The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Communalism needs new response: Panikkar

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 31, 2007
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Karnataka - Bangalore

Communalism needs new response: Panikkar

Staff Reporter

Seminar debates ‘Combating communalism and terrorism’

The historian says
There have been sustained cultural and social activities by communal forces
The recent electoral success in Gujarat is an important indicator

— Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

SHOWING URGENCY: Praful Bidwai (left), columnist, K.N. Panikkar, historian, Ko. Chennabasappa, chairman of M.S. Krishnan Memorial Trust, and Supriya Roy Choudhary, professor of political science, at a seminar in Bangalore on Sunday.

Bangalore: There is need for a departure from existing modes of combating communalism, from that of an exclusively political mode, to interventions in culture, said historian K.N. Panikkar here on Sunday. He was speaking at a seminar on “Combating communalism and terrorism,” organised by the M.S. Krishnan Memorial Trust and Kannada monthly “Hosathu”.

“Communalism is often seen as an essentially political phenomenon, and combating communalism seen as a political act. But the groundswell in communalism has been possible because of sustained cultural and social activities undertaken by these forces across the country and the creation of a communal social consciousness,” said Prof. Panikkar.

The recent electoral success of “communal forces” in Gujarat, despite their violence being exposed, is an important indicator of how political and social consciousness has been communalised, he said. “In the last five years the number of educational institutes controlled by the RSS has increased dramatically. Also, new social groups are being inducted into the communal fold, and the cultural life of tribal people being ‘Hinduised’,” he said.

There has never been a greater urgency to combat communalism, said Prof. Panikkar, adding that he anticipated a “surge” of communalism in the next two years. The intensifying of communal violence reflects the “failure of secular forces in resisting communalism,” he said. “There has not been a strong attempt to retrieve secularism and communal forces have been allowed to occupy positions of power,” he said.

Violence, he said, has always been linked to communalism.

“It becomes necessary to identify an ‘enemy’ for communal forces to make advances in society. The perpetration of violence has a larger agenda, which is to create a perpetual sense of fear and insecurity in people’s minds,” he said.

Speaking on terrorism, columnist and political observer Praful Bidwai said that state-sponsored terrorism is “incomparable” in scale to individual acts of terror.

“The 3,000 people killed in the September 11, 2001 attack has no comparison to the lethality of violence that the State can mobilise. For instance, over 1,00,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq following U.S. intervention,” he said.

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