- Hindu-Muslim unity
in India is superficial
By Kuldip Nayar
I do not know why after every bomb blast in India, be it
at Mumbai in a Hindu locality or at Malegaon outside a
mosque, Indians, particularly the media, resoundingly say
there was no communal riot. One leader after another
repeats in more or less the same words that terrorists
have failed in their nefarious purpose to disrupt the
Hindu-Muslim unity.
So far the refrain has been that terrorists have no
religion. But after the September 8 Malegaon blasts, most
Urdu newspapers in the country have said that the bomb
blasts were the handiwork of Hindu fundamentalists.
Probably so, but if in the past the comment has been that
terrorists have no religion, then why change the policy
now? It does reflect anger, but smacks of parochialism.
If the blasts are engineered by particular communities, it
is bad enough. But the worst is the message it conveys:
the Hindu-Muslim unity is superficial. When the two
communities leave the elites aside live in their own
localities, have little social contact and very limited
economic dealings with each other, why should Indians feel
the bomb blasts were used to cut the unity asunder?
Confusing
The absence of conflict is not unity. We are confusing it
with co-existence. The fact, however sad, is that even
after nearly 60 years of independence, Indians have not
been able to establish a secular polity which they thought
they would after getting rid of the British rulers and
parting company with those who wanted to establish a
separate and religious polity.
India's freedom struggle projected pluralism as its ethos.
Where did it go wrong? This was the question I raised in
my maiden speech in the Rajya Sabha (upper house of Indian
parliament) in 1997. I still have no firm answer. Either
the seed of separatism has been sown so deep that Indians
have not been able to uproot it or they have left things
as they were because they did not care. Once India got
independence, Indians hardly bothered to establish a
secular society.
True, India adopted a constitution which has given all
communities equality before the law. But to make this
meaningful, little has been done.
The effort to blot out old prejudice or rectify communal
thinking has seldom gone beyond paper. Indians have stayed
more as Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs than Indians
and their approach has been sectional and it has remained
the same way in one form or another.
Indians have not imbibed the secular spirit which a
secular society demands. That is the reason why most of
them do not rise against blatant acts of communalism and a
few even give shelter to terrorists, foreign or Indian.
Indians are barking at the wrong tree. Take for example,
Vande Mataram (Mother, I bow to thee). It is a song which
has stirred national feelings for years. To use it for
political purpose is fatal.
India's federal minister Arjun Singh, a top Congress
leader, was the first to throw the brick, making the
singing of the song compulsory at government-aided schools
on September 7, when Vande Mataram was supposed to be 100
years old. Congress president Sonia Gandhi would have done
the country proud if she had said that she was not
compelled to sing it. True, she did not sing, but the
party's explanation was that the date of September 7 was
historically wrong for the centenary year.
Message
The message that a person does not become less patriotic
if he does not sing the song went awry. The Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) which has no other programme except to
communalise every facet of India feels happy that it has
embarrassed the Congress.
The question is not whether the Congress has lost or the
BJP has won. The question is whether the Indian nation has
won. It has not.
The BJP may have scored a point but it is at the expense
of Vande Mataram.
I was amused to read the comment by the Muslim Personal
Law Board and some Islamic organisations. They do not have
to teach the nation that Islam does not worship anyone
else expect Allah. After living together for centuries,
all Indians know that. They made it a religious issue and
played into the hands of the BJP.
A society does not become secular by enunciating that it
is secular. It requires commitment to the principle of
tolerance and accommodation. Above all, it needs
conviction that one's religion is not superior to that of
others. All people, belonging to different religions,
realise that their separate entities merge into one
entity, that of India.
When there is no odium of guilt in a community which kills
people of the other community, every verdict gets lost in
recrimination. A secular society should be made of sterner
stuff.
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