Old and new fault lines in Uttar Pradesh

What the State needs today is a sustained and vigorous political engagement with all communities for a dialogue on reconciliation

August 30, 2014 12:56 am | Updated 12:56 am IST

Unless people realise that communal harmony and equal justice are the bedrock of material progress, economic growth and a better future, containing the virus of communalism will be an uphill task. Picture shows a security person guarding a mosque on Eid-al-Fitr in Sahranpur, Uttar Pradesh.

Unless people realise that communal harmony and equal justice are the bedrock of material progress, economic growth and a better future, containing the virus of communalism will be an uphill task. Picture shows a security person guarding a mosque on Eid-al-Fitr in Sahranpur, Uttar Pradesh.

Recently, I had the opportunity to give an hour-long talk on the political doctrines of Gandhi, Ambedkar, Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan with Aam Aadmi party volunteers at one of the many volunteer training camps organised by the party in Uttar Pradesh. Following the discussion, a senior party member from the State cornered me and gently chided me for being ignorant of the ground realities.

Skirmishes in Uttar Pradesh “Ever since the Samajwadi Party government came to power, Muslims have been involved in minority terrorism. They openly molest or harass our women while the administration indulges in a cover-up,” he said in an angry tone. “Please make it clear to the top leadership that they should steer clear of issues related to Muslims if they don’t want to lose the support of the majority. Ab is desh me musalmano ki rajneeti nahi chalegi (now the politics that allows the Muslims to call the shots has no place in this country),” he added.

I asked him if he knew of any specific instance of a Muslim man raping or harassing a Hindu woman. He furnished at least three recent instances.

“Would it be fair to evaluate or judge an entire community by the yardstick of just two or three individuals,” I asked without getting into the merits of his statistics. “All the accused in the ‘Nirbhaya’ episode were Hindus and they certainly belonged to one caste or the other. But did we measure their respective caste groups on the basis of one individual’s action? If not then, why are we making an exception in the case of Muslims now?” I continued.

“In the coming years, the home of Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb is going to pose a litmus test for the secular and modern vision of India”

“There is a big difference,” he said. “The caste or religious doctrines of Hindus do not sanction deceitful or forcible conversion or violence targeted against a particular community. But ‘their’ religion does so. It is not just that Hindu women are being lured into love affairs and marriages with the sanction of Maulvis; such activities are very well-funded. Look at the proliferation of mosques along the U.P.-Nepal border. Where is the money coming from? The worst part is that the State government has been siding with the Muslim culprits,” he replied.

I told him I would not get into an argument of demanding “hard evidence” to substantiate such accusations, nor would I engage in platitudes like “the law should take its own course” and “the guilty should be punished.” Religious emotions stirred up by politics are not susceptible to reasoning or evocations of India’s constitutional ethos.

I decided to talk to him person-to-person. “Let me give you my example,” I said. “I dated a Muslim girl while studying in a Lucknow college and came very close to marrying her. We never saw our relationship through the prism of religion and nor did our friends and families. The fact that we didn’t get married had nothing to do with religious prejudices. This happened in U.P. 16 years ago, but there was no talk of love jihad then. The woman I eventually married — nine years ago in Mumbai — is a Goan Catholic. I, a Marwari baniya, could easily have been accused of indulging in a Hindutva version of love jihad by targeting women from different minority communities across multiple States. Perhaps the only reason I didn’t land up in trouble was because there were no counterparts of the Vishva Hindu Parishad or the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh taking up the issue of the women I had had relationships with.”

Unless we segregate girls and boys of different religions and castes in all public spaces, inter-religious and inter-caste love affairs and marriages are inevitable. They are bound to happen in the feudal and patriarchal social settings of U.P. as much as in the cosmopolitan environs of Mumbai or Delhi.

“But you didn’t forcibly convert your wife, did you? Look at the Meerut instance. They took advantage of her poverty by giving her a job, then made her pregnant and converted her to Islam. They want to increase their numbers,” my colleague shot back.

Are the instances of physical abuse or mistreatment of women only restricted to relationships between a Muslim man and a Hindu woman? How do most of the Hindu women get treated in Hindu households? Don’t they face physical violence and male dominance at the hands of Hindu men? The problem lies with the patriarchal and misogynistic mindset cutting across religious communities,” I responded.

“As a political party, we have to appreciate public sentiment. This government is pro-Muslim and people have made up their mind to vote for a party that will show the Muslims their place. This is not my voice but the popular sentiment,” he maintained.

“If we are against minority appeasement and the vote bank politics of the Samajwadi Party, does the answer to it lie in majority appeasement or Hindu vote bank politics,” I asked him. We have to break this cycle of competitive communalism.

“How do you want the world to see us? A Hindu India which denies equal rights and equal justice to its citizens who hail from the minorities or an India where the majority of Hindus has striven for and established a just and fair nation? The worst conduct of a few individual Muslims cannot be the template of conduct for a majority of Hindus. What kind of conduct will enhance the honour of Hindus and India’s prestige? Do we want to be seen as modern and progressive or narrow-minded and regressive,” I asked him.

“What U.P. is witnessing today — the recurrence of skirmishes over loudspeakers blaring at places of worship, the location of mosques or temples, the honour of ‘our’ women — are all old fault lines caught up in old templates of time. These fault lines had been confronted and debated over by the makers of our Constitution: the men and women who spoke for a new India. I think some of the best Hindus with the assistance of the best of members from various minority communities drew up our Constitution and exemplified the collective vision of a secular, just and tolerant India. This was and continues to the best political roadmap for our country. A vision that appeals to and invokes the dark side lurking in each of us would only plunge us in an abyss of darkness. When we talk about a corruption-free India, it also envisions an equitable and just nation that is free of exploitation, injustices and inequities of all kinds.”

“I agree with you but the problem is that the other side doesn’t believe in the logic of communal harmony. Also, how would you convince those who have been putting up with minority belligerence for more than two years? All our good work would get negated by one inflammatory speech of an Azam Khan,” my colleague said.

It is very difficult to talk sense in an atmosphere where rabble-rousers from both sides are stoking ugly passions.

What lies ahead In the coming months and years, U.P., the State that once boasted of its Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb , is going to pose one of the most difficult litmus tests for the secular and modern vision of India. The contagion of mutual hatred and intolerance has spread across the length and breadth of the State. As my conversation above with a part-colleague shows, it would not be an easy task to convince and win over even some of the more reasonable and relatively moderate sections, forget the lunatic fringe.

What U.P. needs today is a sustained and vigorous political engagement with all communities; a relentless dialogue of peace and reconciliation. Conflict resolution committees comprising the moderates need to be formed at the local level. Somehow, it has become child’s play to manufacture and amplify new fissures, and seek out and champion new communal causes by falling back upon patriarchal and feudal notions of loss of honour and prestige of one’s community.

A continual vigil has to be mounted, and at the first whiff of an incident having the potential of a communal conflagration, liberals need to step in to negotiate amicable and mutually acceptable solutions. Unless the people realise that communal harmony and equal justice are not airy-fairy sentiments but the bedrock so necessary for material progress, accelerated economic growth and, above all, a better future, containing the virus of communalism will be an uphill task.

(Ashish Khetan is a journalist who stood for the 2014 Lok Sabha election as a candidate for the Aam Aadmi Party from the New Delhi constituency.)

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