The Hindu : Has communalism changed?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 13, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Has communalism changed? — II

By Imtiaz Ahmad

We must get rid of the one-dimensional, inflexible state of identities, which emphasise consistency.

CONTEMPORARY COMMUNALISM operates within the framework of an enhanced desire of majority communalism to control and manipulate the leverage of state power. This form of communalism became prominent in the 1990s as a result of a deep legitimacy crisis of the Indian state in the face of economic liberalisation. Merely dislodging majoritarian forces from state power is not going to be sufficient to stamp this form of communalism out. Nor can it undermine their social and cultural hegemony. One must understand the link between modern thinking and `daily-life' viewpoints in civil society to deal with it.

Since Independence, India has been pursuing the ideal of nation-building based on secularism. Indeed, the process of modernisation has always had as its focus the reduction of barriers between religions, languages and castes (or tribes) by establishing a secular state and ultimately a unified nation. However, a marginal retracing of history reveals that it was colonial rule that brought western-type modernisation to India and `invented' the currently accepted view of Indian society as clearly segmented by social barriers.

Communalism in India shows that the achievement of constructing a secular nation-state modelled on the modern Western concept of civil society has been hindered by realities. Communalism continues to be given a tautological explanation in terms of conflict between religious communities or explained reductively as a conflict among secular interests under the cloak of religion. As a matter of fact, it is not the ignorant but the highly educated Indians who acquire the modern mentality that supports communalism. To truly understand communalism, one must go beyond the present interpretations that view it as a conflict of interests between religious groups and assess it from a historical perspective as reflecting the limitations of modern thinking which has dominated since colonial times.

Communalism is caused by the repression of the `daily-life viewpoint' by the dominance of a `transcendental viewpoint' inherent in modern thinking. In modern society, which emphasises reason, a rationally objective view tends to repress irrational subjective view. As Kenichi Mishima, a Japanese scholar, has argued, "post-traditional society, which reveals the danger of reason, requires a proper balance between reason and the other of reason". Today, with the collapse of the Cold War structure, the ideal of modernisation that is secularism based on reason has also weakened. This has resulted in the current phenomenon of communalism as the liberation of the energy potential of non-reason. This problem is not unique to India, but common throughout the world. It must be understood in the context of the deadlock of modernisation, namely, worldwide resurgence of religions, which surfaced with the end of the Cold War. Paradoxically, both secularism, under which reason governs religions, and communalism, which liberates non-reason in the form of resurgence of religions, are two sides of the same coin of the modern age. Both are born from modernity and are striving within the limits of modern thinking.

Nonetheless, this strife between secularism and communalism can be regarded as a fluctuating process in the pursuit of a balance between reason and the other of reason, namely, groping for a post-modern episteme. The emergence of a new version of communalism since the 1990s can be attributed to economic liberalisation that realised the spread of consumerism and the development of the new media, particularly television. During the 1990s, TV began spreading rapidly reaching into rural villages and low-income households. The spread of TV enormously changed the informational environment of Indian society. The drastic effect of the spread of TV on society is the realisation of the nationwide unification of information. Even before the spread of TV, print media existed in Indian society. Nonetheless, the TV, which represents visual images instead of letters, found it much easier to access people throughout the country regardless of social class. As a result, the TV enabled the public to more thoroughly live by sharing the same information.

Transmitting live images, TV permitted local viewers to see things from national and even global standpoints. The public therefore began to have two types of information: direct information obtained through first hand experiences and information transmitted by TV comprising images and knowledge but no first hand experiences.

Since TV images, despite the incident taking place in a distant place, appear as `real' as those seen in first hand experiences, the `real' images occasionally confuse viewers by blurring boundaries between `daily-life viewpoints' and `transcendental viewpoints'. This magic of encompassing of `daily-life viewpoints' by `transcendental viewpoints' works for the generation of the phenomenon of communalism through two processes: the `magic of categorisation' and an increase of warm consumer effects by a middle class syndrome.

To explain the "magic of categorisation" one can refer to any local community in a distant part of the country. To them, Ayodhya was a place that had no relation to their daily lives. However, when TV broadcasts transmitted scenes of the destroyed Babri Masjid, Ayodhya was no longer an irrelevant place at least in the domain of imagination. As a result, the incident, which was interpreted as communalism between Hindus and Muslims, began to cast a dark shadow over local communities in which both Hindus and Muslims shared a common culture. This meant that local people in every part of India shared the same visual information, which reflected their incorporation into a `transcendental viewpoint'. In this regard, it is worth pointing out that TV spread modern thinking, allowing viewers to see their daily life from a `transcendental viewpoint' and the popularisation of such a `transcendental viewpoint' supports the development of majority communalism

What is here referred to as the `magic of categorisation' refers to an effect of categorisation from a `transcendental viewpoint', that is, a strong sense of ties and affinity cultivated by the automatic assumption that individuals belonging to one category are siblings and share a common identity. For instance, any individual once categorised as Hindu immediately develops a strong affinity to others who similarly describe themselves including strangers in remote places. It can be called `magic of categorisation' because `daily-life viewpoints' from which a person regards someone he has never met as a stranger are repressed by the sympathy generated by a `transcendental viewpoint'. Thus, the situation of communalism involves the `magic of categorisation' since other persons are always categorised into either friends or foes in an inflexible manner regardless of individual differences within each category. The best way to attenuate communalism is to stay away from its trap. However, the problem concerning the balance between reason and the other of reason still remains unsolved. To cope with this problem, we must change our worldview that categorises objects and people in a uniform view. We must get rid of the one-dimensional, inflexible state of identities, which emphasise consistency. Gandhi probably had this mind when, at the height of the communal frenzy in Noakhali soon after Partition, he said: "You say Hindus are killing Muslims and Muslims are killing Hindus. I am a Hindu, but I am also a Muslim, a Christian and a Sikh. You are all also all of them."

(Concluded)

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