A principle of secularism is that religion shall not be inducted into politics, it shall not be exploited for political gains. The Constituent Assembly adopted a resolution in 1948 mandating this, and a nine-member Supreme Court bench, in its majority decision on March 11, 1994 in the Bommai case, upheld this principle.

 India in the Decade since Demolition

                                                       N Ram

THE demolition of the Babri Masjid, a place of worship going back to the 16th century, by shock troops of the Sangh Parivar commanded by its top leaders, was a vile and barbaric act. It challenged, at one stroke, the rule of the constitution and the law, the secular foundations of the modern Indian state, and India’s rich, multihued and many-layered civilisational heritage. In the wake of this planned act of vandalism, an ugly communal situation developed in several parts of the country, taking a huge toll of human life, welfare and morale. Attempts were also made to create and consolidate a new type of ideological polarisation along raw communal lines. This polarisation is expressed in the fact that while, from a secular-democratic standpoint, December 6, 1992 is a day of infamy, a day of national shame and grief, from the standpoint of the Hindu Right it is a red-letter day of glory and celebration.

 Since the demolition, heightened pressure has been mounted on the structure of state and society in India to fall in line with the dictates of the ideology of ‘Hindutva.’ This ideology had its origins in the ‘Hindu nationalist’ ideas and currents of the late 19th century, took firm shape in Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s 1923 essay Hindutva, and was consolidated in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh supremo Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar’s 1939 tract We or Our Nationhood Defined. This politically constructed ideology has sought to transform, for the long haul, mass consciousness at different levels by adopting a startling variety of means. It has held out the goal of establishing ‘Hindu Rashtra,’ an authoritarian-majoritarian project that bears a strong resemblance to fascism. Anti-minorityism and hate politics are a significant part, but still only a part of the programme of the Hindu Right.

It is another matter that it was the politics of appeasing and compromising with communalism, practised by successive Congress central governments and the P V Narasimha Rao government above all, that enabled the Hindu Right to seize the initiative and plan its assault, in several stages, on the seat of national power. Suffice it to recognise that communalism, as a political mobilisation strategy, has succeeded in making disturbing progress over the past decade. Let us look at the wider background to this development.

BACKGROUND OF DEVELOPMENT

India is one of the most politicised societies in the world. The degradation of democratic institutions and accumulated frustrations over the failure of successive governments to solve the problems of mass poverty, socio-economic deprivation on a gigantic scale, various forms of entrenched backwardness, including illiteracy, communalism, pervasive corruption and criminalisation of politics, might have led to cynicism from time to time. This decline in institutional performance and the frustrations surely have something to do with the volatility that has been a defining feature of Indian politics for decades. But, fortunately, they have failed to generate a long-term trend of depoliticisation.

Sustained politicisation must be recognised as one of the basic strengths of the modern Indian experience, a function of its democratisation through the freedom struggle and more than half a century of independence. People take their political rights and choice seriously. This is an advantage that India has over several countries that are more developed in several respects, more educated at the base level, and far more prosperous.

Nevertheless, recent political events have underlined the reality that India is passing through a time of painful transition. The question is --- to what? This question cannot be answered without reference to the striking range of conflicts, some of them apparently malignant, which have over an extended period pulled against the fabric of nationhood, the social order and political stability. India bears the burden of a national agenda of unwanted social, ethnic, communal and caste antagonisms and divisive issues shaped over a very long period. The issue of economic policy aside, the unity of India and the integrity of its democratic, secular institutions have come under intense pressure from at least four types of socio-political phenomena.

The first is the problem of separatism or secessionism allied with religious fundamentalism or other extremist ideologies and social tendencies and committed to militarised or terrorist methods. This ideologically, socially and politically determined problem has brought civil society in the affected states or areas to its knees. The pressure exerted by this phenomenon has waxed and waned over the decades, sometimes in response to political authoritarianism, over-centralisation and opportunism.

The second is the phenomenon of politically organised, militant communalism that has been on the march, taking a very high toll and threatening the integrity and basic character of the polity. This phenomenon is expressed in a variety of religious fundamentalist responses, but most menacingly on the national stage by the quite successful building up of the ‘Hindutva’ or ‘Hindu Rashtra’ platform by aggressive Hindu chauvinists, the saffron brigade, since the mid-1980s.

The third challenge is related to the deeply damaging features of, and the pressure and social strife that have been built around, the caste system. Although not unchanging, this system, which is bolstered by landlordism and seeped in semi-feudal values and ideas of a most retrograde kind, continues to have a malignant durability. It exemplifies social oppression, inequality and injustice in a way that cannot be escaped. The widespread demand for ‘social justice,’ and the social divisions and strife that seem, at times, to overwhelm the democratic polity, arise from this situation.

The fourth challenge that cannot be dodged relates to the working of ‘cooperative federalism,’ and more specifically centre-state relations, on which both national unity and political stability depend vitally in a political sense.

The demolition of the Babri Masjid, and the wider politics this represented, brought home to all informed observers of Indian developments that it was communalism as a socio-political mobilisation strategy that had come to the fore --- as the principal challenge.

PRINCIPAL CHALLENGE

Thanks to its ineptness in governance, its appalling performance in relation to all issues that matter, its corruption, degeneration and internal contradictions, its record of fostering divisiveness and national disunity, its anti-people economic policies and collaboration with US imperialism, and its dependence on a hodgepodge of coalition partners, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the mass political party of the Hindu Right, has not been able to make the kind of progress it dreamed about.

The BJP has suffered a series of electoral, and other political, setbacks. Its political stock has been in virtually uninterrupted decline, and its prospects of returning to power in the next general election, due no later than late-2004, are widely believed to be non-existent.

Faced with this grim situation, the party has worked to capitalise, in the assembly elections, on the communal polarisation that seems to have occurred in Gujarat in the wake of the Godhra killings and the genocidal anti-Muslim pogrom unleashed by the militant forces of the Hindu Right, with state sanction and complicity.

Overestimating the strength of communal forces --- a trend reflected in recent academic as well as media analysis --- is as much a danger as underestimating it. If, contrary to the reality beneath the surface, a defeatist perception takes shape that the ‘majoritarian’ aspect of ‘Hindu nationalism’ has triumphed permanently and resulted in a fanaticised majority among the Hindu population, then little remains to fight for. On the other hand, complacency engendered by repeated electoral setbacks to the BJP and its allies can also help communalism strike back in unexpected ways.

In recent essays and public pronouncements, Professor K N Panikkar, the eminent historian of modern India, has been calling attention to certain key changes that seem to have taken place in the co-relation of communal and democratic, secular forces in India. These changes reflect the relative success of the multiple Hindu communal organisations in “constructing a religious identity in the realm of politics.” This means “the focus is now on the religious consciousness in society and its mobilisation for political ends” and towards this end, “communal antagonism is underplayed and religious solidarity is highlighted.”

Unfortunately, there is some evidence that through such a shift, communalism has been able to “broaden” and “reinforce” its appeal. For example, a pre-poll survey done in Gujarat by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) comes up with the disturbing finding that more than the impact of the post-Godhra carnage and the communal polarisation, it is the play of “deep prejudices, social distance and hostility” built up over a period by ‘soft’ communal disinformation and other inputs that helps the BJP. Panikkar has suggested the need for a completely new perspective for democratic, secular intervention.

ON DEFINITION OF SECULARISM

There are many things going for secularism in India, among them our whole history, our civilisational heritage, our freedom struggle and our constitution. But very often, when Indians debate secularism, at the intellectual or political level, the issue tends to get blurred or confused. The typical definition on offer in the Indian debates on secularism is sarva dharma samabhava (equal respect for all faiths) or sarva dharma sadbhava (good feelings towards all faiths). In its 1991 election manifesto, the Congress party declared sarva dharma sadbhava to be “the rationale of our philosophy of secularism.”

Over time, various leaders including the philosopher-statesman Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan have offered definitions of secularism that suggest that in the Indian context it has a rather special, if not unique, meaning. Sometimes it is defined essentially as religious tolerance and catholicity of outlook. Sometimes the famous statement of Swami Vivekananda in his Chicago address of 1893, “We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true,” is cited as the core of Indian secularism.

While such attempts at definition and clarification of a key concept in modern Indian history may have their advantages in particular gatherings or contexts --- since they have the progressive effect of countering bigotry, intolerance and fundamentalism in social life and communalism as a phenomenon --- they will not do as a definition of secularism and what it involves. To put it in a different way, sarva dharma samabhava/sadbhava is a necessary but insufficient condition for the flourishing of secularism in India.

In her preface to a recent collection of essays on communalism by K N Panikkar, Professor Romila Thapar, the path-breaking historian of ancient India, offers the valuable insight that opposition to anti-secular actions and practices, including institutional practices, remains inadequate in India partly because “secularism was given a limited definition…entirely in terms of the co-existence of religions” and the other changes required by a secular society have not been given sufficient attention.

Secularism, as a concept that must be put to work all the time, consists of two defining principles. The first is that people belonging to all faiths and sections and of both sexes are absolutely equal before the constitution, the law and public policy. There shall be no discrimination against anyone on grounds of religion, race, caste, gender and so on. This is what the constitution of India mandates through articles 14, 15, 16, 17, 25, 26, 44 and 325, among others. The guarantee of the special rights of (religious and linguistic) minorities in articles 29 and 30 are an extension of this equality-and-fairness principle. The abolition of untouchability and the exceptions to the non-discrimination rule, made to protect compensatory discrimination (in favour of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and also the other socially and educationally ‘backward classes’) are meant as devices to secure the integration of historically disadvantaged groups of people and their access to fair equality of opportunity.

Secularism as the equality-and-fairness principle must be based on justice if it is to survive and flourish. The unmet demand for justice in India has many dimensions --- the constitutional-political, the social, the economic, gender and so on. Discrimination and the denial of justice in any of these dimensions weaken and sap the practice of secularism. Revivalism, traditionalist attitudes to women, caste and social hierarchy, belief in Manu Dharma and so on work against secularism primarily by denying justice to the victim sections of the population.

PSEUDO-NATIONALISM AS ‘POSITIVE’ SECULARISM

Hindu Rashtra ideology and practice flagrantly deny this equality-fairness-and-justice principle and they do this crudely through anti-Muslim and anti-Christian venom and, at a more sophisticated level, by pressing the value of ‘positive secularism.’ Positive secularism as a political mobilisation strategy needs the disguise of pseudo-nationalism --- a ‘Hindu nationalism’ appealing to an authoritarian ‘majoritarianism’ --- in order to gain legitimacy. Defining many-streamed and many-hued Indian civilisation and all Indians as ‘Hindu’ (in a ‘cultural sense’), legitimising ‘Hindutva’ or ‘Hindu-ness,’ pushing the value of ‘majoritarianism’ as the imperative of elective democracy, and calling for an authoritarian ‘national unity’ and ‘patriotism’ on this revivalist, reactionary and ultimately disintegrative basis is what pseudo-nationalism seeks to achieve for naked communalism. “Were this movement to succeed,” warned an eminent historian (late) Professor Sarvepalli Gopal, “secularism would be strangled and India would be heading for a fascist take-over.”

But the second principle of secularism is even more important in the present context. Although constitutionally and legally mandated, it is honoured flagrantly in the breach. This principle is that religion shall not be inducted into politics, that it shall not be exploited for electoral or other political gains. The Constituent Assembly adopted a resolution in 1948 mandating this, and both the electoral and criminal laws are supposed to be sensitive to this principle. A nine-member Supreme Court bench, in its majority decision on March 11, 1994 in the Bommai case, full-throatedly upheld both principles of secularism.

Communalism in India is of different varieties; it is not the monopoly of any one community. There is majority communalism and minority communalism and they feed on each other. But what is absolutely clear from the experience of India since independence, but above all from the experience of the decade following demolition, is that communalism can be contained and quite easily defeated unless it is allowed by the system to become a political mobilisation strategy --- through the subversion of the second principle of secularism.

The hard-core standpoint on this vital aspect of the communal question was spelt out by ‘Guruji’ Golwalkar of the RSS in We or Our Nationhood Defined. Without any inhibition or subtlety, he asserted the supremacy of Hinduism --- “syndicated Hinduism,” to borrow a phrase from Romila Thapar --- in social and political life as a way of achieving the RSS goal.  India has got into big trouble by allowing the disciples of Golwalkar to put this anti-secular principle into deadly practice.

Among political forces in India, the Left alone has put up a spirited fight against both communalism and the dilution of secularism in theory and practice in India. Important sections of the intellectual community, notably the best and brightest among India’s historians and economists, have made a splendid contribution to this cause. So recently has the Election Commission of India, through its courageous and inspiring secular intervention in Gujarat.

As India marks the tenth anniversary of the calamitous act of demolition of a place of worship, it needs to rise to the challenge in the way it did during the brightest chapters of the freedom struggle --- when the combined forces of imperialism, with its ‘divide and rule’ policy, and communalism were defeated decisively through united popular mobilisation and struggle.

It was the politics of appeasing and compromising with communalism, practised by successive Congress central governments and the P V Narasimha Rao government above all, that enabled the Hindu Right to seize the initiative and plan its assault, in several stages, on the seat of national power.