PAST & PRESENT
Exercises in bigotry
RAMACHANDRA GUHA
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Extremist Hindus seek to intimidate Muslims in the present, but they also seek to control the past, by rewriting history...
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Photo: PTI
Keeping tradition alive: Hindus in Lahore celebrate Holi.
I HAVE long believed that the secret heroes of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh are the bigots on the other side. In their philosophy and method, and in their fears and aspirations, the votaries of Hindutva tend to mimic the Islamic fundamentalists. Because Pakistan is an Islamic State, say our local bigots, we must become a Hindu State. Because politicians in Iran take orders from the ayatollahs, our local netas must likewise seek guidance from the sants and the sankaracharyas.
Two-way street
Sometimes, however, the chain of influence can run the other way. That is, the actions of Hindu fundamentalists can inspire the actions of Islamic fundamentalists. Consider a recent news report about the content of school textbooks in Pakistan. Apparently, the Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA) has objected to the inclusion of some passages on Hinduism in the curriculum for Classes VI to VIII. According to the report, the "MMA leaders said that the inclusion of the history of Hinduism will have a negative effect on Muslim students". When their demands were not met, they walked out of the National Assembly, insisting that "the chapter on Hinduism must be scrapped".
To this reader, and perhaps some others, the report brought back memories of the school textbook row that took place in India during the regime of the National Democratic Alliance. Then, a fierce attack was mounted on textbooks that allegedly diminished the importance of Hinduism in Indian history and (again, allegedly) gave too much space to Muslim rulers and cultural achievements.
However, since the party of the bigots was in power, the polemic was soon transformed into policy, with textbooks rewritten to glorify professedly "Hindu" rulers and politicians and diminish rulers and politicians whose attitudes and policies did not so easily sit with the philosophy — such as it is — of Hindutva. A particularly egregious example of these distortions was the account of the murder of Mahatma Gandhi in the civics textbook, which somehow managed to leave out the political affiliations and even the name of the murderer.
Pakistan is an "Islamic" State, but it has withal a fairly large population of those who follow other faiths. There is a sprinkling of Christians scattered throughout the country, and isolated groups of Parsis and Sikhs. However, the most important minority in Pakistan are the Hindus. At Partition, the Pakistan Punjab and the North West Frontier Provinces were ethnically cleansed, but a large number of Hindus remained in Sindh. Few Indians know that two districts in Sindh have a Hindu majority, and there are of course many Hindus living in the city of Karachi. It was one of these Sindhi Hindus who was recently appointed the acting Chief Justice of the Pakistani Supreme Court.
As in Pakistan, the citizens of India owe allegiance to a multiplicity of religious faiths (or to no faith at all). A majority of Indians are Hindus, but the country is also home — in all senses — to communities of Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Christians and Parsis. However, the most important minority are the Muslims, who are spread all across the land (with the exception of the Northeast). There is not one State in peninsular India, not one major town or city, that does not have a large population of Muslims.
Erasing the past
Now, that Hindus live today in Pakistan is something the bigots there cannot entirely wish away. They might seek — as the law of the land in fact has done — to make them second-class citizens. But they cannot extinguish the fact of their existence. They can, however, extinguish their past, by removing their history from the history books. Thus it is that the leaders of the MMA do not want to know Pakistanis to know anything about the literary, artistic or philosophical traditions of the Hindus who have long lived in the lands watered by the Indus and the Ravi.
By the same token, that Muslims live today in India is something our bigots cannot entirely wish away. They can, of course, attempt to make them second-class citizens — the former head of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Ashok Singhal, going so far as to recommend that India follow Pakistan by making their minorities vote in separate electorates, and by denying them access to high Constitutional positions (in Pakistan, no non-Muslim can become the country's President). Extremist Hindus seek to intimidate and cow down Muslims in the present, but they also seek to control the past, by rewriting history to present the faith of the majority in the brightest colours and the faith of the minority in the darkest ones.
A different idea of the nation
An old teacher of mine, the historian Dharma Kumar, used to say that the RSS wanted to make India "an Islamic State for Hindus". If that attempt has not succeeded, it is only because it has been resisted by Indians upholding an altogether more noble idea of India. This idea is the veritable Other of the idea of Pakistan, as explained best of all by Jawaharlal Nehru. Writing to the Prime Ministers of Provinces three months after Partition, Nehru said: "We have a Muslim minority who are so large in numbers that they cannot, even if they want, go anywhere else. That is a basic fact about which there can be no argument. Whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have got to deal with this minority in a civilised manner. We must give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic State".
ramguha@vsnl.com
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