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The basic argument is divided
into three parts: The emergence of secular sensibility in
pre-Independence India and its evolution in the aftermath of
Independence in Nehruvian/Congress image; Its present-day
homogenisation as/into Hindutva/cultural nationalism, and, a
blueprint to counter this hegemonic appropriation.
The emergence
and evolution of secularism in India parallels its evolution
as a national state out of an inherently heterogenous subject.
In the pre-Independence period, Congress politics harnessed
Indian economic discontent into a sort of anti-colonial
nationalism that welded its plural population into a
political/purposeful collectivity. The resultant secularism of
anti-colonial struggle thus acquired a comprehensively nationalist
character, where every one-be s/he of any caste, creed or even
ideology - was equally welcome. Later, party’s ideological
pluralism became a substitute for Muslim support.
The
post-Independence state ‘remade’ this secularism into a
nation-building tool that aimed at converting the partitioned Raj
into a modern Republic through the conversion of a
heterogenous subject into a common citizenry. It was premised
on "religious freedom, celebratory neutrality and
reformatory justice." This construction of secularism was
consciously incorporated into the Republic’s Constitution so
as to reassure religious minorities "that they didn’t
live on sufferance in free India".
The
trajectory of secularism from pre to post-Independence India
through the seventies has, however, been one of contradictions
and fragilities. The contradictions have been particularly
manifest in its negotiation of the majority versus minority
question — be it in the form of language question issue of
language or in its tendency to treat ‘Hindu’ as a default
category for Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists. The later clubbing
has made the socially disadvantaged within these minorities
the automatic beneficiaries of positive discrimination (that
Dalits, being Hindu, get) whereas Christians and Muslims are
denied the similar benefits on religious grounds. It was,
thus, a clumsy, patronising secularism, always vulnerable to
the resentful charge of history.
Primarily a
state-sponsored agenda in post-Independence India, secularism
relied too heavily on the middle class and the metropolitan
elitist props for its dissemination. And herein, according to
Kesavan, lay the fragility of the Nehruvian model of
secularism and seeds of its co-option by the Hindu Right in
the eighties. The ruling elite, in order to survive had to
invent ways for being indigenously sophisticated. The
resultant portability and eclectic hybridity of India’s
metropolitan culture and Indian and elites’ existential
compulsions/anxieties and locational advantages within it made
this secularism a kind of style choice, sans commitment, for
the Indian elites.
As soon as
the patron, i.e., the Nehruvian state, failed to deliver
economically and ultimately declined politically during and in
the aftermath of Indira Gandhi, state-sponsored secularism
also collapsed. Having explained the frailty of middle class
oriented, dependent, State-sponsored secularism, Kesavan goes
on to deconstruct its Hindutva substitute - that holds sway
today - methodically and with all the belligerence a liberal
like him can have at his command. Privileging pre-Independence
brand of Congress nationalism as an all-inclusive indigenous
secular touchstone, he castigates BJP’s
secularism/nationalism for the reversal/subversion of all
these ideals. BJP chauvinism, which it garbs as Hindu
nationalism, is very different from the Noah’s Ark quality
to Congress nationalism of the freedom struggle. European
models - shared language, an authorised history, a single
religion and a common enemy, inspire it. Thus, it has no
interest in plurality, the fundamental Indian reality.
However, the
BJP has concertedly tried to fudge the difference between the
two nationalisms to create a genealogy for itself that,
despite its Indian gloss, remains alien to the fundamental
Indian ethos. Further, this genealogy constitutes of the
mythology of grievances and ‘othering’. In aligning the
majority community and the nation-state to forge a jingoistic
majoritarian state, such ideological-cultural manoeuvres only
undermine the secular-federal mosaic of India.
Here, Kesavan
demolishes all those props (i.e., the projected complicity of
the Muslims in partitioning India, Muslim vandalism, ‘bans
and reservations’, and the need to nationalise the
minorities BJP style) of minority pampering that Right wing
chauvinistic nationalism exploits to garner majority support
for itself in its hate campaigns against the Congress and
against the minorities.
What, then,
is the best way to deal with such a majoritarianism and to
make secularism work in India? The question exercises Kesavan’s
attention in the last part of the book. In order to search for
an answer he probes into existing political models —
Dravidian, ‘Yadav’ and BSP — that ostensibly oppose
Hindutva forces, but faults almost all of these on various
counts.
The political
coalition of the relatively oppressed that unites religioius
minorities, plebian clean castes and Dalits and that is
operative and partially successful in UP and Bihar is faulted
on five counts.
According to
him, "a secular politics can’t be built by fudging a
common experience of oppression." According to Kesavan,
the lower caste coalition, spearheaded by Dravida Movement
down South is rooted more in anti-Brahminism rather than in
secularism and cannot serve as a good blue-print for a secular
combination at the national level, because: the social context
that nourished it doesn’t exist elsewhere and it is co-opted
by the power politics of the day and even in Tamil Nadu
itself, the success of the Dravidian project has also led to
the subversion of the ideology that powered it.
For Kesavan:
"secularism is... a set of fair play norms that prevents
any one religious group, regardless of its size or competence
of power, from monopolising the culture and politics of a
nation and its institutions. In an ideal world, deviation from
secular practice by the government, public sector
undertakings, industry and educational institutions would be
monitored by a statutory watchdog body" He stops short of
advocating judicial activism as a means to preserve it in
India. The only solution that he foresees for preserving
secularism in India is through Peoples’ activism: they need
to be dogmatic in their opposition to any appropriatory
idea/design of Sangh Parivar’s exclusionary agenda.
It is not that the book offers any radical understanding of
the concept. Some of the arguments/portions incorporated in
the book had earlier been rehearsed by Kesavan in the Telegraph,
Calcutta. Its significance lies in its deliberate
targeting of the English-speaking literate middle class
Indians, the most articulate section that still matters in
India, with an intention to ‘educate’ them and to create a
consensus for ‘common sense secularism’. This intention of
the author, however, does not come in the way of his debunking
of this class for reducing secularism to an almost patronising
"behalfism. He is aware of that the composition of this
class, over the years, has changed dramatically with the
influx of hitherto marginal groups into its fold. This class
is more heterogenous and varied that before and had the
potentials to challenge and change the contours of Indian
politics. The very nature of the narrative, both
linguistically and argumentatively — imbued with passion and
logic — asserts this optimism.
His defence
of commonsense or prudent secularism calls for an active
public intervention in a very lucid language. Like all middle
class intellectual enterprises this book, in its
problematisation of the secular, takes the major chunk of
Indian reality, rural India, for granted. Except for some
perfunctory generalisations about caste politics that is
resistant to Rightist secular appropriation, Kesavan, doesn’t
make any earnest to place this secular debate within
ruralscape, political or otherwise.
Ultimately,
secularism is not about state patronage but about an unbiased
and unequivocal public/community empowerment. This
participatory secularism calls not only for affirmative state
intervention but also a democratic and all inclusive
interpretation and dissemination of knowledge, via public
debate that includes and understands all. Kesavan’s book,
though a step forward in this direction, nevertheless, cannot
be absolved of this elitist bias, despite all its intellectual
fervour.
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