The attacks (on Christians) have disgraced India's democracy the vibrancy of which, as that of all democracies, is judged in terms of the safety, opportunities and freedom which the minorities enjoy. Majority rule alone does not distinguish a democracy from a dictatorship ...
Democracy ... means minorities enjoying every right to preserve their distinct identities as well as the one to become the majority through democratic, constitutional means. In keeping with this principle, the Constitution of India provides to minority communities a series of rights to safeguard their identities and interests. Besides, the Government of India has also established a Minorities Commission to safeguard the rights and interests of the minorities.
Attacks on minorities-whether religious, ethnic, linguistic or of any other kind-are, therefore, assaults on the spirit, and often on the letter as well, of the Constitution, besides being totally antithetical to the ethos of Indian culture with its emphasis on diversity ... Swami Vivekananda beautifully summed up the essence of this when he said, "Love everyone as your own self, because the whole universe is one. In injuring another, I am injuring myself." (The Vedanta Philosophy). He had profound faith in the validity of all religions and a deep regard for Islam. Tapan Raychaudhuri writes in Europe Reconsidered, "Sister Nivedita records his (Vivekananda's) joyous pride in the Indo-Mughal heritage a 'great national genius that decreed the birth of Indian sovereigns to be of a Moslem father and a Hindu mother'. He vehemently denied that such rulers were foreigners. He considered the difference between the Hindu and Muslim worlds more apparent than real and found the Muslim's 'a generous race, at heart as Indian as the Hindus'. His highest prayer for the good of the Motherland was that she might make manifest the twofold ideal of an Islamic body and a Vedantic heart."
Given such attitudes, it is not surprising that India has a bewildering variety of minorities ... For roughly the first three decades following Independence, none of the other minorities except Muslims complained of insecurity and discrimination. As for the Muslims, there were spells of tension between them and Hindus and riots from time to time. Nevertheless, there was fairly harmonious co-existence most of the time and optimism about progressive improvement in mutual relations. Things began to deteriorate from the beginning of the 1980s.
One can mention the reasons here only in the broadest outlines. Pakistan's proxy war against India which was started in Punjab before being carried to Jammu & Kashmir contributed, so did Muslim anger over the discrimination and prejudice they had often to suffer and its growing articulation ... The rise of Islamic fundamentalism in West Asia and its spread to India where aggressive demands like those for legislation to neutralise the Supreme Court's verdict in the Shah Bano case and the banning of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses raised the hackles of Hindus who felt that a common civil code was in order particularly since their own personal laws had been amended after Independence and bans on books abridged their intellectual freedom.
Hindu anger over isolated instances of conversions to Islam made things worse, as did clash of economic interests, particularly in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, between Hindu middleman marketing handicraft and Muslims craftsmen producing them. Prosperity among a section of Muslims because of remittances from family members working in the Gulf fuelled the resentment of economically downwardly mobile Hindus in some states. Clashes between Hindu and Muslim criminal gangs sometimes led to communal riots like the one in Baroda in 1982 ... The final deterioration followed the emergence of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. The Rajiv Gandhi Government ... in power during the most critical period 1984-89, was totally unable to cope with the situation. If its capitulation to Muslim pressure in the Shah Bano case produced a strong Hindu backlash, its permitting of the laying of the foundation stone for the Ram Janmabhoomi temple at Ayodhya gave a massive fillip to the movement which finally culminated in the demolition of the Babri Masjid. After that, and the riots which followed, Hindu-Muslim relations have remained uneasy and Muslims have been continuously haunted by a feeling of insecurity.
Other minorities like. the Christians have started feeling insecure only recently.
While the Prime Minister's assurances to them and laudatory references to their role in India are welcome, there is need for protection on the ground and exemplary punishment to the guilty.
Three things need particularly to be remembered. First, minorities have made critical contributions to almost every sphere of Indian life. Secondly, attacks on religious, ethnic and linguistic minorities, if unchecked, can dismantle the constitutional and other safeguards against criminal majority rule and creates a climate of terror in which political minorities and opposition parties can be mowed down. Thirdly, sizeable populations of Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) in Europe and the United States are free to propagate their own religions, build temples or mosques or Gurudwaras, and retain their cultural identities. How would it be if, incensed by the treatment of minorities in India, the overwhelming majorities of these countries who are Christians, turn against the NRIs? (Source: The Pioneer, 18 December, 1998)
