From: jawad@ecst.csuchico.edu (Jawad Ali)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan,soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.bangladesh,soc.culture.turkish,soc.culture.arabic,soc.culture.afghanistan,soc.culture.iranian
Subject: Muslims in India
Date: 22 Jan 93 01:13:29 GMT
Organization: California State University, Chico
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			Bringing Down the Temple
			------------------------

Democracy at Risk in India.

By Praful Bidwai [Nation, January 25, 1993]
--------------------------------------------

	The cataclysm in India has exposed the awsome proportions of 
the crisis that grips the country.  It is as if the nation were faced
with the prospect of a second partition, now along more than one religious
divide.  Milions of Indians, above all Hindu Indians, have been plunged
in despair over the viability of the constitutional secular/pluralist/
democratic order.  A question mark now hangs over the project that
independent India launched in 1947 and that gave the country its raison
d'etre.

	The event that triggered the shock wave on December 6th belongs 
for many Indians to the realm of the unthinkable -- the demolition,
as police passively watched, of a protected historical mosque at the
hands of a mob of fanatics led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, a right-
wing Hindu fundamentalist organization, and other groups of Hindu 
communalists who seek to create a theocratic of confessional state and
who oppose the seperation of religion from politics.  The destruction of
the mosque was the communalists' revenge against history.  The 465-year-
old structure, know as the Babri mosque, in Ayodhya, in the state of
Uttar Pradesh, was a special target (although only one of more than 3000)
because the B.J.P. claims that the Mogul emperor Babar had it built 
after destroying a temple to Rama consecrating his birthplace.

	There is no historical or archeological evidence that a temple
once stood on the mosque's site.  Confronted with this argument, the 
B.J.P. move to the position that this is a matter of faith not open to
rational or legal disputation, and that in any case it would build a
temple at that site.  The party's precursors indeed had surreptitiously
entered the mosque in 1949 and installed some idols.

	Actually, the mosque was attacked so as to humiliate Muslms
(an eighth of the population), to challenge the secular foundations
of the Constitution and to destroy a symbol of India's cultural, ethnic
and religious diversity.  It's destruction is a triumph for the B.J.P's
strategy of physically confronting a weak-willed state and pushing it 
to yield political ground -- a strategy perfected since 1986.  In that
year the Uttar Pradesh government, led by Rajiv Ghandi's Congress party,
decided to unlock the gates to the structure, long shut under numerous
administrative and judicial orders, to appease Hindu fanatics, who wanted
to worship the idols installed inside the mosque 37 years earlies. State
collusion gave Hindu communalism precisely the confidence boost it needed.

	Since the mid-eighties the BJP has attempted to reshape the Indian
political adgenda, harnessing the temple dispute to mass agitations and
using these as a lever to exert pressure on successive weak governments
at the center.  In 1989 the party launched a new campaign on the temple
issue: a march across the country led by the party's L.K. Advani, who
rode an ersatz rath (ancient chariot), in reality a Toyota van garishly
decorated to resemble the Bombay film image of the horse-drawn vehicle
used by mythical warriors, including Rama himself.  The march, calculated
to whip up hysteria, caused major riots in the country.  When finally --
hundreds of deaths later -- a reluctant V.P Singh, then Prime Minister
heading a minority regime, moved to ban the march, the BJP pulled the
rug from under his feet.  In mid-1991 it found a willing ally in Prime
Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, who, loathed to seek support from the centre-
left and went on pursuing I.M.F.-World-Bank-prescribed right-wing economic
policies, established an informal alliance with the party.  

	Rao gave the BJP the kind of respectability that it had always
craved but never got from the establishment.  Until two days before the 
mosque was raised, Rao fraternised with even the most disreputable of the
party's allies, in particular the RSS (National Volunteer Corps), a shady
militarist extremist group that is the ideological fountainhead of the
Hindu communalist movement.  It was banned after Mahatma Gandhi's 
assassination in 1948; the ban was lifted later, but only after the RSS
agreed to abide by certain conditions.  

	From a larger point of view, the BJP's recent success -- its
vote in national elections jumped from under 8% in the mid-1980's to
12% in 1989 to 21% last year -- its attritubal to four factors.  First
there is the rapid decline of the ruling Congress party and the unstable
and often factious nature of centrist alternatives to it.  The BJP has
been the principle beneficiary of both Congress's erosions and divisions
within the centre-left.  These changes, rather than the strength of its
own vote, enabled it to take power in India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh,
in 1991.  Congress's leadership crisis following Rajiv Gandhi's assassination
that year has worked further to the BJP's advantage.  

	Second, the party has gained immensely from the reaction of 
upper-caste Hindus in the past few years to recent affirmative action
and job reservation policies, especially those inaugurated by V.P. Singh,
who sought to reserve 27% of central government jobs, in a phased manner,
for the lower and lower-middle castes, and thus extend the constitutional
provision that reserves 22.5% of such jobs for the lowest-caste
untouchables and tribals.  Reserve quotas have been a charged issue in a
relatively depressed economic situation and have been vigorously opposed
by already privileged upper-caste Hindus, who are increasingly turning
illiberal and hostile to the underclass.  As the Congress vacillated
the BJP, which identifies with the most narrow-minded upper-caste interest
benefited from the unrest.

	Third, in response to the separatist movements in Punjab and 
Kashmir, sections of the Indian elite have increasingly moved toward
military solutions.  These movements have starkly posed the question of
autonomy for the provinces and more balanced relations between the states
and the central government.  The issue has polarized opinion between the 
ultracentrist, who would crush such movements outright, and those who
favor compromises based on greater autonomy and recognition of cultural
diversity.  The BJP has the most consistently hawkish, hard-line position
on these issues, as well as on nuclear weapons -- it is the sole party to
espouse over nuclearization.  This has expanded and deepened its support
base.

	And finally, the party's social and economic conservatism, deriving 
from its narrow upper-class base and its profoundly backward-looking
ideology, has served it well during India's shift to the right, both 
domestically and internationally, since the late 1980's.  This is especially
true following the collapse of the USSR, the ideological retreat of the left
and the proliferation of neoliberal economies in many Third World countries
brought to their knees by their debt crisis in recent years.  The BJP was
perhaps the only Indian political party to endorse the IMF-World Bank
economic policy package announced in mid-1991.  Equally important, for
significant segments of the urban middle class who are increasingly 
uncomfortable with political chaos, instability and unrelieved social
strive, is the party's stance as an upholder of authoritarian discipline
and law and order.

	To a lesser extent the BJP also gained in recent years as a result
of the Shah Bano episode.  This involved a judgement in 1985 by a law
court that, following the country's secular criminal law, awarded a modest
maintenance allowance to a deserted Muslim widow.  The reaction to the 
verdict from Muslim obscurantists, primarily clergymen, was extremely
hostile; they demanded the annulment of the judgement, which, they
claimed, ran counter to religious law.  Caving in to pressure and 
ignoring significant protests from secular Muslims, Rajiv Gandhi's
government had the relevant statute ammended by Parliament, thus lending
some credibility to the communal Hindu argument that the Congress party
panders to the Muslims.

	The truth, of course, is that the Congress has from time to 
time made deals with all manner of religious groups -- Muslim, Sikh,
Christian and, above all, Hindu.  Indeed, the more virulent Sikh
separatists as well as Hindu fundamentalists have thrived because of
its support.  Mainstream politicians have never exclusively favored 
Muslim communalism.  And the bulk of Indian Muslims -- underprivileged,
poor and educationally backward -- have scarcely benefited from the 
policies fo "minority appeasement," which the BJP and sections of the
relatively privileged Hindu middle class increasingly accuse Congress
of practicing.

	The BJP has played up the appeasement metaphor in numerous
ways, exploiting growing discontent in Hindu society by claiming that
the Hindus, a majority in "their own country" have been reduced to
"second-class citizens."  This specious argument has found some 
resonence among frustrated Hindus in search of victims and scapegoats.
Each time the government gives in to pressure from fundamentalists
-- as in the late 1980's, when Rajiv Ghandi banned Salman Rushdie's
The Satanic Verses for short-term political coniderations -- it lends
weight to that argument and allows the BJP to exploit it.  

	It is inconceivable that the temple issue would have gathered
the momentum it did, absent the Rajiv Ghandi's government's decision
to have the structure's gates unlocked in 1986, thus legitimizing
the Hindu communalists' claim to the Ayodhya site and granting religious
bigots the license to gather and worship at the disputed spot.  Once
the state permitted the BJP to intrude into secular political spaces,
in violation of the law, the party's leadership decided to adopt a
more aggressive posture and extract even more concessions from a
pusillanimous government.

	By establishing an informal alliance with the BJP, the Rao
government conferred new respectability on Hindu communalism and
elevated the practice of appeasement to the level of policy.  Acting
in the imperious style for which Rajiv Gandhi and his mother were
so often criticized, Prime Minister Rao gave short shrift to opposition
to his policy from the ranks of the Congress party, into whose base
the BJP had begun to make serious inroads, especially in the north.

	The Rao regime beat retreat after ignominious retreat, temporizing
when it should have acted, conceding ground to the BJP and even more 
intransigently militant nonparliamentary groups allied with the party
and acting in concert with it, such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad 
(World Hindu Council), which is the official sponsor of the temple
aggitaion and which has raised huge sums of money from its supporters
in North America and Britain.  Particularly noteworthy is the involvement
of the militarist Bajrang Dal -- infamous for its routine resort to violent
tactics and some of whose leaders like a great many of the VHP's, sit
as BJP members in Parliment -- and the avowedly fascist Shiv Sena, whose
goon squads have been used by industrialists in Bombay to smash the left
and the trade unions since the mid-1960's.  

	As the Rao government compromised, the BJP and its associates
became increasingly bellicose in demanding the demolition of the 
mosque and the construction of the temple, and started issuing ultimatums.
Bereft of a strategy, Rao responded by repeatedly bargaining for more time.
The BJP and its allies finally announced that they would start building 
the temple at Ayodhya on December 6th.  When this deadline was upon it,
the government did not bother to draw up a contingency plan -- a routine
in India when large gatherings are held -- although there were several
indications that BJP supporters would make trouble.  In any event, the
provincial police, then under the BJP's Uttar Pradesh administration, did
not offer even token resistance to the charged-up mob.  

	Even after the shocking event, the Rao government failed to take
adequate remedial or preventive action.  It delayed sending in troups
to clear the sight untill after the BJP's supporters had already built
a makeshift platform and a five-foot-high wall, which they claim is the
temple.  The government has since caved in to the BJP's demand that the
"temple" be preserved and that Hindus be allowed to worship there.  Having
first announced that it would rebuild the destroyed mosque, New Delhi has
taken no steps to that end.  On the contrary, it seems all set to renege
on that promise in the face of the BJP-VHP's threat to oppose the plan.
The Rao adminstration has now announced that it will acquire land in
Ayodhya on which to build both a temple and a mosque.  This is hardly
likely to restore the religious minorities' badly shaken confidence in
the government.

	New Delhi quickly dismissed the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh
after the razing of the mosque but made few moves to arrest and prosecute
those resonsible for the outrage.  It has since (somewhat belatedly,
and after giving them more than 72-hours' notice) banned the VHP, 
Bajrang Dal and the RSS for their communal activity, but it has also
bent over backward to appear evenhanded and has banned two Muslim
organizations that were in no comparable way involved in Ayodhya and
its aftermath.  The ban remains largely ineffective.  Worse, the
government has asked the Supreme Court to determine if a temple actually
existed at the site of the mosque, thus lending credibility to the 
fraudulent claim.  The Rao government has dismissed three other BJP
rule state governmentsfor refusal to honor and implement the ban, but
it has not gone much beyond administrative action to isolate the BJP
political.  Rao has not convinced the public that he has a coherent 
strategy to pull the country or even his regime out of the present
crisis. 

	The government's vacilliation and weak-kneed response have
reinforced the impression that Hindu communalists in some sense really
do represent the will of the majority and must be respected.  However,
nothing could be further from the truth.  Even before December 6, opinion
polls and other measures of the popular mood had shown that the vast
majority of Hindus were in opposition to the sacking of the mosque.
The BJP's base remains narrow, largely confined to upper-caste Hindus
in the north and the centre-west.  Its hatred-driven, jingoistic version
of Indian nationalism is not acceptable to most Hindus.  And its
version of Hinduism -- malign, intolerant, bellicose, obsessively
North Indian, male supremacist, "Aryan," social Darwinist and casteist
-- is seriously at odds with the inclusive, syncretise and pluralist
character of popular Hinduism.  The BJP's project is to force Hinduism
into a rigid mold, one derived from prophetic religions, and give it
a militant political phase; it is to convince Hindus that they are the
chosen people whose time has come.

	Although it has gained in influence in recent years, Hindu
communalism is not a pervasive, deep-rooted, nationwide phenomenen.  
It can be tackledthrough a combination of firm law enforcement and
political initiatives to isolate it.  The absence of these measures and
support from the state have so far allowed it to grow to a menacing size.
The same factors have in recent days enabled it to move from acute
embarassment and expressions of remorse at the razing of the Babri mosque
to a belligerent posture: The BJP has now decided to launch strikes, 
demonstrations and disruptions to paralyze government and force general
elections.

	Additional help has been provided by the BJP's Muslim counterparts
in Bangladesh and Pakistan, who have been razing Hindu temples, and by
government leaders and clerics in Saudi Arabia and Iran who claim to
speak in the name of so-called world community of Islam, thereby
reinforcing the fraudulent Hindu communal argument about the uncertain
loyalty of the Muslims.

	At any rate, the more indecisive the government, the greater the
administrative disarray and the longer the delay in the reconstruction of
the mosque, the higher the probability that the BJP's campaign of disruption
will succeed.

	India now stands at a crossroads.  There are two possible paths
before it.  In one, state indecisiveness, Congress's leadership paralysis
and the secular oppositions fractiousness continue; timely, effective
action against communalism is delayed; public confidence in the country's
Constitutions is undermined; small currents of "Islamic terrorism" 
(and much bigger Hindu ones) emerge; India moves towards more chaos,
sectarian strive, authoritarianism and virtual disintegration.

	In the alternative, there is a regrouping of secular forces within
 the Congress and other political parties, which leads to firm administrative
 and legal action against the BJP as well as to its political isolation
 as a result of joint public education and anti-communal campaigns; this
 in turn presages a return to secular sanity and to the agenda of balanced
 development with social justice, genuinely participatory democracy and
 popular empowerment.  The government has taken a few hesistant steps in
 that direction, but the situation remains extremely fluid.  It is far
 from clear that India will choose the second way.

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Praful Bidwai, a senior editor of The Times of India in New Delhi,
 is currently a visiting professor at Amherst College.