From: ag3l+@andrew.cmu.edu (Arun K. Gupta)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.bangladesh,soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: II. Conflict : Causes
Date: 14 Apr 92 14:13:10 GMT
Organization: Physics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA


Continuation of:

Hindu-Muslim Conflict in India: Causes and Remedies

by Iqbal Ansari (Dept. of English, Aligarh Muslim University)

This mythic-psychic-folklorish factor is responsible for the climate
and atmosphere in the country within which religious, social, economic
and, most importantly, administrative-political factors singly or
jointly (in varying permutations and combinations) cause mischief and
turn the potentials of hatred into an active orgy of violence and
bloodbath.

A new dimension of the state security forces not only conniving at but
actually indulging in communal violence including cold-blooded murder
of Muslims has been added since Aligarh (1978) and Moradabad (1980).

The most heinous pogrom-like scene of this kind was enacted in Mohallah
Hashimpura of Meerut and the village of Maliana near Meerut in May
1987.. The atmospherics of Meerut was neverthelses again provided by
the mythic-folklorish aspect of the medieval Indian history around
Babri Masjid of Ayodhya.

In the present paper I have tried to analyse and identify all such
factors that continue to engender Hindu-Muslim conflict and tension in
the hope that some measures will be taken for a lasting solution and
that sanity will sought to be restored.

Communal riots may be occasioned by some immediate specifc political,
social, economic or religious causes, but the sources of conflict and
tension are permanently rooted int he collective Indian psyche.  These
are mainly traceable to the following:

1. Visualization of 700 years of supposed Muslim rule in India by the
Hindu elite as a period characterised by forced conversion to Islam,
destruction and conversion of temples into mosques and other symbols of
humiliation. The myth owes its origin mainly ot
administrator-historians of the Bristish raj; later it was
perpertuaated by communal Indian historians.

2. Image of the Indian Muslim as an outsider, with extra-territorial
loyalty, who is incapable of belonging to the country as a patriotic
citizen.

3. Partition of the country and its aftermath, for which Muslims as a
community are supposed to be exclusively responsible.

3.a. Existence of Pakistan and the Hindu elite's perception of
continued threat from it.  Because of this perception, the Indian
Muslims are treated as a fifth column of Pakistan, at least during
periods of minor or major conflict or tension with that country. This
pattern of perception provides the psychological framework within which
Muslim attitudes to Pakistan, even though understandable as very
normal, appear to be anti-national.

3.b. Emergence of Bangladesh in 1971 caused a change in our perception
of threat from Pakistan, the Hindu elite heaving a sigh of relief that
`Islamic militancy' in the subcontinent had been buried to rest. But
this proved to be only a temporary phase.

3.c. The continued need of the successive govts. in India and Pakistan
for their survival to project the other as a hostile force bent upon
its destruction. Lately Pakistan appears to have changed this posture
[1987], but our own Government still needs the image of Pakistan as a
threat, and hence its effort to keep up the image.

4.a.: A section of Muslims within the country and outside combine their
exclusive claim to truth with a sense of being the chosen people by
virtue of belonging to the fold of believers. It however, does not make
them render service to mankind and feel concerned about mankind in
general as Islam would have them do. Instead it engenders in them a
narcissistic psyche. Their religious susceptibilities are, therefore,
too easily hurt.


4.b. Those who define their self-identity as `chosen people of God' and
`the most favored one by Him' are generally made the target of attack
by others. The most obvious example is that of the Jews.

4.c. The presence of shades of Islamic militancy among Muslims in India
provides confirmation to the Hindu elite's perception of threat.  It
has also made some of them take a leaf out of the enemy's own book of
fundamentalist assertion.

5. Caste stratification in the Hindu society has given rise to
ever-increasing assertion of the people of lower castes for securing
their social and economic rights and, most importantly, their dignity
as human beings. The caste elites obviously feel threatened. One of the
tactical measures they employ is to make the Muslims appear the common
enemy of Hindu society, thus hoping to foster Hindu solidarity.

Gujarat presents a good example of this. Here Hindu caste conflicts
have been diverted towards Muslims. It is proof of these tactics that
most often it is people from scheduled castes/ tribes who are used by
the Hindu elite during riots for actual loot and arson. Communal riots
in Nellie (Assam), Moradabad, Maliana, Meerut and Delhi provide
examples of this.

5.a. Sections of Hindus, who have been championing the cause of Hindu
Rashtra as against liberal secular polity, all along the freedom
struggle through partition till the present, need to treat Muslims as a
suspect community and persecute them in the manner of all fascists and
Nazis who would have a minority like the Jews in Germany or the colored
immigrants in Britain, to legitimize their struggle for power.

Engendering a siege-mentality in the majority community, and xenophobia
are all very patent devices in this game. The Rashtravadi movement,
though not religious in character, employs for emotional appeal symbols
that are religio-cultural and historical-mythic-racial.

5.b. The govt. of India by too often crying the foreign wolf,
especially the Pakistani wolf, engenders a climate where
Rashtravadi-xenophobic perceptions and projections get confirmed,
validated and legitimized. In the process, the Indian Muslims are too
easily identified as the Pakistani wolf.

5.c. The handout from Hon'ble Shri Buta Singh, Union Home Minister
about a large number of overstaying and unauthorised Pakistanis in
India at a time when Meerut was burning is a case in point. The
presence of a few Pakistanis in Meerut at the time was supposed to have
caused the mischief in a planned manner.

5.d. Other recent examples of heightening the fear of foreign-Pakistani
hand are provided by the Rajghat incident of attempted assault on the
Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, by a Sikh youth, which was attributed to
Pakistan.

Too often the hand of Pakistan is seen by us behind communal riots. It
was thought to have caused the Ahmedabad riots of 1969, so as to score
over India during the ensuing Rabat Islamic Conference.

Allegations of this nature continue to be made even though in no
incident has Pakistani hand been proved by our own investigating
agencies.

6. The print media reflect the attitudes and perceptions listed in
paras 1-5 in their coverage and comments. Even those newspapers which
are relatively independent and do investigative reporting in other
fields betray ignorance, prejudice and dependence on official stories
and hearsay in this domain.

Imam Bukhari of Jama Masjid, Delhi, for example, was reported by most
national dailies to have made a provocative speech during a Friday
prayer in March 1986, on the issue of Babri Masjid which made the
Muslim youth go on the rampage leading to police firing causing the
death of two Muslim youth.

Shri Inder Mohan, President, P.U.C.L., Delhi, in his investigative
report on the event, on the contrary says that he has the tape of the
speech of Imam Bukhari which was pacifying the crowd and that the two
youths had been murdered in a street by the police.

6.a. Indiscriminate, vague and mischievous use of terms like
fundamentalism, even communalism and obscurantism, etc., by the members
of the govt., political leaders and newspapers has created an
atmosphere in which construction of even a small mosque or maktab
(traditional Muslim primary school) in a remote village is reported as
a sign of the rise of fundamentalism.

6.b. The flow of petro-dollars is reported in a manner that its
beneficiaries appear to be Muslims alone, who are either acquiring arms
with this money or are promoting militant missionary work including
induced conversion.

6.c. By a long established consensus of the orthodox Muslim Ulema,
mosques throughout the length and breadth of the country are used
strictly for prayers in Arabic. On Fridays, the oration is also in
Arabic, which was written hundreds of years ago dealing strictly with
traditional devotional themes. Delhi Jama Masjid's is a rare exception
under the present Imam where he makes speeches touching on political
subjects. But the projection of the image of a mosque in the print
media is such that it appears to be not only a center of Muslim
political activity but also on occasions a den of anti- social and
criminal gangs.

6.d. Official handouts and statements and print media, thus contribute
in a significant way to the legitimization and wider acceptability of
the perceptions, attitudes and projections of a small upper-caste
chauvinist Hindu elite, among larger members of the majority community,
including ministers, officials, the police and other state security
agencies, especially during periods of crisis and tension.

Fortunately, ours being a democracy, still sizeable numbers in all
walks of life remain unaffected by this virus.

7. The issues of Muslim Personal Law, mass conversions to Islam, family
planning, Babri Masjid are not the causes of recent conflict and
tension; they are rather their symptoms.

7.a. Criticism of Muslim Personal Law is not expressed mainly in terms
of social justice or women's rights. It is rather attacked
indiscriminately as a symbol of Muslim separatism.  Indian nationalism
is sought to be defined in terms of a common civil code including
family laws, which does not obtain even in the USA, and which is not in
any case a desirable goal in our multi-religious society.


The more the debate continues on those lines, the greater the
perception of threat to their identity by Muslims. This is exploited by
sections of their religious leaders to forestall even genuine moves to
effect any reform in the existing family laws and practices in
accordance with the teachings of the Qu'ran and Sunnah.


The Muslim tenacity to hold on to the existing Personal Law, apart from
appearing as a symbol of their separatism, is viewed as an undue
privilege, as by virtue of it, Muslim men alone have a right to
polygamy. This right, coupled with the supposed lack of adoption of
contraceptive measures among Muslims is presented as causing the
phenomenal rise in the rate of growth of Muslim population.  The fear
is aroused that Muslims will overtake others in numbers in the
not-too-distant future. Some of the Muslim leaders, instead of seeing
through the game, take it as a compliment and present highly
exaggerated figures of their population.

***
[to be continued]

[The above is taken from "The Muslim Situation in India",
edited by Iqbal Ansari,  which is a publication of a seminar
held by the Institute of Objective Studies in New Delhi, July 4-5,
1987.

On May 22-23, 1987, there were riots in and around Meerut.
These cast a long and gloomy shadow on the deliberations reported
here.]
***
ag3L@andrew.cmu.edu