Monday, March 16, 2020

07 ANATOMY OF RIOT : RELIGION & SECULARISM - Religion and the Secular in India

SOURCE:
https://medium.com/@ContrarianRushd/religion-and-the-secular-in-india-e4d5864ef981


INDEX

 SER _ 07  OF X SERIALS ( CONCEPTUAL RIOT )


SER _ 06  OF X SERIALS ( CONCEPTUAL RIOT )






   Religion & the Secular in India





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 The Turkish Origins Of India's Partition

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erxm70VGjfE
    The Turkish Origins Of India's Partition | Abhijit Chavda |                Genocide Of Kashmiri Hindus |Moplah Riot

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    Should India have a Uniform Civil Code?


 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWJlS04PYlE&t=1351s



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Religion and the Secular in India

      Personal Laws, Indian Muslims, and the Uniform Civil Code






Masjid-i Jahan-Numa, commonly known as Jama Masjid, in Old Delhi.



WRITTEN BY

Rushd as-Safaa → The Contrarian Muslim

Male. Democrat. Pluralistic Muslim. Indonesian Renewal Disciple. Ex-academic. Opposing all fanaticism. Formerly of Reformer Mag. Now active as Haytham ad-Din.


Among the plethora of discourses and debates involving Muslim and Islamic issues globally, it is unfortunate that India rarely receives regular mentions. The focus on Muslim-majority countries has allowed publics and policymakers, especially in the West, to ignore a country where, even though Islam is a minority-religion, there are 190 million Muslims. This means India has the third-largest Muslim national population in the world, behind only Indonesia, with 225 million Muslims, and Pakistan, with 207 million Muslims. Any global discussions on the issues and problems affecting and emanating from Muslim populations, therefore, must include India. The Indian Subcontinent is home to a rich variety of religions in addition to Islam, from ancient Jain and Hindu traditions to the relatively young faith of the Sikhs. Each religious community’s development, thus, is tied to the deep history of the region.

Religious formations in India, including that of Indian Islam today, are profoundly influenced by the intricate histories of the greater Subcontinent before and after independence and Partition. Partition continues to be a self-conscious lens through which India, along with Pakistan and Bangladesh, interprets policy. This self-consciousness includes the way Indians have dealt with the issue of law. India maintains a hybrid legal system that includes civil, common, and personal laws throughout the country, with Islamic Law applying to Muslims in personal matters (marriage, divorce, inheritance). Understanding the intricate histories of the Subcontinent is vital, for the status of Indian Muslims today has been shaped by both community-specific developments and larger historical turns that Muslims and Islam were then subsumed in.

The Subcontinent experienced a wide variety of colonial encounters with European powers, but the defining colonial experience was with the British. The first colonial period, during 1757–1858, is known historiographically as Company rule in India, referring to the dominions of the East India Company, a joint-stock company given Royal Charter to trade in the Far East. After the Rebellion of 1857, the Company was dissolved and control of its dominions was assumed directly by the British Government on behalf of the Crown. This second colonial period, during 1858–1947, is known historiographically as the British Raj.



During both Company and Crown rule, British authorities increasingly sought to ease native sentiments against their rule through a policy of non-interference, allowing local communities to maintain control over internal communal affairs via personal laws. This policy, however, eventually morphed from non-interfering maintenance to encouraging and incentivizing personal law consolidation, which, ironically, became its own form of interference. Before the British, vast bodies of differing literatures existed pertaining to Hindu and Islamic legal traditions. The consistency of their usage and daily value, however, was never evenly established or compelled until the British became involved.

At the behest of the authorities, British legal scholars began aiding natives in deciding which literatures and traditions made sense to include in the consolidation of personal laws. This is why the body of legal literatures and common law developed in the colonial period has been most accurately referred to by scholars as Anglo-Hindu and Anglo-Mohammedan, rather than just Hindu and Islamic. The peculiarity of the Hindu personal laws is that they also applied to Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists. The colonial involvement compelled a consolidation of legal frameworks and communal control that, although not without some foundations before the colonial encounter, became more defined and stringent because of colonial intervention. This intervention, therefore, has a clear legacy in the maintenance of personal laws, Islamic and otherwise, in contemporary India, even and especially after independence and Partition in 1947.
Partition, in all of its complexity and grotesquery, is a subject that shall remain historiographically convoluted and endlessly debated. However, there is one particular aspect of Partition that is possible to clarify here and necessarily so. The maintenance of consolidated personal laws from the colonial period into independence and Partition seems at odds with what were otherwise secularist leaderships and motivations during Partition, including on the Muslim League/Pakistan Movement side, which was led at the time by Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
Jinnah was an avowed secularist who imagined Pakistan as a secular, Muslim-majority homeland. It is Jinnah’s central role in Pakistan’s founding that has, thus, created a particular historiography, especially among Pakistani secularists, that a secular Pakistan was real and then subsequently lost. However, the broader history reveals different facts that have bearing on both modern Pakistan and India, which is that Jinnah’s involvement was accidental and incidental.
Left and Right: Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

 For much of the 1920s and 1930s, Jinnah was in the socio-political wilderness, uninvolved with independence movement activities. The increasingly key figure during this time for many Indian Muslims, and the ideological father of Pakistan, was Muhammad Iqbal. Iqbal was no secularist and advocated for a Divine Law nomocracy based on Muslim religious identity. It is only because Iqbal knew that he was physically fading in the mid-1930s that he called upon Jinnah to return to the public sphere and assume leadership of the Muslim League and broader Pakistan Movement.

 Pakistan’s early secularity, therefore, was an accidental and incidental veneer because of Jinnah’s late but pivotal involvement. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that Pakistan turned into what Iqbal imagined it to be. This religious-communal divide that was initially stirred up by Iqbal and manifested into Partition, therefore, also underpinned modern Indian policy concerns regarding Indian Muslims, primordially tying the concerns to the need for accommodating Islam as a faith. This disposition had major ramifications for debates among the key leaders of independent India. Their decisions would set the foundation for Indian policy for decades to come.

There is much that can be discussed about Partition and decisions made in the ensuing years, but it suffices to focus on three key Indian leaders during that period. The first is Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, commonly referred to with the title of Pandit, referencing his family lineage of Kashmiri Pandits (Brahmin scholars). The second is Vallabhbhai Patel, a Gujarati affectionately known by the title of Sardar (Chief), who simultaneously served as Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Home Affairs, and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Patel is a surname that further denotes a class of land-owning agricultural and merchant families. The third is Abul Kalam Azad, the most prominent Muslim to remain with India, who served as Minister of Education. Azad was a Maulana, a term given to degreed Muslim scholars in South Asia.
Left to Right: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.
These backgrounds are highlighted to illustrate the diverse persuasions at work in the then-nascent Indian Government, a challenge on its own terms made more severe with Partition and the consequent chaos. All three men were members of the Indian National Congress (INC), the political party central to the independence struggle, and all equally detested the agitations of Jinnah, the Muslim League, and the Pakistan Movement. However, they differed on their approaches to Partition, personal laws, and policies toward Muslims that remained in India.
Patel is among the most misunderstood and misappropriated figures in Indian history. Some Indian Muslims and Leftists denounce him as anti-Muslim, while some Hindu Rightists celebrate him as a Hindu nationalist. Neither characterization is correct, with some of the mis-perception fueled by his fights with Azad. While Nehru and Azad still tried to accommodate Jinnah and the Muslim League as late as 1946, a year before Partition, Patel considered Partition then as an in-motion inevitability that might as well be embraced to prevent Parliamentary gridlock and civil war. This was why, in one heated exchange, Azad accused Patel of being more pro-Partition than Jinnah.
Azad’s perspective meant wanting the Government to enact policies that would incentivize Muslims to remain in India, a position on which he was joined by Nehru. Conversely, Patel’s blunt personality and hardened pragmatism meant that he saw the decision to remain with India as a matter of individual choice and loyalty, not something that was the responsibility of the Government to manage and pander to. These differences were exacerbated by differing perspectives on the broader role of government and economics, because while Patel, given his background, defended property rights and private enterprise, Nehru and Azad were fervently socialist in orientation.
Thus, the debate over personal laws was already inflected by these differences in background, philosophy, and personality. Furthermore, the three men had varied interpretations of what secularism in India would mean in actual law and policy, especially as it concerned a Uniform Civil Code (UCC). The Constitution of India, ratified in late 1949 and effected in early 1950, includes Article 44, which reads The State shall endeavour to secure for citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India. However, Article 44 created no mechanism nor explicit obligation to create a UCC. Nehru was the most unabashedly in favor of one, but he soon encountered opposition from both Patel and Azad, albeit for different reasons.
Azad, though a secularist himself, feared that an immediate UCC would be seen as an imposition on what was left of the Indian Muslim community, one still split over Partition and its place in India. He feared that an abrupt change would appear as an attack by the Hindu majority, potentially validating the arguments of those in the Pakistan Movement, who now led an adversarial state that might take advantage of unrest in India. Azad imagined a gradual, national process of UCC formation by merging the best aspects of various cultural and religious traditions.
In parallel, Patel opposed a UCC to avoid triggering unrest among conservative Hindus, who felt it was anti-Hindu and anti-Indian. Though Nehru was disappointed with the multi-pronged opposition to a definitive UCC, the compromise he embraced, via Patel, was to pass a series of laws in the 1950s known as the Hindu code bills. These were a comprehensive set of reforms to Hindu personal laws, which, per the colonial legacy, continued to apply to not just Hindus but anyone who was neither Muslim nor Christian. Furthermore, a separate Special Marriage Act was passed to allow citizens the option of civil marriage beyond the jurisdiction of any personal laws.
One difficulty in assessing this period is that the arguments of each leader were valid in their own way. Azad’s accommodating position made sense for the short-term in light of Partition. Patel’s compromise was pragmatically transitional, while Nehru’s idealism for an immediate UCC made sense for the long-term. The legacy of the compromise is a mixed one. A UCC was not achieved, but liberal progress was made on a variety of social issues concerning the Hindu community. This was especially true with regards to Hindu women and what are legally termed Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCs and STs) and Other Backward Class (OBC), recognized groupings of historically disadvantaged populations. The negative legacy of this compromise, which lasts to this day, is that Muslim personal laws remain utterly unreformed and uncodified. This has left sections of the Muslim community, such as women, in profoundly regressive status.
Furthermore, it has allowed the Muslim community to occupy a peculiar socio-political space within Indian society, one that is, unfortunately but understandably, stigmatized and held in contempt by many non-Muslims as an undeserved gift of immunity from state interference and standards. The role of the INC in creating this status quo was and is not lost on those unhappy with this Muslim immunity. The unreformed state of the Muslim community, and the negative perception among others that it is the “pet” of the INC, were only made worse with time by the INC leadership. After Nehru, the leadership continued to consist of his descendants, who turned the INC into a political apparatus of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Nehru died in office in mid-1964 and, following a brief interregnum, Indira Gandhi, his daughter, became Prime Minister at the beginning of 1966. Indira took the surname of her husband, Feroze, who has no relation to Mohandas K. Gandhi. The INC has, thus, been defined and dominated by members of the Nehru-Gandhi family and their close associates.
Indira was Prime Minister during 1966–77 and then again during 1980–4. Her time as Prime Minister proved controversial, as she increasingly centralized power not just on the national level but further within her own Secretariat, disempowering even the Union Council of Ministers. The growing opposition to her leadership, in both the Government and the wider public, led to splits within the INC and a consequently authoritarian period, known as the Emergency (1975–7). During the Emergency, Indira ruled by decree and quashed political opposition and the free press.
These internal upheavals and her own sense of insecurity led to the adoption of cynical electoral strategies, including appropriating the Muslim-minority community as a vote bank, since the Hindu-majority vote remained fragmented. Indira and her loyalists created a discourse that portrayed the INC as the sole entity capable of protecting the Muslim community against meddling forces. Beyond this discourse, these strategies did have serious institutional implications.
In 1973, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) was created, charged with protecting and advising on matters related to Muslim personal law. Although it remains a non-governmental organization, it was created under the auspices of Indira and has behaved like a quasi-governmental authority. Indira’s goal in its creation was to appease and embolden regressive Muslim leaders in exchange for them guaranteeing mobilizations of Muslim voters for the INC. These relationships only grew with time. In the run-up to the 1980 elections, Indira formally made an agreement with Syed Abdullah Bukhari, then the Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid, to deliver a program specifically for the Muslim community in exchange for electoral support.

    Left and Right: Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.
After Indira’s assassination in 1984, her son, Rajiv Gandhi, became Prime Minister and remained so until the end of 1989. The INC’s pandering to regressive Muslim constituencies continued under Rajiv, most notably with the 1985 Shah Bano case, known formally as Mohd. Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano Begum. The case, argued before the Supreme Court of India, pitted Shah Bano, a Muslim mother of five, against her ex-husband, Mohammad Ahmed Khan. Khan had taken a second wife, divorced Bano, and evicted her and the children out of his house in 1978. Bano filed suit against her husband for the right to alimony, which he had denied. Khan defended himself using Muslim personal laws, arguing that having a second wife was legitimate to begin with and his use of Islamic Triple Talaq divorce, unilateral repudiation by invoking the word Talaq three times, eliminated further obligations to Bano.
The Court ruled in favor of Bano. It declared that even on Islamic grounds, she was entitled to alimony from Khan, but, ultimately, she was owed maintenance according to Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), which refers to maintenance regardless of caste or religion. As the national source of criminal law, the CrPC stands above all personal laws. Facing pressure from some Muslim politicians and institutions like the AIMPLB, Rajiv and the INC passed The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act in 1986. 
This diluted the ruling in the Bano case by only requiring Muslim husbands to provide maintenance during Iddah, the Islamic 90-day period after divorce. Objective observers saw this for what it was, a perversion of Indian soft secularism to favor minority religious chauvinism for cynical, political calculations.

As was true for Shah Bano, the Court has been assertive in its statements and rulings related to personal laws and a UCC. This has been especially true from the 1980s onward, after its authority and independence was restored following the harmful meddling done by Indira before and during the Emergency. The Court does not possess any enforcement mechanisms for its rulings, but it nonetheless has played an important role in declaring Constitutional protections for a wide variety of social and economic rights, beyond just the matter of Muslim personal law.
                            The edifice of the Supreme Court of India.
In 2015, the Court heard a case involving Christian personal law, which requires couples to undergo a judicial separation of two years before petitioning for mutual divorce. This differs from statutes in other laws, such as the Special Marriage Act, Hindu Marriage Act, and Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, which only require a judicial separation of one year. Among other Justices displeased with the Government’s failure to create a UCC, Justice Vikramjit Sen stated during one hearing, “we have to stamp out religion from civil laws. It is very necessary. There are already too many problems.”

In August 2017, the Court made another landmark ruling in relation to Muslim personal law in Shayara Bano v. Union of India. Shayara Bano (no relation to Shah Bano), after years of abuse by her husband, was divorced by mail with a written Triple Talaq. The Court ruled that Triple Talaq, whether invoked in speech, writing, or electronic transmission, was unconstitutional. However, in its ruling, the Court still relied on invocations of the Quran, Hadith, and legislation in other countries that abolished Triple Talaq to make its point. It is unclear whether it was post-colonial inertia or rhetorical strategy that compelled the Court to still invoke interest group reasoning versus exclusively invoking Constitutional protection.
       The incumbent Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi.
In December 2017, the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament of India, passed The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, which made Triple Talaq illegal and punishable by up to three years of incarceration. The effort was spearheaded by incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP/Indian People’s Party). Although some parties, including the Opposition INC and coalitional partners of the BJP, expressed concerns about the Bill being rushed, the INC did not oppose it at the final vote. It is apparent that with minority votes fracturing and the Hindu majority increasingly consolidating into a common voting bloc, the INC no longer has an interest in minority appeasement politics.
The challenge for the Bill remains, as it still has to pass the Rajya Sabha, the upper house, where the Opposition has greater numbers and the skepticism of the BJP’s own coalitional partners could imperil the Bill. Furthermore, it also remains to be seen whether the proclaimed commitment of Modi and the BJP leadership to a UCC manifests symmetrically within the Party. A UCC authored by BJP leadership will likely reflect upper caste Hindu norms and laws. Such a proposal may attract opposition from other BJP factions that have different cultural persuasions and, thus, different concerns regarding what a UCC should address.
This long view of the grand historical turns is essential in understanding the complexities of the issues at stake, but it would be negligent to not acknowledge and factor in the agency and choices of Indian Muslims themselves. Notwithstanding the complexities of Partition and the machinations of the Nehru-Gandhi INC establishment, Indian Muslims have allowed themselves to be politically appropriated. Too many have chosen to comfortably dwell within minority communalism and socio-religious intransigence, delegitimizing critical Muslim voices and incentivizing the stigmatization and suspicion of Muslims by other Indians.

CLICK ON THE MAP TO GET FULL VIEW
Left and Right: Muslim populations by totals and by percentage.

















Whether by fear, complacency, or a misplaced sense of supremacy, Indian Muslims have led themselves into a trap. It is one they supposedly wanted to avoid as a minority community unavoidably tainted by Partition, even with prominent Muslim loyalists like Azad. Rather than voting on substantive policy issues and operating socio-politically based on contingent circumstances, Indian Muslims embraced a partisan shelter that, other than reinforcing their most regressive instincts, did nothing meaningful for them and is already moving on.
A now surging Hindu nationalist electorate feels little need to be concerned about Muslim priorities, contemptuous of the double standards and the defensive clientelism that Indian Muslims have engaged in. Many non-Muslim Indians, therefore, easily dismiss Muslims as not being truly vested in national concerns. Building new political relationships and engagements, based on substantive trust in broad-based policy matters, will take time, but it is something Indian Muslims, en masse, must begin immediately to preserve what is left of their standing. Most importantly, if a UCC is approved that alters the status of Muslim personal law, Indian Muslims must not react with agitations or militancy, for their status in the country might irrevocably be destroyed.














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C-05 (B) ANATOMY OF R I O T Secularism versus Communalism (R)

SOURCE:
https://www.boloji.com/articles/16043/secularism-versus-communalism
SER 01 OF   X SERIALS ( CONCEPTUAL RIOT )
Analysis
              Secularism versus Communalism
                                  By
                      Dr Jaipal Singh 

Interestingly, Sikhs, despite being in minority, have a significant presence in the Indian army and other government jobs besides contributing significantly to the Indian economy. They never seek a reservation for self, one can’t find a Sikh begging and they liberally feed those who participate in their Langars without discriminating on the religion or caste. Sometimes I wonder if others will ever take any clue or lesson from them.
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Secularism is perhaps the most misunderstood and abused word in the Indian politics today. 

In the name of secularism, many political parties, their leaders, self-proclaimed intellectuals and activists have been raising issues in the past and a hysteria during the General Elections for the 16th Lok Sabha that minorities are not safe if the saffron party (i.e. Bhartiya Janta Party) assumes power at the Centre. The new government led by Mr Narendra Modi has indeed taken over the governance at the Centre and will have a tremendous challenge and responsibility to allay apprehensions and fears among minorities, particularly the Muslims, maintain communal harmony and provide equal opportunities to all in their pursuit of socio-economic development and growth of the nation during the next five years.

 
Through the 42nd Amendment of the Constitution of India enacted in 1976, the words “Sovereign Democratic Republic” in the Preamble to the Constitution were substituted by the words “Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic”. This implies that India is a secular country with socialist ideals. However, neither India's constitution nor its subsequent laws further defined the relationship between the state and religion. The laws require the state and its institutions to recognize and accept all religions, enforce religious laws and respect pluralism. Thus in effect, the people of India have freedom of religion, and the state is required to treat people as equal citizens irrespective of their religion.


Communalism is a divisive force that identifies people in distinct, often in conflict, religious groups but secularism tends to unify communities on the principles of equity and mutual respect. Empathy, humanism and philanthropy remain basic traits of any secularist person who always advocates for common welfare and well-being of all. Secularism, in true sense, involves rising above the religious considerations to ensure the justice and fair play to all citizens. Hence it is of paramount importance in any democratic country that citizens imbibe the true secular values and ethics for a meaningful democracy and a better social order in the state.


While western concept of secularism lay emphasis on the separation of religion and state, India has not essentially subscribed to this point of view. Instead, secularism in Indian context is interpreted as equal treatment to all religions by the state. In effect, this implies that the state will not interfere with the religious laws and honour such laws in regulating relevant issues of the concerned community.

 During the general elections for the 16th Lok Sabha, some of the features of nineties of the bygone century, albeit in a lower key, were noticeable while so called ‘secular’ parties had aggressively wooed the minority (mainly the Muslims) votes. This is beyond any logic and imagination that political parties and leaders playing religion card would not be aware of the dangerous consequences of the counter polarization, proving this move to be counter-productive to the interest of the society in the long run. But then politicians often tend to forget it or deliberately ignore it keeping their immediate interests and likely short term gains in view.

 As against this, Mr Modi led BJP’s campaign largely remained focused this time on and agenda of development and good governance throughout these elections. The electorate’s decisive mandate for the agenda of development and good governance is also a clear signal that the religion (and caste) politics is a thing of past and may not sell or pay anymore. Perhaps in the coming years, the common man particularly younger generation will be more interested and focused on issues like education, employment and social well-being of all rather than driven only by the narrow interests of the religion (and cast) factor(s).

 The massive mandate received by the BJP led NDA in the parliamentary elections also clearly indicate that more or less every community has voted in favour of this alliance and the development and good governance is in the interest of all and sundry. Notwithstanding the fact that the so called ‘secular’ parties made all possible efforts to woo minorities, mainly Muslims, but the results clearly go against the communalism, or the religion based politics. Such parties and leaders need to take lesson that the Muslims too would want development, jobs and opportunities like any other citizen of any other community. The efforts made to spread fear or hate amongst their minds in the name of secuarism versus communalism to encash for electoral have clearly not worked.

 Unfortunately, the Indian sub-continent has an ignominious history of communal bigotry and riots in various parts and points of time. It’s just for the political reasons that the Gujarat riots of 2002 had been raked up time and again during the last twelve years and in these elections too by the political parties, some religious outfits and self-proclaimed intellectuals to serve their own vested interests.

 If the so-called secular parties and their leaders are indeed committed to secularism and well-being of minorities then ideally, and appropriately, the communal tensions and riots should have not occurred in states where these parties were (or are) in power. Also they should have shown noticeable prompt and accurate action to minimize loss of life and property if at all hostilities escalated in some part under their regime. But has this been really so? If so, how one would explain recent communal riots in the Western Uttar Pradesh and some other parts of the country.

 It is high time and need that the minority communities, particularly the Muslims, should also debate and realize that it has been over sixty years since independence and the 'secular' parties have fought umpteen elections seeking their mandate in the name of championing their cause but what has actually been done to improve their security, socio-economic standards and to integrate them with the mainstream over the years. They must also realize that in a democratic country, any political party or leader cannot do any unilateral favour or harm to any community and no party should take any community for granted just for the electoral support.

 It’s not that it is being said for the first time. It has been debated and opined by many umpteen times that some so-called ‘secular’ parties have been treating minorities, mainly the Muslims, as a vote bank over the years by inciting a fear psychosis during an election that they must support them or else the 'communal BJP' would come to power. Community leaders and individuals themselves should try to analyze logically and rationally, and not simply driven by religious sentiments, if any harm has actually been done by the said communal party while in power in the States and Centre in the past. Onus also lies on Muslims and other minorities to learn and understand finesse of the secularism and the selfish game played by the sectarian leaders and politicians in the name of communalism.

 Any government irrespective of the political party must recognize that the Muslims, like all other citizens, need education, employment, prosperity and socio-economic growth, and not merely the lip service or freebies as done in the past. Besides the government and community leaders, the common citizen irrespective of religious leanings must realize that more than religious teachings and education, the pupils also need modern education in sync with the contemporary times to groom as professionals for undertaking challenging jobs and assignment in an endeavor to improve the status of self, their family and the nation in the larger context.

 As far the Indian National Congress, which has ruled India for the most of the years after independence, this election was a nightmare and fiasco. The Congress could not garner even minimum number of parliamentary seats required to qualify as the main opposition party. One wouldn’t really know if it is their political compulsion or indeed an honest assessment but either way it appears that they have not learnt any lesson even after a massive defeat and rejection by the electorate during this general election. This is apparent in the aftermath of poll results, when the party spokesmen have stated that the loss at the election was mainly on account of massive polarization of electorate due to BJP’s communal politics and deployment of disproportionately vast resources for the purpose of publicity and mass campaign. It is also stated that the party’s own failure of highlighting the good work done during ten years is also partly responsible for the defeat. One wonders if the Congress has any scarcity of resources or funds and what had stopped them to reach to masses with their achievements.

 This is as if the entire nation has not seen or aware of what all transpired during the parliamentary elections. Is it not a fact that the Congress President met the Imam of the Jama Masjid in Delhi on the occasion and the meeting led to a call from the Imam to the community to vote in bloc for the Congress party? Also it is no more a secret how the support of the particular gangster-turned-politician of the minority community  was sought at Varanasi in favour of the Congress candidate in an endeavor to defeat BJP’s Prime Minister Nominee. Incidentally, the same tainted politician is also under trial facing murder charges of the brother of the said Congress candidate. Several politicians and religious leaders of the community from all over the country camped at Varanasi for weeks together to woo minority votes during the election process.

 It is surprising that the party and leaders are unable to understand or accept that such aggresive overt and covert maneuvers to garner support of a particular community might indeed lead to polarization of electorate on communal lines, as any reaction is bound to trigger a counter-reaction. This is indeed a strange logic of 'a secular party' which beats all logic and rationale. It would be anybody’s guess and inference that such moves ultimately prove counter-productive and self-defeating. Then you blame your rivals for own misadventures.

 Some leaders of other parties too were playing the similar game during canvassing. For illustration, the prominent socialist leader of the Samajwadi Party during the election campaign made a controversial remarks on the death sentence handed down to culprits of the gang rape in Mumbai. He reportedly said, “Boys are boys, they make mistakes. Why hang them?” Then he later added, “Boy and girl fall in love and part ways later due to differences, and when the friendship ends, the girl complains she has been raped.”

 It would be difficult to surmise that the leader does not understand the nuances of a mistake and a heinous crime. The obvious corollary made by media, rival politicians and public at large of his statement was that two of the three convicts were from the minority community and the leader was obviously trying to woo the Muslims for votes even on such a sensitive issue. These are few illustrations, there is no dearth of such saviours of minorities in the Indian politics whose heart (?) exclusively beats for secularism and welfare of minorities, more pronounced at the election eve.

 In the civilized West, the word secular ordinarily implies freedom of religion, equal citizenship and the separation of religion and state. On the other hand, in India secularism does not essentially mean separation of religion from state. Instead, secularism implies that the state is neutral to all religious communities. Consequently, the religious laws, particularly for Indian Muslims, supersede Sovereign laws in India, which have been questioned and debated by some from time to time.

 Because of the marked differences in the interpretation of secularism world over, particularly more democratic and civilized West, and how we envision it in India, secularism has always been a topic of controversy and debate. Some political parties, intellectuals and ordinary citizens feel that any attempt to implement a uniform civil code irrespective of religion would antagonize and hurt sensitivities of minorities, particularly the Muslims. On the other hand, others feel that the acceptance of Sharia and religious laws for the community vitiates the very principle of equal human rights for all citizens irrespective of the caste or creed. Besides, it discriminates against women and renders unequal citizenship. Hence such people feel that India should gradually move towards separating the religion and state.

 Ironically, for many in India secularism has become a narrow interpretation of merely a concern for the religious minorities, particularly the Muslims with a population of over 175 million whom they percieve as a vote bank. In a debate of secularism versus communalism, certain political parties as also many self-styled intellectuals appear to speak or taking sides based on their personal interests, or other short term and long term considerations. Those who subscribe to the conventional pacifying view are considered as secular and others who differ and talk of reason are often branded as communal.

 In constitution, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains and Parsees are listed as minorities. Muslims are approximately 15%, Sikhs are about 2% and others are less than 1% of the total population of India. Interestingly, Sikhs, despite being in minority, have a significant presence in the Indian army and other government jobs besides contributing significantly to the Indian economy. They never seek a reservation for self, one can’t find a Sikh begging and they liberally feed those who participate in their Langars without discriminating on the religion or caste. Sometimes I wonder if others will ever take any clue or lesson from them.

 Some rational thinkers believe that a true secularist is one who believes in collective conscience, contemporary needs and impeccable honesty.  The cardinal principle in any secular society should be spontaneous acceptance of the religious diversity with mutual respect and recognition of different religions and faith. Besides, the diversity of faith must be genuinely respected and not merely allowed or tolerated.

 Religion and state are separate entities and, ideally, the former should not interfere with the latter and vice versa. The communalism should not merit any consideration and the secularism should imply justice and fair play free of religious interventions. Our medieval history accounts for numerous instances where religion was a source of divisiveness, oppression, conflict and conversion, and repeatedly exploited to further the vested interests of one community or the other. But in the modern era of education and awareness, sooner the people realize this better they will have chances of collective survival and prosperity, particularly in a country like India which has such a complex diversity of the multi-religious, multi-lingual and cast based society.


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Delhi Riots 2020- The Slow burn of Anti-minority Prejudice, from 1984 to 2020

SOURCE:
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/1984-2020-49170

The Slow burn of Anti-minority Prejudice,                                   from 1984 to 2020


Sandeep Dikshit in New Delhi




THERE are occasions when even the most assured practitioners of statecraft fail to control the plot. US President Donald Trump was in town on a rare single-country visit and the last thing Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have wanted was to share the airwaves of his diplomatic triumph with a messy situation in another part of the national capital. As the body count rose, PM Modi would also not have wanted the sizeable international media to link the violence to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, that has the entire liberal corner in western democracies up in arms.
There has been no cataclysmic event in the past six years but the slow burn of anti-minority prejudice has reflections of the Delhi political climate in the days leading to the 1984 riots. It was not just the assassination of Indira Gandhi that provided the spark. The anti-Sikh prejudice was steadily percolating into the societal fabric; from Kanpur to Jamshedpur and from Hondh Chillar in Haryana to Delhi, the ideological fuel had been imparted well in advance.
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At the national level, knives had been sharpening well before the Delhi 2020 riots as well; perhaps when Kashmir was unilaterally dragged into a military lockdown while the government bent over backwards to accommodate the tribes of the North-East. If the subtext was not immediately apparent, it became clear when the UP government followed up its gunning down of protesters in December last year with moving to enforce victors’ justice by arm-twisting suspected Muslim protesters to pay damages, with no culpability sought from the police for wanton violence and even ransacking in many cases. The courts seemed to revel in taking to task playwrights and even octogenarian social workers.

In Delhi, the colourful, restrained Shaheen Bagh dharna — decked with national flags and women to the fore — became an antithesis of all that the Muslim was being made out to be. ‘Langars’ by Sikh farmers from Punjab and a procession of celebrities at the podium recast the narrative that CAA and NRC were religion-specific concerns. As elections to the Delhi Assembly approached, Shaheen Bagh was added to the right-wing lexicon of ‘urban naxal, jihadi, anti-nationalist’ and ‘tukde-tukde gang’; all meant to cast the wearer of the mantle as a non-person, unworthy of being extended the state’s social contract of impartial justice and opportunities. 

By the time the Delhi polls were over, local factors joined the mix. In the Delhi elections, the urban poor cutting across religious divide opted for the Aam Aadmi Party. This held true for Mustafabad that AAP wrested from the BJP (one of the three seats it won in 2015). But the Shaheen Bagh innuendoes and a local agitation against a mosque cost AAP the neighbouring Ghonda seat (that includes the badly affected Chand Bagh). Despite a campaign where the BJP positioned itself as an insurgent — this time to claim the legacy of Hindutva — it handily lost most neighbouring seats.
 The days of 1984 were more helpful for the perpetrator and the collaborator as photographic evidence was scarce. A considerable part of the mayhem took place with the confidence of immunity if the state was an accomplice, which has been comprehensively proven in every riot. A redux of 1984 or a 2002 is ruled out because of the risk of a blowback in the form of documentary evidence.
Back then there was no pressure of economic growth either. PM Modi would not have wanted his attempts to turn around the economy go up in smoke because of an uncontrollable conflagration in the national capital’s underbelly.
When National Security Adviser Ajit Doval twice stepped into the gullies of Chand Bagh, the message for a clampdown on the violence was unmistakable. But the element of perceptible even-handed justice has again gone missing. If the intention was to provide a balm, a probe panel should have been judicial rather than being headed by a police officer removed by the Election Commission for the firing on his watch at Shaheen Bagh. Another has been unable to trace the ABVP activists accused of JNU violence.
The CAA agitation has so far claimed more than 75 lives all over the country, besides the countless broken limbs and police cases that will dog them for the rest of their lives. The Modi government cannot step back, for fear of the domino effect: what if the Kashmiris then sought a rollback of Article 370?
In the zero-sum politics practised by the BJP, there can be just one winner: the party itself. If the images of the killings are not gruesome enough (eight bodies could not be identified by their gender, leave alone ascertaining their respective religions) to persuade the BJP to ease the foot off the religion accelerator, one alternative is to ensure a crackling economy. However, the coronavirus epidemic may have put paid to hopes of a healthy economic growth rate for the next six months. The third alternative is the national security card that has already been played to stunning effect.
Delhi still sits on a powder keg. The manner in which the AAP councillor is being hounded while those on the other side have been given a one-month breather suggests partiality and selective targeting. Even Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was rattled into giving sanction for Kanhaiya Kumar’s prosecution in order to retrieve the political ground he thinks he lost due to the shrill media trial of AAP councillor Tahir Hussain. The BJP may consider itself to be on a high, as any party with decisive back-to-back wins is entitled to. But the aggressive, poisoned on-call force of lumpens, which has just muddied the Trump visit, has the potential to embarrass it considerably more.
Anatomy of a riot
The days of 1984 were more helpful for the 
perpetrator and the collaborator as photographic 
evidence was scarce. A considerable part of the 
mayhem took place with the confidence of 
immunity if the state was an accomplice. Delhi 
still sits on a powder keg, but a redux of 1984 or 
2002 is ruled out because of risk of blowback in 
form of documentary proof




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