The Hindu : Has communalism changed?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 12, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Has communalism changed? — I

By Imtiaz Ahmad

Where the distinction really lies is in that majority communalism can mask itself as a `nationalist force' and can leverage state power. Minority communalism lacks this capacity.

SHOULD WE characterise what happened, and is still happening, in Gujarat as communalism? What happened in Gujarat is not a recurrence of the old and familiar phenomenon of violence between Hindus and Muslims for which the word communalism was originally invented. It is an entirely different phenomenon. What is the basis for arguing that the Gujarat carnage is different from communalism, as we have historically understood it? It is the differential role of the state. Communalism, as historically understood, arose in the context of a colonial state required to act neutrally between conflicting communities. The state acted to restore peace without being swayed by the consideration of which community was perpetrating violence and which was targeted. In this sense, communalism was a phenomenon that essentially belonged to civil society and the state sought to control it. The Gujarat phenomenon is different because the state abandoned the time-honoured principle of even-handedness and sided with one community.

One must, to understand the full import of this difference, go back to the familiar distinction between majority and minority communalism. Historically, this distinction was couched in the argument that minority communalism arose because the majority was communal. If the majority ceased to be communal, minority communalism would have no reason to exist and would peter out. This line of reasoning failed to see that this was an insufficient reason for the distinction to be made at all. Communalism relies for its operation on the creation of a mindset and control of civil society.

In this respect, no sustainable distinction can be maintained between the communalism of the majority and the minority. Where the distinction really lies is in that majority communalism can mask itself as a `nationalist force' and can leverage state power. Minority communalism lacks this capacity. It grows under perceived threats to community identity. This is one reason why liberal forces find it hard to push the agenda of democratisation within minority communities.

Under the colonial state and for a considerable time thereafter, the inherent propensity of majority communalism to become ascendant and take control of state power was held in check by the neutrality of the state. The state recognised that communalism, whether of the majority or the minority, was essentially a phenomenon of civil society which it was obliged, in terms of the principles of rule of law and equal dispensation of justice, to tolerate only so far as it did not become threatening to the state and civil society.

The state was not always able to adhere to these time-honoured principles or to act neutrally. Many analysts tend to equate these deviations and distortions with what is happening currently to suggest that much difference does not exist in the character of the state under the Congress during the first 50 years and now. What makes for a difference in the two contexts is that in the first, if the state fell victim to the communal tendencies inherent in civil society, it was able to banish the communal forces, whether of the majority or the minority community, to the margins of state power. Now, the state has been so taken over by majoritarian forces (appropriately speaking, those speaking in the name of the majority, which is and remains otherwise extremely differentiated) that it is willing to allow itself to be guided by them and to protect them if they choose to execute pogroms against those they regard as the other. This significant difference is often glossed over when the distortions and deviations, such as those during Meerut riots or the anti-Sikh pogrom in 1984 under Congress rule, are equated with the current situation.

What happened in Gujarat is a brutal manifestation of the takeover of state power by communal forces. The state allowed organised groups to go around perpetrating violence in full view of the law and order machinery. It offered justifications for that violence as if the function of the state was not to control violence but rather to adjudicate over the question of what sorts of violence it would permit and what forms it would bring under control. The principle of state neutrality in the control of communal violence was openly thrown to the winds.

One can also invoke a series of more immediate political reasons to explain the violence in Gujarat. The first is the drubbing majority communalism received in the recent Assembly elections. This prompted majoritarian forces to revert to their time-tested strategy of communal polarisation to prevent further erosion. Second, since majoritarian forces anticipated realignment of forces at the Centre following the debacle in Uttar Pradesh, their logic was that if their Government had to go, it must do so on a plank which brought them to power in the first instance. They also felt that they lost the Assembly elections because of the Centre's soft attitude on the Ram Mandir issue. Construction of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya signifies for them control of state power and a weapon for polarising society along communal lines. The logic is: polarise society, reap electoral benefits and consolidate hold over state power to shape the nation and society according to a majoritarian vision.

Obviously this is unlikely to go unchallenged by the minority communities. Sooner or later, they too are going to throw up lunatic fringes, which would seek to challenge the hegemonic domination of the state by majoritarian communal forces. As this happens on an increased scale, the country will be witness to spiralling of both communal hatred and violence. All the more because the state would in the process remain a passive onlooker to communal street battles. Once this starts happening on an increased scale, the state would gradually lose even a limited pretence to neutrality. It would start discriminating between the violence perpetrated by majority communal forces and that executed by minority communal forces who will increasingly see in the discriminatory attitude of the state a fair rationale for engaging in violence as the only means available to redress their complete oppression. It would condone majority communalism as a legitimate expression of a powerful national sentiment and penalise minority communalism as a kind of terrorism directed against the state. This will bring forth increased reprisals against minorities leading to large-scale genocidal violence in which the state would openly seek to legitimise majoritarian violence.

For example, the projection of the Ayodhya dispute as a Hindu-Muslim conflict not only concealed its otherwise political content but also aimed at helping majority communalism consolidate and expand its social base. This made it possible for the majoritarian forces to shift the onus of blame for the continuing impasse onto the Muslims. In a nutshell, the state's actions were a part of the majoritarian communal forces' strategy to achieve their vision of the nation and society.

(The writer teaches Political Sociology at JNU.)

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

Stories in this Section

An outrageous quest for ligitimacy

The curse of age

Vajpayee goes to Gujarat

Has communalism changed? — I