An anti-secularist manifestoASHIS NANDY

i,~ i'" )

GANDHI said he was secular. Yethe thought poorly of those whowanted to keep religion and politicsseparate. Those who believed in SUc11separation, he said, understoodneither religion nor politics.

This contradiction has its roots intwo meanings of secularism 'currentin contemporary India. The firstmeaning is known to every modernwesterner; the second is an Indian­ism which has no place either in theOxford English dictionary or in theWebster. Accordiqg to the first, reli­gious tolerance could come onlyfrom the'devalua7tion of religion in·public r' .ahd t~oin the freein~ ofpolitics ,religion. ThelesspoU-.tics is c ~db n,thisargume em'tol

y . disrespecs or by,b

sp towatds them.secularism, the second meaninginsists, must opt for respect. It isthis non-modern meaning of secu­larism which anti-colonial India

'stressed, gi'ven its obncerns~with'm'IlS!! .mobilisation .and a broadconsensus against the British rule."

The meanin'g recognises that evenwhcn a State is tolerant of religions,it need not lead to refiglous toler­ance in a society. For, tolerance by'the State cannot guarantee toleranceby the society. State tolerance jnayensure, in the short run, the survival

. 'of .a political community; in thelong run the community must go'beyond' it: This meaning of secular­ism recognises covertly' what we are

now finding out painfully, namely,that the growth of vested interests ina secular public sphere is an insuffi­cient basis for the long-term survivalof a political community. Otherwisethe Scots and the Welsh or, for thatmatter, the Sikhs and the Assamesewould not be creating so many pro·blems for their countries.

Previously, thanks to a number offortunate circumstances, one couldfollow the logic of the second, morelocal, meaning of secularism inIndian politics while paying lip­service to the first. In recent years,the nature of the democratic processin India is forcing the politicalactors to choose between the twomeanings.

he condition (jf the Indiansuch today that to advise the

traditions . to .abide byived from .the Indian Stateto fall ndeaf ears. Fewe that ism, Sikhismbas. any moral lesson to

m tbe Indian: State. For thereason, the bope that the Statee an impartial arbiter among

t religious communities inits present state appears a ratherpallid one.

Second, in spite of the tremendousgrowth in the power of the State inIIidia, sensitive political analysts aswellanwtivists are in no doubt asto who or what will be abolished ifthe Indian nation-State today takeson the task of ' abolishing religiousand cultural identities. The seculari­sation of the Indian State has gonefar but there are limits to its capa­city to secularise the society, (As Iam primarilywriting for the modernEnglish-speaking gentry, I shall usethe word 'secularism' in its properEnglish' sense in the rest of thisessay and forget tbe other secular­ism as an improper Indianism.)

nonbeliever in .' nOllbeliever in believer in public;public and private. publio; believer in non-believer in(/awaharlal N(?liru, .private privateM.N. Roy) (Yal(abhbhaiPatel, (M..... Jinnah,

Indira Gandhi) DoV. Savarkar)

The awareness of these issues hascreated problems for our concept ofthe State in India. Since about theseventeenth century, the modernideology of the State has wanted theState to be secular by separatingreligion and politics. Since we firstbegan to borrow the ideology in thethird decade of the last century, ithas also dominated the modernIndian consciousness. And we, too,have systematically tried to separatereligion from politics. This, inspireof many like Gandhi trying to be'secular' by bringing the right kindof religion and the right kind ofpolitics together... Now We suddenly confront theem barrassing fact that not onlymany Indians but a significant pro­portion of humankind have becomesuspicious of the western concept ofsecularism and become receptive toa non-secular concept of religiousand cultural tolerance.

To understand the, nature of thisresponse we have to first recognisethat modern nation-States, being bydefinition suspicious of the presenceof culture in politics and trying tocarve out a sphere of ehe State Whereonly the values of statecraft willrule, works with th.6 following order­ing of the citizen (Ialso give exam­ples from Indian public life).

In other words, ' to the ideologuesof the modern State system, theideal political man is someone likeNehru or Roy .. And they believe

. that, given the ineluctable laws ofsocial progress, more and more citi­zens will-enter the first category, toshed, as a first step, their religiousbeliefs in public and, then, as asecond step, their beliefs in private.

This hierarchy of citizens, whichpersists in spite of the official andunofficial veneration of Gandhi asthe father of the Indian nation,follows naturally from the modernideology of secularism and providesthe basis of the Indian State's claimto a monopoly on religious andethnic tolerance. At the level of the

person, such tolerance is defini­tionally the prerogative of one whohas some western education andsome exposure to the modern cul­ture and the modern idiom ofpolitics.

A Gandhian criticis~ of the ap­proach could be three-fold. First,that it ignores the finer differenceswithin traditions, while playing upsuch differences within the modernculture. It ignores that some formsof religion do lead to intolerance,other forms do not. Thus, while theapproach draws a line betweenvulgar Marxism and non-vulgarMarxism and one between a vulgarWest and anon-vulgar West, itrefuses to dra w a line between vulgarreligion and non-vulgar religion orbetween tolerant and intolerantforms of culture.

Often, such secularism - I shallcall it official secularism -t-r- goesfarther. It compares the ideals. ofmodernity with realities of religionsand cultures. Thus, the ideals ofmodern politics are compared withthe realities of the caste tsystem (toshow how bad the latter is) theway. many zealous apologists ofHinduism compare the ideals of thecaste system against the realitiesrofhierarchical modern bureaucracy (to

believer inprivate andpublio(M.K. Gandhi)

show how good the fanner is).

Second, official secularism tries tolimit the democratic process bytruncating the political personalityof the citizen. While the personalityof those within the fully secular,modern sector is well-represented inthe democratic order, those outsidethe modern sector have only a partof their selves represented in politics,The other part they have to carefuIlykeep outside the public sphere.

This, of course, means that thecreative role which politics mightplay within a religious or culturaltradition, by playing up some sub­traditions against the others or byreordering the hierarchy of subtra-

ditions, is pre-empted. Instead ofadialogue between the public and theprivate within a person-and bet­ween politics and culture-the twospheres are rigidly separated and thelatter is frozen in time. As a result,the religious and cultural traditionsare forced to become, as themoderns invariably accuse them ofbeing, status quoist, This dces notof course keep religion out ofpolitics; it only means politics entersit by a different route. We shall re­turn to this point.

1 hird, official secularism falls totake into account the politics ofcultures today. It sees the believeras a person with an inferior politicalconsciousness and it celebrates thefact that we live more and more ina world where all faiths and cul­tures, except modernity, are in reces­sion. Such secularism fails to sensethat critical social consciousness, ifit is not to become a reformist sectwithin modernity, must respect andbuild upon the faiths and the visionsthat have refused to adapt to themodern world view.

I have spoken of the growing mar­ginalisation ofreligions, cultures andvisions. This may seem odd at a timewhen the secularists are obviouslyhaving a hard time. In Lebanon,Quebec, Scotland and Basque-andin Punjab, Assam, Sri Lanka andSind in this subcontinent itself­ethnicity is challenging establishedmodern nationalism; racism is onthe rise in parts of the liberal firstworld; and the Church is ascendantin parts of the super-secular second.Even in societies not torn by ethnicpassions, a new cultural pride andexclusivism are visible. AmericanBlacks and Hispanics are examples.

Though often viewed as unique,the self-affirmation of parts of tbeMuslim world can also be seen as apart of this larger picture. TbeMuslims now find themselves at thecentre of the world stage preciselybecause for long they were treatedas the et-ceteras and and-so-forthsof the world, whereas their ethnicself-affirmation is now backed bywealth and a new capacity to be apolitical nuisance.

This is not the world where onecan talk glibly about the marginal-

15

16

isation of faith. Yet, the fact remainsthat the affirmation of religion. inour times has gone band in bandwith the erosion of religions; exactlyas the victory of the idea of thenation-State has coextended with anew cultural and psychological crisisin the modern nation-State system.The two crises however become onein the third world, and each societyin our part of the world is facedwith a dilemma.

On the one hand, the existinghierarchy of nations and the culturaldomination of the modern Westhave created a new concern for, anddefensiveness about, non-moderncultures. Modernity no longer lookslike something in the distant future;it is now hegemonic globally.

This sensitivity to the power ofmodernity has. been sharPeqed bythe Orwellian awareness.tharbn~byone the mail) modern. thesries ofman-made suffering and. tl1i~-world­

ly liberation have .t~~m.seN~S.1Je~p.coopted by new forces of oppres­sion; these theories themselves. no'¥legitimise new forms. ofgre~d, vis:)lence and obscurap.tism;:Ti.lsuc;h:awonld,the oldeJ~objec C'".pretationsof':reIigioare:hound .. ·toJoo~:al1dldJng'the!~le

Justiceanddignigroups~

ii,€)~(the(•0We '.gies ofreligiop ,obvious,'duetooflnhtnyfottnst.othe·attemptst1reni~.: .Even inth¢'f~Wt

poHties'~bere •••·den;)q~.r~tpatiot). has expanded;(r:~'riddet1piggy-backon then .~pdJi"tioisedto enter. visibJ.e •.. poli~Jg~ .• aj1dmove centre stage.. Dell1octati.~~.t.i~11and politicisatiori have. nst dh11in.­ated religion from politics; they havegiven xenophobic and anti-demo­cratic forms of religion new powerand salience. On the one hand isCoca Cola, on the other AyatollahKhomeini. The choice,even in thisterribly crude formulation, is pain­ful.

II

The mod~rn concept of'secularismiii India, I have already said, is bor-

rowed from western history and ithas a clear normative component:religion and ethnicity should bebanished from the public sphere andan area should be marked out inpolitics where rationality, contrac­tual social relationships, and real­politik would reign. This sanitised.sphere of politics may throw uprulers who are believers, but if itdoes do so, these leaders should beweak, secretor apologetic believers.It also follows from the same nor­mative frame .that in open societies,some citizens may chose theirleaders on religious grounds or theleadere may exploit this weakness ofthe citizens, but both sides-theleaders and the led-should be em­barrassed abent this state of affairsand how the limits oftheir' game.

Thus, a section ofth~ Indian ciq­zenry too feels more at~ome wi~~<a

. temJ?lf~going~ime mipister sucli as'1nchra .GandhJir the .'same ..••·'way. asee,tion .of th~Americanpu!?lic'applauds achurch"goingpresident!\n(.tsee~JriIn·"as pqtenti!\l Y' moreh0l1~stii9r' .stf~ig1:lkfqf~~~eJjmostvgl:cal lJiP.qu :Indjansshockecl:' 'N\\\pakis)"denatul'· j of oia .becathe on

, ,

',' likalpalitik 'and nae. The' theory is'to educate,guide,

'bi tbecitizenry' into thissecularsplrere, tne' sphere of r(lj­dharma" with the help of a modernvanguard acting as a pace,setter inmatters of social challge.

The vanguard sets the pace byexercising its political choices in arational and,hence,moral fashionfrom the point of View of the State.It may not be the Christian, theHindu or the Islamic concept ofmorality, the.theory goes, but it ismorality all right; it is the morality

of modern State-craft. In otherwords, the vanguard sets the paceby being a collection of exemplarypersons who live with their fellow­humans without illusions, yet ethi­cally, and by building their ethicsnot on myths or compassion butonscientific rationality, hi~tor~ .andreasons of the State",

It should be admitted :'~traj~ht­away that, howsoeverlimited its con­cept . of human nature, howsoevercontemptuous .its attitude to theethnic peripheries reportedly waitingto be conscientised out of their illu­sions, such secularism has servedthe Indiancitizenry reasonably wellfor long periods of time, especiallyso in the early years after Indepen­dence . url<;ler the easy, benignplooernist,Jawaharlal Nehru.

At the time; political mobilisation,in spite of the existence of a power­ful nationaHst 'movement since the.t\VenHes, wasistlilat ••.•.~.manageablyl~.vvi}tly;~I"tfJ@.:~l1(.Iian ••. ·power elitewas.choo itb.9J;t~,whomit. ad mitted

. S~!J ..,fhegpvetn-tn ..' qr~ofwhat

e."pame>of feIi­eWaS' frtlS'bip.the

}/\',:,:.;';:,\;":­

cnsus' that•be 'main-mIn y~

c,ont ;ed '1nthe''and in'the

tll ce-keepingAbove alI, 'there 'was a' con-

w~i acktlowleoged -. the of the ,various

forms . of I .' Fabian andMarxist, ideolo which infortrledthetuHng. ioe gy of the IndianState . that· Hinou and' Islamicexclusivism and zealotry were thestrongest among the urban middleclasses, not among the so-calledperipheries of the country, andtherefore the main battle againstreligious and ethnic conflicts had tobe fought among the middle classeswhich dominated the Indian politi­cal consciousness. The secularisationof Indian politics, so fa r as it involv­ed mainly the middle classes, didhold such conflicts in check.

That consensus and that strategypave gone as far as they could have.

17

In sum, formal, western-stylesecularisation has shown an incapa­city to keep pace with politicisationin this part of the world, and itshows no sign of being able to do soin the future. As with countries longheld up as models for India for their

on the road to secularisation and.nation-building. The positivist,'science-centred ideologies of nationa­lity and the conservative and radicaltheories of progress have come underattack there as the new opiates ofthe masses which allow the rulingclasses to hand over the State to thetechnocrats and to the controllers ofmass media.

After rejecting and very nearlydefeating religion as a false con­sciousness in society after society inthe first and second worlds, thesocial critics and activists there havefound that the secular State hasbegun to claim - along with its newpriestly classes like the scientists,the bureaucrats and the developmentexperts - exactly the same blindfaith from its followers as the churchonce did. It has begun to equip itselfwith the technological means to beomniscient, omnipotent and omni­present, God itself. In the north thatprocess is called scientific advance­ment, in the south development.

ultimately, he hoped, wouldgradual­ly delink Islam from the Pakistani'State, confine it to private life, andthen move towards a secular modernState where a highly westernised,lapsed Muslim like him would notbe a misfit. '

Jinnah's main fear, the fear whichmade him leave the Congress camp;was that the Gandhian movementwould create a culture of politics inwhich, under the guise of Gandhian'secularism', a Hindu culture woulddiscomfit both the Indian secularistand the Indian Muslim. Being awesternised ethnic, Jinnah could notdifferentiate between a Hindu zealotand a spokesman of the peripheralHindus, He had 110 clue as to why

.a zealot like D.V, Savarkar shouldbe more hostile to Gandhi than toa modernist like Nehru.

However, if Jinnah had been alive,he would have been happy to seethat his political style, even thoughin crisis because it has been takenover by the zealots in his 'home­land', survives in other parts of the

A '.' subcontinent. In India often fullyII these experiences h~ve been secular, even anti-religious, Muslim

unkind to the modern secularists in politicians get access to power inIndia. Recently, they have.cbeen the name of their Muslim originssubjected to further stress because, ~;hich they themselves see ~n purelyas a part -ofsecularisation itself~ ,the, instrumental terms. In Pak~stan andprivate lives of, politicians'\Pa:ve"Bangladesl~, the Zulfikar All Bhuttosbecome public property. Jawaharlal an,d fhe. Zia-ur-Rahmans, wh? areNehru, it now turns out, was, a non-beIJeversor weak believersvotary of astrology and a sneaking themselves, have constantly triedHindu. in personal life; Subhas' politically to encash the appeal ofChandra Bose was a Gita-devouring Islam.crypto-sannyasi; and by now', it is The experience of Islam in thiswell-known thatIndira Gandhi, that respect has been the experience ofopen worshipper of the secular every religion of the subcontinent.Iridian nation-State, did not like to It is the experience of being oftenmiss a havan or pilgrimage; given a reduced to the status of a hand­half chance. maiden of politics, subservient' to

Even the implicit, third model of the needs of a nation-State and thesecularism used by the be/e noire of class interests of the zealot and theIndian secularists, Mohammed Ali westernised secularist, both of whomJinnah, is in crisis today, Most well- hold the vast majority of the peopleknown Indian secularists of the of their, own religion incontempt;recent decades, by their personal one for their lack of zealotry; thefaith, would have put Jinnah to ?th~r for theirincomplete western-shame, who in private life was a isation.nonbeliever. But Jinnah made arather profitable mix of privateagnosticism and public religiosity,which of course was the exact reverseof the dominant mode of linkingreligion to politics in Indian nationa­lism: private faith and public non­belief. Jinnah's goal was to create apolitical culture in Pakistan which

They have now not only begun tobreak down but to work againstmany forms. of ethnic tolerance.First, political participation hasgrown enormously, thanks to theeight general and innumerable localelections and thanks to the waypolitics has entered virtually everysphere of Indian life. No longeris it possible to screen those enter­ing politics for their commitmentto modern secular ethics. Thisis another way of saying that demo­cratisation itself has set limits onthe secularisation of Indian politics.The new entrants, coming from whatwas, until recently, part of the ethnic'backwaters' of India, have givenIndian' democracy its power andresilience?

SeCOnd, partly negating the firstprocess, the new entrants carryingtheir religion or ethnicity into theirpolitics have self-consciously begunto shed their. ethnic, consciousnesswhile retaining their ethnic 'links.These links they, use in a syculaffashion f?r elector.al,especially fae­tion~l ends. Tpatjs,Jl1ey€:nd up byjoining the tNr~,,8a~T,gQry ofiP0!iti­cal pa,rtici papt~,~y.J!C~tn:pJifj,¢d1?~ per­sor\s,like:Jjn.nah~nq Sava.rk~r)

rat,h~~.than tl~y '. ~rst",pr the,sec9J}d.(exetnpli fit,~ Py, ,~,r1J.rH""anc.l,I.nclirnGa~c.lhiT(\$p(Jctivel' ).lristeaqoftJierellg~9q~!].l~e()fpol .'intolisa/ti""",,-8

eleete

TUt! , ,yXpr~~st?ni Q, cliItupil values, 110101lgerremains available for check­ing'the pure politics of public life,often seen by the newly politicisedas an area where only the laws ofthe jungle apply. All this is anotherway of saying that there is now apeculiar double-bind in Indianpolitics: the ills of religion havefound political expression but thestrengths of it have not been avail­able for checking corruption andviolence in public life.

Third, self-doubts have arisen inmany modern Indians because theolder concept of secularism has beenlosing its shine since the late sixtiesin exactly those countries whichwere said to be way ahead of India

• I

Ij

18

developmental performance (at diffe­rent times Britain, the United StatesSoviet Russia, Maoist Chin~and even Shah's Iran), in this sub­continent, too, ethnicity is refusingoblige and sing its swan song. Yet,as I have already said, the survivalof ethnicity has not strengthenedethnicity or religious traditions; ithas only allowed the pathologies ofthe latter to find political expression.

We thus come to the 'method'of a small minority of thoseworking for religious or ethnictolerance in India, though themethod parad oxically is based onthe faith and the culture of themajority of Indians. The method isimplied in the unofficial Indian useof the word 'secularism'; it is expli­cit in the Gandhian and proto­Gandhian theories of inter-religiousharmony.

Those Joyal to the modern idea ofthe nation-State accept the idiom ofsecularism, and try 'to hitch ethni­9ity, to politics ina m()re or lesspragmatic way. They try t()yreate asocial. basis for secularism by link;­mgitto the reward systembf theState, thus creating avest~dintet.e.§t

in 'at le.a~t the secular pbIWs~I~tyl~;,

Those 8ymR~ thieticJo<tl1~.oa.9qhJ~~,visi()'i1 - toth~'UJt~r em9a.fI"a~§n:i:ent()f t)ie ll1odewIndi.~2~t~r~)·~~rpeW~fgund glo \)~1;B()'Y~r~lJ19:auq ,its f~ar of the g~9'YilJg pdJself-affirmation of,the '-1110,Inqians ~ try to sh.i.f~el,pp.I:i1!~isfrorn actors to texts1,~Pd<r()ll1i~lJ,r~Fto inner incenti:ves,.§.(),asi,t();r.e.a.'~}rl'll.'true' religion and 'true?cl.lltur~which they see as de&nitiona.l),ytC?lerant ofthe other religions a.n4cultures,

Such a vision has marry' features.The most crucial of them IS. therecognition that the clash betweenmodernity and religious traditionsin the third world elicits from eachculture four political responses. toethnicity, The responses can becalled half ideal-types, half mythicstructures.

The first of the four, which doesnot really fit in with the other three,is the ethnic construction of thewestern man whose personality isviewed as the cause of the West'ssuccess and the non-West's failure.This western man is a shadow cate-

gory or a dummy. Not merelybecause he is often physically absentin the third world but also becausethe way the non- West construes himis not how he sees himself. Nor eventhe way he has 'really' existed inhistory. However, the category isnot unreal either; millions of humanbeings have lived by that image andmillions have suffered because ofthe existence of that image.

Sometimes the western man isconstrued by a non-western cultureas an 'other'-to criticise or correctthe allegedly faulty personalitytypes available in the culture. Theshadowy western man then becomesa critique of the indigenous perso­nality as well as a projecticn of theego- ideal of some sections of theindigenous population. If the sec­tions are powerful, they may evenmanage to setup this ego ideal as.the ideal of the entire society.. Itthen 'begins to represent a neweupsychia (to use Abraham Mas­low's Conclilpt .of anJ,ltopia,n,.conc,eptof personality) in opposition to thetraditional etlp$ychiils survivin intRIil;,~oQ\MX' ,

tiesentffom what is generaflyfor them in a theocratic St Dty,inst~ad of fa9ipg the prospect: ofbe Iamisedunder, say; a,nIlll the minoritiesfa being wester-nised in a· n nation-State.However, in the second case, thesituation is morally. 'redeemed' bythe fact that what is in store for theethnic minorities in the long run isno different from what is in storefor the ethnic majority in the longrun. Both become objects of socialengineering and both face culturalextinction.

The second category of responseis that of the westernised native, theethnic who has internalised and ap-

" 1 I

proximated the western man (thoughhis syncretism may include some­times a touch of defiance, too).From a Rammohun Roy (1772­1833) who' took a Brahmin cookwith him to England after life-longdefiance of Hind u caste codes, to aJawaharlal Nehru (1889·1964) whoin his weaker moments gave in toastrologers and tantriks of all hues,a long and colourful list of indivi­duals provide clues to the innercontradictions of the westernisednative. But it also happens to be alist of men who have fought for thcwestern secular ideals in this part ofthe world and turned against thei rown cultural self. partly to identifywith their western tormentors.

Corresponding to the personalitytype is a reconstructed history whichlocates. in the past persons whoreportedly represented the sameideals. Thus, modern India hasrediscovered Ashoka from the thirdcentur¥BG. and Akbar from, thesix.teenth-s~rtBryas proper 'secular'

~2dit&l;lSreinterpreted tradi­'(rl)ts (sHchas the once deal-'t&lh,~ei!!~f~nt~harmasof then8}mebta~ifl}ar,~rthe onesg~yilll th~;, n?Hrality of state-

to .. ise: die westernq;f te6raft,' '

'['he . ~tive;may differ\V~stern man, hetl[ll.man1s pol i­

nthis .• ultimate~ei"";'he p'refers to

(je.tijis¢.:pwjlJuiversalise' ~6\¥I1G~lJtur~. lie tfkes the ideal

9ron~i'(Vor18iseriously and he~~Ii9Yesinf,!B~9~Y of progress in'¥.MjS&,;P~9gF~ss,stands •for . uni­~l?~lJ.l~~~tjpn.~CC?T(,lin~tothe modelofth7EbTQpean nineteenth centuryvi~.ions of a desirable society.He believes that the westernnations ~.' or, if' the westernisednative happens to be orthodoxsocialist or positivist Marxist, thesocialist West - are more advancedculturally; 'that the "peripheries ofthe world win slowly and painfullyhave to traverse the same path ofprogress.

The two main obstacles to thishe sees as the backward, religiousmasses, unexposed to modernscientific rationality, and their falseleadership, ever willing to take

.The Western Man'(dummy variable)

f9

Peripheral oreveryday Muslim

His family belonged to tnePranami sect. a sect deeply in·fl\1:.encedby Islam al1dhybeJ~B&flp,tAaregion Where Muslim coninluriJtN~were in. turn deeply ioflL!enped:hXHindu folk theology. He had'reasonto" be. confident that religiQIls'f\l5tmerely divided but also1.l'nitedhuman aggregates. '. .i

Once youhave classified the:thni~personality in politics. (see summaryin chart), it becomes obvious that insocieties like India, there are twoaffinities and. three enmities in anysituation involving two' religiouscommunities. The overt affinity isbetween the westernised believers ofthe two communities, The westernis­ed Hindu and the' westernised Mus­lim, for instance, can spend daysdiscussing their commonness, '. espe­dally how the two of them are diffe­rent from the common run ofHindus and Muslims who are willingto kill each other for the sake oftheir faiths, and how in the distantfuture, they, the barbarians,mIg4tbe pursuaded to shed their faith,modernise and then live happily-everafter. The covert affinity is betweenthe peripheral Hindus and peripheralMuslims, much less accessible tothemodern Indian and to modernscholarship.

" The overt hostility is that between•the Hindu and the Muslim zealotsWho hate each other but understandeach other's motivations perfectly.The less overt one is the' hostility ofthe westernised ethnic towards theperipherals of his own as wen' asother faiths whom the westernised.ethnic sees as passive or prospective·~ealdts. The covert hostility is thatOf the zealot whose hatred for theeveryday practitioner of his ownfaith is total.

I have more or less completed myanalysis. All tha] remains to be done

Peripheral oreveryday Hind-u

WesternisedHindu.

Hindurevivalist

The Referent

The nonmodern.ethnic

The modernsecular-rationalist

The semi-modernzealot

The non-modern, periPhera~ethnicbas a longer and deeper memory.And it is to him'and his ideologythat Gandhi turned to give a: politi­cal basis to his concept of religiousand ethnic tolerance. A number i ofscholars, most tecently T.K.,lv.\aha­devanand Agehananda.i.Bharati,have written about Gandhi's ,}!loorknowledge of textual Hinduism. Animpartial scholar of classical Hindu­ism cannot but agree with them.Surely Gandhi had little -patiencewith the greater Sanskritic ... culture,He sometimes paid lip service to itbut there could be little doubt thathis primary allegiance was to thtHolktheologies of Hinduism and 'Islam.'

cities have internalised the techno­logy ofvictory of the western manand decided to fight under the flagof their own faiths. The zealot hatesthe westernised iethnic as one whohas sold himself tothe westernmanbut his hatred for the peripheralethnic is deeper. For he shares withthe westernised ethnic the referencepoint called.the western man."

Finally, there are the, numericallypreponderant peripheral believers(who are peripheral only because thezealots and' the secularists havedecIaredthem so). These believerswho have learnt 'to fight with, asalso to survive, the zealots of theother faiths as well as their Own.The modern secularist and thecrypto-modern zealot know ·,of thebattles for. survival against thez~alots of other faiths, . pot of theother battle against the ze~lotsofope's own•. Neither }l1e 'secularist~br.tliez~~lbt h~s the. ~ens,itivitytostao.9.· -.vj(ness to' this.' other battlef?fsurviyaL'N'rit4er has the time totr1l1embe~theexperienceof neigh­b()~rline*s •'. ~o.d .. co'.survival Whichcharacterises thy r~lationships 'amongtlie . peripheral believers of differentfiHihs.· . . .

advantage of irrational, supersti­tious faiths. To fight the twoobs­tacles he invokes tbe image of thewestern man and constantly com­pares it with the realities of the non­western cultures.

ThirdlY, there is the zealot -: theaggressive Hindu, Muslim or Sikhwho, reacting to and yet internalis­ing the humiliation inflicted '0/1 allfaiths byva rtriumphant anti-faithcalled : western: modernity, hasaccepted the modern attitude to allf~iths including his, own. He is tileone the westernised native fears themost as the-fanatic who might mobi­lise the .. otherwise-unmobilisablemasses suffering from an acute caseof false consciousness (even thoughsuch zealots mostly operate fromurban bases and appeal to the semi­modern). .Ifsuch a zealot isa Mus­lim or. a ~ikh~ecallbimJtfunda­mentalist.iif he.isa.jblindu we callhim a revivalist-en-a-Hindu. nation­alist; .

: Strangelyen(?,ll&.~,fRezJalot·bnlYuses .th~ .. 'tra " c' a~. .reljgious·qre~h~ic bPHnQa nits9['1119pi-l;~!itipo,,}Il!W. ..i.op\ P.pjJ~j.n&and~etfJ;B &SP ..••~!o,lt.hefaittjof the ordinal' ......•..\I..MusliIilorSikh isa~·embarra~sll:)enth'I'helattel'd(leS'\tlot " OW-t~il1 ~kbfiity0wn.>.faitlih18o' .p~:rtia:lsp!iMt

:: '!~

••!Io,j~is'v.al}st',.··ott~fi, .l~~.;,)pW.~fl,:t1'" !cit~, .is~jI<'.W-d ""'~"i..es.,tqo, "J;1!J!siqepti ed. with t e aggressors; he,too, has turned against his culturalself. Ultimately.fhe zealot's is morea, political than a civilisational self­affirmation. To the zealot the ideaof his own religion or culture isappealing, not the actuality of it.(That is why his strong commitmentto the classical version of his reli­gion and culture.)

\ He is one who has internalised~e'dereat; of his religion or cultureNf'the hands of the modern world'a-nd ' he 'is the one who believes thattliat .defeat can be avenged onlywhen the peripheral faiths or ethni-

is briefly to mention some featuresof the peripheral majority, their folkreligions and folk theologies, andthe politics of tolerance implicit inthem. This tolerance rbypasses the

, three enmities mentioned above andhas the capacity to survive and evenenrich the process of democraticparticipation, unlike the toleranceof the modernised sector; whichproves fragile in a situation of ex·panding participation.

FiI'S~"theperipheral believers in ati:'~d1ti6rial society face a world-viewvyhich ,seeks to pre-empt and fre­quently deny the existence of theirtraditional. ideology of tolerance.Thus, modern India talks of Ashokaarid Akbar without admitting thatthey did not build a tolerant Statein the sense in which a Lenin or aJawaharlal Nehru would have want­.edthem to; they built their toleranceon' the tenets of Buddhism andIslam.

Likewise, the chieftains' of theHindu zealots like to refer to theprofound truth that India is tolerantbecause it is Hindu. But their claimhas a dishonest ring about it, forthey violeptlY disagree when some­one parodies them and says thatAkbar was.tolerant because be wasMuslim or Ashoka Was greatbecause he was a Buddhist' first and~ king second.;.,;,: ,,' ,

A116anclbidid as a sanatani orirliditional'Hindu was to take boththese positiOils seriously - the onewbichsay~ thM India is secularoeca,l!se iti~Ifindu and the onew~16h ••..• says.','. Akbar was tolerantbeca'lselle was a Muslim- and to?l'¢*lyadrltit' 'the religious basis ofethnic tolerance in India. He did thesame thing with Christianity andtried to do so haphazardly withSikhism and Judaism, too.

Instead of committing himself tothe hopeless task of banishing reli­gion from politics while expandingdemocratic participation, .he daredseek a politics which would beinfus­ed with the right kind of religionand be tolerant. That is why aHindu zealot found him a seriousopposition and killed him. As I havealready said, Hindu zealotry hasnever found the modernist a seriousenemy; it has found in him only alleffete,self-bating Hindu,

Secondly, Gandhi recognised thatIndia's most effective preachers ofinter-communal harmony in thepast have mostly ibeen either pre­modern, non-modern or anti­modern. Men like Nehru, he felt,were only a partial or apparentexception to this rule. Sensing thecritique of modernity implied inthis recognition, the embarrassedmodernists have tried to integrateGandhi in their framework by con­ceptualising Hinduism and Islam astwo cultures which could, be freedfrom their religious moorings andfitted into a composite whole calledthe Indian culture to which allright-thinking Indians should beallegiant.

Unfortunately, religions are r.otmachine-parts, and politicians andscholarsmake bad cultural machi­nists. The best of Hinduism and thebest of-Islam may go together as thetitles o.f two paperback books ofreadings ill the same series, but willhardly' invoke two Jiving religioustraditions trying to cope with eachother or with real-life issues.

Those outside the modern sectorin India sense this. They are con­scious of the existence of tworeligions called Hinduism andIslam .as well as of the Hinduconstruction of Islamandthe Mus­lim construction of Hinduism. It ison the basis of such constructions'- and by" this 1 certainly meansomething more than stereotypes­that they operate in everyday life.At this plane the 'languages' ofHinduism and Islam -- and for thatmatter all major religions and ethnictraditions in India - have nowinterlocking and/or commongrammars. These grammars survive,in spite of the efforts of learnedscholars to read them as folktheologies - as inferior, peri­pheral versions, of. Hinduism andIslam. They surviveas a mode ofmutuality and a major source ofIndian creativity.

Creativity, after all, presumes acertain marginality, and, in thematter of culture, a certain dialecticbetween the classical and, the folk.It has.to transcend the classicist-­and eli~e - formulation that.classi-

cism is the centre of the culture, toprotect the classicism itself frombecoming a two-dimensional frozeninstance of a culture museumisedand commoditified,

Let us consider for a momentwhat many consider to be the finestexpression of Indian creativity:north Indian classical music. Is itHindu? Is it Muslim? Is it secular?One need not to do a very imagina­tive empirical work on Indian crea­tive musicians - though some suchworks are available - to piercethrough their derived sloganeeringabout secularism and to find outthat the Muslim musicians thinknorth Indian classical music to be,mainly Muslim, the Hindu musi­cians think it to be mainly Hindu.

This could be read as a source ofpossible conflict; it could be read asthe possible source of the culturalpower of such music. One of tbemajor symbols of the north Indianclassical tradition in this c;entury,Allauddin Khan, when he wantedtohonour his wife Madina Be~ull1,~ycomposing a new raga inhernall1'~'

could 110t apparently find aI)Y!J1jm~.

less Vaishnava than mad,q~111a.nj([ri.;:,

Modern secularism fajls tQI~e~;tJ1~religious sources of sUc;h (-il,'eatiiVit.y;and tolerance of other faiths.l.ltsees the refusal of Bacle(}hul,am Alito sing paeans to Pakjstan'!9):.t~:j,~sfounderd uring his briefst'\l:y:intl1lfl"p'country us anexpressiOll,qfpjssecularism. Traditional". tbe?ries'pfethnic tolerance see it anlnyexptes,.sion of his Islam or of a .truerIslam. They recognise that songtexts in north Indian classical musi'¢have a tradition behind them andthey bear a direct relationship withan artist's or a gharana's n;lOdebfcreativity. That tradition has ' adirect religious meaning - simul­taneously Hindu and Islamic. Itcannot be artificially given. a reli­gious meaning exclusively identifiedwith one faith. Nor can it be everfully secularised.

Similarly with architecture. P.N.Oak has worked for years on a'Hindu'history of the Taj Maha!.Now carbon dating seems to be.lending partial support to thistheory. Trying pathetically to be .a

proper modern historian, .Oak neverowns up the psychological insighthe is tacitly articulating: the TajMahal does seem sanctified to areligious Hindu, and deeply Islamicto the believing Muslim. There liesthe Indian meaning of its grandeuras well as appeal. DisconnectTajfrom either of the two traditions,and it becomes a monument purelyfor the non-Indian tourists andorientalists. Oak's history, thus, isnot only irrelevant to the majorityof Hindus; it is anti-Hindu.

What is true of the zealot'sapproach to culture is also true ofthe westernised native's attitude toculture. The modern secularist andthe modern Hindu . try to preservetheTaj as a monument for touristsarid build an oil refinery next to it.Their modernity is linked to theTaj through the market and throughsulphuric acid. The traditional con­cept of ethnic tolerance, concerned,powerless and-at-bay; can only prayat the mosque hoping that themodern \VorldWiUpass it by.

Both exan,'lples "PFOvideclues toan alterniHi s of the cul-ture of Indi awareness adm:itsthat at one plane Hinduism luis'bel;:, ap ian Islam andIsla· duism.:-. thatthe slim knows

. e a m;inorityhefincl,s .to admit .:.that In the mostcreativ~ .' its crea-tivity t' the ot.h~rfaitho. .way tht'lever . that thecre~ QM1:leerishar ies by -. itsencounters with other faiths, mainlyIslam, Buddhism, Christianity andSikhism.

True that the uprooted or mar­ginalised Muslim, urbanised andfrequently lurnpenised, often looksto the Middle East for salvation.And so does sometimes the Mullahtrying desperately to protect his:place among followers whose peri­pheral Islam does not often granthim the centrality he seeks. But 'canone not make a strong case thatsuch defensiveness follows not somuch from his faith as .from his

frustration and insecurity in hisimmediate political environs?

The Gandhian response to thisquestion is clear. If the rules gov­erning the treatment of mlechchasand vldharmis in Manu, Yajnavalkyaand Kautilya do not handicap theHindu in a democratic order, be­cause he has other shastras andtraditions to fall back upon, theconcept of dar'ul Islam also shouldnot make the Muslim a congenitalmisfit in a plural society. There arealternative traditions in Islam, too.

I find in the Indian Express ofJanuary 29, 1983, a brief biographi­cal note written by a journalistwhich, in an abbreviated form andwith minor editing, I want to repro­duce for the scholarly secularist asmy last word on the inner capacitiesof faiths in the matter of ethnictolerance.

On January 9, the house of ayoung Telegu poet in· the oldcity of Hyderabad was raided bya. band of'communalists. Theystabbed him,bis wife rand hischild. The woman died, imme­diately, the poet on thc:way tothehospital, Thr orl'fb~ijed boyis)nhospital~9M z » • between1ife and death.i.p9 ' 'frel1zydoes.n ()t k~O':Y'w . a.. 1 'claims.l;h()y... di(t.ll.obkno\V· that they\y()re.qestroyi~g a. "'Ipromisin~T!llL1gll p()et, WhO was writingtiJ,e 17'01 version of ..Ramayana,

'f•.the.poet wasb9rn all January.2,. 1946ai Kalwakurty, a bigtehsil village in Mahboobnagardistrict of the. Telengana region.His mother was a teacher in thevillage school. He too followedin her footsteps. 'Teaching isthe noblest profession', he used.to say. But he was not contentbeing a matric-passed trainedbasic teacher. His ambition wasto become a vidwaan of Samskrit.But Kashi Vidyapeeth rejectedhim. ,..Then he met a scholar,Pandit Gunday Rao Harkarey,who taught him the secret oflearning a .language by the self­taught method ... Th us, studyingprivately, he obtained Master'sdegrees in three .. .languagesSamskrit, Telugu and Hindi.

He bad started composing sl~alipoems in Telugu when' he wasjust 12 years old. After his mar­riage, he produced four volumesof kaavyas and three volumes ofkhanda kaavyas. After the 'publi­cation of 'Vijaya Bheri', 'AsruDharu' and 'Bharati', he washailed as the most significantpoet since Umar Ali Shah.Presenting him at a Telugumushaira, Viswanatha Satya­narayana. ..said 'This is a gather­ing of poets in their 70s. Thisyoung poet being only 25 should110t have been here. But if he ishere, it is because he alreadywas 50 when he was born'. Sucha rich tri bute .. .is all the moresignificant because the poet wasfrom Telengana and the literaryelite of the Godawari districtdismiss Telengana's 'ulligaddi,badnikai' Telugu with disdain ...the unspoilt villager in the poethad survived despite the manydegrees he obtained....

The young poet 'now beganstudying all the versions ofRamayana - Valmiki, Ranga­natha, . Bhaskara, Kambha,MolIa,' Viswanatha, . KalpaVruksha and Tulsi, 'I [have dis-.covered rational and .lcglcalflaws in Valmiki .itihisd'es'::crlption of places and-situation';he said, 'I want to write myversion of Ramayana....1 wantto name it "Yaseen Ramayana".If will be my gift to posterity'.That is what Ghulaam Yaseen,the teacher and the poet, Wasbusy doing. when fanaticismstruck its deathly blow.... Andthe Ramayana which GhulaamYaseen wanted to leave behindhim ... remains unfinished.

. What was Ghulaam Yaseen? Asecular Muslim who did not knowhis real vocation? A good man witha Muslim name who could be usedby dedicated social reformers or bythe Indian State to establish bridgesbetween faiths? A crypto-Hindukilled by the Hindus by mistake?Or a true Muslim who could expresshis religious sensitivities throughother people's faiths? Or an Indianwhose assassination has simul­taneously impoverished Hinduism,Islam and Indianness?

21

Gandhi's response to these ques­tions, I am sure, would have beenunambiguous. What about ours?

III

, 'Only one thing remains to bediscussed now. And the case ofpoetGhulaam Yaseen.brings us back toit with a vengeance: riots.

From the growing volume ofdata on religious violence in Indiaitisnow fairly obvious that riotshave only indirect links with tra­ditions or faith. Thoughthe modernIndian loves to see all riots as pro­ducts of insufficient modernisation,avery large majority of all riotstakes place in urban and' semi­urban Ind ia where only one-fifth ofIndians live. Within urban' Indiain 'ttirn,riots co-vary significantlywith ind ustrialisaticn, uprooting,breakdown of traditional social,' tiesand habitats.

a~ij$' aiAlostth.at communal riots in' n vea.11i6'dern co~neetietl; This connec­tfon is not' surprlsiQg.Wh:i1ereli­g{o'lJs;_violence ,was.,!certain,ly ,'notunknowndn. pre-rt)(Jd~r!:;J' or ' non­modern India, the kind of 'rational','managerial',' "infercomrn unal .via-.lence we'often witness nowadays ca~

only be a byproduct of sec).l1arisa­tion and modernisation. ·Only· asecular, scientific concept of anotherhuman aggregate or individual '­only total objectification - cansanction the cold-bloodedness andorganisation which have come tocharacterise many of the riots inrecent times. '

22(t, True, there has always been au'

element of. organisation in riots.'Religious violence is rarely, ifever;

a spontaneous expression of faithor of the desire for martyrdom.True, during this century" thiselement of organisation has generallybeen provided by the zealots and bythe political formations controlledby the zealots. This is but natural.Only the semi-modern zealots, tryingto organise their cobelievers as apolitical community - as an instru­ment ofheroic, death-denying trans­cendence - can have the motivationand the .ideology to provide theorganisational base for riots.

For that very reason, however,there is a built-in check in the situ­ation. Take for instance the self­conscious -Hindu zealot who,embarrassed by his own un-Hinduzealotry, alwaysdefensively assertsthat Hind uism is more tolerant thanother faiths, While admiring, deeperdown, the, 'intolerance' of the otherfaiths. He also recognises that thistolerant spirit of Hinduism is basedon theunorgaIli~ed, polycen trionatureofxthe faith. The Hitidu whois tolerant., is not a z~aI6t; he 'doesnot even talk of-his tolerance •. 'Thezealot Wh()ot~lks'ofHindu , toleranceisnot',.!Lolera'tlt,for.he is not: theHindit""'ho.is .tolerant-,d '

·t\,.I.\' ,,'- ,

tuft' 'of'wlYosee'the everyday Hmosi-ardent ehahave enjoyecltheelectof a very ,sman propoftionbf' theHindtls, that too irisemi'modern,urban India)'. In ofher words, :thezea:Jot's success is self-lirniting; eventhough it can be fearsome in theshOrt run. .

No such limit works wben thewesternisedHinduuses religioninpolities. The zealot as a semi­westernised, .'marginal Hindu 'canonly look wistfully at the fullywesternised, modern Hindu and hiscommand of modern statecraft,organisations and mass media. Thezealot has tolook. even more' wist­fully at the support the peripheralHindu has given till now to 'his

westernised brothers and denied thezallot, even though the zealot claimsto fight for the Hind u cause andthe westernised Hindu does not.As if the peripherals knew that thewesternised Hindu was engaged inthe hopeless task of abolishingHinduism, whereas the zealot wasengaged in the more attainable andtherefore dangerous task of alteringthe content of Hinduism.

It is the westernised Hindu's C0111~

manu over modern statecraft, C0111­

bined with his efforts to protect hisearlier hegemony in competitivemass politics, and his desacralisedsecularism which has created a vola­tile situation in the country today.The modern,secular, westernisedHineu, like his.counterparts amongthe Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lankaand the PunjabiMuslimsin Paki­stan, is now constantly pushedtowards the political use of religlon,

He is pushed because he has twonatural assets', (1) better access to themass media, as compared to that ofthe zealot and the peripheral Hindu,and (2) 'greater ability to use dis­passionately the passions of faith ofthe zealot and the peripheral Hind,u.B, ssets 'give him advantages

are not available either to tilezxabt or to the Iledplier.aL believer.

'.Z .

other: woids; \Vll~li 'the ,secii-laternl,sts ,getirivolveGl ill' th~ game

<J) .organised'religious oretfl'rl'jC 'vi6;;lein'ee'. to':oI:itibal "defeat-

',f"":'"",,, ' ,_' .: .,'",,,,'..,-'{I egame notus' fanaticSt advance Hie tauseOf then·olwo'coill.munityor faith but as poU­ticians: wh'o must ta-kea:dvantage ofhuman '.pass:lons .. to mobilise thepolitical,' especiallyeledoral;.Stlp­port 'orthe nt\merieany preponderant'passive' bfe'llevers. And, a's . the' role0'£< modern" coml11lmltation andmodernorganisations expand in poIf­tics, the temptation as well as capa­city of the secular modernists toorganise religious or ethnic violencein a fully secular and scientific man­ner increases. .

It is the unfolding of:nis processwhich we are witnessiug .in . Indiatoday. In earlier riots, organisationby the zealot and political cost-cal­culation by. ev.eryone used to. playan important but small role. A

larger role was played by religiousfanaticism, stereotypes and pre­judices. Over the years the role oforganisation and rational cost-cal­culations have expanded enormous­ly. During the 1980s, in Bhiwandi,Delhi and Ahmedabad we have seenfully planned and expertly executedpogroms run by hired psychopathsand lumpen proletariat who notonly start and sustain mob violencebut do so without much of fanatic­ism, stereotyping and prejudice.

It will not be an exaggeration tosay that this new breed of riotsdepends more on rationality, objec­tivity and self·interest - on hardmaterialism, cost-benefit analysisand greed----- than on religious fana­ticism or stereotypes. Fanaticismand stereotypy come in, but in adiluted form, to provide the morallytroubled middle-classes with 'postfacto rationalisation of what thelocal toughs,the politicalmachines,and the lumpen-mobs do.

In matters of riot, rationality isnow used to generate violence - torob, to burn, to kill - while thepassions are used to sustain the id~a

of 'a moral world where the robbery,the arson and the murder are notarbitrary acts of God but are desee­ved punishments for the acts of somemembers bfthe victims' community.In this sense, weare now· witnessesto primarily ,secular riots, justifiedlater on in non-secular terms for thebenefit of the victims and the instru­ments of violence..

No '0 . eHi6t ofrecent times illus-trates' oint' 'better than thecafnag s in Delhi in Novem-ber 1984: (I shall try not to glorifythe event by calJing ita riot, for itwas clearly a one-way affair~ How­ever, such organised.religious 'wars'can include arrangements with poli­ticians of other faiths to give theviolence the look of a riot, as inHyderabad in 1984).

First a contextual fact. The Sikhshad been traditionally seen by theHindus as well as by the Sikhsthemselves not as an alien commu­nity but as part of the Hindu socialorder. After all, the principle ofendogamy was never observed in thecase of Hindu-Sikh relations and the

traditional social ties which boundthe two communities were deep.That is, by conventional criteria, theSikhs were not a minority nor didthey see themselves as such. It tooka long period of political skull-dug­gery and the experience of the 1984riots to turn them into a distinctminority.

Because of this background,Hindu or Sikh zealotry, too, hasnever found it possible, till recently,to arouse in Hindu-Sikh conflictsthe fanaticism which has been asso­ciated with the Hindu-Muslim con­flicts in this century. It was notthat easy during the days of violencein November to induce the Hinduneighbours to take part in the pog­rom against the Sikhs. At best theycould be turned into passive observerswho later on; if guilty about theirpassivity.icould be given ready-madepackaged 'reasons' through thegovernment-controlled media as towhy the Sikhs needed to learn a les­son.

ThUS, except for a few localities,the Hindu neighbours tried to helpSikh families to escape the killers,sometimes at great risk to their ownsecurity. Communities with a sharedpast did even better. For instance,many erstwhile refugee colonies, setup in the late forties by the victimsof the partition riots, formed jointHindu-Sikh defence committees andprotected their Sikh members suc­cessfully. The exceptions were local­ities where there were no neighbourlyties either because the communitieswere new settlements or because theywere dominated by pseudo-com­munities of uprooted, economically­deprived isolates and criminals.

Second, organisations like theRSS, which generally take a lead inorganising violence against minori­ties, also got into the act this time.However,according to the Sikhsthemselves, these zealots acted assmall-time activists, not as the king­pins of the pogrom. In a majorityof cases, the attackers came fromoutside the community, in organisedgroups and in busloads. Often theycame from the nearby State ofHaryana. As if they were being un­loaded against the poorer, lessdefended Sikh communities, the

extermination of which outside thepsychological boundaries of middle­class city life would not disturb theconscience of the average middle-class citizen. '

The organisers knew that manymiddle-class Hindus would find iteasier restrospectively to justify thepogrom if the major killings did nottake place before their own eyes orbefore the eyes of their families, andif the killings did not indicate atotal breakdown of the moral order.Attacks against those living at thegeographical and psychological peri­pheries ofDelhi's civic life ensuredsuch a 'numbing', of the citizens'moral self. '

The attackers on their part were.motivated not so much by any angeror sorrow. on the assassination of

,Indira Gandh~, usually given as tl]'ereason for the carnage, but •mainlyby the prospect' of loot Ihp1an;ycases, they joked and laughed whenparticipating in the arson, rape andthe killings. From the availableaccounts of the Victims, even thepolice, tbe docile bureaucratsan:dthe Congress-I activists who tookpart in the pogrom did so not asa spontaneous revenge: for MrsGandhi's assassination but. as a partof a well-oiled machine. '

This is best evidenced by the wayin which the police got rid . of allevidences of the. carnage .in anorganised,calculated fashion. Theother clue is the way rumours weredeliberately spread in the city (suchas the one about the city's drinkingwater being poisoned by. the Sikhs)to provoke the citizenry, to furthernumb its moral sense, and to buy itspassivity.

Third, before, during and after thepogrom, a propaganda barrageagainst the Sikhs was kept up by themonopoly media, represented by theradio, the television and the servitorpress. This propaganda dubbed asseditious even things which previous­ly had looked innocuous or minorsuch as the alleged anti-nationaldemands of the Anandpur SahibResolution.

The Resolution had been passedtwelve years ago in the presence of

23

24'." .\

Congress-I stalwarts; it was later onblessed by persons like JayaprakashNarayan, and considered harmlessenough by Mrs Gandhi for her tohave supported and financed JarnailSingh Bhindranwale even after hehad become a strong votary of theResolution. Evidently, aware thatthe minorities were gradually aban­doning the Congress-I, the rulingparty was keen to win over a size­able chunk of the Hindu vole, evenat the cost of unleashing a Hindubacklash and making a target outof the Sikhs.

At this plane, the Sikhs weresubstitutable victims, as were theMuslims in Hyderabad in September1984 and the Muslims and the Dalitsin Ahmedabad in April-May 1985.Only the organisers of such pogroms

.are not substitutable; they have tobelong to the sector from which the.Indian elites come; they have to takeadvantage of the State-controlledmedia and the State's law-and-ordermachinery.

It is not easy to organise a·pogrom against a community .not,pften seen as a minority. Despite·efforts by Sikh zealots and despitethe Sikqs being a: crushing majorityin the Punjab countryside, it wasnot possible to Qrganise a single riotagainst the Hindus there during

,1982-84. The Sikh,ze~lots h~d to,.' 'on a small band of assussjps

ey too ended up py ldlling. ikhs thaI). aindus..

lMk~\'Yjsej dtWEI$noteasy40. induceJ~e,Qf:dinary .. :ai13<lU,to .. attack .' theI SJib.~inl"" D.~lhh.·.·.· ~n··~qst.casesone)hi:ll'li,tP rJ;jSe, • imPQ.rte.d·>gangsop the~rip!in~l14nqerworId.QfDelhi, upro'"vid'e them with transport andweapons, and motivate them with

•t~el?romise of loot, rape .~I)d. pro­t~ction. I like to believethat at one·time, perhaps fifty or one hundredyears ago, it must have been asdifficult to organise a Hindu-Muslimriot. It is not easy to make a fanaticout of the ordinary believer, be hea Hindu, Muslim or Sikh.

Finally, while in all riots it is thepoor who suffer the most, in 'secularriots' their lot becomes worse. Fana­ticism cuts across social classes; Ariot which is precipitated by a quar-

rel about playing music before amosque, smoking before a guru­dwara or by cow slaughter touchesmore different classes than does ariot which is fully organised.

In the latter case, the demand forsecrecy, the fear of public protest,and the need to protect the riotingcadres from the hands of the law,and the need to destroy evidence ofparty or State involvement in theriots, force the organisers to choosedispensable victims who are lessvisible and have lesser access to thelaw courts and the media. Only thepoor can meet these criteria.

In the Delhi carnage, availabledata suggest that less than two percent of the Sikbs killed were well­to-do. The rest were poor or verypoor. These poor Sikhs were mostlyCongress-I supporters and in mostcases they did not even speakPunjabi. A majority of tbem were

.Rajasthani Sikhs and they werehostile to the political demands ofthe Punjabi Sikhs. All this did notsave them. Their poverty and theirmarginality doomed them. Secularcommunal violence, one' suspects,is~l\yays D:l.0re decisively anti-poorthan the non-secular on.

'1\: sllll1 .. up, the Delhi carnagesHggests/~hE!:treligious violence is1:leCioroing·J:n9feasingly a product offb~~4.: ·.··pqHtjcaJ cost-calculations,1.~:"el'h~ad~dorgl;lnisation,and dis­passjouatearous.al of communal

:.feIilJings,It is now primarily a pro­dupLoyfauIty rationality, not offp,ulty passions. The idea of secu­larism .may be able to cope with

..religious riots which grow out offaulty Passions but it is. unable tocope with the riots which grow outof dispassionate, scientifically man­aged Violence .

Given the contours of the exist­ing ideology of secularism, in­stead of resisting such violence,secularism endorses the world viewfrom within which such violenceflows. In practical terms, too, manysecularists, when faced with State­sponsored communal violence, beginto coIlaborate with the sponsorsbecause they see such collaborationas profitable. They can then justifythe coIlaboration in terms of ornate

theories which have little to do withimmediate realities.

Recognising this new role of secu­larism is also to recognise that themajor threats to religious tolerancenow come from the modern sectorin India. That is why the secularistshave no answer when the minoritiesare attacked -or a base is laid foran attack on them-e-with referenceto modern, secular criteria, whenfor example the Sikhs as a commu­nity are attacked for their linkswith external powers or for anti­national ideology, the Muslims formultiplying like bedbugs or theSouthIndians for not speaking Hindi.

Likewise, the Delhi carnage hasmade it clear that little help can beexpected from the secularists whenthe State gets involved in organis­ing communal.violence, A few naive,good- hearted secularists may breakranks, but the remainder goose-stepfor whoever controls the State andthe media and redefine cultural dis­tinctiveness as antithetical to theinterests of tq.~State and; thus, asculpable.

p rObal)l~i,i~¢:ii;.t~ru~t '.of .the lastpart of ,the. n:t:is that we canno longery~ector;class orideology asWt1lt~insic~lIy.incapableof proe!. .. ll1unalviolence.Each gr iubculturehas itsown.pogy'which' be..comes group or thesubcult ;~sits •hegemonyin thesooi.<.< ., ... ]ows that neithera mechanic~lreiteration of the prin­ciple of secula,rismnor its mechani­cal exch.l~i,o;),tl,. 1'\.1blic ,life orpublic dOC.ll r: sj~~uc4 as the Cons­titution)w~H .sllre, religious toler­ance in India.

To build ap1dte tolerantsocietywe shalt hav~to defy the imperial­ism of categori~sof our times whichallows the concept of' secularism(which is but One out of many waysof moving towards a 'more tolerantsociety and a not very successful oneat that) to hegemonise the idea oftolerance, so that anyone who isnot secular becomes definitionallyintolerant. The defiance must in­volve attempts to recover the first­hand experience of religious andethnic conflicts and cooperationfrom the ready-made interpretationsof them given by the secularists.