Author: Dr. Ajay Chrungoo
Publication: The Daily Excelsior
Date:
Heads I Win Tails You Loose
'Secular liberals must be proactive
to prevent India from skidding into an era of violence, intolerance, authoritarianism
and economic slowdown that experts now derisively call the Hindutva rate
of Growth,' says Anita Pratap (outlook April 29, 2002). The mission, however
requires both credibility and a perceptional framework which can make the
difference. Not in terms of scoring points, but creating a healthy and
lasting inter community interface. Unfortunately the liberal discourse
lacks the both.
For decades liberals have indulged
in a vicious selectivity compromising the basic qualification of universalism
without which issues of coexistence and Human Rights could not be addressed.
Inspite of being able to capture almost whole of space in print and electronic
media liberals have only marginally influenced the middle class opinion
in India. Secular liberals were all along proactive during the build up
to Babri demolition. Why couldn't they influence the middle class opinion
in India?
The credibility crisis which the
liberals face has been expressed with subdued sincerity by the editor of
HT in his write up 'one way Ticket' (dated March 1, 2002). He writes 'there
is something profoundly worrying in the response of what might be called
the secular establishment to the massacre of Godhra.. Any media-indeed,
any secular establishment-that fails to take into account the genuine concerns
of 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 government 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' is only
a euphism for a paradigm which is inherently deffective. It breeds a culture,
which even in the absence of communalists among Hindus and Muslims will
keep the vicious hatred and suspicion among the two major communities in
India alive. We need to look into the character of this aggressive secularism
before we face in passing the contours of selectivity in which liberals
have indulged.
The general framework of secular
discourse in India is thus - majority communalism is more dangerous than
minority communalism; it has tremendous striking power; it is oppressive,
hegemonistic, authoritarian and ultimately fascit; a policy of protective
discrimination is a necessity to insulate minorities from minoritarian
tyranny. These broader postulates presuppose and in fact recognise an identity
which is a national majority. And this majority has to evolve a socio-political
behaviour so that it does not relapse into practising brute majoritarianism.
The very quality of this paradigm
is such that it has to operate totally divorced from the framework of the
political discourse in the country evolved by the same liberal mindset.
This political discourse recognises 'Hindu' identity as a misnomer or at
the most a geographical expression. The identity as per this reference
frame is basically a collectivity formed as a result of artificial fusion
of multitude of cultures and nationalities. It is an invention which served
the colonial imperatives to rule over India. The secular discourse seeks
both concessions and discipline where the Hindu majority behaves within
the parameters laid. The political discourse denies the very basis of 'Hindu'
as a identity denominator.
The contradiction does not stop
only at delegitimisng and ridiculing the majority identity. It creates
a conceptural situation where Muslims are the dominant group and in fact
the real majority while Hindu majority is at the most a concoction. The
implications of such a situation are two fold. First a psychological atmosphere
is created where Muslim minority gets projected to the Hindu majority as
a usurper. Denial of due respectibility to the Hindu majority eventually
has lead to their desensitisation to the genuine deprivations of the minority.
Secondly, Muslim minority fed on
the concepts that Hindu identity is artificial visualizes itself actually
as a majority, particularly in areas in which there is significant Muslim
presence. It builds a relationship with the majority ignoring the 'Whole'
and recognising only the 'Cleavages and Components.' This fake consciousness,
once it gets superimposed by the ideas of Ummah or Pan Islamism, builds
a self image in Muslims of having invincible reach and sway. The carnage
of Godhara, Bombay blasts or religious cleansing of Kashmir Hindus are
the suicidal provocations to the majority which can be only explained on
the basis of this enlarged self image and reach.
The efforts of a section of liberals
to describe Godhra as merely a 'criminal act' is either naviety or intellectual
crime of negationism. The very quality of these acts is such that they
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
in which liberals have indulged has added the fuel to the fire. The theme
of liberal reaction on the communal carnage in Gujarat focuses on deliberate
state inaction and fixing of responsibility not only of those responsible
in the government but also of the organs of society as well as individuals.
Compare it with the liberal response to the communal onslaught in Jammu
and Kashmir. It focusses on deliberate state action. It also rationalises
the explicit connivance of organs of society and individuals in the religious
cleansing. In Kashmir it is the state action which has to be described
as state terrorism and in Gujarat it is state inaction which represents
the state terrorism.
A few examples of liberal selectivity
will bring home the point. The BJP proposal of going for a snap poll in
Gujarat has met with a spontaneous disapproval and rejection. Legally Gujarat
government can propose snap polls by its own right. But is it morally right
to go for elections when thousands of its own citizens have been rendered
refugees in their own state? Liberals argue, and rightly so, about the
immorality of the whole proposal.
Contrast it with the liberal response
when elections were proposed in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in 1996.
350,000 Hindus had been rendered internally displaced after whole of Kashmir
valley had been cleansed of the Hindu minority. The very talk of conducting
of elections was not only criminal insensitivity, it was trivialising a
genocide, even denying it. Nation was choosing to ensure the right of franchise
of a people before ensuring its right to live. Editorials flashed the compliments
to the government. Postal ballot arrangement for voting in exile was hailed
as an ingenious method.
We have now almost one million population
in the state which is displaced. Spill-over of terrorist violence into
Jammu has brought about internal displacement which no body has acknowledged
so far. People in Muslim majority areas of Jammu have shifted from isolated
villages to small towns, from upper reaches of mountains to lower localities,
from smaller towns to big ones. We have thousands of border migrants who
have fled their homes. Will the liberals oppose elections in Jammu
and Kashmir on the same premises they opposed in Gujarat? Since the liberal
outlook is not universal the rules of game frequently change.
Prem Shanker Jha in his column (outlook
April 29, 2002). rightly tries to bring the Gujarat debate out of the cause-reaction
cycle. He argues 'For if Ayodhya mitigates Godhra the Godhra surely mitigates
Ahmedabad and Mehsana...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 legitimise the deliberate use of hatred
as a political instrument...'. Mr Jha however persistently chooses the
same tract of cause and reaction when he deals with the terrorism in Kashmir.
In Kashmir , as per him militancy
is bornout of the, 'despair of a small select group of young people who
form a new but disinherited middle class...The denial of political rights
is only a small part of their dispossession...Thus there has also come
into being a growing class of job seekers that is looking specifically
for salaried employment...Not only is the remote Valley not well suited
to industrialisation but a disproportionate number of the salaried jobs
that have been created have gone to Kashmiri Pandits...' (TOI 29/5/90).
In simple generalisations based on half facts and falsehoods the unleashing
of pan-Islamic terrorism is explained in the typical cause-reaction framework.
And remember the dangerous allusion that Pandits had usurped the
employment cake in the state was made by Mr Jha at a time when cleansing
operation against Pandits were reaching the climax. A subtle justification
for Hindu Genocide.
AG Noorani in his prolific writings
on Kashmir has goaded all of us to realise the implications of not only
the 'constitutional abuse' but the 'moral wrong' committed through the
erosion of article 370.
Every other day we read his illuminating
write ups towards building the case of Genocide of Muslims in Gujarat.
How often we have seen him delving into religious cleansing in Jammu and
Kashmir
Liberals eulogise JKLF as the moderate
secular outfit which only wanted independence of Kashmir. Kashmiri Hindus,
having experienced how JKLF unleashed genocidal violence on them and brought
about their cleansing from Kashmir watch these blatant destortions with
helplessness.
Selectivity in the liberal discourse,
willful or otherwise, is the most vicious assault on the principal of coexistence.
It has rendered all serious debate on fundamental issues ineffective. It
creates the psychological environment where.major communities constituting
India pit against each other.
Hindus see the liberal paradigm
of Heads I win Tails you loose.
Last but not the least liberal rationalisations
instead of putting a rational defence in favour of Muslim society infact
indicts it more than anything else. For example in Jammu and Kashmir the
spate of massacres of Hindus is being attributed primarily to the foreign
terrorists. Even though the assertion is factually incorrect, yet if we
take it as truth it indicts the Muslim society in a wider sense. For the
operation of a single foreign mercenary or 'guest militant' many times
wider societal support is needed than for the local terrorist.
Dr. AJAY CHRUNGOO
*Chairman (Panun Kashmir)
*Head of Editorial Board Fortnightly
Political Magazine Kashmir Sentinel
*Represented case of displaced
Kashmiri Hindus in UNHRC and other international fora.
Ph: 0191-530157, FAX: 0191-591316
