Are political parties in India embracing communal ideologies in different shapes and forms and democratizing this demonic political tool to bolster their respective vote bank prior to the make-or-break general elections scheduled for early 2014?
A recent spurt in communal conflagration and the riot in the north Indian town of Muzaffarnagar, where nearly 50 people died and 50,000 Muslims were displaced from home, point toward a very disturbing trend of a nation getting embroiled in perpetual hatred. This sounds ominous for a country of India’s diversity where no minority is minor enough to be deemed inconsequential. But then the advent of a new trend of caste- based social identities has caused the demise of nationalistic secular ethos.
Even the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the hard-core self-professed propagator of puritanical Hindutva, pander to identity politics in addition to its version of religious nationalism. Hence, Narendra Modi, the poster boy of majoritarian communal politics with family roots in the backward community, has a different projection in places where caste identity plays a dominant role in electoral mathematics.
In fact, his spin-doctors are exactly banking upon this aspect of his existence to reap political benefit. Modi is a pariah of the intellectuals only because he has climbed up from the grassroots, claims BJP. His party, however, conveniently bypasses the critical question of why the subaltern class has no place in Modi’s inflated development model. The poor, especially in the countryside, have little money to spend, as rural spending has dropped significantly in an apparently vibrant Gujarat.
Coming back to the core issue of communalism, this parochial practice, which induces adverse psychological effect on human mind and conscience, has virtually eaten into India’s social fabric. Failure of judgment and loss of sanity ignites hate-mongering reflected not only in the use of loaded words against Indian minorities but also the frequent call for a fight to the finish with Pakistan.
Frenetic intemperance, however, is not exclusive to Indian psyche and is equally manifested throughout South Asia and elsewhere. Even a peacenik like former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee fell into this trap despite creating a history by embarking on a goodwill bus journey to Lahore for mending fences with the “troublesome” neighbor.
No doubt, excessive indulgence of communal politics, which has its origin in the ethnocentric commitment of the political class, has given rise to a sense of triumphal superiority in a section of the population belonging to the majority community.
But a far more serious issue coming out of the mob frenzy in Muzzafarnagar has surely put the state apparatus in a tizzy. This communal eruption has virtually established the nauseating fact that a petty tiff is transformed into a full-fledged riot only when a conscious political decision, involving all political ideologies, is made at some level. Informal network of specialists, receiving subtle politico-administrative backing, are assigned to exploit societal fissures and organize spontaneous acts of violence, designed to make it look like a skirmish between two different communities.
So far, India has only harped on the superficial causes of communal violence, namely individual political motivation and ambitions as well as compulsion of vote bank politics — the plinth of modern India’s electoral structure. But the Muzzafarnagar sting operation videos that later on went viral reveal the stark reality of the presence of an institutionalized riot system in India with a well-defined role for all the actors — politicians, bureaucrats, police and criminals — involved in the game.
The big challenge for India is to segregate the healthy electoral system from a vicious political process that conflates religious and political identities in the name of mobilizing electoral pluralities.
India, with all her cultural uniqueness and diversity, unfortunately boasts of an inglorious history of riots. Governments of all hues have at some point or other confronted such threat to social stability. But more often than not, they ended up exacerbating the scar in their eagerness to consolidate the support base and simultaneously preserve their secular identity. Successive enquiry commissions, formed to investigate the real cause of communal hatred after every incident, have produced tough recommendations, which were never implemented at the end of the day.
Since 2005, a bill aimed at preventing communal violence and ensuring proper rehabilitation of riot victims is languishing in Parliament only because the lawmakers have little time to evolve a consensus and incorporate it into the statute book. Given the indifference of the political class to enact tough laws to dissuade those fomenting hostility, perhaps it is high time that the religious leaders of various communities initiate inter-ethnic civic engagement across India.
Such communications at local level will inevitably prevent those who deliberately incite hatred on the basis of religion and try their level best to socialize citizens from one faith to hate others with effective use of partisan narratives. Additionally, the Indian state is required to plug the lacunae existing in the very machinery tasked to preserve public order. Unfortunately, the law and order machinery has become subservient to the partisan interest of political masters who often act as a shield for criminal elements in their perennial quest for absolute power.
Right from the constabulary in the grassroots, officials at the decision making level to the intelligence gathering apparatus scavenging every nook to detect a spark capable of causing a flare up, the system needs to be revamped. It is only then can India bid adieu to communal violence permanently.
• Seema Sengupta is a Calcutta based journalist and columnist.
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