Author: Dr. Ajay Chrungoo
Publication: Kashmir Sentinel
Date: October 1- 31, 2002
Indian 'secular' liberals have thrown
a bombshell-the country runs the risk of sliding into violence, intolerance,
authoritarianism and economic chaos if the liberals do not go on offensive.
Thanks to the obliging media, these liberals have succeeded in even ensuring
that voices critical to them are effectively suppressed.
The million-dollar question, however,
is why have these liberals failed to move the vast Indian middle class?
The insinuation now is that Hindus are turning communal. They have embarked
on a programme of ethnic cleansing of Muslims. Average Indian rebuts the
claim saying it is 'Secular' liberal who is sowing the seeds of violent
hatred between the two major communities. Indians are distancing from the
secular liberal elite. A 'secular liberal is looked upon with suspicion.
He is seen compulsive Hindu basher, se political agenda includes Working
against national interests, promoting caste-communal schism and support
to international pan-Islamist elements. Common Indian is alarmed by an
unholy alliance of secular liberals, Pan-Islamists and Marxists of different
hues.
This has created a profound crisis
of credibility for secular-liberal intellectual in India. Even Vir Singhvi,
who otherwise sides with Secularvadis is constrained to remark, "there
is something profoundly worrying in the response of what might be called
the secular establishment to the massacre at Godhra. Any media-indeed,
any secular establishment-that fails to take into account the genuine concerns
of the people risks losing its own credibility. Something like that happened
in the mid-eighties when an aggressive hard secularism on the part of the
press and govt. led even moderate Hindus to believe that they had become
second-class citizens in their own country. It was this Hindu backlash
that brought the Ayodhya movement, till then a fringe activity to the forefront,
fuelled the rise of L. K. Advani."
'Aggressive' secularism has created
a culture, which is keeping alive the hatred and suspicion between the
two major communities. It has failed to create a healthy and lasting inter-community
interface. Instead secular liberal by becoming unabashed champion of Muslim
communalism, is forcing confrontation between the two communities. This
has been seen in Gujarat and elsewhere.
Flawed Argument:
The framework within which secular
framework operates reveals an inherent contradiction. It pronounces majority
communalism as more dangerous, oppressive, hegemonistic, fascist etc and
with unfettered striking power. To insulate minorities from this majoritarian
tyranny, protective discrimination is justified. All this presupposes an
identity, which makes Hindus the national majority. This majority needs
to evolve a socio-political behaviour so that it does not relapse into
practicising mindless majoritarianism, it is argued. To counter this tyranny
the national majority needs to be put under constant pressure. Secular
liberal has evolved a perspective which goes like this. Support to all
those who weaken Indian state externally and internally, endorsement of
Musharraf to project him as a peacemaker and demonizing Indian state and
opposition to any measure that strengthens Indian defence e.g. nuclear
status. In Kashmir secular liberal sides with Islamist separatists and
justifies genocide against non-Muslims there. Why does Musharraf talk of
a split opinion on Kashmir in India? It is this fifth columnist secular
liberal he has in mind.
In Gujarat the secular liberal tries
to give cover to ISI activities by underplaying Godhra and demonizing the
majority. To caricature and debunk the majority the secular liberal needs
a powerful symbol. Sangh Parivar fits the bill and Modi becomes 'Milosevic'
Modi, because this parivar has seen through the secular conspiracy to weaken
India.
To carry the argument further, the
secular liberal demands concessions for minority on the premise that Hindus
form the national majority. In political discourse, however, Hindu identity
is sought to be delegitimised. It is dismissed as a misnomer or at the
most a geographical expression. Hindu identity as per this reference frame
is essentially a collectivity formed as a result of artificial fusion of
multitude of cultures or nationalities. It is an invented or a crafted
identity, which served the colonial imperatives to rule over India. This
sham identity needs to be ridiculed, so goes the secular argument. This
paradigm creates a conceptional situation, where Muslims emerge as the
monolithic dominant group and Hindus, an amalgam of different castes and
nationalities. Its implications create social instability. Psychologically
Hindu majority begins perceiving Muslim minority as usurper. At other level,
by denying due respectability to Hindu majority, there is desensitization
of Hindus to the genuine deprivations of the minority.
Muslim minority, fed on the concepts
that Hindu identity is a concoction and Hindus a fissured society, begins
visualizing itself as majority, particularly in those areas, where it has
significant Muslim presence. This minority then seeks to redefine its relationship
with the majority-ignoring the 'whole' and recognizing only the 'cleavages
and components' among the majority. Promoting caste and ethnic tensions
among Hindus thus emerges as the central' sociopolitical agenda for Muslims.
Laloo Yadav, Mayawati, Mulayam Singh, VP Singh etc become the 'secular
messiahs'. Secular liberal provides the ideological wherewithal and polemical
support to push forward this line.
The new false consciousness once
it gets combusted with ideas of Ummah of Pan-Islamism, builds a self-image
of Muslims having invincible reach and sway. The carnage of Godhra, Bombay
blasts or religious cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus are the suicidal provocation
to the majority, which can only be explained on the basis of this enlarged
self-image and reach. The efforts of secular liberals to project Godhra
as merely a 'criminal act', is to quote Koenrad Elst, an intellectual crime
of negationism. The very quality of these acts is such that these cannot
be accomplished without a significant connivance and support at the societal
level.
The liberal paradigm has created
a volatile substratum for Hindu-Muslim strife. The ruthless selectivity
with which liberals reacted to the Gujarat happenings added fuel to the
fire. In the context of communal violence in Gujarat, liberals focussed
on state 'inaction' and indicted not only the government but also the Hindu
society. Compare this with their response to terrorism in J&K. Here
the focus is on deliberate state action-the 'state terrorism'. In Kashmir
the liberal rationalise the explicit connivance of different segments of
Kashmiri Muslim society in the religious cleansing of Hindus. In Kashmir
the state action is described as 'state terrorism', while in Gujarat state
'in action' is described as state terrorism. Heads I Win Tails You Lose!
It does not stop here. The BJP proposal
for a snap poll in Gujarat invites spontaneous disapproval and rejection
from liberals. This despite that a duly elected government has every right
to call for snap polls at any time of its choosing. How is it morally valid
to conduct elections in J&K, when lakhs of people become refugees in
their own state and lose right to live? Another fraud called "Postal ballot
arrangement for voting in exile" helps the ruling dispensation to further
tighten the siege. "Postal ballot" for migrants is' hailed by liberals
as concern of Indian state for Pandit refugees. The problem has since been
compounded by the addition of thousands of other refugees-the victims of
religious-cleansing in the Muslim-majority areas of Jammu province and
"border" migrants.
Prem Shanker Jha, another self-proclaimed
ideologue on Kashmir decries Vajpayee's remarks on Gujarat in the BJP convention.
He says... what was profoundly wrong with Vajpayee's remarks was not their
content but the occasion he chose to make them ... In short what Vajpayee
managed to do was to legitimize the deliberate use of hatred as a political
instrument...." On Kashmir, Jha not only maintains wilful silence on violent
hatred let loose by JKLF Hizbul Mujahideen combine against Kashmiri Hindus,
but goes to such absurd lengths as to attribute fundamentalist insurgency
in Kashmir to "disproportionate number of salaried jobs that. have gone
to Kashmiri Pandits." A subtle justification for genocide of Kashmiri Hindus.
Liberals hail JKLF as an ultra secular outfit fighting a national-liberation
movement. And how was JKLF fighting a national liberation movement through
religious-cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus and silencing secular political
dissent through plain murders. If all this is accepted the myths the secular
liberals have woven around JKLF collapse. Hence the disinformation and
make believe theses. Similar motives explain why massacres in Jammu region
are attributed solely to foreign terrorists by the secular liberals, This
helps absolve local terrorists of the charge of being communal.
AG Noorani continues to render sane
advice" on Kashmir to the nation. He would like us to accept that the so-called
erosion of article 370 is not only a constitutional "abuse" but also a
"moral wrong". For him the wholesale religious-cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus
and their perpetual exile is no "moral wrong". Today the Left establishment
takes pride in promoting the, "sane advice" of this veteran anticommunist
on Sangh Parivar.
(The writer heads Panun Kashmir)