Archive for Identity, Culture and Society
Pre-History of Religious Conflict in India
According to the scholars of secular nationalist historiography, the British colonial rule, especially its ‘divide and rule’ policy, was responsible for Hindu-Muslim conflict and the breakdown of communal harmony in India. For example, Das (1990:22) has argued that communalism was first conceptualized by the British to secure allies. They raised Muslim communalism as a counter-weight to the emerging Indian nationalism. Hasan (1980: 1395) has noted that the roots communalism in India lies in ‘the Morley-Minto Reform [of 1909] which, by creating communal electorates, exacerbated Hindu-Muslim divisions and fostered the spirit of political exclusivism’.
Although such explanations are true, they provide only a partial understanding and ignore ‘the longue duree’ of the construction of communal identities in India (van der Veer 1994:30). Scholars like Christopher Bayly (1985), Peter van der Veer (1994) and others have stretched the discussion to pre-colonial period and have argued that religious and communal conflict had a pre-history in India even before the consolidation of the British rule. According to them ‘community-based state policies’, as followed by Aurangzeb (1618-1707) and Tipu Sultan (1750-1799) on the Muslim side and Jai Singh II of Jaipur (1688-1743) on the Hindu side, were responsible for communal conflict during the pre-colonial period (Bayly 1985:184-186; van der Veer 1994:32).
Such preferential exclusivist community-based policies were, however, continued by the British (e.g. through separate electorates for religious minorities), which resulted in large-scale ethno-religious violence in colonial India and ultimately culminated in its territorial division into the Islamic state of Pakistan and the Hindu dominated but secular India. Language, religion and ethnicity have, since then, been issues that keep challenging the democratic character of a pluralistic India.
Power and Contestation
Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam (2007) Power and Contestation: India since 1989, London: Zed Books.
Power and Contestation, written by two well-known political theorists-cum-activists in India, presents the most up-to-date and comprehensive chronicle of India’s political history since 1989. Combining post-nationalist, feminist and new left perspectives, the authors candidly illustrate how the power of capital and nation in post-1989 India has constantly been contested in public and political discourse.
Narrating the political transformations and changing state–society relations in India in the last two decades, the authors argue that India post-1989 has witnessed a significant departure from its foundational principles such as Nehruvian socialism, secular nationalism and the principles of non-alignment. Although global factors like the ‘end of the Cold War’ and neoliberal reforms have significantly influenced developments in India, the authors argue that it was primarily the ‘internal conflicts and logics’ that propelled these transformations in India (p. 2). With the decline of the Congress party and the regionalization of Indian politics, the issue of caste has re-emerged in the political sphere. The ‘mandalization of politics’ (p.16) and the increasing political mobilisation of the lower caste has not only challenged the hegemony of the upper castes but also significantly influenced the imperatives of electoral politics in India. Secularism, a key political principle which traditionally provided considerable psychological and political security to religious minorities, has been under vigorous attack with the rapid rise of Hindutva politics manifested in the demolition of Babri Mosque in 1992 and the ‘state-sponsored massacre of Muslims in Gujarat’ in 2002 (p. 51).
Globalisation and neoliberal economic reforms, as updated incarnations of the old idea of development and modernisation, have dispossessed people, disrupted communities and destroyed their cultures and livelihoods without offering them any viable or dignified alternatives. As a response, various non-party political formations and grass-roots movements or what the authors call ‘new left’ movements have emerged to contest the exclusive and exploitative logic of global capital and its local ally the nation/state. The conflicts in the north-east and Kashmir region have also challenged the ‘idea of India’. Although global capital has helped the Indian nation to secure a place in the world, the authors conclude that ‘in India, as elsewhere in the world, the contestations to the power of Capital and Nation are so many, so varied, and so relentless’ (p. 181).
Since the book is written from the ‘new left’ perspective, it captures only one aspect of India’s transformation since 1989. Despite this, the strength of the book is its numerous recent examples and candid analytic style, which make it an admiral contribution to the Zed Books series on ‘Global History of the Present’ and a rich resource for anyone working on India.
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@ Sarbeswar Sahoo, Political Studies Review, Vol. 7, No. 1, January 2009
The Politics of Tribal Resistance in Orissa
Why does collective resistance occur where they do and how are the actions and options of social movement agents shaped by and also impact on social structures? What inspires and empowers people to resist and to reveal the character and spirit of the cultural expressions of resistance? In short, what is the ‘politics’ of (tribal) resistance in Orissa? Addressing these issues, the paper makes three basic arguments – Firstly, the ‘fear’ of the uncertain future, and the cultural meaning attached to the geographical notions of ‘place’ provide important perspectives in understanding the relations of power, domination and the politics of collective resistance. Secondly, the threat of material interest serves as an organizing principle in politicizing identity and interest groups against the outside authority. And finally, the magnitude of resistance intensifies when the grievances of the people are treated in an unresponsive and oppressive manner.
Individualism – Man’s Right to Exist for his Own Sake
Has man any right to exist if he refuses to serve society?
Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake, he taught his brothers to light. But he left them a gift they had not conceived. And he lifted darkness off the earth. Throughout the centuries, there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. The great creators, the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors stood alone against the men of their time. Every new thought was opposed; every new invention was denounced. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid, but they won. No creator was prompted by a desire to please his brothers. His brothers hated the gift he offered. His truth was his only motive. His work is his only goal. His work, not those who used it; his creation, not the benefits others derived from it; the creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men. He went ahead whether others agreed with him or not, with his integrity as his only banner. He served nothing and no one. He lived for himself, and only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.
Man cannot survive, except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon, but the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. The man who thinks must think and act on his own. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be subordinated to the needs, opinions or wishes of others. It is not an object of sacrifice. The creator stands on his own judgment. The parasite follows the opinions of others. The creator thinks; the parasite copies. The creator produces; the parasite loots. The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasites concern is the conquest of men. The creator requires independence. He neither serves nor rules. He deals with men by free exchange and voluntary choice. The parasite seeks power. He wants to bind all men together in common action and common slavery. He claims that man is only a tool for the use of others that he must think as they think, act as they act, and live in selfless, joyless servitude to any need but his own.
Look at history! Everything we have, every great achievement has come from the independent work of some independent mind. Every horror and destruction came from attempts to force men into a herd of brainless, soulless robots without personal rights, without personal ambition, without hope, or dignity. It is an ancient conflict. It has another name – the individual against the collective. Our country, the noblest country in the history of men was based on the principles of individualism – the principle of man’s inalienable rights. It was country where a man was free to seek his own happiness. To gain and produce, not to give up and renounce; to prosper, not to starve; to achieve, not to plunder; to hold his highest possession, a sense of his personal value and as his highest virtue his self-respect. Look at the results! That is what the collectivists are now asking you to destroy as much as the earth has been destroyed.
I am an architect. I know what is to come by the principle on which it is built. We are approaching a world in which I cannot permit myself to live. My ideas are my property. They were taken from me by force, by breach of contract. No appeal was left to me. It was believed that my work belonged to others to do with as they pleased. They had a claim upon me without my consent that it was my duty to serve them without choice or reward. Now you know why I dynamited Cortlandt. I designed Cortlandt, I made it possible, I destroyed it. I agreed to design it for the purpose of seeing it built as I wished. That was the price I set for my work. I was not paid. My building was disfigured at the whim of others who took all the benefits of my work and gave me nothing in return. I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life nor to any part of my energy, nor to any achievement of mine, no matter who makes the claim. It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing. I came here to be heard in the name of every man of independence still left in the world. I wanted to state my terms. I do not care to work or live on any others. My terms are a man’s right to exist for his own sake.
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@ This is translated from a video on “Fountain Head”.
Hindutva’s Violent History
ANGANA CHATTERJI
Anthropologist
Tehelka Magazine, Vol. 5, Issue . 36, Dated Sept 13, 2008;
HINDUTVA’S PRODUCTION of culture and nation is often marked by savagery. On 23 August 2008, Lakshmanananda Saraswati, Orissa’s Hindu nationalist icon, was murdered with four disciples in Jalespeta in Kandhamal district. State authorities alleged the attackers to be Maoists (and a group has subsequently claimed the murder). But the Sangh Parviar held the Christian community responsible, even though there is no evidence or history to suggest the armed mobilisation of Christian groups in Orissa.
After the murder, the All India Christian Council stated: “The Christian community in India abhors violence, condemns all acts of terrorism, and opposes groups of people taking the law into their own hands”. Gouri Prasad Rath, General Secretary, VHPOrissa, stated: “Christians have killed Swamiji. We will give a befitting reply. We would be forced to opt for violent protests if action is not taken against the killers”.
Following which, violence engulfed the district. Churches and Christian houses razed to the ground, frightened Christians hiding in the jungles or in relief camps. Officials record the death toll at 13, local leaders at 20, while the Asian Centre for Human Rights noted 50.
The Sangh’s history in postcolonial Orissa is long and violent. Virulent Hindutva campaigns against minority groups reverberated in Rourkela in 1964, Cuttack in 1968 and 1992, Bhadrak in 1986 and 1991, Soro in 1991. The Kandhamal riots were not unforeseen.
Since 2000, the Sangh has been strengthened by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s coalition government with the Biju Janata Dal. In October 2002, a Shiv Sena unit in Balasore district declared the formation of the first Hindu ‘suicide squad’. In March 2006, Rath stated that the “VHP believes that the security measures initiated by the Government [for protection of Hindus] are not adequate and hence Hindu society has taken the responsibility for it.”
The VHP has 1,25,000 primary workers in Orissa. The RSS operates 6,000 shakhas with a 1,50,000 plus cadre. The Bajrang Dal has 50,000 activists working in 200 akharas. BJP workers number above 4,50,000. BJP Mohila Morcha, Durga Vahini (7,000 outfits in 117 sites), and Rashtriya Sevika Samiti (80 centres) are three major Sangh women’s organisations. BJP Yuva Morcha, Youth Wing, Adivasi Morcha and Mohila Morcha have a prominent base. Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh manages 171 trade unions with a cadre of 1,82,000. The 30,000-strong Bharatiya Kisan Sangh functions in 100 blocks. The Sangh also operates various trusts and branches of national and international institutions to aid fundraising, including Friends of Tribal Society, Samarpan Charitable Trust, Sookruti, Yasodha Sadan, and Odisha International Centre. Sectarian development and education are carried out by Ekal Vidyalayas, Vanavasi Kalyan Ashrams/Parishads (VKAs), Vivekananda Kendras, Shiksha Vikas Samitis and Sewa Bharatis — cementing the brickwork for hate and civil polarisation.
This massive mobilisation has erupted in ugly incidents against both Christians and Muslims. In 1998, 5,000 Sangh activists allegedly attacked the Christian dominated Ramgiri-Udaygiri villages in Gajapati district, setting fire to 92 homes, a church, police station, and several government vehicles. Earlier, Sangh activists allegedly entered the local jail forcibly and burned two Christian prisoners to death. In 1999, Graham Staines, 58, an Australian missionary and his 10- and six-year-old sons were torched in Manoharpur village in Keonjhar. A Catholic nun, Jacqueline Mary was gangraped by men in Mayurbhanj and Arul Das, a Catholic priest, was murdered in Jamabani, Mayurbhanj, followed by the destruction of churches in Kandhamal. In 2002, the VHP converted 5,000 people to Hinduism. In 2003, the VKA organised a 15,000- member rally in Bhubaneswar, propagating that Adivasi (and Dalit) converts to Christianity be denied affirmative action. In 2004, seven women and a male pastor were forcibly tonsured in Kilipal, Jagatsinghpur district, and a social and economic boycott was imposed against them. A Catholic church was vandalised and the community targeted in Raikia.
Change the cast, the story is still the same. 1998: A truck transporting cattle owned by a Muslim was looted and burned, the driver’s aide beaten to death in Keonjhar district. 1999: Shiekh Rehman, a Muslim clothes merchant, was mutilated and burned to death in a public execution at the weekly market in Mayurbhanj. 2001: In Pitaipura village, Jagatsinghpur, Hindu communalists attempted to orchestrate a land-grab connected to a Muslim graveyard. On November 20, 2001, around 3,000 Hindu activists from nearby villages rioted. Muslim houses were torched, Muslim women were ill-treated, their property, including goats and other animals, stolen. 2005: In Kendrapara, a contractor was shot on Govari Embankment Road, supposedly by members of a Muslim gang. Sangh groups claimed the shooting was part of a gang war associated with Islamic extremism and called for a 12hour bandh. Hindu organisations are alleged to have looted and set Muslim shops on fire.
It is Saraswati who pioneered the Hinduisation of Kandhamal since 1969. Activists targeted Adivasis, Dalits, Christians and Muslims through socio-economic boycotts and forced conversions (named ‘re’conversion, presupposing Adivasis and Dalits as ‘originally’ Hindus).
Kandhamal first witnessed Hindutva violence in 1986. The VKAs, instated in 1987, worked to Hinduise Kondh and Kui Adivasis and polarise relations between them and Pana Dalit Christians. Kandhamal remains socio-economically vulnerable, a large percentage of its population living in poverty. Approximately 90 percent of Dalits are landless. A majority of Christians are landless or marginal landholders. Hindutva ideologues say Dalits have acquired economic benefits, augmented by Christianisation. This is not borne out in reality.
In October 2005, converting 200 Bonda Adivasi Christians to Hinduism in Malkangiri, Saraswati said: “How will we… make India a completely Hindu country? The feeling of Hindutva should come within the hearts and minds of all the people.” In April 2006, celebrating RSS architect Golwalkar’s centenary, Saraswati presided over seven yagnas attended by 30,000 Adivasis. In September 2007, supporting the VHP’s statewide road-rail blockade against the supposed destruction of the mythic ‘Ram Setu’, Saraswati conducted a Ram Dhanu Rath Yatra to mobilise Adivasis.
In 2008, Hindutva discourse named Christians as ‘conversion terrorists’. But the number of such conversions is highly inflated. They claim there are rampant and forced conversions in Phulbani-Kandhamal. But the Christian population in Kandhamal is 1,17,950 while Hindus number 5,27,757. Orissa Christians numbered 8,97,861 in the 2001 census — only 2.4 percent of the state’s population. Yet, Christian conversions are storied as debilitating to the majority status of Hindus while Muslims are seen as ‘infiltrating’ from Bangladesh, dislocating the ‘Oriya (and Indian) nation’.
The right to religious conversion is constitutionally authorised. Historically, conversions from Hinduism to Christianity or Islam have been a way to escape caste oppression and social stigma for Adivasis and Dalits. In February 2006, the VHP called for a law banning (non- Hindu) religious conversions. In June 2008, it urged that religious conversion be decreed a ‘heinous crime’ across India.
‘Reconversion’ strategies of the Sangh appear to be shifting in Orissa. The Sangh reportedly proposed to ‘reconvert’ 10,000 Christians in 2007. But fewer public conversion ceremonies were held in 2007 than in 2004- 2006. Converting politicised Adivasi and Dalit Christians to Hinduism is proving difficult. The Sangh has instead increased its emphasis on the Hinduisation of Adivasis through their participation in Hindu rituals, which, in effect, ‘convert’ Adivasis by assuming that they are Hindu.
The draconian Orissa Freedom of Religion Act (OFRA), 1967, must be repealed. There are enough provisions under the Indian Penal Code to prevent and prohibit conversions under duress. But consenting converts to Christianity are repeatedly charged under OFRA, while Hindutva perpetrators of forcible conversions are not. The Sangh contends that ‘reconversion’ to Hinduism through its ‘Ghar Vapasi’ (homecoming) campaign is not conversion but return to Hinduism, the ‘original’ faith. This allows them to dispense with the procedures under OFRA.
The Orissa Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act, 1960 should also be repealed. It is utilised to target livelihood practices of economically disenfranchised groups, Adivasis, Dalits, Muslims, who engage in cattle trade and cow slaughter.
In fact, a CBI investigation into the activities of the VHP, RSS and Bajrang Dal is crucial as per the provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. Groups such as the VHP and VKA are registered as cultural and charitable organisations but their work is political in nature. They should be audited and recognised as political organisations, and their charitable status and privileges reviewed.
The state and central government’s refusal to restrain Hindu militias evidences their linkage with Hindutva (BJP), soft Hindutva (Congress), and the capitulation of civil society to Hindu majoritarianism. How would the nation have reacted if groups with affiliation other than than militant Hinduism executed riot after riot: Calcutta 1946, Kota 1953, Rourkela 1964, Ranchi 1967, Ahmedabad 1969, Bhiwandi 1970, Aligarh 1978, Jamshedpur 1979, Moradabad 1980, Meerut 1982, Hyderabad 1983, Assam 1983, Delhi 1984, Bhagalpur 1989, Bhadrak 1991, Ayodhya 1992, Mumbai 1992, Gujarat 2002, Marad 2003, Jammu 2008?
The BJD-BJP government has repeatedly failed to honour the constitutional mandate separating religion from state. In 2005-06, Advocate Mihir Desai and I convened the Indian People’s Tribunal on Communalism in Orissa, led by Retired Kerala Chief Justice KK Usha. The Tribunal’s findings detailed the formidable mobilisation by majoritarian communalist organisations, including in Kandhamal, and the Sangh’s visible presence in 25 of 30 districts. The report did not invoke any response from the state or central government.
In January 2000, The Asian Age reported: “‘One village, one shakha’ is the new slogan of the RSS as it aims to saffronise the entire Gujarat state by 2005.” Then ensued the genocide of March 2002. In 2003, Subash Chouhan, then Bajrang Dal state convener, stated: “Orissa is the second Hindu Rajya (to Gujarat).”
We all know what has happened in Kandhamal December 2007, and again now. The communal situation in Orissa is dire. State and civil society resistance to Hindutva’s ritual and catalytic abuse cannot wait.
The writer is associate professor of anthropology at California Institute of Integral Studies and author of a forthcoming book:
Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India’s Present, Narratives from Orissa
Why Civilizations cannot Climb Hills?
Prof. James C. Scott, a professor at Yale, was a visiting professor at the Institute of Development Studies in Roskilde University in Denmark. Presenting his research on Southeast Asia, he spoke about Why Civilizations cannot Climb Hills on 29 April 2008. He argued how states stop when they come to hills and presented the history of non-state spaces. According to him, the history of agriculture in Southeast Asia is of 8,000 years. The history of homo-sapiens is 200,000 years and the history of homo-sapiens in Southeast Asia is 50,000 years. He also argued that most of human experience has been state-less. Population and production in Southeast Asia was dispersed.
He distinguished between the Valley and the Hill and argued that the valley has always been the sites of states – taxes, Kings, sites of war and of hierarchy. The hill has no permanent states, no permanent Kings and taxation system. It is relatively egalitarian, although it is considered uncivilized, primitive and as barbarian periphery. Hill peoples are the past of the valley people. Hill peoples don’t share the religion of the valley. Mountains remain at the fringes of civilization. People run away from valleys to hills to evade state-making – taxation, mono-cropping, etc. of the state. Hills are not barbarian periphery but they are kind of political refugees. Hill peoples are considered as tribes and tribes were the creation of states and empires. They are the people who live in the fringes of the state. In Southeast Asia and South Asia, tribes were escaping state-building where as in Africa tribes were part of the state project. The idea of nation-state has been to control the periphery and to expand the state sovereignty till the border.
Empowering Visions
What roles do the modern media play in the sphere of culture, politics and governance? Christiane Brosius’ Empowering Visions: the Politics of Representation in Hindu Nationalism (London: Anthem Press, 2005) is an attempt to address ‘why, how and when Hindutva ideologues and pragmatics exploited the video media in order to claim power over public opinion-making and opinion-shaping’ (p. 3). Grounded on the theories of popular culture, anthropology of audiovisuals and thick ethnographic analysis, Brosius brilliantly depicts the roles played by Jain Studios’ videography in representing Hindutva’s cultural nationalism as an alternative conception of modernity, nationhood and national identity against the existing morally corrupt culture of secularism. These alternative empowering visions are realized through active entwining of ‘imagination to politics and ideology, space to time, image to narrative, and agent to action’ (p. 4).
The author argues that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies, since the late 1980s, have heavily exploited the modern media, particularly audiovisual technologies to create visions of idealized Hindu way of life. Employing Schiffauer’s idea of ‘field of discourse’– ‘as a sphere in which cultural agents interact with each other with regards to interpretations, norms, values, questions of style and memories’ (p. 3) – Brosius argues that Jain Studio’s production and distribution of propaganda videos has helped the BJP in spreading cultural and ideological images to influence the public consciousness with a pan-Indian cultural nationalism grounded on the glories of the golden age. By depicting the people passionately participating in the saffron revolution, these images and narratives invite further participation of the audience. Key images and narratives from the domain of local popular culture were appropriated and commodified in a package to heighten ‘political marketing’ and mobilization (p. 93); to influence the popular psyche of the people; and to present itself as a credible force to reshape the modern nation-state, reclaim the stolen stories and rewrite the national history.
Selective use of particularistic media imaginations and narratives has colonized the public conscience and provocative representations in the public sphere have generated antithetical feelings of ‘self’ and ‘the other’. Visual media has convincingly justified Hindutva’s agenda of Hindu cultural identity as ‘credible’ and depicted Muslims as anti-nationals and a threat to the nation. It argues that the national history has been misrepresented by the anti-nationals and a self-empowerment could be achieved only by re-mapping Indianness through a return to the ‘indigenous and “true” history of the Hindu people’ (p. 12). A sense of ‘pop patriotism’ is being crafted by softly manipulating the Hindu sentiment through devout citizenship, righteousness, self-sacrifice, sacred violence, heroism, national devotion, and the notion of martyrdom which has ‘left deep scars on the skin of civil society, and changed the mental maps of large parts of Indian citizenry for good’ (p. 180). The video media, which is a part of Hindutva’s ‘cheerful revolution’ aimed at forming a powerful paternalistic state with a seemingly disciplined and infantile citizenry ever ready to sacrifice for the cause of universal brotherhood and moral community (p. 93). Since 1998, the Internet has decentralized the power of representation and disseminated Hindutva ideology on a wider scale. The presentation of imaginary and narratives in cultural production has, thus, played a significant role in redefining identity, history, nationhood, governance and politics.
The only shortcoming of the book would be its overemphasis on the cultural ‘production’ of image and narratives and not the ‘reception’ of it by the people. Despite this, the book is an admiral contribution to the Anthem South Asian Studies series. Its uniqueness lies in its provocative and telling arguments embedded in ethnographic description and provides a valuable contribution to the field of popular culture and anthropology of iconography.
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@ Reviewed by Sarbeswar Sahoo, Contemporary South Asia, Vol. 16, No. 3, September 2008, pp. 357-358.
Who Invented Hinduism?
Hinduism, I had thought, is a very old religion. To my disbelief, it is actually not. Many have claimed that Hinduism is a colonial construction/invention and was non-existent before the colonial times. W.C. Smith, who is identified as the pioneer, cites the year 1829 before which “Hindooism” did not exist. As John Hawley (1991) writes, “Hinduism – the word perhaps the reality too – was born in the nineteenth century, a notoriously illegitimate child. The father was middle class and the British, and the mother, of course, was India”. Similarly Brian Smith (1989) has argued that “Hinduism was probably first imagined by the British in the early part of the nineteenth century to describe (and create and control) an enormously complex configuration of people and their traditions found in South Asian subcontinent. ‘Hinduism’ made it possible for the British, and for us all (including Hindus) to speak of a religion when before there was none or, at best, many”.
The question however is if Hinduism is an illegitimate invention of colonialism, what was it called before the British gave it this name? Contrary to the above claims Many argue that variants of the word Hindu were existent in Persian and vernacular Indian languages long before nineteen the century. The religious sense also coexisted and overlapped with an ethnic and geographical sense. It is commonly agreed that the word Hindu is derived from the name “Sindhu” to refer to the inhabitants of the lands near and to the east of the Indus. If the word “Hindu” had a purely geographical sense up until the nineteenth century, then why were the foreign Muslims, who permanently settled in India, or at least their descendants born in India, not called Hindus? Heinrich von Stietencron answers this by insisting that the Muslim rulers persistently maintained a foreign self-identity for generations, while the Hindus, i.e. native Indians, just as persistently maintained a separate, indigenous identity. Addressing some of these contentious and controversial issues, David N. Lorenzen argues that the claim that Hinduism was invented or constructed by European colonizers, mostly British, sometime after 1800 is false. The evidence instead suggests that a Hindu religion theologically and devotionally grounded in texts such as the Bhagabad-gitas, the Puranas, and philosophical commentaries of six darshanas gradually acquired a much sharper self-conscious identity through the rivalry between Muslims and Hindus in the period between 1200 and 1500, and was firmly established firmly before 1800.
Riots in Rajasthan
He was on his house’s roof, when he heard people shouting and running for shelter towards their houses. “There is riot in the city” someone shouted. Abdul Ghani’s house was in the Keer Khera mohalla of Chittore Garh. He thought his house was safe, as he had enmity with none. There were two more houses in the mohalla which belonged to the Muslims.
Suddenly he saw a crowd of fanatic people shouting slogans against Muslims heading towards his house. Now he was a bit anxious, as he had an adolescent daughter. He rushed down and closed the main gate of his house and bolted it thoroughly. Then he called his wife and daughter to the inner room and closed it firmly. He heard the sound of breaking of the main gate and in no time the rioters were on the door of the inner room in which he had hidden himself with his daughter and wife. The door could not resist the bumping and it fell open. Abdul Ghani now gathered his whole courage and tried to stop the hooligans from entering the room but he was hit by a knife in his belly, again and again, till he fell unconscious. Now his wife Bismillah tried to defend her daughter but she was beaten by sticks so badly that she had multiple fractures. Now the girl was there, unprotected and afraid. They dragged her and brought out to the street. There were about 40 people who ripped her clothes to make her stark necked. The intention was obvious. A few people of the mohalla felt ashamed as the girl belonged to their locality. They came to her rescue and the girl was saved except for some bruises on her body.
The riot broke in the city on the day of Holi. It was not all of a sudden, but well designed by the communal forces. The Police and administration didn’t take any action for complete four hours. The miscreants burnt, ransacked and looted the shops of Muslims freely for four hours. The Police Control room happens to be only 30 feet away from the Dargah of Sufi saint Hazrat Chal-Phir Shah, where all the menace was going on and the rioters were selectively burning and looting the shops belonging to the Muslim community. Even if there had been a shop of a Hindu among the Muslim shops, it was evacuate sympathetically and then the Muslims’ shops were set afire. The shameless nuisance continued even after curfew was imposed in the city.
Though it is commendable on the part of the Police, that they prevented any direct clash between the communities, but just after gaining control, they started arresting innocent people from both sides in the name of `rapid action’ till the number reached to about 45. Most of the detainees had nothing to do with the riot. The actual culprits, against whom FIRs have been lodged with their names, are still roaming about fearlessly and threatening the victims, even after one and a half month. According to the local residents, the offenders belong to the ruling party BJP and are fully protected.
During this unfortunate riot, about 60 shops, belonging to the Muslims were burnet, damaged or looted. According to the survey done by the administration, the loss amounted to Rs. 63 lakhs, but according to the local people, it amounts to about Rs. 85 lakhs to One Crore. Till now only 8 persons have been paid Rs. 50,000/- each and 49 have been offered Rs. 2000/- to 5000/- in lieu of their damaged properties worth lakhs of Rupees, what a joke? Really the communal forces must be rejoicing on the success of their plan to pull down theMuslims economically. Most of the victims have refused to accept such a meager help from the government.
The District Chittore Garh of Rajasthan has been in the clutches of the fascist and communal forces since a year. Recently in the month of December, 2007, on the very next day of Eidul Azha, 6 villages of Kapasan Tehsil of the district faced fierce riots in which several acres of fields with the crop either awaiting to reap already reaped and dumped there, were set ablaze, 19 tube wells were destroyed, hundreds of meters of PVC pipes were burnt, a tractor and a motor cycle were set on fire as well as quintals of fodder and manure. Here too is the same story. FIR was lodged against 51 people, but not a
single was arrested from among the chief culprits who are threatening the plaintiffs and amusing that you can do nothing against us.
Recently a delegation of Rajasthan Muslim Forum (a united forum of the Muslim organizations of the state) headed by Er. Muhammad Salim (State President JIH and member Forum) has visited the affected areas of the district. The villagers of Raghunath Pura, Umand, Hathiyana etc., informed the delegation that the culprits are enjoying the shield provided by the ruling party. They also complained against the District Collector P. L. Agrawal, Kapasan Tehsildar Himmat Singh and sub-section officer Manveer Singh Atri of being communal and biased against the Muslim Community and said that due to these officers the culprits could not be nabbed till now.
Here, (Kapasan Tehsil) also, the compensation amount being given to the sufferers is very small which they have denied to accept. Tehsildar Himmat Singh is reportedly forcing them to accept the amount and threatening that they will be charged falsely with serious allegations if they refuse to take the compensation.
The overall situation is that the district is fully in the hold of the communal and fascist forces, who consider themselves above the law. They are pretty confident, that no action will be taken against them. Another tragedy is that the Opposition party Congress didn’t play any role in bringing the rioters behind the bars or in availing justice for the victims. Moreover, some members of the party were found to be indulged in the December 07 riots of the Kapasan Tehsil.
The Rajasthan Muslim Forum has demanded from the government to arrest the culprits without delay, release the innocent people, give away the appropriate compensations for the losses and take stern action against the officers who are guilty of saving the criminals and discriminating communally.
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@ Received from South Asia Contact Group on 11 May 2008
Terrorism is not a Muslim Monopoly
“All Muslims may not be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.” This comment , frequently heard after the Mumbai bomb blasts implies that terrorism is a Muslim specialty, if not a monopoly. The facts are very different.
First, there is nothing new about terrorism. In 1881, anarchists killed the Russian Tsar Alexander II and 21 bystanders. In 1901, anarchists killed US President McKinley as well as King Humbert I of Italy.
World War I started in 1914 when anarchists killed Archduke Ferdinand of Austria. These terrorist attacks were not Muslim. Terrorism is generally defined as the killing of civilians for political reasons.
Going by this definition, the British Raj referred to Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad and many other Indian freedom fighters as terrorists. These were Hindu and Sikh rather than Muslim.
Guerrilla fighters from Mao Zedong to Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro killed civilians during their revolutionary campaigns. They too were called terrorists until they triumphed.
Nothing Muslim about them. In Palestine, after World War II, Jewish groups (the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang) fought for the creation of a Jewish state, bombing hotels and installations and killing civilians.
The British, who then governed Palestine, rightly called these Jewish groups terrorists. Many of these terrorists later became leaders of independent Israel — Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon.
Ironically, these former terrorists then lambasted terrorism, applying this label only to Arabs fighting for the very same nationhood that the Jews had fought for earlier.
In Germany in 1968-92, the Baader-Meinhoff Gang killed dozens, including the head of Treuhand, the German privatisation agency. In Italy, the Red Brigades kidnapped and killed Aldo Moro, former prime minister.
The Japanese Red Army was an Asian version of this. Japan was also the home of Aum Shinrikyo, a Buddhist cult that tried to kill thousands in the Tokyo metro system using nerve gas in 1995.
In Europe, the Irish Republican Army has been a Catholic terrorist organisation for almost a century. Spain and France face a terrorist challenge from ETA, the Basque terrorist organisation.
Africa is ravaged by so much civil war and internal strife that few people even bother to check which groups can be labelled terrorist. They stretch across the continent.
Possibly the most notorious is the Lord’s Salvation Army in Uganda, a Christian outfit that uses children as warriors. In Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tigers have long constituted one of the most vicious and formidable terrorist groups in the world.
They were the first to train children as terrorists. They happen to be Hindus. Suicide bombing is widely associated with Muslim Palestinians and Iraqis, but the Tamil Tigers were the first to use this tactic on a large scale.
One such suicide bomber assassinated Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. In India, the militants in Kashmir are Muslim. But they are only one of several militant groups. The Punjab militants, led by Bhindranwale, were Sikhs.
The United Liberation Front of Assam is a Hindu terrorist group that targets Muslims rather than the other way round. Tripura has witnessed the rise and fall of several terrorist groups, and so have Bodo strongholds in Assam.
Christian Mizos mounted an insurrection for decades, and Christian Nagas are still heading militant groups. But most important of all are the Maoist terrorist groups that now exist in no less than 150 out of India’s 600 districts.
They have attacked police stations, and killed and razed entire villages that oppose them. These are secular terrorists (like the Baader Meinhof Gang or Red Brigades).
In terms of membership and area controlled, secular terrorists are far ahead of Muslim terrorists. In sum, terrorism is certainly not a Muslim monopoly.
There are or have been terrorist groups among Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and even Buddhists. Secular terrorists (anarchists, Maoists) have been the biggest killers.
Why then is there such a widespread impression that most or all terrorist groups are Muslim? I see two reasons. First, the Indian elite keenly follows the western media, and the West feels under attack from Islamic groups.
Catholic Irish terrorists have killed far more people in Britain than Muslims, yet the subway bombings in London and Madrid are what Europeans remember today.
The Baader Meinhof Gang, IRA and Red Brigades no longer pose much of a threat, but after 9/11 Americans and Europeans fear that they could be hit anywhere anytime. So they focus attention on Islamic militancy.
They pay little notice to other forms of terrorism in Africa, Sri Lanka or India: these pose no threat to the West. Within India, Maoists pose a far greater threat than Muslim militants in 150 districts, one-third of India’s area.
But major cities feel threatened only by Muslim groups. So the national elite and media focus overwhelmingly on Muslim terrorism. The elite are hardly aware that this is an elite phenomenon.
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@ Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar,The Times of India, 23 July 2006
