THE END OF INDIA Read online

  ‘Then they came for the homosexuals, and I did not speak up because I was not a homosexual.

  ‘Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak up because I was Protestant.

  ‘Then they came for me . . . but by that time there was no one left to speak up.’

  In my defence I can say with a clean conscience that I did raise my voice against religious fundamentalism and fanaticism whenever it surfaced. I condemned Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale when he made hateful utterances against Hindus. I was on his hit list and that of the Khalistanis and had to be guarded for fifteen years. Disillusioned with the Congress, I had proposed the name of L.K. Advani as MP from New Delhi in 1989, but have never spared him after he launched his notorious rath yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya. Once I confronted him at an open public meeting and told him to his face, ‘You sowed the dragon seeds of hatred in this country which led to the breaking of the Babri Masjid.’ Now in response to my columns I get hate mail from Hindu fundamentalists. Not a week goes by without my receiving a letter or postcard describing me as a disgrace to Sikhism and India, or a Pakistani agent—‘Pakistani randi ki aulad (born of a Pakistani whore)’. And much more that is unprintably obscene. It washes over me like water on a duck’s back. I have not given up nor will I give up because I feel I owe it to my country to fight these forces of evil for as long as I can.

  Enough of heroics. I am not cast in a hero’s mould. I am a coward, but I do speak my mind when it comes to real enemies of my country. That is the least I can do. For a long time I was searching for an appropriate word to describe religious fundamentalists. At last I have found it in Githa Hariharan’s novella. She calls them ‘fundoos’ and defines them perfectly:

  ‘A nickname, fundoos, rolls off Meena’s tongue with ease. A nickname for a pet, a pet enemy. The familiar garden-variety hatemonger, inescapable because he has taken root in your own backyard. Fundoo, fundamentalist. Fascist. Obscurantist. Terrorist. And the made-in-India brand, the communalist—a deceptively innocuous-sounding name for professional other-community haters.’

  The essays in this book were written in anguish, anger and bouts of depression when I felt that we had lost the battle against the ‘fundoos’. We have lost in Gujarat, we may lose in some other states and the ‘fundoos’ may rule over us while paying lip service to secularism—or not even that. But I still hope that revulsion against them will build up and they will eventually be thrown into the garbage can of history, where they belong. It is the duty of every sane Indian to put them there.

  February 2003

  THE CASE OF GUJARAT

  There are days when speeches made by our netas and so-called sants distress me so much that a voice within me screams, ‘Let all of them go to jahannum (hell). I’ll get on with my life as best as I can.’ When I get over the depression, a wave of anger surges within me and I say to myself: ‘This is my homeland, I will not let these medieval-minded fanatics get away with wasting precious years squabbling over where exactly a temple should have its foundation-stone laid. I will shout my protest from the roof-tops.’

  Then comes the ghastly carnage in Gujarat.

  Much has been written and said about the riots of 2002. But not enough. I would like to quote from a document from another time. Summing up his report for the Maharashtra government after the riots in Bhiwandi and Jalgaon in 1970, Judge Madon wrote:

  ‘It was a lonely, arduous and weary journey through a land of hatred and violence, of prejudice and perjury. The encounters on the way were with men without compassion, lusting for the blood of their fellow men, with politicians who trafficked in communal hatred and religious fanaticism, with local leaders who sought power by sowing disunity and bitterness, with police officers and policemen who were unworthy of their uniform, with investigating officers without honour and without scruples, with men committed to falsehood and wedded to fraud and with dealers in mayhem and murder.’

  He could have been writing about Narendra Modi’s Gujarat. But at least the Maharashtra government under S.B. Chavan accepted Judge Madon’s damning report with all its recommendations. Modi’s government dismissed the report of the National Human Rights Commission as incorrect and biased. The Central government’s attitude was no different. Cabinet ministers like Arun Jaitley shamelessly supported Modi’s stand. To them it was mere propaganda by the ‘pseudosecularists’.

  What can one expect from an administration that has openly sided with murderers? It is clear that the attack on the train at Godhra was pre-planned. Far from putting the perpetrators down with an iron hand, the government colluded with the mischief-makers as its police and its chief minister were imbued with the spirit of badla—revenge. It is also clear that the revenge was so vicious and effective because it was also pre-planned. There have been credible reports that within hours of the Godhra massacre, armed mobs were out in different parts of Gujarat with detailed lists of Muslim homes and establishments. Several hundred Muslims were hacked to death or burnt alive, women raped, homes and shops looted and burnt down.

  I have seen it before with my own eyes in 1947 and 1984. The police stood by like tamashbeens (spectators) watching the carnage. They had been tipped off not to interfere but let looters and killers teach hapless men, women and children a lesson they would never forget.

  In Gujarat they went several steps further. Not only did the police remain inert, when the army arrived on the scene, it was not deployed. Flag marches are spectacles which don’t frighten evil-doers. What does frighten them are orders to shoot at sight which were issued too late, only after many lives had been lost. Officers who tried to do their duty and foil the plans of the mobs were transferred out. Even in the camps set up for the riot victims there was harassment.

  There can be no doubt there was serious dereliction of duty on the part of the chief minister, his cabinet colleagues and the IG of police. Even a year after the rioting, many Muslim victims remain homeless. Those who have returned to their homes have been forced to withdraw all complaints filed with the police. They are at the mercy of their Hindu neighbours who have warned them never to forget their subordinate status. I won’t be surprised if Muslims in Gujarat one day have to start paying religious taxes like the jazia which medieval Islamic rulers imposed on their non-Muslim subjects.

  *

  It is ironic that the highest incidence of violence against Muslims and Christians has taken place in Gujarat, the home state of Bapu Gandhi. It has been going on for years. Before the 2002 riots, Christian missionaries were being attacked in the tribal districts of the state. There were reports of violence and intimidation coming in almost every day. We will see more of that.

  Since the late 1990s, newspaper reports have put the blame for this communalization squarely on neo-fascist members of the Sangh parivar: the RSS, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena, with the collusion of the BJP government. Reports of the Minorities Commission substantiate what has appeared in the national press. For those interested, photographic evidence of destroyed churches, dargahs, Muslim homes and shops is available. Among the most ludicrous is the State-sponsored attempt to wipe out remnants of Muslim presence. I first saw this in 1998. Gujarat’s capital, Ahmedabad, was built by a Muslim ruler in the middle ages. I noticed that milestones on the main highway leading to the city had dropped Ahmed from its name and made it into Amdavad.

  How did Gujarat become the laboratory of Hindutva? It did not happen overnight. The Sangh and its sympathizers began poisoning Gujarat not long after Independence. Even the Congress took advantage of the slowly vitiating atmosphere to divide Gujarati society for electoral gains, unwittingly helping the RSS. The 1969 Ahmedabad riots were the first triumph of the RSS in Gujarat. Its fortunes began rising after that.

  I went to Ahmedabad in 1970, five months after the riots. I quote from the article I wrote after my return:

  ‘I had constituted myself into a one-man commission of enquiry to find out all I could in three days and pass on my verdict to my
readers. My object was not to discover what had happened . . . but why it happened. And, even more, what the people of Ahmedabad thought about it today and what they would do tomorrow if some incident again strained relations between the city’s 90% Hindus and 10% Muslims.

  ‘I start my investigation by visiting the temple of Jagannath . . . I detect no signs of damage. To make sure I ask (a) priest. He tells me to look outside. I go outside and look. Above the entrance gate is a glass pane to cover an effigy of a mahant. The pane is splintered in three places. I approach a band of ash-smeared sadhus lolling under the shade of a banyan tree and ask them if anything else had been damaged . . . They express themselves in unholy language.

  ‘I walk around the bazaar and come to the dargah where it is said to have begun—with the herd of temple cows stampeding into pilgrims going to some Urs. The dargah gate is barred. A posse of constabulary guard the entrance. I ask the caretaker seated outside if this is the right place. He looks at me suspiciously. For an answer he spits a blob of phlegm on the pavement. The sub-inspector of police gives me a dirty look. I do not like policemen. I move on.

  ‘I go to the Sindhi Bazaar. It is a cluster of cubicles made of plywood and corrugated tin. Row upon row of mini-shops cluttered with bales of cloth and hung with multicoloured saris. The place looks as inflammable as an Indian Oil petrol carrier. I was told that the bazaar had gone up in smoke. I can well believe it. But I see no sign of damage. Sindhis are an enterprising race; they must have rebuilt it and resumed business. I accept one of the many invitations hurled at me to buy something . . . I pay for a dhoti to buy information. I get an earful of hate.

  ‘I hire a scooter. From the Arabic numerals 786 painted on the metre I know the faith of the driver. A scooter is not the best mode of transport for a friendly dialogue. I yell my comment on the ‘bad days’. The driver turns back, ‘You take me for a sucker? I know on which side you are!’ He doesn’t say so with his tongue but with his doleful eyes.

  ‘I try paanwalas, chanawalas, fruit vendors. The result is the same. If they talk, they are Hindus. If they do not, they are Muslims. Both speech and silence are pregnant with hate . . .

  ‘I remind myself of my mission. It is not to probe into the dead past but to gauge the prevailing mood and so forecast the future. But the yesterdays of September are always with me. I drive out of Ahmedabad along the Sabarmati. I pass a mound of debris. A half-broken minaret reveals its identity. I pass graves with their gravestones smashed. And my temper mounts and tears come to my eyes. What species of monstrous swine were those who spared neither places of worship nor the peace of the dead?’

  At the end of my visit I told the then Mayor of Ahmedabad about what I had seen and heard. ‘It is all over,’ he assured me. ‘It will not happen again.’ I hoped he was right. But I was not so sure.

  Of course it did happen again, more than once, and most tragically in February 2002. Those deep divisions I saw over thirty years ago were not allowed to heal. The Sanghwalas were never interested in bringing communities together. In Gujarat, a border state, they have terrorized and alienated the state’s ten per cent Muslim population. History will judge them for the damage they have caused, but that will happen in the future. Meanwhile, with a triumphant Modi as their mentor, they will repeat the Gujarat experiment all over India, unless we stop them.

  THE SANGH AND ITS DEMONS

  All religions have and continue to have bigots who give founders of their religion and their teachings a bad name. Christians had their inquisitors who burnt innocent men and women at the stake as heretics. Muslims have their Islamic fraternities whose leaders pronounce fatwas condemning people to death, ordering women to shroud themselves in veils and imposing draconian rules of behaviour on the community. Sikhs had their Bhindranwale who forbade men to dye or roll up their beards, women to wear saris or jeans or put bindis on their foreheads, and who said nasty things about dhotian-topian waaley—the Hindus. Not to be outdone, Hindus produced their own fanatics who condemn Christianity and Islam as alien religions, and while mouthing platitudes about being the most tolerant religion on earth, hound Christian missionaries and target Muslim places of worship for destruction. In the name of Shri Rama, they demolished the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, and Gujarat represented the worst face of religious extremism.

  Events such as the demolition of the Babri masjid, the burning of Graham Staines and his children and the barbaric and mindless carnage in Gujarat stink of politics mixed with religion. I have always maintained that religion and politics do not go together; they must be kept apart at all cost. But the Hinduization of Indian politics, the sporulation of Hindu-chauvinistic parties, and the rise of the BJP to centre stage all point to an alarming and disturbing truth: religio-centric politics is here to stay and its evils will be more enduring and damaging than you or I can imagine.

  The birth of Hindu nationalism took place in Renaissance Bengal in 1886 with the Hindu melas. The primary objective of these melas was to train young Hindus in the martial arts, the use of lathis, daggers and swords. Non-Hindus were not allowed to participate. There was Swami Dayanand Saraswati’s Arya Samaj movement with its emphasis on Shuddhi—Dayanand’s objective to re-establish the golden age of Hinduism encouraged reconversion of Muslims and Christians back to its fold. In Maharashtra, Bal Gangadhar Tilak revived Ganapati and Shivaji festivals. Every time they were celebrated, Hindu-Muslim riots broke out. At the same time, in Bengal, anusilan samitis (disciplinary organizations) were set up to combat partition of the state. These samitis did not accept non-Hindus as members. Hindu Sabhas, which had initially stood for cow protection, the promotion of Hindi as a national language, and self-rule, formally launched the Hindu Mahasabha in 1922. But it was only after the arrival of V.D. Savarkar as its president in 1936 that the organization assumed a distinctive Hindu ideology, a theory of a Hindu nation. At the core of this ideology was Savarkar’s Hindutva, published in 1923.

  According to Savarkar, a Hindu is one who acknowledges Hindustan as his pitrubhumi (fatherland) as well as his punyabhumi (holy land). Whether he or she is a devotee of sanatan dharma is unimportant. Anyone who is or whose ancestor was Hindu in undivided India—including someone who was originally a Hindu but converted to Islam or Christianity—is also welcome back into the Hindu fold provided he accepts India as his fatherland and land of worship. However, love for Bharat Mata, following the Hindu faith and belief in the Hindu caste system are not enough. A Hindu has to love, embrace—and own—Hindu sanskriti as a whole. This automatically excluded Muslims and Christians, for, while they might have shared a common pitrubhumi with the Hindus, their punyabhumi lay elsewhere. Hindutva also involved the wholehearted acceptance of Sanskrit and other Indian languages while there was no place for Urdu or English. While Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs were accepted because their religions were of Indian origin, Muslims, Christians and Parsis were excluded on the basis that they were ‘communities of numerical minorities’.

  Savarkar was also the first to propound the two-nation theory, referring to the Hindus and Muslims as separate nations. Other Hindu leaders who accepted this two-nation theory were Dr Moonje of the Hindu Mahasabha, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, founder of the Benaras Hindu University, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bhai Parmanand and Swami Shraddhanand. The eminent Bengali writer Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay also supported the notion.

  The stream of Hindu separatism began to flow like the Pataal Ganga soon after the British overthrew the Mughal dynasty and established their rule all over India. It gathered strength from reviving and exaggerating memories—real and imaginary—of all the ‘wrongs’ the Muslim invaders had done in India: humiliating Hindu rulers on battlefields, destroying Hindu temples, imposing the jazia tax and treating non-Muslims as lower than second-class citizens. Hindu and Sikh warriors like Prithviraj Chauhan, Guru Gobind Singh and Shivaji who resisted the Muslim rulers, were portrayed as national heroes.

  A general feeling was created that the wrongs done by Muslim conquerors in th
e past had to be set right. The Indian Freedom Movement was biased against the British as it was against Muslims. By the time the British decided to quit India, a significant proportion of Hindus felt that they should inherit the legacy of their forefathers while the vast majority of Indian Muslims felt that they would have no future in Hindu-dominated India. The inevitable partition of the country into India and Pakistan followed.

  India could have declared itself a Hindu State since over eighty per cent of its population was Hindu and all its neighbours had declared themselves religious States: Islamic (Pakistan), Buddhist (Sri Lanka and Burma) and Hindu (Nepal). But under the influence of Gandhi, Nehru, Azad and others, it chose to pursue a greater ideal: a modern secular State where all religious communities would enjoy equal rights.

  It was too good to last. What in Nehru’s time were parties of marginal importance, the RSS, the Hindu Mahasabha, the Jan Sangh, the Shiv Sena and the Bajrang Dal, gathered strength and became the main opposition to secular forces. Drawing inspiration from Savarkar’s concept of Hindutva, which they considered as an article of faith, they indulged in falsifying history, mosque-breaking, church-burning and attacking missionaries, and they went on to perpetrate pogroms. They are the footsoldiers of today’s rulers. But if India is to survive as a nation and march forward, it must remain one country, reassert its secular credentials and throw out communally-based parties from the political arena.

  A country which is proud of its tradition of religious tolerance and is the world’s largest democracy has to reckon with forces that threaten to wreck both our past and present as well as demolish our dreams of the future. These forces can be easily identified as the lunatic fringe of the Sangh parivar—the Shiv Sena, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal, and a crop of new organizations raising suicide squads. No State worth its name should allow private armies to operate on its soil.