Bittersweet hope for secularism
G.S. Cheema

Will Secular India Survive?
edited by Mushirul Hasan.
ImprintOne, Gurgaon. Pages 399.

This book was received shortly before the recent parliamentary elections. The timing of its publication and its provocative title seemed to have the then forthcoming polls in view, hence the reviewer decided to await the results. Against all expectations, the BJP and its allies lost, and secular India appears to have survived, at least for the time being. Recently, the President, in his capacity as the Visitor of Jamia Millia Islamia, approved the appointment of Prof Mushirul Hasan, editor of the book, as the Vice-Chancellor of the university. I am far from suggesting that Hasan had anything so mundane in mind when he set about putting this book together (his academic credentials are impeccable, and the contributors are all eminent scholars), but rarely has a book been so propitious for its author.

The essays are about the steadily worsening condition of the minorities, particularly the Indian Muslims, for the others receive only passing mention. The subcontinent’s turbulent history is usually held responsible for most of our problems. Both Hindus and Muslims, observes Amitava Kumar, see themselves as the sufferers in a self-defeating narrative of victimisation. Indian historiography, too often propagandist, is partly to blame. The modern "saffron" school is only the latest of many such biased schools. Hopefully, they will have suffered a setback with the recent election results, but who knows how long the present phase will last?

The Congress party’s own stand on secularism has been, at best, ambiguous. As Martha Nussbaum points out, Indian secularism is quite different from the American version. The Indian state, instead of being neutral in religious matters, respects all faiths and creeds. The four main religions are recognised. The state patronises them and protects their right to have their own personal laws. It occasionally intervenes on their behalf, as it did in the Shah Bano case. Such interventions are usually seen as " of one or the other community, and the state tries to play a balancing role by further interventions in favour of others. For instance, after the Shah Bano case, the ostensibly secular Congress Government of the day allowed the locks of the Babari Masjid (locked since 1947) to be opened, with all the horrendous consequences that followed.

Even during the freedom struggle, there were many Congress leaders who would have met the RSS at least halfway. For many of them, getting the British out came first and the question of Muslims afterwards. Such elements still persist. And for entirely different reasons, at the time of the Ayodhya crisis, cynics like Narasimha Rao were ready to compromise with communalism and close one eye. Every political party has its goondas and mass murderers, and the Congress is not blameless in the matter.

After the political revolution of the 19th century, the dispossessed Muslim elites turned inwards in search of an explanation for their eclipse, observes Satish Saberwal. Wahabism, Syed Ahmad Barelvi and the Oar-ul-Uloom of Oeoband were the response to this quest. Among the Punjabi Hindus the Arya Samaj took root. These movements sought to provide easy answers, urging a return to fundamentals, and reinforcing exclusive religious identities. Even Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, undoubtedly a progressive, had to cede to the Ulema of Oeoband ideological control over the institution of his dreams at Aligarh, before the Muslim gentry would open their purse strings for his project. The shared spaces between the two communities were becoming smaller.

The sad history of the Minorities Commission has been detailed by one of its former chairmen. The retreat of the state from education and the poor funding of Urdu medium schools have led to the proliferation of madrasas with poorly paid teachers, following an obsolete syllabus. Since Muslims anyway feel discriminated against in matters of employment — and undeniably, their share in government services has steeply declined after Partition — this is not considered important. It is enough that they teach Urdu and sufficient Arabic to enable their pupils to read the Koran and be "good Muslims"— whatever that may mean.

Dipankar Gupta’s essay makes a more generalised study of terrorist movements among minorities. He includes in his ambit Sikh, Tamil and Palestinian terrorism. He explains its genesis and points out how in spite of the long history of "communal riots", in which the minorities (mostly Muslims) have invariably been at the receiving end, one is hard put to find a single example of successful prosecution of the majority community for murder, arson, rape, etc.

All in all the essays present a grim outlook, but with one’s morale bolstered by the results of the recent general elections (whatever the reasons for the defeat of the BJP and its allies), one can say that hope is not yet entirely lost. India has an infinite capacity for springing surprises, and Hasan Suroor, whose bittersweet piece is the concluding essay, strikes a small note of hope.

While there has been a definite deterioration in the political climate after the events at Ayodhya, he observes, India is not yet a Hindu version of Pakistan and — if one may add — may it never be.

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