Living with diversity

By Asghar Ali Engineer

ALL OF South Asia is intensely diverse. It is this diversity of culture, religion, race and language which makes it so rich, colourful, liveable and interesting. People from different parts of the world made it their home. Some came with their own religion and others embraced the local ones. Many languages are spoken in different regions of the subcontinent. After independence, India opted for linguistic States and officially accepted linguistic diversity. But even after this, problems remain and regional identities are strongly asserting themselves.

Take Jammu and Kashmir, where secessionism is propagated on the ground that Kashmiri culture and identity are different from the rest of India. But the State itself is highly diverse. Jammu is dominated by Punjabis and Dogras. The Kashmir Valley, of course, has a Muslim majority but this region too is quite diverse. It had a substantial number of Pundits and even the Muslims are far from being a homogeneous mass. There are Sunnis and Shias. There are Gujjars who, though Sunnis, are culturally and linguistically very different from other Kashmiri Muslims. The Ladakh region has a Buddhist majority.

Assam, another hotbed of militancy, is equally diverse. There are Bengalis and Assamese, tribals and non-tribals, plains tribals and hill tribals, Bodos and Lalungs, Ohoms and non-Ohoms. The entire northeast is greatly diverse and is experiencing social and political turmoil.

There is no homogeneity even on the basis of religion. The British divided the Indian population into Hindus, Muslims, Parsis and Christians. All those who were not Muslims, Parsis or Christians were characterised as Hindus; the implication was that all these religious communities were not only homogeneous but also had common interests. This assumption ultimately led to the communal discourse, which plagues the polity today. The diversity within every religious community was totally ignored by the British and even by modern democratic rulers. The Hindus are divided into a number of castes. It is not only caste diversity but also linguistic, regional and cultural differences which make the Hindu society a non-homogeneous mass. Along with caste-based parties, regional outfits such as the Asom Gana Parishad, the Telugu Desam, the DMK and the AIADMK get voted to power. The BJP, party of the Hindu right, is slowly coming to terms with these harsh realities and has formed a National Democratic Alliance of 22 regional and caste-based parties, diluting its Hindutva agenda.

The Muslims are no less diverse. Apart from sectarian divisions into Shias and Sunnis, Khojas, Bohras and Memons, there are regional differences. There are Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati and Marathi-speaking Muslims with distinct identities. It would be a mistake to assume, as many communalists do, that all Muslims speak Urdu. The sectarian differences are also quite sharp. On some issues such as the Babri Masjid and the Muslim personal law, their behaviour tends to be uniform and this creates the illusion of homogeneity; this is projected with undue emphasis by the communalists.

There is no community which is not diverse. Even personal laws are not uniform, either of the Hindus, the Muslims or the Christians. Those who demand a common civil code do not take this diversity into account. One law professor said at a seminar that there was such a bewildering diversity among the Hindus that they would, more than others, reject a common civil code.

A democratic society cannot but be diverse. Uniformity ultimately leads to authoritarian and centralised power structures. The rightist forces always opt for overcentralised power structures. Democracy cannot improve without decentralisation. But ultra- nationalists among the Hindus and fundamentalists among other communities are not comfortable with this diversity. The RSS would like to promote cultural, religious and linguistic uniformity. It projects the Hindus as a homogenised community. And the Hindu community of its conception relates to a Brahminised culture, ignoring folk religions, customs and traditions.

Indian secularism is nothing but another name for diversity and pluralism. In fact, by adopting secularism the founding-fathers of the Indian National Congress in 1885 sanctified diversity and pluralism. But from day one, the rightist forces in all religious communities, especially among the Hindus and the Muslims, found secularism problematic. The Hindu Mahasabha rejected the concept and so did the Muslim League.

Nation is a political concept which has nothing to do with religion at all. It applies more to a culturally and linguistically cohesive group than to a religious group. Of course, there can be problems if a linguistically and culturally homogeneous group has religious fault lines. If speakers of the same language are divided along different religions, tensions, even hostility, can and do arise. But an assumption that if followers of the same religion are divided into different language groups, no tensions or hostility will occur is problematic.

The BJP, despite its Hindutva hyperbole, could not even unite all Hindus religion-wise, let alone do so politically. At the height of the Ramjanmabhoomi frenzy, it boasted that minority votes could be dispensed with. But the BJP has now been forced to woo the Muslims. A communal polity based on one religion or language or culture can never succeed in ruling India which is a coalition of heterogeneous identities. There are tensions in the polity today because all regional and ethnic identities have not been shown an equal measure of accommodation. Capitalist development is highly skewed and all regions do not get adequate opportunities. Regions which are neglected and remain less developed become volatile. Ethnic conflict, more often than not, is a conflict for development resources.

A diverse society needs dialogue among the different groups to promote better understanding. The three Ds - democracy, diversity and dialogue - go together. Diversity can become a source of strength, and not of conflict, only if all linguistic, cultural, religious and caste groups are provided equal opportunities, not just equal rights. The Constitution gives equal rights to all citizens. But all groups and communities are not getting equal opportunities for development and progress. Thus, regional and ethnic conflicts in the northeast and Kashmir can be explained by a total lack of development in these regions.

After all, what do various regions want autonomy for? For proper development opportunities, for fulfilling their aspirations of material and cultural development. The Kashmiris, Assamese and Nagas feel they have been marginalised in the power structure. It is through an appeal to the feeling of identity that people can be mobilised; identity becomes important for its potential for mobilisation in democracy. A nation is not mere geography as the rightist forces would have us believe; it is its people and their inspirations. And people are always diverse. Thus a nation can remain stable only if the aspirations of all its people are satisfied. India has remained united, not merely under coercion but because of attempts to accommodate - though not satisfactorily - the aspirations of its diverse people, giving them at least some share in power. There is violence, not always because people want to secede from the Indian Union but because in their perception their share in power is far from satisfactory. Diversity will remain a source of conflict as the long as people's aspirations are not fulfilled. It will be a great source of richness and variety if all sections have the satisfaction of enjoying their proper share in power and development.

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