SECULARISM

Javed Anand on the State of Secularism

Having dislodged the BJP-led Government a fortnight ago, socialists and communists, Congressmen and its regional rivals, caste representatives and Muslim communalists (have) all endorsed the United Front's claim to rule.

Victory for secularism and the humbling of Hindutva? If a "no" for an answer would be cynical, a "yes" without reservations would be short-sighted. Twice in a; span of two days recently, Mr. V.N. Gadgil emphasized the need for his partymen to rethink the credo which has landed his party in a ditch. Hindus have deserted the party for its perceived pro-Muslim bias, while Muslims have come to see it as a less transparent version of the RSS. To this, Mr. Gadgil could well have added the alienation from the Congress of Sikhs, since 1984, and, now, Christians too.

Faced with the prospect of its gradual withering away from the political landscape, the Congress may feel compelled to introspect. Mr. Gadgil said the discussion should not be limited to the role of religion in politics but also include the role of caste in politics. Given the experience of recent years, this sounds fine in principle. But it also looks like a clever Congress subterfuge to divert attention from itself and turn the searchlight towards the "social justice" parties which openly seek specific caste-community linkages.

The call to introspect will carry conviction if the Congress keeps the question of caste politics in abeyance and takes an honest, hard look at its own role in nourishing and nurturing communal consciousness in the last 12 years. What is needed is not some involved philosophical enquiry into the meaning of secularism and its suitability to the Indian situation. Mr. Gadgil's party will do itself and the country a lot of good by asking itself: If somehow the last 12 years of our national existence were erased from history and our collective memory so that it is 1984 again with Mrs. Gandhi at the helm, would it rethink the choices it had made earlier?

June 1984: The first frontal assault on a sacred space in post-Independence India is launched, in Amritsar.

October 1984: Mrs. Gandhi is assassinated by two of her own security guards. Prominent leaders of the Congress party, not the Bajrang Dal, master-mind a "retaliation" in which over 3,000 innocent Sikhs from Delhi alone are made to pay for the dastardly action of two members of their community.

December 1984: Party-paid advertisements in newspapers make not-so-subtle appeals to "Hindu sentiments" for votes in the Lok Sabha elections. The RSS throws its full weight behind the Congress which wins with an unprecedented majority.

1986: Mindless Muslim leaders, political and religious, churn up mass passion to protest against the Supreme Court's judgement in the Shah Bano case claiming it amounts to an interference in the God-given personal law of Muslims. The frenzy is sufficient to force Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi into enacting a new law excluding Muslims from the provisions of section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code applicable to all communities.

As if in anticipation of such a development, the Rajiv Government performs a "balancing act". Weeks before the Muslim Women's Bill is passed by Parliament, the Congress inspires a court ruling directing that the gates of the disputed Babari Masjid be opened to permit worship of Ram Lalla's idols.

Summer 1992: Narasimha Rao's Government remains a silent spectator while professor Mushirul Hasan, pro-vice chancellor of Jamia Millia, is hounded out of the campus by Muslim bigots for having expressed the view that on principle he is opposed to banning of books, Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses included.

December 1992, January 1993: Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao chooses to believe the BJP's "assurance" that the "kar seva" in Ayodhya will be purely symbolic. The result: Demolition of Babari Masjid and riots throughout the country. In parts of Congress-ruled Maharashtra and Gujarat, police shows its anti-Muslim bias just as it did earlier in Malliana in UP (1987), Bhagalpur in Bihar (1989) and elsewhere.

1995: The party whose governments have, in riot after riot failed to fulfil its constitutional obligation to protect the life and property of thousands of citizens proposes to pay salaries to Imams and job reservations for Muslims. Will this not sound like sheer Hypocrisy to Muslims and yet more instances of "minority: appeasement" to Hindus?

Frequently in recent years the Congress has played footsie with communal politics and sided, overtly or covertly, with bigots, fanatics and opponents of change. If Hindus and Muslims, Sikhs and Christians feel alienated from the party today, the problem is not secularism but the Congress itself. If it has the honesty and the courage. to acknowledge its own role in pandering to communal politics, it could still play a role in reversing the continuing process of polarization.

(Source: The Pioneer, 17 June, 1996)

Official Religiosity

Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda visited the Shivite pilgrim center at Nanjangud, 24-km from here, and offered pooja to the presiding deity. Nanjundeswara and the Chamundi hill.