Terms of Trade: On secularism, there is no going ‘back to the future’

The fight for secularism about building a dynamic and nimble consensus absolutely essential to hold the socio-economic fabric together

On 10 December 2019, the Parliament of India passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The crux of the CAA was a shift away from jus soli (citizenship by birth) to jus sanguinis (citizenship by descent), the idea being granting citizenship to non-Muslim immigrants from India’s neighbouring countries who might have come to India because of religious persecution. The BJP, which passed the law and continues to be in office, celebrated this law as a sort of historical redressal of persecuted minority Hindus, something the Indian state should have done long ago.

The whataboutery on communalism in the subcontinent is nothing new and there is very little to suggest that it will disappear. (Representative file photo)

Five years later, the CAA’s biggest proponents are realizing the limits of this so-called masterstroke. With the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government in neighbouring Bangladesh there has been a large increase in both perceived and actual persecution of Hindus in the country. Bangladesh still has almost 10 million Hindus. A far bigger number, almost 60-70 million, who once used to live in Bangladesh have migrated to India over the last many decades in varying intensities. Given the already overstretched state of habitations in the regions where bulk of this migration was accommodated, there is very little appetite for accommodating even a fraction of the Hindus in Bangladesh if they were forced to move out because of rise in persecution there. CAA or no CAA to decide their legal status is beside the point when it comes local appetite for more such migration.

This is exactly why the Indian state is extremely worried about the situation in Bangladesh. It is also one of the biggest reasons why India continued to be invested in Sheikh Hasina despite growing evidence of her regime’s abuse or subversion of even basic democratic processes in Bangladesh. The Awami League was not programmatically invested in persecuting religious minorities in Bangladesh. Unfortunately, there is very little which can be done right now to change the situation.

To be sure, there is more than an element of hypocrisy in a lot of right-wing commentators in India criticising Bangladesh or anybody else on the question of protecting minorities. From a high-court judge upholding majoritarianism in a Vishwa Hindu Parishad meeting to lower courts promptly ordering “survey” of Muslim places of worship to ascertain whether or not they are built on Hindu temples – this is despite a law being on the statutes which prohibits a change in character places of worship – even the non-partisan arms of the Indian state are now increasingly being seen as emboldening, if not outrightly unleashing, persecution of minorities. India’s own track record – this is irrespective of which political party has been in power – in punishing people for communal violence has been abysmal.

The whataboutery on communalism in the subcontinent is nothing new and there is very little to suggest that it will disappear in the future. The more interesting and pertinent question is what does one do about it?

It is easier to begin with what not to do about it: evoke history to fight communalism. The biggest failure of this strategy in India was seen during the Ram temple agitation when a bunch of historians, most of them from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, got together to argue that claims of the Babri mosque being built on a temple were historically and archeologically untrue and hence the agitation had no standing. The foot soldiers of Hindutva, of course, did not give a damn about such scholarly arguments. The culmination of this political-ideological battle is now history. There is a BJP government in New Delhi and a Ram Temple in Ayodhya.

To be sure, not all historians were invested in the historiography or archeology can beat communalism theory. This column has quoted Majid Hayat Siddiqui, a JNU historian who dissented against his colleagues on the Ayodhya issue, more than once to make this point. Siddiqui’s central argument was that historical veracity of lack of it of such arguments was not the most effective tool and what was needed on part of the historian was a moral-political and not historical argument against communalism.

Then there are others who have argued that even history per se need not be in black and white in many such conflicts. Shahid Amin’s – nobody would accuse him of being pro-BJP – observations in his book on the warrior saint Ghazi Miyan – today it is Suheldev, the Hindu king who defeated Ghazi Miyan, who is more popular in popular culture – is a good example to cite.

“But we know that the medieval Sufis, though gentle in their persona, especially in archetypal opposition to the ‘holy warrior’, had to forcefully carve out their spiritual domain against the locally ensconced authority of jogis. Hagiographies constantly harp on contests between the Sufi and the jogi for spiritual supremacy, contests in which the jogi is invariably bested: he either converts along with his disciples, or retires, leaving the Sufi in triumphant possession of a prior holy and tranquil spot (often by a lake). One of India’s most venerable Sufis, Muinuddin Chishti of Ajmer, is said to have established his hospice only after successfully overcoming ogres and warriors attached to a pre-existing site commanded by a jogi and his entourage. Sometimes, all that remains of the preceding jogi is a wisp of a name, carrying the toponymic stigmata of a ‘historic’ defeat for all to utter”, Amin writes in the book. His arguments will be music to the Hindu right’s ears today which now has Ajmer Sharif in their sight as well.

Amin’s intellectual argument is, of course, not to give a blanket endorsement to frivolous court petitions which are ask for digging the ground under more and more Muslim places of worship to find out remnants of Hindu temples and demand their so-called restoration. He is making this argument to underline the risks at hand in relying on “historical hubris” in dealing with the challenge of communalism.

“It is now widely accepted that the political community of Indian nationals contains differences that would be unhealthy for the nation state to brush aside: regional, linguistic, caste, gender, and community affirmations are here to stay. The question is: if one can find traces of these differences and conflicts in our history, how may we relate these to the present life of the community of Indian nationals? This is a radical and serious issue which Indian historiography must address itself if it is to reach out from the family of like-minded historians to the persons-in-communities who are struggling against the homogenising currents that are constantly and dangerously seeking merely to define the ‘New Indian National’”, he writes.

Amin’s counsel should not be heeded by just historians. It should be taken note of by everyone who is hoping to fight communalism by invoking some flawless utopian past. India needs secularism not because of some fictitious secular past, but because, it has far too much religious diversity to maintain stability under a democratic framework sans a secular outlook by the state. Similarly, just because the language question played a role in Bangladesh’s rupture with Pakistan, it does not mean that Muslim communalism was non-existent in the country and does not drive present-day politics.

Can Indian society really sustain an endless quest to convert Muslim places of worship into Hindu ones, even if historical evidence, whether objective or based on subjective beliefs, might lend some ground to such claims? Will efforts to push such actions in India not embolden fundamentalist elements in neighbouring countries to persecute Hindu minorities? Can the Indian state do anything of consequence so prevent such majoritarian impulses in its neighbourhood, which are bound to touch a raw nerve on this side of the border? The answer to all these questions is an unambiguous no.

To be sure, it is unfair to blame history for failing to solve the communalism problem. Most of these ghosts are being resurrected by current day politics where the incentives to use them are very high.

“The publicly expressed view of all the major political parties is that religion and politics should be kept apart in the interest of both, and such would appear to be the spirit behind the Constitution of India. But that is more easily said than done in a society in which the temptations of mobilising political support by appealing to religious sentiment can be resisted only by saints”, sociologist André Beteille very aptly wrote in his 1998 essay called The Conflict between Norms and Values.

“There is no way in which change can come about without the displacement of some norms and values by others. Nor do all conflicts over norms and values end by tearing apart the fabric of society; indeed, the suppression of such conflict may as easily lead to that outcome. It is important to acknowledge their presence and even their necessity and to create and sustain institutions to negotiate them. This cannot be done by wishing present conflicts out of existence, or hoping for a future in which no conflicts will arise”, Beteille adds in his essay.

His observations might have a valuable insight for future praxis of the battle to fight for secularism. It is not about protecting some metaphysical civilisational value of secularism which was stronger in the past than it is today. It is more about building and sustaining a dynamic and nimble consensus which is absolutely essential to hold the socio-economic fabric together. This might sound like a tautology to a lot of readers, but even the truth needs its proponents when sectarian forces are trying their best to bury it.

Post Script: This column was written before the Supreme Court put a stay on all ongoing and fresh court-cases dealing with demands to convert mosques into temples until its hearing on The Places of Worship Act concludes. 

Roshan Kishore, HT’s Data and Political Economy Editor, writes a weekly column on the state of the country’s economy and its political fallout and vice-versa