SACW | 03 -4 March 2004

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  |  3-4 March,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1] Pakistan-India: Stranger in a familiar land  (Kamila Shamsie)
[2] UK- India: 'Hardline' charity begins in the donation box (Ashish Kumar Sen)
[3] India: Muslims as poster boys (Praful Bidwai)
[4] India: What would a Hindu state do that the secular state has not 
done already? (Pratap Bhanu Mehta)
[5] Can India 'shine' under Hindutva? (Asghar Ali Engineer)

--------------

[1]

The Guardian (UK)
February 18, 2004

Stranger in a familiar land

While the governments of Pakistan and India are struggling to resolve 
their differences, the people of the two countries have more in 
common than they might imagine, as Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie 
discovered when she went to work in Madras

As with so many things to do with India and Pakistan, trouble started 
well before it had any business doing so. When I set about getting a 
visa to go to Madras (or Chennai as its now officially called) in 
order to spend a week as writer-in-residence at Stella Maris college, 
I imagined that my first stumbling block would be in fulfilling the 
requirements of the visa application. But as it turned out, getting 
hold of the visa office in Islamabad was a mini-saga in itself. When 
I finally dialled the correct number, a fax machine picked up. 
Undaunted, I wrote a letter asking for details of the visa 
application process and attempted to fax it across. But this time, no 
fax machine picked up - there was only the ringing of the telephone. 
I almost gave up right there; this is a metaphor, I decided. 
Pakistani phones Indian and gets a fax machine. Indian hears ringing 
phone, answers it to speak to Pakistani, and gets an incoming fax. 
The desire to communicate is there, but the machinery won't allow it.

It was to see if the metaphor could stand up to scrutiny that I 
dialled the number a third time, and got through to a human being. 
And so it was that a few days later I found myself in Islamabad's 
"diplomatic enclave" (to enter the enclave you must board a bus which 
lets you off at your embassy of choice. The Indian embassy is the 
closest to the entrance, but it's also the last stop on the route. 
This, too, is a metaphor). In the end, the officials duly stamped my 
passport with a visa for Bombay and Madras (Pakistan and India don't 
give each other's nationals visas for the entire country, only for 
select cities within the country). And so on February 6 I found 
myself in Bombay, where I was to spend two days with friends on my 
way to Madras.

Nothing had prepared me for Bombay. I don't mean the extremes of its 
extremes - though its wealth and its poverty are of an acuteness, and 
exist at an adjacency to each other, that are startling even to 
someone from Karachi. Simply, I had never been somewhere so 
completely unfamiliar that still managed to exude such a sense of 
familiarity. I knew, of course, that Bombay, like Karachi, was an 
overcrowded, industrial port city, with colonial architecture 
dominating certain parts of town, and that a distance of just over 
500 miles separated them. But it is quite something else to be 
confronted with the reality of the fact.

It struck me most forcibly one evening as I was sitting on the long 
verandah of the Bombay Gymkhana - almost identical to the long 
verandah of the Karachi Gymkhana - and, as evening descended, a cool 
breeze raced in from the sea, and carried away the heat of the 
afternoon. It's one of my favourite things in Karachi, the evening 
sea breeze that transforms a hot day, and to find it in Bombay was 
like meeting, for the first time, the sibling of someone you love and 
in that stranger's features encountering utterly beloved expressions.

But it gets stranger. It was not only Karachi that I was reminded of 
in Bombay. In the architecture of some of its streets, it is London. 
In its frenzy, in the ultra-coolness of its ultra-coolness and in the 
constraints of geography that make it grow upward rather than 
outward, it is New York. And so there were moments in Bombay when it 
almost seemed possible to believe myself in a dream in which the 
three cities in which I had spent the previous year all came together 
in one place, and yet that one place was nothing like any of those 
other places at all.

When you are in a place that is partly familiar, your attention is 
drawn more than ever to the ways in which it is utterly alien. So it 
was with me and Bombay. The statues, for instance, took me entirely 
by surprise. In all my travels, I had never stopped to consider that 
in Karachi we have no statues, but seeing the ones in Bombay made me 
aware for the first time that, in my home town, our monuments are 
fountains or swords or arid mountaintops in the midst of a landslide 
- to commemorate Pakistan's first successful nuclear test in 1998; 
when I first saw it, I didn't know whether to laugh or weep - but 
never people. Perhaps, I thought, what I sensed in Bombay was just a 
microcosm of what India and Pakistan encounter with each other: a 
constant movement between finding intimacy amid strangeness and 
difference buried within the heart of similarity.

But then I went to Madras. And there, I found nothing of metaphor and 
dream - just a city that clearly belonged to the same region of the 
world as Karachi, and no more. In Madras you can't help being aware 
at all times that you are in southern India - and that, as a 
Pakistani, most of your associations with India are with northern 
India. The food, the languages, the topography were all distinct 
enough from the world I have grown up in that I was able simply to be 
there without overlaying images of Karachi on to any part of it.

For many of the students at Stella Maris college, as well as for many 
of the faculty, I was the first Pakistani they had met, and they were 
immensely curious (and never less than utterly warm and hospitable). 
One day I asked a hall full of students which country in southern 
Asia they felt the strongest association with. I expected many to say 
Sri Lanka - Madras is, after all, the capital of Tamil Nadu, so it 
seemed natural to think there would be an affinity with the Tamils in 
Sri Lanka - but to my vast surprise, the entire hall called out 
"Pakistan". "Why not Sri Lanka?" I asked. "Because Pakistan used to 
be the same country as India," someone offered. "So was Bangladesh," 
I said. "Do you feel the same affinity there?" No, they all said, not 
at all.

Afterwards, one of the teachers told me that there are many people in 
Madras who identify with the Sri Lankan Tamils, but not so many in 
the younger generation, since they don't remember the Sri Lankan 
civil war at its height in the 80s. But partition was in the 40s, I 
thought afterwards. This idea of affinity can't just be about a 
historical past - particularly not in Madras, which remained almost 
entirely untouched by the events of partition. It is our two nations' 
official state of enmity, I'm sure, that keeps us so connected - you 
have only to look at both countries' defence budgets to see how much 
force we exert on each others' lives. That flexing of military and 
rhetorical muscle at the same time ties us together and keeps us from 
really knowing each other.

That same afternoon I was having an informal lunch with a group of 
students and one of them finally mentioned the K-word, which no one 
had thus far uttered. "Is Kashmir your Kashmir or our Kashmir?" she 
said. "It's the Kashmiris' Kashmir," I replied, and was surprised by 
the degree of assent around me. But one of the students said, "I 
think of Pakistan as our Pakistan." The girls around her hushed her. 
"Don't say that in front of her," one of them whispered. The girl 
looked at me as though to say she meant no offence but was simply 
stating a fact. "We were the same country," she said. "Yes," I said. 
"We were. A while ago." A few minutes later another of the girls 
said, "We didn't know what to expect when we heard you were coming. 
We thought you'd be all -" and she made a gesture of someone covered 
up from head to toe. Then she pointed to my V-necked kurta with its 
rolled-up sleeves. "But you look just like us." I knew then that I 
was to them what Bombay had been to me - something far more familiar 
than anticipated.

Back in my hotel that evening, I ran into one of the women in 
housekeeping who asked me where I was from. "Karachi," I said, and 
could see that she wasn't quite able to place the name. "Your mother 
tongue is Hindi?" she asked, which I already understood as a 
shorthand for asking me if I were from northern India. "Urdu," I 
replied. There was a moment's silence and then, "Karachi is on the 
Pakistan side of the border?" "Yes." "What, in Pakistan itself?" 
"Yes." I still can't stop thinking of the way she phrased her 
questions, as though, in her mind, there existed a place on the 
Pakistan side of the border that was not Pakistan itself.

Now back in Karachi, I find that the part of me which writes fiction 
is utterly captivated by this idea - a city that is the border itself 
rather than existing within either nation - and in my imagining, the 
material of which that city, that border, is built dissolves into 
abstraction or transforms into impenetrable steel as contexts shift 
around it from one moment to the next.


_____


[2]

Asia Times (Hong Kong)
Mar 3, 2004

'Hardline' charity begins in the donation box
By Ashish Kumar Sen
WASHINGTON - For the second time in less than two years, an in-depth 
recent report has been released providing in detail links between 
charities based in the West and militant Hindu organizations in India.
The latest report, "In Bad Faith? British Charity and Hindu 
Extremism", has been published by Awaaz, a London-based secular 
network. According to the report, a significant portion of funds 
collected in the name of humanitarian causes is being spent on 
schools run by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a hardline 
Hindu organization whose philosophy is intolerant of other religions 
and which advocates Hindutva - a militant brand of Hinduism.
In New Delhi, an RSS spokesman dismissed the allegations as "wild and 
false". "The whole report smacks of a sinister conspiracy to defame 
Hindu organizations," said RSS spokesman Ram Madhav. "We take strong 
objection to the propaganda unleashed by persons and organizations 
hither to unknown against the RSS and organizations connected with it 
like the Sewa Bharati [a fundraiser] with wild and false allegations 
of misuse of funds received from abroad."
In the past, independent human rights groups including the New 
York-based Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and India's 
National Human Rights Commission have reported that RSS projects 
directed at tribal and lower caste groups in Gujarat played a 
critical role in fomenting communal riots in 2002.
The Awaaz report claims that the RSS's front organizations collected 
millions of pounds from the British public, which was unaware of the 
charities' links to Hindu militants. A majority of these funds were 
collected by the Leicester-based and registered charity, Hindu 
Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) and its fundraising arm, Sewa International 
(UK).
The HSS, an overseas branch of the RSS, actively promotes its 
ideology of turning India into a Hindu nation.
Sewa International (UK), though not a registered charity, became a 
high profile fundraising organization after the Gujarat earthquake in 
2001. Allegedly using the HSS' charity registration number, its India 
Quake Appeal raised around US$4.2 million. The British public and 
patrons of Sewa International were apparently at the time unaware of 
its connections to the RSS.
Lord Adam Patel, member of the House of Lords and patron of Sewa 
International, resigned from his latter affiliation last year after 
learning of the group's links to RSS. Speaking at the release of the 
report in the House of Lords on February 26, Lord Patel said that 
Sewa International had "cheated me and cheated the residents of the 
UK".
"Like Lord Adam Patel, people have been shocked at the level of 
deceit carried out by Sewa International," said Suresh Grover, an 
Awaaz board member.
London-based Charity Commission is investigating the HSS and Sewa 
International. Last year, the Indian government denied visas to 
investigators from the commission who wanted to travel to India as 
part of their inquiry. Confirming that the commission had been 
"refused" visas, Rebecca Drake, a spokesperson said: "We have 
contacted them [the government of India] to ask them to reconsider 
their decision and are awaiting a response."
Another Charity Commission spokesperson said: "We are looking into 
potential links between the charity [HSS] and extremist organizations 
in India and alleged payments to these groups by the charity. We are 
looking at the relationship between the HSS and Sewa International, 
and also the administration of the funds that were collected for the 
Gujarat Earthquake Appeal."
Many are unaware of the extent of the political influence the HSS has 
cultivated within the UK. "It's a striking fact that as prime 
minister, Margaret Thatcher put a garland on [RSS founder Keshav 
Baliram ] Hedgewar's bust," said Awaaz spokesperson Chetan Bhatt.
Explaining the lack of public outcry, Bhatt said: "That's part of the 
British didactic multiculturalism ... people don't want to be labeled 
racist."
According to Grover, the main goal of the HSS and Sewa International 
is to "channel money to extremist RSS fronts in India, despite their 
claim to be non-sectarian, non-religious, non-political and purely 
humanitarian organizations". Funds raised by Sewa International run 
into millions of dollars.
While the report links the HSS, Sewa International and the Kalyan 
Ashram Trust to RSS-sponsored violence in India, Grover said: 
"Although we cannot say pounds collected here were used to buy guns 
in India, we can say with confidence that the money was used to build 
hatred against a minority. Most donors would be horrified if they 
knew the nature, history and ideas of the RSS," he added.
The Hostel-Dispensary-Cultural Center for Children and Nurseries, an 
affiliate of a US-based charity implicated in a similar report, 
states in its literature: "The Muslims are also trying to create 
chaos in these communities, either by enticing these tribals or by 
raping the tribal girls by force. The Kalyan Ashram at Sidumbar 
[Gujarat] is trying to put a stop to these activities of Muslims as 
well as Christians ... The workers of Kalyan Ashrams are required to 
give a tough fight to the Christian missionaries because they keep on 
harassing the local residents."
According to the Awaaz report, the village of Chapredi, rebuilt after 
the Gujarat earthquake, included an important dedication plaque 
glorifying the RSS, its founder and a key RSS affiliate. A Hindu 
temple topped with saffron flags was built in the village. No 
evidence was found of Sewa International funding the rebuilding of 
mosques or churches, though many of these were destroyed in the 
earthquake.
Some funds meant for earthquake reconstruction were also allegedly 
channeled to the RSS's Lok Kalyan Samiti in Chanasma village, which 
has been directly implicated in the violent "cleansing" of all 
Muslims from the village and the illegal occupation of premises and 
land belonging to the statutory Muslim Waqf board. Another RSS 
project, Jankalyan Samiti, was allegedly the recipient of Sewa 
International (UK) earthquake funds. The Samiti's Maharashtra branch 
has been involved in violence against Christians.
The report makes a pointed reference to the fact that despite these 
charities' claims of being non-sectarian and non-discriminatory, Sewa 
International (UK), the HSS (UK) and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP - 
World Hindu Forum) did not launch any humanitarian appeals following 
the Gujarat violence in 2002. The majority of victims of that tragedy 
were Muslims.
Saying that the Sewa Bharati was governed by Indian laws, Madhav 
added: "Every single penny received by Sewa Bharati from within or 
outside India is judiciously spent on the causes for which it has 
been collected."
The Awaaz report is not the first to expose links between Hindutva 
groups and violence. In 2002, a Channel Four investigation in the UK 
documented the communal ideology espoused at Vanvasi Kalyan ashrams 
in India. Last year, the Financial Times reported a similar story. 
The Madhya Pradesh government has revoked Sewa Bharti's license 
because of its alleged involvement in violence against Christians.
The Awaaz report claims a large proportion of the $484,000 raised by 
Sewa International for Orissa cyclone relief in 1999 enabled the 
expansion of major RSS affiliates. "Funds were used for building RSS 
schools. The RSS and its leaders were glorified. The HSS said Orissa 
cyclone funds would be channeled through RSS volunteers and given to 
organizations which get their work force from the RSS," the report 
says.
Bhatt says that the British public was "duped" into believing they 
were contributing towards relief efforts for victims of the Orissa 
cyclone and the Gujarat earthquake.
Grover added: "We do not think it is a coincidence that the two 
Indian states where Hindutva networks, violence and hatred have grown 
phenomenally in recent years both had natural and human tragedies 
followed by massive amounts of funding to Hindutva organizations from 
overseas."
Almost a quarter of Sewa International earthquake funds raised from 
the British public were for building sectarian, highly controversial 
RSS schools. "These schools are mainly run by the RSS's Vidya 
Bharati, whose teaching material has been condemned by India's 
statutory National Council for Educational Research and Training as 
blatantly promoting bigotry, fanaticism and hatred."
Madhav claimed that the Sewa Bharati had constructed 124 schools, and 
that 49 of these had minorities on their rolls. "Sewa Bharati 
[Gujarat] has served the minorities without any discrimination during 
the relief activities," he added.
The UK report echoes findings by US-based groups in November 2002. 
The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (CSFH) put out an exhaustive 
document linking a Maryland-based charity, the India Development and 
Relief Fund (IDRF), to the RSS. The authors of that report, "The 
Foreign Exchange of Hate", alleged IDRF was sending money to 
organizations implicated in violence against Christians and Muslims 
in India.
"The British report corroborates the assertion of the FxH [The 
Foreign Exchange of Hate] report that front organizations raise money 
in the Indian expatriate communities, ostensibly for the purposes of 
development and education, but channel these funds towards political 
agendas that are inimical to a tolerant, secular and plural society," 
said a CSFH spokesperson.
Linking the two reports, a spokesperson for Awaaz said: "Sewa 
International is the UK equivalent of the American charity, the India 
Development and Relief Fund; both organizations work towards the same 
purpose - to fund, promote and glorify extremist RSS fronts in India."
In a response to the CSFH report, "Factual Response to the Hate 
Attack on the IDRF," the "Friends of India" refuted charges against 
the charity saying: "Here is what a rational individual should ask: 
Is being for something always being against something else? Does 
loving your wife lead to hating other women? Is loving your nation an 
indication of hating other countries? Is helping those closest to you 
an attempt at undermining others?"
"Ordinarily, Hindutva is understood as a way of life or a state of 
mind and is not to be equated with or understood as religious Hindu 
fundamentalism," the authors of the "Factual Response" said.
"The response of the HSS has always been to simply deny all 
allegations rather than deal with specific charges," said Bhatt. 
"They never answer the key allegations which have been made to them 
repeatedly - which is that they are RSS fronts, they are raising 
money for the RSS and its affiliates, they are funding organizations 
which are linked to violence, and they are accountable to the British 
public from which they have raised this money."
The Awaaz report has asked the UK Charity Commissioner to withdraw 
charity status of the HSS (UK), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (UK) and 
the Kalyan Ashram Trust.
In New Delhi, Madhav remains confident that his organization will 
ride out the storm. "Similar futile efforts were made last year also 
by some groups in the US to denigrate and defame Hindu organizations 
working for the welfare of the people of our country," he said. 
"These campaigns have not harmed us earlier and they are not going to 
do so now either."
Ashish Kumar Sen is a Washington DC-based journalist.


_____


[3]

  The News International (Pakistan)
March 4, 2004

Muslims as poster boys

Praful Bidwai

So the Bharatiya Janata Party is doing with great gusto what it 
always damned its opponents for doing: namely, cultivating minority 
'vote-banks'. Last week, it organised a convention in Delhi with 
hired crowds of Muslims, and inducted a few leaders from their 
community into its ranks. At the convention, Atal Behari Vajpayee, 
ostentatiously wearing a green turban, strained to assure the 
audience that the BJP has nothing against the minorities. He said the 
Indian Muslims' best bet is to befriend and support the BJP.

Most Muslims would see this appeal as akin to the menacing statement 
issued by the RSS from Bangalore exactly two years ago, immediately 
after the Gujarat massacre: "Let Muslims understand that their real 
safety lies in the goodwill of the majority. Muslims will be safe... 
provided they win the goodwill of the majority community."

Nothing in the BJP's ideology, its basic instincts, its policies and 
its actual practice can reassure the 180 million people who 
constitute India's non-Hindu citizens (or, for that matter, the vast 
majority of Hindus, who are secular) that the BJP has executed even a 
minor shift in its majoritarian orientation, its Islamophobia and its 
hatred of non-Hindus. The BJP-led government's 'concessions' to the 
Muslims have all been of a token nature: the Haj subsidy's 
continuation, a Muslim President, iftar parties.

Had the BJP even had a scintilla of concern for Indian Muslims, it 
would have acknowledged the seriousness of the problems afflicting 
them: a literacy rate of under 40 percent (national average 62), 
landlessness (51 percent), unemployment or underemployment (a 
horrific 62 percent for males). It has done nothing to address their 
real needs - health, education and employment - or to increase their 
representation in government jobs (2 to 4 percent), work 
participation (10 percent) or legislatures (less than half their 
ratio in the population). On the contrary, the BJP chides and taunts 
Muslims for their backwardness and poverty - as if they willed it!

However, unconvincing the BJP's appeal to the Muslim masses, it has 
drawn in a handful of Muslim leaders. The most prominent is Arif 
Mohammed Khan, a former central minister. Najma Heptullah, Deputy 
Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha, and a Congress member, is also likely 
to defect to the BJP. But these are individual mavericks. They have 
no base in the Muslim community. Their defections are driven by 
narrow, personal calculations. Heptullah won't even get elected to a 
municipality on her own. She has nothing to show for herself, except 
her lineage from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad - without his intellectual 
or political legacy. She was lucky to have been elected to the Rajya 
Sabha four times, thanks to the Congress.

As for Khan, he is a cynical politician who used the Shah Bano issue 
to build a pedestal for himself. He has been through numerous 
parties. After the Bofors scandal broke out, he joined V.P. Singh's 
Jan Morcha, but betrayed its greatest source of appeal: probity in 
public life. The worst instance of this was his grounding in 1990 of 
the entire Airbus A-320 fleet of Indian Airlines as Civil Aviation 
Minister for nine long months. The flight-ban was lifted only after 
the European consortium, paid a huge, shall we say, 'consideration'. 
It would be a miracle if Khan weren't a beneficiary of this.

Khan knows he has no following worth the name and not much of a 
political future. He is just selling his identity. He won't be able 
to garner Muslim votes for the BJP. But he can cause some damage, if 
he goes to Gujarat and campaigns for Narendra Milosevic Modi, the 
architect of Independent India's worst pogrom of a minority. In 2002, 
Khan spent three months in Gujarat, apparently helping the victims 
with relief. He can now stab them in the back. That way, he can 
become 'even-handed'.

In doing so, Khan would only be following the perverse logic that 
drove him towards the BJP in the first place: nobody is secular in 
India (false); therefore, one may as well go with the worst of 
hardcore anti-secularists! This is like saying that in an unfair 
world, you must not promote balance, but unfairness and injustice!

The BJP's calculation in recruiting Khan and his ilk is 
straightforward and cynical. There are about 100 Lok Sabha 
constituencies, where the Muslim vote is 15 to 20 percent, or more. 
But the BJP probably won't gain a single Muslim vote thanks to its 
latest 'catch'. Few Muslims will be taken in by its 'poster-boy' 
tokenism. But will the BJP gain any Hindu votes? That, too, seems 
unlikely. The BJP's hardcore supporters will vote for its Muslim 
candidates - because they are committed to Hindutva, anyway. As for 
the more uncommitted or floating Hindu vote, this kind of tokenism 
won't work. It is just too crude.

Ordinary Indians, with their robust native intelligence, know how to 
distinguish between genuine gestures of goodwill and contrived, 
tokenist or dishonest ones. That's why Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister 
Mulayam Singh Yadav had to withdraw his ill-advised move to close 
schools at mid-day on Fridays to enable Muslim children to offer 
namaz. The most vociferous protests came from the Muslims, 
themselves. They clearly saw the measure as an electoral ploy. It 
didn't arise from the community's needs, in which education for boys 
and girls scores higher than prayers. The move would have been seen 
as partisan, and would have boomeranged on the Muslims.

The BJP, then, is unlikely to gain votes or respectability by 
inducting a handful of opportunist, discredited Quislings (named 
after a renegade Norwegian officer who collaborated, like Marshal 
Petain in France, with the Nazis). But what of the Quislings, 
themselves? They, too, are soon likely to see their own comeuppance. 
There is little space in the BJP for non-Hindus. It had just one 
Muslim MP in the last Lok Sabha. He was its only Muslim minister. The 
other token figure, Akhtar Abbas Naqvi, is only a fourth-rank 
spokesman. Its original 'poster-boy' Sikander Bakht just died as 
Kerala's governor. Despite his loyalty, he never rose high in the 
BJP. What the BJP wants is not Muslim leaders, only mannequins. And 
mannequins are dispensable; they are usually discarded - 
unceremoniously.

Hindutva's new mannequins won't persuade anyone that the BJP is 
moving towards 'normalising' itself or becoming a 'mainstream' party, 
which broadly accepts India's plural, multicultural, multi-religious 
character. To this day, the BJP hasn't given up its Ram Janmabhoomi 
obsession, leave alone apologised for the Babri demolition. Its 
supporters and affiliates continue to occupy Muslim prayer-grounds, 
graveyards and shrines like Baba-Budangiri in Karnataka and Kamal 
Maula Masjid in Madhya Pradesh. They lay claim to 30,000 Muslim 
monuments, including the Dargah Sharif at Ajmer.

The BJP doggedly refuses to cut the umbilical cord with the RSS or 
modify the core-ideology of creating a Hindu-supremacist society. It 
is India's only party, barring to an extent the Shiv Sena, which 
remains committed to radically altering the character of Indian 
society by destroying its plurality, and by dangerously mixing 
religion with politics. India's Muslims would have to be suicidal to 
support such a party. And that's one thing they are not.

_____



[4]

The Telegraph (India)
March 04, 2004

WHY THE BJP IS CALM
- What would a Hindu state do that the secular state has not done already?
Pratap Bhanu Mehta

The author is visiting professor of government, Harvard University

Just as a supposedly socialist constitution does not prevent India, 
except at the margins, from being configured into a capitalist 
economy, it could be argued that a secular constitution does not 
prevent India from being a Hindu state. It has become customary to 
write the history of the modern Indian state in something like the 
following terms: India, after Independence, sought to create a 
secular state. There is some dispute about what this secularism 
entailed. This project entailed that there would be no state 
religion, but it left the precise boundaries of state involvement 
with religion open. Whe- ther such a secular state could thrive in a 
society not itself fully in the throes of secularization was also an 
open question. But there was no doubt that this secular state was the 
quintessential project of modern India, the basis of the state's 
legitimacy.

Hindu nationalism was the first powerful ideology to openly challenge 
this objective, and the extent to which it has managed to compromise 
the state's secular credentials is the object of fierce debate. But 
does the narrative of Hindutva versus secularism adequately capture 
the ideological trajectory of the Indian state?

Ask yourself a question with graceless frankness. What would a Hindu 
state do that the secular state has not already done? The Indian 
state has used state power to consolidate Hindu identity in more ways 
than one can list. The state, for the first time, created a 
territorially unified body of Hindu law, transcending numerous 
regional divisions. Supreme Court judges not only promulgate public 
purposes; they act as authoritative interpreters of Hindu religion, 
defining what is essential to it and what is not. The state runs 
thousands of temples across the country, appropriated in the name of 
social reform or financial propriety.

Cow protection, an issue which many think is the most symbolically 
potent of Hindu demands, is allowed in many states. The entire burden 
of anti-conversion legislation, acquiesced to by all parties and the 
Supreme Court, is to privilege Hinduism. Anti-conversion legislation 
privileges Hinduism in its interpretation of the relationship between 
religion and propagation; it privileges Hinduism in its attempts to 
protect it from other religions, in the way it seeks to eliminate 
competition for the allegiances of those who might be the target of 
conversion: Dalits and Adivasis, and so forth. Rather than 
eliminating religious identity from law, the state constitutes these 
identities in legal terms.

Even the so-called reform of Hindu law undertaken during the Fifties 
can be given another interpretation. It was not so much that a 
secular state was reforming a religious law, an alien imposition on 
an otherwise recalcitrant religion. Rather the reform process was an 
example of Hindus collectively exercising their authority as Hindus, 
deciding on what the laws should be. It was not so much a secular 
state reforming religion, as it was Hindus exercising 
self-determination, in a somewhat progressive direction. That Hindus 
reformed their laws democratically does not make those laws any less 
Hindu. The fact that the reform was carried out through a process of 
democratic representation, was a result of the fact that Hindus chose 
to resolve their disputes over who exactly had authority over its 
laws democratically.

Even in terms of public representation, it could be argued that India 
has been more like a Hindu state. Minority representation in public 
life has been dwindling, but the curious thing is the asymmetry of 
legitimacy that religious leaders have in politics. It is quite all 
right for mahants and pandits, sadhvis and gurus to participate in 
politics, even contest and win elections, not to mention run 
governments, without in any sense attenuating their identity. On the 
other hand maulvis or priests in politics at this juncture would be 
quite a hazardous affair. Most of them are confined to issuing odd 
statements here and there, but the idea that they could enter 
politics qua religious leaders would be quite anathema. We can put 
the matter this way: it is more legitimate to be a Hindu leader and 
be in politics than it is to be a religious leader of any other sect 
and participate in politics. Has not the representative space been 
defined in Hindu terms?

It is true that the state cannot preach the Hindu religion, but it 
can do the next best thing. It can write textbooks that give a 
particular version of Indian history, promulgated by a set of Hindus 
who have access to power (justified by the canard that the Marxists 
did the same thing). Or better still, it can not provide any robust 
state education in Dalit and tribal areas, so that these remain at 
the mercy of schools inspired by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. And 
if the government of Rajasthan is to be followed, direct preaching in 
state schools may not be far off. It also has to be admitted that 
state power is complicit in turning what should have been, at most, a 
private dispute in property law, into a religious dispute and it is 
only a matter of time before a temple is built at Ayodhya.

So what would a Hindu state do that the Indian state is not doing 
already? Given the character of Hinduism, it would be difficult to 
anoint an official god for this state. If we pick one that has any 
form, the protagonists of different gods will be fighting one 
another. Saivites and Vaishnavites can partake of the same ultimate 
reality when political symbolism is not at stake; if political power 
comes into the picture, they will be, as they often have been in 
medieval India, at each others throats. So, for the sake of Hindu 
unity, we cannot have an official god.

You might protest. I am going too quickly. Has not the Indian state 
guaranteed freedom of religion? Has it not been solicitous towards 
minorities, granting them supposedly separate laws, subsidizing their 
Haj pligrimages, sometimes tolerating their loudspeakers and so 
forth? This may be true enough, but it is never entirely clear why 
this is incompatible with the Indian state acting as a Hindu state 
would. Even in these acts of toleration there is an assertion of 
majority identity. It is made very clear that the majority, if they 
can be called as such, grants these privileges; if the minorities get 
too demanding, we will be within our rights to admonish them.

Of course, Hindus can grant a significant space to minorities; it is 
to their credit that they often have. But the state makes sure that 
these grants are on Hindu terms. And besides, anti-minority 
communalism is, in principle, only contingently related to Hindu 
nationalism. In principle, you can be secular and think that 
minorities are traitors to India's territorial integrity, or you 
could want a state to be solicitous of Hindu sentiment and grant 
space to other religions as well.

So we remain stuck at the question. What would a Hindu state do that 
is not already being done? It is true that the state did not protect 
the Kashmiri Pandits. But their plight was as much a result of the 
Centre exercising undue proprietary rights over elections in Kashmir, 
in the name of the interests of the rest of us Hindus, as it was a 
failure of the state to take Kashmiri Hindus seriously. Secularism 
has become to Hindu nationalism what socialism in our Constitution is 
to capitalism: form without content.

This argument can have its comforts. One might be able to say to the 
Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the RSS, "Calm down, you don't need to 
agitate. India already is close to being a Hindu state. You are 
fighting to get something you already possess. That is why the 
Bharatiya Janata Party is so calm these days. What else do you want? 
Do you want it also to be an extremist Hindu state?" But then we were 
reminded in the last couple of weeks that there are other big battles 
to be fought. As Uma Bharti has reminded us, India is pretty close to 
being a Hindu state. The big question before us now is whether it 
will be a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian Hindu state.


_____


[5]

Dawn (Pakistan)
28 February 2004

Can India 'shine' under Hindutva?

By Asghar Ali Engineer

The media campaign launched by the NDA government showing "India is 
Shining" is immoral as crores of rupees of public money is being 
spent on it and the purpose is certainly not merely to inform the 
public about the 'achievements' of the ruling coalition but to win 
forthcoming elections.
Is India shining? Well, it all depends on how one looks at it. Even 
from economic perspective such claim is totally untenable. In a 
country where millions are unemployed, hundreds are committing 
suicide because of poverty and hunger and millions of children drop 
out from school before reaching even 5th standard, how can one claim 
India is shining?
But we are more concerned here with communal situation under the NDA 
rule than the economic situation. India despite its bewildering 
diversity has remained united, thanks to our commitment to secular 
polity.
Secularism in India means that state remains neutral to all religions 
and see that religious majority does not reduce our democracy to 
majoritarianism and minorities are protected and are free to follow 
their religion without any let and hindrance.
However, India has suffered very badly on this score under the NDA. 
India can politically shine only if its secular polity is not 
tampered with. Can India shine politically when its main ruling party 
remains tied to organisations like RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal, which 
are avowedly anti-minorities? No less a person than the prime 
minister of India said in the crowd of RSS and BJP supporters in 
Straten Island in the USA that 'RSS is my soul'.
Can there be any doubt about BJP's active connection with the RSS? Mr 
L.K.Advani personally attends the RSS rally in 'Khaki chaddi' and 
gives salute to RSS flag. And he does so when he is home minister of 
India. What message will it send to the police force? Will police 
force then be able to control communal violence impartially?
The Congress regime did not have any brilliant record of communal 
peace in the 45 years of its rule. No one disputes this. But its 
leaders did not have allegiance to the likes of the RSS, much less 
VHP and Bajrang Dal. They did not stuff premier research bodies like 
the ICHR and ICSSR (Indian Council of Historical Research and Indian 
Council of Social Science Research) with those who openly deride 
secularism. These two premier research bodies were controlled during 
the Congress rule by those academics whose secular credentials were 
never in doubt.
But soon the NDA came to power, these organisations were captured by 
the RSS and VHP supporters. It is a great tragedy that such research 
bodies in social sciences be controlled by those who are avowed 
opponents of secularism. Even moderate BJP person like the late Prof 
M.L.Sondhi was not tolerated and the human resources ministry removed 
him from chairmanship of the ICSSR.
If these organisations are to be controlled by avowed opponents of 
secularism what direction social sciences would take? Social sciences 
are the very basis of intellectual life of a country.
These cannot be allowed to be in the hands of those who are opposed 
to our constitutional values. They are making all efforts to 
undermine the secular values of the Indian constitution. How India 
can remain secular under such a dispensation?
The British rulers distorted our history in order to divide us which 
ultimately resulted in division of our country. The textbooks are now 
being changed for the worse by the NDA hard-liners.
The so-called secular parties supporting the NDA, and keeping the BJP 
in power, are also a party to these dangerous attempts to undermine 
our secular values. The children are growing with a deep sense of 
hatred towards minority communities.
Thus it is not only hate politics but also hate education and such an 
environment of hatred and polarisation was never there before during 
the 56 years of independence.
It was the BJP leadership, which raised the controversy about 
secularism in early eighties describing it as a western concept 
unsuitable for Indian culture and Indian society and then dubbed it 
as 'pseudo-secularism' and based on 'appeasement of minorities'. A 
high pitched propaganda was carried out on these grounds to build a 
Hindu vote bank thus seriously damaging inter-community relations.
It was certainly the outcome of this high-pitched hate propaganda 
that a communal carnage erupted in Gujarat and which put the entire 
country to shame in the comity of nations.
The Ramjanambhoomi matter was raised by the BJP during the nineties 
to win elections and the BJP came to power ultimately on the basis of 
this hate propaganda and now it has worked out a clever strategy to 
perpetuate the controversy.
While the BJP keeps on saying that construction of Ram temple is not 
on the NDA agenda, the RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal keep the issue of 
temple construction alive and they raise this issue with much more 
vehemence whenever elections are due in any state or in the Centre.
This time the prime minister has himself initiated his election 
campaign from Ayodhya and again promising that 'give us five more 
years and the temple will be constructed.' How can a 'secular' 
government promise people to construct a temple or a mosque? And when 
Shankaracharya of Puri tried to intervene and established contacts 
with the Muslim Personal Law Board to solve the issue through a 
dialogue and it was about to be resolved the RSS and VHP chiefs 
stormed the Shakaracharya's place. They forced him to retreat so that 
the temple issue remains alive and exploitable for votes.
Also, the issue of Uniform Civil Code, which is purely a secular 
issue and pertaining to gender justice was communalized by the BJP by 
adopting as 'Hindutva Agenda'.
What an irony? And do the Hindutva leaders believe in gender justice? 
Are they ready to give equal rights to women? All of us know that a 
secular issue like UCC was communalized by the BJP leaders only to 
create anti-minority feelings among the Hindus and to damage 
harmonious relations between the two communities. Earlier all women 
organisations were demanding UCC but once it became Hindutva agenda 
it was given up by all secular women's organisations.
And by the way can any party which feels proud of its 'Hindutva' 
agenda and proclaims it publicly be trusted to run a secular state? 
Can the secular constitution be safe in the hands of such a party? 
Can India politically shine under a Hindutva party? Can there be 
communal peace under it? The BJP used to claim that when it comes to 
power there is no communal riot.
What happened in Gujarat under its rule is now a tragic episode of 
our history. It will make all secularists and humanists shudder 
forever. The Gujarat came close to atrocities committed by the 
fascists and Nazis of Germany.
The BJP has been in power since 1999. There was not a single year 
under it when India did not witness communal violence. According to 
our research based on newspaper reports and other sources, the number 
of riots that took place in the year 1999 was 52 in which 43 people 
were killed and 248 injured.
In the year 2000, 24 riots occurred in which 91 people were killed 
and 165 injured. In the year 2001, 27 riots erupted in which 56 were 
killed and 158 injured.
In the year 2002, 28 communal riots were recorded (including Gujarat) 
in which 1,173 persons lost their lives and 2,272 were injured 
(unofficially in Gujarat alone more than 2,000 people were killed 
according to private counts). And in the year 2003, 67 riots took 
place in which 58 people were killed and 611 were injured.
How truthful is the claim of the BJP that no communal violence occurs 
when it is in power? It is true that these riots took place in the 
states where the BJP was not in power but it has an overall 
responsibility in the country and in most of these riots its family 
organisations like the RSS/VHP/Bajrang Dal were involved. There was 
not a single year, which was riot-free under the NDA rule led by the 
BJP.
Now we have reports from Madhya Pradesh that under the BJP Chief 
Minister Ms. Uma Bharti an RSS Pracharak has been appointed as her 
adviser with cabinet rank. She has also set up a Hanuman temple in 
the courtyard of her chief ministerial bungalow.
Is secularism shining or communal darkness intensifying? Where will 
all this end? Can anyone ever expect that India can remain secular 
under the leadership of Sangh Parivar? The BJP is an ideological 
brainchild of the RSS and has always refused to sever its umbilical 
chord from its parent.
When dual membership controversy arose in 1978 (and Mr George 
Fernandese, now with the BJP along with Raj Narayan and Madhu Limaye 
had raised it) the Jansangh members resigned from the Janata Party 
bringing down Morarji Desai government rather than resigning from the 
RSS. And the RSS has consistently refused to give up its Hindu 
Rashtra concept, which is in direct confrontation with the concept of 
secular India.
Those who think that India can politically shine only if secularism 
goes strong can never accept a dispensation in which the BJP is a 
dominant partner. And the day BJP wins majority of its own one can 
expect all kinds of steps to convert India into Hindu Rashtra. Then 
India will never shine again. n
The writer is chairman of the Centre for Study of Society and 
Secularism, Mumbai.

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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on matters of peace 
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