HUMAN RIGHTS

N. Ram On India at the Crossroads: Human Rights and Communalism

The first point that strikes anyone about the national political situation is that the country seems to be at the crossroads. The polity stands divided or fragmented.

There is a great deal of uncertainty.

Some issues that should have been addressed in the general election were not (Some of them are):

1.     Challenge to national unity forced by communalism as a political mobilisation.

2.     Threat of separatist movements backed from abroad.

3.     Challenge of social justice.

In my view, high priority must be accorded to the question of resisting communalism.

Where does human rights figure in all this? It figures in relation to a number of issues - such as social justice, corruption and separatism. When we talk of the problem of communalism, it involves the human rights of the minorities and of the innocent members of the majority community caught in the crossfire during a political battle unleashing communal passion, tension and violence of the kind that we saw during the demolition of Babari Masjid in December 1992

What happened to innocent people, particularly the Muslims of Bombay, where the Shiv Sena was involved in a semi-fascist kind of offensive immediately after the Babari Masjid demolition, is a question we must address. How effective are human rights organisations in that kind of communal conflagration? Not very effective, in my opinion.

According to Sarvepalli Gopal, the historian, communalism in the South Asian sense is unknown almost anywhere else in the world. We know of the Muslim fundamentalism of the Middle East. Here, it is not merely Hindu fundamentalism. In the Indian context, communalism is a political mobilisation strategy.

It is not a new phenomenon. It is perhaps a 100 years old or even older. There was, for instance, the use of Ganesh Puja as a technique of mass mobilisation during the freedom struggle. The method which Gandhiji himself adopted was sometimes controversial. But the best example of it the RSS attempt to communalise or hinduise the post-partition political state.

It is this new phenomenon that we are concerned with. It is relatively of recent origin. If combated in a determined way through the active practice of secularism in independent India it could have been marginalised. Because of a complexity of factors, it has been able to capture hearts and minds and come to the political centre-stage as India prepares to usher in the 21st.century.

There is an apparent absence of capability within the political within the political and constitutional system to keep communalism at bay. This is often demoralising to those who believe in secular democracy and modern civil society but we should not feel pessimistic.

There is a whole literature that goes strongly for our secularism. However, very often when we debate secularism at the intellectual or political level the issues tend to get blurred or confused.

The Indian concept of secularism is sarva dharma sambhava, that is, equal respect for all faiths. In its 1991 election manifesto the Congress made an effort to define secularism. It said the fundamental principle of our millennial civilisation was unity in diversity and the rationale of our philosophy of secularism was sarva dharma sambhava or good feeling towards all faiths. In the 1996 manifesto it side-stepped the issue of what secularism means and simply stated that "the cornerstone of secularism is the security of the minority". This is a tremendous and dangerous oversimplification. Secularism demands more than that.

Secularism as a concept must be put to work in all situations. Basically there are at least two fundamental principles of secularism in the Indian context.

The first is that people belonging to all faiths and sections and both sexes are absolutely equal. There shall be no discrimination against anyone on grounds of race, religion, caste, gender and so on. This is what the Constitution mandates. The exceptions to the non-discrimination rule are devices to secure the integration of historically disadvantaged groups and their access to fair equality of opportunity.

The second principle of secularism is that religion shall not be inducted into politics. Though constitutionally and legally mandated, it is honoured flagrantly in the breach. Both electoral and criminal laws are quite sensitive to this principle.