Two Phases of Indian Secularism

Dost-mittar,

Nicely written. Indian secularism is being assaulted in every possible way, but the
recent Supreme Court statement against the Gujarat govt`s role perhaps restores
some residual faith in the system. Coming from Bengal, it has been personally
shocking for me to notice how increasingly commonplace and blase anti-Muslim
comments have become among educated middle-class Bengalis.

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great article, dost-mitter-ji,

I would add that Congress had a very long history of working with communal elements among the indian muslims. Indeed, Gandhi`s bizarre entanglements with the Khilafat movement could also be considered as such. Mantolives recent note on Chowk on indian politics in the 30s also provides insight in this space.

good article dost meter
you well define two phase of Indian secularism. I put it this way two phase of Hindu mentality. first I want to ask who is Hindu. I don’t understand any definition of Hindu yet. You can see Hinduism as complex of religions. because If you think Hindu worship Rama then who are those who worship Ravana(enemy of rama who kidnap Rama’s wife)
Hindu see Ravana as most evil soul. then why they not break Ravana’s temple in south India.
Even you can see temple of Indrazit and kumbcarna in north India. Have you ever heard
Bomb blast in ravana’s temple or killing of ravana’s follower. anyone can see lot of mockery of Hindu god Krishna and other god’s in bolliwood movies..ever anyone heard
Death fatava of Hindu for actor or director?. In Ahmedabad lot of jain living. they believe ravana is god in next era and Krishna Is evil soul and he is in hell. lot of jain book you can find in ahmedabad which tell why Krishna in hell. in some jain temple you can find idols of ravana as god of next erra.but never Hindus burnt jain shops or never Hindu jain riots in Gujarat.parsi ,Jews and some Christian get asylums in India and never face discrimination. .bjp,rss never attract Hindus until 1988.then why sudden change in Hindus. where there tolerance gone. Generally indifferent to religion Hindu why so active and something fanatic.

You are right when you say shahbano case is first signle.but I think Hindus get it as a wakeup call. I live in Gujarat I get some ideas what Hindu in general and Gujarati in particular start to think.

Muslims always talk exclusively and want something special for them.
Muslims always talk government do nothing about there education. but they never talk
Government does nothing about poor Indian. if poor Muslim cant get education so poor
Hindu. and who ask them to send child to maddressa and not start population control.
If anyone ask about population control what answer you can get.this is against Quran.
Bacchay to allah ki den hey
Muslims always talk government do nothing about their employment never talk
Government does nothing about employment of poor Indian. if poor Muslim cant get
Employment so poor Hindus
Some Muslims leader talk about Muslims had only one present in army. but they never talk if Muslim want to commission to army then who stop them. What they expect from government to send invitation card for that
I ask my some friends why you firecrackers when Pakistan wins match they simply told me as a concept of ummah they had to stay with their remote breatherns.so they had to support Pakistan in match..evenif riots happens no problem with it.
When some priest of America called Mohammad terrorist Muslims in Gujarat called strike for Muslims. This amazed Hindus why this people go on one day strike and harm to their business because of somebody in America use harsh language for prophet.
some Muslims dont get job in private company because they insist to keep beard and demand break for noon prayer.so what government can do .start reservation in private firm for muslims. I am wonder sometimes before 9 11 not big number Muslim women u find in burakha and man in beard and topi but after that u go anywhere and see Muslim woman or man with burakha or beard and topi.they want to display pride that they are something special .
One of my friend give me the reason to don’t accept uniform civil code. he told me this law define by man and we already had law of god. so we cant accept uniform civil code.
At shahbano case Rajiv Gandh’s minister Mohammad arif khan and 200 well known Muslims submit signed latter in favor of court verdict. but this well educate people didn’t appeal Muslims. but they attract to fanatic sahbuddin and banatwala.
They never said Pakistan supported terrorist destabilize Kashmir. what they said politicians doing this.
For every their plight they blames others. Government is bad. Hindu is bad every one is bad except them. for every their shortcomings they blames other.
Sometime I amazed to see how much Muslims lives in conspiracy theories
Anyone can go to godhara and see you can’t find single fan of ablul hamid but you can find thousands of fan of usama bin laden.
Even laden told more then one times on video tap he is mastermind of 9 11. but Muslims said There is conspiracy against him he is great soul. there is no proof laden do it. Behave like More catholic then pop.
These attitude change mentality of Hindus. if you think only rss and vhp behind advani’s rathyatra then you are wrong that time and after that bjp and rss get lot of support of hindu masses which never before.
When after godhara incident what happens in Gujarat every Muslim with other people
reject argument of modi and togadiya “this is reaction of godhara.if there will be no godhara then there will me no carnage”. Yes this is right nobody can object it. This is bogus and inhuman argument.
but what is the beauty of Muslim’s thinking you can see in akhsardham temple attack
and Bombay bombblast.first they condemn incident. very good but in same breath
there is argument if there is no carnage in Gujarat then there is no attack on temple and no blast

Muslim not yet get massage those are Hindus who found country as secular and may be those will be Hindu who kill secularism.

...there are hundreds of stories like this all over the Internet...what special insight do you bring by writing this?...

India got a lot out of all that peace loving land of Gandhi nonsense, but that`s coming to an end now...according to the Western world the former the land of peace, mysticisim and elevated conciousnesses is now the `Heart of Darkness`.




http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,12559,1042180,00.html

Heart of Darkness

As a young backpacker Luke Harding found India charming and eccentric. Fifteen years later he returned as the Guardian`s correspondent. Now, after finishing his time there, he recalls how one terrible incident of secular violence in Gujarat brought his love affair with the country to an end

Monday September 15, 2003
The Guardian

I can identify the moment I fell out of love with India quite precisely. It happened at the end of last February. Riots had just broken out in the western state of Gujarat, after a group of Muslims attacked a train full of Hindu pilgrims, killing 59 of them. In Gujarat`s main city, Ahmedabad, trouble was brewing. Hindu mobs had begun taking revenge on their Muslim neighbours - there were stories of murder, looting and arson. Arriving in Ahmedabad from Delhi, I found it impossible to hire a car or driver: nobody wanted to drive into the riots.
But the trouble was not difficult to find: smoke billowed from above Ahmedabad`s old city; and I set off towards it on foot. There were rumours that a mob had hacked to death Ahsan Jafri - a distinguished Indian former MP, and a Muslim - whose Muslim housing estate was surrounded by a sea of Hindu houses. A team from Reuters gave me a lift. Driving through streets full of burned-out shops and broken glass we arrived half an hour later outside his compound, surrounded by thousands of people. Jafri had been dead for several hours, it emerged. A Hindu mob had tipped kerosene through his front door; a few hours later they had dragged him out into the street, chopped off his fingers, and set him on fire. They also set light to several other members of his family, including two small boys. There wasn`t much left of Jafri`s Gulbarg Housing Society by the time we got there: at the bottom of his stairs I discovered a pyre of human remains - hair and the tiny blackened arm of a child, its fist clenched.

Two police officers in khaki told us the situation was dangerous, and that we should leave; they seemed resigned or indifferent to the horror around them, an emotion I had encountered before during what would turn out to be more than three years of reporting on India for the Guardian. Later that afternoon, in the suburb of Naroda Patiya, we watched as a Hindu crowd armed with machetes and iron bars attacked their Muslim neighbours on the other side of the street. All of the shops on the Muslim side of the road were ablaze; smoke blotted out the sky; gas cylinders exploded and boomed; we were, it seemed, in some part of hell. ``We are being killed. Please get us out,`` one Muslim resident, Dishu Banashek, told me. ``They are firing at us. Several of our women have been raped. You must help.``

When we asked a senior policeman to intervene he merely smirked. ``Don`t worry, madam. Everything will be done,`` he told a colleague from the Times mendaciously. We left. It was too dangerous to stay.

The causes of the rioting - India`s worst communal violence for a decade - became clearer the next morning, when I returned to Naroda Patiya - now a ruin of abandoned homes and smouldering rickshaws. Virtually all of the Muslims had fled: I found only a solitary survivor, Narinder Bhai, standing by the charred interior of his home. ``Everything is finished,`` he said, showing off his ruined fridge. ``Many people have been killed here. My wife and children have disappeared.``

Just round the corner, down an alley, I spotted a neat bungalow that had apparently escaped the chaos. It was only on closer inspection that I saw its owner: the charred and mutilated remains of a Muslim woman had been laid out in the front garden and framed by a charpoy. Round the back I found an address book - which identified the woman as Mrs Rochomal; next to it, the Nokia phone she had used in a doomed attempt to summon help. Her son`s washing was hanging on the line, in the morning sunshine; inside there was a neat kitchen and black-and-white family photos. Mrs Rochomal`s flip-flops were still by the front door, next to a swing-seat.

Five minutes later, her mobile phone rang. I didn`t answer it. Her body was less than 60 metres away from the local police station. The police had not, it was obvious, bothered to rescue her: they had, I was forced to conclude, been complicit in her death.

Fifteen years earlier I had visited India for the first time as a backpacker, only dimly aware of the country`s inflammable religious politics. I knew that India was a Hindu-dominated, though officially secular country. I also knew it had a large Muslim minority, which had failed to migrate to Pakistan at the time of partition. But the charming aid workers I spent four months with in the cool hills of Tamil Nadu, Madam Preetha and Babu Isaac Daniel, were eccentric and devout Christians; while the family friends I visited in Bombay were wealthy Parsis. It seemed also that India`s Congress party - led by the secular Rajiv Gandhi - was destined to stay in power for a long time; the party had, after all, governed India for most of the period since Britain left the subcontinent.

Two years later, however, an arms corruption scandal forced Gandhi out of office and a new ideological movement began to dominate the political landscape - the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or India People`s Party. The BJP rejected the idea that India should be secular; its more extreme supporters wanted to turn the country into a Hindu state, a sort of Indian version of Pakistan, an India-stan. By the time I arrived in New Delhi for the Guardian, the BJP was firmly established in power; and the multi-faith India of Mahatma Gandhi and Jarwarharlal Nehru, India`s first prime minister, was, it seemed, in big trouble.

Mahatma Gandhi still appeared on India`s banknotes, of course. But nobody seemed to talk about him any more, and his vision of an inclusive India was under threat from something darker and arguably fascist. Driving last year around Ahmedabad, in Gandhi`s home state, I found a group of Hindu men standing jubilantly around the ruins of a small brick tomb. They had just demolished it. The tomb had belonged to Vali Gujarati - Muslim India`s answer to Geoffrey Chaucer, and the grandfather of Urdu poetry. In its place, the Hindu youths had erected a tiny petal-strewn shrine to the Hindu monkey god, Hanuman. ``We have broken the mosque and made a temple,`` one of them, Mahesh Patel, told me. What should be done with India`s Muslims, I wondered? ``They should not live in India. They should go and live in Pakistan,`` he told me. This is clearly a tricky proposition: India has 140 million Muslims, out of a population of more than a billion. It is, paradoxically, the world`s second-largest Muslim country after Indonesia. The Muslims I talked to during the Gujarat riots pointed out that they were Indian. They said that they didn`t want to go anywhere.

Returning to Delhi after a harrowing week in dry Gujarat, where it is almost impossible to get a drink, I found dozens of emails from incensed BJP supporters in Britain and elsewhere. Like most commentators I had heaped blame for the riots on Gujarat`s BJP government, and its chief minister, Narendra Modi. I wrote that Modi had condoned and encouraged what was in effect an anti-Muslim pogrom by instructing his Hindu police force to do nothing. The hate mail came flooding in. One email accused me of ``anti-Hindu sentiment``, and announced that dozens of demonstrators would gather outside my flat in the leafy Delhi colony of Nizamuddin the following day.

They didn`t show up. Another pointed out, correctly, that Britain had chopped the subcontinent in half and looted ``trillions of dollars in goodies from India`` - including the Kohinoor diamond. He signed off: ``I piss on your dead whore Queen Mother.`` More ominously, though, I was summoned to meet Mr Kulkarni, a special adviser to India`s ostensibly moderate BJP prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. As dusk fell, we sat on wicker chairs in the garden of Kulkarni`s government flat, just opposite the prime minister`s bungalow in Race Course Road. I had failed to understand the nature of Hindu society, he politely suggested over a cup of tea.

It would, perhaps, be an exaggeration to say that the worsening Hindu-Muslim divide in India threatens to tear the country apart, but certainly relations between the country`s two major communities are as bad as they have ever been. Indian Muslims are now in the unenviable position of being cast as fifth columnists for Pakistan, India`s Muslim neighbour and - for most of the time - its enemy. Nehru`s India appears to be dead. Islamic extremists inside India, meanwhile, are taking their own form of bloody revenge - killing more than 50 people, for example, last month in two gruesome car bombings in Bombay.

The origins of the violence ultimately go back to Ayodhya, a small, sleepy temple town in north India, where cannabis grows in the ditches, and sadhus, or Hindu holy men, mingle with large gangs of monkeys. It was here in 1992 that Hindu zealots tore down a mosque on a site they claimed was the birthplace of Lord Ram, Hinduism`s most important deity. The episode propelled the BJP to power, provoked widespread communal riots and severely damaged India`s secular credentials.

The issue of whether a temple should be built on the disputed site - and India`s hostile relationship with Pakistan - continue to dominate Indian public life. In the meantime, little attention is paid to the plight of the country`s 400 million poor. Late last year I travelled to Baran, an impoverished district in Rajasthan, where dozens of low-caste tribal people had reportedly starved to death. I found plenty of villagers who were still eating grass; the rumours of starvation were true. There was, it transpired, plenty of food in government warehouses - it was merely that corrupt local officials had taken it for themselves.

In his latest book, India in Slow Motion, Mark Tully blames India`s problems on the ``neta-babu raj`` - the alliance between politicians and bureaucrats to hang on to power. Tully is probably right. But it is not just in rural India that the pace of change has been slow. Faced with bankruptcy in the early 90s, India embarked on a programme of economic liberalisation. Delhi now boasts Marks & Spencer and Pizza Express. The biggest change in Delhi during my tenure in India has been the arrival of the coffee bar, and the admirable coffee chain Barista. It is now possible to buy a latte or espresso in India`s big metros - in a country famous for its tea. But in general, India`s infrastructure is as creaking and run-down as ever. During the monsoon, the phone lines crack up; and in the infernal summer months, the power fails. Maintaining electrical appliances - fax machine, water purifier, back-up power supply - is a full-time job. In the quiet periods after last year`s Gujarat riots I thought often of Mrs Rochomal, lying burned and mutilated in her neat front garden, and of the horror of her last few minutes. Did her children stumble on her body? Did the people who killed her feel any remorse? I shall return to India, but not for a while.

Email
luke.harding@mantraonline.com

The analyses given in the premises would please the Hinduists and the conclusions would please the Islamists.
A classic work in subterfuge.!!!!!!

I would like to reproduce a discussion that I had with Stuka on another topic:

Having Economic development of Malaysia as my University thesis quite some time ago and having recently visited the land, I would like to submit that we should have followed the Malaysian model. The model applies to both Pakistan (urban versus rural population) and India (where some casts and Muslims have been incentivized in the hope to please them.

Malaysia had almost the same problem. Chinese were immigrants to the land, urban dwellers, a minority, educated and controlled the economy. Malays (called the Bhumiputras) were son of the soils, rural dwellers, Muslims, a majority and mostly uneducated. Muslims had a very high increase in population as well. Now the Malaysians could have easily incentivized the Muslims through artificial measures, but they chose not to. In around 1968-69, they initiated a long-term strategic program whereby they incentivized educating the rural Muslim Malay women. They hoped that an educated woman will like to have job, continue from college to professional world, delay wedding and therefore control population on one hand and stress on educating her children on the other. This is what exactly happened in next 20 years.

In Malaysia, Malays, Chinese and Tamil Indians are all equal members of society, who have contributed to the economy and have developed Malaysia into what we see it today.

My argument puts the burden of improving the status of under-performing communities squarely on the Government. This has to be done by creative and innovative approach rather than a lose-lose kind of situation that has been accorded to Indian Muslims.

Applying Malaysian model to India, your Government could have incentivised Muslim community to get educated. Perhaps encouraging Muslim women to get educated would have delivered the goods. Or perhaps your Governments could have encouraged Muslim leadership emulating Sir Sayed Ahmad Khan. Why this was not done would bring a discussion that I had with a Sardar Saheb from England who was visiting Orlando in January of 2002.

Now his argument may not be right and Indians have every right to question the sagacity of the same, but he said that the founders of India wanted Muslims to continue to live a life depending on alms and charity so that they never raise their voice. Dependent on the state, they would always remain subservient. He also quoted a case from Mahatama`s Gandhi`s life advising his pupil to make Muslims dependent on alms and charity.

As I have said before this was his argument. I have not heard such arguments from other Indians. At personal level, I don`t believe it. Indians are the best judge to determine what went wrong with Muslims of India, if it ever, and by whom? To me, every under-performing community should be encouraged to improve its performance using constructive mechanisms. Malaysia`s model is one of them.

Oh No! Not another blinkered view about secularism.
This nonsensical depiction of the three phases of Indian Democracy`s secularist traditions while identifying the very critics and diluters of Secularism i.e RSS and BJP as the chief proponents of secularism is deplorable and betrays understanding of democratic polity in India.
So once you identify Osama as the exemplar of Islam you can spread curses about Islam while denouncing his actions. In the same way, the author of the post has identified the policies of BJP or RSS as secularism par excellence in India. But why???
Too much of obfuscation has already been done by some in spreading lies about secularism. Why? because secularism is the natural enemy of both the Islamist and Hinduist in India, and both of them want to bury Secularism for ever. Secularism is the first enemy of both the parties because secularism creates the political space for discussion of non-religious issues like poverty, hunger, famines, rain water harvestation, import tariffs, agricultural subsidies, corruption- which none of the Islamist or Hindusit would like us to discuss without referring it to them. Secularism completely dis-empowers these mulaahs and pandits, and takes away the grounds for their intervention in such ``non-secular`` issues.

It has been the dream of the mullahs to derive all the valid or true propositions in this world from some proposition in their book however convulated their logic may be, and such ideological support ensures their place amongst the elites of their resident societies.

Remember, the critics of Secularism are the votaries of tomorrows Osamas.

I think you ignore the external provocations. Daily killings of Hindus and Sikhs in Kashmir and the expulsion of the Pandits with no active opposition from the government fostered the belief that Hindus are fair game to Islamic extremists in India and Pakistan.

The more Pakistani-based infiltrators kill in Kashmir, the more the Indian Muslims will suffer. This is a statement of fact from observing the situation. But I know that the neo-Thugs will be accusing me of anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Very well written, dost-mittar.

The pendulum has indeed swung in India from tolerant secularism to anti-Muslim Hindu fundamentalism. The former had its flaws, but the latter is outright demonic. A middle ground must be found between the two extremes. Any attempts to bludgeon a large minority of Muslims, Dalits and Christians will only result in the ``end of India`` as Khushwant Singh succintly put.

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Ref HisExcellency #13

[Any attempts to bludgeon a large minority of Muslims, Dalits and Christians will only result in the ``end of India`` as Khushwant Singh succintly put.]

One Mirza Rafifullah Baig has filed a lawsuit recently claiming (rightly, in my opinion) that the law reserving certain constituencies for Dalits for election to the Parliament is an unconstitutional infringement on his rights as a citizen of India since he is prevented from standing for election in his locality of residence, a right guaranteed to any citizen of India.

At least in this case, it is Muslim who is trying to ``bludgeon`` a Dalit.

Dost-Mitter

A timely warning for India which could destroy its peace, its progress and its world image. Not to speak of the miseries of a common man - both Muslim & Hindu.

My only fear is that the Pakistani believers of two-nation theory may get reinforced in their belief that they were always right and a Hindu-Muslim peaceful co-existance is not possible. Especially, after the kind of history they have been reading in the text books. The Army leadership with its tunnel vision will be the first to jump to the conclusions.

And while India will most likely get rid of this fanatic streak through its democracy, economic growth and a fairly independant judicial system, the Pakistani military leadership will continue on its destructive path of conflict with India. That is not good for an average poor Pakistani.

I feel the politicians will have a broader and a more balanced view - But for the present, they have no say.