Indian Democracy, Pluralism and Minorities
Ram Puniyani
Global Media Publications
J-51-A, First floor, AFE,
Jamia Nagar, New Delhi-110025
www.gmpublications.com
Rs. 400, 166 pages.
Ram Puniyani's book under review is an anatomy of communal politics during years around the turn of the century that witnessed Vajpayee Government at the centre and efforts to blend Hindutva ideology with national polity. The era saw the convergence of interests of Hindutva elements due to their ascendancy to power at the national level and imperialist interest in the wake of the US' so-called war on terror. Both sought to demonise Muslims and raised the bogey of terrorism. The Western media worked in tandem with the imperialist forces in the wake of 9/11 collapse of twin towers in New York. It proved a godsend for the Sangh Parivar to sing in tune with the CIA and make a common cause in unleashing terror against the Muslims at home. Under the smokescreen, the US' invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, Israel pulverized Lebanon and made a futile bid at suppressing the resistance movement of Hezbollah and Hamas. At home the Sangh Parivar led a genocide of Muslims in Gujarat to avenge the burning of Hindu karsevaks in a train coach at Godhra.
Anything gets believed when hatred overpowers people's minds. The imperialist forces carry out hate-mongering with a higher degree of sophistication, taking full care not to see its repercussions on their own soil. No Muslim was killed in the US in the aftermath of the 9/11 but Iraq and Afghanistan were pounded to dust and contracts to rebuild them were lapped up by the MNCs controlled by the Republicans, more specifically then vice president Dick Cheney. Methods adopted in India were rather crude and could not deflect flak from groups promoting human rights and civil liberties. If Gujarat was a big blot, dance of death in Dangs and roasting alive of missionary Graham Staines in Orissa smudged the Indian copybook.
Versatility of Sangh Parivar expertise in demonizing the minorities has been captured in all its variety. The 2001 Census came to be interpreted in a way that Muslim growth rate could set off alarm bells. But alert intellectuals could soon unravel the insidious campaign to manipulate figures that had unrealistically ballooned up the demographic expansion of Muslims. In the same vein, charge of proselytisation against Christians is rebutted by Puniyani. How could Christian population come down from 2.60 per cent in 1971 to 2.18 per cent in 2001 demographic advantage motivated the proslytisation? asks the author. Trickery and duplicity underlying the Hindutva strategy receives ample light. No RSS activist ever went to jail during the freedom struggle, but the outfit never tires of thrusting the Vande Matram slogan and song down the throats of Muslims. Similarly, Adivasis, the original inhabitants of India, posed a dilemma for those who accuse only Muslims and Christians as foreigners. So the decade saw emergences of new funny and phoney theories of Aryans being original Indians. The author takes a good dig at it.
Rationale is never on the side of chauvinists, be they Hindu communalists or Islamic fundamentalists. Patriarchy builds the identity of the community on the body of women and through that the hatred of the other religions gets compounded by the idea that women are the property of men. Communal riots are sparked by spreading rumours that women of 'our' community are being defiled by men of 'other' community. In such an atmosphere the inter-caste or inter-community marriages come to be looked as 'loss of our women' and 'appropriation of our women' by the others. The Hindutva lobby represses minority women by unleashing sexual violence on them and within (the Hindu community) by projecting the liberal values as licentious and loose morals.
But comments like 'Jinnah was a secular leader' do come as a surprise. Such red herrings are dictated by electoral expediency and stem from Sangh Parivar's attempt to somehow woo Muslims, whose support, of late, is identified as crucial for any party ruling the centre.
If within India, Muslim needed to be demonized to polarize Hindus and encash their votes, on the global level, the US was looking for an enemy after Cold War ended and Soviet Union disintegrated. At both levels, the Muslims ideally fitted the slot, hence all the provocative interpretation of all that the community did, said, demanded, professed or/and practiced. 'Ethno-preneurs' in the media and public fora, to borrow the term from sociologist Dipankar Gupta, did a good job in painting the community with a black brush. But the facts that terrorism was a response to the US imperialist policies to control oil resources in the Middle East and Palestinian militancy was a resistance movement against Israeli highhandedness was hardly ever highlighted. Puniyani calls for introspection as to what came first, terrorism or US designs on the Middle East. It has to be understood whether terrorism is a disease in itself or manifestation of the deeper diseases.
Few will disagree with Puniyani's conclusion that the polity is seriously ill. A serious effort needs to be made to carefully nurture the democratic and plural ethos in order to celebrate the diversity and differences as what matters at the political level is no one's religion but one's citizenship, which is supreme and non negotiable.
Poor editing and typograhical errors do leave a sour taste in mouth of an otherwise work of immense intellectual value.
 |
January 2010 |
