The Hindu : 'Matters of faith cannot undermine rights'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Aug 12, 2002

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'Matters of faith cannot undermine rights'

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI AUG. 11. A senior social scientist from the capital's Jawaharlal Nehru University has given the call for a new political formulation that dispenses with the rhetoric of ``tolerant secularism'' and subscribes to a new ideology, which while placing economic and social development at its centre gives primacy to citizenship rights over controversial matters of faith.

Delivering the Prem Bhatia Memorial Lecture 2002 on ``Not By Tolerance Alone: The Prospects of Secularism in India after Gujarat'' here this evening, Dipankar Gupta, Professor at the JNU's Centre for the Study of Social Systems, said the harsh lesson one can learn from Gujarat is that the ``rhetoric of secularism no longer works''. ``Secular tolerance'', he added, should give way to ``secular intolerance''. The lecture was presided by the president of the India International Centre, Kapila Vatsyayan.

Pointing out that villages in Gujarat had become sites for ``ethnic riots'' and Dalits as well as tribals were buying the argument of Hindu `rashtra' as it provided them a mistaken sense of pan-Indian identity, Prof. Gupta said it was time that right-thinking citizens in the country got together and propagated the view that ``matters of faith'' cannot undermine ``citizenship rights'' in any way.

In this context, he referred to the controversy surrounding the destruction of nude paintings of Goddess Saraswati by artist M. F. Husain by a group of self-styled nationalists and later, the protest against the attack on the crew of the film `Water'' and said such protests go to prove that violence of any form was intolerable.

Prof. Gupta said it was for the first time ever that the State as a whole was seen to be supporting ethnic groups who believe in the exclusion of certain communities living in the country. Nehru, he pointed out, never allowed sectarian politics to gain the upper hand because he kept the State away from such narrow debates. But the situation was the reverse now.

Drawing the attention of people towards the present situation in Gujarat, the social scientist said the post-riot scenario was indeed a cause for concern as the State did not set up even a single relief camp. Moreover, bringing the perpetrators of riots to book has never been its priority. However, even those who have been arguing against the alarming situation in Gujarat wanted only the Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, to go and could not raise a more serious debate because all they could find to support their arguments was the rhetoric of secularism.

It is here that Prof. Gupta argued that `secular intolerance' must come into vogue rather than `secular tolerance'. Principles of justice, tolerance and secularism, he stated, cannot over-ride the basic inalienable rights of citizens, which they were entitled to enjoy under the Constitution and whenever it happens, citizens must raise a collective voice of protest.

Arguing that the issue was, therefore, a more serious one, Prof. Gupta sought to distinguish between a communal movement and an ethnic movement. ``An ethnic movement is based on the sense of the other — that certain groups of people do not belong to the country,'' he said, pointing out that it was more dangerous than a communal movement as in it the narrow definition of nationality replaces rationality.

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