BRIEF OF “COMMUNALISM IN INDIA”
· Ravindra defines communalism as an organization/ideology that seeks to promote the interests of a section of the population to the detriment of the society as a whole, rather in the name of religion or tradition, usually opposing to social change.
è ACTUALLY HERE WHENEVER I REFER TO RAVINDRA KUMAR I WILL BE REFERRING TO THE GENERAL IDEAS PRESENTED IN THE BOOK EDITED BY HIM, WITH CONTRIBUTIONS OF MANY DIFFERENT AUTHORS, CALLED “PROBLEM OF COMMUNALISM IN INDIA”.
· According to him, communalism fosters the idea of inherent antagonism based on irreconcilability of interests between distinct communities.
· Ravindra points that communalism is a political orientation that recognizes a religious community, and not the nation and the nation-state as the final point of political allegiance.
· It oposes to nationalism in it’s sense of multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-lingual communities.
· Ravindra points that it’s a modern phenomenon, not existing at the medieval times.
· Ravindra analyses the raise of communalism after independence and says that the determining role has not been played by religion and culture, but by non-religious and non-cultural forces operating in the political and economic system, such as:
I. THE BRITISH COLONIAL RULE WHILE DIVIDING THE COLONIAL SOCIETY TO AVOID THREATENS TO THEIR DOMINATION.
§ The active role played by fostering the Pakistan partition and the “communal holocaust” left a deep dent in the mind of the two major religious communities – Hindus and Muslims.
§ Heritages of the Pakistan partition:
1. Muslim Nationalism
a. Although a minority of only 13.4% - 138 millions – Indian Muslim population is the world 4th, after Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
b. The Muslim League (1906), which had successfully challenged the secular Congress Party in the partition issue, virtually disappeared in India, surviving only in Kerala.
c. Despite the Muslim Party, Muslims support has always been crucial to the Congress’ base.
d. Trying to stop the decrease in Muslim support for the Congress (I), Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi scuttled the Supreme Court decision in the Shah Bano case and approved a bill assuring the Muslim right to their own kind of divorce.
e. The communal Muslims are working against the goal of national unity.
f. The Muslim League, Jamaat-e-Islamii, Jamaiyt-ul-Ulema, Dini Talimi and others Muslim organizations are still anti-Hindu biased.
i. The Jamaat-i-Islami was banned during the 1975-77 emergency, and again after the Babri Masjid communalist riots.
g. Mushirul Hasan points that the Babri Masjid Committee had power and consensus unparalleled since the Khilafat movement, in the 1920’s.
Ø ACCORDING TO MOIN SHAKIT AND ENGINEER, SUCH ORGANIZATIONS CONFUSE RELIGION WITH POLITICS AND ECONOMICS AND KEEP THE MASSES IGNORANT OF THE REALITIES AND DEMANDS / OPORTUNITIES OF THE MODERN AGE. (ALSO APPLY TO ALL OTHER CASES OF COMMUNALISM)
h. The big struggle for maintaining the Muslim Personal Law as a remaining and updated fuel to separatist movements.
2. Hindu Nationalism
a. Hardgrave and Kochanek tracks its roots at the 19th Century, when the Congress leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak lead the extremis movement called Arya Smaj.
b. The Hindu Chauvinism growth in the 20th Century incorporated by parties like Hindu Mahasaba (1914), created by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya in reaction to the creation of the Muslim League (1906).
c. Its decrease of importance after the Lucknow Pact (1916) alienated most Hindu extremists of the Party was broken by the claim that since Muslims have their non-Secular country the “remaining India” also has the right to be Hindu-ruled.
d. Hardgrave and Kochanek points that since 1960, however, the Mahasabha has been in decline, not representing a potent force anymore.
e. In its place emerged many other Hindu-nationalist organizations, most of them under the umbrella of RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) - 1925, such as:
i. Akhil Bharatiya Vidyartgi Parishad (ABVP) – 1948.
ii. Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) – 1955
· Today is the largest Trade Union in the country.
iii. Jana Sangh (1951) and it’s successor, the BJP, representing the political arm of RSS.
· From 1998 to 2004, the BJP Prime Minister Vajpayee focused more on pragmatic governance than Hindu-nationalism, what raised tensions with RSS and is pointed as one of the reasons why he lost the next elections.
iv. Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) – 1964.
· Gained proiminence with the Ayodhya temple movement
v. The offshoot of VHP, the Barjang Dal (1984).
· Also raised with the claims to “liberate” Ayodhya and other temples.
· More radical than VHP, with armed gangs supporting and a more clearly Hindu fascist characteristic.
vi. Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (1991).
vii. Hindu Shiv Sena, formed in 1966 to counter Sikh terrorism in Punjab.
· It has spread to the country and nowadays the most powerful base is in Maharastra, which, since 1984, transformed the earlier Marathi nativism into an anti-Muslim party of Hindu chauvinism.
· Has no direct ties to RSS, however, since 1989 has entered into an alliance with BJP.
f. RSS was founded as paramilitary organization, by Dr. Keshav Hedgewar.
i. In 1948 Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic linked to Mahasabha and RSS.
· Hindu Mahasabha suspended political activity after that.
· RSS was banned by the government, as it would be again during the 1975-77 emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi, and again in the awake of the demolition of Babri Masjid, in 1992.
ii. Since the end of the emergence they have grown from 1 million affiliates in the 70’s to some 7 to 8 million activists today.
iii. RSS support is predominantly urban and lower middle class.
iv. Geographically based in North India, but spreading into Northeast and South India, as well as into the countriside.
v. This flows has brought an increasingly support of Dalits and tribals.
vi. Popular claims based on social work:
· It runs 22.000 schools, 45.000 works in slums, 11.000 works in tribal villages.
vii. Has more than 50 affiliated groups, which include:
· 8 daily newspapers; 50 weeklies.
g. This raises the flag of a Hindu-India (Akhand Bharat).
h. There’s a fascist biased use of the Ram-rajya, the ideal rule of the mythic age of Lord Ram, which was supported by Mahatma Gandhi, however, in a more pluralistic and comprehensive way.
i. Other important concept managed to endorse Hindu-nationalism is the Hindutva, or “Hindu-ness”, which embodies the notion that all Indians – including Muslims – are part of a Hindu nation and that Rama and the gods and heroes of Hindu mythology are part of their patrimony. Those unwilling to accept their “Hindu-ness” are not just apostates but traitors.
j. This poses the issue of Indianization, which is the pressure to impose Hindu habits to everbody in India, regardless of their religion.
i. E.G: Demands to ban cow slaughter, demans to introduce Hindu religious, ethical and spiritual teachings in educational institutions and to propagate the tenets of Hinduism through mass media.
3. The path for communalist charges that communal Muslim riots are provoked in India by Pakistani intervention, which fits in the feedback mechanism where Pakistan charges India for not-acting against Hindu-nationalism, and so on…
a. Ravindra points out that in this mutual charge politics it do happen to Pakistan intervene and foster Muslim communalism in India, also as an outcome of this situation.
II. COMUNAL GROUPS AHEAD OF IMPORTANT MEDIA, LITERATURE AND TEXTBOOK PRODUCERS, SUCH AS:
· The Hindu-nationalist newspapers “Akali Patrika”; “Sabat”; “Organizer”, among others.
· The Muslim rulers Allaudin Khilji, Mahmud Ghaznavi, and Auranzeb have been consistently painted as anti-Hindu by Hindu-nationalist extremist histories.
· It also happens in the opposite direction.
III. COMUNALIST PARTIES, LIKE:
§ The Hindu-nationalists “Hindu Mahasaba” and “BJP”, the Muslim-nationalist/separatist “Muslim League” and the Sikh-nationalist/separatist “Akali Dal”.
· Besides trying to kidnap politics through religious claims, Ravindra claims that those parties also aim to create communal tension to “fish in troubled waters”.
· Those parties play the game of magnifying the insecurities of religious communities in India.
o Ravindra highlight the Nazi-like organization of BJP, creating a broad apparatus of Hindu-nationalism which goes from traditional politics to knowledge production and the fostering of symbols and discipline.
IV. THE MUSLIM REFUSE TO CHANGE THEIR OWN EDUCATION SYSTEM BY THE MODERN ONE BEING IMPORTED FROM ENGLAND (Particular view of Ravindra).
§ It drove them to an under-condition after independence, highlighted by a wide gap of opportunities and by perception differences which lead to misunderstandings.
V. THE POLITICAL ACTORS AFTER INDEPENDENCE WHICH MANEUVER THE SOCIAL GAP TO FOSTER THEIR VESTED INTERESTS.
§ They unable people to see that religion is not a solution to modern life problems.
§ Those are the main responsible to the communalist riots, which are extremely violent and largely based in the participation of poor people.
VI. THE CONVERSION WAR.
§ Besides the Hindu defensive consciousness raised by the behave of Iran, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Hindus also fear mass convertions of untouchables, especially when they convert into Muslims.
· E.G: In 1981, more than 1.000 Dalits in Meenakshipuram – Tamil Nadu – converted in mass to Islam.
· According to Hardgrave and Kochanek, RSS and Arya Samaj responded calling for a ban on convertions to Islam and Christianity, and VHP set about to reconvert this people and, more broadly, to bring Indian Muslims back into the Hindu Fold.
· This issue includes other religious communities.
o E.G: Christians in Kerala number 25% of the population, which are the main support of the Congress Party there.
o In the late 90’s Christian communities come under unprecedent assault as Churches were burnt all over india and a missionary and his two sons were murdered in Orissa.
o Hardgrave and Kochanek point that this was an outcome of Sonia Gandhi emergence as leader of the Congress Party.
· Jawahar lal Nehru pointed that the greatest danger for India is from communalism and not so much from external aggression.
· He defined that as the Indian version of fascism.
· According to him, minority communalism is born out f fear, while the majority communalism takes the form of political reaction.
· Still today communalism continues to divide the Indian people and waste their human potential, jeopardizing politics, administration and scholarly analyses.
· Ashish Nandy points that Indian Political System alienate people from its processes and that communalism raises as way to politically capture the masses using religion, however, in a very secular way.
· He highlights that riots organized in the name of religion have become some of the most secular events in India for they are organized the same way other strikes and rallies are, most times having professional and specialists working for it.
· Besides the secular organization of the communalist riots, Nandy also quotes the analogue function of those riots with other traditional political movements aiming to bring down a regime of a discredited chief minister or to help an election.
· Ravindra claims that it has been said that technological and economic development would lead to the decline of communalism, however, despite of the currently India modernization , the communal violence and frenzy not only continued but also assumed new dimensions.
I. Actually he goes beyond and states that modernity has, in some cases, accentuated the gaps, and, in other cases, created institutions which are mutually charged of biased benefiting one or other religious group, leading to doubts on the state impartiality and secularism.
II. One illustration of this analysis emerges when we see that Unity and the States Governments usually fail to prevent, intervene and even to punish responsible for communalist riots.
§ E.G: Muslims feel unprotected regarding the government and Union failure during the ‘Comunal Riots’ (2002).
§ E.G: Sikhs feel unprotected regarding the popular persecution which followed the murder of Indira Gandhi (1984).
III. In the bureaucratic and police level there are also charges of systematically biased behavior.
· Ravindra questions even the so called development and economical improvement, especially regarding it’s inclusive perspective, because, according to him, neither the founding fathers of the Constitution nor the political elite have ever been serious about the economic and religious emancipation of the members of the minorities groups.
I. Any justiciable article of the Constitution ensures this.
II. The elites among the minorities just demand self-interested issues or what Ravindra called “non-issues”, which are claims regarding things unlinked to structural transformations, such as changings in personal law, renaming of public places, etc…
§ According to this interpretation, that’s what allow minorities elites to be accommodated by ‘national elites’ forging a facade of political consensus.
· Ravindra see the Indian Communalism as example of Marx situations in which there is a political attitude to religion and a religious attitude to politics, making secularism to be no more than political rethoric.
· Ravindra links the Indian reality to a very Marxist view since he considers the scarcity situation to be the main source for communalism politics manipulation, quoting that the worst peak of communalism, in the 1980’s, coincided with the economic crisis decade.
· Some core communalist riots were:
I. The communalism among Hindus and Muslims which culminated in the destruction of Babri Masjid by Hindus in 1992, and the following Muslim persecution after some Muslims burnt a train with Hindus coming from a festival in Ayodha, happening at the place where Babri Masjid used to be.
§ 1528 – The 1st Mughal emperor, Babur, built the Mosque.
§ 1949 – Declared the region a disputed area and closed the gates for everybody.
§ 1984 – VHP took it as main cause.
§ 1986 – A district judge ordered the gates to be opened to Hindu worshippers.
· Muslims reacted creating the Babri Masjid Action Comitee.
§ 1987 – More than 300.000 Muslims gathered in Delhi.
· VHP responded with a giant rally one month latter.
§ 1989 – VHP launched the movement to demolish Babri Masjid and claimed people to march with a brick to build the Ramjanmabhoom, leading to what Hardgrave and Kochanek called the worst communal riot since partition in 1947.
· In one village, Bhagalpur in Bihar, deths ranged from 200 to 1.000.
§ 1990 – BJP President, L. K. Advani, was arrested about to enter Uttar Pradesh for his rath yatra rally aiming to destruct the temple.
· As an outcome, BJP withdrew the support to Prime Minister V. P. Singh and passed a vote of no confidence, leading to his resignation.
§ 1992 – 200.000 Hindu militants destroyed the Mosque in an announced riot which the Prime Minister choose to believe not to be a threaten to the Mosque.
· As a consequence, there was widespread communalism in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
o In the next 6 days, some 1200 people were murdered in India, most of them Muslims.
· The 56 countries in the Islamic Conference expressed outrage to Indian government.
· There was intervention and President Rule in Uttar Pradesh.
· RSS, VHP, Barjan Dal, Jamaat-i-Islam and Islamic Sevak Sangh were banished for two years.
§ 2002 – Muslims burnt a train killing 58 Hindus in Godhra in Guajarat.
· The outcome was a massive Muslim persecution, with the incentive of some major politics.
· From 700 to 2000 people were dead.
II. The mix of communalism and separatist movement which took place from 1966 on, institutionalized by the Akali Dal. All over the almost 20 years from the first Akali Dal reivindications until Indira Gandhi’s death, there were charges of communalism among people and also regarding the State and Unity intervention, as well as in the Akali Dal leaded Sikh group. The situation got when in 1983 Sikh radicals transformed the Golden Temple in a Terrorist base and commanded several murders, what was followed by a more radical Union intervention and the invasion of the Temple and other 44 holy places – Operation Bluestar” – causing widespread violence until a Sikh murdered P.M. Indira Gandhi, causing a national general popular persecution of Sikhs by Hindus, in 1984.
§ According to Hardgrave and Kochanek, no other ethinic conflict in India was more traumatic politically and emotionally.
§ They also see the 1966 raise as a continuation of a historical Sikh claim for emancipating Punjab in “Khalistan”.
§ They highlight that, in this case, different from the pattern among Muslims and Hindus, there was a complaint by Hindus unsatisfied with the better social position enjoyed by Sikhs, which were the Punjab elite.
§ They also point that an extra source of Sikh fears was motivated by some Hindus claiming Sikhsm to be just a part of Hinduism, and not a distinguished belief.
§ They highlight the regional aspects making it all more complex, like the ethnic balance, where Sikhs were about 55 to 60%, in a decreasing curve due to their own entrepreneurial success driving them to other countries and states, while Hindu flows were coming to work in the developed rural area.
§ They argue that in the beginning the caste distinction and varied interest among Sikhs broke the Akali Dal coherence, however, as the situation was worsening the Sikh organizations become increasingly more extremists in response to Hindu organizations like RSS.
III. Bombay riots among Muslims and Hindus in 1992.
· Kumar suggests that any measure to challenge communalism must avoid stigmatizing this or that group. As follows:
1. Educational and economic upliftment and an environment of security and trust should be provided by the government to the Muslim community.
2. Liberal Muslims in India in politics, education or in other occupations should show more initiative and earn acceptance within the community to be able to influence others. This can be done by social service and participating in competitive democratic politics more vigorously.
3. At the same time, Hindus can take the initiative to try to change the image of the other community held by them and liberal Muslims can reciprocate. To a considerable extent, it is this image that tends to generate communal thinking when the incitement is present – But Hindus and Muslims will have to generate the thrust from within themselves.
4. Generally the communal tension among the various communities is built up by the militant organizations among those communities. Therefore, efforts should be made to curb the growth of such militant organizations.
5. Reduction of economic disparities and inequalities is also essential to eliminate a feeling prevailing among the minority community that they are being discriminated against. Once these disparities are removed, they shall tend to forget their separate identity.
6. The development of a scientific outlook that encourages democracy and humanism.
7. Political and scholar engagement by those of democratic humanist thought.
REFERENCES:
· RAVINDRA KUMAR. “Problem of Communalism in India”.
· ASGER ALI ENGINEER & MOIN SHAKIR. “Communalism in India”.
· HARDGRAVE & KOCHANEK. “India: Government and politics in a development Nation”.
· MUSHIRUL HASAN. “Competing Symbols and Shared Codes: Inter-Community Relations in Modern India”.
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