Communalism Devours Its Own Protagonists (Mushirul Hasan in Conversation)

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  - Dispatch #2  |  15 August,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1]  Communalism Devours Its Own Protagonists: Mushirul Hasan in 
Conversation with Sundeep Dougal


Outlookindia.com
Web | Aug 14, 2004    

Conversation
COMMUNALISM DEVOURS ITS OWN PROTAGONISTS
The noted historian [Mushirul Hasan] on counterfactual history, the 
what ifs of the Shah Bano case, the Babri Masjid demolition, 
Partition, Secularism and more.
by Sundeep Dougal

What if Rajiv Gandhi hadn't given in to the mullahs in the Shah Bano 
case? What if the Babri Masjid had not been unlocked by Rajiv Gandhi 
in 1986?

I believe that in the development of communalism in Indian politics, 
two episodes are singularly important. One is the capitulation over 
the Shahbano affair and the other of course is the demolition of the 
Babri masjid. I think these two are very closely interrelated and I 
think but for one the second may not have happened. 

It is hard to tell what came to be decided first but the evidence 
does seem to suggest that there is an interconnection between the 
two. I think the politics of communalism gained not only salience in 
the late 80s and early 90s because of these two incidents but it also 
gained a fair degree of legitimacy which is why, I think, the Supreme 
Court judgement, and the government's reaction to it - and the Muslim 
leadership's responses to it - became so critically important. But 
that is the short term view. But what I am going to say is something 
different.

The long term view I would take of these incidents is that (a) I 
think in a sense that the cause of the Muslim women in the case of 
Shahbano has been better served because of the reaction to it, rather 
than ill-served. The fact that it triggered a vigorous debate. There 
were two sides to it. It was not as if everyone differed with the 
Supreme Court judgement. More importantly,  it has led to a great 
degree of self introspection. But for the Shahbano case, the 
discussion that is taking place today among the theologians as also 
other Muslim groups in India --  the procedural aspects of talaq, 
about the status of women, about the role of women in Muslim society 
-- would not have been possible. So you know if you take a long term 
view, then you realise that the debate that took place then has had a 
far-reaching effect.

But isn't that like looking for a silver lining as it were? The 
impression that has emerged is as if the entire Muslim community was 
against the SC judgement and pressured Rajiv Gandhi's government to 
overrule it in Parliament? Hasn't this been used as a stick, as it 
were, to beat the entire community with?

Well, I conceded that at the outset that this is one aspect of it. 
But for the community itself, it has in some ways led to a 
reappraisal of the existing attitudes and the interesting thing is 
that the most vociferous critics today are relatively quiet. You 
don't for example today hear the strident voices against, for 
example, a number of judgements that the High Courts in this country 
have given, despite the Muslim amendment bill regarding the grant of 
maintenance to divorced Muslim women.

But isn't the reform too late and too little? 

I think it is a significant beginning ... I would regard it as very 
significant change indeed. And I would say the same about the the 
demolition of the mosque. Again, if you take the short-term view, it 
would be as to how it led to the ascendancy of the BJP and how it led 
a party with just two seats to become part of a major ruling 
coalition. But, on the other hand, if you take a long-term view, you 
discover the politics of communal mobilisation doesn't always pay 
off, that, in a sense communalism devours its own protagonists which 
is precisely what has happened in the case of the BJP and the RSS...

But won't that be a very, very long term view? Indeed, something that 
only history would tell...?

No, it happened just very recently, less than 2 months ago...

You mean what happened in recent elections after 12 years of the 
demolition? But despite the recent election results, isn't it also a 
fact that there is a very clear, large and growing constituency of 
people who think that a temple ought to be built there?

I do not think so ... I think in a democracy the verdict of the 
people is the best index of gauging their mood and time and time 
again and more so now, the people have rejected the divisive politics

But that is only one view. Even if we look at the number of seats, 
the difference is only very marginal between the Congress and the BJP 
and it is not that the latter has  been totally demolished. Besides 
voting decisions are based on a complex interplay of factors...

No, no, I am not suggesting that. Yes, they did manage to create 
because of this agitation over the Babri Masjid, a substantial 
constituency and that constituency has remained intact to a very 
large extent because they were able to capture political power in 
some states - some major states as well as at the centre. But having 
said that, as ruling leading members of the ruling coalition, first 
of all, the non-performance combined with the stridency of the RSS, 
the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, I think, somewhere along the line - and 
the carnage in Giujarat, certainly - I am quite certain that they 
sent out the message that a BJP-led government is a sure guarantor of 
civil strife, if not political instability. Because the BJP after 
Gujarat and after the stridency of the VHP and the Bajrang Dal 
somehow even in the middle-class urban constituencies became 
identified with the lumpens of the society

So I am not saying that all those who voted for the Congress, voted 
for "secularism" but what I am saying is that the Congress emerged in 
this particular election as the party which recovered in this 
election some of its past glory, a party which was perceived by the 
minorities, by sections of the Dalits, by sections even of the upper 
castes as bringing in some degree of political stability

Some would in fact argue that the BJP in opposition is more dangerous 
that when in power?

That is not borne out by the BJP rule.

Apart from Gujarat, which the BJP  argues was an aberration, they 
claim that they provided a riot-free administration. But we are 
digressing, because the intent of this chat really is to look at what 
the situation might have been, so to go back to the original What If 
questions... 

If obviously both these things had not happened, the BJP as a 
political force would have been eclipsed. I am very certain about 
that. Because there is nothing to suggest in the early 80s or mid 80s 
that Indian politics was being polarised politically. There is 
nothing to suggest that the idea of Hindutva, despite very 
substantial presence of thre RSS and its very extensive networks, was 
beginning to evoke a favourable chord in many parts of the country. 
There is nothing to suggest in terms of the intellectual climate of 
the country that the Sangh Parivar's ideology was coming into its own 
as it were. I think what really made the difference was this 
discovery of this trump card: Ayodhya, Ram, the birthplace of Ram 
became and was made into the main issue and mobilisation was sought 
to be centred around it.

Mandal may have acted as the catalyst, but that always happens in 
historical processes, Historical processes are intertwined so you can 
always establish a connection but surely to respond to your question, 
I think the process of the disintegration of the Congress would have 
gathered momentum because that had nothing to do with it in a sense 
because the Congress became a victim of its own political errors. 

But the process of eclipse of the BJP brand of politics would have 
certainly taken place...It didn't matter very much at any rate, to 
begin with. It would not have emerged as either an ideological force 
or a political force. That's why the BJP's role in both is very 
important because the BJP presented the Shahbano case as yet another 
example of Muslim appeasement.They were not interested in the status 
of divorced Muslim women or the Muslim women in general but they were 
interested in doing - which they did very successfully - was to 
exploit this

Since they were so insignificant at that point, it begs the question: 
why did the Congress capitulate? Congress had 400plus seats. And to 
come back to our question, what would have happened if the Congress 
hadn't capitulated, not given in to the mullahs, as it were?

Well, the whole problem, I think, with the all political strategies 
of all parties is the assumption that applies across the board,  that 
it is only the theologians who represent the communities and their 
interests. That at one level they are the ones who would deliver 
votes, and  at another level they are taken to be the authoritative 
spokesmen of the Muslim community. Unless and until this mindset is 
changed and it has to change, I think they must recognise that there 
is a strong body of opinion that is concerned with the welfare of the 
community but which wants to redress the grievances and which wants 
to sort out the difficulties within a broadly liberal and secular 
frame.

Now unless that group,  that body, receives support and, if you like, 
"legitimisation" -  and I am not saying "legitimacy", I am saying 
"legitimisation" - from not just the government, but also from the 
media, the civil society in general, you will finds that the 
impression about the Muslims would continue to be steeped in those 
stereotypes and those imaginary ideas which have been around for such 
a long time.

But to go back to our question of what might have happened if these 
two things had not happened...

I would go to the extent of saying in the case of Shahbano a good 
case of opportunity lost because there was a very strong body of 
opinion within the community which wanted the Supreme Court judgement 
- which approved and welcomed the Supreme Court judgement and this is 
where by backing the modernists and the liberals at that time - which 
is what Nehru did at the time of the Hindu code bill - I think the 
congress would have emerged much stronger...

Even the polity of the country would not have become so polarised?

Yes, Yes,

So are we looking at the silver lining, that some debate has 
happened, that much introspection on these issues has happened, but 
would it be correct to summarise your reaction, and be fair to say 
that these two basically changed Indian polity for ever? And also 
strengthened the stereotypes and made them more and more entrenched? 

I think so, I am quite certain of that. Yes, besides Mandal, these 
two incidents or events have changed the contours of Indian politics, 
number one. And they have decisively changed the character of 
inter-community relations. I would go to the extent of saying that 
only once before has the Indian polity been polarised along these 
lines, along religious lines, and that was in 1947... 46, 47 were the 
years when there was almost complete polarisation between the 
communities. There were some saner voices and so on, but by and large 
the communities were polarised. I think after 1947, this was the 
first time, i.e. on the eve of the demolition, you had the same sort 
of feelings which were intensified after demolition so that we had 
some people who said it's OK, after all ... But there were others 
saying it was a sacrilege, that this is against secular foundations.

   ..But nonetheless the intensity of feelings was as strong in 1992 
Dec 1992 as it would have been - as I know it was - in August 1947.So 
we are talking about a very heightened sense of community 
identification which had not taken place in the 50s and the 60s, and 
even the 70s.


So if only Rajiv Gandhi not opened the locks, all this would have not happened?

I don't think, I mean, there was no controversy. The whole thing was 
dormant since 1949. The last time after independence that one heard 
of this controversy was when the idols were installed and then Nehru 
reacted and even then  it was not taken very seriously. People like 
Patel did not approve of it and so on,  but after that it was a 
complete three incident-free decades right up to the opening of the 
gates. Because you know if there is a symbol around which you can 
gather 10-20 people and create a noise...

You think Rajiv Gandhi knew what he was doing? You think those who 
were then seen to be his advisors - and some of them went on to join 
the BJP later - realise what the consequences would be? Do you think 
it was a well-thought out move by those who advised him or do you 
think they did not quite know, much like Frankenstein, of the monster 
they were creating, or the genie they were letting out of the bottle, 
as it were?

I think those who advised Rajiv Gandhi knew its implications...

You think they had thought it through?

I think they did., These are professional politicians who know the 
consequences of what they are doing, so I am quite convinced that it 
was a well-conceived, well-coordinated, well-planned move. I think 
the PM, the then PM probably had no idea about the long term 
consequences ...

But even in terms of the reversal of Shah Bano case and the opening 
of the Babri locks, there is now quite a controversy around the 
sequence of events. A.G. Noorani for example has written extensively 
arguing that though in physical time, the reversal of the Shahbano 
case may have come before, but the decision to open the locks had 
been taken much earlier ...

You know it'd be very hard to dispute the interconnection...I used 
the word 'mobilisation",  and I did so deliberately. I think these 
are dormant symbols - whether it is cow slaughter or whether the 
future of a mosque or a shrine. It is only when you activate them 
with a certain political or ideological agenda in mind that they they 
create havoc and that applies to the mosque in Ayodhya.

It was a dormant symbol. It was "reinvented" - that is an appropriate 
word. It was reinvented by some very clever person or persons and 
turned into use as a trump card, and in the articulation of their 
demands they were able to draw upon the fears and the anxieties of 
certain section of the communities in India against the Muslims. So 
it served a dual purpose. They became as the saviours of Hinduism, 
Hindu symbols and so on, at the same time they became the saviours of 
Hindustan from the imaginary onslaughts of the Muslim community.

You see if you look at some person like Arun Shourie and examine his 
writings, you'd see how this person has demonised the Dalits, the 
Christians and the Muslims consistently, and yet he enjoys 
respectability. The point is that this is the ideological baggage 
that these people have been trying to sell since 1947 and adding on 
to this the Ayodhya mosque, the Ram's birthplace as a symbol, is a 
deadly combination - it turned out to be a deadly combination

And then you have people like Naipaul talking about historical corrections.

Yes, when you begin to talk of - nobody talked of historical 
correction earlier - interestingly, it was only when BJP acquired 
legitimacy thanks to erstwhile socialists like George Fernandes and 
other so called secular leaders.
But that is only recent, surely we are talking about 1992 when George 
etc were not supporting the BJP, unless we go back to the Janata 
Party days of the late 70s...

Yes, but it is only then that this argument about correcting the past 
begins to have a certain degree of receptivity in certain circles, 
but it is as silly an argument as it is mischievous because 
correction with whom and who is there, and what kind of correction 
and who would do that correction...?

...and how far back in time would you go to carry out what sort of 
'corrections'? But to come back to the theme here, the What If.  What 
do you think India would have been like today? How would the polity 
be been different today?  

India would have been ...I think these two things have done 
incalculable damage to our polity and our society in general. I 
think  In any case, the process of disintegration of the Congress had 
started, the emergence of caste-based parties was already beginning 
to take place. In Bihar the process had begun quite early. In UP and 
other places, also in Karnatka and so on, it was gathering momentum. 
The Left parties you know had already acquired strongholods in 
Bengal, so it was a complex political landscape. It was not Congress 
dominated scenario. It was not Congress hegemony any more. That was a 
positive development because one party dominance was over and you 
were beginning to becoming a multi-party democracy...

But isn't there a contradiction there? Because all that is post these 
decisions -- because in 1984, Congress was 400 plus even though by 
1992 there was an emergence of the Third Front forces, as it were. 
Along with the rise of the BJP, the Mandal and Kamandal were in play, 
but all that is post these two turning-points...

If you look at UP, because it is the politics of UP which is what 
matters, and what mattered even then, I think, the developments that 
took place in UP, even though after 1992 the BJP lost and Kalyan 
Singh was thrown out of power, but it changed the configuration of 
forces for the first time which had never happened and the Congress 
was marginalised. A new set of caste-based and back-ward caste 
leaders had emerged

Well, perhaps we could come back to the What If. The other questions 
that we are asking in this series are, for example, what if India had 
chosen not to be a secular state?

I could answer that easily and very simply. Because it was a 
historical necessity. Number one. it could not have been otherwise.

And that in turn leads to the other question, what if Partition had 
not taken place? But are you suggesting that post-Partition, there 
was no choice but to be secular?

The Indian nationalist struggle in the 1880s was premised on the 
notion of plural nationhood which didn't mean that there weren't 
elements within the Indian National Congress who were soft to this or 
soft towards that. There were many whose proclivities for that matter 
were somewhat different from the Socialists or those like Nehru and 
so on and so forth. Although there are these elements and although 
there were frequent invocations of certain symbols which to us might 
appear as non-secular (I do not think that they are non-secular, but 
that is a different point). But the movement and the ideology of its 
leaders was premised on plural nationhood. I have no doubts about 
that. We would see aberrations...

But then isn't there a problem with the term Secualrism itself and 
what it connotes if you just look at the recent articles in Outlook 
and even in general, in many ways, there is an often articulated 
complaint that it has come to denote anything which opposes Hindu 
extremism but not its Muslim counterpart, in short that it connotes 
basically appeasing the Muslims and is an anti-Hindutva ideology - at 
least that seems to be the common thread in most of the complaints 
that one comes across.

No I would not take this negative view of secularism or secular 
ideologies and I am not using the term 'ideology'.The point of the 
matter is that the confusion that reigns supreme in the minds of some 
people is again a recent reinvention of certain debates which relate 
to enlightenment and so on and so forth. But if you simply were to 
look at the debates within the Constituent Assembly, which went on 
for very long and the participants who were drawn from different 
backgrounds, different regions, different castes. My point would be 
vindicated that whatever your point of entree into this debate, there 
was a basic, a basic consensus that the only way this society could 
survive was through pluralism and pluralism when translated into 
political arrangements is nothing else but secularism. So what we see 
in the Constitution is on the one hand an assertion of the character 
of the Indian nationalist movement and on the other hand the 
reflection of the collective wisdom of the Constituent Assembly 
members who arrived at this position through debate and a great deal 
of deliberations...

Agreed, there is no argument really, because the problem seems to be 
as to how this secularism is perceived to be in practice. But what if 
we were to turn the question on its head as it were and examine what 
if India hadn't chosen to be a secular state?

India would have been caught up in a communal cauldron. What some of 
the VHP and Bajrang Dal etc argue now is what was argued by the RSS 
leaders and others like them even then -- there was a whole lot of 
pamphlets and so on and the reason why they attacked Nehru was 
because of this - the reason they disliked Gandhi was because of 
this. Their attitude has not changed, they are very consistent. But, 
yes, I think India would have been fragmented across regional and 
caste and religious and linguistic lines. I think it was the genius 
of Nehru which prevented all of this...

You mean Nehru alone?

[Phone interrupts. Mushirul Hasan very calmly says, "Nahi ye Railways 
enquiry nahii hai,  bhaiyaa'. I ask if it happens often. He smiles, 
shrugs, and goes back to my question]

I think the over-arching ideological thrust...if you read Nehru's letters...

But you know there is this confusion, the way Nehru addresses this 
whole question even in the Discovery of India, some have even argued 
that "in view of his recent reputation as an apostle of secularism, 
Nehru seems by and large to have accepted a very negative view of 
Islam. This is why he portrays the situation in India after AD 1200 
in negative terms, as the decline and atrophy of an already-perfect 
civilisation. Writing more recently, Naipaul draws upon similar 
images, adding to it a dash of the 'Clash of Civilisations' thesis: 
the fault-line between Islam and Hinduism (which can be read as 
'Indian civilisation') passes for him through the heart of the 
subcontinent".

Quote me saying that it is rubbish. Complete rubbish. But to come 
back to the question, I think we would have been split. There is the 
demographic reality -- the population exchange was not really 
practical -- and there was no way out but to be what we chose to be.

So obviously we go back to the question, why Partition then? And what 
if Partition had not happened? Of course, the non-serious answer is 
that we would have had a great Cricket team, but would there not have 
been obvious problems of governance?

Well [smiles] united India was governable under Akbar in the 16th century. 

But then it was a different geographical entity and he was busy all 
those 50+ years in fighting those opposed to his rule and conquests...

No, the Mughal Empire was run through a very efficient bureaucratic 
apparatus. So governability wasn't really a problem.Governability is 
not the main issue. The man issue is what has acquired salience now. 
i.e. the distribution of power. Whether it is Mandal or the 
opposition to reservation for SCs and OBCs. The centrality of 
distribution of authority and power is the key question in a society 
that is socially stratified and a society that is so unevenly 
developed. 

So in an unevenly developed region, caste antipathies become 
extremely important. In an undeveloped society, the struggle for 
loaves and fishes becomes even more intense. So if a young student 
asks me what Partition is all about, my answer is: Don't look at it 
as a conflict between two communities, because if you begin to do 
that you would not understand the struggle for the levers of power 
and the struggle. That struggle is at a higher level when you and me 
compete for a position in government, but there are other deeper 
level of society where the introduction of new institutions create 
conflicts among people who have lived together for centuries amicably.

But if we go back to the question What if Partition had not happened?

If Partition had not happened, then obviously this would have been a 
very very important region. Not just politically, not just in terms 
of military power but as and that is what I would like to emphasise, 
as a civilisational society. I think the cultural contribution of 
this region to human history, both historical and contemporary, is so 
enormous that I think its impact would have been felt which is not 
the case today. And also, I would suggest that this would have been 
one of the most exemplary multicultural societies in the world. I 
would also suggest that plurality and the variety in this region 
would have dazzled the world, because of the richness and vibrancy of 
the people and the culture. So that Partition at the end of the day 
not only introduced a discordant note in the nation building project 
-- a post-colonial nation building -- but also the rhythm of the 
society, its natural rhythm and its civilisational evolution was 
impeded and broken.

But somehow it seems, as if we are suggesting that all would have 
been hunky dory, that there wouldn't have been any, shall we say, 
sectarian divide or crisis?

No, not to that extent. All societies that emerged from the throes of 
colonialism had to go through arrangements within communities. I am 
not suggesting that there would be a reversal. Partition is an 
established fact. What we are seeing today is indicative of how the 
bridges could be built.

But in many ways, what primarily led to a separatist demand, what led 
to Partition, it would seem, was the fear that the minorities had of 
being swamped under majoritarianism, and the rejection of various 
formulae being discussed then. In short, is it correct that the issue 
was primarily about how minority interests could be safeguarded? And 
in many ways, isn't that exactly what confronts us now? So how do we 
ensure equitable distribution of power and rights?

You know, the fact is that there is no society in the world today 
which has been able to sort this thing out with absolute satisfaction 
for all concerned, whether it is the United Sates of America or any 
other European or other country.

So you have to discover devices, you have to make arrangements. Look 
at neighbouring Pakistan and how its sectarian as well as the 
regional conflicts have engulfed it. Pakistan was created out of a 
dreamy, fantasised version of an Islamic society, but that vision is 
gone, replaced by sectarian divide. So that is a good enough scenario 
for what would have happened to India too, to go back to the question 
of what if we had not chosen to be a secular state...


Would we have succeeded in making these arrangements, would we have 
discovered these devices, as it were, considering the present 
situation?

The great advantage after independence was that we had very strong 
democratic mechanisms. Some we had inherited from colonial rule, 
others we were in the process of developing. And we had a very strong 
civil service. We had a very strong bureaucracy with a lot of 
imagination, with a lot of ideas, with a lot of ability to synthesise 
information. I think this was, these were the pluses, and I think in 
the way that many other contradictions were resolved. Take for 
example how the linguistic contradictions were resolved, that Nehru 
was able to resolve through the reorganisation of states. I think 
there was something in India, in the Indian institutional framework 
that we had inherited which would have made it possible to reconcile 
the contesting claims of different castes and communities within an 
existing institutional and bureaucratic frame that was in the process 
of development.

You think Nehru would have been able to resolve the problem of other 
contesting political claimants and individuals - Jinnah, for example, 
was intransigent...

Well, of course, true, but as I said through institutional mechanisms 
and that's the only way that you could have resolved it to avoid 
civil strife. But I see no reason why it was not resolvable. But I 
think the assumption that the entire Partition, the narratives 
projecting Partition as simply as an articulation of religious 
passions is so completely false that you miss out on the more 
interesting aspects which relate to power-sharing and representation.

And also tied in perhaps is the whole question of reservations...

Yes, as I said, representation and reservation.

How do you look at that question of reservations, particularly in the 
current controversy over reservations in AP...

I do not believe that reservation on the basis of religion is or was 
the answer. Reservation on the basis of religion is what caused the 
estrangement, what caused the conflict, and the British knew it and 
that's why they perpetuated this idea in all the arrangements in 1909 
and ending with 1935 but, but the principle of representation or 
reservation on the basis of class, on social and economic basis is 
something that I support.

So the current demand in some quarters for reservation for Muslims 
must be changed and there should be a demand for reservation on 
economic, and social and economic factors alone rather than the 
religious category is what would solve the problem. Otherwise we 
remain with the same old charges of appeasement and so on..



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