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1976 and 1993—the two moments in Indian history that show secularism’s fall from grace

In 'Hurt Sentiments', Neeti Nair reveals the growing disjuncture between faith in the state ideology of secularism, in theory and praxis.

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Although the term “secular” was added to the Preamble to the Constitution during the Emergency, the debates reveal the government’s reluctance to define secularism. Scholars have long theorized about the distinctive characteristics of Indian secularism; these debates offer rich examples of how people’s representatives from across India understood and drew assurance from Indian secularism. The subsequent amendments (Forty-Third and Forty-Fourth) that reversed several of the changes made to the Constitution during the Emergency did not alter the changes made to the Preamble. However, a parliamentary debate on “hurt” Hindu sentiments in the wake of the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya shows up secularism as an ideal hardly worth defending. What accounts for secularism’s precipitous fall from grace? My analysis of these two moments in India’s history—1976 and 1993—reveals a growing disjuncture between faith in the state ideology of secularism, in theory and in praxis.

The Sangh way

Several scholars have written on the relationship between the RSS and the Jana Sangh. Whatever the precise modalities of sharing and propagating an ideology of Hindu victimhood and resurgent Hindu pride between the two organizations, there was complete harmony in the views of RSS chief M. S. Golwalkar in Bunch of Thoughts and the thesis of “Indianisation” propounded by Jana Sangh leaders Balraj Madhok and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
This was recognized by the prime minister as evinced in the following brief exchange, as well as by other members of Parliament.

Indira Gandhi: Books are being written and published changing our known history. This is extremely dangerous on us. . . . I would like the hon member to read some of the speeches made by members of his party who have said that the Muslims cannot live in India unless they are Indianised.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee: Now, it is my turn to challenge the Prime Minister. Let her produce a single speech, and I am prepared to take action against that Jana Sangh leader. [. . .]

Indira Gandhi: Golwalkar ji has said this (Interruptions) . . . I am told that the Members who have joined certain Governments on behalf of the Jana Sangh have been Members of the RSS. I think there are any number of speeches which can be produced on these lines.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee: Show me even one.

Indira Gandhi: Why one, we will show you all. We discussed all these in the National Integration Council.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee: Speak of the Jana Sangh, of the Jana Sangh . . .

Although Golwalkar’s Bunch of Thoughts elaborated his views on the place of Muslims in India and Indian history, and the RSS’s highest executive body routinely pronounced its views on the status of Kashmir and other political matters, as many as three High Court judgments declared that the onus lay on the government to prove that the RSS was “political.”

The RSS chief M. S. Golwalkar offered “the Sangh Way” to resolve the Muslim problem. “Bharat,” he declared, “is Hindustan, the land of the Hindus.” To an Englishman who asked him his views of Muslims and Christians, he responded by asking the Englishman his opinion of those in England who are “not English.” Did he think ofturning them out of England?

The Englishman replied: “If they merge in our stream of life and become one with the national aspirations, we don’t object to their way of worship.” Golwalkar concurred with this position. Assimilation, or Indianization, in a word, became the core demand and slogan of the Sangh—both the RSS and the Jana Sangh. Included in this pithy slogan was opposition to Urdu, which was deemed to be a foreign language; opposition to reservation for Muslims in elected bodies or services; and the constant reminder, dinned into every other editorial and speech, that Muslims were responsible for the partition of India and had still not proven their loyalty to India.

The independence and integrity of Hindustan are constantly menaced by Pakistan, which is indeed a dagger planted in the body of India. And it was the Indian-area Muslims more than Pakistan-area Muslims who planted that dagger there. This is history. And Indian Muslims cannot disown responsibility for it. When, therefore, the Hindu sees that the Muslim has set up an Islamic State in Pakistan but wants a “secular” state in Hindustan, he feels that the Muslim is not being reasonable. He notes that while the Muslim had adopted Urdu in Pakistan he is opposing Hindi in Hindusthan. He notes, too, that while he has no tears to shed for the plight of Hindus in Pakistan he is all the time demanding more jobs and more offices and more power in Hindusthan. The Hindu sees all this and he feels cheated.
. . .

The Muslim is not educating himself; and the Government is doing nothing to educate him. He seems to be living in a ghetto world of his own, emotionally frozen in the ruins of the Mughal Empire. When is he going to see that except for his religious beliefs, he is a Hindu—by blood, by language, by everything? Only when the Muslim identifies himself completely with this country and its people and their culture will he be at peace with himself and with the world.

There is no space in this diatribe for the Muslim to offer a response and rebut these absolute charges. It is the Muslim who desires a secular state in Hindustan, surely a most unreasonable demand. Whatever the Muslim might do—and that s / he might now wish to participate in Muslim-led political parties was regarded a threat—the very existence of Pakistan made their loyalty suspect. In the late 1940s, when articles in the Organiser asked Muslims to give up their religious customs and adopt Hindu names, copies of the publication were banned, as discussed in Chapter 1; now, the Organiser reiterated that Indian Muslims must accept that they were, essentially, “Hindu.” These articles were not, however, banned. In fact, they were an extension of Golwalkar’s Bunch of Thoughts, marketed as a collection of his speeches and quickly translated into regional languages.

The Sangh sought to educate the opposition on the position of Muslims in India. Bapurai Sohoni, former president of the Jana Sangh, criticized Jayaprakash Narayan’s address to university teachers and students in Bombay, in which he had referred, with foreboding, to the rise of Hindu nationalism. Sohoni sought to disabuse JP of the idea that Muslims were
second-class citizens:

After carving out Pakistan, the Moslems who have stayed back in India have not got any complex of second-class citizenship. It is an untrue statement. The Muslims after independence are so conscious that they act as a powerful political pressure group. The Congress has won all the elections on the basis of the solid support of Muslims. . . . Muslims are not second class citizens; they are the supercitizens of India. The fact that Dr Zakir Husain is President and Shri Hidayatullah is Chief Justice, disproves any statement to the contrary. The fact that Zakir Husain could get elected even though opposing the Directive Principle on Uniform Civil Code, shows the power of Muslim communalism in Hindusthan.

Members of the Sangh routinely compared the personal marriage laws of Indian Muslim men, who were allowed to marry four wives, with those of Pakistani Muslim men, whose marriage laws had been substantially reformed. Writers in the Organiser also compared the position of allegedly pampered Muslims in India with those of Hindus in Pakistan, who were second-class citizens and did not have the right to become head of state.

The Sangh’s ideology relied on Pakistan as much for its progressive policies toward Muslims as for its regressive attitude toward its own religious minorities. The Congress’s politics of tokenism, of appointing Muslims in high places, militated against a real reckoning of the position of Muslims in the nation at large. In the absence of hard data, the editor of the Organiser, K. R. Malkani, pronounced that the perception of Muslims that they were marginalized, was a “psychological” problem “with its roots in the historical.” Malkani blamed the “average Muslim” for living in the past and considering himself a member of the ruling class; he asked that they undergo “a whole process of re-education” that would give them a “proper perspective of history.” In a throwback to the Sangh’s obsession with partition, and also reflecting a bizarre approach to national statistics, Malkani argued
that if the three countries of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh were considered together, the proportion of Muslims in services would not be less than their share in the population of the “Hindustan Peninsula”!

This excerpt from Hurt Sentiments by Neeti Nair has been published with permission from Harper Collins.

 

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