Driving India’s Balkanization

One of the reasons why India celebrates 75 years is that it lived so long. At the time of independence there was doubt whether this would happen. The main skeptic was Winston Churchill, who claimed that India was no more than a geography whose people were helped by the British to bring them under one umbrella through conquest. But as we celebrate India’s journey, we have to recognize that forces are at work today that undermine its unity. Notably, two projects that have received the blessings of the current political system at the Center have the potential to actually destroy it.

knowledge issue

First, we watch with wonder and awe the developments related to the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi. Petitions have been filed in the court for centuries to allow Hindus to worship in a mosque. Unbiased observers say that there is indisputable evidence that the mosque was once a temple which was demolished on the orders of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. Now, we have the Places of Worship Act 1991 which does not allow a change in the status of the religious structure. This should be enough to protect the concerned mosque from the threat of a change in its status as a place of worship for Muslims. But should we be looking at it from a purely legal point of view? What, if it comes to this, should the Indian Muslims of today be asked to vacate a mosque for which they are not responsible? Shouldn’t the Hindus of India rise to the greatness that can reconcile them to the injustice done to their forefathers, as heart-wrenching as one can imagine? Not only are they now the vast majority of this country, but they also have plenty of places to worship.

from another democracy

Last year, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, even though his popularity has now waned globally, gave a keynote speech in Tulsa, Oklahoma. U.S., where he went to commemorate the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. He said, “We don’t do ourselves any favors by pretending that it never happened or that it doesn’t affect us today, because it still affects us today. We can’t choose to learn only what we want to know.” We should know the good, the bad, everything. That’s what great nations do. They come with their dark sides…..” Mr Biden was suggesting that Americans remember should they also proceed without submitting complaints.This message is valid for both Hindus and Muslims of India depending on the context.

There is something unfinished in the project to isolate Muslim rule in North India for the record of violence in our history. Although it is not yet established whether the decline of the great Dravidian settlements of northern India was due to the expansion of the Aryans or environmental causes such as drought, we have reason to believe that this expansion was not without violence. After all, in the verses of the Rigveda, the pre-eminent Aryan deity, Indra, is invoked as the killer of the “Dasyus”, literally meaning “slaves” of India. Throughout northern India, pride was expressed in the subjugation of the local population upon the recent arrival of the Aryans. But Hindu nationalism sits uncomfortably with such gaiety, as it makes Aryans foreign to this country, without the legitimacy to define its cultural norms. The settlement pattern in India by which the tribals have been confined to inaccessible places such as mountains or driven to the ends of villages suggests that this was the result of a concerted move to exclude them from social life. This would not have been possible without the threat of violence.

Another language project

Talking about the destruction of religious symbols, there is evidence that the Aryans may not have been so universal. Archaeologists participating in excavations at sites of the Harappan civilization in western India point to the deliberate destruction of the remains of a phallic sign carved in stone. One can find advice on the worship of Seshanadeva, literally the phallus god, in the sacred literature of Vedic Hinduism. So, the destruction of religious symbols of the conquered peoples in India is not limited to Islamic rule in North India. For some Indians, it goes back to our pre-history. It’s not even a suggestion of a moral equivalence, as violence against any defenseless is cowardly, but it does serve to bring some perspective to the debate about retributive justice relating to past injustices. It is the tribals among us who are least likely to have blood on their hands.

The second project of Hindu nationalism, along with the project of alienating India’s religious minorities, is to establish Hindi as the dominant language in the country. Purely a reflection of a desire to dominate, it cannot be rationalized as a pursuit of vengeful justice, and, unlike the other project, the support of the state is immaculate. The issue has remained dormant in the country after a very mature agreement in the 1960s agreed that English would be used in Indian government communications for as long as the southern states wanted.

Since 2014, we have seen a renewed emphasis on Hindi by the central government. Attempts to impose Hindi on the rest of the country are both fraudulent and pre-present. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi is being hypocritical when he talks about equal importance of all Indian languages, while his Home Minister does not miss an opportunity to remind the country of the special status of Hindi. Too much time and resources of central government institutions are wasted in promoting Hindi when all its officers understand English very well. Nothing but linguistic conservatism keeps this discovery alive. The so-called socialists of North India are not above this either, as Mulayam Singh, the then chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, revealed in the 1990s when writing publicly in Hindi to his Kerala counterpart, the long-serving politician. Life Sadly, the feeling of Hindi being dominant is widespread in India, as seen in recent comments by Bollywood actors. These purveyors of mostly costume drama may be vying for Hollywood status, but not the big heart of a Marlon Brando who supported the rights of Native Americans.

Read also | democracy on the slide

The relentless attempt to impose Hindi in the mid-1960s came close to success, but to stop it, there was arson and self-immolation in the state of Madras. Today’s time is less favorable for Hindi fanatics. The South is far more advanced than the Hindi speaking region, both in terms of social and economic progress. In fact, it serves as a ray of hope for North Indian workers in search of livelihood. Even the common South sees Hindi as the language of the most backward part of the country, where Muslims are bullied, women are subjugated and politicians are treated as marginal feudalists. So, why would South Indians agree to rule in the language of a region they consider worthy of emulation? It is not even necessary for them to remember that Hindi is the language of the most recent migrants to this ancient land. They reject the majoritarian grounds on which it is considered a national language.

a diverse people

Constitutionally, India is a union of states. Its founders created an entity that has so far lived in great adversity. But India is also a coalition of peoples who are diverse in terms of their history and culture. Keeping it together requires leaders with big hearts, not just big chests. We see today the rise of a political ideology with little understanding of the idea of ​​India as a coalition of the willful. Unable to win hearts and minds, this has given rise to a divisive politics that has the potential to break a union with great care. Only a determined active citizen can avert this outcome.

Pulapre Balakrishnan teaches at Ashoka University, Sonepat