The overwhelming victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in western Indian state of Gujarat led by Narendra Modi has caused consternation across India, along with dire predictions of the collapse of India’s secular order and its pluralistic commitment. While such concerns are valid, it is premature to write the epitaph on India’s secularism.
While many Indians (and their friends abroad) beguiled themselves into believing that a liberal order was "natural" to India and even inevitable in terms of India’s history and its informing spirit, there was nothing pre-determined or inevitable about this set-up. Over the last 20 years, the debate within Hindu society to define its self-image and its destiny has continued, and has now acquired a new urgency and sharpness. The votaries of Hindutva have been particularly active in this debate as they attempt to retrieve the destiny and authority they feel they were denied when the Indian Constitution was finalized.
In recent times, the Hindu spirit of tolerance and accommodation has been subjected to severe assault. The Khalistan agitation through the 1980s and the Kashmir violence over the last decade, both of which in specific traumatic episodes victimized ordinary Hindus, have served to sharpen the consciousness of being Hindu.
However, it is ironical that in the emerging Hindutva discourse, this Hindu identity could obtain definition and credibility only in terms that personified the Muslim as the "other," obviously recalling the "humiliation" and subjugation over 1,000 years of Muslim rule. This identity acquired sharper focus as the Kashmir violence took its toll through the 1990s. Since the principal elements perpetrating this violence were Muslims, it mattered very little to the Hindutva protagonists that many of them were foreigners; that they were trained and armed abroad; that most of their victims were Muslims. Indeed, the vast majority of Indian Muslims were completely uninvolved with and unaffected by the Kashmir uprising and did not ever say or do anything that could be construed as being supportive of it.
Regardless of the facts on the ground, the Hindutva forces took advantage of this sharpening Hindu identity and moved from the margins of the Indian polity to its center on the basis of a stern anti-Muslim platform. However, the electoral achievements of the BJP through the 1990s primarily benefited from the pursuit of politics of moderation and mutual accommodation, exemplified in practice by a series of adroit alliances and affiliations across the country. While there were occasional murmurs in some Sangh Parivar quarters about the moderation of the BJP-led government and its abandonment of the Hindutva agenda, the consensual view was that the broad Hindu spirit of tolerance, as also the logic of electoral alliances, made a continued commitment to moderate centrist politics inevitable.
This has changed over the last one year. Following the events of Sept. 11, a new international framework has emerged which demonizes the Muslim globally. The deep involvement of Pakistan in extremist Islam and in Islam-based violence in India has given this an immediate regional dimension. However, what has provided an urgent national significance to these regional and global experiences are a series of violent episodes cynically and cold-bloodedly planned in Pakistan and executed by their jihadis in India. These are the attacks on: India’s Parliament two years ago; the police residences in Kaluchak in May 2002; the Akshardham temple in Gujarat in September last year; and the Raghunath temple in Jammu in November 2002.
These four events involved about 15 terrorists, all of whom were Pakistani nationals and all of whom died while executing their operations in which 60 people were killed. Constituting a rhythmic drumbeat of violence and hate, they have served to tear at India’s pluralistic fabric and ethos of tolerance. They had this impact primarily because "Muslims" perpetrated them on revered institutions, sacred and temporal, and because all the victims were Hindu, with women and children among the principal victims: Images of their blood-soaked bodies flickering across our TV screens could not but harden the heart of even the most moderate person.
Just as the assault on the United States on Sept. 11 dramatically transformed the American self-image and world view, and provided license to American hawks for aggression and violence (with the majority of the populace baying for blood), so also have these four episodes, taken together, though much less dramatic, served to spread the poison of communal animosity in India and corrode the Hindu spirit of tolerance and moderation. And this, when no Indian Muslim has been involved in the attacks and in only one case did three Indians give sanctuary to the terrorists.
During the election campaign, Modi and his associates milked the Godhra episode to the maximum, strongly suggesting that the assault by Muslims on the train was in fact an assault on Gujarati (Hindu) pride, and that Modi was the sole effective guardian of this threatened, wounded ethos. This effort was misdirected: The communal carnage that followed the Godhra episode (which itself is still mired in mystery and conflicting claims) not only "balanced" the attack on the train, but also the extent of the violence on Muslims, particularly on women, was so disproportionate and heinous as to fill most Hindus across the country, including many in Gujarat, with deep embarrassment and even guilt and shame.
It is worth noting that in the last 20 years, not one person from the 150 million-strong Indian Muslim population has ever participated in any jihadi activity anywhere in the world. This is when tens of thousands of jihadis nurtured by the Islamabad-Taleban nexus have wreaked havoc globally and laid the foundation for a contemporary clash of civilizations.
In regard to the future, the sad truth is that Pakistan will continue to plan and perpetrate atrocities against India, and hard Hindutva will continue to use it cynically in pursuit of its agenda, since, ironically, India’s secularism and pluralism are hateful to both of them.
The Gujarat election could become a defining moment in India’s destiny. Already a struggle has ensued within the Sangh Parivar, the outcome of which will shape the soul and spirit of the Indian nation and the destiny of its people. This struggle can be expected to be long and bitter as the hard-Hindutva seeks to convert the broadly centrist, tolerant, moderate Hindu to its side. As in the past, though Muslims will be the subject of this debate and will be most profoundly affected by its outcome, they are likely to be bystanders, making no contribution to its content and direction.
This has to change. For far too long has the Indian Muslim educated middle class avoided participation in the political process and thus evaded responsibility for the maintenance of the pluralistic order on which their status and future rest. Instead, with rare exceptions, they have permitted the worst from within their fold to emerge as their so-called leaders, persons who represent only themselves and tarnish the image of their community.
The time has come for educated and liberal Muslims, who exemplify in themselves the success of Indian pluralism and its enduring value and relevance, to enter the political arena and robustly contribute to the debates that are affecting their community’s future and their country’s destiny. In association with other like-minded elements within the Hindu community, they have to strengthen the core values and the native good sense of the average Hindu, tapping into his basic belief in pluralism and his understanding that the average Muslim is not his enemy but is a victim like him of a frequently iniquitous political order.
In this period of political flux, there are no permanent friends or enemies and no dividing lines between communities and organizations. Muslims have a legitimate claim on their Indian nationhood and a legitimate claim to enjoy the rights bestowed by this nationhood. Hence, Indian Muslims must actively engage with moderate elements in the Sangh Parivar and provide them with the arguments and personal examples that would enable them to cope with the assertions of the hard right. The battle is not lost nor its outcome inevitable; the only enemy of pluralism in India is apathy and complacency. (The Asian Age)
— Arab News Features 9 January 2003
