What Secularism is and Where It Needs to Be Headed

October 25, 2015

In speaking about Indian society and the secular, let me say at the outset, that secularism goes beyond just politics, although our political parties have attempted to reduce it to a political slogan. So one party endorses it in theory but hesitates to apply it properly in practice, the other makes fun of it since the party’s foundational ideology is anti-secular. Supporting secularism or dismissing it, is not just a political slogan. It is deeply tied to the question of the kind of society that we want. This is perhaps why it was widely discussed in the early years of independence whereas now attempts are being made to scuttle it. Questioning the secular would mean seriously changing the direction that we have intended to give to Indian society. If secularism is removed from the constitution then democracy becomes a victim, with an unthinkable future.

If however we want a secular society, then we would have to stop identifying ourselves primarily by religion, caste or language, and start thinking of ourselves primarily as equal citizens of one nation, both in theory and in practice. This involves mutual obligations between the state and the citizens and between citizens, not just in theory as of now but in actuality. The relationship of other identities such as religion, caste, language and region will inevitably become secondary. These latter have to be adjusted so as to ensure that rights of citizenship together with what they entail remain primary. Eventually the state will not be expected to support any religious organisation, even those it is currently supporting.

I would like to begin by trying to explain what I mean by the terms secular, secularism and secularising. Secular is that which relates to the world and is distinct from the religious. Secularism involves questioning the control that religious organisations have over social institutions. This is sought to be justified by arguing that it ensures morality. But the morality fundamental to secularism goes beyond any single religion and extends to the functioning of the entire society. Secularism does not deny the presence of religion in society, but demarcates the social institutions over which religion can or cannot exercise control. This distinction is fundamental. And finally, secularising is the process by which society changes and recognises the distinction.

What secularism is and is not
When the term was first used in 1851, secular had only one basic meaning. It described laws relating to morals and social values as having been created by human society in order to ensure the well-being and harmonious functioning of the society. These laws were neither the creation of divine authority nor did they require the sanction of divine authority. Authority lay in working out – through reasoning and sensitivity – what was best for society in keeping with generally accepted values of tolerance and social responsibility, by those who constituted that society. Authority was exercised through laws. Social values therefore grew out of rational thinking, debate and discussion. This was needed to establish a moral code agreed to by the entire society and was not linked to any particular religion, caste or class.

What this means is that the laws and social values that govern the society should be observed as laws in themselves and not because they carry any divine sanctions. They have their own authority distinct from religion or caste or whatever. Religion involving belief and faith in a deity and in an afterlife continued to exist. However, the civil laws were sanctioned and upheld by secular authority and did not require the sanction of any religion. Secularism therefore is not what it is sometimes said to be – a denial of religion – but a curtailment of the control that religious organisations have over social functioning. And I would underline this definition repeatedly.

This theory after it came to be widely discussed had various consequences. One was that it allowed people the freedom to think beyond what was told to them as being religiously correct. Again this did not mean throwing religion overboard but disentangling the codes of social behavior from religious control. This did not make people immoral as some had feared at that time, since the threat of punishment for breaking laws was enforced, and punishment came immediately in this life. It was not postponed to the next life as in most religious codes. So it made people think about the purpose of their laws and such thinking is always extremely useful. The observance of the law is strengthened when people understand its purpose.

Having to reason things out meant that people had to learn to think independently. The thinking came from their education. Here too the explanation of everything being part of a divine plan and requiring divine sanction was not always the answer to simple questions. Therefore, education began to involve searching for explanations other than those based on faith and religion, or possibly even honing these explanations if there was evidence to do so. But preferably, social laws began to be drawn from rational enquiry into both the natural and the human world in which we live. Occasionally there might even have been a small leap of imagination ultimately to be explained by reason. So the explanations for the laws and a discussion of these, became an essential part of education, and of thinking about the implications of being secularised.

Religion had originated as a personal emotional need. This was then extended to explanations of how one experienced life and beyond that how the universe functioned. This was all attributed to a supernatural power who was held in awe. Gradually however, this personalised religion became a complex organised religion and took the form of institutions ambitious to control society and politics. With this change, religion became powerful both as the focus of belief and as an authority controlling social institutions through various religious organisations. In some places, its power paralleled that of the governing authority – the state. It is this particular aspect of religion – the control that religious organisations have over social institutions – that the secular person wishes to keep separate from the state. The distinction is important because we often overlook it, in saying that secularism denies religion altogether.

Secularism then takes on an additional meaning. The state having authority over the making and observing of laws by human agencies should be distinct from religion since religion has its sanction from faith and from deity. The authority of each was clearly different.

Social laws are the spine of a society. They should protect the right to live and they should ensure that there should be no discrimination that affects life and work. This is crucial to protecting the points of change in the human lifecycle for which laws are necessary, such as registering birth, marriage, or even divorce, processes of education by which a child is socialised into society, occupation and employment, and inheritance, generally of property. Actions linked to these come under the jurisdiction of civil law. To make this link effective, social laws have necessarily to provide the basic aspects of welfare in a modern state – the absolute minimum of which are equal access to education and to health care for all members of society, and to employment, and this is to be irrespective of religion and caste. If civil laws are to be universal and uniform as they would be ultimately in a secular society, then we must guarantee this endorsement by the state. Discrimination on any count would be completely unacceptable.

So religious authority continues in a secular system but is limited. It extends only to governing religious belief and practice. It has been argued that there should be no rigid barrier between religion and the state, but there can be a negotiated, principled distance between them. This can allow for new alignments within the religion or between religions or between religion and the state. The overall relationship would disallow the dominance of any single religion since each would have equal rights on the state and the state on them and equal status before the law. Nevertheless, there is a degree of stipulated separation in this arrangement in as much as religious authority would no longer be controlling social laws.

‘Indian’ secularism
This is not of course the same as what is sometimes described as the Indian definition of secularism, namely the coexistence of all religions. Mere coexistence is insufficient as religions can still be treated as unequal and some be marginalised, as they often are. The acceptance of coexistence together with equal status before the law can certainly be a first step. But we do have to ask how far does this go and what should be the next step.

This definition based on the coexistence of religions is incomplete in many ways since the question of the jurisdiction of religious authority remains unanswered. The intention would in any case be not to put up barriers between state and religion. It would be to demarcate the activities that come under a civil jurisdiction and those that would continue to be controlled by the organisations representing religious authority. In a democratic system the equality would be essential – as essential as spelling out who controls which laws. In contemporary India, the coexistence of religions exists but their equality has yet to be established. The secular is less evident and some might even say that it is virtually absent. Political and state patronage does not invariably distance itself from religious organisations. In fact, it is sometimes closely tied together as we know.

Some oppose secularism by arguing that it is a western concept not suited to India. Should the same be said about nationhood and democracy, both new to post independence India? And surely our internalising the new liberal market economy is a far stronger imprint of the west. To support the secularising of society does not mean subordinating ourselves to a western concept but rather trying to understand a process of change in our contemporary history. Being a nation-state is a new experience of modern times and is current now in every part of the world. We have chosen democracy as the most feasible system despite its being new to us. I would argue, that a secular society is essential to democratic functioning.

A secular society and polity does not mean abandoning religion. It means ..the religious identity of an Indian has to give way to the primary identity of a citizen. And the state has to guarantee the rights that come with this identity, as the rights of citizenship.

Let me turn now to the specifically Indian aspect of the subject and comment on how I see religion and society in the past in order to compare it with how it is viewed in our times. My argument is that colonialism introduced a major disjuncture in how we perceive ourselves and that we have accepted this without much question. Any deliberate social change with sizeable consequence becomes a little easier to handle if one can see the earlier historical forms of the society and its gradual mutation. The present, after all, does emerge out of the past. In the important area of the relationship between society and religion, we have been nurtured on ideas about how religion functioned in India. These ideas came from colonial views of Indian religion that we have internalised without adequately questioning them. So a brief look at these might be useful.

Colonial view of religion
Colonial perceptions were based on the European experience of religion in the context of European society. With reference to Europe, secularism is often described as the separation between Church and State. This is taken as a one-to-one relationship because generally the religion was a single monolithic religion. This was so strongly asserted that in past times those that questioned Catholic belief and practice in Europe were heavily punished as heretics. Some were burnt, some had to recant as did Galileo and many faced the punitive actions of the Inquisition. Although Protestantism later was more flexible, the earlier experience was not forgotten.

This was the perspective of religion that was familiar to the colonisers. Their reading of Indian religion was through this perspective. Recent writing on Indian religion and society suggests that this was a defective view and therefore needs reinvestigation. The colonial image of Indian society projected two nations – the Hindu and the Muslim – defined by monolithic religious identities and inherently hostile to each other. And because of their mutual hostility, a controlling authority from outside was required. This became one justification for colonial rule. As many historians have pointed out, this image was then imprinted on the history of India – especially on the medieval period – thus enforcing a distancing between the two religions.

The concept of majority and minority communities identified by religion was also introduced by colonial policy. This further consolidated the idea of monolithic religions and these in turn fueled communal politics. Permanent majority and minority communities are of course contrary to the norms of democracy. A democratic majority is formed on each occasion when a large number of people come together in support of a particular opinion. The number has to be larger than of any other group, and those that join it are not restricted to membership of any previous affiliated organisation. Forming a majority, therefore, is not based on any pre-existing religious, caste or linguistic identities. The constituents of the majority change with each issue. There are no permanent members of majority or minority communities.

A Hindu Mahasabha pamphlet from 1937
Anti-colonial nationalism tried to confront this image since broad based nationalism has to be inclusive, has to induct a range of opinion, and has also to draw on a shared history. The shared history is crucial. I would also like to quote Eric Hobsbawm who wrote that history plays the same role in nationalisms as does the poppy in the life of opium addicts. It is the source. It feeds ideas of identity. Anti-colonial nationalism did not question the monolithic nature of religious communities. It focused on denying their antagonism and projecting their coexistence. This became central to its idea of secularism. But this did not fully succeed. One reason was that the colonial view of religion in India was, and it still is, also foundational to the ideologies of what are now referred to as religious nationalisms, Hindu and Muslim, that went into the making of the communal landscape of India. In other words, anti-colonial nationalism and both the religious nationalisms build on the colonial construction of Indian religion, though the first borrows much less so whereas the second make it foundational to their ideologies. A century or so ago, the organisations propagating religious nationalisms were the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha. These were not religious orthodoxies but rather ideologies using religion for political mobilisation. Today, religious nationalisms include a range of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and other religious organisations, politically ambitious and anxious to continue their control over community laws to ensure a political constituency. History in religious nationalisms is not shared, it is divisive and it becomes the arena of battle. The struggle over history text-books, therefore, is the attempt to ensure the projection of a history slanted towards one religion and a denial of a shared history.

We may well ask was this actually the way in which religion functioned in relation to Indian society from early times? Have we looked analytically at our past? Have we examined the role of religious organisations from that past? What form did these organisations take, how did they exert authority and which sections of society supported which organisation ?

The place of religion in Indian history
I would argue that the historical picture of religions in India was complex. It was not just a simple binary of Hindu and Muslim, because religious groups took the form of an array of sects, and not of a large monolithic community. I see it in terms of two sets of relationships, each required for investigating the link between religion and society. The first was the interaction of sect with a close social linkage through caste connections, present in every segment of Indian society. The second was the mediation with and through political authority that then became a three-way process involving sect, caste and the state. There was no church to bring together the sects into a single entity. In other words, I’m arguing for a much more decentralised way of looking at religion.

What this means is that the laws and social values that govern the society should be observed as laws in themselves and not because they carry any divine sanctions.

In the Indian past, the crucial relationship lay in the connection between multiple religious sects and many castes. The sect propagated belief, the caste often determined its social context. Status was measured through an interdependence of the two. Upper castes across religion – whether they observed caste restrictions strictly or not – tended to be more closely associated with the text-based formal manifestations of the religion, whereas the lower castes, perhaps being less text-based, were far more flexible. Caste determined the social code, maintained formally by those who claimed to be educated and knew the law. For most people, however, it was the hearsay of tradition. The authority of caste and sect over the social code has now to be replaced by civil law applicable to all. This will require looking afresh at the civil law claimed by all religions to ensure its secularity and its endorsement of social justice. Both secularity and social justice are familiar as values but their application in social institutions is new.

Many valuable and meticulous studies have been made of religious texts that have enhanced our understanding of them. However, less attention has been given to examining the institutions created by various religions both to propagate their beliefs and as agencies of social control. Rather than focusing on monolithic undifferentiated religious society in general, what may be more insightful is if we study the link between caste and sect in order to comprehend more precisely the interface between religion and society in our past. The link between caste and sect had a flexibility, even a fluidity that monolithic religions lack. We could then ask whether the rigidity lay less in religion and more in caste discrimination. In that case, the colonial construction of religion in India, so readily accepted by us, would need to be examined again. Perhaps we need to look more carefully at how caste in past times and now class in its turn, has shaped and is shaping the relations between religion and society. Which groups in society support which politico-religious organisations and why.

In pre-Islamic times, there are no references to any monolithic type of Hinduism. Interestingly, what we today use as labels for religion, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, are not mentioned as such. Instead, there is reference to two broad categories of sects that propagated their distinctive ideas. These were the Brahmana and the Shramana. The basic differentiation was based on belief in or denial of, divinity, and the theories of the afterlife. Brahmana referred to brahmanic beliefs and rituals, Shramana referred to the shramanas or Buddhist, Jaina, and other monks of so called heterodox orders, the nastika/non-believers, and their followers. The latter rejected the Vedas, divine sanctions and the concept of the soul. They were consequently associated with more rational explanations of both the universe and human life. Within each of the two, distinct sects with various beliefs were recognised.

Neither of these were monolithic groups. They were a collection of diverse sects. This duality of Brahmana and Shramana continues to be used in a variety of texts with reference to what we would today call religions, and over a period of 1500 years from the edicts of Ashoka, to the accounts of Megasthenes, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims, and Al- Biruni in the 11th century AD. References are made in Brahmanical texts such as the Vishnu Purana, and in Buddhist texts, to occasional hostilities between the two. Interestingly, they use the same abusive terms for each other. The grammarian Patanjali of the early centuries AD, refers to the two and adds that their relationship was comparable to that of the snake and the mongoose.

A third category that is not mentioned was that of those who were discriminated against because of their caste or lack of it. Because of this, they had their own belief systems and forms of worship. This was the category that was intrinsic to caste. The equivalent of what we call the Dalit today is found in every religion under different names, such as, pasmanda, mazhabi, etc;. The Dalit is present even among those religious sects that claim that all men are equal in the eyes of God. Technically all Dalits, irrespective of religion, should have the same rights but this is not generally conceded.

The importance of sects
Among the multiple sects that were emerging over time, some adhered to the orthodox and others were supporters of the heterodox. The advantage of sects over monolithic religions is that sects shade off from the very orthodox to those far less so. This allows the less orthodox to assimilate new beliefs and these are not treated as heresy. The heretics function in a stream of their own.

Our understanding of conversion would be much clearer if we could focus on sect and caste, wherever the evidence exists or can be traced back. This would provide a far better explanation than merely going on referring to Hindus becoming Muslims. What we understand of historical interactions in the past moulds to a fair extent our thinking about present-day interactions. It is, therefore, incumbent upon us to be far more analytical and precise in our historical exploration and explanation. We should not allow history to be reduced to, or dismissed, as political slogans of various kinds.

The creation of a sect was open and led to a plurality that became characteristic of every religion in India. This constitutes an important aspect in understanding the relationship between religion and society, and these relationships differ from society to society. We cannot assume therefore that the role of religion that emerged for Europe can be applied automatically to India – a mistake made by colonial scholarship. This does not imply that the meaning of secularism can change, but that the manner in which it is introduced into a society may vary.

Since Shramanism in the main was based on historical founders, it takes a fairly linear form with segments referring back to a central teaching. The history of Brahmanism is far more complex. An early phase was Vedic Brahmanism focusing on the ritual of sacrifice, the yajna, invoking many deities and specially Indra and Agni, and performed by upper castes. A variety of heterodox sects, pre-eminently the Buddhists, Jainas and Ajivikas, questioned these beliefs. Heterodox groups tended to provide rational explanations about social institutions and established a critical tradition of questioning orthodoxy, although eventually establishing their own orthodoxies.

By the early centuries AD, Brahmanical ritual became more individualised with a shift to the worship of Shiva and Vishnu. Sects of worshippers came together differentiated by particular deities, as for example the Vaishnava Bhagavata and the Shaiva Pashupatha. From the seventh century, religious belief and worship took the form of devotional sects – what we call the Bhakti sects. They arose at varying times in different parts of the sub-continent. The earlier recognisable ones were the Alvars and Nayannars in the south to be followed by many in the north. Some among the later ones reflected striations of new religious ideas.

Both Brahmanism and Shramanism received hefty patronage and became wealthy, powerful, established religions. This gave them status and enabled them to control social laws. Donations were made to sects and not to a monolithic religious entity because this did not exist at that time. This continued to be the norm even in later periods.

Centres of the wealthy sects became the nucleus of education. This added to their authority and they could induct the elite. Frequently, sects with large followings and authority began to function as castes in themselves as for example the Lingayat in Karnataka, and many others in others parts of the country. They did not necessarily identify with the formal religions, and some actually opposed them. But in colonial records they were assigned to either one or the other.

The arrival of Islam
With the arrival of Islam and more so with the presence of the Sufis, the exploration of religious ideas – orthodox and heterodox – expanded, as did the number of sects. Some took orthodox positions, others held out mixed beliefs and worship. The latter were popular among the larger number of ordinary people.

The new presence was marked by the elaborate mosques and khanqahs built by royal patrons and the wealthy. The religious endowments became richer and richer, as is so in all well-patronised religions. As with Buddhist monasteries and Hindu temples and mathas, these endowments tied to Islamic centres also enabled their recipients to participate in the world of scholarship and in politics. Detailed studies of the social institutions controlled by various religious authorities that we refer to as the Hindu, Muslim, Sikh etc. would be revealing.

As in earlier times the sect remained the popular religious identity among the majority of people. This becomes more evident if we look at two processes involved in the coming of Islam – settlement and conversion. Today this event is projected at the popular level largely in terms of invasion and its subsequent political consequences. But there were many other avenues that took different forms, as in the settlements of traders, migrants, Sufis and such alike.

Mohammad bin Qasim’s conquest of Sindh is known. But far more interesting were the settlements of Arab traders all down the west coast of India from Sindh to Kerala. Some Arabs entered the service of the Rashtrakuta kings of the Deccan dating to the 8th and 9th centuries. The more senior among them exercised their right to give grants of land to temples and brahmanas as had been the prevailing custom in the area. Arab traders inter-married locally and new communities evolved with a new take on existing religions. Inevitably, these became new sects – such as the Bohras, the Khojas the Navayat, the Mapilla and many others – where belief, ritual, and civil law did not hesitate to draw from existing practice. So no two were identical. Gujarati Bohras had little to do with Malayali Mapillas. Many such sects mushroomed all over but have not been sufficiently studied as part of the history of society and religion.

This pattern continued into later centuries at the level of the wider society. This was despite the emergence of other patterns that arose from political power and administration. Such dichotomies run through history and only their constituents change. The newly emerging teachers of various persuasions attracted supportive followers. Until recently, these remained the essentials of how a major part of Indians experienced religion irrespective of having to declare conformity to formal religions in colonial times. This was prior to the ingress of Hindutva and Islamisation, that have considerably hardened the boundaries and even altered practices. Many people today who identify themselves with the monolithic religion, whichever it may be, when pressed further, will mention the sect that they belong to, or the holy man whom they revere – the baba, guru or sant – who can be of any persuasion. This link is often more pertinent to the lives they actually live. And interestingly, the sects that they identify with are generally those that were established in the last thousand years.

Myth-making about medieval history
In the history of India, medieval history, which colonial historians called the Muslim period, is located in the last thousand years. This history has had a raw deal from religious extremists and politicians in being described as the age when, to quote the slogan, “We were slaves” – the assumption being that Islamic rule tyrannised an oppressed Hindu population. This is a continuation of the British interpretation of Indian history eagerly taken up by religious nationalism. Viewed historically, the scene differs at many levels.

The interaction between what we call Hinduism and Islam had its moments of confrontations and conflicts in the face offs between competing politics and were manifested in various ways, and often through religious organisations. What was a largely political act at that time is often interpreted today as an entirely religious act, with the politics left out. Some confrontation was to be expected. Such confrontations were not new to the Indian scene if in earlier times the brahmanas and the shramans had a relationship comparable to the snake and the mongoose – and this was probably a correct assessment as we know that in some regions Buddhist monks were killed and in others Jaina monks were impaled. In the subsequent millennium, that is the last thousand years, things may not have changed strikingly. It was neither a culture given over to religious aggression as colonial scholars maintained, but nor was it entirely free of such aggression. It was, in fact, a normal culture similar to many others in the world at the time.

But as was so in earlier times, the medieval period continued to be a time when striking creativity enriched facets of Indian culture and we still live with these. The intellectual liveliness of the time expressed in Sanskrit and Persian and in the regional languages matched that of earlier times, although in different genres. It was precisely this period that gave shape and form in various ways to much, although not all, that we now identify as Hindu in the landscape of present times.

Leaving aside for the moment the interaction of cultures practicing diverse religions, even some of the activities clustered around the Brahmanic tradition are most impressive. Throughout the second millennium AD, that is the last one thousand years, from Kashmir to Kerala and in between, there were scholarly commentaries being composed on Brahmanical texts and religious practice. Sayana’s explanation of the Rig Veda is a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a learned scholar of the 14th century with its mix of reality and fantasy. Social change draws out new commentaries on existing social codes. Kulluka’s commentary on the Manu Dharmashastra incorporates a reaction to the social change of the times, as in the debate over the status of temple priests vis-à-vis other categories of brahmanas, a matter of concern only when temples became powerful institutions, at a time simultaneous with the arrival of Islam in the sub-continent. The looting of some of the wealthy temples did not prevent the building of other equally wealthy ones and striking innovations in architecture.

There were many commentaries, digests, discussions on classical Sanskrit poetry and literary compositions. With the gradual switch to the regional languages, grammars required commentaries. New and prior philosophical theories are discussed in texts such as the Sarva-darshana-sangraha of Madhavacharya in the 14th century. Discussions on the Advaita Vedanta and Mimamsa schools of philosophy, to mention some, date to this period. There were explorations into theories in mathematics and astronomy going from Ujjain to Baghdad and beyond, with Indian scholars at the cutting edge of knowledge. Classical Hindustani and Carnatic music was patronised by the courts of Maharajas and Mughals and in the homes of the wealthy.

Arab traders inter-married locally and new communities evolved with a new take on existing religions. Inevitably, these became new sects – such as the Bohras, the Khojas the Navayat, the Mapilla and many others – where belief, ritual, and civil law did not hesitate to draw from existing practice. So no two were identical. Gujarati Bohras had little to do with Malayali Mapillas. Many such sects mushroomed all over but have not been sufficiently studied as part of the history of society and religion.

In addition to Sanskrit and Persian, literary compositions of high quality began to be composed in regional languages that acquired a new standing in the royal courts and in places linked to religious sects. These compositions carried much of the thought and creativity of their own times, as is evident in the Ramacharitamanas, and the Krittibasi, distinct from the Valmiki Ramayana and much revered by Hindi and Bengali speakers. There were even alternate histories sung as legends by folk poets and bards, very different from the court chronicles that we quote. These were the voices of numbers of people as also expressed in the bhajans of Meera and Surdas and the compositions of Tyagaraja. These were not the achievements of enslaved people. We are today unable to look beyond what we have been told by those who colonised us, and those who loyally continue to carry on with that legacy.

The task of secularisation
In this rather scattered attempt to look at some aspects of the past, I have tried to underline the plurality in the articulation of religion in India often in the form of sects and their interface with caste. To eventually disengage religious institutions from controlling the functions of civil society would help us in bringing about a more equitable society. The process of secularising society will have to address both religion and caste, and to that extent it requires a different kind of analysis from that of religions elsewhere. We have internalised the colonial version of the relationship between our religions and our society, and are experiencing its aftermath in the stridency of dominant religious organisations. We have also allowed some of these to become mechanisms for political mobilisation. Secularisation therefore will have to be thought through with sensitivity, care and thoroughness. Although it cannot be a rapid change, nevertheless a serious beginning has to be made to introduce secular values through establishing confidence in a secular society and explaining its necessary link to democracy. The resort to assassination to silence secularists can never succeed – it merely leads to the suffusion of terror that will one day rebound on those terrorising others. If there is one lesson that history teaches us it is this.

A secular society and polity does not mean abandoning religion. It does mean that the religious identity of the Indian, whatever it may be, has to give way to the primary secular identity of an Indian citizen. And the state has to guarantee the rights that come with this identity, as the rights of citizenship. This demands that the state provides and protects human rights, a requirement that at the moment cannot be taken for granted. Such an identity, while adhering to human rights and social justice, would also be governed by a secular code of laws applicable to all.

A beginning could be made in two possible ways. One would be to ensure the secular in education, and the other, the secular in civil laws. Education means the availability of all branches of knowledge to all citizens without discrimination. Knowledge means updated information and training young people to endorse the method of critical enquiry. I would like to add to this the need for young people to know what is meant by a shared history. Given that we are a democracy, we can perhaps work out how best this could be done.

Our civil laws were drawn up in colonial times although we have made some changes after independence. In a turn to the secular, we shall have to comb through the existing civil laws to ensure that they conform to equal rights for all citizens with no exceptions. Resolving the differences between the civil laws and the laws of each religion and caste, will have to be discussed with the communities concerned and not only with those currently controlling religious and caste codes. A uniform civil code does not mean merely doing away with the laws of one religious code. It means reconsidering jointly the social laws of all religious codes and arriving at a common secular civil code. In this process, injustice and discrimination against minorities and against the underprivileged – whether because of religion, gender or caste – will need to be annulled. Law does not remain law if it can be manipulated to allow discrepancies. This is likely to be the most problematic in our turn toward secularising society. Is it not time now to start work on this?

The overwhelming projection of religiosity – not religion but the excessive display of religiosity – in the world that surrounds us sometimes appears to be a surrogate for not coming to terms with real life problems; or perhaps it is due to our having become a competitive society with all its unexpected insecurities. Can we instead consider how we can make the reality of citizenship a guarantee of our social welfare, our well-being, our understanding of our world, and our wish to bring quality into our lives? The secularising of society is not an overnight revolution. It is a historical process and will need time. But hopefully it will be assisted by the recognition that the state and society need to function in a new way. Implicit in democracy is the upholding of the ethic of human action. Secularising society is an advancing of that very ethic.

Romila Thapar is Emeritus Professor of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has been General President of the Indian History Congress. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and holds an Hon D.Lit. each from Calcutta University, Oxford University and the University of Chicago. She is an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and SOAS, London. In 2008 Professor Thapar was awarded the prestigious Kluge Prize of the US Library of Congress, which honours lifetime achievement in studies such as history that are not covered by the Nobel Prize.

Romila Thapar delivered the Ali Asghar Engineer Memorial Lecture at Jamia Millia Islamia on August 19, 2015. This is the text of her lecture.The same lecture was delivered again on October 26, 2015 under police protection at the KC College Hall, Mumbai.

Communalising beef: The Hindutva camp’s flawed argument

October 20, 2015

Courtesy: indianexpress.com

The worst part about any debate on political/social/religious issues in India is that you introduce a Muslim dimension to it and the whole discourse will turn into an emotive issue. This situation has greatly aggravated with ‘swayamsevaks’ ruling a democratic-secular India. Currently it is happening on the issue of beef. The Hindutva camp is using it to demonize India Muslims by arguing that consumption of beef started with the arrival of Islam/Muslims in India. This thesis was laid out by MS Golwalkar, the most prominent ideologue of the RSS in 1966 when he said: “It began with the coming of the foreign invaders to our country. In order to reduce the population to slavery, they thought that the best method to be adopted was to stamp out every vestige of self-respect in Hindus. They took to various types of barbarism such as conversions, demolishing our temples and mutts. In that line cow slaughter also began.” [M. S. Golwalkar, Spotlights, (Bangalore: Sahitya Sindhu, 1974), pp. 98-99.].

Thus, cow became another issue to attack Muslims and continues to be a factor in unleashing violence against them. The latest contribution to this theatre of the absurd was made by Haryana CM ML Khattar by arguing that Muslims can live in India but they would have to give up eating beef. He went on to say that “It is written nowhere that Muslims have to eat beef, not is it written anywhere in Christianity”. Khattar is right that in Islam and Christianity beef is not revered and is not a staple food. But he must know that Muslims and Christians got used to it in India. It was with the advent of Jainism and Buddhism which coincided with the rise of agricultural society animal sacrifices including cow and bulls (an integral part of Vedic rituals) were decried and cow came to be revered. The fact is that beef eating in India existed long before the advent of Islam on this earth and arrival of Christianity in India.

It’s shocking that a person holding a constitutional office in a secular-democratic country is touting extra-constitutional conditions borrowed from RSS shakhas for Muslims’ stay in the country. This gentleman, who is fond of flaunting his RSS background, should explain why only Muslims. Even Christians, Hindus and Dalits consume beef legally in seven states of the North-east, Kerala, Goa, Karnataka & West Bengal. Will they also be de-nationalized?

As a RSS senior cadre, he must be familiar with the name of Swami Vivekananda. This is what Swami said about eating of beef by ‘Hindus’ in ancient India. “You will be astonished if I tell you that, according to old ceremonials, he is not a good Hindu who does not eat beef. On certain occasions he must sacrifice a bull and eat it.” [Vivekananda speaking at the Shakespeare Club, Pasadena, California, USA, 2 February 1900, cited in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, vol. 3 (Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1997), p. 536.]

This is further corroborated by other research works sponsored by the Ramakrishna Mission established by Vivekananda. According to C. Kunhan Raja, a prominent authority on the history and culture of the Vedic period, “The Vedic Aryans, including the Brahmanas, ate fish, meat and even beef. A distinguished guest was honoured with beef served at a meal. Although the Vedic Aryans ate beef, milch cows were not killed. One of the words that designated cow was aghnya (what shall not be killed). But a guest was a goghna (one for whom a cow is killed). It is only bulls, barren cows and calves that were killed.” [C. Kunhan Raja, ‘Vedic Culture’, cited in the series, Suniti Kumar Chatterji and others (eds.), The Cultural Heritage of India, vol. 1 (Calcutta: The Ramakrishna Mission, 1993), p. 217.]

Christians, Hindus and Dalits consume beef legally in seven states of the North-east, Kerala, Goa, Karnataka & West Bengal. Will they also be de-nationalized along with Muslims?

Another great researcher on Hinduism, BR Ambedkar penned a scholarly essay (which is available on the internet) titled ‘Did Hindus never eat beef?’ According to his findings, “the Aryans of the Rig Veda did kill cows for purposes of food and ate beef is abundantly clear from the Rig Veda itself. In Rig Veda (X. 86.14) Indra says: ‘They cook for one 15 plus twenty oxen”. The Rig Veda (X.91.14) says that for Agni were sacrificed horses, bulls, oxen, barren cows and rams. From the Rig Veda (X.72.6) it appears that the cow was killed with a sword or axe”.
The Manusmriti which RSS wants as the constitution of India replacing the present Indian Constitution, in its chapter V mentions recipes of how different kinds of meats should be cooked/processed. The verse 32 says, “he who eats meat, when he honours the gods and manes, commits no sin, whether he has bought it, or himself has killed (the animal), or has received it as a present from others”. It does not bar beef.

This statement adds a new dimension in the Hindutva discourse on who is an Indian. So far Muslims and Christians were kept out of Indian nation for belonging to foreign religions, not being Aryans, not knowing Sanskrit and not having Hindu blood in their veins. They were described as Malechas. These conditions were imposed by VD Savarkar and Golwalkar. Now beef is another condition. The only problem is that with this new add-on many more Indians, Dalits and those Hindus who eat beef are going to be de-franchised.

(The author is a former professor at Delhi University. A version of this article appeared in The Indian Express on October 21, 2015)

Building the Idea of India

October 6, 2015

Young Friends,

As in the preliminary remarks it was said that the concept of India is a growing one, I propose to discuss how the concept of India arose, how it developed and how India became a nation; and what are the dangers today that face the nation. We are at a very sad moment in our history. Rationalists—people who believe in science—like Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi […Kalburgi very recently] have been murdered in our country. In the name of GauRaksha(cow protection), Mohammad Akhlaq has been murdered! So, our country’s name is being dragged into dirt and it is, therefore, time for all of us to reflect and consider what our country is about and how best it can be served.

We must remember that far from its becoming a nation in the relatively recent past our BJP friends and their RSS mentors are fond of saying that India was a nation since Rig-Vedic times. But, in fact, neither in the Rigveda nor in the other three Vedas, nor even in the Brahmana which followed them, or, even for that matter, in the still later Upanishads, is India mentioned at all. In the Rig Veda, there is not even a mention of any geographical region; but only rivers and tribes. Even Sapta Saindhava (seven rivers) did not mean the region of Punjab, as it meant later on, but just the main seven rivers that form the Indus. The area in which the Vedic hymns were written was limited to the Punjab and parts of Afghanistan, and it was a inhabited by migratory tribes; so there was not even the concept of a region, least of all, the concept of “country”.

As culture developed, political entities arose. The first name of our country was in Prakrit Sola Maha-Janapada (Sixteen Great States), which occurs in texts going back to 500 BC Remember, Solah is a Prakrit word and many of our languages, including Hindi and Urdu, go back to Prakrit. These maha-janapadas ranged from Kamboja or Kabul to Anga in eastern Bihar but they were confined only to northern India; and there was not yet any concept of India as we now conceive it. In some Dharma Søtras, the term Aryavarta, ‘the land of the noble,’ begins to occur and Manusmriti defined Aryavarta as the country from Himalayas to the Vindhyas; but then again it is only a large part of India and not the whole country that the term encompasses.

The first perception of the whole of India as a country comes with the Mauryan Empire. Those of you, who have studied Indian history would know that the inscriptions of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka range from Kandahar and north of Kabul to Karnataka and Andhra and they are in Prakrit, Greek and Aramaic. So it was with such political unity that the concept of India came, and its first name was Jambudvipa a name which Ashoka uses in his Minor Rock Edict-1, meaning 'the land of the Jamun fruit.' The term Bharata was also used in Prakrit in an inscription in Orissa, at Hathigumpha, of the Kalinga ruler, Kharavela in 1st century BC; that is the first instance of the use of Bharat, and Kharavela uses it for the whole of India. So, gradually the concept of India as a country began to arise and a cultural unity was also seen within it as religions like Buddhism, Brahmanism and Jainism spread to all parts of the country. Prakrit was spoken, at least literary Prakrit, all over the country, becoming its lingua franca. So, there were things which, as people could see, united us.

There were also foreigners who could see that this was a culturally distinct country and it often happens [and this is an interesting part] that foreigners regard a country much more easily than its natives because they realize that there is difference between, say, Indians and Persians; whether you went to the Punjab or the South, Prakrit was the literary language and Sanskrit the priestly language. So, it is the Iranians who first time gave us the name ‘Hindu’, and Hindu is the Persian form of Sindhu river, that is, the Indus River. So, every region east of the Sindhu river, which was called Hindu in ancient Persian, was ‘Hindu’ and from this the name, ‘India’ comes. For Greeks, Hindu became Indu as Greeks did not pronounce the initial ‘H’, and the Chinese name for India, ‘Intu,’ also came from the same source. And then came the later Persian name ‘Hindustan.’ Remember, there is no such word in Sanskrit as Hindusthan. Sthan always means in Sanskrit a ‘particular spot’.But ‘stan’ in Persian is a territorial suffix, so, we have Seistan, Gurjistan, Hindustan and so on. This name is used in Sasanid inscriptions in the fourth century AD. So these words and the word Hindu itself are of non-Indian origin. Those talk about Hindutva and rejection of everything foreign, forget that their own name Hindu is Iranian in origin, and is not found in Sanskrit before the fourteenth century. Its first use in Sanskrit inscriptions comes from the Vijaynagar Empire where the Vijaynagar emperors call themselves Hindu raya suratrana, ‘Sultans over Hindu Rays.’ They regarded themselves as Sultans and their subordinates as ‘Hindu Rays’. So, our country as its name indicates is of a composite nature, illustrated by the very name Hindu, derived from ancient Iranian, then used by Iranian and Arab Muslims, and entering Sanskrit usage only in the 14^th century.

I say all this because it means that the concept of India as a country was ancient, the assertion made by Perry Anderson in his book The Indian Ideology that the India is a name given by foreigners particularly Europeans in modern times, is a totally misleading statement. It is particularly misleading because there is another very interesting matter: True, there was a conception of India in ancient times, even before Christ, but when was there a conception of love for India i.e. patriotism? It is surprising that throughout ancient India you have no patriotic verse in Sanskrit expressing love for India.

The first patriotic poem in which India is praised, India is loved, Indians are acclaimed is Amir Khusrau’s long poem in his Nuh Sipihir written in 1318. I am very sorry that now we are losing this heritage. How many people here would be able to read Amir Khusrau, and so appreciate that here is the praise for India for the first time in its history. What does Amir Khusrau praise India for? For its climate first of all which I think is very unconvincing statement, its natural beauty, its animals and along with its animals its women, their beauty as well as faithfulness. Then he comes to Brahmans. He praises their learning. He praises their language Sanskrit. He identifies India not only with Brahmans, but also with Muslims. Those who speak Persian, as well as those who speak Turkish, he says, are to be found throughout India. He praises all the languages of India from Kashmiri to Mabari i.e. Tamil. All these languages that were spoken in India, not only north India but also in the south India, are listed there. He called them Hindavi. He adds that besides these languages there is the Sanskrit language, which is the language of science, and of learning. And had Arabic not been the language of the Quran, he would have preferred Sanskrit to Arabic. He then says India has given many things to the world: India has given Panchtantra tales, as well as chess, and most surprisingly, he says India has given the world the decimal numerals what are known as Arab numerals or International numerals. He is correct in all the three points. And, as for decimal notation Aryabhatta theoretically recommended its use in 4th century AD.

Other historians, other writers, other poets also praised India but not in such detail, not with such fervor and not, of course, with such mastery of language as Amir Khusrau. In 1350 the poet, Isami said in a poem dedicated to the praise of India.

“Praise be to the splendour of the country of Hindustan for paradise is jealous of the beauty of this flower garden.”

So, you begin to find patriotic verses. I will not go in to details because they are all in Persian and Persian for Indians is almost a dead language now.

In the Mughal period patriotism turned into a more insistent assertion particularly with Akbar and Abul Fazl. They argued that India is a special country, India has a large number of religious communities, and so there must be tolerance, under the umbrella of Sulh-i Kul i.e. absolute peace.’ It was argued that the King, like God, must favour all without discrimination. It was not only Akbar and Abul Fazl who made this assertion but even Aurangzeb (when a prince), in 1658, using it to win Rajput support. Does God, it was asked, discriminate between Muslims and non-Muslims when He makes rain to fall or make sun shine on people? Does the sun not shine on Hindus, and only on Muslims? Does rain fall only on Muslims and not on non-Muslims? Where God is fair, where God is just, how can the emperor as a representative of God be different? There was thus a concept not of a secular state but of a “tolerant state” suited to the conditions of India. It was again and again said that in India every religion must be tolerated. Jahangir says that in Turan it is, only Sunnis and in Iran it only the Shias who are tolerated, but in India every religion has to be tolerated. And there was thus something new in the Mughal experience, and political development.

Dr. Tara Chand asserted in his well-known book The Influence of Islam on Indian Culture, published in 1928, which has been republished by National Book Trust (NBT), that these two successively large states, the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, by bringing all parts of India together created the sense of a larger “national allegiance”, an assertion he continues to make, even in the official history of Indian National Movement which he partly wrote and partly edited. This concept of political India, is also very strongly present in the revolt of 1857. Those of you who know or who have studied Modern India probably know that the rebellion of 1857 occurred with the revolt of the Bengal Army. A hundred thousand men out of 130 thousand, one of the largest armies in the world at the time, revolted and they were in majority Brahmans sepoys. But what did they say? ‘Let us go to Delhi and crown Bahadur Shah Zafar, emperor of India’. Those of you who know Urdu, I invite them to read the Delhi Urdu Akhbar, the major organ of rebels in Delhi. For five months, it was the major organ through which the rebels spoke and it is of ‘Hindustan’ that they speak. They quote Sa‘di who said that all human beings must be one—Ayza-e-Yak-Digar and—“they are organs of each other”; if one is hurt the other is hurt. So Hindus and Muslims, the rebels proclaimed, must come together. The Delhi Urdu Akhbar actually issued a public declaration against the Wahabis who said Hindus and Muslims could not join in a rebellion against People of the Book (English). And in fact, the Wahabis did not support the 1857 revolt! They occupied the Jama Masjid at Eid-uz-Zuha, and demanded cow slaughter. Bakht Khan, the mutineers’ commander drove them out and threatened to suppress them if they persisted in this demand.

Syed Ahmad Khan in his Sarkashi-e-Zila Bijnor says in fact that the whole people of India were guilty in 1857 and rightly punished. So whether they are rightly punished or wrongly punished, we must remember that those who revolted considered themselves to be standing up for India. In my old age, I have now often taken to quoting Urdu poets. I quote now a simple couplet of Bahadur Shah Zafar which he wrote after he became a prisoner and he wrote in commendation/ memory of fallen martyrs of the mutiny:

Ay Zafar Qayam rahegi Jab Talak Iqleem-e-Hind,
Akhtar-e-Iqbal Is Gul Ka Chamakta Jayega

[O Zafar, so long as the country of India endures, The star of the glory of this [fallen] flower would go on shining]
So, a concept of India, politically independent, is already present in 1857. But was it sufficient? If the rebellion of 1857 failed, the reason was partly that it was not supported in large regions of the country. While the Bengal Army revolted, Madras and Bombay Armies didn’t. The rebels in their reply to Victoria’s Proclamation of 1858 themselves spoke up for the whole of India reminding people of how the English had treated rulers from Tipu Sultan of Mysore to Dilip Singh of the Punjab. Yet though the rebel leaders thought of the country as a whole, the rebellion did not actually extend outside the Hindustani-speaking region.

Indeed, something more was needed to turn India from a ‘country’ into a ‘nation’. Two stages seem to me to be very important for such conversion. First of all, there had to be a realization that an independent country, a free India would be different. It would be better than India governed by the British. The whole point of very sincere people like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Syed Ahmad Khan in supporting British rule was the belief that the British rule was the best India could get. It was for people to understand that we could have an India which could be much better off than that governed by the British. And here the role of people like Dada Bhai Naoroji, Ramesh Chandra Dutt, Justice Ranade and a number of others was extremely important. They showed that Britain was exploiting India. From 1874 to 1901, Dada Bhai Naoroji, the Grand Old Man of the Indian National Movement, wrote essays and papers showing how India was being exploited, as the very title of his book of 1901, Poverty and the UnBritish Rule in India; shows so clearly. India was being impoverished by the tribute British were extorting and the de-industrialization of India, caused through free trade. Dada Bhai Naoroji was least interested in his own community, Parsi community and you see him pleading the case of all kinds of Indians, Hindus, Muslims, Bengalis, Punjabis, etc. And that’s a particular thing for us to remember when we think of these early writers like Ramesh Chandra Dutt or others. They have no element of communalism in their approach. They were talking about all Indians. Yet they were speaking to English speaking people, and so to a very small minority. They were taking about peasants, poor people, unemployed, the weavers and spinners, but they were writing in English and so addressing only small circles of people. How could this audience be enlarged? Well.. one way was by supporting movements for social reforms. The initial voice was that of Ram Mohan Roy, who by the way knew Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, English, French, and Hebrew, being really a polymath. He wrote his first book (Tuhfatu’l Muwahhidin)’ in Persian. He said in 1828 that Indians can’t be patriotic because they are divided up among castes. If caste affinities continue, how can there be any patriotism for the country? And therefore the social reform movement, particularly as initiated by Keshav Chandra Sen (1838-84) was so important. He has practically been forgotten today; but look at the man who at the age of 18 or 20 was writing that untouchability must be abolished, intercaste marriages should be allowed, women should have equality with men in inheritance and every other right, modern education should be spread among women. And he created a new Brahmo Samaj some of whose members by the way ate beef which show that there were Indians who could defy religious orthodoxy. But that was a small thing; the real thing was that they made social reform movement possible. Everywhere these demands arose—abolition of untouchability, equal rights for women, and modern education. And Keshav Chandra Sen said in 1870 that as social reform progresses, India will become a nation, since India could only become a nation if its division into castes and religious communities was overcome.

I will not go into the early nationalist movement here, or to people who sacrificed their lives for the nation. I will only refer to the Ghadar movement that gave us the largest number of martyrs (before the INA), after acts of armed violence occurred in Maharashtrians, and under revolutionary nationalists of Bengal. The Ghadar movement arose in the Punjab and among Punjabi settlers in Canada and the United States in 1913-15. Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, particularly Sikhs, were greatly involved. But the biggest uprising was the mutiny in Singapore by the Muslim sepoys of 5th Light Infantry, inspired by the Ghadar propaganda and Ghadar agents. 45 of them were shot in a public display in Singapore after the Mutiny had been suppressed. By their bold demeanor in facing death, they deprived the British of the propaganda value of public executions. This was the biggest mutiny in the Indian army after 1857 with the largest number of martyrs. In the Punjab, itself and other places over 50 people were executed in 1914-15 including Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims. But some of the records left by the Ghadaritis in India are painful to read. Few among the public were supporting them. The people whom they sought refuge with went and reported the police. They died seemingly unsung. Because the national movement was still limited to a very small number, India was a nation in the eyes of very small number of people. Here, I think, one must with almost unconditional, unqualified assertion, say that Mahatma Gandhi was one person responsible for bringing the masses in to the National Movement, and so hastening the true creation of India as a nation. In the whole of Indian history before 1913 was there a case of 200 women—Hindus and Muslim—offering to go to prison because Indians were being ill-treated in South Africa? There had been no such protest against the British in India. Against acts of gross injustice, had anyone mobilized 200 in India before? Speaking of 1913, 2000 miners marched into the Transvaal—the Great March of Indian Miners in South Africa. Indian history had never seen such a thing! Who was that man behind it? M.K. Gandhi had done it and he came to India in 1915 because after this agitation, the South African Prime Minister Smuts surrendered: he abolished Native Poll Tax, he legalized Indian marriages, and he gave some other rights. So Gandhi Ji came to India. In 1917, there was the Peasant Satyagraha in Bihar the Champaran Satyagraha, which he led. For the first time in India peasants were brought into a political agitation. And Gandhi said: “when I met peasants I saw God”. He realized that the national movement could only succeed if the Indian peasants and masses of the poor joined the national movement. So we had the April Satyagraha of 1919 and then the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920. Can I quote an Urdu verse here. Akbar Allahabadi had once said that people regarded the British with such awe that he was led to say in his famous misra: Main To Allah Ko Collector Samjha —I thought God was a Collector—since there could not be anything more powerful, more absolute, than the English Collector. But when Gandhiji began his Non-Cooperation everything changed. Then Akbar Allahbadi wrote ‘Buddhu Miyan Bhi Hazrate Gandhi Ke Sath Hain, Ek Musht-e-Khak Hain Magar Andhi Ke Sath Hain’. What was earlier the role of Buddhu Miyan or the Ordinary Man in Indian history? Nothing! He was nowhere. He is now brought into history. And as more and more ordinary peasants, ordinary women, joined the national movement, India became more and more of a ‘nation’. Because there is no nation unless the larger number or mass of the people feel that they should be independent and they should rule themselves. With the poor coming to the movement, what do you offer them? What is to be their future? And here I submit JawaharLal Nehru is very, very important, for from late 1920s he urged that the National Movement should have precise goals for peasants, workers, women, etc. fully worked out. There are also others who were important; I am not saying that Gandhi and Nehru together make the Indian national movement, but they were in fact the two crucial persons.

Dr. Tara Chand asserted in his well-known book The Influence of Islam on Indian Culture, published in 1928, which has been republished by National Book Trust (NBT), that these two successively large states, the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, by bringing all parts of India together created the sense of a larger “national allegiance”, an assertion he continues to make, even in the official history of Indian National Movement which he partly wrote and partly edited.

What did Gandhi Ji have to offer the common man? When you ask this difficult question, you will go back to his book Hind Swaraj (1909). Muslims may find it very gratifying that unlike other Congress leaders Gandhi supported the Indian Councils Act 1909 and its concessions to Muslims. He says, in Hind Swaraj, that those Hindu leaders who opposed the concessions to Muslims were wrong. If our Muslim brothers get extra benefits, what is the harm? Should your brother get something, ought you to be pleased or displeased?—This is what he says in Hind Swaraj. To him, India’s past is not Hindu or Muslim but both. India was very good under the rule of Maharajas and Badshahs who were guided by Pandits and Maulvis. I myself consider it a horrible state but in Hind Swaraj he considers the government of Badshahs and Maulvis as very good government as compared to that of the British and equates that with those of Rajas and Pandits. But he even doesn’t condemn the caste system although he opposed untouchability in South Africa and in India too right from the time of his arrival in India in 1915. But this is not criticized in Hind Swaraj. All these things he believed would be left to private efforts—his own constructive programme, not government. Government should keep aloof. It is only through private efforts that people should be served. Peasants should be served by the Zamindars or landlords who should be their custodians. In factories, workers should be helped by the owners who should see themselves as their custodians. But in real life this was not sufficient, this was not going to draw the masses to national movement. Here then was the importance of Left and particularly of Jawaharlal Nehru. Right from 1928, he demanded not only independence, he also demanded that in independent India, peasant should get land, workers should get protection, women should get equal rights with men, and there should be total democracy with mass suffrage.

These demands were pushed in the Congress by Jawaharlal Nehru with the help of the Left and actually the Karachi resolution of 1931—which I strongly recommend all to read—it was emphasized that the state should pursue “neutrality” towards religions, women should have equal rights with men, peasants should get land and rent-relief, and the State should control the basic industries, indebtedness to moneylenders should be scaled down, etc., etc.

Now, without the Karachi resolution, without these promises, I don’t think there could have been that support for national movement which it obtained in 1930s and 1940s. In Civil-Disobedience Movement unprecedented number of peasants went to prison and lost their properties. Remember, going to prison in British rule was not the same as going to prison now; you lost your property, you lost everything, you couldn’t get employment, yet over hundred thousand people went to jail in the Civil-Disobedience movement of 1930. Many lost their lands, properties, everything. They were mostly poor. Unlike the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1921, Civil-Disobedience movement was the movement largely of the poor and that was the new thing. Once the movement took this form it became increasingly difficult for British rule to continue.

I want here to bring to your attention something which appeared in the Dawn, the Muslim League organ from pre-1947 days which comes out daily from Karachi. There was an article abstracted from it, which I read. In that article, the writer said that we have a problem in Pakistan our movement for Pakistan as a nation has no martyr, no hero. Because it never opposed the British rulers, it only opposed our fellow subjects (the Hindus). What shall we look to? Indeed those went to prison against British rule in what became Pakistan, they were Khudai Khidmatgars, Congressmen of the Punjab, nationalists of Sindh, and not the Pakistan leaders. Pakistan is, however, not alone in this problem. It shares it with those who are now in power in India.

The Hindu Mahasabha, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have the same psychological problem. The RSS was founded in 1925 and if you ask them what did you do for twenty two years [till 1947]? Why didn’t you join the National Movement and go to the prison? Why don’t you do something against the British if you are such great patriots? You ask the Hindu Mahasabha the same question. Savarkar in the Andamans gave an apology thus washing away his whole patriotic past saying he will not oppose British government. He never did so, he only opposed Muslims, propounding a two-nation theory even before Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

What is RSS doing now; It is looking for other figures like Bhagat Singh to count among its heroes! What Bhagat Singh has to do with the RSS, the man who in the night before execution wrote Why I am An Atheist, the man who said that if there can be any leader from the Congress he supports, it is JawaharLal Nehru. The man who wrote that Hindu communalism is worse than any other opponent of the National Movement, how can he be your hero! As for Vallabh Bhai Patel, do not you know that he always said that he was a close follower of Mahatma Gandhi?

Another hero—they claim—is Subhash Chandra Bose. Did Subash Chandra Bose ever say that there should be Hindu Rashtra? He even made Iqbal’s poem “Sare Jahan Se Achchha Hindostan Hamara” the National Anthem of the Indian National Army. He made Urdu and Hindi official languages of Azad Hind Fauj. Look at the name –Azad Hind Fauj! He said—Jai Hind; he never said Hindu Rashtra! RSS men never say ‘Jai Hind’, nor ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ the slogan Bhagat Singh used to employ. Before 1947 I was present at many Congress meetings and I remember that the meetings always started with the audience shouting—Inquilab Zindabad in homage to Bhagat Singh. So, it is wrong when our newspapers say that Bhagat Singh had been forgotten by the Congress or that Subhash Bose once praised the RSS. Serious biographies of Subhash Chandra Bose show that he never had any dealings with the RSS.

RSS heroes like Shyama Prasad Mukherjee or Deen Dayal Upadhyay did nothing against British rule. Why are you exhibiting the latter’s photographs in the JawaharLal Nehru Museum? What did he do in the national Movement? Where was he? Nowhere! Shayama Prasad Mukherjee was a minister in Bengal along with the Muslim League at the time of the Quit India movement (1942). He remained a minister. He never lifted his finger against British rule but only against Muslims. So the Hindutva forces can claim no hero in the National Movement. Their entire theory and entire beliefs are totally opposed to those of the National Movement. Who in the National Movement ever said “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan”? None, It was only Hindu Mahasabha! Who in the National Movement said “Hindu Raj Amar Rahe”? None It was only RSS! So, you had those slogans, then you say that you actually opposed the British government! Or is it that you really supported the British government because you tried to divide the National Movement; you tried to separate the Hindus and Muslims and so weaken the National Movement. You always raised the issue of communalism! The RSS men have not changed, they are the same! People say why does not the Prime Minister Modi issue a statement [on Akhlaq’s lynching]? I say what is the use that would be always hypocritical, so let him remain silent about Dadri!

I now turn to two things: Fight for Secular India and Fight for Prosperous India. These are the two objects for people of the nation. Since you are students of Aligarh Muslim University, I want you to remember August 1947. Aligarh had been described as the fortress of the Muslim League. We had insulted Abul Kalam Azad when he passed through the Aligarh railway station. What was to be our fate now? The first thing was that Nehru sent the Kumaon Regiment to protect the Aligarh Muslim University. But could it protect the whole district, when the whole of what is now Haryana was in flames? In Tappal, there was a massacre of Muslims. Muslim corpses were coming, to the morgue in our neighborhood from somewhere. All the time the Kumaon Regiment was trying to protect the city and the university with huge flares by which they could see a crowd at a distance at night. Any time the crowd could come. Only one man seemed to stood forth to prevent the destruction of this University and massacres of Muslims in western Uttar Pradesh, and that was Mahatma Gandhi. He was insulted when he went to Muslim refugee camps at Jama Masjid and he was insulted when he went to Hindu refugee camps! Day in and day out, he suffered insults. He went to Panipat trying to protect Muslims. On 13^th January 1948, he went on fast. And what were the demands of the fast? One was that Muslims must be protected and those people who had been leading mobs against Muslims must sign that they would not do such thing again. And there were names of RSS and Hindu Mahasabha leaders in his list. And Muslims should be allowed as have not gone to Pakistan to return to their homes so that refugees from Pakistan were being asked to vacate for Muslims. This was the first demand and you can see what a huge demand it was in the circumstances. The second demand was that Rs. fifty five crores, an immense amount at that time, should be paid to Pakistan because Pakistan officials had not received salaries for a month and India had withheld that pledged amount. Can you imagine a man going against his own government in favour of a foreign government? And when he was asked, he said I am as much an Indian as I am Pakistani. I belong to both countries!

When the fast began on 13 January 2015 all through Delhi the slogan was ‘Gandhi Murdabad’. There was a procession marching with such slogans towards Gandhi Ji’s prayer meetings. But on the third day of the fast JawaharLal Nehru addressed a meeting of ten thousand people in front of the Red Fort. I always ask who called that meeting? Did Patel call that meeting? Did Rajendra Prasad call it? Who had the courage to call it and face the crowd? And yet by the time Nehru had spoken the crowd was with him. And then within two further days there was a procession of a hundred thousand people in Delhi. Peasants of Aligarh, peasants of Meerut, peasants also from Muzaffar Nagar—perhaps fathers and grandfathers of some of those who participated the riots recently—were in that procession along with. Sweeper unions, tongawalas and factory workders. Thereafter crowds surrounded the houses of Hindu Mahasabha and RSS leaders forcing them to agree to sign pledges and bringing them practically by force to Gandhi Ji’s site of fast until all of them had so submitted. And when Gandhi Ji ended his fast, and the government paid fifty five crores of rupees to Pakistan, violence was over, almost simultaneously in both countries. So, you are not speaking of an ordinary man when you speak of Gandhi. We are speaking of a man of immense courage who didn’t care for his personal status or dignity for the larger cause. He was always walking barefoot in total dirt among the homeless victims but he never minded it. He would go again and again to both Hindu and Muslim refugee camps for giving his message that Hindu and Muslims should be brothers and sisters.

So, it has been such people who have made us a nation. Things didn’t fall of themselves from the heavens. What happened after independence, I would not go into in great details but shortly one must remember –To a Muslim audience it may not sound very great, but for India, it was an immense thing that the Hindu Code was legislated in 1955-56. Hindu women had no right to inheritance, they have now. They had now equal rights except in very few matters. It represented a total overthrow of Dharma Shastra and not through a coup but through a general election. The Congress (and the Communist Party) went into that election saying that women should have equal rights with men. Jan Sangh and Ram Rajya Parishad stood up for the Dharmashastra, and surely need to be asked today, why did you oppose the Hindu Code in 1950s? Don’t you think men and women should have equal rights? But they were totally rejected by the electorate—Jan Sangh, the pre-cursor of the BJP as well as Hindu Mahasabha and Ram Rajya Parishad. So, India became a democracy, it changed civil laws where men and women, at least 80 percent of population, were made equal though unfortunately unfavorable social customs continue, like dowry. And simultaneously came the agrarian reforms. Millions of peasants throughout India got land. UP once had of the most radical Zamindari Abolition Acts besides Kashmir but every state had such Acts. Finally came the ceilings legislations of 1960s and the construction of the Indian public sector. The basis of new India, with all its weaknesses that still remain, was thus laid in the 1950s and 1960s.

Coming to this university, when I was a student (1947-53), only 900 students were left in this university in 1949. This was a private university run by donations under the British government the total amount, of whose grant was a few lakhs. In 1951 the Indian government took over the finances of the university. They didn’t touch the organization of the university. The government would fund everything. Otherwise AMU would have been in the dustbin! I was a student in 1947, what a small university it was at the maximum, about 2500 students. Now, I don’t know what the current number is? 28,000… or more, with huge buildings and so on! It’s all the nation’s gift!

Well, the real thing is how the poor have fared? They haven’t fared very well. If you read an essay by Utsa Patnaik, The Republic of Hunger, you will see that until 1989 the per capita calorie intake continuously increased. Even in years of drought this was maintained by Food Corporation’s, operations subsidies and so on. Do you know what has happened after 1991? Calorie intake per capita declined! By 2003, it reached the level that it was under British rule. When Mr. Modi and Co. speak of capital inflow, or go to various countries where, they can give away billion dollars, as in Mongolia, they are only supporting the corporations. The RSS and Hindu Mahasabha, very much like Muslim League, never had an economic programme. The poor mean nothing to them; only the rich fund-givers are important. I read today in the newspaper that the upper castes, ‘of course’, support the BJP in Bihar [VidhanSabha election 2015]. The word “of course” I liked. Not only upper castes but upper classes support the BJP. Therefore, in order to rule they must continue to raise the communal issues, which is the only way in which they can continue to get votes. They are not the first to do so, the Nazis did it by raising the racial question in Germany. Golwalkar, the RSS guru, actually praised Hitler for his policy towards the Jews saying that same policy should be resorted to in India against Muslims. So, to keep up the anti-Muslim fervor is now the RSS watchword. No opposition to religious fanaticism i.e. Hindutva can be tolerated. Even an ordinary history text book which says that the Rigveda was compiled in 1500 BC—and by implication not in 8000 BC—is unacceptable. Therefore, what is happening today—the murders of Dabholkar, Pansare, and Kalburgi—is part of a pre-determined pattern: by threats they want to silence people. The Congress didn’t much care who served in the ICHR, ICSSR, JawaharLal Nehru Museum but RSS cares! Everywhere they are filling places with fanatics. Everywhere they are giving a totally wrong picture of Indian history and of Indian Constitution. Therefore, on the shoulders of the educated people in India or those who can answer them in print, on paper, in speech, a great responsibility rests today. A massacre of Muslims is not just an attack on Muslim community, it is an attack on India and large number of people are realizing it. Read Indian Express, or The Times of India, and other dailies, the realization is amply there on their pages every day. And I am very glad to see that in Hindi press too, they are realizing it. This is the time for us to forget our small grouses and grievances and stand up against the conspiracy of the BJP and RSS against the very “Idea of India”.

(This is a complete transcription of the lecture delivered by Professor Irfan Habib in the “Idea of India” Series at the Kennedy Hall, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh on October 7, 2015)

Affirmative action for Muslims is key, says Vice President Hamid Ansari

August 30, 2015

Courtesy: Press Information Bureau

State must correct the state of deprivation, exclusion and discrimination faced by India's largest minority community, Ansari says.

It is a privilege to be invited to address the 50th anniversary session of the All India Majlis-e-Mushawarat. Needless to say, and like many other compatriots, I have over the years followed in some measure the work of this consultative body.

The Mushawarat was formed in response to a perceived need to defend and protect the identity and dignity of the Muslim community in India in terms of the rights bestowed by the Constitution of India on the citizens of this land. This objective remains relevant though some of its ingredients may stand amplified or modified today.

The Muslims of India constitute a community of 180 million, amounting to a little over 14% of the population of the country. They are, after Indonesia, the second-largest national grouping of followers of Islam in the world. Their contribution to the civilisation and culture of Islam is in no need of commentary. They were an integral part of the freedom struggle against the British rule. They are dispersed all over the country, are not homogenous in linguistic and socio-economic terms and reflect in good measure the diversities that characterise the people of India as a whole.

The Independence of India in August 1947, and the events preceding and following it, cast a shadow of physical and psychological insecurity on Indian Muslims. They were made to carry, unfairly, the burden of political events and compromises that resulted in the Partition. The process of recovery from that trauma has been gradual and uneven, and at times painful. They have hesitatingly sought to tend to their wounds, face the challenges and seek to develop response patterns. Success has been achieved in some measure; much more, however, needs to be done.

In the past decade, work has also been done to delineate the contours of the problem.
The Sachar Committee Report of 2006 did this officially. It laid to rest the political untruth in some quarters about the Muslim condition and demonstrated that on most socio-economic indicators, they were on the margins of structures of political, economic and social relevance and their average condition was comparable to or even worse than the country's acknowledged historically most backward communities, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. It specified the development deficits of the majority of Muslims in regard to education, livelihood and access to public services and the employment market across the states.

In the same vein, Expert Group reports were prepared in 2008 on the need to develop a Diversity Index and establish an Equal Opportunity Commission.

Taken together, these and other studies bring forth sufficient evidence to substantiate the view that "inequality traps prevent the marginalised and work in favour of the dominant groups in society".

More recently the Kundu Report of September 2014, commissioned to evaluate the implementation of decisions taken pursuant to Sachar recommendations, has concluded that though "a start has been made, yet serious bottlenecks remain." It makes specific recommendations to remedy these. It asserts that "development for the Muslim minority must be built on a bed-rock of a sense of security."

It is evident from this compendium of official reports that the principal problems confronting India's Muslims relate to:

identity and security;

education and empowerment;

equitable share in the largesse of the state; and

fair share in decision making.

Each of these is a right of the citizen. The shortcomings in regard to each have been analysed threadbare. The challenge before us today is to develop strategies and methodologies to address them.

The default by the State or its agents in terms of deprivation, exclusion and discrimination (including failure to provide security) is to be corrected by the State; this needs to be done at the earliest and appropriate instruments developed for it. Political sagacity, the imperative of social peace, and public opinion play an important role in it. Experience shows that the corrective has to be both at the policy and the implementation levels; the latter, in particular, necessitates mechanisms to ensure active cooperation of the State governments.

They (Muslims) were an integral part of the freedom struggle against the British rule. They are dispersed all over the country, are not homogenous in linguistic and socio-economic terms and reflect in good measure the diversities that characterise the people of India as a whole.

The official objective of sab ka sath sab ke vikas is commendable; a pre-requisite for this is affirmative action (where necessary) to ensure a common starting point and an ability in all to walk at the required pace. This ability has to be developed through individual, social and governmental initiatives that fructify on the ground. Programmes have been made in abundance; the need of the hour is their implementation.

The foregoing pertains principally to governmental action or lack thereof. Equally relevant is the autonomous effort by the community itself in regard to its identified short comings. What has it done to redress the backwardness and poverty arising out of socio-economic and educational under-development? How adequate is the response in relation to the challenge?

A century back the lament was emotive:

Firqa-bandi hai kahein aur kahein zaatain hain
Kya zamaane main panaph-ne ki yahi baatain hain?

Today, we have to admit that both "firqa bandi" and "zaat" identity is a ground reality. The imagery of Mahmood and Ayaz standing shoulder to shoulder in the same line is confined to the mosque; so are the injunctions on punctuality, cleanliness and discipline. Each of these is violated beyond the confines of the congregational prayer. Corrective strategies therefore have to be sought on category-differentiation admissible in Indian state practice and hitherto denied to Muslims (scheduled caste status) or inadequately admitted (segments of OBC status). Available data makes it clear that a high percentage of Muslims falls into these two broad categories.

It is evident that significant sections of the community remain trapped in a vicious circle and in a culturally defensive posture that hinders self advancement. Tradition is made sacrosanct but the rationale of tradition is all but forgotten. Jadeediyat or modernity has become a tainted expression. Such a mindset constrains critical thinking necessary both for the affirmation of faith and for the wellbeing of the community. The instrumentality of adaptation to change – Ijtihad – is frowned upon or glossed over. Forgotten is its purpose, defined by the late Sheikh Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi as 'the ability to cope with the ever-changing pattern of life's requirements'. Equally relevant is Imam Al-Ghazali's delineation of the ambit of Maslaha – protection of religion, life, intellect, lineage and property. Both provide ample theoretical space for focused thinking on social change without impinging on the fundamentals of faith.

It is here that the role of Mushawarat becomes critical. As a grouping of leading and most respected minds of the community, it should go beyond looking at questions of identity and dignity in a defensive mode and explore how both can be furthered in a changing India and a changing world. It should widen its ambit to hitherto unexplored or inadequately explored requirements of all segments of the community particularly women, youth, and non-elite sections who together constitute the overwhelming majority.

This effort has to be made in the context of Indian conditions and the uniqueness of its three dimensions: plural, secular and democratic. Some years back a close observer had posed the problem:
"To deny discrimination and pretend all is well is to fly in the face of facts. But agitation against discrimination can arouse the very emotions that foster discrimination. The solution of the Muslim problem lies in a resolution of this dilemma by devising a form and content of agitation which heals old wounds and inflicts no new ones. This resolution can be achieved by regarding discrimination as what it is; a problem of Indian democracy to be resolved within the framework of national integration."

This would necessitate sustained and candid interaction with fellow citizens without a syndrome of superiority or inferiority and can be fruitful only in the actual implementation of the principles of justice, equality and fraternity inscribed in the Preamble of the Constitution and the totality of Fundamental Rights. The failure to communicate with the wider community in sufficient measure has tended to freeze the boundaries of diversities that characterise Indian society. Efforts may be made to isolate the community; such an approach should be resisted.

The Indian experience of a large Muslim minority living in secular polity, however imperfect, could even be a model for others to emulate.

One last word. The world of Islam extends beyond the borders of India and Muslims here, as in other lands, can benefit from the best that may be available in the realm of thought and practice. Some years back I had occasion to read the Algerian-French philosopher Mohammed Arkoun and was impressed by his view that our times compel us to rethink modernity so that, as he put it, "critical thought, anchored in modernity but criticising modernity itself and contributing to its enrichment through recourse to the Islamic example" could open up a new era in social movements.

Would future generations forgive us for failing to explore these options?

"Verily never will God change the condition of a people until they change it themselves with their own souls."

And so the task before Mushawarat in the foreseeable future should remain a threefold one: to sustain the struggle for the actualisation in full measure of legal and constitutional rights, to do so without being isolated from the wider community, and to endeavour at the same time to adapt thinking and practices to a fast changing world.

I thank Dr. Zafarul Islam Khan sahib for inviting me today. Khuda hafiz.

Jai Hind.
(Key Note Address of Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari delivered at the 50th anniversary Celebrations of the All India Majlis-e-Mushawarat at the Indian Islamic Centre, New Delhi on August 31, 2015)

Talibanisation of Kashmir

July 7, 2015

Post-Kargil, imported mujahideen are pedalling a Talibanised Islam in the Valley. And succeeding in good measure, thanks to the unholy nexus between the BJP-led government at the Centre and an unscrupulous National Conference in the state

There has been a significant change not only in character of the movement but in the mood of the Kashmiri people post argil. The reason for this is the even deeper and greater sense of alienation and outright bitterness among the local people – in the Valley, in Jammu and in Ladakh. As far as militancy is concerned, there has been a sharp decline in the Kashmiri-speaking people component among the militants.

The actions of the militants, too, signal this sharp shift. Earlier, the victims of militants used to be civilians — soft targets. There used to be harassment and extortion of the local population. This has stopped. Today, post-Kargil, the attacks are directly on the army and BSF headquarters.

The militant activities are more dare devilish, more direct, more desperate in a way. A group has emerged that calls itself Fidayeen (Lovers of God). Unlike the activities of earlier militant groups, their targets are not civilians but the army and security forces. There is now no extortion from the local
population, distinct attempts are being made to ingratiate them and win their sympathy.

The Kashmiri movement has, as a result, and very unfortunately, been virtually taken over by outsiders. The Jamaat-e-Islami has never had any faith in the Kashmiri brand of a more liberal Islam. A more standardised version of Islam is being offered to the local population that is completely out of sync with the region, with Kashmiriyat, a characteristic that typified the movement before.

This weakness of the Kashmiri movement that is fast-losing its Kashmiri identity — and, for this a variety of factors are responsible — is more than compensated on the other side. RSS and even more extreme brands of Hindu nationalism are gaining currency among Hindus in Jammu, as elsewhere in the country.

What are the factors responsible for this hardening of position on both sides? The sham of the recent elections is one of the most significant contributory factors. It is a sorry tale for any country that is proud to call itself a democracy. Elections were far from free. Official figures themselves reveal a fast-declining rate of voter participation, not only among Kashmiri Muslims, but also Pandit migrants and Jammu Hindus. What does this signify but increasing alienation?

In its report published on October 6, 1999, The Times of India revealed that the opinion expressed by me on the recently conducted elections in the state were shared by a team of four IAS officers sent as independent observers to the state. I quote from their report: “Elections were neither free nor fair but full of violence. The electorate was coerced by the security forces to vote. The presiding officer at several polling booths corroborated the charges of coercion made by the voters. The observers found even minors in the queue and several mobile voters”.

The observers saw matadors carrying women voters. They intercepted these matadors. The four senior IAS officers made a demand to the EC to countermand the elections. These demands were not even considered by the EC, while in states like Bihar and elsewhere, more prompt action was taken.

There has been a significant change in the character of the movement in Kashmir with the presence of a militant outfit like Fidayeen (Lovers of God). The actions of the militants are more sympathetic to the locals and are targeting the Indian security forces

The conduct of the election commissioner (GV Krishnamurthy) on a visit to the state was blatantly partisan, when he commented that the “conducting of the elections was the answer to militancy.” The EC would have performed a far more signal and patriotic service to Kashmiris, residents of Jammu and
the whole country if he had simply concentrated on ensuring that the conduct of the elections was ‘genuinely free and fair’.

The boycott call by militants and a heavy presence of the military has been a constant factor in the state since the 1996 elections. How come then, that given these constants in the last three elections, there has been such a sharp decline in voting percentages this time?

Look at the official figures. During the 1996 parliamentary elections, in the Srinagar city segment, 35 per cent of the electorate voted; this was down to 30 per cent in 1998 and touched an all-time low of 12 per cent in 1999. The story is similar for Anantnag. In 1996, 50 per cent of the voters came out; in 1998, this was down to 28 per cent; but in 1999 the voting percentage dropped to 14 per cent. In Baramulla, while 41 per cent of the voters came out to cast their vote in 1996; the turnout was the same in 1998, but this time it plummeted to 27 per cent. If one goes into further detail and scrutinises figures for the Srinagar segment that has recorded 12 per cent of voters, we see that the Charar-e-Sharif and Badgaon segments recorded 45.50 and 45 per cent of voting respectively while Srinagar city registered barely 3–5 per cent votes. The extent of voter disillusionment or alienation can well be gauged from these statistics.

Jammu and Kashmir also recorded the highest rates of invalid votes anywhere in the country; EC statistics tell us there were 9-12 per cent invalid votes in the state. It is worth analysing the factors responsible for such a low voting percentage and high rate of invalid votes in the state.

As stated before, the boycott call by militants, the heavy and obtrusive army presence, the acute disillusionment of the Kashmiri people over the Kargil episode were the main factors.

But an additional factor was the acute disillusionment of the Hindu migrant voters in the Valley and Hindu Pandits in the Jammu region with the BJP. This is evident from the number of Pandits who voted for the BJP. The BJP vote in the Jammu-Poonch region fell from 7,90,000 in 1998 to 2,90,000 this time. This means that only one-third of Pandit voters who supported the BJP last time extended their support to the same party this time. In Udhampur, too, the Pandit vote for the BJP declined from 5,23,000 votes in 1998 down to 1,94,000 this year.

If there is such a sharp decline of votes within one year, from a particular segment with a particular party, what does it show? Obviously that, completely disillusioned with the BJP, which is also the ruling party at the Centre, Pandits have turned away from it. The BJP has led them up the garden path with false promises.

In the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, the percentage of Muslim voters is high. Within the Jammu region, too, 30 per cent of the electorate is Muslim.

With an open alliance between the BJP and NC, is it really believable that seats with a high domination of Muslim voters would so willingly back the NC’s collaboration with the BJP? There is hardly a constituency anywhere in India where Muslim votes are sizeable in number and where they have wholeheartedly supported the BJP. So, it is hardly believable that they would do so in Jammu and Kashmir.

The disillusioned local population, both Muslim and Hindu, were looking for an alternative, a secular outlet to channelise their protest against the unholy nexus between the BJP and the National Conference

In short, both the Hindus and Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir are completely disillusioned with the ruling parties — the National Conference and the BJP.

There was blatant coercion of voters at the voting stage and subsequent manipulation of the results. My opinion is corroborated by EC observer’s report.

In the midst of all this, secular parties, particularly the main opposition party, the Congress, that had converted secularism into a mantra all over the country, was conspicuous in that it put up only a nominal fight in the state. Since nothing can be expected from the opportunistic politics and regime of Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference and the communal worldview of the BJP, secular forces within the country must take their share of blame for the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.

Why did they betray the interests of Kashmiri Muslims, Jammu Hindus and the migrant Pandits living in the Valley? This is not what secularism is about. They had a wonderful opportunity during the last elections to intervene. They not only squandered an opportunity for themselves but have also compromised the national interest. The disillusioned local population, both Muslim and Hindu, were looking for an alternative, a secular outlet to channelise their protest against the unholy nexus between the BJP and the National Conference.

The National Conference was a regional party which should have necessarily pitted itself against the insensitive and centrist politics of the Indian state. But, today, it has willingly been reduced to a mere tool of the BJP. It has completely lost the raison d’être of its existence. The Jammu Hindus, who were against Kashmiri Muslim domination, had under certain circumstances arising out of this, supported the BJP in the past. With the BJP shamefully allying with the NC, the raison d’être of this support, too, has also been completely eroded.

Given this state of a huge political vacuum and accumulated discontent what happens? Like I said before, it was the ideal situation for a secular formation with civil liberties, human rights perspective to intervene.

In its absence, the local population has been pushed to the wall and a fresh lease of life has been given to militant activities. Without local support, no sophisticated weapons, no armed training can help militants succeed in any region.

This choice has, in my opinion at least, been forced on both the Kashmiri people and the people of Jammu. In 1996, when Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference came before the people, despite his past record, the people were willing to give him another chance. But over the past three years, his rule has been the worst ever, extremely corrupt, allowing no avenues or channels of protest.

All this must be seen in the context of heightened ‘national’ and ‘patriotic’ interest on the territory of the state during the Kargil conflict. The earlier ‘conviction’ and ‘assertion’ of the Indian authorities that, after Kargil, militancy would collapse has been disproved comprehensively.

Indian arrogance and insensitivity was manifest throughout the Kargil conflict? The Indian media, most of it, swooped down on Kargil. But none mentioned the people of the state, the people of Jammu and Kashmir, where the war was being fought. Little mention was made then of the displaced persons either. This failure of the Indian media to even cursorily look at the plight of the Kashmiri people, with an ongoing struggle for democratic rights for decades, in my mind, constitutes a significant omission on the part of the Indian media.

Conversely, there was a studied detachment among the local people at the war being waged. Unlike earlier occasions, there was no enthusiasm for the Indian army, throughout the operation, no donations for the jawans were collected, no blood banks held here. No state government ministers, with a few exceptions, even visited the front at the time.

I had made a special visit to Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee on this question. This visit was an attempt to apprise the Indian political leadership with the issues crucial to the people of the Valley, the Jammu region and Ladakh. The Shia Muslims who live in Kargil have a continuing disenchantment and discontent with Pakistan across the LOC, so even tactically it would have been wise of India to address their grievances. Though I was given assurances during my meeting with the Prime Minister, nothing has resulted.

The Indian government and the Indian people have consistently refused to address the grievances of the state. There is the struggle for Kashmiriyat. There has also been the expression of Jammu Hindus against Kashmiri Muslim domination. There has also been a movement for autonomy within the Ladakh region in which Kargil falls.

For a month or so, things were silent after Kargil. The Pakistan-sponsored militancy movement remained silent. Local disillusionment with Pakistan, US and UN was also simmering. Pakistan had to do something to keep the movement alive. But what helped Pakistan significantly was the chief minister of the state, Farooq Abdullah’s coming out in open support of the BJP. At an RSS-sponsored function, he sang praises for the organisation and went to the extent of declaring that “the RSS is the most patriotic organisation”.

The political vacuum, the issue of acute discontent and disenchantment, during Kargil and post-Kargil especially at election-time, was unfortunately not addressed by any Indian political party, not even the so-called ‘secular’ Congress.

The biggest betrayal of the state was in fact by the ‘secular’ Congress, as we can expect nothing from the BJP outside its self-declared divisive agenda. How interested the Congress party is in reflecting the genuine aspirations of the people of the state can be seen from the fact that the party had one member in Parliament and another in the Assembly. It got rid of both leaders, including Mufti Mohammed Sayeed just before the elections simply for suggesting dialogue with the militants.

Has the party forgotten that during the last Congress government, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s cabinet colleague, Bhuvanesh Chaturvedi (then minister of state in the PM’s office), had, around 1995, offered unconditional talks with militants in Kashmir? How do political parties accept a resolution of the Kashmir issue without having such a dialogue?

If the government can talk to Naga leaders in Paris, and other people ‘without conditions’ why not in Kashmir? This was the issue on which Mufti Mohammed Sayeed felt let down and resigned, and the Congress put up a token fight during the recent elections in the state.

The failure of secular forces to give an adequate response to the ground-level reality in Jammu and Kashmir was most visible in the failure of established political parties and NGOs and civil liberties groups to campaign for Saifuddin Soz who stood as an independent. It was Soz’s single vote on which the BJP’s central government had fallen.

None of the national secular parties have raised a single voice against Farooq Abdullah’s support to the BJP. There has been not a word of disapproval for this open and unprincipled collaboration. The Congress goes to town criticising Sharad Pawar and Mulayam Singh for their individual “hobnobbing with the BJP”. But here is a leader who is openly allying with a communal force and there are no comments, no condemnations, no interventions from the top Congress leadership.

Former information and broadcasting minister, Pramod Mahajan was blatant about this cosy relationship before elections were held. On a visit to the state, when asked to comment on the prospects of the BJP-led NDA coming to power, he said that the “six seats from Jammu and Kashmir (all these are seats over which the National Conference had claim) are already in the NDA basket.”

How can we complain against the BJP and their agenda? Their agenda is clear and open, as is the Jamaat-e-Islami’s. But Farooq Abdullah’s open support to both these ideologies has been ignored and allowed to pass by secular parties. This is a great act of omission on their part.

There is every evidence of a serious comeback of militancy in the state. If militants can get at the very nerve centre of the Indian security system, the army, it means they are back. But what needs to be emphasised is that it is out of sheer desperation that local sentiments are being exploited like this. This is the only way they can express their resentment and that is why there is this silent but growing support for militant activities.

The political vacuum, if unaddressed, will be filled by extremists on both sides. The process has been assisted by lack of secular commitment on the part of Indians to the state. In Jammu, the BJP’s failure to meet the aspiration of the Hindu section of the population, will, soon give birth to outfits that are more extremist than the BJP even.

The local Kashmiri leadership, too, is isolated and cannot be heard. Shabbir Shah is a leader who had projected a more tolerant ideology but whose voice was hardly heard in between. Soon after the recent elections, he and others were jailed by the National Conference without any charge. Why?

Personally, I am not inspired by All-Party Hurriyat Conference, especially after they accepted the leadership of the Jamaat-e-Islami’s Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who is openly pro-Pakistan. Yasin Mallik, who once showed so much potential as the young and daring leader of the secular JKLF, has also fallen in with the official Hurriyat line. None of these Kashmiri leaders, by the way, condemned Pakistan’s conduct during Kargil and that I think was a major failure on all their part.

India is obsessed with blocking the Kashmir issue internationally, outwitting Pakistan etc. Why are we not concerned with trying to solve problems within our control? If we regard the people of the state as our own, why do we not espouse or display any desire to hear their legitimate grievances and thereafter attempt solutions?

I now fear the political eclipse and redundancy of saner voices such as mine in such a situation. Physically, too, I am vulnerable. So far, I have been able to communicate with both sides in the dispute. But with the complete shrinking of space for sane and secular dialogue, I fear that with hardening, extremist stances on both sides, I will lose my space completely.

A far stronger figure, like Gandhiji, found himself redundant in 1947 and eliminated in 1948; what chances has a far smaller man like me under the circumstances?

Just like the RSS and the BJP have assumed the sole monopoly on the Indian point of view, the Kashmiri protest movement has increasingly been epitomised by a Pakistani Muslim fundamentalist flavour. On both sides, extremists have taken over. The military coup has not helped matters but generated further confusion.

A very stable and dangerous triangle has emerged after the last elections.

The three points in the triangle are Farooq Abdullah, the BJP (driven by the extremist RSS) and the Hurriyat (now openly supported by a pro-Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami). While the three points of this triangle appear to oppose each other, they are in fact supporting each other. Hindu communalism supports Muslim communalism and an opportunistic National Conference makes political gain for itself, crucially dependant as it is on both the extremes. No points ever threaten each other; they depend on the other for their own survival.

Archived from Communalism Combat, November 1999, Year 7 No. 53, Cover Story 1

Tyeb Mehta – A tribute

May 30, 2015

Tyeb Mehta, one of India’s most tal-ented and celebrated artists, passed away in Mumbai on July 2. He had been battling ill health for some years.

Born in Kapadwanj, Gujarat, the 83-year-old artist lived in Mumbai for most of his life apart from brief but crucial spells in London, New York and Santiniketan.

Tyeb Mehta was an artist of quiet humility but was vocal and public in his stand against communal violence and in his support of human rights and the freedom of expression. His work was notable for its commitment to the ideals of equality and freedom.

When he was 22, India was partitioned and his street was also divided, reflecting the reality of a ravaged subcontinent. He was unable to travel the relatively short distance to his workplace. In the bloodbath that followed, he was witness to a horrifying incident in which a young man was lynched. This was an image that would stay with him for the rest of his life. "The crowd beat him to death and smashed his head with stones," he said in an interview with art critic Nancy Adajania. "I was sick with fever for days afterwards and the image still haunts me today. I am paralysed by the sight of blood, violence of any kind, even shouting…"

Sixteen years ago he drew by hand the huge backdrop for SAHMAT’s Artists Against Communalism cultural sit-in at the Shivaji Park in Mumbai in 1992. Against this backdrop, Sitara Devi and Astad Deboo danced and Hariprasad Chaurasia played the flute. Despite his increasing physical frailty in recent years, he came out to join the protest at Mumbai’s Jehangir Art Gallery in May 2007 after the BJP attacked the student review in the art department of the MS University in Vadodara.

For us at Sabrang, Tyeb Mehta and his family have been staunch supporters of our work and he was generous in donating his work to support our efforts against communal forces.

We join the wider art fraternity in paying tribute to a fine artist who spoke out during dark times.

– Editors

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2009 Year 15 No.142/ Tribute 3

Demonising Muslims

May 25, 2015

American Christians have deep-rooted views of Islam as a violent, demonic religion

by Thomas Kidd

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 spawned a spate of conservative Christian reflections on the essential characteristics of Islam. Figures from Christian Broadcasting Network’s Pat Robertson to Colorado Springs pastor Ted Haggard pointed to the inherently violent nature of Islam. Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell said on 60 Minutes that "Muhammad was a terrorist", a glib comment that set off riots among Asian Muslims and earned him a fatwa from an Iranian cleric calling for Falwell’s assassination. As recently as 2006, even Pope Benedict XVI generated a major controversy by making disparaging comments about Islam’s violent history. One might think that these Christians’ views simply represent angry reactions to the horrific violence of 9/11 and ongoing jihadist terror. But a closer look reveals that American Christians have deep-rooted views of Islam as a violent, demonic religion.

Pastor Aaron Burr Sr (the president of the College of New Jersey at Princeton and the father of the politician Aaron Burr who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel) expressed widespread Anglo-American Protestant sentiment in a 1756 sermon in which he discussed "the false prophet and grand impostor Mahomet". According to Burr, the early medieval period represented a dark night for the Christian church for two primary reasons: the rise of the Catholic papacy and the spread of Islam. Muhammad brought Arabia under his control by violence, as he taught his followers that Islam should be "propagated by the sword and that it is meritorious to die for it". Misery, woe and ignorance followed in Muhammad’s wake and compounded the sufferings of god’s true church in the world.

Burr, like most prominent Anglo-American theologians of that time, believed that the advent of Islam had been predicted in the Bible, particularly in the Book of Revelations. Most conservative American Christians now think that the prophecies of Revelation point to future events but early Americans saw many of the prophecies as already fulfilled in history. Burr shared the common opinion that Revelation 9:2-3, which speaks of locusts coming out of a smoky abyss, was fulfilled with the coming of Muhammad. Like most colonial observers, Burr saw Muhammad as the worst kind of religious "impostor", who pretended to have received revelations from god in order to gain power.

Obeisance with the Holy Koran

Since the colonial era, conservative American Christians have maintained a conflicted attitude towards Muslims. They have portrayed Islam as having malevolent origins but they have also kept faith that Muslims would eventually convert to Christianity. Despite the overwhelming difficulties of Muslim evangelisation, anecdotal accounts of Muslims becoming Christians were steady-sellers in colonial and antebellum America. Probably the most famous Muslim conversion narrative in the 19th century was the account of Abdallah and Sabat, told in a sermon by British pastor Claudius Buchanan. This compelling, tragic tale of the Arabian friends’ journey to faith in Christ was printed in various forms throughout Britain and America from the early 19th to the early 20th century.

Conservative Christians have hardly lost their taste for Muslim conversion stories, as demonstrated by books like Bilquis Sheikh’s I Dared to Call Him Father (1978). In this autobiography, Sheikh, a Pakistani noblewoman, recounted her conversion to Christianity following a series of dreams and visions about Jesus. The book defined the ideal Muslim conversion for a generation of Christians. It has been translated into many different languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Finnish and Amharic (a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia), and it remains in print today.

Despite their hopes for Muslim conversions, American Christians have also anticipated that Islam would meet its demise in the end times when Jesus would return to earth and establish his kingdom. In early America, many Protestants believed that Islam and Roman Catholicism would be destroyed simultaneously. Some even saw the two as the eastern and western Antichrists. The expectation of Roman Catholicism and Islam’s downfall and the imminent return of Christ led to bold date setting in the early 19th century, capped by the forecasts of William Miller and his followers who expected the end to come in 1843.

Jesus’s failure to appear at the appointed hour helped to transform standard Anglo-American interpretations of Bible prophecy and by the early 20th century "dispensational" theology had become dominant in conservative circles. Dispensationalists began to anticipate the re-establishment of the state of Israel where the final battle between good and evil would transpire. The founding of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent struggle between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states has become the frame for many conservative Christians’ interpretation of prophetic scenarios.

There remains a common expectation among American Christians of Islam’s coming downfall. Many now interpret the mysterious description of the attack by "Gog and Magog" against Israel in Ezekiel 38 and 39 as forecasting a time when Arab Muslims would unite with Russians to destroy Israel. Their attack would be miraculously foiled in a hail of fire and brimstone and this event would set the stage for the rise of an atheistic Antichrist who would launch a genocidal campaign against the Jews. This would lead to the final battle of Armageddon and the return of Christ to earth.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 inaugurated a sharply heightened interest in Islam among American Christians and in time we may also see that it generated lasting departures in prophetic interpretation, as some conservatives have begun to put Islam squarely at the centre of end times theolog

The attacks of September 11, 2001 inaugurated a sharply heightened interest in Islam among American Christians and in time we may also see that it generated lasting departures in prophetic interpretation, as some conservatives have begun to put Islam squarely at the centre of end times theology. Some have even begun to argue that the messianic Mahdi expected in some Muslims’ beliefs actually represents the Antichrist.

Despite some post-9/11 novelties, the history of conservative American Christian thought regarding Islam is largely a story of continuity, not change. Although they have often seen Islam as an inherently violent, malevolent religion, traditional Christians have also maintained persistent hopes of mass Muslim conversions to Christianity. Those who did not convert would ultimately fall before a returning Christ in the last days. Although the details may have changed over time, their convictions about the end of days have helped assure many American Christians that their god, the father of Jesus, would triumph in the end.

(Thomas Kidd is associate professor of history at Baylor University and senior fellow at Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion. His latest book is Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots, Basic Books, 2011. This article was published on History News Network on March 15, 2009.)

Courtesy: History News Network; http://hnn.us

Killing for Peace

May 25, 2015

The violent fanaticism on display in Pakistan is too close for comfort

Javed Anand

There’s nothing a practising Muslim ever does without the invocation: “Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim (In the name of Allah, the most compassionate, the most merciful)”. About Prophet Muhammad he will tell you that Allah sent him to earth as “rahmat al il alamin (mercy unto mankind)”. The very word Islam means peace, you will be told. Allah, Prophet Muhammad, Islam, is all about peace, compassion, mercy. Get it?

No doubt Mumtaz Qadri, the assassin of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer, believes himself to be a pious Muslim. No doubt bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim preceded the bullets he pumped into a person he was trained, paid and sworn to protect, risking his life if need be. No doubt he committed cold-blooded murder in the name of “Allah, the most compassionate, the most merciful” in defence of a religion that means peace and in honour of the prophet (hurmat-e-rasool) who is meant to be mercy unto all mankind. Killing for peace? I just don’t get it.

Killing for peace? I just don’t get it.

Could it be that despite his self-perception, Qadri was actually under Satan’s evil influence? Banish the thought. For the “respected ulema” of Pakistan the man is a ghazi (holy warrior) now. (In Islam, a ghazi enjoys as high a status as a shaheed, or martyr.) If we happen to think otherwise, we too are blasphemers, kafirs, ‘wajib-ul-qatl (fit to be killed)’.

Killing may not be your or my idea of promoting peace but according to the “respected ulema” of Pakistan, you better believe it, that’s Islam. Read the joint statement issued by 500 “maulanas” from the Jamaat-e-Ahl-e-Sunnat Pakistan (JASP) which also issued a death threat to anyone who dared lead or even participate in the namaaz-e-janaza (funeral prayer) for Taseer: “The punishment for blasphemy against the prophet is only death as per the holy book [Koran], Sunnah [sayings and deeds of Prophet Muhammad], consensus of Muslim opinion and explanations by the ulema… this brave person [Qadri] has maintained the 1,400 years of Muslim tradition and has held the heads of 1.5 billion Muslims of the world high with pride.” No, you messiahs of murder, count me out.

Ironically, this very Barelvi sect from among the subcontinent’s Muslims had thus far been seen as Pakistan’s great big hope for peace, a counterforce waiting to be deployed against the Deobandis, the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Ahl-e-Hadith, all of whom are guilty of injecting intolerance, extremism and terrorism into Islam. But a single murderous deed done by a “ghazi” has brought together Pakistan’s mutually warring “ulema” on a common platform. Whatever their other disagreements, they stand together in their worship of violence and contempt of the dissenting voice.

The credit for this unprecedented unholy alliance goes to the Jamaat-ud Dawah (JuD), another name for the terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) which among numerous other heinous acts is responsible for the 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai and India. As evident from its very well attended rally in Lahore (on January 16 and 17) under the banner of the Tehreek-e-Hurmat-e-Rasool (Movement for the Honour of the Prophet), the JuD, the Deobandis and the Barelvis jointly pronounced a death sentence on anyone calling for change in Pakistan’s infamous blasphemy laws.

Such madness in our immediate neighbourhood is in itself sufficient cause for concern. More worrisome is the fact that the roots and trunks of Pakistan’s major religious outfits lie in India. Deobandis and Barelvis owe their name to Deoband and Bareilly, both of which are towns in Uttar Pradesh. The Ahl-e-Hadith was birthed on Indian soil; so did Maududi found his Jamaat-e-Islami in undivided India. And each one of them today has far greater reach within the country than they had at the time of partition.

Why is it that since the unpardonable murder of Taseer, not one Indian leader of consequence from any of these outfits has spoken a word against the outrage? My Urdu-speaking Muslim friends from Mumbai tell me this is equally true of Urdu newspapers with the honourable exception of The Sahafat Daily. This conspiracy of silence, though shocking, is not surprising. Each one of them preaches that the punishment for blasphemy, apostasy, heresy, is death in an Islamic state and complete social ostracism from the entire community where Islam is not wedded to power.

Fed such poisonous brew, the ummah may be forgiven for missing out on finer details. In secular India some years ago, the Raza Academy (a supposedly more tolerant Barelvi group) threatened to burn Taslima Nasreen alive if she dared come to Mumbai. In 2008 the Urdu press in Hyderabad poured scorn on the leaders and activists of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) for their failure to kill her when they had the chance to do so.

“Educated Muslims have no choice but to get out of the clutches of the ulema,” opined a Muslim woman on a Google group last week. “If this is Islam, count me out,” wrote a Muslim male.

How do Muslims respond to the growing Islamophobia across the globe when the entire galaxy of “ulema” proclaims murder from the housetops? “Educated Muslims have no choice but to get out of the clutches of the ulema,” opined a Muslim woman on a Google group last week. “If this is Islam, count me out,” wrote a Muslim male.

So here’s the choice before educated Muslims. Opting out of Islam altogether or discovering that an Islam other than that of the “ulema” is possible. But to discover this other Islam, you need the sensibilities of a Farid Esack, a South African Islamic theologian whose moral and ethical integrity is evident from his statement: “If a choice has to be made between violence towards the text [holy scripture] and textual legitimisation of violence against real people then I would be comfortable to plead guilty to charges of violence against the text… Isn’t theology essentially about god? Yes, it is about god but my theology is about a god that is essentially just and compassionate.”

The time has come for a fatwa against the fanatics.

Here is the Link to the original sabrang website where the story can also be read

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