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Monday, Nov 29, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Working a democracy

By Harish Khare

We owe it to ourselves to see to it that religion ceases to be the basis of inclusion or exclusion, discrimination or favoured treatment.

FROM KASHMIR to Kancheepuram, suddenly developments are testing the depth of the Indian constitutional arrangement and its democratic resilience. First, Kashmir. The week before last, the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, travelled to the troubled State. He addressed a public rally of 10,000-15,000 people in downtown Srinagar. It was organised jointly by the two partners in the Mufti Mohammed Sayeed-led Government, the Congress and the People's Democratic Party. Probably more than half of the people were mobilised from outside Srinagar. Each one of the rallyists ran a calculated risk; it would not remain a secret in the villages as to who attended the rally. By choosing to join fellow Kashmiris in a democratic ritual, each rallyist was making a statement: I am not afraid of the militant's gun and I want to hear out what the Prime Minister of India has to say about the future of Jammu and Kashmir.

This was more than a show of strength by the pro-India political parties. The large turn-out was an expression of confidence in a democratic order's inherent promise to correct its past mistakes and to remove the current anomalies. As Mehbooba Mufti, the dynamic president of the PDP, spelt it out at the rally, the majority of the people who had gathered at the Amar Singh Cricket Stadium had attained manhood under the shadow of gun — of the militant and of the soldier— and their presence would indicate that they were prepared to have a re-look at the Indian constitutional arrangement's capacity to be fair to them.

But in the clichéd discourse on Kashmir, this outbreak of democratic sentiment was downplayed and instead exaggerated attention continued to be focussed on the unelected gods in various factions of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. These separatist icons would not have a cup of tea with the Prime Minister of India but were only too eager to travel all the way to New Delhi to break bread with the Prime Minister of Pakistan. As a reward, the good general in Islamabad has once again endorsed their untested representative credentials.

A similar contrariness has been at display in the matter of an acharya. A section of the Indian political elite is asserting that somehow a religious figure is above the scrutiny of the rule of law. It is perhaps understandable that the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership — including a former Prime Minister and a former Union Home Minister — should be wanting to politicise the matter of a seer's arrest in a murder case. But what is most disappointing is that a former President of India, who once took the sacred oath to "preserve and protect" the Constitution of India, has given priority to religious sentiments over republican virtues and values. And, to lend a kafkaesque touch to the whole affair, the former Prime Minister leads a delegation to Rashtrapati Bhavan to demand that "the sanctity and dignity of the Kanchi Peetam, as indeed of all religious and spiritual institutions of all denominations, must be protected from political pulls and pressures."

The bottom-line of this argument is that anyone who speaks in the name of religion, be he a highly-respected Sankaracharya or an imam in a local mosque or a bishop in a metropolitan church, ought to be treated differently from other citizens. This argument is contrary to the very essence of democratic equality and the republic's egalitarian commitments.

Disquietingly enough a very sizeable section of the upper caste elites — the very people who preside over key democratic institutions — appears to be in sneaking sympathy with these drumbeaters. This should be a cause of concern about the depth of democratic commitment among the managers of the Indian state. But mercifully enough, the masses in the country remain unimpressed by the claims of special treatment and immunities. The disconnect between a section of the political elite and the masses is all too obvious.

Admittedly, this is not the first time that modern, democratic and republican India has been called upon to deal with claims made in the name of religion. Punjab was a witness to the most violent stand-off between the claims on allegiance made by the Indian state and the demands voiced in the name of religion. The pretentiousness of a man who called himself "sant" and arrogated to himself the right to demand a separate Khalistan had to be put down violently, culminating in Operation Bluestar. The entire country paid a heavy price, including the assassination of a Prime Minister and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. It took years for society and polity to recover collective equilibrium, all because this or that political crowd insisted on manipulating religious sentiments for narrow sectarian purposes. We owe it to ourselves to see to it that religion ceases to be the basis of inclusion or exclusion, discrimination or favoured treatment in our collective affairs.

How the episode resolves itself would be felt and watched as far away as in Kashmir. It would have a vital bearing on the much-needed restoration of a relationship of trust between the Kashmiris and the rest of democratic India. There can be no "solution" — certainly not a just and morally defensible solution — if it is anchored in claims made and encouraged in the name of religion. Neither can any concession nor any legitimacy be granted to the pro-Pakistan secessionist elements, who trade in the idiom of religious affinities between the Valley-based Kashmiri Muslims and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

That, however, does not mean that the Indian state can carry on its business in the same manner as it has for the five decades. All those who preside over the Indian state have an obligation to explore reconciliation and peace in Jammu and Kashmir, as indeed in any other part of the country. It means that the democratic forces, habits and institutions should be re-energised to drain out the reservoir of resentment and alienation among the Kashmiris. That means basic, good governance; but more than that, it also enjoins the Indian security forces in Jammu and Kashmir to justify their presence as the guardian, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the public rally, of the "life and property of law abiding citizens." Just because a man wears the Rashtriya Rifles uniform it does not give him a licence to misbehave with the citizens. As the Prime Minister reminded the forces as well as the citizens, "the honour and dignity of our security forces oblige us to deal firmly with all violations of human rights of citizens."

Our leadership should be sufficiently self-confident to demand that the army deals firmly with its rogue elements. A few uncivilised officers and men cannot be allowed to undo the hard work and sacrifices of the Indian Army as well as the painstaking efforts of political parties and other citizen-groups. We owe it to our democratic polity to discipline the errant elements in our security forces, if the "healing touch" has to have any meaning. Our elites cannot reserve all their indignation for a seer; they must show the same sensitivity in the matter of countless young men and women picked up by the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir and the entire Northeast.

Only a decent, caring and fair India can earn back the lost trust of the Kashmiris. Commitments made to Kashmiri sub-nationalism — enshrined in Article 370, and periodically re-affirmed in the agreements of 1952 and 1975 — have to be respected and realigned in tune with democratic accountability. In particular, it means that the Congress leadership (mostly based in Jammu) should stop its clamour for a new Delimitation Commission. The Kashmir Valley should continue to feel that it is the senior partner vis-à-vis Jammu and Ladakh. In the immediate context, the greatest service that the Congress leadership can render to reconciliation in Jammu and Kashmir is to let Mufti Mohammed Sayeed continue as Chief Minister for the full term, rather than insist on the letter of the "agreement" between the Congress and the PDP.

Only a democratically self-assured leadership in New Delhi can have the moral and intellectual clarity to offer the Kashmiris the space they strive for within the Indian Union. Pakistan too may be able to live with it if the Kashmiris get convinced about the fairness of the space being offered to them. But the democratic Kashmiris (as also the alienated elements in the Northeast) are bound to remain sceptical if democratic India is not able to display a stamina for constitutional fairness in the rest of the country.

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