SACW | 8 July 2006 | Shrinking Secular Space - in Pakistan, among Bangladeshi's in UK, in India

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | 8 July, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2270

[1]  Pakistan: Study in temporising (Tahir Mirza)
[2]  UK: Bangladeshis in east London: from 
secular politics to Islam (Delwar Hussain)
[3]  India: Delay in communal violence bill (Syed Ali Mujtaba)
[4]  India: Temple Tantrums (Rajeev Dhavan)
[5]  South Asia:  Interrogating religious radicalism (Yoginder Sikand)
[6]  India: Letter to National Commission of 
Minorities re Harassment of Christians (John 
Dayal)

___


[1]

Dawn
July 07, 2006

STUDY IN TEMPORISING
by Tahir Mirza

PRESIDENT General Pervez Musharraf is reported to 
have directed the Council of Islamic Ideology, of 
which otherwise one hears very little, to draft 
an amendment to the Hudood Ordinances. This 
should be done by "consensus", says the relevant 
report, and the amendment should be "compatible 
with Islamic law and values".

According to the report, the general said: "The 
Hudood Ordinance (sic) was authored by one man 
and it can be changed. However, it should not be 
abused."

Whether or not the president has taken an 
interest in this oppressive piece of legislation 
on account of the recent media debate that has 
been generated only he can say. But there has 
been an outcry against the ordinances almost ever 
since they were promulgated in 1979 by Ziaul Haq, 
the "one man" mentioned by Gen Musharraf. There 
have been several committees or commissions that 
have gone through the ordinances and almost all 
have recommended their repeal on the grounds both 
of their anti-women bias and because, in the view 
of many scholars, they do not conform to Islamic 
principles of justice. The most notable of the 
recommendations for their repeal were contained 
in the reports of the Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid 
commission and the National Commission on the 
Status of Women, which was headed by Justice 
Majida Rizvi.

Two elected civilian prime ministers had two 
terms each to ponder over the legislation and to 
amend or rescind it. In view of the fact that Mr 
Nawaz Sharif at one time wanted to establish a 
system based on the Shariat, he may not have been 
too keen on tackling the ordinances. Ms Benazir 
Bhutto had no such inhibitions, and yet she too 
shied away from taking on the religious lobby. 
General Musharraf made some encouraging "liberal" 
noises when he took over, but he quickly learnt 
the trick of pushing all socially or religiously 
sensitive issues into the background.

His latest pronouncement is another study in the 
art of temporising at which our political leaders 
excel. He wants the ordinances to be amended, not 
repealed, and amended through consensus and in a 
way that is compatible with Islamic law and 
values. The commissions and committees that have 
urged repeal of the ordinances apparently did not 
arrive at a consensus considered satisfactory by 
the general and, in his view, did not make 
suggestions compatible with Islamic laws and 
values.

According to the Hudood Ordinances, women 
reporting rape can end up by having to confess to 
zina, adultery, because they have to produce four 
male eyewitnesses to testify to rape. This is not 
a dead law that is not invoked: the AsiaNews 
website quotes the NGO Madadgar as saying that 
196 Hudood cases were registered in the first 
four months of this year alone - 106 in Punjab, 
77 in Sindh, 11 in Balochistan and two in the 
NWFP. Such is our powerful feudal culture that 
couples marrying without the blessings of their 
families can be and are charged under the Hudood 
laws: if a man wants to victimise a woman, all he 
has to do is to go to the police station and have 
an FIR registered against her under the Hudood 
Ordinances.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that 
of the nearly 6,000 women and children in prison, 
about 80 per cent of the women have been charged 
with adultery under the ordinances. Most of them 
come from disadvantaged sections of society, are 
poor and illiterate. One newspaper article had 
pertinently asked whether such women were more 
promiscuous than the rich and the famous.

Thus, again we have a piece of legislation that 
discriminates against the poor and in favour of 
the rich.

While referring the issue to the Council of 
Islamic Ideology, General Musharraf also asked 
that an ordinance be issued for the immediate 
release of women prisoners accused of crimes 
other than murder, robbery and terrorism (and 
presumably also drug smuggling). The release 
process was to be finalised by Monday, but the 
federal law minister now seems to be saying that 
this will form part of a "package" of reforms. So 
we can expect a little more delay, a little more 
of temporising.

General Musharraf has sounded confident and full 
of bravado on other issues, often invoking the 
personal pronoun to assert that he will do this 
or he won't let that happen. On this issue, he 
has proved to be as pusillanimous as any other of 
our political leaders, although he has far more 
authority at his command. One hopes this is not 
due to the fact that he holds previous military 
rulers, - Ayub, Yayha and Ziaul Haq - in some 
reverence. He should have denounced at least his 
immediate predecessor as a military dictator when 
he took over.

But loyalty to the service and no doubt the 
esprit de corps prevailed over good sense. One 
should be forgiven for believing so, but the 
general seems so beholden indeed to the Ziaists 
in the military that he keeps Ziaul Haq's son in 
his cabinet as minister. The son may be gifted 
with qualities of head and heart of which we are 
unaware, but wasn't a principle involved 
somewhere about bestowing a high office on the 
progeny of a dictator who inflicted incalculable 
damage on Pakistan?

One dilemma in all such matters is of course 
caused by the fact that we call ourselves the 
Islamic Republic of Pakistan, as clearly stated 
in the Constitution by which we all swear. This 
"Islamic" provision has not prevented 
anti-Islamic and anti-social practices to 
prevail. We have lied and cheated and given and 
taken bribes and usurped the rights of innocent 
people, exploited the poor and the downtrodden, 
sated our appetites while the poor have gone 
hungry, blown the rule of law to smithereens and 
behaved in the most uncivilised fashion, and, as 
a state, patronised regimes that have destroyed 
historical monuments and have indulged in all 
kinds of clandestine, extra-legal activities.

Yet the provision provides a reference point to 
question the government on any matter that 
someone considers to be contrary to what he 
believes to be Islamic values or Islamic laws. 
Few individuals have invoked this provision to 
challenge the actions of the government, but the 
religious right merrily uses it any time that it 
wants to make political capital out of a 
particular situation. It's the easiest thing to 
describe something as un-Islamic and then watch 
ministers and rulers run for cover.

The second problem is lack of religious 
scholarship and of men learned in Islamic 
jurisprudence. As a result, most public 
discussion on matters concerning religion is 
uninformed. The discourse has been cornered by 
the mosque imams, many of whom are barely 
literate, by clerics motivated by sectarian 
prejudices, and by politically bankrupt 
politicians who turn to religion to justify their 
actions. What many of us consider to be Islamic 
may on closer scrutiny turn out to be totally 
contrary to our religious values.

Unnecessary confusion and schisms have been 
created in society. Many of us believe that since 
we don't know enough about religion, we should 
keep it out of political argument, which should 
be conducted on secular lines and on the temporal 
political issues confronting us at every step. 
Others think that we should imbibe enough of 
religious learning and scholarship to take on the 
mosque imams and leaders of the 
religious-political parties on their own wicket.

The secularists have been fighting a losing 
battle because our state is constitutionally a 
religious state. Thus, it has become easy for the 
more reactionary minded to mix up "secularism" 
with being anti-religion or irreligious. No one 
stops to ask how this can be possible in a 
country where the majority is religious and 
consists of what are described as practising 
Muslims.

Secularism as a belief system that extols 
tolerance and acceptance of all religions is 
never considered pertinent to the Pakistani 
situation. This has bred much of the hypocrisy 
that we see around us and which results in laws 
like the Hudood Ordinances, described by eminent 
Muslims jurists as un-Islamic. The contradiction 
that is at the root of many of the bewildering 
problems we face should at some point of time at 
least be recognised even if at the present moment 
it seems impossible to resolve it.

If the Hudood Ordinances are not altogether 
scrapped, which is the demand of civil society, 
then any revision of the legislation must take 
into consideration the views of women 
representing all sections of society, and the 
link between the misuse of the legislation and 
the feudal system should be thoroughly 
investigated. Any insular exercise conducted in 
the airconditioned comfort of Islamabad, away 
from the district towns and hamlets where the 
ordinances provide only another means of 
terrorising and exploiting women, will prove 
meaningless.

_____


[2]

www.opendemocracy.net
July 7, 2006

BANGLADESHIS IN EAST LONDON: FROM SECULAR POLITICS TO ISLAM
by Delwar Hussain

Who speaks for the mostly poor Bangladeshi 
community in east London? Delwar Hussain charts a 
long-term shift from secular leftism to Islamism 
- one in which British state policy has played a 
significant role.


The connection between events in Bangladesh and 
the large Bangladeshi community in east London is 
intimate but not static. The influence of 
economic, political and generational change on 
the transformation of personal and public 
identities is profound. In particular, there has 
been a significant movement in recent years from 
alignment with secular politics as a vehicle of 
representation and empowerment towards 
Islamic-based organisation. An important element 
in this is that the British state has helped 
create and support this process through its 
funding policies and its application of a 
"multicultural" model of relating to and 
supporting community organisations in the area.

To understand the context of this change, it is 
necessary to understand the trend of events in 
the Bangladeshi homeland itself. In 2001, the 
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) came to power 
in coalition with the vehemently Islamist 
Jamaat-e-Islami, which at the time of 
Bangladesh's liberation war in 1971 had fought to 
maintain the country as a province of Pakistan. 
"East Pakistan" (the forerunner of Bangladesh) 
shared a Muslim identity with "West" Pakistan - 
today the state of Pakistan proper - but most 
Bengalis wanted a secular society, rooted in 
Bengali culture rather than in Islam.

Almost immediately after Jamaat's arrival in 
government, attacks against religious and ethnic 
minorities in Bangladesh began to be reported. A 
British peer and parliamentary human-rights 
representative, Eric (Lord) Avebury, said that 
"Bangladesh is an increasingly dangerous place 
for women, minority faiths and ethnic groups, 
opposition parties and secular organisations". He 
argued that at the root of these problems lies 
the "cancer of a maverick branch of Islamism" 
that aims to "transform the country into a 
Taliban-style dictatorship".

Five years on, Bangladesh approaches an election 
scheduled for January 2007 with its politics 
bitterly divided between the Awami League (AWL) 
and the BNP (see Liz Philipson, "Bangladesh's 
fraying democracy" (26 June 2006). The Jamaat 
openly advocates "Islamic revolution" and calls 
for the establishment of a worldwide Islamic 
khalifah (caliphate). This is the culmination of 
a process that began soon after independence with 
the assassination of Bangladesh's architect 
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and the seizure of power 
by the army.

Bangladesh's new rulers sought legitimacy for 
their nationalistic vision by turning to 
religious parties. They removed secularism and 
socialism from the constitution, and declared 
Islam the state religion. This issue lies at the 
heart of the country's present predicament: the 
attempt to revive religion as an instrument to 
redefine the national identity.

The war of liberation appeared to have resolved 
the problem, but the faultline persists. Jeremy 
Seabrook argues that it goes to the heart of the 
people's identity, "(setting) Bengali culture, 
language and tradition against the growth of a 
form of Islam not rooted in Bengal". Seabrook 
makes the important point that for centuries, the 
distinction between these two realities was not 
experienced as a problem or a division at all.

The diaspora and the city

These issues - Islamic and Bengali identity, 
religion and culture, political struggle and 
political power - are very much alive in London's 
Bangladeshi diaspora, centred in the Tower 
Hamlets area. At their forefront are 
organisations such as the East London Mosque 
(author of conspicuous and effective Islamist 
initiatives) and the Shadinata Trust (a secular 
body that seeks to increase awareness of Bengali 
culture and history among British Bangladeshis).

The battle is an unequal one: the secular effort 
is faltering against the vibrancy and energy of 
the Islamists. One of the trust's primary 
objectives is to bring collaborators in the 
liberation war, some of whom live in Britain, to 
justice. For many young people in deprived Tower 
Hamlets, this is ancient history with no 
relevance to their lives: they regard Bangladeshi 
politics as distant and corrupt, and day-to-day 
issues of drugs, gangs and unemployment as far 
more relevant.

The Islamists, by contrast, are sophisticated and 
up-to-date in their focus and appeal. The East 
London Mosque (and its affiliate, the London 
Muslim Centre [LMC]) shares the ideology of the 
Jamaat-e-Islami. The mosque is no fringe 
organisation; it was at the centre of the 
campaign that helped elect the local Respect 
party candidate and vocal critic of Britain's New 
Labour government, George Galloway, in the 2005 
general election.

An article on the website of the Islamic Forum 
Europe (IFE), an organisation associated with the 
mosque, urged voters to vote for Galloway; 
although it said he was "unlikely to establish 
khalifah in East London", and he has 
"passionately (campaigned) for Muslim political 
prisoners far more than some of our Muslim 
community elders who are still living in the days 
of the subservient maharajas in British India."

The London Muslim Centre hosted an event in 
honour of the new MP, where he expressed his 
gratitude to the young volunteers who "gave their 
blood" for him. The IFE's president, Muslehuddin 
Faradhi, said: "We made sure that people (were) 
able to cast their votes without fear and 
intimidation and make an informed judgment. The 
way we attempted to educate people was 
significant. We believe the impact of this will 
be felt for years to come."

A Bangladeshi Jamaat MP, Delwar Hossain Sayedee, 
has regularly appeared at the mosque and raised 
funds for his party there. These visits are 
controversial: older Bangladeshis accuse him of 
involvement in the massacres of Bengalis during 
the liberation war. But the Jamaat has made 
strenuous (and successful) efforts to distance 
itself from its extremist and anti-Bengali past, 
and young, third-generation, British-born 
Bengalis have demonstrated in support of 
Sayedee's presence.

It is striking that a party with the Jamaat's 
record can attract young people in Britain, when 
for the most part, they have little interest in 
the politics of their parents' or grandparents' 
country. In south Asia, the party has drawn 
support from those both promoted and dislocated 
by modernisation - middle-class people (teachers, 
lawyers, and engineers among them) repelled by 
western ideas and attracted to the ideological 
rigour of fundamentalism.

Indeed, societies in transition often generate 
fundamentalism. In London, the absence of a 
Bangladeshi middle-class has meant that support 
for the Jamaat was negligible, but it has 
discovered another constituency: the 
British-educated Bengali working class, those at 
the bottom of Britain's social pyramid, heirs to 
endemic poverty and exclusion. The path of social 
advancement may be closed to them elsewhere, but 
the doorway to rightwing, fundamentalist theology 
is broad and always open.

The state and the "community"

The transnational, diasporic links represented by 
Jamaat-e-Islami represent just one aspect of the 
"Islamising" of the Bangladeshi community in east 
London. There are further processes at work: 
political, religious, and "multicultural".

The social policies of successive British 
governments have played a part in the long-term 
trend away from secularism and towards Islamism. 
The British state has since the early 1990s 
deferred to a generic idea of the "Muslim 
community". This has increasingly enabled mosques 
to enter into partnership with local authorities 
to deliver social-welfare programmes. The East 
London Mosque, for example, provides educational 
facilities (religious and non-religious), a youth 
centre, a gym, a meeting-space and a library. The 
mosque and the LMC have also positioned 
themselves in resistance to the culture of gangs 
and drugs in the area.

These organisations share with others based on 
Islamic principles a facility in targeting youth 
"at risk" and helping to curb anti-social 
behaviour. John Eade writes: "The success of 
these projects in reaching out to disaffected 
youngsters ensures that these faith-organisations 
are engaged in mainstream service delivery 
channels and remain open and accountable, a 
requirement for public funding".

Michael Keith, the leader of Tower Hamlets 
Council, observes that faith has become 
legitimised as a way of providing welfare 
facilities, such that explicitly faith-based 
youth associations in the borough that have 
become increasingly significant; to end the 
funding of such organisations, he says, would 
result in the disappearance of crucial social 
safety-nets of the kind once provided (but no 
longer) by the state.

Moreover, an effect of structural economic change 
in Britain (especially the unemployment of many 
former textile workers in London as a result of 
the effective outsourcing of their jobs 
toŠBangladesh) has been that local authorities 
themselves have funded faith-based initiatives 
that answer the livelihood needs of second - and 
third - generation Bengalis.

This funding has its origins in two significant 
events in the early 1990s - the Salman Rushdie 
affair (1989) and the Gulf war to eject Saddam 
Hussein's forces from Kuwait (1991) - that were 
crucial in the formation of the "British Muslim 
identity". In their aftermath, Britain's 
political establishment realised that British 
Muslims could not be ignored, believed that 
gestures towards fighting poverty and social 
exclusion would undercut support for specifically 
"Muslim"' causes, and at the same time sought 
(for economic and ideological reasons) to cut 
government funding to voluntary organisations. 
The result of these combined processes was the 
rapid emergence of faith-based alternatives in 
the social arena, whose agents urged individuals 
into using their "Muslim" identity to access 
particular services and to gain traction over 
social and political concerns.

While in earlier periods British Bengalis were 
known by their national origin, today they are 
seen as part of a homogeneous "Muslim community". 
This is the irony of multiculturalism: policies 
aimed to create diversity in British society 
opened spaces for fundamentalist intolerance and 
homogeneity. Islamists have been the main 
beneficiary of these developments. The media may 
portray them as "backward" and "medieval" people 
who reject British values, but their demands on 
the British state have been and are legitimated 
within a government-created framework.

However, state funding is only one aspect of the 
rise of Islamism. As long ago as 1992, reports 
suggested that Asian Muslims were deserting bars 
and clubs and entering mosques and religious 
classes. The phenomenon seems in retrospect 
supportive of an argument based on the idea of 
young people being "in-between two cultures" 
(alienated both from the cultural "traditions" of 
their parents and "modern" western culture).

This led them, the idea runs, to an embrace of an 
Islam that allows individuals to transcend this 
separation by linking them into the global 
"culture-free" identity of the umma. The 
increasing self-identification of Britain's 1.6 
million Muslims by faith rather than by ethnicity 
would seem to support this line of thinking (the 
summary is, a simplification, needless to say, 
since cultures are not static, but complex and 
multiple with porous borders).

A more persuasive argument relates to issues of 
discrimination and exclusion. Bengalis are among 
the poorest in Britain, and among those most 
exposed to racial discrimination. This is not 
new; but the response of the maturing third 
generation of indigenous British Bangladeshis is.

Between the 1960s and the 1980s, Bangladeshis in 
London used secular, socialist ideology to combat 
injustice - a system of thinking that could then 
still lay plausible claim to the future. There 
also remained at that time the option of return 
which sustains many migrants, who promise 
themselves they will go "home" when they have 
made enough money.

Today, most of those born in London still refer 
to Bangladesh as "home", but in practice Bengal 
is distant from their daily lives and probable 
futures. Within the community, Bengali 
secularists appear today as archaic as the 
political left. Islamic brotherhood is a more 
potent tool in the fight against discrimination. 
Claire Alexander, author of The Asian Gang: 
contesting Britishness, writes: "Islam stands as 
a psychological barricade behind 
whichŠBangladeshi young people (usually men) can 
hide their lack of self-esteem and proclaim a 
functional strength through the imagination of 
the umma".

The agency of change

An older generation of British Bangladeshis saw 
Islam as one aspect of a plural, many-layered 
identity; for their children and grandchildren it 
has become the basis of a monolithic ideology, 
the supreme identity in the struggle for 
political and socio-economic interests. It is 
also both reaction to and defence against the 
experience of poverty and racism.

The context of this mobilisation is both global 
and local. The Islamists have managed both to 
articulate and project a persuasive political 
meta-narrative after 9/11, and to appeal to young 
people in east London by focusing on issues of 
drugs, crime and unemployment. Their local 
success is in part a consequence of the 
state-sanctioned ideas of multiculturalism which 
dominated society during their upbringing. They 
have been able to use, adapt and extend such 
ideas by taking them far from their "liberal" 
origin, and joining very different movements 
which yet proclaim the same objective of 
"equality".

The impulses and actions of what might in another 
age have been seen as working-class anger have 
thus acquired a more plausible emancipatory 
narrative in Islamic fundamentalism. Religion has 
been the agent of empowerment for many Muslims in 
the struggle against racism, imperialism and the 
extremes of capitalist inequality. That this has 
been facilitated by state funding along faith 
lines is a fact few are ready to confront.

The fight of secularists against racism and 
poverty appears bland compared to the ardent 
certainties of religion. In Bangladesh, 
secularists and the left have been marginalised 
and suppressed by the post-2001 ruling coalition. 
While the Bangladesh Nationalist Party - and 
George Galloway in London - seek to ride the 
Jamaat-e-Islami tiger for political gain, the 
prospects of this strategy for resolving the 
enduring questions of social justice, equality 
and diversity are dim. Jamaat and other 
fundamentalist groups are sowing the seeds of 
future conflict, as well as obscuring more 
hopeful and humane pathways to equity and harmony 
for Bengalis, in both Britain and Bangladesh.

Delwar Hussain is a researcher in Bangladeshi 
politics and the Bangladeshi diaspora

_____


[3] 

Central Chronicle
July 5, 2006

DELAY IN COMMUNAL VIOLENCE BILL

Aligarh and Vadodra are not isolated events but 
part of the larger picture of the communal 
programme that is being carried out 
intermittently - Syed Ali Mujtaba

The Communal Violence Bill announced by the UPA 
Government soon after coming to power in May 
2004, seems to be gathering dust. The Government 
seems to have more reasons to pilot the Office of 
Profit and the Reservation bills than make 
efforts to stop the cancerous growth of 
communalism in the country.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister 
Shivraj Patil both made separate statements in 
Parliament on the communal situation in the 
country and took credit of keeping it under 
check. However, both maintained a stoic silence 
over the timeframe for tabling the Communal 
Violence Bill in Parliament.

Meantime, two communal riots, one in Aligarh (UP) 
in April last and the other in Vadodra (Gujarat) 
in May, reiterated the necessity of the bill. The 
bill is supposed to give powers to the Union 
Government to intervene in the wake of a 
breakdown of the communal situation. As of now, 
the Centre cannot interfere in the affairs of the 
states and can only appeal it to control the 
situation.

Take the Aligarh incident, where once again the 
dispute centred on places of worship. Every year 
the matter comes to boil there during Hindu 
festivals with Muslims objecting to the use of 
the blaring loudspeakers in the temple that 
disturbs their prayers in the adjacent mosque. As 
in the past, the tension this time too was 
building up for some time and exploded with 
instances of stone throwing, looting and arson. 
This was retaliated through police firing, 
killing eight people.

The Minorities Commission's fact-finding team 
found that the police did not comply with the 
rulebook and fired above the waist as all the 
shots hit the victims directly on the upper parts 
of the body, suggesting its intention was to kill.

The IG Police (Kanpur range) who headed the 
Departmental inquiry reportedly calls it a case 
of police high-handedness in his report. He says, 
sufficient evidence is there to prove that the 
situation could have been brought under control 
without the police firing, if the administration 
acted with a little intelligence and 
responsibility.

Aligarh echoed in Vadodara a month later where 
five people were killed in the police firing. 
Here again the issue centred on a religious 
structure claimed as encroachment on road by the 
Vadodra Municipal Corporation, even though, the 
first survey carried out in 1912 by the then 
ruler of Baroda, Sayajirao Maharaj mention that 
the Muslim shrine was in existence for at least 
200 years and its daily light (diya) and 
expenditure were borne by the Hindus.

Unless motives are attributed to its act, it does 
not stand to reason why the Vadodra Corporation 
paid scant regard to the ancient place of worship 
and showed unnecessary haste in its demolition. 
The shrine was termed as 'mini Babari masjid' and 
was a target of attack at every communal riot 
that took place in the city since 1969.

Muslim residents of the area that resisted the 
demolition were hit with police bullets leaving 
five of them dead and scores injured. A day after 
the demolition, a Muslim youth was burnt alive in 
his car by a fanatical Hindu mob.

The Supreme Court injunction ordered swift action 
by the Union Government to control the situation; 
otherwise the Vadodra incident had all the 
trappings of the post-Godhra communal genocide of 
2002.

Both in Aligarh and Vadodra, it is ominous that 
the fatalities could have been avoided if the 
local administration tactfully handled the 
situation.

A cursory look at the history of the communal 
riots in the country suggests that Aligarh and 
Vadodra are not isolated events but part of the 
larger picture of the communal programme that is 
being carried out intermittently.

Riots after riots have similar story to tell. The 
communal violence invariably flares up around 
religious centres; the State administration 
allows it to escalate. The extremists then go on 
the prowl, unleashing an orgy of death and mayhem 
in connivance with the local administration. When 
enough damage is done and media pressure becomes 
unmanageable, the authorities put their act 
together to control the situation.

The naked vote bank politics of consolidating the 
vote of the majority at the expense of 
destruction of the minority is the pet theme for 
the last sixty years or so in India. This is a 
tried and tested formula in Indian politics to 
first create a sharp division in the society and 
then ride on the insecurity wave to romp home to 
power. The Congress or the BJP both are two sides 
of the same coin, so goes the saying.

Since communalism is one of the many tools on 
which politics centres in India, no political 
party wants to get this eliminated altogether. 
Some may talk about its banishment from the 
society but those who see it as a holy cow of the 
electoral politics, want the communal pot to be 
kept boiling.

It was a revolutionary call of many sorts when 
the UPA Government announced that it was going to 
bring the communal Violence Bill to stop the 
repeat of Gujarat. The promise held credibility 
because the Left which is supporting the 
Government too showed keenness to put a lid over 
this recurring crime. However, the UPA Government 
having completed two years in office but still 
not keen on bringing the Communal Violence Bill, 
give rise to the suspicion that it may be another 
case of an empty promise made for electoral gains.

However, if the Government sources are to be 
believed, it is not the real case. The 
Parliamentary Standing Committee of the Home 
Ministry is currently discussing the Bill. The 
discussions are centering around two contentious 
issues; can a communal situation in a state be 
dealt with by the Central Government without 
encroaching upon the state's rights of 
maintaining law and order? Second, can the 
deployment of Central forces be done 
independently or at the request of the State 
Government and, in any case, can such forces act 
independently or act under the command of the 
State Government?

Notwithstanding the rights of the states to be 
encroached upon, the fact remains that in the 
name of State autonomy and exclusive right over 
'law and order', the Central Government cannot 
remain a spectator to the instances of communal 
violence taking place in a State.

Irrespective, of the delay in the Bill, the 
Central Government should immediately bring out a 
statutory order that it would have the exclusive 
right to intervene in the event of communal 
situation, and punish those who have been behind 
this heinous crime. It is time for the UPA 
Government to implement the promises made. 
Further waste of time would be an invitation to 
another Aligarh or Vadodra to take place.



_____


[4] 

The Times of India
July 7, 2006

TEMPLE TANTRUMS
by Rajeev Dhavan

The Sabarimala controversy tests India's dual 
secular guarantee of religious freedom and social 
justice for all. Every citizen has the right to 
profess, practice, propagate and manage one's own 
affairs in matters of religion including the 
myriad of essential practices that define a faith.

To strike a balance, the Constitution permitted 
the state to provide, for "social welfare and 
reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious 
institutions of a public character to all classes 
and sections of Hindus" to ensure temple entry 
for untouchables and others.

But, religious freedom is subject to gender 
equality. The Ayyappan temple at Sabarimala is 
undoubtedly a public temple which must normally 
be open to all including women.

The core question is whether temple entry or 
social reform can override what is sacral to a 
faith. In the Srirur Math case (1954) Supreme 
Court extended protection to all the 'essential 
practices' of a faith to strike down provisions 
which granted the commissioner for endowments 
entry to the "inner Holy of Holiness... the 
sanctity of which is zealously guarded".

In the Devaru case (1958) directly concerning the 
temple entry of untouchables, Supreme Court took 
the view that untouchables could not be 
prohibited from the temple but could be excluded 
from all ceremonies which were for Gowda Saraswat 
Brahmins alone.

On this logic, any court or law cannot interfere 
with what the faith declares as essentially 
sacral or profane. The legal script of the 
Sabarimala Ayyappan temple has already been 
written up.

In 1991, Kerala high court not only concluded 
that the exclusion of women from the temple was 
reasonable and proper but also accorded sanctity 
to using astrology to discern the wishes of the 
deity at periodical Devapra-sanams.

Accordingly, in 1985 it was declared that "the 
deity does not like young ladies to enter the 
precincts of the temple". Following this, the 
high court emphatically stated: "If the wish of 
Lord Ayyappa as revealed by Devaprasanam 
conducted at the temple to prohibit a woman of a 
particular age group from worshipping at the 
temple, the same has to be honoured and followed 
by the worshippers and the temple authorities".

The court, therefore, proclaimed that the 
Devaswom Board "has a duty to implement the 
astrolo-gical findings and prediction on 
Devapra-sanam... (and cannot disregard) the 
wishes of the deity revealed in the Prasanam".

The present controversy stems from the latest 
astrologically based Astamangala Devaprasanam in 
which the deity was, allegedly, upset by many 
things, including thefts and favouritism in the 
temple, de-forestation and a woman having defiled 
the temple sometime earlier.

In a secular vein, the deity also wanted worship 
at the Vayar shrine managed by Muslims in the 
vicinity. All these supposed oracular wishes of 
Lord Ayyappa stand unfulfilled.

But, what has attracted attention is actress 
Jaimala's confession that she had touched the 
deity in 1987, her defiant stance that she will 
answer to God and not high priests and her 
apology.

The high priest refused to admit a dereliction of 
duty to doubt the Jaimala story. Where do we go 
from here? As a matter of law, Kerala high court 
has clearly laid down that the exclusion of women 
aged between 10 and 55 is essential to the faith 
as a core 'essential practice' of the followers 
of Lord Ayyappa.

If this is so, the past is secured and the future 
sealed. Non-believers cannot be told to believe 
in God. Nor can believers be compelled to deny 
their faith. But we can ask them to re-examine 
the validity of their belief.

We can go down a partisan bifocal BJP route of 
preaching a uniform civil code to Muslims in the 
name of reform whilst defending many irrational 
Hindu claims to be part of India's national 
heritage.

Such an approach has too many 'Hindutva' 
contradictions to command secular respect. For 
the rationalist, on the other hand, empirically 
unproven beliefs and practices should be allowed 
as personal belief not social practice.

Religions cannot be compartmentalised into inner 
beliefs, which are to be protected and external 
practices which can be reformed out of existence. 
Faiths come as an integral whole.

Believers may well say that the forced entry of 
women into the temple will render everyone's 
prayer at the temple valueless. If the Supreme 
Court's logic is followed, women may obtain entry 
to the temple but not to the inner sanctum of 
Lord Ayyappa.

The Kerala high court surmised that the reason 
for excluding women from the Ayyappan temple was 
to protect them from suffering the privations of 
the 41-day ordeal of penances. The rest is blind 
tradition based on astrological conjecture.

Hindu orthodoxy may have social and political 
reasons for seeking refuge in obscurantism. But 
Hinduism is no stranger to reform and change. 
Temple entry of untouchables and other reformist 
intervention have not weakened but strengthened 
the faith.

Hindus cannot preach gender justice to others and 
indulge in practices that their own reformers 
have found wanting. For the moment we must 
proceed on the basis that the practice of 
excluding women from the Sabarimala temple lacks 
critical, moral and religious foundation. That 
the Kerala high court decided otherwise is hardly 
the point.

The writer is a senior Supreme Court advocate.

_____


[5]

INTERROGATING RELIGIOUS RADICALISM
by Yoginder Sikand (July 5, 2006)

A principal premise of all forms of religious 
radicalism-Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim or 
other-is a stark and rigid dualism. Religious 
radicalism reflects a very simplistic, and, to 
its adherents, a very convenient way of looking 
at the world, saving them from the onerous task 
of carefully examining it in all its complexity. 
It divides all of humankind into two neat 
compartments, hermetically sealed off from each 
other and projected as being inherently and 
permanently at odds. One part of humanity is 
projected as consisting of the 'chosen' ones: 
fervent soldiers of God, ardently struggling 
against all odds to implement His will. The rest 
of humankind is depicted as 'deviant', 
'irreligious' or even worse: as enemies of God 
and helpers of the Devil.
In this stark way of compartmentalising all of 
humanity, what people of different religions 
share in common, their common hopes, fears, joys 
and sorrows and their innate humanness thus come 
to be invisiblised, forgotten or even rudely 
denied. Good things in other religions or 
philosophies are either ignored or else referred 
to grudgingly as only 'partial' and 'limited' 
and, therefore, as inadequate for salvation. 
True, often enough, when pressed with evidence 
that belies their claims, religious radicals will 
admit that people who do not adhere to their 
particular ideology, too, are human beings, or 
even children of the one God. Yet, in the same 
breath they would also insist that for these 
others to be truly 'saved', to be truly true to 
God, they must abandon their beliefs and ways and 
join their ranks. Only then, they argue, would 
God be pleased with them. And if they refuse, 
they would, they contend, continue to be 
considered by God as His 'enemies', and their 
personal piety and goodness would count for 
nothing, failing to save them from perdition in 
the life after death.
Aspects of the various faith traditions or 
alternate understandings of these that seem to 
question the principal premise of ideology of 
religious radicalism are routinely glossed over, 
denied or sought to be suitably 'explained' away 
by religious radicals. Not surprisingly, in the 
South Asian context, for instance, both Hindutva 
and Islamist religious radicals routinely 
denounce popular forms of religion, such as the 
humanistic tradition of many Bhakti and Sufi 
saints, which, while speaking in the name of 
religion, evoke a common humanity transcending 
narrowly inscribed boundaries of caste and creed. 
Such traditions are seen as a menacing threat to 
the stern, straight-jacketed dualist ideology 
that religious radicalism is premised on.
Religious radicals see human beings as defined by 
only one identity out of the many that they 
actually possess: their religion. All other 
identities, such as of class, caste, sect, 
nationality, region and gender, are considered 
only secondary, at best. Because these identities 
sometimes threaten to disturb and challenge the 
ideological hegemony that religious radicals seek 
to impose in the name of religion, those who 
share a broader religious tradition with the 
radicals but interpret it differently and speak 
for these other identities are routinely branded 
as dreaded 'fifth columnists', 'agents' of the 
enemies of what is presented as the one true 
faith. Thus, for instance, Dalits who demand 
reservations and denounce 'upper' caste 
domination are denounced by Hindutva ideologues 
as 'pawns' in the hands of the 'enemies' of 
Hinduism, who are alleged to be using the Dalits 
to destroy the 'unity' of the Hindus. Likewise, 
Muslims who speak for Muslim ethnic and sectarian 
minorities, such as Sindhis and Baluchis or Shias 
in Pakistan, are quickly berated as 'enemies' of 
Islam by Islamists, who insist that the only 
identity one should possess or be proud of is 
that of being Muslim. To talk of other identities 
is thus a major threat to those who wish 
political discourse and people's worldviews to be 
defined solely by religion, and that too by their 
own particular, fiercely dualistic, version of it.
Related to this is the point that religious 
radicalism often serves the function of 
preserving and promoting the interests of 
entrenched elites or of middle-class elements 
seeking that status. Religious radicalism, 
generally speaking, reflects a certain cognitive 
or intellectual arrogance that is sternly 
elitist: 'We alone are right, and others, 
including people of other faiths as well as 
people who claim to follow our faith but follow 
or understand it differently are wrong". But this 
suffocating elitist exclusivity does not remain 
limited to the realm of discourse. More often, it 
is consciously used to forcibly counter other, 
particularly subaltern, ways of understanding the 
very same religious tradition that religious 
radicals claim to represent-witness the fervent 
opposition of Hindu and Muslim radicals to 
popular Hindu and Muslim subaltern cults, which 
has, throughout history, taken even violent 
forms. Witness, too, the fierce persecution of 
various subaltern Christian sects by the Catholic 
Church. Such alternate forms of religion are seen 
as in urgent need of being countered and 
suppressed, peacefully or by manipulation, but, 
if that fails, then through force, because they 
effectively challenge the claims of religious 
radicals of being the sole spokespersons of the 
religion they claim to represent.
Religious radicalism is also often used to 
suppress demands articulated by subaltern groups 
protesting against their subordination at the 
hands of elites who are associated with their own 
broadly defined religious tradition. As part of 
this agenda, religious radicals seek to entice 
the oppressed to turn their wrath onto people of 
other faiths instead, who are projected in 
radical religious discourse as their real 
'enemy'. Hence, for instance, Dalits protesting 
'upper' caste Hindu hegemony are told that they 
should cease serving the agenda of the 'enemies' 
of the Hindus and that, instead, they should 
attack Muslims, who are projected in Hindutva 
discourse as the great, menacing 'other'. 
Similarly, in Pakistan, workers and peasants 
struggling against landlords and the 
feudal-industrial elites and non-Punjabis opposed 
to Punjabi hegemony are warned by radical 
Islamists to cease what they denounce as their 
'anti-Islamic' agenda which, they claim, is 
inspired by the 'enemies' of Islam and calculated 
to divide the Muslim 'ummah' against itself. 
Instead, they are told, they should join hands 
with their fellow Muslim oppressors in a joint 
struggle against a range of forces who are 
routinely depicted as Islam's 'enemies', 
including the Hindus, India, the West and so on. 
Religious radicalism is thus often consciously 
used as a device to keep subaltern groups 
associated with the same broadly defined 
religious tradition as the radicals firmly in 
their subordinated position. In this sense, 
therefore, religious radicalism is more often 
than not an enemy of most members of the very 
community whose faith tradition it claims to 
represent and champion.
Because they speak the same idiom of 
religiously-inspired exclusivity and sharp 
dualism, different religious radicalisms, while 
claming to be fanatically opposed to each other, 
actually feed on one another, all being opposed 
to the recognition and celebration of a common 
humanity and of alternate truth claims. In 
effect, therefore, the ideology of religious 
radicalism is a major stumbling block to genuine 
inter-faith dialogue and solidarity. At a time 
when religious identities are playing a major 
role in shaping world affairs and local as well 
as translocal conflicts, religious radicalism 
needs to be critically interrogated. While the 
complex economic, political and cultural roots of 
many of these conflicts have to be addressed, the 
religious or ideological dimensions also need to 
be carefully understood and critiqued. Although 
not adequate by itself for this purpose, 
promoting alternate understandings of each 
religion, more accepting and accommodative of 
other religions and their adherents, is a crucial 
necessity in this regard.

_____


[6]

Communalism Watch
July 6, 2006

Letter to National Commission of Minorities re Harassment of Christians

Dr. John Dayal
Member: National Integration Council
[. . .]
MOST URGENT

[. . .]
6 July 2006

Jenab Mohammad Hamid Ansari
Chairman
National Commission for Minorities
Lok Nayak Bhawan,
New Delhi 11003

Re:

1. Harassment of Nuns and Christian workers at 
Bus Stops, Rail Stations in Tirupati 
government-owned areas
2. Request to have the Constitutionality of the 
Seven Tirumala Hills reportedly being out of 
bounds to Christians
3. Ending hate campaign against Christians in Andhra Pradesh

Dear Ansari Saheb
[. . .]
I am making this formal complaint to you 
regarding a sustained hate campaign by the 
religious fanatics of the so-called Sangh Parivar 
in Andhra Pradesh, directed as much against the 
Church as against certain local politicians who 
may profess the Christian faith, and in 
particular Chief Minister Rajshekhar Reddy.

While I am sure the Mr. Reddy can take adequate 
care of himself and counter the campaign – 
carried out in the media as also on the 
grassroots level – helpless Christian workers, 
ordinary people, cannot. Nuns and Pastors have 
particularly been victimized and targetted. There 
have been several incidents in the state in the 
last six months.
[. . .] goons of the Sangh Parivar have taken 
upon themselves to be the local religious police 
– in connivance with some ranks of the Andhra 
State police, to harass Christian workers in the 
guise of stopping their missionary activities or 
`conversions.’
[. . .]
I am sure you, and other departments of the 
Government of India, will look into this incident 
and it ramifications for the health of secularism 
in our country.

With warm personal regards
John Dayal
--
[ Full text of the above letter is available at: 
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2006/07/john-dayals-letter-to-ncm-re.html 
]

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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
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