FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK: Call to the Community to oppose Centaral

Madrasa Board and Save Madrasas

Maharashtra Assembly Election, 2009

by Rakhshanda Jalil

Memorial Lecture by Kamal Hossain, ex F.M. of Bngladesh, 12 July, 2009

: Harsh Mander on Frozen Compassion & Absence of Remorse

: Mohan Bhagwat on Hindutva as Common Identity of all Indians

Chikmaglur-Second Ayodhya as making in the South

: Abhishek Raman on Shiv Sena’s Call to Form Hindu Terrorist Squads

Unconstitutional Land Grab in Kashmir by Army & Other Authorities

: Editorial The Times of India, 30 June 2009

Sword by Pope Benedict XVI to Support President Bush’s New Crusade

: Debarshi Dasgupta on Cultivation of Israel Muslim Indians by Israel

: Hasan Suroor on New Wave of Islamophobia in Europe?

: Adrian Michaels on Muslim Europe: A Demographic Time Bomb

: George Friedman on Afghan War: A New Strategy

: Sam Sagher on Internally Dispaced Kurds in Iraq

: Dr. Syed Habeeb Ashruf’s Message: From a Concerned Muslim American

to Muslim Indians

Estate for many Hindus

: M J Akbar on Nehru & Patel: Divided India to Save It for Civil War

: Balraj Puri: Was Jinnah Secular and Solely Responsible?

: Maulana Azad on Partition

Allotment of Land for Masjid in Delhi by DDA

: Mani Shankar Aiyar on Poverty of Politics and Politics of Poverty

The term ‘minority’ in general refers to a part of the population of a state that is marked off by race or language or religion or some other social characteristic which leads the people of the group to be looked on by the majority as somewhat different or ‘other’ and leads the minority to view the majority as as both different and dominant. In the context of India, the term ‘minority’ encompasses groups of every possible type racial, linguistic, religious, territorial and in addition groups unique to Indian society: minorities on the basis of inferior caste status. According to Indian official terminology, ‘minority’ has a more restrictive range and refers only to the religious minorities.

India is a home to all major religions known to mankind. Pluralism is the hallmark of our society. This acceptance of diversity is not something new but can be traced back to leaders associated with the national movement and the drafting of the Constitution.

The emphasis on national unity was however not something which gained significance in the post-liberation era. It had a long history. In the 19th century, the moderates had emphasised the idea of unity. This emphasis on unity after the 1920s was advocated by Gandhi in whose eyes, the Indian nation was a collection of religious communities.

The progressive intelligentsia represented by Nehru also rejected the notion of a nation based on ethnic feelings or with religious communities as propounded by Hindu nationalists or the Muslim League.

In January 1947, G.B. Pant made a revealing speech before the Constituent Assembly, whereby he established a strong relationship between on the one hand, the need for the minorities, and especially the Muslims, to get integrated, to merge with the nation as individuals, and on the other hand, the precondition of this process, the dissolution of the religious communities. By recognising an undifferentiated individual as being the basis of the nation obviously implied pleading for a culturally uniform nation. (Varshney ed. p. 129)

The same concern was also expressed by B.R. Ambedkar, the Law Minister in Nehru’s first Union Government and Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee, in the following words:

Our difficulty is how to make the heterogeneous mass that we have today a decision in common and march on the way which leads us to unity. (Varshney ed. 2004, p. 132)

In the same perspective, S. Radhakrishnan, who later became the President of India in 1962, suggested that the following be included in the Preamble to the Constitution:

… with a view to develop a homogeneous, secular democratic state, the devices hitherto employed to keep minorities as separate entities within the state be dropped and loyalty to a single national state developed … we must put an end to the disruptive elements in the state. What is our ideal?. It is our ideal to develop a homogeneous democratic state. (Varshney ed. 2004, p. 135)

To concretise the idea of unity, the system of separate electorates, which was considered by a number of Congress members as responsible for the development of the ‘two-nation theory’ that finally led to the creation of Pakistan, was abolished. Sardar Patel, however, did not oppose to the idea of reservation of seats for the Muslims. This idea, however, was not acceptable to some members of the Minority Committee like H.C. Mookherjee, a Christian leader.

The Indian Union which was born with the proclamation of the Constitution on January 26, 1950, maintained the neutrality of the state against the aspirations of the Hindu traditionalists for a ‘Hinduisation’ of the Republic. The debates on the issue of national symbols are very revealing in this perspective. Hindu traditionalists such as Seth Govind Das and H.V. Kamath wanted to call the national flag, Sudarshan. Seth Govind Das wanted India to be officially called Bharat and H.V. Kamath wanted Bande Mataram to be made the national anthem.

The debates that ensued ended in compromises which were mostly unfavourable to the Hindu traditionalists. So far as the naming of India was concerned, after long discussions, it was finally decided to use the well-known formula of the first Article of the Constitution: India that is Bharat shall be a Union of States. Insofar as the national anthem was concerned, Bande Mataram was rejected in favour of Jana Gana Mana, which sings praises of India’s unity in spite of its regional diversity.

The national flag and emblem also ended up avoiding overtly Hindu connotations. The Indian Republic drew on its Buddhist legacy, giving itself both Indian and yet neutral official symbol and thereby ensuring that no single religious community would be able to claim them.

The Constitution of India therefore did provide a space for diversity. Two concerns that were reflected were a) not only every citizen but also all the communities must have a level playing field in every sphere, and b) those who have historically suffered social debility of any kind have been given a constitutional guarantee of protective discrimination.

However, before we look at the guarantees provided to individuals and groups and institu-tional arrangements in the Constitution, let us briefly see how the management of diversity was articulated in the Preamble of the Constitution.

The objectives of the Constitution, are laid down in the original Preamble.

However, while the framers of the Constitution were content with unity, later politics brought back an emphasis on integrity too by including ‘unity and integrity of the nation’ through the 42nd Amendment of the Constitution in 1976.

In Part III of the Constitution certain articles are included Articles 14-18 (Right to Equality), Articles 19-22 (Right to Freedom), Articles 23 and 24 (Right to Freedom of Religion) and Articles 29-30 (Cultural and Educational Rights), to accommodate the diverse groups existing in the country.

The various measures therefore were undertaken to strengthen the idea of unity and also to inculcate a sense of belonging to the nation. But in spite of all the steps undertaken, the minorities have not been able to associate with the majority. The divide between the two continues and in fact with the passage of time it has widened. This provokes one to identify the reasons which have been responsible for widening the gulf between the majority and the minority. Some of the reasons are:

Firstly, as far as the Constitution is concerned, there are certain flaws that prevail in it—

The Indian Constitution and the Hindu Code Bill define Hindus in such a way as to include Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs, the three protestant religious groups. According to the Indian Constitution, all those who profess religions of Indian origin are Hindus. The constitutional expansion hence denies the identity of minority religions as being of Indian origin.

Besides, the denial of identity of minority religions, the identity of even tribals is denied. From 1871 to 1931, the British Indian Census used terms such as ‘primitive, tribal or animist’ to describe the religions of the Scheduled Tribes and to a limited extent those of the Scheduled Castes. The first Census enumeration of indepen-dent India was done in 1951 and those tribals who were not converts to other world religions Christianity, Islam, Buddhists were automatically categorised as Hindus. Thus, through a mere definitional twist, the Census authorities of free India appeared to deny authentic religions identity of millions of Indians and thrust upon them an identity which they disown.

If one focuses on Article 25 of the Constitution, it assures not only freedom of conscience but also the right to propogate one’s religion. Propagation of religion may lead to conversion. Therefore, if the spirit of the Constitution is adhered to, the state should not intervene when people convert from one religion to another. While the state in India has never prevented conversion as such, it has intervened in the process of conversion due to ‘popular pressure’ only with regard to conversion to Islam and Christianity because these religions are perceived and defined as products of conquest and colonisation. In contrast, one does not come across any popular protest or state intervention even when substantial numbers of persons convert from one religion of Indian origin to another. Therefore, it is clear that state intervention is selective. This erodes the meaning of secularism as defined in the Constitution.

The genesis of such discrimination may be traced to the Constitutional order which declared ‘no person who professes a religion different from Hinduism shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste’ denying non-Hindus the statutory benefits that are accorded to Scheduled Caste Hindus.

In addition to all this, one can also see certain flaws in the functioning of the state. The state has intervened to change the personal laws for Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs through the Hindu Code Bill and made them uniform. If the state has to act as a reformer, then it should play the role vis-a-vis all the religious collectivities.

Besides this, one finds a weakness on the part of the state in dealing with communal Violence. It has been seen that either the state is a silent spectator or if it acts, it does not operate in a neutral way. The first way of functioning of the state can well be seen in the case of Orissa which experienced the communal outrage in the last week of August 2008.

The Sangh Parivar was given a free hand to kill and terrorise the Christians minorities. The State Government therefore silently witnessed the death and terror which took 40 lives and made 10,000 homeless.

The second way of functioning of the state is well seen in the February 28, 2002 communal Violence that took place in Gujarat. More than 1000 persons were killed About 700 hundred mosques and mausoleums were demolished; property worth Rs 10,000 crores was looted or burnt. Hundreds of Muslim families were totally uprooted.

In these riots, the police and the bureaucracy operated in such a way that sopported the majority community, that is, the Hindus. What is worse the Chief Minister Narendra Modi justified these riots and described them as a reaction to Godhra fire. The honest officers who did not allow carnage in their areas were instantly transferred by the Gujarat Government.

These are just two incidents. But if one studies India’s political history, then one finds that it is dotted by numerous riots. Thus, in spite of many years of independence, India has not been able to free itself of the curse of communal violence. If anything, it has been getting worse year after year. According to Asghar Ali Engineer, there has not been a single year in the post-independence period which has been free of communal violence though the numbers of incidents have varied.

The inability to control communal violence leads to the weakening of the faith of the minority in the political system. They see it as dominated by the majority community. The middle class, especially the elite Hindu middle class, is complacent. The poor and lower-caste Hindu community is silent. This silent majority has no opinion primarily because it has no confidence that its opinion matters.

Certain steps, therefore, are urgently needed to control the menace of communal violence.

What is needed is that civil society groups, Left parties and secular forces should strengthen themselves. So that they can unitedly combat the growth of fundamentalist forces. Will instil not only a sense of security amongst the minority but but will also reflect the true secular character of the country.

(Source: Mainstream, 17-23 July, 2009)

The loneliest man of Indian politics dreads to step out of the walls that separate him from the horror that multiplies outside haunted fortress in Lutyens’ Delhi. Open the windows and he hears the whispers of the Undead who have swarmed the leafy lanes. They are waiting to claim him, and their voice has the unmistakable tone of vengeance and anger, hurt and humiliation. He dare not look. Oh, those creepy figures without shadows, and he knows who they are, where they come from, and what makes them hungry. They are all there, he is darn sure. That lanky fellow from Karachi, still exuding his impeccable Savile Row elegance and chomping on the damp half of a cigar, seems to have left the mausoleum back home for good and found a more rewarding haunt across the border. Alongside the founder of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is the soldier in olive green who carries within him the harshness and endurance of the desert, and he is waving a hardback and crying "Honour". There are more of them, the wounded, the defeated, the marginalised, and even some bearded chaps from Godforsaken Kandahar. Their accusatory fingers are growing frighteningly longer, as if they might even pierce the concrete and touch his allegedly frozen conscience. Lal Krishna Advani can only shudder and retreat further into the shrinking shell of his political existence.

This is not the place he thought he would end up after such a long journey. A place of isolation and rejection. And this is not what he imagined he would become. A superannuated leader who refuses to accept his own redundancy. Once upon a time, there was an Advani the mobiliser who travelled the entire length of the country as the spokesman of a vandalised nation. He retrieved the abandoned gods of the political Hindu from the archival sites of civilisation and placed them just outside the polling booths. He was the argumentative nationalist who provided the sharpest counterpoints to the official version of secularism. He made the BJP a party of governance, which marked a historic right turn in Indian politics. The best of Advani, whose political career is almost as old as independent India, embodied struggle against power. That Advani is long dead. What we have today is a grim old man who is desperately struggling to postpone his own political irrelevancy. Out there, as the banished and the sidelined ask questions about his leadership, his integrity and honesty, his lies and tricks, he has no words to defend himself. The iron cult is being blasted.

In retrospect, the-Right-in-power was the shortest romance in our political history; those who won the mandate proved not to be worthy of it. Today, after two devastating humiliations, the official custodians of the party are busy scavenging the wreckage of defeat for the last remains of power. It is the pathology of the discredited; and Advani, the BJP’s tallest leader after Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s retirement from active politics, is the cause number one.

As Vajpayee soared above the party, Advani was the proverbial number two, and the long distance yatri of Indian politics never revealed his frustration. The more he travelled, the more elusive appeared the destination. When he did finally become number one, he saw it as a moment of liberation and possibility. He should have stopped there. Instead, the yatri accelerated his pace only to become the cause number one of the BJP’s nervous breakdown.

He is the one who stands between decay and renewal. After the 2004 defeat, at the National Council meeting of the party, he said: "Ideology is what gives the BJP its distinctive identity. We are a party with a difference precisely because we are firmly wedded to a set of core beliefs. Our political priorities, strategies and tactics may be fashioned by the issues of the day but our ideology remains constant. The BJP is first and foremost a nation-first party. We are a party of nationalism. Our politics is determined by the litmus test of what is good and desirable for the nation."

Those were inspiring-and reassuring-words from the original action hero of Hindutva, which he had defined as a nationalist, not religious, sentiment. And those words should have formed the first testament of the party’s new guide and philosopher. He should have gracefully made the way for a new leader. He had other ideas, and there was a job he badly wanted. He chose to be the highest guru of subterranean manipulations, and defying both biology as well as ideology, he repainted himself as the Future. He did not become another Vajpayee. He has become the sole repudiator of whatever the great reconciler of the Indian Right stands for.

Not that it was too late for him to play the wise counsellor. Shimla-or in retrospect Jaswant Singh’s Siberia-was his last chance of redemption. Perhaps he alone could have averted Jaswant’s martyrdom. Advani, the first BJP leader to sing the secular virtues of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, quietly endorsed the banishment of the blasphemous Jaswant who did not say anything more outrageous than what the leader of the Opposition had written in the visitor’s book at Jinnah’s mausoleum in Karachi: "His (Jinnah’s) August 11, 1947, address is a forceful espousal of a secular state in which every citizen would be free to practice his own religion. My respectful homage to this great man."

Well, Jaswant did a lot more than lazily paraphrasing the Quaid-e-Azam’s much quoted address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan. He did 10 years of research in history before retelling the story of Partition and the political life of Jinnah. When Jaswant was summarily sacked by the suddenly animated Rajnath Singh for writing a book, for going against the popular mythology of the good Nehru and Patel and the evil Jinnah, for asking questions. Ideally, Advani should have stood up for the sacredness arguments.

Certainly he could not have been unaware of the uses of arguments and revaluation of the past in a confident democracy that was in no need of bogeymen. Advani too suffered for his arguments for a while; he felt abandoned, isolated and misunderstood, but he stood by his belief. He did not repent or recant.

Mohan Rao Bhagwat seems to have enjoyed his status as the most sought after sound bite guru.

he told India Today: "When I look back, I identify two landmark events in my entire political career: first, the Rath Yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya; second, the six-day trip to Pakistan. And I can tell you that… I had a feeling I was making history. The Rath Yatra yielded immediate dividends for the party. As for the Pakistan trip, a few years down the line there will be people who will think that what Advani did then had strengthened his cause, his party and raised his esteem in the people’s eyes."

In his memoirs My Country My Life, he writes: "I continue to hold the view that I had expressed in the India Today interview…This debate (about Jinnah) is not about the past; it is about the future, in the light of the lessons from the past. For the issue that should be discussed is not so much Jinnah, but the future of Indo-Pak relations in the context of a new vision of peace, inter-religious harmony, and inter-state co-operation in all of South Asia."

The conviction politician was very much on display. Jaswant took Advani’s argument further and gave it a book-length legitimacy of scholarship and research. At the now-infamous session of introspection, when the ayatollahs in saffron asked for the heretic’s head, Advani, the original deviant, felt no sense of solidarity with Jaswant; he did not bother to tell the neophytes in the party that BJP was not fragile enough to crumble under the weight of a book. He showed no conscience-or courage. When a wounded Jaswant proved to be a bigger threat than his book, Advani just retreated, perhaps knowing that no words could have redeemed him. When Jaswant took him on over Kandhahar and the cash-for-MPs scandal, Advani did not come out with his version of truth. Maybe he was silent because he hated to lie.

The aura was anyway coming to an end. It began long ago. The halo of the Hindutva’s long marcher was not there as he stared down from the cardboard legend of "Determined Leader, Decisive Government" in the last General Elections. It was his first and last battle for power, and at 82, he was determined to realise his ambition, and quite decisive about the style of his campaign-very presidential. In yet another desperate makeover, he sold himself as a moderniser-and a strongman for the hard times who was pitted against the "weakest" prime minister.

Independent of the traditional structures of the party, it was a campaign sustained by his fantasy and a select few non-political freelancers. Ideally, he should have been just the campaigner, not the candidate. Advani on the stump was not exactly the face of 21st century India-or of a 21st century Right-wing party. He turned the election into a referendum on himself and the answer was a resounding no.

Still he refused to read the message that he has overstayed, that the time has come for a total generational shift. Defeat only intensified his hallucination about political immortality, and he took refuge in make-believe. He has become the patron saint of a cabal, each member a protégé of his. They are united in projecting him as the indispensable one because each of them doesn’t want the other as the next leader.

So the BJP today has a president whose freedom is purely ceremonial. (Rajnath’s only show of authority was the sacking of Jaswant.) The real power is with an urban Brahminical elite. Advani himself declared that the BJP chief ministers will not be "disturbed". He has been distancing himself from ideologically driven grassroots leaders-be it Kalyan Singh or Uma Bharati-from the hinterlands since the late 1990s. He abandoned the constituency that made him and desperately sought the approval of the one that doesn’t vote for him anyway.

He has now reached a stage where he has nowhere to turn for one last vote of conscience. In the wake of the post-Jaswant mutiny, he has only succeeded in bringing the RSS to the centre of the party affairs. Mohanrao Bhagwat, the media-savvy RSS boss with that camera-friendly walrus moustache, seems to have enjoyed his status as the most sought after soundbite guru.

Still, the high profile role of the Sangh as the final arbiter of the BJP’s destiny may have restored peace in the House of Saffron, but it has also strengthened the stereotype: the party’s independence is conditional. It has further added to the image crisis of the BJP. It is perhaps the final revenge of Advani.

On September 12, 1947, the 20-old swayamsevak left his hometown of Karachi for Delhi on a BOAC aircraft. He had to flee because many of his colleagues were arrested after a bomb blast in the city. Six momentous decades later, it is again farewell time.

(Source: India Today, 14 September, 2009)