Minorities in India – An Introduction

Minorities in India – Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

By Mukul Sinha

Today:
The serial bomb blasts in Ahmedabad on July 26, 2008 and the pictures of the dismembered bodies of scores of victims, brought back the spectre of the riots of 2002. Would there be another communal conflagration like in 2002? The authorities did try to instigate it – the day after the serial blasts, the police arrested Maulana Halim and accused him of being connected to Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and the case of the missing Muslim boys of Ahmedabad! His picture was published in the newspapers – the skull cap, long beard and SIMI were just the red rags asking for a reaction! Mercifully, nothing happened. But the suspicion and polarization between the Hindu and Muslim communities deepened despite the minorities’ open protest against the blasts.

The deadly recurrence of bomb blasts all over the country {Varanasi, Malegaon, Nanded, Mumbai, Jaipur, Thane, Bangalore, Ahmedabad} in recent times has ended in the murder of thousands of innocent people. The manipulated media coverage has etched a stock image of the ‘terrorist’ – the skull cap, beard and gun – despite the fact no proof has been found implicating any Muslim organization in these blasts! The authorities do not even consider the possibility of a non-Muslim organization masterminding the terrorism.

The Goebelian propaganda that began before the Babri Masjid demolition – accussing minorities of being obstacles in the development of ‘Bharat’ – has successfully prejudiced millions of Indians, carrying forward a legacy of hate since the partition in 1947.

Yesterday:
The India of yesterday (post-partition 1947) was more a tolerant and compassionate nation. Our leaders of yester years pioneered a secular constitution and lay the foundation for an unusual nation-state. They weaved a national fabric that preserved the cultural and religious rights of minorities under articles 25, 29 and 30 of the constitution. Despite the ethnic diversity, most regions in the country were charcterized by impoverishment. As India integrated with the global economy, divisive forces gained momentum in an inequitable economic scenario, leading to perennial political crisis. The regional imbalances in coalition politics has prevented a stable central government in the last two decades.

Will the Indian nation-state survive the centrifugal forces of capitalist development in the globalized world? The multi-ethnicity and caste-class contradiction will exacerbate with time and may threaten the integrity of India in the same way as it is happening in neighboring countries.

In a desperate attempt by the political establishment to keep all the regional forces happy, the minorities’ rights are being sacrificed. Let us understand the history of nation-states to grasp the situation better:

The nation state model in practice:
The term ‘nation state’ is frequently misused simply to mean a sovereign state, even if its political boundaries do not coincide with ethnic boundaries. The state is a geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural ethnic entity. The term ‘nation-state’ refers to the region where both nation and state coincide geographically. If successfully implemented, this implies that the citizens of a ‘nation-state’ share a common language, culture, commerce and business — which was not the case in many historical states.

The idea of a nation state is associated with the rise of the modern system of states — often called the “Westphalian system” in reference to the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), under which legitimate states were assumed to correspond to nations — groups of people united by language and culture.

Characteristics of the nation state : The nation state promotes economic unity, first by abolishing internal customs and tolls. Nation states have a policy to create and maintain a national transportation infrastructure, facilitating trade and travel. The primary role of the nation state, as compared to its non-national predecessors, is the creation of a uniform national culture through state policy. When an obvious unity is absent, the nation state tries to create it. Language and cultural policies become negative, and aim at the suppression of non-national elements. Language prohibitions were sometimes used to accelerate the adoption of national languages, and the decline of minority languages.

Minorities:
The most obvious deviation from the ideal of ‘one nation, one state’, is the presence of minorities, especially ethnic minorities which are clearly not members of the majority nation. The nationalist definition of a nation is always exclusive: no nation has open membership. In most cases, there is a clear idea that surrounding nations are different, and that includes citizens of nations who live on the ‘wrong side’ of the border.

Tomorrow:
In light of this historical backdrop, it becomes clear that the two major political streams are striving to create a chemistry to preserve unity in India. Unfortunately, upper caste dominance in state governance is common to both. While one practices pretentious secular governance wherein the upper caste rules with the coalition of subordinate castes and minorities, the second (led by the Sangh Parivar) seeks to create a Hindu Rashtra, a nation state built upon the cultural unity of Hindutva, in exclusion of all religious minorities. Here again the upper caste will naturally have the sway over all other castes by re-establishing a historical heirarchy. In both cases, religious minorities are marginalized – mere appendages to the established order.

Most of us turn a blind eye to the dreadful tomorrow!

Don’t we want to live together, eat together, enjoy our multi-lingual, multi-cultural life and strive for a just, equal and inclusive society. In that tomorrow may we all march together, where there will be no riots, no bomb blasts and no tears.

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