While the word 'Community' has been used in political discourse in India to depict a social group, irrespective of its size or its generic classification the term 'Communal' has always had a negative connotation. 'Communalism' was seen as the reverse, the anti-thesis thus of 'Nationalism'. While the Communities existed and the 'Nation' was still in the making, every community's or sub-community's instinctive inclination was to look out for itself. A community or even all the communities sometimes came together to achieve a common goal but in an atmosphere of mutual distrust and suspicion, burdened by the past, they found it difficult to look at the problem rising above their own short-term and long-term interests. The resulting acrimonious competition aggravated the historic adversarial relationships to the extent that every constructive enterprise, confined to a community, however positive, was seen as an act of hostility towards the others. What is worse was the tendency to regard a majority enterprise as inherently 'national' and a minority enterprise as per se communal.
The communal approach was also seen as subversive of the process of national integration. National integration was itself equated with assimilation and absorption by the dominant majority. The assumption, always, was that the majority community constituted the core of the nation and had the right to design and build the national superstructure. Only it was expected to concede the rights of security and shelter to the minority groups. The majoritarian ideologues were inspired by the slogan "One people, one culture, one state" or "Hindu, Hindi, Hindustan" or "Cultural Nationalism", a la Advani.
Our freedom struggle was also largely defined in terms of a triangle - the Hindus, the Muslims and the British Empire; the first two had to come together under the banner of Hindu-Muslim Unity to force the British out. And since the two communities could not come together, perhaps because the Muslims demanded too much, too soon, and the Hindus conceded too little, too late, and the British never played the honest broker, the country was Partitioned on the eve of Independence.
In India, we have not yet overcome the trauma of Partition. Still we are moving in mental grooves etched during the Freedom Movement. We are living under the ever-present shadow of Pakistan - a reminder of the failure of the Freedom Movement to preserve the unity of the country. Therefore, our thinking is still bipolar Hindu-Muslim Muslim-Hindu.
This simplified picture conceals the complex structure and heterogeneous character of the Indian society characterised by equally persistent lines of cleavage, other than religion - language, caste, class, race, culture, geography and historical memory. In the aftermath of Independence, universal franchise and development planning have caused an upsurge of other group identities based on language, caste, culture and domicile and the crystallisation of corresponding social groups, consolidating themselves, seeking alliances, operating locally as well as cutting across political boundaries, trying to emerge as pan-Indian communities. Indeed, the religious identities, except in situations of inter-religious confrontation, tend to disintegrate into linguistic, caste and regional Sub-groups which have sometime been seeking allies from across the religious divide.
The fact remains that the Hindu community itself does not constitute a single homogenous community. Hindu India is a compendium of many Indias - Aryan India, Dravidian Indian, Adivasi India and the like; Bengali India, Tamil India, Malayali India, Punjabi India and the like; Brahmin India, Rajput India, Shudra India and the like; not to speak of the Sects and Sub-sects in which Hinduism, with its wide spectrum of beliefs, was divided and the wider disparities of economic existence. Homo Indicus is yet to be born.
The realistic picture is that India is not only multi-religious but multi-lingual, multi-cultural, multi-caste, multi-class and, if one adds the dynamic element of inter-state migration, multi-migrant, at every level and multi-communal.
The social, economic and political motivation behind group affinity and solidarity is exactly the same irrespective of the principle of consolidation and identity: to protect the legitimate interests of the group, as perceived, in terms of participation in the political process, distribution of available economic resources, definition of social status and defence of cultural/linguistic/religious rights
Every group demands recognition of its identity whatever its base - by the State and by the peer groups. Every group tends to exaggerate its deprivation and therefore, its demands on the system and the resources. Some groups tend to press real and supposed historical claims. Some groups arrogate to themselves the right to speak for a larger conglomerate and thus monopolise power and resources disproportionate to their own strength. Some groups deny to their own sub-groups the rights which they have wrested from others. But these are all transient situation.
In the age of Democracy, which is essentially a game of numbers, no social group can claim or permanently arrogate to itself more than its due share of resources, proportionate to its population, and no group can permanently accept the resulting deprivation. But, when a group which has been marginalised and deprived demands its due, it is dubbed by the dominant group as 'communal' or 'casteist' or even 'unpatriotic' and 'anti-national'.
Equality and Justice have been universally accepted as the determining principles for the management of human society. Today the human society is divided into states. The State is not synonymous with the 'Nation'. A State may be multi-national while the sarne 'Nation' may cut across state boundaries. Indeed the political map of the world is subject to living forces of both fission and fusion. Even the smallest State is not homogenous. And a mega State like India has many heterogeneities - call them identities, ethnicities, communities. National-building in such a heterogeneous society is not an easy task. One cannot force all the people to profess the same religion, or to speak the same language or to adopt the same culture or brainwash them out of primordial loyalties and historic memories.
We have to accept that at the close of the 21st century, no community, howsoever big, can impose its will on others and no community, howsoever small, will accept subservience submergence, assimilation or absorption. Subversion of religious identity, derogation of racial identity, assumption of superiority, submergence of cultural identity, through absorption or assimilation can be as explosive as denial of political equality or economic justice.
One aspect of state formation particularly in case of large States with large areas and/or big population is the vertical structure. A mega State like India cannot be administered from one Centre. This lead us to the universal need of a federal set up. But in the case of India it has to be a multi-layered federation. At every one of those 5 levels - Union, State, Zila, Prakhand and Panchavat - competing diversities, identities and communities will have to be accommodated in every politico-administrative unit at the same level. In a given unit at a given level, all communities may be all minorities, with no community commanding 50% of the population; in most of them there may be a majority community with more than one identifiable and self-conscious minority communities. The principle of Federalism cannot be limited to Centre-State Relation but must extend to State-District, District-Prakhand and Prakhand-Panchayat Relations.
Federalism implies autonomy - decentralisation of political authority, devolution of financial resources and management of development. So whatever the authority vested in, and the revenues devolved upon, a level, every unit at that level has to work out a democratic mode of management to the mutual satisfaction of all communities living within its jurisdiction. So the Federal Principle has to be wedded to the Principle of Social Justice to produce democratic governance which is not majoritarian but equally and equitably responsive to all communities whose legitimate aspirations - political participation, equitable distribution, social status, linguistic and cultural identity, religious freedom etc. have to be addressed. Thus for every level - depending upon the tasks allotted thereto -norms for the treatment of minority groups have to be defined by consensus - one may call it a National Code for the Minorities - based on universal or regional Declarations and Conventions and our own Constitution and the ever-evolving norms for international and bilateral intercourse among states.
We have, therefore, to take into account, all our diversities and treat all communities alike, define our limits of tolerance and acceptance not on the basis of any pre-conceived bias or prejudice but on the basis of the demands of Equality and Justice. All communities, at every level, must not only co-exist peacefully but cooperate harmoniously for progress and development.
Group Identity - is not permanent and unchangeable; it goes on changing in many respects all the time under the impacts of the social, nay, global environment, except perhaps in some well-defined aspect which a group considers to be essential to its existence. But while change cannot be imposed by force the process of change can neither be brought to a standstill or artificially accelerated.
This is not a plea for understanding only between Hindus and Muslims - which is a must if our country is to move forward and fulfill its destiny - but for the recognition of all Sub-Hindu and Sub-Muslim identities, indeed of all emerging identities, some without a religious label, as legitimate and for their accommodation within he national scheme of things. Every community must feel secure and be free to manage its own affairs and participate in running the system. Wherever it commands a majority, the dominant community should pay due regard to the rights, interests and aspirations of the minority communities. Thus only every community will ensure the same measure of regard for those of its members who form minority groups elsewhere at the same level or at the higher or the lower levels. A network of interdependence and mutual respect will lead to balance and harmony.
At the end of the century it appears as if the Melting Pot model of national integration which fascinated our political leadership like the concept of nation-state has been jettisoned even by its western exponents and has been taken over by the 'Mosaic' or the 'Bouquet' approach - the concepts of Multi-Culturalism and Minority Rights.
In the 21st Century, with the world under the impact of globalisation, free flow of information, knowledge, technology, economic resources, management skills will move us towards an international order which would be basically federal, based on the recognition of mankind's multi-religious, multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-cultural character. The success of the Indian experiment – the biggest experiment is social engineering in history – will provide a viable model for the world of tomorrow, if we work consciously for the recognition of all identities, and he equitable incorporation of all communities in governance at every level.
New Delhi,
1s April, 1999
