sinhala elite, allegiance to Buddhism is paramount. Culturally, however, in modes of dressing and religious rituals, many bear a similarity to the southern Indian traditions of worship and ritual. A senior social scientist and one of the leading historians of Sri Lanka, Kumari Jayawardena, while talking to Communalism Combat observed: “Teaching daughters the Bharatanatyam is not only fashionable, but even holding the “Arangetram” (first public performance of a young artist traditionally only after she has attained genuine expertise) is the done thing. But it is not unusual for the members of the same Sinhala elite to make racist remarks like, ‘Every 25 years, these Tamils become uppity. Therefore we need to bash them up.”
 
Recently, a cartoon published in a popular English daily, The island, after an elephant had crushed two civilians to death in Kandy caused an outcry among academic circles in Colombo. The caption below the cartoon read: “How was the elephant wise enough to know that these people were Tamil?!”
 
Only last month, when a senior Tamil bureaucrat, the deputy secretary of the North-Eastern Provincial Council travelled from Colombo to the eastern provinces of Batticaloa and Trincomalee, he was stopped at every check point. He had to produce his identity card each time after which his car was searched.
 
“This only happened because he was Tamil, it can never happen to a Sinhala officer,” said N. Shanmugaratnam, a senior economist from the Norwegian Centre for International Agricultural Development who was travelling with him. Two years ago, Shanmugaratnam, now settled in Norway, himself had to face a potentially dangerous situation right in the heart of Colombo.
 
Dr. Arulpragasam is the vice-chairman of Sri Lanka’s National Education Commission (NEC), a body that is hoping to pioneer significant educational reforms under the current political dispensation. He was formerly vice-chancellor, Colombo University. Speaking at a seminar organised to discuss Khoj – a secular education programme run by the publishers of Communalism Combat, Sabrang Communications, Bombay – in Colombo in September, he spoke eloquently about what it means to be a Tamil-speaking person in Sri Lanka.
 
He said: “How many of us in the south are even aware that the northern and eastern parts of the country are living in the grip of a 14-year-old war? How many of us even remember that after the first communal riots in post-independence Sri Lanka (1958), Black Friday – July 23, 1983 – changed the history of a people and a nation? That the actions of that one day against a minority have resulted in a large Tamil Diaspora in the United Kingdom, USA, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore and that their relocation in their home-land is not a practical proposition? That there are thousands of children in our country who have known no peace but who can easily recognise a bomb or a chopper? That the patriotism of every Tamil has been suspect and even I can be stopped, today, by Sri Lankan security forces here in Colombo and sneeringly dubbed a Nakhikotya (toothless tiger)!”
 
This ignorance or indifference of the majority among Sir Lankans, to the gravity and tragedies of the 14-year-old war remains today the most serious obstacle to a lasting peace. For the ordinary Tamil-speaking person from the north or east of Sri Lanka, life is a continuous cycle of humiliation and deprivation, a condition that finds no empathy or even recognition in the south. In a country with a small population, such deep-rooted divisions cause greater alienation and more resentment.
 
In the east and the north, people are made to stop at every check point; they have to obtain passes even to get to Vavuniya, a large town in the east that has better banking and health facilities. Outrageous cases of crass human rights violations by the Sri Lankan army (that is entirely Sinhalese), including refusal of passes to the aged and the ill, brutal gang rapes of Tamil girls and women (In June 1997, President Kumaratunga ordered immediate enquiry into a ghastly case of militaristic rape when Sinhala soldiers exploded a grenade in the vagina of a Tamil widow; there are, however, no public records of convictions of army personnel), only help legitimise the violence of the militants.
 
A young Tamil student last year passed the university entrance examination (itself a hellish task in Sri Lanka) for the engineering degree and had to report immediately to the university concerned to communicate his acceptance of the offer of admission.
 
On the way he was picked up the Sinhala security forces and illegally detained for six months. When, at last, he was fortuitously released and went to the university concerned he was refused admission on the ground that he had not turned up on time. No amount of appeals to the University Grants Commission helped. Today, he serves as a prominent ideologue for the Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
 
Whether based on fact or fiction, numerous accounts like this one do the rounds in the north and the east, reinforcing people’s feeling of being abused and outraged. These, coupled by the state and Sinhala majority’s amnesia over the atrocities committed against the Tamil minority, make a bad situation worse.
 
Several instances of racist acts by the Sinhala state and its security forces have been recorded by commentators from the mid-seventies onwards (1977, 1981). But the worst, undoubtedly, was the holocaust of July 1983 that took the shape of an unmitigated pogrom against the non-Sinhala, Tamil population. The perpetrators have gone scot-free and there has been no public condemnation of the inhuman outrage.
 
Predictably, sustained and aggressive communal politics by the Sinhala-Buddhist Sri Lankan state has resulted in matching, exclusivist and communal Tamil minoritarianism. The chronicle of ethnic pogroms committed by Tamil militants, from the Anuradhapura massacre of 1985 to the Medirigiriya killings in late 1992, coupled with the expulsion of Muslims from their traditional homelands in the north, are among the most shocking manifestations of militant Thamil Eelam chauvinism.
 
Unfortunately, the ideology that dominates the Tamil people’s struggle today is also a powerful mix of narrow Tamil nationalism and militarism.
 
“Justice must be an intrinsic part of the peace and reconciliation process if the peace is to be long-lasting,” stresses Faizun Zackariya, a feminist-activist from Colombo who is a regular visitor to the northern and eastern provinces. “Not only is there no public acknowledgement of the wrongs done but none of the guilty of communal crimes have been punished.”
 
On the other hand, the Sri Lankan state continues to notch up “victories” against the militants. Hundreds of Sinhala soldiers sent to war are missing, the real issues that dog a multi-ethnic society, that of an equitable share in representation and resources, remain unaddressed.
 
The July 1983 pogrom against Tamils bears special recall. It all began around July 20, 1983 with the killing of Tamil guerrillas and the gang-rape of a Jaffna Tamil girl by Sinhala soldiers in the north. Two days later, there was retaliation by the militants with soldiers being killed. The next morning, the Sri Lankan government under the then Prime Minister, J.R. Jayawardene, issued an official communiqué that dubbed the act by militants in the north as a “racist killing of Sinhalese by the Tamils”. The government then stage-managed the soldier’s funeral and with it launched a state-sponsored pogrom against Tamils that lasted the whole week in Colombo and outside.
 
The pogrom launched from opposite the Prime Minister’s official residence in Colombo meant brutal killings, murder by burning and the deliberate destruction of property worth millions of rupees. (Two million kilograms of tea waiting to be exported was also destroyed, simply because it represented Tamil economic interests).
 
The services of the general secretary of the government sponsored union, Jathika Seveka Sangamaya (JSS), a young Buddhist bhikhu (monk) was used to wreck destruction. The ideological backing for this state sponsored pogrom was provided by none less than C. Cyril Mathew, union minister of industry and scientific affairs whose gospel of Sinhala – Buddhist racism had in the years that preceded and followed, gained wide political currency.
 
In 1978, the year he was sworn into the ministry, he authored a book, “Diabolical Conspiracy” in which he presented Sri Lanka as “the Holy Land of Sinhala-Buddhism.” Sri Lanka, according to him, was under threat from a joint conspiracy of the white skins and the descendants of the “Dravidian Chola and Pandya rulers” who were outsiders. Even after the brutal 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom, the Ceylon Daily News had expounded Mathew’s thesis in a series of vitriolic anti-Tamil of articles published in September 1983.
 
 

When Lankan nobility invited Nayakkars from south India to rule

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Leslie Gunawardana, a leading historian, currently vice-chancellor University of Peradeniya, in an exclusive interview with ‘Communalism Combat’
 

Your work has repeatedly suggested that scholars have been coming under increasing pressure in Sri Lanka to develop a representation of the past which lends legitimacy to the claims of either the Sinhala or the Tamil nationalist projects. Since when has this trend been clearly visible?
 
If you survey the type of writings that have been published since the mid-80s, you see this trend gathering strength. It is the tendency of taking sides in the ethnic conflict that is still raging within Sri Lanka. A good example of this is a statement made by an influential speaker at a gathering of archaeologists in Colombo on July 7, 1992. He compared the role of the archaeologist in the field to that of the soldier in the ongoing war in the North, commenting that the contribution of the latter was no less important.
 

You have also repeatedly observed in your works that the worst impact of the Orientalists’ categorization of the South Asian peoples into ‘Aryan’ and ‘Dravidian’ has been felt in Sri Lanka. Could you elaborate?
 
The impact of Orientalism in South Asia seems to take varying forms. It has had its lasting impact in India, too. But out there, there has been a greater emphasis on religion. In Sri Lanka, this Orientalists’ categorisation can be identified as the single most divisive root of the current ethnic divide. Today people think that ethnic identity is the determining criteria little realizing that this is a post-19th century phenomenon.
 
The impact can be weighed especially if one looks back to see the way in which relations between the Sinhala and the Tamil communities in particular were friendly and mutually accommodative before this categorisation came to be accepted.
 
If you go back to the Kandyan period, we find the Sinhala nobility choosing an external South Indian dynasty – the Nayakkar dynasty – to govern them. This is not to present people of today in a negative light and the people of the past in positive terms but to emphasise and to remind people that the ruling ideas of different periods of history can be so different.
 
During the Kandyan period, caste was a much more important factor than ethnic identity. Between South Indian people and Sri Lankan people, the Sinhala people and the Tamil people, the same ideas and notions of caste prevailed.
 

Could you tell us a little more about this pre-19th century Sinhala nobility?
 
We had this very unusual phenomenon of kings being invited and placed on the throne, that is, South Indian rulers being invited here and placed on the throne. The lead in this was, ironically, always taken by the members of the nobility in consultation with members of the Buddhist clergy.
 
In fact, the first Nayakkar king was proposed to the throne by the chief incumbent of the Navaddha Vihara, a revered figure among Buddhist monks, the Samaka Sangha Rajja; this particular dynasty that was thus invited remained in power for about four generations and they formed close alliances with the local nobility.
 
There were much closer links between the Nayakkars and the local nobility and severe divisions between / within the local nobility.

 
What are the other main components of the communalist projects, both Sinhala ethno-nationalist and the Tamil ethno-nationalist one?
 
The Eelamist interpretation of history and the Sinhala interpretation of history, I see, as two sides of the same coin. They in fact support each other, socially and politically.
 
The historiographical project undertaken by some Sinhala ethno-nationalists has been the construction of a past in which the Sinhala language and the Sinhala ethnic identity has always been present. In this imagined past, all the Sinhala ethnics are Buddhists while their enemies who invade, create disruption and occupy their land are Tamil speaking Hindus.
 
 On the other hand, the Tamil ethno-nationalist project is nothing less than the invention of a “classical age” for the Tamils of the Jaffna Peninsula. It is presented as a time when the peninsula was united under a Tamil kingdom centred on Kantarotai, independent from “Sinhala hegemony”.
 

Buddha’s Lions and Tamil Tigers

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Just opposite the Bandarnaike Memorial Hall in Colombo stands a huge statue of Buddha behind which is a building that houses bhikkus (Buddhist monks). Published investigation reports following the July 1983 pogrom revealed that young Elle Gunawansa, a leader of Sinhala Peramuna, an organisation of Buddhist monks and others, were guilty of drawing up lists on non-Sinhala businesses prior to the state-sponsored pogrom.
 
It is this unholy alliance between the Sri Lankan state and the fanatical Buddhist-Sinhala clergy that is responsible for a deeply-entrenched communalism in Sri Lanka. Both religious and linguistic, it takes the form of violence and exclusion, politically and economically, while imposing Sinhala and Buddhist imagery culturally and linguistically on the minorities.
 
It is in this background of a deeply divided society and a severely communalised state apparatus that the present government has to outline and sell to its populace the much-debated devolution package by November. Today state-sponsored caravans (Thavalamas) are busy carrying the message of “One country, one people” to the people in the south in an attempt to convince the electorate of the devolution package.
 
“I don’t think that the situation is all that hopeless,” says Lucien Rajaka-runanayake, a senior journalist and part of the Free Media Movement. He is involved at the moment in trying to devise creative methods to take the devolution package to the people.
                                                                     
“There can be no question at all about the outline of the northern province which is and will have to be all-Tamil. The sensitive area is in the east where the aspirations of the Tamil-speaking people are that Batticaloa and Trincomalee be merged with the north. I don’t see that as impossible, yet.”
 
“The only solution in today’s Sri Lanka is that after devolution, an autonomous state for the Tamil-speaking people be carved out in the north merged with Trincomalee and Batticaloa in the east and a separate autonomous state for Muslims in the south. If there is a de-merger in the devolution package and the east is not part of the autonomous province of the north, the war will continue,” says Shanmugaratnam. “Unlike the militant leadership, the Tamil-speaking people will be quite happy with autonomy. They don’t want statehood,” he adds.
 
Is such a communalised demarcation inevitable? Does it not defy the multi-ethnic character of Sri Lankan society and reality?
 
“Regional autonomy along communal lines is a compromise, the only option that we have, the only step that can avert Partition. It is a culmination of the logic of the processes of communalization, first of the Sinhala-Buddhist majority and now of also the Tamil-Hindu and Muslim minorities,” replies Shanmugaratnam, adding, “Once such autonomy is granted concerted efforts towards a multi-ethnic society might, in the long term, overcome these divisions. In the short term, there is no alternative.”

“Regional autonomy along communal lines is a compromise, the only option that we have, the only step that can avert Partition. It is a culmination of the logic of the processes of communalisation”
 
The moot question is whether the government can with its devolution package win over the hearts and minds of both the Sinhala and the Tamil people? Will it display the skill and statesmanship to pose the issue in non-chauvinist and non-exclusivist terms even if the lines being demarcated follow communal patterns?
 
The Sinhala chauvinists, supported by the Buddhist Sangha have already begun vociferously opposing the devolution idea, trying to whip up chauvinist fears against it, arguing that if this is permitted, secession would be the next step. On September 17, 1997, the Sinhala Commission symbolically chose the birthday of Anaganika Dharmapala, a chauvinist Sinhala-Buddhist ideologue to present to the Sangha (a Constitutional Body) its detailed statement roundly denouncing the devolution package.
 
In the same week, the President made welcome noises reiterating, after a long gap, her government’s openness and readiness to talk to the LTTE unconditionally for a cessation of hostilities.
 
How will the Sri Lankan government respond to the counter pulls and pressures from Sinhala chauvinists on the one hand and the bloody-minded and corrupt LTTE leadership on the other? Will it have the courage to offer justice, equity and rights to its minorities, in the midst of a highly charged communal atmosphere?
           
The answer to these questions carries implications not merely for Sri Lanka but the entire South Asian region.
 

 

 

Shah Bano Lives

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Illustration: Amili Setalvad

Nearly 12 years ago, an over 70-year-old women won and then, thanks to the “soldiers of Islam” lost the battle for a Muslim divorcee’s right to maintenance. Shah Bano is no more. But her struggle for gender justice lives, through the damning prose of Pakistani writer, ZAHIDA HENA.
Abba Miyan has been coming to her for the last two nights. There he is, talking a stroll in the garden. Turning to her he says, “Shahenshah Bano, I have been remembering you a lot these days’’. As she tries to get up to salute him, the illusion evaporates: No garden, no Abba Miyan “Shahenshah

Bano”! she mutters to herself bitterly. “Why did you give an ill-fated women like me such a name, Abba Miyan?’’

Of sleep there is no sign; her entire life comes rushing back to her.

There she is, all decked up in floral ornaments just like a bride. The fragrance is intoxicating. The entire family has assembled for the occasion. All the girls look wistfully at this first one in the family from their gender who is being initiated into learning. Abba Miyan hands a pen in her trembling hands which she dips into ink made with saffron. The novelty of the situation is evident to everyone present: This girl is going to learn not only to read but also write. Abba Miyan is a supporter of modernity, of women’s education. When the daughter is old enough to read, her cupboard is full of books. But for the strong opposition from his wife, he would have given her an English education, too.

How time files. Here she, is surrounded by her friends. What fun, her reading out to them, in secret, stories of Amir Hamza and Tilism Hosharba, stories which men have written for male consumption only and which women are prohibited from reading.

They respond to these stories with a mixture of amazement and incredulity. Their own lives are circumscribed by the boundaries of the Zanakhana (women’s quarter)…. when at last freed from here, they will populate the graveyards. But Tilism Hosharba’s world is entirely different… here women rule. Its women who ride the horses in battlefields, it is they who vanquish men with swords and arrows, and magic spells. Afterwards, they tie up the vanquished men and carry them away on their horses. These women… they love, they envy, they set up mehfil for their own entertainment… Oh! What queens and women with magical powers are these before whom all have to bow in subservience.

Its time for Shahenshah Bano’s marriage, a time of happiness mingled with doubt and anxiety. She does not knows, that her life is being headed on a course of ruin, not fulfilment. When she leaves her parental home, she leaves behind all the love affection and caring with which she, whose footwear had always been adorned with shining stars, would now herself be treated as dirt. She, whose bath water was always scented with rose will from now on remain drowned in misery day and night.

As marriage turned her life into a veritable hell, she often thought, Abba Miyan? Do names determine fate? Over whom did you think I would rule when you named me Shahenshah? Was I some Noorjahan in whose name coin would be minted? Where did I share the fate of Arjumand Bano to have a Taj Mahal erected in my name? Abba Miyan, I was not even a Gulbadan Bano or a Zaibunnisa Begum to write my memories or poetry, and organise gatherings attended by Persian princes.

‘’I am just an ordinary Muslim women… incapable of thought…. Only as worthy as a man’s footwear … the sole purpose of my being born was to be married off to some man and spend the rest of my life in deference to his every wish and whim…life me an endless wail, death the only means of my freedom …Abba Miyan , I complain not about whom you got me married to, my grouse is that you chose to get me educated, encouraged me to think. Why did you make me a princess only in name?

She was reminded of the Behishti Zewar (Ornament of Paradise) which Amma had with great feeling included in her dowry along with the Holly Quran. A trunk full of books- Tilism Hosharaba, Alif Laila , Indra Sabha, Aaraish Mehfil, Arab ka Chand, Mansoor Mohan included—had also accompanied her to her marital abode

That evening a few weeks after her marriage will forever remain imprinted in her consciousness when her Majaazi Khuda (Worldly god), Mustafa Ali Khan alias Dular Miyan, saw a book in her hand for the first time. The very next moment the book was shred to pieces and flung out of the house. The next thing that Dulare Miyan did was a bonfire of all her book in his courtyard.

The son of Abba Miyan’s  friend, a student of law then turned towards the humid and dingy room where she sat in silence. His menacing voice tore Shahenshah to pieces: ‘’I swear by Allah, Dhul Jalal (The Lord of Majesty), if after today I ever see a printed page or pen in your hands, I’ll make mince meat of your fingers and parcel them to your father.’’

Her heads lowered, Shahenshah Bano merely started at her fingers and hennalaced hands. Evidently, a sword or a dagger is not essential to cut of hands. The mere words of a Majaazi Khuda  are enough to slash off a limb, Slice off fingers. That is why from the day of her marriage till the moment of his death, her father longed for a few words in her own handwriting.

She was well aware where Dulare Miyan went every evening after dressing up in style. She knew whose hands fed her the paans. Which tainted his lips red and the perfumes from whose attire he perfumes from whose attire he carried on his person when he returned home late every night. She knew, too, that Dulare Miyan was a poet of sorts who participated in mushairas  and narrated stories of love and romance. He was, of course, entitled to his pleasures. He had been in love with a cousin but family squabbles came in the way. For his failed love, he sought solace from Laqabai and took revenge on Shahenshah Bano.  

Some months after the marriage, Dulare Miyan retuned home late one evening as usual. This was the first time that while she waited for him, Shahenshah Bano had dozed off involuntarily. The moment she heard the door of her room open, she woke up with a start and turned on the lamp. As Dulare Miyan was taking off his perfume-laden Sherwani, he noticed the sleep in her eyes. He was outraged. Filing his  Sherwani to one side, he pulled out the Baheshti Zewar  from the shelf.

‘’Did your father teach you nothing about religion?’’ Dulare Miyan razor sharp voice flashed like lighting in the her dingy room. ‘’My daughter has read the Holly Quran fully, is familiar with Hadith, has read scores of books, she has read the Behishti Zewar, too’’, said Dulare Miyan imitating her father’s voice while turning the pages of Behishti Zewar.

‘’Please don’t drag Abba Miyan in this’’, she pleaded in a broken voice . ‘’Dare you argue with me? Is he your father or Allah Miyan about whom nothing can be said? You obviously know nothing about religious edicts. Listen, this is what His Holiness Hazrat Ashraf Ali Thanvi says in the Bahishti Zewar: "To the extent possible, think of your husband’s wishes and always do what he desires. If he directs you to stay standing the whole night , it is for your good, both in this life and the life hereafter , that you bear some physical inconvenience to earn Allah’s grace. Never say anything which he does not like. If he says its night when its day you too must say the same.’’ Dulare Miyan dished out nuggets from the Bahishti Zewar  at great speed:’’ This is what the Shariah says and there you are going off to sleep without waiting for my return?

Shahenshah Bano raised her lowered head and looking at her Majaazi Khuda protested in a feeble voice, ‘"Is it a sin to doze off?’’ ‘’Of course not, it is me who is the sinner to have disturbed the sleep of Your Majesty, the Empress of Delhi ,’’ Dulare Miyan’s words stung her like a scorpion. What a cruel and merciless man Dulare Miyan was. There never was a day when she was a day when she was not taunted, pinched or pounced upon by him. She was reminded of the night when Dulare Miyan had pressed his double barrel gun to her chest. Their second son, then two-years-old, was running a very high temperature that day. Dulare Miyan had, as usual, returned home late at night.

Seeing the condition of his son, he growled, ‘’Why did you not send for me? Did you intend to kill him? The distraught Shahenshah Bano who was giving the child a cold sponge turned to her husband and said, ‘’Who could I have sent? Where? To Laqabai’s kotha?’’ On hearing her mention Laqabai’s name, Dulare Miyan exploded like a canon. He pulled out his gun, held it ever you utter that name again, I’ll blast your brains’’.

 
“The son of Abba Miyan’s  friend, a student of law then turned towards the humid and dingy room where she sat in silence. His menacing voice tore Shahenshah to pieces: ‘’I swear by Allah, Dhul Jalal (The Lord of Majesty), if after today I ever see a printed page or pen in your hands, I’ll make mince meat of your fingers and parcel them to your father.’’

The Behishati Zewar was pulled  out again that night and Dulare Miyan read out its teachings at the top of his voice: ‘’In Luknow, a women’s husband lives with a prostitute. He never comes home. On top of that, his concubine makes demands about the food she would like his wife to cook for them. But the poor wife never complains. She cook whatever her husband demand and send it to him without ever complaining. The entire world is full of praise for this women; and that is not to mention the great reward that await her in paradise.’’

Then, closing the book, Dulare Miyan had growled : "Have I ever stayed away the whole night? When have you ever cooked pulao or whatever for  Lakabai? Have I ever asked and have you ever prepared and sent food across? Listen, come out of your imperial delusion. Do you know , the status of a women is so low that the water leftover after her ablutions has been deemed unfit for bath or ablution by a men. We have been made superior to women , do you understand?’’

That’s when, for the first time, Shahenshah Bano become convinced that no formula has descended from heaven for the salvations, was to inform men how they can consign women to the lowest depth of hell in this world itself. 

From that night, an unknown, yet-to-born, women came to reside inside Shahenshah Bano’s body. When she prayed, the women inside would knock at her heart’s door and raise blasphemous questions: Is there a god for women, too? Does someone recognise us too as their creation?’’ Whenever the women residing inside her raised these questions, she would hurriedly curse the Satan, her head would stay glued to the ground for longer and longer periods in obeisance to Allah, the prayer mat would be soaked with tears. But the voice of that women within would not be silenced. It was as if she had taken permanent residence within her.

Concerned about her Abba Miyan’s standing and honour, she never complained to anyone. She was not permitted to visit her parents. In fact, she was prohibited from going anywhere. It was Hazrat Maulana’s view that women’s going out of home was the cause of many evils and it was therefore not proper for them to do so. In appendix ll, section Vll of Behashti Zewar, he had said that women should neither call anyone to their homes nor attend social ceremonies or rituals such as marriages, circumcision, engagements, rituals on birth or death of a person, etc.

When she got news of Amma's death, she was in Rampur awaiting the return of her Majaazi khuda from another city. She could not step out of home without his permission. By the time Dulare Miyan returned from Meerut, it was too late. Her husband was at home when she received news of her father's death. Shahenshah Bano responded with a deathly silence and said nothing. When Dulare Miyan mentioned the train she could take to Delhi, she looked at her Lord on earth. Forget being able to see his face Abba Miyan had died, his longing till the very end for a letter from his daughter unfulfilled. "What's the point of going now when I couldn't while he was unwell. He is bound to be buried before I can reach there." she said in a cold tone.

"Why? Do you intend to leave the house, shop and other property to your relations or what?" asked Dulare Miyan disapprovingly. "Which shariah tells you to let go of your share in property?" Is this man a human being or a butcher? Even a butcher offers water to the animal before he slaughters it. Forget any sorrow at Abba Miyan's death, this man had opened up the accounts section of the shariah even before Abba Miyan had been buried.

"Yes, how can one let go of one's share due according to the shariah?" she responded with a wry smile. "You are the only one I have ever seen smiling on the death of her own father," Dulare Miyan shot back and retreated to the men's quarter. The rush of memories brings Shahenshah Bano's heart leaping to her mouth. With tear-filled eyes she looks towards the courtyard. The moon has already set. She feels enveloped by a frightening darkness.

What all had she not been through living with Dulare Miyan. She was prohibited from wearing anything but coarse cotton. She loved perfumes from early childhood but was forbidden from using any after marriage. But for the fact that she wore coloured clothes, she looked a widow in every other respect.

Around the time the country was partitioned, her father-in-law passed away. A few months later, the mother-in-law also died. Shahenshah Bano heaved a sigh of relief. Things will now change for the better, she thought. She would be free to do what she liked, at least when Dulare Miyan was not at home. But happiness was not for her. Six months after the mother-in-laws expiry, her husband dropped another bomb – he had decided to take a second wife.

A few days later, the new bride arrived home. He arrival was preceded by major changes. Two new rooms were built on the terrace, the entire house acquired a new coat of paint. Shahenshah Bano learnt from the maidservants that the second wife was also from Delhi and a widow. She also had a four-year old son from the previous marriage. Dulare Miyan, the lawyer, had first set eyes on her in connection with some property dispute and fell in love soon thereafter. Once his parents were out of the way, there was nothing to stop him from marrying a second time.
Once the new bride arrived, Shahenshah Bano lost her empire which had extended from her own room to the kitchen Dulare Miyan entrusted the management of all domestic affairs in the hands of 'Raunaq Dulhan', his second wife. The same Dulare Miyan who only spat fire at Shahenshah Bano, showered Raunaq Dulhan with love, affection and gifts – sweetmeats, flowers, perfumes. kohl.

In the beginning, Raunaq Dulhan kept her distance from Shahenshah Bano but once she realized that the co-wife was a 'Shahenshah' only in name, she relaxed. The victor always treats the vanquished with mercy. Raunaq Dulhan started feeling sorry for Shahenshah Bano. Being a God-fearing women, she always tried to make up for Dulare Miyan's excesses against her. Had she behaved with her more like a rival, Shahenshah Bano would have felt less humiliated.

When her three sons grew up, two of them migrated to Pakistan while the third got a job in Shahjahanpur. He was married and lived with his wife. Back in Gheer Mulla Ghairat, Raunaq Dulhan's children were growing up. They called her Badi Amma and Shahenshah Bano found some distraction in their company. Raunaq Dulhan's son from her first marriage was particularly attached to her.

Shahenshah Bano recalls that afternoon when Dulare Miyan arrived home in a foul mood having lost the case for her wife's property. After Abba Miyan's death, he had filed a case against Shahenshah Bano's two cousins. In his own lifetime, Abba Miyan had given a house to his two nephews but Dulare Miyan sensed a fraud. He kept up his legal battle – session court, high court, now even the supreme court had ruled in favour of his cousin brothers-in-law.

Shahenshah Bano silently listened to all the verbal barrage Dulare Miyan had let loose against her two cousins whom she had not seen in the last 40 years He husband was of the view that leave alone meeting them, the Shariah did not permit her from even seeing their face or be seen by them.
Abba Miyan had left a lot of property behind for Shahenshah Bano but she had no access to any of it. Dulare Miyan swallowed everything – house, shop, money. Let alone her having any right on what her father had left behind for his daughter, Dulare Miyan made sure that even the jewellery she had received as dowry were gifted away to the daughters-in-law when their sons got married.

Bitter memories of her dispossession through the years flashed through her mind. When she couldn’t take Dulare Miyan's continuing bad-mouthing against her cousins any longer, she suddenly screamed back. "Enough, please stop." "Why should I stay quiet? You have been denied what was your right according to the Shariah. The Hindus are now the rulers, they do what they please. Islamic laws are no longer followed, nor is there a rule of law any longer." Dulare Miyan shot back. Following Partition, he had begun to take interest in Muslim politics. He had even succeeded in becoming a small-time politician. His statements on Muslim Personal Law and on the question of Muslim identity were often published in local Urdu papers.

"Abba Miyan had given away this house to his nephews during his lifetime. Whatever was left after his death was swallowed by you. So where is the question of my right having been denied?" a peeved Shahenshah Bano demanded. Her response hit Dulare Miyan like a bullet. "A word more and I will pull off your tongue. I have lost my thousands in the case but your heart is bleeding for those men. It’s my fault that I did not have everything spelt out in black and white while your father was still alive. Even while dying, he proved what a crooked man he was."

Shahenshah Bano felt as if a thousand canons had been fired at her at the same time. Such words of Abba Miyan, a gentleman to the core? It was fear of sullying his fair name she had kept silent, never complained for 40 years. "Are you out of your mind. Mustafa Ali Khan? Do you know what you are saying and to whom?" Shahenshah Bano looked straight into the eyes of her husband. For the first time in her life, the sound of her voice had traveled beyond the confines of her own room to the courtyard.

Such unprecedented defiance took Dulare Miyan completely by surprise. "Yes, yes I am talking about your father" he was beyond himself, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets. Shahenshah Bano, too, saw red, the fire dormant within her for years erupted: "Where is your Shariah now, speaking ill of a man to whom you are so deeply obligated?" As if someone had pumped a few bullets into Dulare Miyan's chest. "Me obligated to your father?" he yelled.

"Yes, you are obligated to my father… all his property and his money, who has swallowed it all? Who blew it up living a debauched life?" Shahenshah Bano was determined to settle scores of the last 40 years there and then. "After his death all his property was yours by right", Dulare Miyan retorted as he sent a stool flying with a kick.

"In that case, you are obligated to me, so beware what you say about my father", Shahenshah Bano heard herself say, She could not believe she could be talking like this.  Dulare Miyan turned while with rage. A woman, as worthy as his footwear, mindless, inferior to men, the water left by whom is prohibited to a man for ablution… A woman trying to tell him he is obligated to her. For a few moments he stood there speechless. Then, with hate-filled eyes he looked at the woman whose Majaazi Khuda he was.

"Shahenshah Bano, you will regret this moment for ever", he said in a venomous voice and stormed out of the room. She remained frozen where she was. She could not believe that it was her own voice that had been raised, that it was she herself who had taunted her Lord. She stayed where she was, her mind a complete blank, bitter memories of four decades flashing through her mind.

Before dusk that very evening, hell broke loose. Shahenshah Bano was sipping a cup of tea in the verandah when she saw her husband take rapid strides towards her room. He emerged a few moments later dragging with him her trunk of clothes.

‘’Pick up your things and get out of this house’’, he thundered. Shahenshah Bano put her cup aside and looked at him in astonishment. She could not understand what he was talking about. ‘’Where could I go?’’

‘’To hell, as far as I am concerned’’.

On hearing her husband’s outburst. Raunaq Dulhan came charging out of the kitchen. That very moment. Shahenshah Bano’s paandan was sent flying to the courtyard, its contents scattering over.  "For Allah's sake, what are you doing", cried Raunaq Dulhan, taking rapid strides towards her husband. ‘’You stay quiet, Raunaq Dulhan, I do not want to hear a word in favour of this accursed women'’ Dulare Miyan screamed back in anger. 

“Oh God! Why are you fouling your own mouth’’, said Raunaq Dulhan pained by the abuses being hurled at Shahenshah Bano. Terrified, the children stood cowering. The maid too came out of the kitchen, Raunaq Dulhan pleaded with her husband, asked for mercy in the name of Allah and the Prophet But Dulare Miyan was categorical that there was no place in his home for the disobedient and troublesome woman.

As she sits thinking of that evening, a cold shiver runs through the ageing Shahenshah Bano’s bones.  She had found no support either from the heavens above or from the good earth below. As she started walking towards the door, she had a dizzy spell and was about to collapse when Shakeel, Raunaq Dulhan’s son from marriage ran to gather her in his arms.

‘’Don’t worry Badi Amma , I will come with you, I will take you to the house of Bada Bhaiyya in Shahjehanpur’’, he said as tears rolled down his cheeks. Shahenshah Bano was oblivious to what was happening to her, what was going to happen. She felt enveloped by an all-pervading darkness.
That evening of her misfortune when Shakeel picked her up and put her in a rickshaw covered by a chador, a tin trunk with clothes, a pillow wrapped in a rug, a tumbler, a water jug and a paandan whose lid had been broken when flung by Dulare Miyan _ these constituted the sum total of her worldly possession. She could not help recalling the dowry which 40 years ago she had brought along with her to fill the house of Mustafa Ali Khan.


From that night, an unknown, yet-to-born, women came to reside inside Shahenshah Bano’s body. When she prayed, the women inside would knock at her heart’s door and raise blasphemous questions: Is there a god for women, too? Does someone recognise us too as their creation?’’ Whenever the women residing inside her raised these questions, she would hurriedly curse the Satan, her head would stay glued to the ground for longer and longer periods in obeisance to Allah, the prayer mat would be soaked with tears.

From an opening in the chador, in the dim-light cast by the electric lamppost, she cast a last glance at the half-open door of that house in Gheer Mulla Ghairat where Raunak Dulhan stood slouched against the door frame, tears welling her eyes. She prayed for her from every pore of her being, Raunaq Dulhan it was who had stealthily slipped two hundred rupees in her hands as she was leaving the house. It was her son Shakeel who had been kicked and abused by his step-father without complaining and never for a moment flinching in his loyalty to Shahenshah Bano.

As she departed from Gheer Mulla Ghairat amidst the sobs of Raunaq Dulhan and the beggar Madan Faqir’s call for alms, she was reminded of the time when she had first left her natal home. Shahenshah Bano had sobbed uncontrollably.

How radically her life was transformed after leaving Dulare Miyan’s house. For the last two years she had stayed at her elder son’s home. The two sons who had migrated to Pakistan never bothered to ask how their mother was. For sometime she commiserated about their lack of concern for her but then sought solace in the thought that before migrating those who abandon their motherland squeeze out and leave behind every trace of filial affinity from their blood : were they to carry these associations with them, emotional burden may  prove to be unbearable. Thankfully, the eldest son in Shahjehanpur took care of her in her old age. His wife too was not bad. But she was tired of Shahenshah Bano’s untiring quest for justice.

Despite the discouragement of her son, she had called her cousin from Delhi whom she had not seen for 40 years. After several months of deliberations, a case for main tenance was filed. The case lasted for one and a half years. Before the court verdict, she received the first and the last letter from Dulare Miyan. ‘’Mrs. Shahenshah Bano’’ was intimated through this letter that she had been given triple talaq and is thus no longer the wife of Musafa Ali Khan. The letter added that her mehr amount of 3,000coins in current currency had already been deposited in the court after which she had no further claims from her former husband.

After receiving the divorce letter at the age of 62, getting her due from Mustafa Ali Khan became the sole purpose of Shahenshah Bano’s life. The case in court proved to be unending. A lower court ruled that Mustafa Ali Khan must pay a monthly sum of Rs. 25 to her as maintenance. Two years….four years…the matter finally reached court ruled that she be paid Rs. 79 and 20 paise monthly as maintenance for the rest of her life.

Mustafa Ali Khan filed an appeal against this ruling of the apex court. His contention was that according to the Shariah, a divorced woman is not entitled to any maintenance beyond the iddat period . The secular Indian law, on the other hand, stipulated that a divorced wife is entitled to maintenance until she remarries.

A shiver runs through Shahenshah Bano.

The several years long legal battle between her and Dulare Miyan had got transformed into a battle between Islam and kufr. Ranged on one side was her frail existence, on the other side stood millions of Mujahids of Islam. Hate, contempt, condemnations….life became hell for her. lll-informed youngster were brainwashed and despatched to raise slogans before her house.

The walls of her son’s house had been plastered with Fatwa posters. Her son and daughter-in-law were fed up of the legal acrimony and condemnations following it. She was attacked by the ulema and grand muftis from inside mosques throughout in Islam… it is a question of the sanctity of faith… an apostate and non-be-living old hag has thrown a challenge to Islam.’’ Something which she was prohibited read papers like Islamic Voice, call of Islam and learn from these newspaper that she had abandoned her faith, sold out to idolaters, become an enemy of Islam She would read all these and shed tears of blood.

Then started the processions against her…Five thousand, one lakh. The rising tide of the ummah was over whelming. Islam was in danger because of a 70-years-old helpless old women.

After moving to her son’s home, her sole preoccupation was reading books, periodicals and newspapers,

Pressures began to be mounted to her. She should relinquish her claim. Apply to the court for withdrawing her case. Lose the battle she had already won. But she stayed firm. Not for herself or for that meager sum which the court had directed to be paid to her as maintenance. Her battle was on behalf of all Muslim women and Muslim girls.

The homes of poor Muslims in India had been turned into bazaars for Arab harems. Year after year they would change cars, and women. With her failing eyes she had read innumerable accounts of exploited, Pune, Bombay, and Delhi who for a few thousand rupees in mehr become brides of week and then, talaqnama in hand and a new born in their arms, entered the flesh market.

How could men, who for a few thousand rupees could every so often acquire new girls to exploit, tolerate the challenge thrown by her? what if tomorrow their own divorced wives started demanding maintenance from them? Marring someone and then divorcing at will was their right and any interference in this male privilege meant an attack on Islam. So, for the protection of religion, Shahenshah Bano was condemned from the pulpit inside mosques and through newspapers.  Writings, speeches fatwas smear campaigns….Brothers in Islam. Islam is in danger!

Ppressure kept mounting on her from Fatwa peddlers, from the Muslim community, from her own son and daughter-in-law, and for the last few hours, of the tumultuous crowd of the soldiers of Islam who after the Friday prayers. Had entered her mohalla. With cries of ‘’Allah-o-Akbar’’ the crowed assembled on the street outside her home and on street nearby. A hail of stones fell at the entrance door and in the courtyard. In the verandah some stones fell close to the platform on which she said her namaaz. And, then, the attempt to break down the entrance door.

Helplessly, her son cast a glance at her and then at his two daughter who were trembling and clinging to each other. ‘’Amma, would you have this house reduced to rubble?  ‘’We are ready to die, ready to face slaughter….We are ready to face slaughter…We are ready to perish for the sake of Islam’’ The walls were shaking with the cacophony of voices. She was sitting on the prayer platform in the verandah. It was time for the asir[evening] prayers. She looked up towards the sky. It was not on her side. She looked down at the ground, that too was not on her side. She looked down at the ground, that too was not with her. She prostates herself before Allah.

‘’We are ready to die, ready to face slaughter’’. Like deadly weapons, words were cutting her to pieces. She was getting crushed by the onslaught of fatwas. Her was getting soaked with tears. The hail of stones intensified. The hail of stones door was deafening.

She was lying prostrate before her Allah when she heard the anguished scream of her granddaughter. ‘’Dadi maan. They will cut us to pieces’’, In her terrified voice there was not only the fear of death but worse. This was not the cry of her grand daughter but of women from time immemorial….Women, the war booty in every period of history…But these were our own people? The episode of Hurra rose from the pages of history and sank in her tear-filled eyes.

She got up from her namaaz with a shiver. ‘’Open the door… Bring to me the people who wish to talk to me’’.

The door opened and in no time the entire courtyard overflowed with believers. What an impressive assembly of highly respected ulema and grand muftis around her! Attired in back coats, perfumed and with hennaed beards, eyes lined with kohl, Rampuri caps on their heads….
She cast a gland on the sheet of paper on which her signature could end that jihad between kufr and Islam which had shaken the entire country to its foundation. By signing on the dotted line in front of this assembly of Muslims, she would relinquish set up by idolaters had given to her.

Ameer-e-shariat, Maulana Sibgat Ullah Naumani, pulled out the Parker pen from his coat pocket and handed it over to her. This was the same man who had made life hell for his own wife. Penniless, she had been begging around for survival for the last nine years. Her own petition for maintenance was also pending in the courts. Ignoring the hand stretched towards her, she turned to her grandson who clung to her shoulder and the trembling of whose finger she could feel in her bones.

‘’Beta get me the kohl from the shelf ‘’.

No one understood what she was up to while the grandson fetched the kohl on her right thumb, her son rushed forward ‘’Amma , why are putting your thumb impression? Why don’t you sign?’’

‘’Signing is the way of idolatrous women, our women should only use thumb impressions’’, she said and put her thumb to paper.

The Ameer-e-shariat took the paper from her hands, the stood up, turned towards the surging crowd, waved the paper which carried Shahenshah Bano’s thumb impression and loudly proclaimed : ‘’Allah –o-Akbar’’ the crowed melted away.

The courtyard of her house which a few hours ago had resembled a battle field is now bereft of human presence but the feel as if the battle-caries of her assaulters are still lounging at her like bats, crashing against the walls.

The Moon has set, it is nearing the break of dawn. ‘’you won Mustafa Ali Khan. My name has been turned into an abuse by your community. My tear-soaked prayers, all my fast during Ramzaan and at other times which gave me swollen knees and ankle bones…. No one bothered about that while declaring me an enemy of Islam and calling me a Kafir,. There were even calls for stoning me to death while you a regular in the red-light area, were treated white as milk. You became a leader, a follower of faith, a distinguished servant of the community.

I, a hapless old women, thought that when others have given me justice, how could my own people be unfair to me. But it was you who was destined to win. Your people who have never been able to defence of their dying language (urdu), what have they not put me- a helpless, hapless old women — through. For me, an old woman behind veils, a whole army of the soldiers of Islam…It is evident now that none is on my side, none.

The cold is biting into her bones. She tries to lift her trembling right hand to examine her thumb. Her thumb impression on that light green paper swims before her eyes. You and your people, Mustafa Ali Khan, will not be able to remove this blot even with your blood.
Like stones, a hail of fatwas are drawing her blood. She is trying desperately to run for cover…gasping, stumbling, gathering her strength again.

‘’Abba Miyan’’, she cries, ‘’Had you been alive, on which side would you have been Abba Miyyan? With the community or with me? She is sobbing uncontrollably. She searches for some warmth in the tattered old quilt she is covered with but to no avail.
She tries raising her head from the pillow for a glimpse of the dying moonlight but her head feels as heavy as lead. Abba Miyan calls her from behind. She tries to get up to great him but there is no strength left in her body. Abba Miyan comes forward and hold her hand. She somehow picks herself up and remember she has to ask him something:’’ In this battle, Abba Miyan, on whose side were you,?

She turns to him, full of hope. Abba Miyan lowers his head. A silence that stretches from heaven to earth sweeps away Shahenshah Bano in its tide. 

(From Zahida Hena’s collection of short stories, Raah Mein Ajal Hai (Death on the streets), published by Danial Publishers, Karachi. Translated from Urdu by Javed Anand; archived from the May 1997 issue of Communalism Combat where it appeared as the cover story)

 

Why rulers patronised and pillaged others’ religious places.

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Prof. Romila Thapar

 
Prof. Romila Thapar

Ancient India

Within colonial historiography, we have two distinct trends- the Orientalists and the Utilitarians. The first presented a sympathetic image of a Golden Age. The Utilitarians (James Mill for example) on the other hand, moved away from this romantic vision of a glorious Indian past and periodised Indian history into three periods, Hindu, Muslim and British (not Christian). This was a meaningless categorisation as it no way reflects or characterises an age.
 
In their search for an identity in the early part of this century, nationalist historians harked back to the descriptions and imagery of golden ages of the past. To fight colonialism these interpretations of Indian history pointed to a backward-looking utopia.
 
All these streams show a close link between ideology and history writing. And it was in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that the culmination of this link, this time in the form of communal ideologies and history writing, became transparent. This clash of communalisms continues with us (Hindu and Muslim communalist history writing).
 
One way of breaking out or away from these kinds of motivated interpretations of history is to study an age not merely through political events but also through social and economic relations.
 
A major theory of historical explanation which evolved in the 19th century was the theory of the Aryan race. This theory, developed as an explanation of common origin by Max Mueller who held that the Aryans originated in Central Asia and came as invaders into North-Western India, subjugating the locals and imposing their language, Indo-Aryan (technical term for Vedic Sanskrit). This theory divided Indian society along racial lines arguing that the fair arya and the dark dasa of the Rigveda were racial distinctions.
 
This theory is untenable because it equates language with race. Language is an acquired, cultural feature which can be learnt by a member of any race provided it is taught whereas race has got to do with biological descent.
 
An interesting thing happened with this theory of the Aryan invasion. Jyotiba Phule argued that the Aryan invasion brought the brahmanas who subjugated the indigenous peoples; thus making them – sudras, dalits and tribals – the rightful claimants and inheritors of the land.
 
At the other end is the Hindutva version of history which holds that there was no invasion, the Aryans being indigenous to India, therefore giving a clean, linear descent to the Hindu Arya as the rightful inheritor of the land.
 
The explanation of origin is critical to any communal ideology. For Hindutva to be tenable, it must be established that only Hindu Aryas are true descendants of the land. How else can the notion of pitrubhumi hold valid?
 
Neither of these interpretations, however, is borne out by historical evidence. Apart from the Rigveda being the earliest source that refers to the arya, today we have the evidence provided by archaeology and linguistics. The Harappan cities cannot be equated with Vedic society as the urban culture of the former is distinctly different from the predominantly pastoral culture of the latter.
 
Archaeological evidence from the North-West of the subcontinent and dating to 3000 B.C. onwards provides no evidence of a large scale invasion or migration. However there is evidence of contact between the North-West and the areas beyond in Afghanistan, North-Eastern Iran and the Oxus valley, especially in the second millennium B.C. That would suggest there was a frequent movement of people and goods between these areas.
 
Religious monuments, their creation and destruction, often become central to communal discourse. In studying history, we must understand that religious monuments represent the religions of the elite, that they are a statement of wealth, power and authority. Only the rich build monuments and because the religious monument, be it the temple, mosque or stupa has also been the safe deposit for a lot of wealth, they have been the target over the ages of ravage and plunder.
                                              
Religious conflicts there have been many and periodic. But that these have been only between the Muslims and the Hindus is nonsense. Shaivites and Buddhists had conflicts, King Shashanka of Assam destroyed Buddhist temples in the North-East and there is evidence of Jains and Shaivites clashing in the region of Karnataka during the ancient period.
 
When we study Indian history, we also need to examine religion in Indian history which was quite different from the way religion evolved through the history of Europe. Indian or sub continental history is replete with instances, from the ancient period on, of the patronage by rulers of religions other than their own. The ruler or the monarch had to observe a policy of pluralism.
 
This is unheard of in European history where you would never hear of a Christian monarch ever building a mosque. Various eras in Indian history are full of such examples: during the rule by the Kushans, there was evidence of a co-existence of Shaivism and Buddhism, during the medieval period, the Moghul kings provide examples of this.
 
So we need to ask ourselves the motive or reason behind this multi-purpose patronage? Was it a good political policy? Or was it pragmatic for a pluralist society?
 
—Prof. Romila Thapar
J.N.U. New Delhi

In 1997, Khoj education for a plural India programme held a workshop that enabled interaction
between in India's leading historians and school teachers in Mumbai. This article is the edited transcript of the lecture by professor Romila Thapar. 
Archived from Communalism Combat, March 1997 – Cover Story
 

The myth of the Gupta Empire as the ‘Golden Age’ for India

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Prof. Kesavan Veluthat


Prof. Kesavan Veluthat
 

Early Medieval India

 
One of the elements which nationalism draws sustenance from is a particular construction of history. During the anti-imperialist struggles in India in the first half of the 20th century, creation of golden ages in our past would have served to boost the morale of the educated middle classes.
 
In the Gupta empire were identified all the elements with which golden ages are made by historians.
 
Among them were mentioned an all-round development in the political, cultural and economic fields. The Guptas were shown to have repulsed "foreign" invaders such as the Hunas. In the field of the arts, developments in painting and sculpture were projected. Literary achievements were also underlined with Kalidasa being the best example.
 
What was identified as Hinduism was shown to have reached its height with the Puranas representing its highest glory.  Gold coins and other indicators of economic prosperity were also taken up. However, ever since Kosambi, questions have been raised about the quality of this golden age, much of which is as Professor Thapar says, shown as more tinsel.
 
As for the revival of nationalism under the Guptas, it has been shown in recent years that the only positive evidence of any direct engagement which the Guptas had with the Hunas comes from the fragmentary play, Devichandraguptam, where Ramagupta is shown to have been defeated by them and also nearly surrendered his queen Dhruvadevi to them!
 
The Vamsanucharita sections of the Puranas, the other contemporary literary source of the period, speak of the Guptas as comparable to the mlecchas and unrighteous. It is only in the exaggerated claims in their own inscriptions that they are described as great, which were used by nationalist historians.       
 
Thus, Kosambi says, rather than the Guptas reviving Indian nationalism, Indian nationalism revived the Guptas! In the matter of cultural achievements shown as part of the "Hindu renaissance" there has also been considerable rethinking. The sculptures and paintings bearing the Gupta stamp, from Mathura, Ajanta and Bagh, are mostly Buddhist and not related to Hindu themes. 
 
Even in literature, Kalidasa is shown as carrying forward a tradition dating from a much earlier period, not to speak of the doubts raised about his date. Even about the happy position enjoyed by the brahmanical sections of society, there have been notes of dissent.
 
So also, in the matter of economic prosperity, the age of the Guptas and immediately thereafter is shown as witnessing the creation of several shades of superior rights over and the subjection and immobility of peasantry. Women were subjected to increasing hardships, instances of sati went up. In fact, women and sudras come to be bracketed together in the texts. 

On the whole, therefore the idea that the age of the Guptas represented a Golden Age does not hold much water any more.
 
When this demystification of the watershed of the early medieval period has been effected, a straighter thinking is possible about this and the subsequent periods. There is no particular glory attached to the "Hindu" period and, therefore, no more degeneration and decay attributed to the later, "Muslim" period. Communal historiography loses one of its sharpest teeth. 
 
— Prof. Kesavan Veluthat
Mangalore University
 

In 1997, Khoj education for a plural India programme held a workshop that enabled interaction between in India's leading historians and school teachers in Mumbai. This article is the edited transcript of the lecture by professor Kesavan Veluthat. 
Archived from Communalism Combat, March 1997 – Cover Story 
 

What makes Akbar ‘liberal, secular’ and Aurangzeb ‘fanatical’?

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Prof Anirudha Ray

Medieval India

When we speak of the Medieval Age we unconsciously refer to the "Muslim invasion of India." We must be very careful in the use of such terminology; the invasion was Turkish not Muslim.
 
Some important questions need to be asked when we read or interpret history relating to this critical period. We need to ask ourselves:
 

> Was there a large scale massacre of Hindus during the Medieval period?
 
> Was there a forced conversion of Hindus after invasions, did persecutions take place?
 
> Why was there no popular resistance to "Muslim" medieval rule?
 

Some of the answers to these questions are very surprising. There is one concrete example of a large scale massacre by Allauddin Khilji near Delhi. Who were the victims? Neo-Muslims (newly converted Muslims) and according to the historical source Ziauddin Barani thousands of people were killed.
 
There were some specific occasions during the Medieval period when the state participated in conversion. This was only when the monarchs were faced with a rebellion. The reasons and motives behind these conversions were not religious but a question of ensuring subjugation and loyalty.
 
An underlying feature of the Medieval age — and this was the primary motto of every king of that period anywhere in the world–was that he never forgave a rebel. That was why, in the Indian context, conversion was thrust on a rebel only after he had shown disloyalty.
 
Or else, how can any historian explain how there was no conversion, nor any attempt in that direction to convert the Rajputs?
 
One of the major problems in the communal approach to history is when we make the cardinal error of characterizing an age through the character of a king. This is particularly evident when we speak, or describe, or teach the Medieval Age of Indian history. Except for Pakistani scholars, we are told by both Hindu and Muslim scholars that the reign of Akbar was a golden one, he is described as Akbar the Great and furthermore as liberal and secular.
 
I have no personal problem with labelling him "Great" because that is a purely personal assessment. But to embellish him with labels like liberal and secular — both modern and not medieval terms — is to commit grave injustice in our understanding of the Medieval Age as a whole.
 
What else is being achieved by classifying 50 out of 500 years of Medieval rule as liberal and secular? Don't we immediately, by implication and comparison, classify the rest of the period as "dark"?
 
Aurangzeb has suffered most at the hands of such stereotyping. Professor Athar Ali's book also informs us that while under Akbar's reign there were 21.5 per cent of Hindus in the Moghul administration, during the last 20 years of Aurangzeb's rule (when due to the imposition of jaziya tax he has been dubbed a Hindu-hater), the Moghul ruler employed as many as 31.5 per cent of Hindus in his administration.
 
Ironically, under Aurangzeb, the percentage of Rajput nobles reduced but the share of Maratha nobility within the Moghul administration grew considerably.
 
Besides, we also know that the same Aurangzeb who has cruelly been labelled a temple-breaker also gave enormous grants to temples.
 
— Prof. Anirudha Ray
Calcutta University

In 1997, Khoj education for a plural India programme held a workshop that enabled interaction between in India's leading historians and school teachers in Mumbai. This article is the edited transcript of the lecture by professor Anirudha Ray. 
Archived from Communalism Combat, March 1997 – Cover Story

Growth of Hindu and Muslim communalisms was a parallel process

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Prof K. N. Panikkar


Prof K. N. Panikkar
 
Modern India

For the British, as rulers trying to understand and control Indian society, it was important to develop an understanding of what Indian society is. It was through this process that the category of a community of Hindus and a community of Muslims began to be widely and increasingly used.
 
This use of community terminology became part of our scholastics and analysis. What we need to ask ourselves is: does this category as a category of analysis give us the whole picture?
                                                               
Conversion, both as a continuing and a historical phenomenon is an important facet that is constantly brought to bear on communal discourse. The most important aspect to remember when we look at the issue of conversion historically is that the largest concentrations of Muslim population are not in states where there was a Muslim ruler or dynasty; quite the contrary. What does this tell us?
 
For example, in the Malabar Coast in Kerala, large scale conversions to Islam did not take place during the invasion by Tipu Sultan. The largest conversions to Islam on the Malabar Coast were during the period 1843-1890 and were directly linked to the fact that in 1843 slavery was abolished in this region. As a result, large numbers of formerly oppressed castes bonded in slavery by upper caste Hindus moved over to Islam which they perceived, rightly or wrongly, as a religion of equality and justice.
 
Religious stigmatisation also, unfortunately affects our reading and interpretation of the reigns of specific historical rulers like say Tipu Sultan or Shivaji. Do we know, that it was during the reign of Tipu Sultan that a Maratha Sardar, a good believing Hindu, invaded Mysore several times and during one such attack plundered and destroyed the Sringeri Math.
 
Who was responsible for the reconstruction of the Math and the pooja that was performed before the reconstruction? Tipu Sultan. We need to ask ourselves what a "good, secular Hindu Sardar" was doing destroying the Math and how come a "fanatical Muslim ruler" restored it?
 
During the invasion of the same Tipu Sultan of Kerala, there were hundreds killed, not because they were Hindus but because the people of Kerala resisted his invasion.
 
There are hundreds of such examples in history. We need to search them out and examine in the right perspective what were the motives of the rulers of those times for such actions? What were the politics and the historical processes behind the destruction and plunder of temples, the invasion of new territories and kingdoms and the conversion to a different faith?
 
Another aspect critical to the study of Modern Indian History is the counter positions of communalisms, Hindu Communalism and Muslim communalism that have so dramatically affected the politics of the subcontinent. We must be very conscious when we read and interpret this period to understand that the development of both communalisms was a parallel process that is not rooted in the second or third decades of the 20th century (the birth of the Muslim League or the Hindu Mahasabha) but must be traced back to the middle of the 19th century.
                                                                                         
This critical juncture in the communalisation process (mid 19th century) has to be more closely examined by us: it will reveal how these processes occurred in parallel, how the Arya Samaj that began as a reform movement turned communal and similarly the Aligarh movement that began as a movement for internal reform also became communal.
 
Another critical aspect to a non-communal approach to the study of modern Indian history is rooted in understanding the development of the concept of Indian nationalism that was always characterised by its anti-colonial thrust.
 
We have through the early part of this century distinct trends visible that go beyond the anti-colonial, negative thrust, and moving towards a positive understanding of Indian nationalism. One is Anantakumar Swamy's ‘Essays on Nationalist Idealism’ that explores the real essence of a nation as being not politics but culture. The other is Gandhi's ‘Hind Swaraj’ which explains the essence of nationalism as civilizational. Both these thinkers did not link the concept of nationalism with religion.
 
Yet another contribution in this area was by Radhakumar Mukherjee who in his works, ‘Fundamental Unity of India’ and ‘Culture and Nationalism’ tried to conceptually trace the relationship of nationalism to the ancient period of history. He sought to link culture with religion.
 
In 1924, Veer Savarkar's ‘Hindutva’ forcefully pushed this link, between culture and religion. The compositeness and plurality of Indian tradition was overlooked completely when Savarkar explained how the Indian nation evolved. In his chapter ‘The Six Glorious Epochs of India’ where his key questions were: How did India become a nation? How did Hindus become a nation? The book, forcefully written, is based on an erroneous interpretation of facts.
 
But the important thing for us to understand is why Savarkar did this given his own history of being a revolutionary. In his earlier work written some years earlier, ‘National War of Independence’ the same Savarkar describes the 1857 War of Indian Independence as the combined efforts of Hindus and Muslims and the rule of Bahadur Shah Zafar in New Delhi as its culmination as "five glorious days of Indian history."
 
— Prof K. N. Panikkar
Jawahar Lal Nehru University, New Delhi

In 1997, Khoj education for a plural India programme held a workshop that enabled interaction
between in India's leading historians and school teachers in Mumbai. This article is the edited transcript of the lecture by professor K. N Panikar. 
Archived from Communalism Combat, March 1997 – Cover Story

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