| The Mark of Hindutva |
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| COVER STORY The Mark Of Hindutva Is Indian democracy a cover for brute majorityism?, asks Saba Naqvi Bhaumik SABA NAQVI BHAUMIK India in Crisis as Race Violence Spreads," screamed the double-decker page one lead in the Guardian. The page one chief sub-editor at the usually reliable British daily had obviously confused India with Bradford, where the Brits have indeed faced race riots. It was a bloomer that did not go unnoticed�in its archives the paper has replaced the word "race" with "sectarian". But there was a terrible irony in this casual oversight in a leading daily in the same country which must hold some responsibility for creating "sectarian" (not racial) boundaries in South Asia. "What happened in Gujarat was horribly reminiscent of the bloodshed following partition," remarked The Independent, adding: "The violence has begun to take on a systematic look: ethnic cleansing, Indian style." Those who understand India know there are limits to the rise of the Hindu right. But they fear that by then India would have changed. The Times carried a piece from Islamabad which, predictably, referred to "the fallacy of Indian secularism" and the "planned genocide of Muslims..." Channel 4 in the UK has just begun a series titled British and Muslim. My dilemma here has been being an Indian and Muslim in Britain after the Gujarat bloodbath. As an Outlook journalist in Oxford on a fellowship, I had given a talk on �How India�s Democracy Works� just days before the Gujarat troubles. I realised then that across the world many do see Indian democracy as a great experiment, a ray of hope in Asia where most regimes are dictatorial. The most frequently asked question by members of the audience from Africa, Pakistan and the Middle East is in itself revealing: "You have such a huge army and the nuclear bomb. How come the Indian army hasn�t taken over?" But whenever Indians cut their nose to spite their face, that wonderful experiment appears doomed to failure. As the Guardian, which usually gets it right, wrote: "At issue is what kind of state India should be�a secular democracy as envisaged by Jawaharlal Nehru or something darker and more chauvinistic." The many India hands at Oxford had a better sense of the display of Hindu machismo also deriving from an imminent loss of political power. Those who know and understand India know there are limits to the ascendancy of the Hindu right. But they fear that by then the very nature of the Indian state and establishment may have changed. I asked one of the South Asia experts why British historians at Oxford (like Judith Brown) kept researching Nehru and Gandhi; why didn�t they move on to more contemporary figures. One of the reasons given by the British historian was compelling: both Gandhi and Nehru were men of great ideas, large men who tried to construct a pluralist, humane state on the debris of hatred. The Hindutva ideologues, on the other hand, have taken a vast idea and reduced it to a tunnel vision. While Hindutva is being studied as an important phenomenon, its leaders simply come through as unattractive figures. Hindutva does not even find intellectual support in what may be described as the right wing in the West. "To us in the West they seem to propagate a form of communal madness more commonly associated with the Wahabi regime in Saudi Arabia," said a British historian. All those "Hindu" intellectuals who argue that India is a secular democracy only because of the "Hindus" may puff up their chests but they are only talking to themselves. The world laughs at these puny attempts to talk of the "greatness of India" by those who are destroying it. A country which has one-sixth of the world�s population and a relatively stable democracy in spite of widespread poverty should be able to occupy a high moral ground. Instead, many Asians who live under dictatorships now ask me whether Indian democracy is a cover for brute majorityism. My Pakistani friend at Oxford made a most perceptive remark: "It�s very sad when this happens in India, because those who prop up the military in Pakistan turn around and say, �see the Indian system is a sham�." Just when Gujarat disappears from the British media comes the news of Arundhati Roy�s arrest. Her striking face stares at me from the front page of the Guardian�s G2 magazine which describes her as "the most-celebrated literary inmate since Oscar Wilde". She is a cause celebr� in the West, where her arrest sounds as bizarre as mobs burning children to death. I cannot even begin to explain the legal quagmire that landed her in prison to my friends in Britain. It was easier explaining the politics behind Gujarat. I reassured myself and the questioners that those who perpetrated this bloodbath will ultimately be defeated democratically. That the killers of Gujarat will be given a justice of sorts by the great Indian electorate. That after its bouts of madness, India always returns to sanity. But there were moments when every Indian would have been rendered speechless by the detailed accounts of the brutality. My speechless moment came on day three of the Ahmedabad massacre, when a South Asian shopkeeper of Pakistani descent asked with a great deal of emotion: "Why are they doing this in India? What is happening?" After a moment of panic, I mustered a reply: "I am not from India. I am from Zimbabwe and we also have our troubles!" My friends found my response hysterically funny. But later that night I realised that the comic moment had a tragic dimension. For the first time in my life I had been shamed into denying my nationality. |