Don’t blame Rabri, Laloo

March 31, 1999

No mainline political party, including the Rashtriya Janata Dal, is really relevant to Jehanabad’s politics of bloody massacres

Home minister, L.K. Advani has made this point repeatedly: the rule of law does not prevail in Bihar. When he says this he possibly reflects his party’s political position on the ruling state regime of Rabri Devi–Laloo Prasad Yadav. Which is that the regime itself comprises lawless, if not unlawful elements and is, therefore, incapable of either upholding or enforcing the rule of law in the state. In the wake of the recent Jehanabad massacres, Advani and his party have become all the more convinced about their argument. But it would be a tragedy (probably no worse than the massacres themselves) if we were to get carried away by the argument and seek to find an answer to the curse of Jehanabad by focussing on the character of the state government.

This is because no mainline political party, including Laloo Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, is really relevant to the politics of Jehanabad. As is quite apparent, the bloody corpse count being done by two outlawed outfits in this deadly game of political one–up–man–ship, does not leave any scope for parliamentary politics. Of the two groups, one is the Ranvir Sena, a private militia of upper caste landowners, and the other is the Maoist Coordination Committee, a so–called militant organisation of the dispossessed lower castes. The very fact that the two are mobilising and nurturing their respective constituencies by mass murders proves that extreme violence has become acceptable to the supporters of the warring groups. In this situation, mainline democratic politics have become redundant.

Let’s first look at why Jehanabad is a special problem even in problem–ridden Bihar. Located to the southwest of Patna, Jehanabad district was created following the reorganisation of Patna and Gaya districts. It has no industry to talk of, but agriculturally it is well endowed. The land is fertile (part of the Gangetic plains) and is supported by the Sone irrigation system. Of course, the neglect of infrastructure has made this irrigation system non–functional in many parts of the district. The population is dependent on agriculture, but the land’s bounty has remained stagnant, and this makes the strife for land quite sharp.

On top of this, in a caste–ridden society, the caste divide in Jehanabad is particularly acute. The preponderant castes are Bhumihars, upper–caste land–owning farmers, Yadavas, politically assertive intermediate caste marginal farmers, and Dalits, landless lower caste peasants. A peculiar feature about Jehanabad is the high concentration of Dalits — in fact, it is the highest in Bihar. The sharp caste division has made Jehanabad a fertile zone for experimenting with extreme politics. One of the initial extreme leaders of Jehanabad was Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, a sadhu who got drawn to the communist movement and founded the Bihar Pradesh Kisan Sabha. He remains one of the revered figures of Bihar communists.

The communists were able to strike roots quite early in the region. In fact, the CPI was quite popular among the Bhumihars to begin with as the party’s leadership came from this relatively educated upper caste. But the honeymoon was brief — once the communists took up the demand for minimum wages and share–cropping rights, the land–owning Bhumihars felt alienated. As long as the CPI was organising movements against the zamindars, the land-owning sections felt drawn to it, but once the focus moved to themselves, it became a different story. By the early sixties, the Yadavas became the vanguard of the CPI.

By the seventies, politics began taking a violent turn in Jehanabad. The CPI was furiously opposed by the Bhumihars and a measure of desperation crept in among them when despite their opposition, the CPI was able to send Yadavas to the Lok Sabha — Ram Ashrey Prasad Singh, a CPI leader belonging to the Yadava caste, was the main success story. The notorious King Mahendra, a Bhumihar Congress leader who patronised criminals and specialised in booth–capturing, grew in opposition to the CPI. Subsequently, there was Sardar Krishna Singh and other Bhumihar toughies. The ground, in other words, was being laid for a higher level of political violence in Jehanabad in comparison to the adjoining areas.

The Yadavas, unfortunately, were found wanting in their attitude to the castes lower to them — the most backward castes like Kahars (palanquin bearers) and Mallahs (boatmen) and, of course, the scheduled castes. By and large, the Yadavas did to the lower castes what the higher castes did to them. The Dalits were oppressed, denied minimum wages, and their women routinely violated by both the upper and the intermediate castes.

Culturally, however, this region was different from north Bihar. The Brahminical varna system did not have the kind of cultural sanction as it did north of the Ganga. Acknowledgement of upper caste ‘supremacy’ could be obtained here only under compulsion.

The combination of the Yadava attitude — or roughly speaking, the CPI’s politics — and upper caste oppression created conditions for the growth of still more extreme politics: in the main, it led to the growth of the IPF, a Marxist–Leninist formation which mobilised the low castes and vowed to extract peasant rights by the power of the gun. Subsequently, the M–L groups splintered, some joined parliamentary politics, while some, like the MCC, became very ruthless and barbaric in pursuit of their theory of annihilation of class enemies. Today, there are charges of the MCC behaving like a mercenary army whose ‘services’ have been bought by political parties from time to time.

It’s a measure of the nature of politics in this region of Bihar that virtually every caste has built and developed its own private army. The Bhumihars initially had their Bramharshi Sena (now it has become the Ranvir Sena to which all upper castes pledge support), the Yadavas, the Lorik Sena, the Kurmis, the Bhumi Sena, while the Dalits had their underground squads under the banner of M–L groups to counter and fight these private militias. Survival, in other words, hinged on a group’s armed might and the political discourse developed accordingly.

No where in Bihar has the macabre phrase, chhey inch chota kar dena (slicing six inches from a person’s height — by slashing of the throat), been actually practised the way it has in central Bihar. Easy availability of illegal arms has made it all quite widespread.

Since the mid–Eighties, there have been mass murders. Topping the massacre milestones are the killings in Arwal where 70–80 Dalits were killed, and the Damoha killings soon thereafter when 25 upper castes were beheaded. It fell into a pattern after that. Adding to the spate of killings were other vested interests who utilised private armies to settle different kinds of arguments. Overall, while in the rest of Bihar the upper castes were learning to come to terms with the politics of Laloo Prasad Yadav and grudgingly acknowledge the importance of backwards politics, in Jehanabad time virtually stood still. Caste contradictions remained just as strong and caste rivalries implacable.

In the backdrop of this was, of course, the land issue. For one thing, land reforms have not been carried out in Bihar and in the district of Jehanabad the state has failed to rustle up even relatively less fertile excess land for distribution. For another thing, despite the prosperity of the land–owning upper caste (not all of them are, however landed; a good 40 per cent of the upper castes are marginal farmers), and despite the mobilisation by M–L groups, statutory minimum wages are simply not paid in this area. As a matter of fact, the issue has ceased to be an economic one; for the landlords it is now a question of prestige — how can they buckle under duress and meet the demand? And at the same time, the Dalits are determined to extract their due.

In this situation of extreme polarisation, nothing really will be gained in Jehanabad by replacing the Rabri government by central rule. At most, central rule would be viewed by Bhumihars and other upper castes of the area as BJP rule and would encourage them to wreck a more ruthless ‘revenge’. And, as a corollary, it would make groups like MCC even more desperate to establish that its power has not been diminished by the change of government in Patna, thus possibly escalating the spiral of killings. Instead of getting dragged into the political football over the massacres, it is time to treat Jehanabad as a national challenge.

A ‘national challenge’, of course, sounds like a moth–worn cliché. The kind of thing that is said when no solutions are in sight. But as it happens in Jehanabad, a start can be made by persuading the landlords to pay minimum wages. Given the kind of complex emotions that this otherwise simple demand is expected to generate, it requires an effort from every national party. Those who wear bleeding hearts on their sleeves whenever the fields of central Bihar are strewn with corpses could, as a very minimum, campaign for this basic right. You would be surprised how dramatic can be the change in political mood if this were to happen.

Archived from Communalism Combat, April1999, Year 6 No. 53, Comment

Indonesia? Indonesia!

March 31, 1999

Months of communal and ethnic violence rip the social fabric of Indonesia, damaging its centuries’ old tradition of assimilation and toleration

Crowds of bystanders cheered a display of severed heads of Madurese men in Sambas, about 900 km. east of Jakarta in West Kalimantan. One severed head was displayed atop an oil drum with a cigarette stuffed in its nostril. Malays, Dayaks armed with weapons ranging from guns, swords and spears, to farm tools, carried human ears, scalps and hearts as souvenirs." (Reuters news agency report)

This was the latest and most gruesome violence to rock the archipelago which has been the centre of communal, anti–military, separatist and ethnic clashes since last year. Last year ethnic Chinese had been the targets. This time, the local Malays and Dayaks unleashed terror against the migrant Madurese population in the region, who had been brought to West Kalimantan under a government scheme aimed at relieving the population pressure on the relatively poor island of Madura.

About 176 lives were lost in less than one week in Sambas in West Kalimantan province. As the two per cent Madurese population had gained more employment opportunities, the locals became increasingly resentful. Reports came in of some of the ‘victors’ even cutting open their victims’ chests to eat their hearts — customs rooted in their tribal traditions. More than 23,000 Madurese, left homeless in the carnage, have fled in any transport accessible to them.

The army in the meantime has been accused not only of inaction but even collusion with the rampaging mobs. "Police and soldiers did not intervene as rioters in the town of Sambas systematically smashed and burnt home after home. Security forces have passed severed heads in the road without stopping. They have let armed men roar through the town on motorcycles and in lorries… Police pickup trucks have even given lifts to hitchhiking ‘warriors’." (Agence France–Presse).

The recent violence was not the first such eruption. Similar violence in 1996 and early 1997, had claimed about 500 lives according to human rights groups’ estimates. In a country made up of 13,000 islands, with 300 different ethnic groups, such ethnic violence could simply spell chaos, especially since Indonesia is already on the brink of an economic collapse.

Though the recent ethnic violence was what put Indonesia on world headlines, continuing reports of communal violence have already severely marred the image of Indonesia as a tolerant and pluralistic society, whose Muslims were upheld as an example for Muslims world–wide, India especially.

Since November last year, the country has seen Muslim–Christian riots in and around Jakarta, West Timor and more lately, since January this year, in Ambon. In the earlier bout of violence, 1,000 buildings had been burnt down along with 22 mosques and churches. At the height of the violence, some 20,000 people took refuge at military and police stations as well as mosques and churches. Both Christmas and Eid celebrations were marred by riots and attacks on religious places. Some reports state that up to 60 churches had been burnt down in the past six months in Muslim majority provinces.

However, the death toll was not as high as it has been in Ambon, a Christian majority area, where rioting in the past two months has claimed more than 200 lives. In Ambon, the violence first erupted on January 19, and then spread to five neighbouring islands in Maluku province. The violence is considered a reaction to the earlier riots in Muslim majority areas in and around Jakarta. In Ambon, entire villages have been razed to the ground. Tens of thousands of people have been left homeless. Many of the Muslim inhabitants of this Christian majority area have fled.

"We have nothing left. All was burned or stolen. Our relatives were killed. We are leaving for good", said one Muslim evacuee.

Executive director of the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Sidney Jones, said in a report on the clashes, "Neither community has a monopoly on truth and suffering. The death toll is appallingly high for both sides have seen entire neighbourhoods burned down, and houses of worship destroyed."

Some 30,000 people have been displaced and are living in temporary shelters in and around Ambon. The report by HRW, an American human rights group, also contradicted the picture of communal amity that had always been portrayed by the government. Ambon was portrayed as a region where the interfaith relations had been well protected by a system called pela, where for centuries, a village of one faith had been twinned with a village of the other faith; where Christians helped build mosques and Muslims helped build churches. Tensions between the two communities, Ambonese Christians and Ambonese Muslims and other Muslim immigrants, according to the report, have been high since the 1970s.

The influx of Muslims into Christian majority Ambon and their domination of the commercial scene has left the Ambonese Christians extremely insecure. The HRW report also cites the ‘Islamisation’ that Muslim migrants brought as they built mosques and sought converts to Islam in Christian dominated areas. In heavily Muslim areas of Java and Sumatra, aggressive Protestant evangelism has caused as much resentment as Muslim proselytising has in Christian areas.

Another facet of the communal tension, according to the report is that sections of the Christian population had identified more with the Netherlands than with the Indonesian nationalists at the time of independence from the Dutch in 1945. They mounted a short–lived separatist movement after independence called the Republic of the South Moluccas (RMS). Several of the Muslim villages that have figured prominently in the recent conflict were razed by RMS forces in 1950. In the recent fighting, Muslim leaders had accused the Christians of working with the RMS, thereby portraying them as both militarily organised and disloyal.

Allegations have arisen against the army’s role in the riots as well. A huge demonstration was held against the army, by 3,000 Muslims in Ambon city, accusing the local military commander, Col. Karel Kalahalo, who is a Christian, of displaying anti–Muslim bias. Muslims and Christians have both periodically made such allegation against the army. However, the troops have also been criticised for using extreme measures to break up the riots. HRW points out that while the deaths upto February were a result of the traditional weapons used by rioters, most of the subsequent deaths had been a result of brutal shooting by the 5,000 security forces deployed on the island. The organisation has primarily been demanding investigations into rogue elements in the army, who they suspect were deliberately provoking trouble at former President Suharto’s behest, in order to disrupt the preparations for elections scheduled for June 7 this year and create conditions for a return to military rule.

While officials claim that it is the economic crisis that is fuelling the violence, it is obviously not the only factor, as the economic crisis is not as severe in Maluku, where Ambon is situated, as in some other Indonesian provinces.

One of the key factors in the rising insecurity amongst the minorities of Indonesia is the rise of various fundamentalist Muslim political organisations in the country.

Suharto had repressed overtly ‘Islamic’ political organisations with an iron hand throughout his reign. In the 1990s, however, the Suharto regime began to appoint Muslims over Christians to civil service jobs as part of its campaign to create a political base for itself among Islamic groups. After Suharto’s fall, these organisations have found support amongst the youth base in Indonesia, who are frustrated with the social and political situation prevalent in the country. In fact, many of the youth and student organisations that had played a significant role in toppling the Suharto regime and calling for economic reforms have allied themselves with Islamic organisations. On March 7, an estimated 1,00,000 Muslim students and their supporters took part in a demonstration in Jakarta calling for a holy war (Jehad) against Christians and for the resignation of defence minister, Wiranto, due to the riots in Ambon, which had claimed more Muslim than Christian lives.

Not long ago, many Muslim groups joined forces with youth groups to constitute a civil guard to protect the People’s Consultative Assembly, the country’s highest legislative body. The largest element in the civil guard is the ‘Brigade Hizbullah’, consisting of 1,00,000 youths from 32 Muslim organisations and ‘Furkon’, a Muslim youth organisation linked to the conservative Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals Association (ICMI) and to the Indonesian Committee for International Islamic Solidarity (KISDI). Acting President, B.J. Habibie, was himself a member of the ICMI earlier. Thus, the conservatives look towards him with hope for finally realising their dream of an Islamic Indonesian state. Though Habibie has ruled out any declaration of Islamic state, the alliance of religious parties has only gained strength. Those behind this conservative coalition were also responsible for a resolution in early November that declared that only a Muslim male would be acceptable as the next Indonesian President. This not only barred leaders from any minority community from the premier position, but also the popular opposition leader, Megawati Sukarnoputri of the National Awakening Party (PKB) and daughter of freedom fighter Sukarno. Even fellow opposition stalwart, Abdurrahman Wahid, echoed the conservative stand on March 24, and declared that she could not become President as they were tied down to Islamic law in mainly Muslim Indonesia and she should settle for vice presidency or house speakership.

Archived from Communalism Combat, April1999, Year 6 No. 53, Special Report

Reflections of a Crusader

March 31, 1999

For 38 years, since way back in 1961 when he was a student of engineering, Asghar Ali Engineer has been waging a two–pronged battle — against the divisive forces of communalism and the gross human rights violations of ordinary Bohra Muslims by an oppressive and corrupt priesthood under the head–priest — Syedna Burhanuddin.

Turning 60 in March, the crusader for peace and amity typically spent his birthday at yet another seminar on ethnic conflict in the entire South Asian region in New Delhi. Reflecting on 38 years of struggle against bigotry and unreason, Engineer travelled down memory lane with Communalism Combat, from the time when the Awaaz–e–Biradaran (Voice of Brotherhood) was born after the first, post–partition communal riot at Jabalpur in 1961 to the threat of communalism in South Asia in 1999, at the turn of this century.

How and when did you take the first step into the movement that became your life mission?

I remember being badly shaken by the Jabalpur riot in 1961. I was a student in Indore at that time, doing my engineering. The riot was so terrible. Even Nehru was shaken by the sheer scale of the violence. That riot had shaken the whole nation.

So young people like us, then, who desired harmony in society decided to do something about the menace of communalism. Soon after my graduation in civil engineering, I came over to Bombay and joined the Bombay Municipal Corporation.

What followed was a series of riots in Durgapur and Jamshedpur, followed by Ranchi, all in the sixties. That propelled us into setting up an organisation of young people called Awaaz–e–Biradaran (Voice of Brotherhood).

Apart from myself, journalists belonging to various newspapers, some social activists and college teachers formed part of this organisation, holding regular meetings.

I remain as convinced now as I was then that common people are not communal, with no evil intentions to kill others. They are just misinformed by wrong and vicious propaganda. Communal forces know that this kind of misinformation campaign is highly productive for them, which is why they carry on relentlessly.

Where is the anti–communal movement, in your assessment, after all these years?

Where are we after all these years? There is no simple answer. The situation has worsened, there have been ups and downs. The main reason for communal violence is political, so it is very much tied with the political fortunes within the country and the maturing of a democracy.

After a peaceful period between 1971 and 1977, during Janata rule, there were a series of riots. My analysis is that these major riots took place because the RSS was not happy with the Jan Sangh becoming a "secular Gandhian" party. They wanted to give the message, that "we still stand by our ideology". Hence the violence. This is evident because in all these bouts of violence, RSS ideologues were named publicly to be responsible for the violent crimes.

Then again, we have a series of major riots from the eighties beginning with Muradabad in 1980 and ending with the Bombay riots in 1992–93. The eighties was the most dangerous decade in terms of communal violence. But why was this turmoil taking place?

One explanation I have is that this violence was the result of the maturing of Indian democracy. People had by then become more and more aware of their rights and this awareness meant that people of all communities had begun asserting these rights. Therefore, upper caste Hindus, with their positions of privilege threatened, began to retaliate. There is a very close parallel here between what happened in the pre–partition period and what happened in the eighties.

During the pre–partition period, what we saw was aggression by the Muslim elite and in the eighties what we witnessed was aggression by the Hindu elite. The UP–based Muslim elite became aggressive and carved out Pakistan because they feared that they would lose out in independent India, over–represented as they were in the services.

When this kind of insecurity seizes a privileged section, aggression results. The same thing happened with the Hindu elite in the eighties.

All the talk of implementation of the Mandal commission recommendations, coupled with the Muslim response during the Shah Bano agitation and the Sikh agitation guaranteed their violent reaction. I can clearly recall a columnist who is also a gay activist writing a letter to The Indian Express in the early eighties, urging that all minorities in India should be disenfranchised for ten years because they had become so aggressive!

Post–1992, the situation is qualitatively different. The demolition of the Babri Masjid has opened people’s eyes. But today the target of communal forces is the Christians, the method used to target them is different.

Communalism and communal violence are two different phases. Just because there is no communal violence, does not mean that there is no communalism. Secular forces often make the mistake of ignoring the implications of communalism when there is no evidence of riots or violence. Communal forces are very active even when there is no communal violence. Communal violence will take place only when these forces assess that creating such violence will be politically beneficial.

What is the response to your consistent work in this field? Do you feel that in the last 38 years there has been any positive change in the response of people and organisations?

There have been different phases in people’s responses, too. The impact that we had before the eighties was washed out in the face of aggressive communal propaganda by communalists in that decade. We could not be very effective during that phase. But again, after the demolition of the Babri Masjid people were shocked into a response.

Specifically because history has become very important, a contentious issue. When I talk about the proper interpretation of history in the workshops that we hold, this subject has the maximum impact. My work is mainly with the middle class because I feel that the middle class is the main culprit in spreading communal views. If their ideas change, if they don’t get influenced by communal propaganda, they will not propagate that cause, they will not talk about it in the classrooms, in newspaper articles. The poison will not spread.

After your work with Awaaz–e–Biaradaran how did you proceed?

Following the brutality of the Ahmedabad riots in 1969, we formed the Anti–Communal Youth Front and organised a number of activities in Bombay, Thane and Bhiwandi. We joined hands and networked with Subhadra Joshi and D. R. Goyal who had formed the Sampradayik Vidrohi Committee. Goyal, with the RSS in his youth, had quit to join the CPI and later became a Congress–man. He had authored several pamphlets on the RSS at the time. We had the great support of a friend, Balraj Sahni, the prominent artist, at the time. I recall an incident. I called him up after the Bhiwandi riots took place in 1970, urging him to do something with us since things were critical there. He was on the verge of a long–overdue holiday in Kashmir. But he gave it up and we spent 14 days touring neighbouring villages around Bhiwandi where violence had been fomented by the Shiv Sena aided by the police.

In 1970–71 came the campaign for Bangladesh when we used to hold programmes for communal peace and in support of the campaign for Bangladesh.

When the nineties round of rioting started, we formed the EKTA samiti. We had always been investigating riots in any case, now we started doing this through EKTA. We organised peace marches from Delhi to Meerut, from Mumbai to Azad Maidan.

Your other single–minded campaign has been against the oppressive conditions within the Bohra community controlled by a corrupt and dictatorial priesthood…

The more our resistance and work gets strong, the activities of the communalists will become more visible and repressive. On the Bohra reformist movement, too, I believe that it was because we posed such a challenge to the priesthood that they became much more oppressive out of their own insecurity.

Personal suffering, oh yes, one has to suffer. There were physical attacks, a social boycott against me, since 1973, which still continues. I am totally out of touch with my close relatives, my cousins with whom I used to play and study as I grew. They don’t talk to me, nor come to meet me out of fear.

People often ask me a rather ridiculous question — how far have I been successful in the Bohra reformist campaign? How can you quantitatively assess these things? These are battles of/for ideas. If the forces of evil were to go unchallenged, can you imagine what might happen?

Does this mean that the hold of the Syedna on the community is still very strong?

Very strong. It is very difficult to shake his influence off. But the mere fact that we, a handful of people, without any means, could shake them, is a positive point.

My mother was staying with me when she was summoned by the Syedna and ordered to stay separately, not with her shaitaan (devil–like) son. She earnestly asked of the high priest who would house her if not me? Not only did the high priest take great offence at this but ordered her to hang a curtain between us and cook separately.

She agreed, but life was a living hell. Women spies would be sent to our home, sometimes in the middle of the night, to check that the priest’s dictates were being carried out. Finally things became so unbearable that I sold some ancestral property I had in Ratlam and put her up in a small flat at Kurla. I see her now, infrequently and always furtively.

My children, Irfan and Seema suffered tremendously, growing up to abhor what the Bohras stood for. They would be visiting their Nani and if another Bohra also came, would be forced to hide under the bed!

I was not allowed to join the funeral procession of my elder brother who had been my support. They threatened to throw away his body if I did not leave. What could I do? I left the cemetery weeping. My maternal uncle and my father–in–law came and consoled me. Even that was reported. They had to pay a fine of Rs.10,000 each for that ‘misdemeanor’.

I have campaigned relentlessly among Muslims for which I have been dubbed an RSS agent, even a communist agent let loose to destroy the disciplined community of Bohra Muslims! Muslim leaders would argue with me,"Bhai saheb, yeh ek hi disciplined community hai, isko bhi aap tod rahe hai?"(This is the only disciplined community among Muslims, why are you bent on breaking that?) To which I would reply, "Kya aapko Hitler ka discipline chahiye kya?" (Do you want the discipline of a Hitler?). This is the discipline of a cemetery where none can speak out. Those who protest are thrown out or killed!

They tried to kill me four times but did not succeed. Muslim leaders have always been terrified of taking a stand against the Syedna, be it Najma Heptullah or others. Najma Heptullah and I were part of the same delegation visiting Egypt when I was assaulted. She did not speak up, believing that since the high priest was very close to Indira Gandhi, she would disapprove of their involvement with a reformist!

It is because all politicians have refused to take action against the human rights violations being perpetrated by the high priest and his apparatus against ordinary Bohras that there is this impression within the community that the high priest is invincible.

Where does the Bohra reformist struggle stand today?

Today the high priest has had to change his strategy. The earlier approach was to terrorise. Soon, he realised that the reformists would not be cowed down by that. Now he is attempting co–option of many within the movement. But he has not succeeded.

And they are a significant number?

There are about 20,000, all over the world. There are many youngsters, particularly in Udaipur. We had our 10th world conference this February in Udaipur that was widely attended.

What I must emphasise is the women’s participation in the reformist movement. I salute their grit and determination. But for the militancy of the women within the reformist movement, the men would have surrendered!

What is the reason for this?

Theirs is a strong reaction against the shabby fashion in which they were humiliated, insulted and molested by Bohras simply because they were part of the reform movement. When they went to visit Kaliakot, the holy place for Bohras (one of our saints is buried there), they were molested there right in the presence of the high priest, the Syedna in 1972!

That was the turning point for the movement. Women became determined. When I sat on an indefinite fast in 1989 against the high priest’s refusal to allow us to go to Kaliakot, hundreds of women would gather each morning after completing their chores, sit in solidarity the whole day, returning home only at night.

After the government, a Congress government, intervened and assured us that we would be allowed to visit the shrine, I broke my fast. But the government played a treacherous role backing down from allowing us to visit the shrine, twice. On both occasions, it was the determined militancy of the women that forced the authorities. But still they stopped us short of reaching the shrine. On the second occasion that the government let us down, I was extremely worried that this kind of ending to the agitation may prove to be some sort of anti–climax for the whole movement and womens’ participation in it.

So I just went around asking all of them, "Is wakt kya mehsus kar rahe ho aap. Bahut maayusi ho rahi hogi?" (You must be experiencing great disappointment). I cannot, ever, forget their reply. "Kya aap samajhte ho ke ham pathar chhoone ja rahe the. Hum to apni rights ki ladaai lad rahe the." (You think we were going to prostrate before the shrine? We were going only to assert our rights!)

The machinery of the Bohra priesthood has tried every trick in the book to spread rumours, and to discredit the movement. The response of the women among the reformists is testimony to how futile these efforts have been.

Under the current regime with its unashamed allegiance to Hindutva, which envisages a state drastically different in character from its democratic one, what does the future hold?

In India, democratic traditions, however lopsided, have taken deep roots. BJP ke liye aasaan nahin hai (It is not that easy even for the BJP to violate these completely.)

The real task ahead is for people to make what they will of a democratic and secular state. The Constitution is an idea which gives us the character of the state. But what the state in practice will be is determined by political parties.

What is needed is a peoples’ movement to extract an accountable behaviour, secular and democratic, from the political parties and the state.

(Interviewed by Teesta Setalvad)

Archived from Communalism Combat, April 1999, Year 6 No. 53, Tribute

History in South Asia

January 31, 1999

Allah’s Army in Pakistan
Hindutva Brigade in India
Buddhist Lions in Sri Lanka

A prominent South Asia Historians’ meet unravels our shared past to dispel the myth–making and hate –preaching in the name of history teaching in the sub-continent

Drawing national boundaries for the creation of independent states in South Asia — India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh — has resulted in the dissection of history, too, within the limits set by these modern nation states. Over the past fifty years or so, both the learning and teaching of history in these countries has done little to widen the scope of exploration and inquiry to encompass a wider reality, an area that has experienced common links and trends, over centuries. These links and shared experiences got severed, suddenly but surely, once the state in each of these countries dominated the subject of history learning, especially through deciding the content of syllabi and the writing of text–books.
The Kandyan period in Sri Lankan History between the 17th and 19th centuries fascinatingly reveals how regional bonds, on caste lines, were formed by the ruling castes transcending national boundaries.

There are several examples during this period of the Sinhala nobility, in consultation with the Buddhist clergy, choosing an external ruler from a South Indian dynasty — especially the Nayakkars — and inviting them to govern. This was because caste affiliations were more important in this period — barely three hundred years ago — then ethnic ones.

The first Nayakkar king was promoted to the throne by the chief incumbent of the Navaddha Vihara, a revered figure among the Buddhist monks, the Samakha Sangha Rajja. This particular dynasty, thus invited, remained in power for about four generations and formed close alliances with the Lankan nobility.

More significantly, over the past century, historical construction, history learning and its dissemination has also resulted in the legitimising of certain groups, defined in terms of the “majority”. In the process, “others” have got excluded. The construction of this ‘minority’–‘majority’ discourse has also meant defining people’s identities exclusively in religious terms, ignoring the multifarious facets of identity that are historical and practical realities.
There have also been distinct phases behind this legitimisation and exclusion that are not only crucially linked to the emergence of these nation states but which have had a direct impact on the kind of nation state — its inherent composition and commitment — that got formed, in all three countries within this region.

A three–day South Asia consultation organised by KHOJ, a secular education programme within India, enabled historians, educationists, writers and activists to meet in Mumbai between January 26–28 to discuss this and other aspects of ‘History Learning, Exploration and Teaching within South Asia’. Internationally–acclaimed historian and professor emeritus of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Romila Thapar, prominent historian of modern history, K.N. Panikkar, vice–chancellor of Peredeniya University and leading Sri Lankan historian–anthropologist, Leslie Gunawardana, and prominent dissenting historian from Pakistan, Mubarak Ali, were among the participants.

Only religion counts
Viewed together, people in the South Asian region have had close links with each other, before and after the creation of these nation states. Trade and business links, cultural links and environmental concerns, not just religious allegiances. These appear to have been brutally and artificially severed or, at the very least, severely strained.

Gandhi’s symbolic act in breaking the repressive Salt Law by consuming a pinch of salt on April 6, at Dandi, gave the greatest fillip to the Civil Disobedience Movement against the British? Over 1,00,000, Khudai Khidmatgars (Servants of God) swore an oath to the non-violent path on April 23, 1930, under the leadership of Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, laid down their handmade rifles and faced the worst–ever repression from the British. ‘Frontier Gandhi’ and his strong army representing the whole of the north west frontier province resisted the Partition.

Within a year of it taking place, Mahatma Gandhi had been assassinated by a Hindu fanatic (on Jan 30, 1948) and Frontier Gandhi, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, had been jailed by Pakistan’s Islamic government for sedition and being ‘pro–Hindu’.
The participants at the workshop were agreed that to even begin examining the plausibility of re–orienting our learning — and teaching — processes within the wider reality of South Asia as a region (and not limiting them to narrower and narrower visions of reality), it is vital today to examine in detail the difficulties that may come in the way of this approach.

The peculiar circumstances behind the vivisection of the sub–continent on religious lines has led to an artificial and in a sense now, real, super–imposition of religious identities over any other in the region. This has had peculiar consequences on the interpretation, reading and teaching of history within the countries in the South Asian region. Emergent exclusivist tendencies that are not religious, but misuse religion and religious symbols have led to the acute communalisation of discourse, the state and the polity in all of South Asia.

Ironically, just as the region is intrinsically inter–linked, so do the various types of communalisms have an irretrievable link. They feed upon and foster each other.

(From L to R: Professor Leslie Gunawardana (Sri Lanka), Dr. Mubarak Ali (Pakistan) and Dilip Simeon (New Delhi).

What partition did to people
Partition, 1947, was re–visited during the consultation in the context of the emergent nation states and their dominant ideologies often governed by these majoritarian precepts and biases. What emerged as a fascinating theme from the discussions was the examination of “Partition as Loss (in the Indian context), Partition as Achievement (in the Pakistani context) and Partition as a Symbol to justify the political behaviour of Hindus today (by proponents of a chauvinist Hindu ideology)”.

The teaching of the event of Partition, Panikkar maintained, should be seen as the culmination of a process of communali-sation that took place in both communities. He argued that scant attention has been paid to the activities of organs like the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha and little reference is found to their divisive role pre–Partition. Unless the history teacher and student is given access to all these facets that surround the event, it is inevitable that the country’s break–up will continue to be viewed selectively and raise high emotions.

This session that greatly enthused the school teachers who participated in the workshop also dwelt at length on the various aspects of Partition that could be taught to students of history at the school, college and university levels. How was the border actually drawn? What did it do to the areas through which the dividing line passed? What did Partition do to the armed forces? What did it mean for marginalised sections like women, Dalits, prisoners, persons kept in mental asylums? The human dimensions of the tragic event are hardly explored in history teaching.

What happened to border areas as a consequence of Partition? Are we at all aware of the half–a–million strong ‘Hindu” population living on the Bangladesh–India border, even today? The Chitmahals is the name given to the territory, many of whom have homes encircled by a Bangla village! What about the border peoples of the Sindh and Kutch deserts?

What were the mechanics of division when Partition took place? What were the human dimensions of the event? The army was divided between India and Pakistan on almost entirely communal lines. Prisoners from jails and residents of asylums for mental health were also carted to one side or another on the basis of their religious identity. Even eunuchs were forced to choose! Yet, they still meet once a year in joyous re-union, on this or that side of the border, embarrassing the Indian and Pakistan consulates into granting visas. Hundreds of thousands of children were lost in refugee camps. The province of Sindh passed the Essential Services Maintance Act (ESMA) following partition, forbidding Dalits from crossing to India as the sanitation system of the whole province would collapse!

It was strongly felt that all this would have to be looked at in the context of dealing with a subject that, even today, triggers high emotions and charged personal memories. The teacher who thus deals with the issue will need to stay with the traumas that such a difficult issue may cause within the confines of the class before moving in the many-faceted directions creatively.

Interestingly, the animated discussion was felt to be of relevance even to Sri Lanka that today faces a possible partitioning of the island on communal lines. Participants felt it would be extremely worthwhile to organise workshops for history teachers in different parts of the country and the rest of South Asia around the single theme: “How Partition Can be Taught.”

History in service of the State
Within India, even when ostensibly secular parties were in power, textbooks were laced with scarcely-veiled derogatory references to Islam and Muslims. (See box on text-books). These text–books were authored by state–sponsored writers, post–Partition. This period, Partition and the diverse processes that led up to it, is hardly explored in ‘official’ Indian texts. ‘The Birth of the Muslim League’, ‘Lahore Declaration’, ‘Mohammad Ali Jinnah’ and ‘Direct Action Day’ are the four telling heads under which the entire upheaval is dismissed in just four-five paragraphs each. There is not even an oblique reference to the emergence of Hindu chauvinist (communal) outfits like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or the Hindu Mahasabha, bodies that contributed significantly to the divisive discourse of the time, finally culminating in the vivisection. The assassination of M.K. Gandhi by Nathuram Godse, a member of both the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, also receives scant attention in these books.

Professor Romila Thapar at the Khoj workshop

Worse, parallel Indian texts sponsored by Hindu chauvinist outfits like the Vidya Bharati of the RSS that run parallel schools in most Indian states, emphasise a mono-cultural, mono-religious construct of India, denigrate Pakistan, dubbing it “Paapistan”(the land of the sinner) and constantly question the nationalist character of Indian Muslims. Of late, in BJP run-states there have been attempts, successful in some cases, of elevating Hindu chauvinist leaders to the status of “national heroes.”

The poet–philosopher, social reformer, Kabir, on the other hand, is conveniently relegated by secular India’s texts as the apostle of Hindu–Muslim unity when historical examination reveals him to be a stringent critique of the ritualism and dogma that had then come to epitomise both faiths.

Fifty years of history teaching in Pakistan is a unique example of the impact state ideology can have on the discipline. History, under a theocratic state, has been used as a tool by the Islamic republic of Pakistan to reinforce the ideology of Pakistan and the two-nation theory that is the basis of its formation. Anything that stands in the way of this justification is simply ignored or discarded, no matter what this means to the student of history.

For two decades after Partition, history teaching and text–books within Pakistan were not significantly different from Indian text books in either periodisation or content. But Pakistan’s loss in the 1965 war with India changed all that. Until then, only political heroes figured in the country’s text books but after the humiliating defeat against India, the weakened Pakistan state introduced the study of the army and military heroes within the classroom. What is worse, also since then, ancient history has been blotted out in all school and college-level education in Pakistan. It now exists merely as an option for post–graduate students. (See box interview with Dr. Mubarak Ali).

Myth of the Aryan race
Colonial historians are largely responsible for the mythical construct of people who spoke the Indo–Arya language into a distinct and superior race — the Aryans. This has since been alternately used by Hindu Indian, Sinhala Buddhist and Tamil Sri Lankan chauvinists to “prove” their superiority and more legitimate claim on the “indigenous” soil. This has also fed into the exclusivist discourse adopted by Hindu “nationalists”, conveniently used to describe Islam and Christianity as “alien” faiths and its followers as potential “anti–nationals.”

The contentious theory of Aryan invasion bears close examination even in relation to Dalit–Bahujan ideology that seeks political mobilisation on a theory of Aryan invasion followed by their (Aryan) oppression of the “indigenous’ Dravida race. Ironically, Muslim communalists, both within Pakistan and Sri Lanka, seek to establish their “racial” origins to Arabia. The crudest interpretations within Pakistan blot out any reference to Akbar while glorifying Aurangzeb. But it is difficult for this line of selective historiography to discard the medieval Indian period altogether because that would mean letting go of both the Red Fort and the Taj Mahal!

History as memory
History as memory, even though a more privileged memory as it is a specialised discipline that trains the historian to investigate a variety of sources, their motivations and their interpretations through the centuries, was also an area examined closely during this workshop.

Romila Thapar shared some of the insights arrived at through her work on the historical narratives and re-tellings over the centuries of the raid of the Somnath temple. And how selective examination of these varied interpretations impinge on the present understanding of the event. Mahmud Ghazni’s raid of the temple in 1026 A.D. finds variant interpretations from the main sources to the period, the Turko–Persian chronicles, the Jain texts, the Sanskrit inscriptions of the period, the debate in the House of Commons and the so-called ‘nationalist’ reading of the event.

In the Turko–Persian chronicles, the narration of Mahmud’s invasions and raid of the temple are depicted as a victory for imperialist Islam. Thereafter, for a few centuries the raid finds scant mention, though the temple itself and the loot of pilgrims who make the pilgrimage is a subject matter that is dealt with in Jain texts and the Sanskrit inscriptions. Most ironically, nearly 200 years after the raid on Somnath — an event that in 20th century discourse has become so central to Hindu–Muslim relations — there is evidence, from inscriptions of the time, of land from the estate of the Somnath temple being granted for the construction of a dharmasthan (mosque) to one Nirodin Piroja (Nooruddin Feroze from Hormuz) by the local Panchakula (powerful local administrative committees headed in the this case by Purohit Veerabhadra, the chief priest of Somnath). The language and tone of this legal document, available in both Sanskirt and Arabic is friendly and has no evidence of the rancour with which this temple and the event are viewed with today.

The participants felt that quite apart from text books, syllabus and teaching in the classroom, popular history being disseminated through pamphlets, newspapers and communalist propaganda networks also need to be examined by historians, and techniques of intervention devised that reach people and the populace beyond the classroom.

The first mention of a “Hindu trauma” is during the House of Commons debate in 1843. In this century, it was K.M. Munsihi’s Jai Somnath, published in 1927, that was critical to mobilising communal Hindu sentiments in Gujarat and Maharashtra where it was very popular.

Post–1947, Munshi a Union cabinet minister, exhorted Nehru to re-build the temple with state funds as this was the least that Hindus could reconcile themselves to! Nehru refused to compromise the secular character of the Indian state by conceding a demand that should be carried out by a private trust.

Building language barriers
The role that language and linguistic identities have played in both communal discourse and secular mobilisation in the South Asian context deserves close historical scrutiny. In Sri Lanka, the declaration of Sinhala as the country’s official language acutely sharpened the ethnic, majority–minority divide into a linguistic one as well. Though state policy could make a significant dent in communal discourse and the ethnic divide in Sri Lanka by simply introducing the study of two languages in the educational process, this has not been done.

Gunawardana made reference to a discourse on state and languages, during the run–up to the inception of the Sri Lankan state in the 1930s. C. D’Silva, a communist leader, had then pointed out to fellow Lankans: “If we adopt one language we will have two states in Sri Lanka, but if we adopt two languages, we can have one state!” D’Silva’s warning went unheeded then, but people in Sri Lanka today are forced to rethink, given the heavy toll the communal divide has taken in that country.
The late 19th century history of the Urdu and Hindi languages is crucial to understanding the manner in which ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ of poets and writers by the respective tongues was determined by what they wrote when, and for whom, rather than the inherent literary merit of their works. The history of these two languages in north India can also be traced to the communal mobilisations of the Indian polity in the pre-Partition period, Urdu being mis–represented as the language of Muslims and Hindi of the Hindus.

Similarly the birth of Bangladesh in 1971 was critically linked to the hegemony of the Urdu and Punjabi-speaking people over persons of Bengali origin from East Pakistan or east Bengal (pre–Partition). In Pakistan, the imposition of Urdu as the state language has created much resentment within the Sindhi, Seraiki and Pushto–speaking peoples. In India, conversely, Urdu was wrongly dubbed as a ‘Muslim’ language after Independence and Hindi imposed by the state, a fact that caused deep resentment in the southern states.

In 1920, Sindhi religious political leaders made it clear to the Jamait–e–Ulema–Hind, an organisation of the Muslim clergy (with leaders like Maulana Ubed Ullah Sindhi, Maulana Abul Kalaam Azad, Maulana Syed Hussain Madni who had opposed the Partition) that they envisaged Sindh as an independent province that had been captured by the British in 1843.

Even today, a significant section of the Sindhi leadership under leaders like Maulana Ubaidullah Bhutto demand a Sindhi state where nationality must be given to all Sindhis regardless of where they are placed.

History on the streets
Quite apart from text–books and classroom teaching, history is today being re–written in popular communalist discourse through the extensive distribution of pamphlets and other forms of literature. Ten years ago, the countrywide mobilisation for the construction of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, orchestrated as a campaign for the destruction of the Babri Mosque that ‘symbolised centuries of subjugation of Hindus at the hands of Muslim invaders’, was spearheaded by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, RSS and Bajrang Dal. The political spoils are today being enjoyed by the BJP.

Today, malicious pamphlets distributed by organs like the VHP and the Hindu Jagran Manch (see CC, October 1998) distort history to spawn hatred against the Christian minority.

There can be no better example of this use and appropriation of history in popular discourse than in ‘secular’ India today where despite the existence, in principle, of a democratic state and its Constitution, bands of rabid communalists periodically lead attacks on the country’s religious minorities, after whipping popular passions through falsified history, whether on the subject of “conversions” or “invasions.”

‘Islam teaches only atrocities’

January 31, 1999

The following examples of text–books from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka reveal how within the South Asian nations and between peoples, sections of the population are elevated or demonised.

INDIA

Invasion of Mahmud of Ghazni
The advent of Islam might have been a boon to the Arabs who got united under its banner, and were enthused by it to carry on conquests in Asia, Africa and Europe but it has been a curse for the people outside Arab world because wherever the Islamic hordes went, they not only conquered the countries, but killed millions of people and plundered their homes and places of worship and destroyed their homes, places of worship and above all their artworks.

The general Islamic belief that political power can be claimed by anyone who can wield power goes not only against the legality of inheritance to throne but encourages intrigues, plots, rebellions and assassinations of father by his son, brother by his brother, ruler by his military commander or minister, and above all master by his servant, nay, even by his slave. There might have been some killings of such a type among the people of other religious faiths like the Hindus or Christians, but those were exceptions while in the Islamic people these have occurred as a rule, not as exceptions.The king of the Ghaznavides, Subuktagin, who started raids on India in the last decades of the 10th century A.D. was a slave of Alptagin, who himself was a slave of the Samanid, ruler of Khorasan. So it is the slave of the slave who set in process, the Islamic invasion from 10th century A.D.

The Conquest of Kanauj
Mahmud’s victories in India made him very popular in the Muslim world and attracted the people in Transoxiana, Khorasan and Turkistan to join him as volunteers to fight in his crusades against the infidels in India. With a large force at his command Mahmud decided to invade the so–called imperial capital, Kanauj. He started from Ghazni in 1018 A.D. and crossed all the rivers of the Punjab and captured all the forts on the way up to Baran (modern Bulandshahar) where the local Raja, Hara Datta, not only submitted to him but also embraced Islam with ten thousand men. Mahmud then marched against

Kulchand, the chief of Mahawan on the Jumna, who fought with the invader but was defeated. Blood thirsty Muslims killed 50 thousand Hindus. Proud Kulchand killed himself and his wife. Having acquired a large booty at Mahawan, Mahmud preceded to capture Mathura, sacred city of the Hindus. Mathura then was a wonderful city, full of beautiful temples, solidly built and exquisite design. Mahmud not only plundered the immense wealth of the temples but ordered to raze the temples to the ground.

‘Why these atrocities? Because Islam teaches only atrocities. Have not Islamic invaders done so wherever they had gone, be that India or Africa or Europe?’

And destruction of such exquisite works of architecture and sculpture has been an enormous loss to humanity. It is also an enormous blot on the teachings of a faith which Mahmud followed and the cause of which he championed. From Mathura Mahmud proceeded to Brindaban which too he sacked and plundered. Thereafter in 1019, Mahmud marched towards Kanauj. The Parihar Raja of Kanauj, Rajyapala submitted without offering any resistance. Even then Mahmud destroyed ten thousand temples at Kanauj, killed its inhabitants and seized their wealth.

Why these atrocities? Because Islam teaches only atrocities. Have not Islamic invaders done so wherever they had gone, be that India or Africa or Europe? Mahmud returned to Ghazni with a large booty.

Expedition against Somnath
Mahmud’s most important expedition was against Somnath in 1025 A.D. Mahmud had heard that the Somnath temple contained fabulous wealth, which lured him to march against Somnath.
The Rajput princes from far and wide gathered to save the great temple and repelled the assaults of the invaders twice, which dismayed Mahmud, who, it is recorded by Muslim historians, jumped down from his horse and exhorted his soldiers to fight in the name of Allah, and the tide of war turned in his favour. This appears to be fantastic nonsense. The truth of the fact may that the dismayed Mahmud must have restored to some kind of treachery and thereby defeated the gallant and highly moralistic Rajputs.

Another part of the idol of Somnath was laid before the door of the mosque of Ghazni, on which the people rubbed their feet to clean them from dirt and wet. What an uncivilised act of a fanatic Muslim invader! After destroying Somnath, Mahmud attacked the ruler of Anhilwar for his taking part in the defence of Somnath. The town was encircled, males were massacred and women were seized to be reduced to slavery.
(From History of Medieaval India, by Dr. R.R. Singh, published by Sheth Publishers Pvt. Ltd., a recommended text for the third year bachelor of arts students in Maharashtra).

Since the two–nation theory is the basis of Pakistani separatism, there is a constant need to prove that Hindus and Muslims have remained separate from time immemorial’ — Dr. Mubarak Ali

January 31, 1999

Since Pakistan is an ideological state, history only serves the ideology of the state. This is not only in case of Pakistan but also in case of other ideological countries. It is a very horrifying experience to live in such a society where there is so much fanaticism. This is not only at the government level but has slowly and gradually also seeped into society. Society is also becoming Islamised, ideologised, fanatical, fundamentalist.

From the very beginning, the problem with Pakistan after partition was how to legitimise its creation. And that’s why it is still very difficult for Pakistani historians who want to honestly explore origins and identities because it’s very difficult to decide
where to start Pakistani history from.

Some people argue that because it’s a new country, 1947 should be the starting point. Some people say that not 1947, but the invasion of Muhammad bin Qasim, who invaded Sind in 1711, so the Muslim period begins from the Arab conquest. There are very few people who like to trace the history from the ancient period. Actually, we do not teach ancient history in Pakistan, neither at the University level, nor at school or college levels, except the Indus valley civilisation.

Interestingly, however, until the 1965 war with India, in which Pakistan faced humiliating defeat, the text-books and syllabi did include a study of ancient India. But after 1965, military heroes and the study of the army entered our text–books and the classroom and ancient history was thrown out.

We have not really developed history as a discipline. Now the attempt is being made to have a separate identity of Pakistan, to de–link Pakistani history from Indian history. We actually have some proposals from ‘eminent’ historians arguing that the history of Pakistan should only encompass what is now Pakistan, the present day geographical boundaries, and we should have nothing to do with India.

But, at the same time it is very difficult for complete exclusion from India because then we are left with the problem of the Sultans, the Mughals. Then of course we are going to lose the Taj Mahal and Red Fort and everything! Since the two–nation theory is the basis of Pakistani separatism, there is a constant need to prove that Hindus and Muslims have remained separate from time immemorial. So, there is a constantly constructed myth of Muslim separatism.

Now in Pakistan they are actually trying to construct the two–nation theory not from 1947, or from the period of the freedom struggle, but since the time of Akbar. Interestingly, on medieval history there is currently a debate within Pakistan on whether it was Akbar or Aurangzeb who was responsible for the Mughal downfall. And a prominent Pakistani historian, I.H. Qureishi, writes that as a matter of fact, Akbar was responsible for the downfall of the Mughals, not Aurangzeb! But there is no Akbar in Pakistani text–books up to the matriculation level whereas Aurangzeb is very much present.

So there is this is systematic construction of the two–nation theory and most of the students in schools are taught this version of history. It has become increasingly difficult to counter this version of history, because though in the beginning the ideology of Pakistan was very weak, the failure of democratic governments followed by a series of martial law governments has converted Pakistan ideology into the official jargon. Now, it is used by the ruling classes so justify the chaos.
In 1991, when Nawaz Sharif became Prime Minister for the first time, he passed the Pakistan Ideology Act that renders any person who writes, speaks or acts against the two–nation theory punishable with ten years rigorous imprisonment! Another dangerous trend within Pakistan is that gradually religious parties are becoming very strong in Pakistan. At this moment we have nearly 22 armies of different religious parties, called lashkars. They belong to different sects, Sunnis or Shias. The most frightening phenomenon is the emergence of a full–fledged army known as the Lashkar–e–Tayyeba. They also send their volunteers to Kashmir to fight over there; not only to Kashmir, but also to Afghanistan and other countries.

The result is that we don’t have a single creative religious scholar in Pakistan. Religious scholars are only political agitators, because they believe they must capture the state with the help of armed forces and then implement the shariah. The unfortunate outcome is that instead of having a progressive and enlightened version of Islam, the Taliban Islam has become a model for Pakistan. In a backward society, of course, the major victims are women, as in Afghanistan. A similar thing is going on in Pakistan against women as a result of religious fanaticism. And of course, we are also writing history on these patterns and we are also producing in our colleges and our universities fanatic people!

‘Non–Muslims nursed enmity against Muslims’

January 31, 1999

PAKISTAN

The Muslims treated the non–Muslims very well (when they ruled the province). Yet the non–Muslims nursed in their hearts an enmity against the Muslims. When the British invaded the area (ilaqa) the non–Muslims sided with them and against the Muslims. So the British conquered the whole country (mulk).

The Hindus wanted to control the government of India after independence. The British sided with the Hindus. But the Muslims did not accept this decision. Allama Iqbal and Quaid–i–Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah said that a Muslim government should be established in the areas where the Muslims constituted the majority of the population…. The Pakistan Resolution was adopted on 23 March 1940 in a big meeting of the Muslim League held in Lahore. In 1946, before the creation of Pakistan, when the people of NWFP were asked their opinion, all them voted in favour of Pakistan.

To say that “the British sided with the Hindus” is only a half–truth. Iqbal and Jinnah were not the only persons who asked for a Muslim state; nor, in chronological terms, were they the earliest to make the demand. Iqbal argued for separation in 1937 and Jinnah in 1940. Dozens of people had suggested a solution by partition long before this. The Lahore resolution was adopted on 24 March, not by “a big meeting of the Muslim League”. In 1946 all the people of NWFP did not vote for Pakistan. For fuller details on all these points). (Mu’ashrati Ulum, Class 4, NWFP Text–book Board, Peshawar).

There are 11 pages of history at the opening of the book under 4 headings: Differences in Muslims and Hindu Civilizations, Need for the Creation of an Independent state, The Ideology of Pakistan, and India’s evil Designs against Pakistan. The three quarters of a page essay on Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan has no dates, but asserts that he declared that “the Muslims should organize themselves as a separate nation”. Iqbal was the first person to present to the nation the idea of Pakistan in 1930, and his suggestion was to create an “independent and free” state made up of “all those areas where the Muslims are in majority’. The 1971 break–up of the country is dismissed in four atrociously distorted lines: “India engineered riots in East Pakistan through her agents and then invaded it from all four sides. Thus war lasted two weeks. After that East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh.”

In the same chapter, wars with India are mentioned in patriotic not historical terms. In 1965, “the Pakistan Army conquered several areas of India, and when India was on the point of being defeated she requested the United Nations to arrange a cease–fire…… After the 1965 war, India, with the help of the Hindus living in East Pakistan, instigated the people living there against the people of West Pakistan, and at last in December 1971 herself invaded East Pakistan. The conspiracy resulted in the separation of East Pakistan from us. All of us should receive military training and be prepared to fight the enemy.”

The last 12 Lessons treat with the same personalities as are included in the NWFP textbook for the same class (see above), with two changes: Aurangzeb is replaced by Ahmad Shah Abdali and Sultan Tipu is omitted. (Mu’ashrati Ulum, NWFP Textbook Board, Peshawar).

(From The Murder of History — A critique of history textbooks used in Pakistan; by K.K. Aziz).

‘Teaching pluralism to Tamils, chauvinism to Sinhalese’

January 31, 1999

SRI LANKA

The most striking fact that emerges from the analysis made in the previous chapters is the divergence in content and purpose between different groups of text-books, in so far as they affect communal relations. This divergence is greatest between the Sinhala and Tamil readers, and this is a very significant phenomenon for our purpose.

These readers are language-specific, produced for Sinhala–speaking and Tamil–speaking children respectively, while the English language books are produced for children of all ethnic groups and the social studies texts, and some of the texts on religion have a common content in both Sinhala and Tamil. This chapter will, therefore, begin by setting out those general conclusions which are suggested by a comparison between the Sinhala and Tamil readers.

In general the Sinhala and Tamil readers seem to have been planned and written independently of each other, with no correspondence either in the content of particular lessons or in the broad principles guiding the selection of material. There is an exception, however, in the case of the Sinhala Mul Potha and the corresponding Tamil kindergarten reader (pre– primer). It is not necessary to make an elaborate comparison between these two books here because the comparison has already been made in an article published in the Lanka Guardian of 1.5.79.

As the Lanka Guardian article points out, although both readers have been ‘designed on the same general pattern’ and contain some material in common and even share some illustrations, there is a sharp contrast in the thirtieth page at the end of the two books. Where the Tamil book has a picture of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim families in ‘attitudes of mutual cordiality’, and a text with the message that we are all ‘people of this country’, and ‘friends’, the corresponding page in the Sinhala reader has a piece telling the Sinhala child that this is his land. As the Lanka Guardian comments: ‘… it is clear from a comparison of the two readers that the Department thinks it important to preach inter–racial and inter–communal amity to Tamil and Muslim children from their first year of school, but inappropriate (or dangerous or demoralising?) to bring the same message to the Sinhala child.’

The point that the Lanka Guardian makes here comes out even more clearly in relation to the later readers. From the analysis of these Sinhala and Tamil readers, it will be evident why no common plan for these later books would have been possible, since their aims are so fundamentally divergent. In the Grade 1 and Grade 2 Tamil readers, no Sinhala characters or aspects of Sinhala life are introduced (and this is a shortcoming), but these books do include themes relevant not only to Hindus but also to the Christian and Muslim minorities, so that the experiences and culture of all groups of Tamil–speaking children reading the books find some reflection in them. In contrast, the Grade 1 and 2 Sinhala readers ignore completely the way of life, festivals and practices of the Christian minority, of whom an appreciable number of children will use these readers in school. Unlike the corresponding Tamil books, Sinhala 1 and Sinhala 2 maintain a solely mono–cultural context — Sinhala Buddhist.

The divergence between Sinhala and Tamil readers is still sharper in Grades 3 to 9. Not only do the Sinhala readers continue to maintain their mono–cultural character in these grades; they also project an image of a Sinhala–Buddhist identity which is defined fundamentally through opposition to and struggle against Tamil invaders in past history, and the existence of a multi–ethnic and multi–religious society in contemporary Sri Lanka is not merely ignored but denied, by representing even the Independence won in 1948 as freedom for the Sinhalese.

In contrast, the corresponding Tamil readers contain material presenting relations of friendship between Tamil children on the one hand and both Sinhala and Muslim children on the other; they use story material drawn not only from Hindu, but also from non-Hindu, including Buddhist, cultures; they portray festivals of all four major religions of the island; they represent the major secular festival of the country — the indigenous New Year — as the Sinhala and Tamil New Year (while the Sinhala readers keep the awareness of this shared character of the festival from the consciousness of the Sinhala child); and they depict both Keppetipola and Pandara Vanniyan as national heroes martyred in the cause of freedom.

It is not suggested here that everything in the Tamil readers which has a bearing on communal relations has been effectively handled towards the end of successfully communicating to the child the sense of a broader national identity. It may be questioned, for instance, whether the didactic song in the kindergarten reader, which says that people of different linguistic and religious groups in this country are ‘all friends’, is the best way of communicating such a message to children, particularly at so early an age; children are much more likely to apprehend and respond to such a conception if it is conveyed through a concrete situation — say, through a story involving particular people — rather than through abstract moralising. However, this is a question of the degree of understanding of the child-mind and of skill in writing of the authors of the text books — not a question of the purposes to which the books have been directed.

As far as the Sinhala and Tamil readers are concerned, therefore, the three questions formulated at the beginning of the study have to be answered as follows: the Tamil readers (with whatever degree of success) do seek to create an understanding of and respect for the way of life and culture of non–Tamil and non–Hindu linguistic and religious groups, and do attempt to project the sense of a common national identity, while the Sinhala books not only fail to do this (except in a solitary lesson in the whole series of ten readers) but contain an abundance of material which will strengthen communal attitudes and reinforce communal antagonisms.

(Excerpted from School Text Books and Communal Relations in Sri Lanka, published by the Council for Communal Harmony Through the Media; authored by Reggie Siriwardena, K. Indrapala, Sunil Bastian & Sepali Kottegoda).
(These excerpts from text–books prescribed in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have been compiled by KHOJ — South Asia studies project).

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