02 - Religious Revivalism in South Asia by South Asian Media Net

patronised elites who sought leverage and access by employing ethnic and religious tools.

Religious Revivalism in South Asia

eligion, like racism, nationalism and the patronage of 'white-man's burden', has been in use as an instrument of politics for centuries by various communities, nations and regions in their struggle for domination and survival. East, in general, and South Asia, in particular, is no exception, although it received most of its brunt. What is, however, exceptional about the East is that it is predominantly non-Christian and nonwhite. The regions of religious revivalism are mostly underdeveloped and are locked in the double-bind of a fast growing but distorted 'modernity' and slowly-dying but persisting archaic 'tradition'. The in formation revolution, in the meanwhile, has amplified the voices that were once rarely taken note of. Societal evolution becomes even more complex in the East - unlike Western Europe that experienced a distinct historical continuum of clearly defined stages of social formation - as various historical stages got jumbled up in a heterogeneous evolution. Since both 'modern' and 'traditional' distract and interact, mix and negate and change roles, efforts at drawing lines or analysing social, cultural and ideological phenomena, though categories alien to the Eastern context, are often misleading and, generally, suit ideologies of supremacy of one civilisation over another. In an increasingly globalising world where the developed or dominant live at the cost of the underdeveloped or dominated, the periphery is also divided between various combinations of dominant groups, on the one hand, and the marginalised and dispossessed, on the other. With the retardation of the processes of formation of nations and due to colonial intervention, the historical personality of the colonised people and nations could not grow in a normal fashion. Consequently, during the colonial and post-colonial eras, search for roots and yearning for the past has resulted either in religious revivalism/radicalism or nationalism in formed by ethnicity, culture and, in most cases, religion. Melancholy and alienation over the loss of 'great tradition' or a 'golden era' has been replaced by an aggressive search for new identities and going 'back to the roots'often mixing ethnicity with religion or bringing the two into con flict - that have assumed, in some places, exclusivist and, in others, exclusionary forms. Formation of nations and nation-states in South Asia, like social development, had its own peculiar characters - mixing tradition with modern structures - and has taken a different course from, and is far behind, Western Europe. The British colonial intervention in the subcontinent not only destroyed the basis of self-sufficient agrarian communities, but also brought India, as its appendage, into the 'modern age'. Distorting and disrupting the processes of formation of nationalities and nations, the colonialists superimposed their value-loaded administrative structure and encouraged and

Consequently, the national liberation movement in the subcontinent had a number of traits, con flicts and trends that were rooted in a very diverse multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi-religious social soil. This could well be seen in diverse political movements and various shades of national liberation movement and its representative leaders, including the Indian National Congress and All India Muslim League, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Sir Sayyed Ahmed Khan and Maulana Azad, Mahatma Gandhi, Mohammed Ali Jin nah and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. This is not merely an irony of history that the national liberation movement failed to find a solution to the minority question and a secular Jin nah had to take recourse to Partition on the basis of religion. And, despite the Partition of the subcontinent and creation of Bangladesh, the minorities remain marginalised in the secular Republic of India, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The rise of religious revivalism/radicalism in almost all countries of South Asia shows that new independent states could neither address the concerns of the minorities, nor integrate them in the mainstream. What makes the plight of the minorities even more miserable is that the sections of dominant interest groups from majority religious and ethnic communities have raised the ban ner of religion to promote their political agenda. The commonality among these aggressive chauvinist paradigms is that they use religion to sell a proto-type of fascist majoritarian argument in order to seek the domination of a majority ethno-religious community by excluding the minority ethnoreligious community from the mainstream. Be it Hindutva creed in India, Islamic extremism in Pakistan, Sinhala Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka, Monarchist Nepalese Hinduism or Islamic revivalism in Bangladesh, all represent the interests of the dominant groups among the majority community. As ethno-religious movements become mainstream forces and fan parochial sentiments, they tend to exacerbate communal and sectarian con flicts among different ethno-religious communities by targeting the minorities in their respective countries, on the one hand, and, as a consequence, rein force interstate con flicts in South Asia, on the other. By fan ning religious extremism in their own countries, the forces of Hindutva, Islamic extremism and Sihnala Buddhist nationalism rein force their chauvinist counterparts both within and without and narrow the space for peace, harmony and cooperation across frontiers, besides eroding the basis of pluralist democracy and the separation of religion from the state in their respective countries. The peoples of South Asia need to shed their 'false consciousness' and come forward to stop the march of the forces of religious extremism for a peaceful, fraternal, civilised and prosperous region.

He explores the social basis behind the rise of Hindu fanaticism and authoritarianism without sparing even the most moderate faces of the BJP, such as Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

In This Issue Dedicated largely to discussion regarding religion, nation, state and identity in South Asia, the second issue of the South Asian Journal begins with an essay by Professor Peter van der Veer of the University of Amsterdam, in which he discusses the issues of fundamentalism and radical religious movements, in general, and in South Asia, in particular. Looking at the concept of modernisation and globalisation and locating the growth of these radical religious movements, van der Veer questions the nature of the ‘religiousness’ of these movements in contrast to more ‘secular’ demands. He argues that what are often perceived to be religious movements need not purely be that and are more broadly ‘political’ in nature. He cautions us about using such concepts and dichotomies as religious/secular which, he says, are historically located and are being transformed by and affecting the modern state.

Balbir Punj, Rajya Sabha Member and convenor of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) think tank in India, attempts to clarify the perception held by many, that the BJP and its sister organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), are antisecular and communal parties. He argues that the BJP is far more secular than most other Indian political parties, by quoting from writings of ideologues of the party and from the party’s manifesto, constitution and rules. Citing examples from recent Indian history and from the Indian Constitution, Punj tries to argue that the BJP has played a leading role in trying to take genuine secular course than what he dubs as ‘pseudo secularism.’ He also argues that the terms ‘Hindu,’ ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Hindutva,’ have a cultural and national con notation, rather than a religious or sectarian content which most people believe.

Praful Bidwai, a secular analyst, presents a comprehensive analysis of Hindutva or Hindu-communlism and goes back in time to explain the factors behind the emergence of ethno-religious nationalism and Hindu communalism. Further, he traces the evolution of the Sangh Parivar (fraternity of Hindu revivalists) and the growth of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a mainstream political force, backed by its ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Critically evaluating its ideological platform and the politics of temple behind the facade of cultural renaissance, Bidwai exposes the designs of Hindutva by castigating it as fascism.

iii

Islamic Extremism in Pakistan Khaled Ahmed, Consulting Editor of the Friday Times, deals with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and sectarian violence in Pakistan, while presenting a detailed history of how Pakistan has been affected by these phenomena. Tracing the origins of Islam in the area which became Pakistan and Islam’s impact on the Pakistan Movement, he shows how different notions of Islam existed - a High and Low Church. However, in the mid-1980s, under General Zia-ul-Haq, with the changed situation in Afghanistan and through the involvement of Islamic countries, the nature and form of religious expression changed in Pakistan. Gradually, religious extremism began to take root and jihadi culture and sectarianism became far more militant and visible in Pakistan. The article closely examines how jihadi groups operate in Pakistan and documents many cases and incidents of sectarian violence in the country.

Evaluating Political Islam The way Islam is categorised and castigated, more recently, is the theme of the paper by Dr. Iftikhar Malik, Professor at Bath University, U.K. Bringing in notions of neo-orientalism and neo-conservatism, Malik presents a defence of what he calls ‘Political Islam.’ He argues that the West has too simplistically categorised Islam as a monolithic category, and is not concerned with developments (and schisms) within Islam. For him, Islam is not simply a religion but its variations give rise to different expressions of politics as well. Using examples from across the Muslim world, Iftikhar Malik talks about the class nature (and class con flict) of movements within political Islam. He argues that leaders and activists in the Muslim world are forced to address political, social and economic issues in their own context while relying upon the religious idiom.

Nepal: Confronting Hindu Identity The case of religion, identity and the state in Nepal is discussed by Dr. Krishna Hachhethu, Reader of Political Science, Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS), Tribhuvan University, who argues that Nepal has always been a Hindu state, although Hinduism should not be seen merely as religion in the context of Nepal, where it has a far broader social and cultural manifestation and where it has been more ritualistic rather than a doctrine. Presenting a history of the formation of the Nepalese kingdom and state, he shows how religion has played a role in this formation. In modern day Nepal, there has been a growing tension between demands for a democratic and secular state by some sections of society and the fact that under a monarchy, Nepal is a Hindu state. Ethnic and religious minorities, including marginalised Hindu groups, Maoist and other mainstream

democratic parties have been active in their demands to push Nepal towards a secular direction that is different from its history of Hinduisation.

Sinhala Buddhist Nationalism Selvy Thiruchandran, Director of the Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Education and Research Centre in Colombo, presents a historical examination of the Sri Lankan religious and ethnic question and the role the state has played in causing and dealing with the Tamil question. She argues that Sri Lankans are divided by ethnicity, race and religion, where religion was usually tied to ethnicity in the past, and language as the marker of ethnic groups, is the major divisive factor in Sri Lanka. After independence, Buddhism, which was the religion of the majority Sinhalese, was made the state religion, alienating many of the other religious and ethnic groups. The overlapping of religion/ethnicity/language and the domination by one group, that has also controlled a centralised state, has given rise to very bloody struggles between Tamil-Hindu minority and Sinhala Budhist majority in Sri Lanka over the last two decades.

Islamisation of Curricula A.H. Nayyar, a physicist at the Quaid-e-Azam University and an educationist, looks at the curriculum content of social science and Urdu text books, at the primary and secondary levels, in Pakistan. He presents numerous examples and quotations from these secondary-level books showing that young minds are being indoctrinated by religious ideas which do not inculcate tolerance towards other cultures and minorities. Nayyar shows that the instructions for and curriculum at lower grades is instrumental in inculcating a militant Islamic spirit among the students, rather than giving them a rational and truly national picture.

Communalising the Non-Communal This is a case study of a dargah (shrine) in Karnataka, in South India, by Yoginder Sikand, at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, in Leiden, the Netherlands. Using the location of the dargah of a Muslim sufi, he shows how a relatively uncontroversial site for veneration for both Hindus and Muslims, has now turned into a site for communal contestation between Muslims and Hindus and their political representatives. Tracing the history of Islam in Karnataka, Sikand argues that Hindus and Muslims lived together for centuries and shared a common cultural world. Yet today, with growing communalisation in India, the shrine has become a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;communalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; issue with the fear that it could even escalate into another Ayodhya in order to serve divisive contemporary political purposes.

Islamisation of Laws in Pakistan Salman Akram Raja, a leading constitutional lawyer of Pakistan, has focused on the process of Islamisation of laws in Pakistan with the legalistic precision of an

advocate. Briefly starting with the ideological debate surrounding the nature of state and laws, Raja takes note of both the distortion of and deviation from the guiding principles set by the Father of the Nation, Mohammed Ali Jin nah. In a comprehensive evaluation of the process of Islamisation of laws, especially during the reign of General Zia-ul-Haq, he discusses various laws that have been supposedly derived from the Quran and Sun nah. Referring to land-mark cases, and con flicting judgements, he narrates the effect these laws have had on different segments of society, particularly women and minorities, besides showing their con flict with the realities and known norms of justice.

India: Combating Communalism Many readers of the South Asian political scene believe that religion has become a critical factor in politics in the region, and in India, given its large minority population, this has taken on the colour of communalism. Achin Vanaik, political commentator and former journalist, examines how religion has evolved in India, examining its political and cultural manifestation. He shows how over time, the role as well as notion of religion has changed in India, arguing that there has been a significant decline in the social importance of religion. He examines the impact of colonialism and modernisation on religion in India and shows that with regard to economic, political and social life, there has been an enormous secularisation in India. Nevertheless, acknowledging the visible presence of communalism in India, Vanaik provides ideas as to how to further maintain and deepen the secularity of the India state and to further secularise Indian civil society.

After the Gujarat Pogrom A leading human rights activist, Teesta Setlavad, editor of Communalism Combat and Secretary of Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), narrates her account of what happened during and after the Gujarat Pogrom and hurdles to bringing the culprits to justice who had committed crimes against humanity by targeting the Muslim minority. While leading the cause to fight communalism and violence, she got the time to compile her observations along with the evidence she and others have been collecting in a hostile environment to show how difficult it is to seek justice for the survivors of such a ghastly tragedy. As opposed to those who perpetrated the crimes, the role played by the conscientious representatives of civil society, by standing up against the scourge of communal violence and coming to the rescue of the Muslim minority in Gujarat, shows communal hate and violence can be challenged, even if the authorities have yet to answer many questions. The testimony of a Hindu whose wife was burnt in a train by accident or by Muslim zealots shows how people are used for communal politics and suffer from its consequences.

Religious Radicalism in South Asia Peter van der Veer

et us raise a few general questions about radical religious movements. Radical is probably the alternative to 'mainstream' and moderate. It is perhaps instructive to begin by looking at Jonathan Israel's recent (2001) monograph, entitled Radical Enlightenment in which he argues that there was a radical underground European Enlightenment between 1650 and 1750 that has been generally regarded as marginal to the wider phenomenon but that he sees as central. In his view ‘the Enlightenment European and global- not only attacked and severed the roots of traditional European culture in the sacred, magic, kinship, and hierarchy, secularising all institutions and ideas, but (intellectually and to a degree in practice) effectively demolished all legitimation of monarchy, aristocracy, woman's subordination to man, ecclesiastical authority, and slavery, replacing these with the principles of universality, equality, and democracy.’ I do not cite Israel because I accept his grand view of modernity or enjoy his history of men and ideas approach or even because he places Spinoza and Holland in the center of world history, but because it is this wholesale, great transformation perspective, that we find also in many writings on Fundamentalism which is the catch phrase for writing about radical religion. Radical in this case stands for a total rejection of secular global modernity (the product of Jonathan Israel's and Peter Gay's Enlightenment) by religious movements. When in the early 1990s I was invited to participate in the Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, I felt attracted to its comparative framework. I still think that due to the importance of the Middle East to U.S. global politics, there is too much emphasis on radical Islam and a neglect of the importance of global processes for a number of religious movements. To compare Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish movements therefore has an immediate appeal. The problem, however, with comparison is that it is often not left at that, but that social scientists also want to come up with a general model to explain global phenomena. In the case of the Fundamentalism project this was basically the model of modernisation and secularisation. . The argument is the following: fundamentalism is a social phenomenon that occurs during rapid social change, is marked by a profound experience of crisis, and tries to overcome that crisis by a revitalisation of religion and a search for authenticity. Fundamentalism is a global phenomenon in so far as it is a response to global processes of transformation. Gabriel Almond, a political scientist, who had been a prominent

modernisation theorist in the 1960s, was a leading in fluence behind the Fundamentalism Project and, indeed, the Project had a focus on secularisation or rather, the failure thereof, as a major structural factor. It was in outline accepted by Huntington for his theory of ‘The Clash of Civilizations.’ In a recent sequel to the multivolume Fundamentalism Project Gabriel Almond, Scott Appleby and Emmanuel Sivan have again proposed a general model of what they now call Strong Religion. They propose the following: ‘strong religions are historical counterattacks from threatened religious traditions, seeking to hold ground against this spreading secular ‘contamination’ and even to regain ground by taking advantage of the weaknesses of modernisation. The resistance to modern forms of secularisation is a defining common feature of religious fundamentalisms.’ Secular Modernity is the Enemy against which radical religious movements rally, according to these authors. In their view secularisation is the main structural factor in the rise of these movements. It is clear that this is a view that belongs to the old orthodoxy of modernisation theory and that, after two decades of criticism of the secularisation thesis one might wonder whether this is a fruitful approach. In the case I am most familiar with, Hindu radical movements, it is not. These movements do not protest against secularisation, since they explicitly demand secularisation of India's legislation. They object to what they call the ‘pseudo-secularism’ of India's Congress Party because they argue that this party thrives on ‘pampering the religious minorities.’ What is clear from the Indian case is that ‘secularism’ is a political ideology carried by political actors and opposed by other political actors in the name of religion. If liberalism is a secular ideology, radical Hindus accept most of it, such as liberalisation of the market, the free individual, democracy, but all in the name of a nationalist utopia in which the majority of Hindus dominate the nation-state. The Enemy is not secularisation but Islam that is seen as an obstacle to the secular ideal of progress that is shared by Hindus. Of course, one could object that Hinduism and India are special cases that can not be understood in general models. However, if the Muslim attackers of the World Trade Center can be considered followers of radical religion it is clear that they did not object to the secularisation of Saudi-Arabia, but to something far more specific, namely the close ties of the Saudi establishment with the American military-industrial complex and the presence of American soldiers on Saudi holy land.

I, therefore, do not think that a general model based on modernisation theory is what we should aim at, but that comparison between cases will bring out some general features of the movements we are interested in. The question whether they are religious or not may not be a crucial feature. In fact I would suggest that radical religious movements have much in common with a number of other movementssocialist, fascist, conservative, nationalist, that also want to use modern state power for total transformation of society. Indeed, it is the focus on capturing state power that seems a defining feature of these movements and it is thus state formation as the framework of these movements that has to be understood. The modern state is directed to large-scale social transformation and, by and large, has the capacity to have such an impact (obviously with a large number of unintended consequences). No

modern political movement (religious or otherwise) can ignore the state. While state formation in different societies has different trajectories there are also some general shared features. First of all, societies find themselves in a global order of nation-states, in which notions of borders, citizenship, elections, central state power and the en forcement of state law are operative. This implies that in many cases radical movements are nationalist. South Asia has a number of examples: Muslim nationalism resulting in Pakistan, followed by Bengali nationalism resulting in Bangladesh, Hindu nationalism or Hindutva characterised by attacks on Muslims and Christians before elections, Sikh nationalism demanding a separate nation-state called Khalistan, Sri Lankan Buddhist Sinhala nationalism opposing Tamil Hindu nationalism, and so on and so forth. Borders, minority rights, electoral violence, centralisation and decentralisation, are all issues coming up here. I would propose that it is not essential whether the focus of mobilisation is religion, language, regional identity or a mix of all these things and thus I would not claim a specific status for radical religion. Essential is the nationalist framework for political contestation. Secondly, all societies find themselves in a new phase of globalisation that complicates state formation but does not undo it. Two major developments in this regard are con nectivity through the internet and other forms of IT-enabled communication and the formation of transnational networks by migration. These developments may enhance the possibilities of radical movements to mobilise resources on a global scale and also to address the global political order. In the South Asian example the Sikh Khalistanis as well as the Tamil Tigers have been involved in transnational mobilisation of resources. But also the Hindu nationalists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad have always seen their nationalist mission in global terms. This is not new or particularly religious, since much of this is already found in the Comintern, but the rise of the network society makes at least some movements less tied to specific spatial or social locales both in their operation and in their objectives. Since the U.S. has become more and more the hegemon of the new world order it is clear that it is addressed both for specific regional problems, lobbying for Kashmir or Israel for instance, and for specific utopias like another Islamic world order. If religion is only a variable in all the movements that try to gain political power should we then pay specific attention to religious movements? I think that there is some need to do so for the simple reason that with the so-called 'End of History', the socialist utopia is not anymore carried by communist or socialist movements and religious utopias seem to be flourishing everywhere. This is so also because mainstream social scientists continue to be inspired by secularist ideals and thus have difficulties to apply their perspective to religious movements. Therefore there is also a theoretical need to pay attention to religious movements. While I think that in their recruitment patterns, their resource mobilisation, and their creative response to opportunities religious movements can be studied like other social/political movements, their ideological core makes them religious movements. Striking in the ideological core is the reference to religious traditions.

Often in South Asia and elsewhere we find a reference to a traditional, just, state. This is the background to references to the Islamic state (dawla) or to Ram's Rule (Ramrajya). The first thing that has to be observed here is that references to earlier political forms show a deliberate misunderstanding of the radically different nature of the modern, developmental state. Those who call for the foundation of an Islamic state often use the Arabic term dawla that refers to 'dynasty' and indeed the pre-modern societies are governed by sultans, nawabs, rajas and the like. The modern state, on the contrary, is an instrument of the will of the people and penetrates deep into people's lives with a number of developmental projects, such as education and health care. It is, even when it is a weak state in Gun nar Myrdal's sense, still a beast of a completely different nature than the pre-modern state. The second observation to be made is that the references to a religiously based 'just state' are relatively recent in modern Indian history and are actually quite marginal in Indian political thought and practice. The call for going back to the time of the Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) or the time of Ram and establish a so-called theocratic state is a very recent demand which has to be understood in the framework of modern political ideas of true Islamic democracy and so on. Contrary to what is often thought, there is no clear definition of the Islamic state in Pakistan. What is one to make of the tradition of dar-al-islam (the Abode of Islam) to which Muslims should migrate (hijrat) if they are in a minority position, or that of the jihad (holy war) against the dar-al-harb (an Abode of Unbelief or War)? None of this makes much sense in India where Muslims were always a minority and there were no Islamic states, but merely Muslim dynasties with Islamic legitimation. It also ignores the fact of current large-scale migration to the daral-harb, or the West, rather than away from it. Similarly the reference to the rule of Rama, the virtuous king (dharmaraja) and the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Lord of Proprietyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (maryada purushottam), has very little specific content, even less than in the Islamic context where the establishment of the Law (shariah) can at least be part of a political program, as it was in Pakistan under General Zia-ul-Haq and Nawaz Sharif. Certainly, in Hindu kingdoms the Ramayana may have given some guidance to the behaviour of rulers, but there is little in it that specifies the nature of the caste order and the rules of politics. One should understand references to such traditions in the modern period primarily as a utopian rejection of current political formations rather than as a theological interpretation of the tradition. This is not to say that there are no theological interpretations of the tradition that have political implications. They certainly exist and are important, because they show that the tradition is alive. The violent political projects of activists like Osama Bin Laden, however, do not engage the tradition in such a fundamental man ner. It is, in fact, striking how little theological training leaders of the major religious nationalist movements have had. They tend to be journalists, engineers, graduates of the humanities, educated in modern topics rather than in the tradition. The same is true for leaders of Hindu and Muslim movements who want a just rule. Gandhi was absolutely not a theologian and when he came up with the notion of Ramrajya he used a cultural repertoire in which he had been socialised from his early youth, but not a political theology. In the case of Gandhi and many other great populist

leaders one sees the function of a traditional religious repertoire for bridging the gap between elite politics and mass politics. However, it is also clear that this kind of reference to tradition for purposes of mass mobilisation needs to allow for a wide range of interpretations. Similarly, in contemporary Sri Lanka one finds major departures from Buddhist tradition and the invention of new traditions, such as the Sarvodaya movement that purports to give a Buddhist model of development. Here we get to the heart of the matter: I do think that modern references to Ramrajya and Dar-al-Islam are inventions of tradition, but at the same time there are a number of living traditions, in which there are discourses and practices relating to state and violence. However, we are not speaking about separate universes (one of tradition, one of invented tradition) here, but about interaction, con flict, polemics. Some people are willing to use a lot of violence to establish their idea of traditional justice in the form of an Islamic state or of a Hindu state and others who think they are living in harmony with tradition are completely mystified by what the first are doing. Often radical religious movements refer to traditions of gender as a way of signifying relations of power. An important transformation in these relationships in the nineteenth century is the rise of the gendered distinction between public and private. This distinction is crucial to the development of a modern ideology of the family, domesticity, and the moral order of the nation. A dominant line of interpretation in the study of nationalism is to argue that the nation is often imagined in terms of a brotherhood of men protecting their women folk. Men are portrayed as strong and powerful; women as weak and powerless. Protection implies the exertion of male authority, to which women have to submit. The state represents male authority as if it were the father of the nation. While this pattern can be found everywhere, religious traditions shape this con figuration in different ways in different cultures. While, for instance, Victorian ideas about 'domesticity', 'companiate marriage' and female education were in fluential all over the empire, in Hindu India, the ideal of the 'modern' educated housewife was almost always tied to that of Lakshmi. The problem we need to address, therefore, is how such traditions are transformed under the pressure of modernity. My conclusion is that the opposition ‘secular-religious’ hides more than it shows. Concepts like ‘religion’ and ‘the secular’ are historically contingent and get meaning in a shifting field of disciplines and practices in the context of the modern state.

Bibliography

! Gabriel Almond, Scott Appleby, Emmanuel Sivan, Strong Religion. The rise of Fundamentalisms around the World (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2003) ! Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment. Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 ( Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001)

(Peter van der Veer is Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Amsterdam and the director of the Research Centre Religion and Society.)

Hindu Rashtra Balbir K. Punj

he ideal of the Indian state has been Dharma Rajya. Tolerance of and respect for all faiths and creeds is an essential feature of the Indian state. Freedom of worship and conscience is guaranteed to all and the state does not discriminate against anyone on grounds of religion, either in the formulation of policy or in its implementation. It is a non-sectarian State and not a Theocracy.’ - Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya at a Bharatiya Jana Sangh meeting held at Vijayawada from January 23 to 25, 1965. This quotation from the ideologue of the 'Party' sums up the philosophy of Rasthriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)/Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In spite of several such clear policy statements, various myths have been built in the western media about these two organisations. The BJP and RSS are two distinct organisations, with separate constitutions, programmes and working. I have clubbed them here because of two reasons: Most of the BJP leaders are inspired by RSS and their detractors do not make any distinction between the two and go on parroting that they together have a secret agenda to turn India into a theocratic state by imposing `Hindu Raj'. However, in no BJP / RSS publication can one see traces of any such intent. The BJP believes in `positive secularism', i.e. justice to all and appeasement to none. Some critics even allege that the BJP/RSS do not accept ‘democratic secularism.’ The two allegations merit separate consideration. Thus, discussing a case where the Supreme Court had judged that it is not illegal to appeal to voters in the name of ‘Hindutva,’ some 'secularists' have argued that the Court should have been more firm against ‘the erosion of democratic secularism.’1 There is no necessary con nection between secularism and democracy: one can be secular and anti-democratic, for example, the communists. More importantly, the RSS/BJP uphold both, secularism and democracy. In its 1971 Manifesto, the Bhartiya Jana Sangh (BJS), the predecessor of BJP had declared: J‘ana Sangh fully subscribes to the ancient ideal of the non-communal state. In India no one is discriminated against on grounds of his religion. The state has always looked upon all faiths as entitled to equal freedom and protection. Jana Sangh is resolved to carry forward this secular tradition. Jana Sangh, however, rejects the pseudo-secularism that combines irreligion with appeasement. We would like followers of all religions to accept the Indian ideal of Sarvadharma-samabhava and cherish a feeling of not merely tolerance, but equal respect for other faiths.’ 2 In all its manifestoes, the BJP

has reiterated its faith in secularism. The BJP

Constitution declares: ‘The party aims at establishing a democratic state which guarantees to all citizens irrespective of caste, creed or sex, political, social and economic justice, equality of opportunity and liberty of faith and expression. The party shall bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established and to the principles of socialism, secularism and democracy, and would uphold the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India.’ 3 During 1989-91 (when the Ayodhya movement was its peak), the BJP rhetoric was at its most ‘communal.’ Yet, its manifesto for the 1989 elections says: ‘The idea of a theocratic state is an anathema to the Indian mind and the BJP believes that the state in India has always been a civil institution which respects all religions equally and makes no discrimination between one citizen and the other on the grounds of language, gender, caste or religion.’ 4 In fact BJP's pledge enjoins upon its every member, a concept of a secular state and nation not based on religion. BJP believes in 'Integral Humanism' as its basic philosophy, which visualises a harmonious relation between individuals, individual and state, state and world, individual and humanity. The democratic bona fides of the BJP is certified by the French political scientist Gerard Heuze. ‘Ou va Inde moderne’ (Whither Modern India) is one of the best studies of the Indian political scene by any foreign scholar. Though Heuze is ideologically close to the Indian secularists, he does not parrot their slogans since he is objective. According to him, ‘Gandhi's murderer was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha, and not of the RSS as is commonly alleged.’ 5 Heuze emphasises that ‘the Hindu movement is much larger than the BJP.’6 Heuze claims ‘The BJP seeks to link up internationally with the democratic, non-racist right.’ 7

The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)

JP has always been known by its Hindi name unlike anglicised Indian National Congress, Communist Party of India, Forward Bloc, Revolutionary Socialist Party etc. At present the party leads a ruling coalition in Parliament resulting from November 1999 General elections.

BJP owes it political origin to its precursor and now defunct Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS). Late Shyama Prasad Mookerjee had floated ‘People's Party’ in Calcutta on May 5, 1951 and Bharatiya Jan Sangh was created at Jallandhar, Punjab. Jan Sangh was formed by union of these parts and several other state units that popped up during 1951. RSS had supplied some cadre to BJS, the most promising amongst them was Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya who later became Jan Sangh President. And that is probably where the word 'Sangh Parivar' came in. The BJS increased its vote share in every election since 1952. It was one of the parties to fight against Indira Gandhi’s fascist Emergency (1975-1977) in defence of democracy. The BJS, which had secured 93 seats in 1977 elections, was coalesced with several socialistic parties to constitute Janata Party which formed the ill-fated Janata Government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai. But the Janata Party broke down in July 1979 as some socialists raked up the issue of RSS-membership of BJS

Quoting Heuze, Konaraad Elst, a Belgium born Indologist, points out that ‘internal democracy has been effective in the BJP, but has for long been suspended in Congress. He (Heuze) also highlights the egalitarian element in the Hindutva action programme, including its anti-casteism. As a son of the motherland of secularism, he (Heuze) acknowledges that in central points of the communalism debate, the classical agenda of secularism is brandished not by the secularist establishment but by the Hindu movement, starting with the Common Civil Code demand.’ (The Saffron Swastika, Voice of India, New Delhi). The RSS does talk in terms of `Hindu Rashtra' (Hindu nation and not Hindu state). There is an ocean of difference between a `Hindu state' and a `Hindu nation'. India under a `Hindu State' will be `Hindu Pakistan', a concept totally alien to Indian ethos. `Hindu Rasthra' means a nation inspired by Hindutva philosophy i.e. a pluralistic and democratic state, in con formity with the age-old tradition of states ruled by Hindu kings, which put `Panth nirpeksh', `sect neutrality' into practice. According to Shri K. S. Sudarshan, the RSS chief: ‘One of the corner stones of the cultural foundation of the ancient mansion of `Hindu Rashtra' is `unity in diversity'….. ‘The Hindu system of thought starts by accepting the fact that every entity has a distinct role to play and a special contribution to make in the evolution of the universe’ 8 To quote Guru Golwalkar (the second RSS chief who led the organisation for over three decades): A ‘ s far as the national tradition of this land is concerned, it never considers that with a change in the method of worship, an individual ceases to be the son of the soil and should be treated as an alien. Here, in this land, there can be no objection to God being called by any name whatever. Ingrained in this soil is love and respect for all faiths and religious beliefs. He can not be a son of this soil at all who is intolerant of other faiths.’ (Bunch of Thoughts, Suruchi Sahitya, 1980, pp.208). constituents. In 1980, Janata Party lost elections. The former BJS members formed BJP and launched the new party on April 6, 1980 at New Delhi. Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, present Prime Minister of India, was the founder President and Mr Lal Krishna Advani, present Deputy Prime Minister, one of the four General Secretaries. The international media often refers to it as Hindu nationalist party in a pejorative sense. There is nothing to be apologetic about this term if seen in light of Hindutva as has been interpreted by Vivekananda and Guru Golwalkar (the second RSS Chief) and practiced. Nor should the term 'Saffron brigade' appear stigmatic since saffron is the revered colour of Hindus denoting renunciation/sacrifice and worn by saints and monks. It is true that many BJP members including Vajpayee and Advani have RSS background but it is neither obligatory nor expected that all BJP members should have RSS affiliations. RSS is an apolitical social organisation whereas BJP is a bona fide political party. While RSS is welcome to advise the party on relevant issues or criticise it, BJP is not duty bound to take note of either. BJP could have widely divergent views from RSS either on ideological or pragmatic political grounds (nothing pejorative about pragmatism).

He further says, ‘The Hindu thought did not stop at the negative aspect of restraining one religion from in fringing upon another. The wide and all-comprehensive view of life ingrained in the Hindu ruler made him respect and even encourage every single religious thought, however few its adherents, to grow according to its own genius. The King became the symbol of support and protection to all faiths and creeds and never of negation of religion. This is the positive content of 'secularism' if at all it can be called so. Indeed, our concept of 'state' has always been 'secular' and emphasising the secular nature of the state by the adjective 'secular' is redundant in our country.’ (ibid. Pp 215 & 216).

Now let us look at RSS. The official guru of the RSS is the saffron flag (Bhagwa Dhwj): ‘Soon after founding the RSS, Hedgewar cautioned the first recruits that no man, including himself, should be honoured as the embodiment of the RSS. He decided that the flag (the bhagva dhwaj) should be recognised as its 'living' guru.’ 9

However, detractors of BJP/RSS have of late been citing a 77-page pamphlet called ‘We’ or Our Nationhood Defined’ purported to have been written in 1939 by Golwalkar and selectively quoting a paragraph- ‘The non-Hindu people in Hindustan, must cease to be foreigners, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving privileges, far less any preferential treatment not even Citizen's rights.’ Since Guru Golwalkar had headed RSS and expanded the organisation in a major way, this statement has been sought to be branded as RSS’ official view and is used to nail the organisation as ‘undemocratic’ and ‘fascist.’

This point is frequently reiterated in Hindutva literature, e.g. in its editorial on the occasion of Guru Purnima 1999, the VHP, related periodical Shree Vishwa Niketan writes: ‘In Sangh, we do not believe in hero-worship, and declaring Bhagwa Dhwaja as Guru has been a master stroke from Sangh founder P.P. Dr. Hedgewar.(…) The visionary in him wanted Sangh to be free from someone's hegemony and hunger for power. Bhagwa Dhwaj represents the tradition and history of Hindus, the saints and sages from Vedic times and all heroes of Hindu history. It is the undisputable Guru of all those who call themselves Hindus. 10

But such intellectuals conveniently gloss over the fact that it was not Golwalkar's original work but free English rendering by him in his formative years in RSS of a Marathi book, 'Rashtra Meemansa' by G.D. Savarkar. Golwalkar had subsequently distanced himself from the book and the book has been out of print since 1947. The Marxists dug 'We' out of some dusty archive in 1992 and projected it as the most authentic piece on RSS ideology. The RSS has repeatedly explained its stand on this book. The whole story behind this book was written by Devendra Swaroop, a senior RSS man, in RSS- Hindi organ Panchajanya of February 17, 1980, much before CPI (M) had discovered ‘We’ . I have also repeated this fact, but '’secularists’ continue to tag ‘We’ to the RSS with a purpose.

The RSS political philosophy and strategy and working style are not focused on state power. Contrary to communist and authoritarian state-centred ideologies, the Hindutva movement accepts the ‘primacy of nation/society over state power.’ 11 Andersen and Damle point out that ‘European fascism, like other Western forms of totalitarianism, sought to destroy or to seize control of all existing centers of sociopolitical and economic power. The RSS has not abandoned the Hindu bias towards semiautonomous social units within which a group discovers its own ethos (…) While fascist doctrine traces all power to the political leader, the belief system of the RSS displays a marked distrust of political leadership.’ 12

Apart from the allegation of ‘theocratic’ designs leveled against the BJP / RSS, another charge is that they have ‘fascist’ inspiration. Fascism is a secular-nationalist ideology. Theocracy is in principle contrary to people's sovereignty, i.e. democracy. Thus, in a theocratic Pakistan, the Shariat Court can throw out any democratically enacted law which it deems contrary to Islamic tenets. On the other hand, pluralism is central to Hindu tradition. The ‘leader principle’ is central to ‘fascism’ which was quite popular in the 1920s and 30s with Italy as the trendsetter. In the 1920s, there was a widespread feeling in Europe that democracy had failed, since it bred cultural and economic decay and general mediocrity. This is in contrast to the contemporary mood in Europe. There is not even one party of substance that pleads for dictatorship. In India too, few people today would dare plead for the abolition of democracy. Even communists are forced to present their anti-democratic programme as ‘democratic.’ But interestingly even those claiming to be fighting against fascists have used the 'leadership principle' without calling it by its name. Stalin, Mao Zedong, Albania's Enver Hoxha, North Korea's Kim

II-Sung and Nicolai Ceaucescu enjoyed absolute power following the principle of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat through its vanguard party.’ Communism and fascism are today just two sides of the same coin. The leadership principle is central to fascism and communism practices it without saying so.

The RSS attaches less importance to the state and to politics than Marxists of classical nationalist movements do: ‘The RSS does not make total claims on society. The members are not encouraged to overthrow or replace the government. Their claims are partial, and they demand primacy only in the character-building area. It has in frequently challenged government authority. When it did so, the actions were limited, and lasted only until the specific grievances were resolved. These examples were acts of civil disobedience, not revolution.’ 13 The RSS and the organisations inspired by its philosophy (popularly called Sangh Parivar) have always stood by democracy. During the Emergency, declared by Prime Minister Indra Gandhi, it was they who suffered Indira Gandhi's repression the most while the communists had happily collaborated with the draconian regime. The Communists have contempt for ‘bourgeois democracy,’ and they suffer it only as a matter of strategy. Thus, it is not difficult to see why communists and the BJP appear to be two extreme poles of Indian political spectrum. For the BJP to be a democratic party, it should be hostile to anti-democratic ideologies. It should therefore be anti-communist. No

wonder the Indian communist parties have been the most strident and vocal opponents of the BJP and the RSS and used their global expertise of mixing half-truths with total

this is how ‘Sindhu’ became ‘Hindu’ ; and you are all aware how the Greeks found it hard to pronounce ‘h’ and dropped it altogether, so that we became Indians. Now this word ‘Hindu,’ whatever might have been its meaning in ancient times, has lost all its force in modern times; for all the people that live on this side of Indus no longer belong to one religion. There are the Hindus proper, the Mohammedans, the Parsees, the Christians, the Buddhists, and Jains. The word ‘Hindu’ in its literal sense ought to include all these; but as signifying the religion, it would not be proper to call all these Hindus’15 (from a lecture delivered in Madras (Chen nai) commonly titled 'Vedanta in its application to Indian Life’ in 1897 after returning from his first tour of the West.)

hat constitutes India? Is it a merely geographic entity? Revolutionary Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, perhaps the epitomic practitioner of Secularism and national integration in Azad Hindu Fauj (Indian National Army) observes- ‘ Geographically, India seems to be cut out from the rest of the world as a self-contained unit. Bounded on the north by the mighty Himalayas and surrounded on both sides by the endless ocean, India affords the best example of a geographical unit. The ethnic diversity of India has never been a problem- for throughout her history she has been able to absorb different races and impose on them one common culture and tradition. The most important cementing factor has been the Hindu religion. North or South, East or West, wherever you may travel, you will find the same religious ideas, the same culture and the same tradition. All Hindus look upon India as the Holy Land.16 Thus the word ‘Hindu,’ with its derivatives ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Hindutva,’ has a nationalistic rather than religious or sectarian origin in hoary past of civilisation. And despite being much de-valorised through ordeals of history it still retains a nationalistic con notation. Even though the word Hindu is a nationalistic term it was natural that Hindus should follow some religious beliefs and rites. Hindus themselves vaguely called it Sanatan Dharma ( Eternal Religions), while others referred to it as Hinduism. To debate about its merit is one thing but to say it is communal or sectarian will be quite another. Hinduism is as natural to Hindus as the religion of ancient Greeks or Egyptians is to them. But unlike in those religions, Hinduism had a strong body of philosophic thoughts viz. Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita etc. which ensured its vitality. Those magnificent civilisations that erected spectacular monuments in stones, assigning more importance to body than soul vanished from the face of the earth under external aggression. But Hindus erected monuments of minds which survived through millen nia. A body decomposes and disintegrates according to the laws of nature when the soul leaves it. But can the soul live in this world except through the body? Certainly not, whether we have to achieve something material or spiritual it is possible only through the medium of physical body. In fact a weakened body could hamper even the most abstruse and philosophic pursuit. So if the Sanatana soul of Hinduism has to survive in the world it needs the body called Hindutva. The critics of Hindutva, either through ignorance or mischief, project it as generally anti-minority and specifically anti-Muslim. Balraj Madhok, a former President of BJS

says, ‘The Arabs, Turk and Mughal invaders came to India on the band-wagon of Islam. They justified their vandalism and barbaric acts against people of this country, their shrines and holy places in the name of Islam. Therefore, the opposition to foreign rule also came to be construed as opposition to Islam and Hindus, the national of Hindustan began to be looked upon as upholders of a creed hostile to Islam. This was a misconception. It was struggle of a people, a nation, which comprehended followers of diverse religious sects or ‘Panths’ against foreign invaders and their agents in the country’ 17. But should a nationalistic ideology whose crystallisation predates the emergence of Christianity in 1st century Palestine or Islam in 7th century Arabia by thousands of years, need to certify its bona fide at all. After all India has seen several invasions before Muhammad bin Qasim set his foot here in 712 AD. Noted freedom fighter and interpreter of Hindu history Veer Savarkar says- ‘Indian settlement and kingdoms in those days nearly 2500 years ago-were spread on the other side of the Indus River. What we call Hindukush Mountain today, Greeks called it Paropnisus. Today's Afghanistan was called 'Gandhar'. The archaic name of Afghanistan was Ahiganistan. The river Kabul was called 'Kuva'. Large and small kingdoms of Indians were spread on territories of Hindukush mountain’18.

he point to be noted here is that the cultural boundaries of India (Hindustan) were much expansive to the West than they are now. In fact, the cultural penumbra of India spread from Central Asia to South East Asia in ancient age without any political invasion. However this spread of Hindu-Buddhist culture was punctuated by attacks on India by Greeks, Sakas, Kushana, and Huns between 327 BC to 4th C AD. They were able to wrest some part of India for some time before being won back by the Hindus. But the most important thing to note is that long before they have been physically defeated by the Hindus they became culturally Hindutised. In 2nd century BC we come across a reference of Heliodorous, a Greek ambassador of King Antialkidas of Taxilla, setting up a Garuda column at Besnagar in honour of Vasudeva (Lord Krishna) 19. Greeks authors admired the Indian sages. Hellenic rulers and statesman listened with respectful attention to Indian philosophers. One of the greatest Indo-Greek Kings, Menander displayed great predilection for Buddhist teachings and issued coins of Buddhist type. Greek meridarchs are mentioned in Kharoshthi inscriptions as establishing Buddhist relics and sanctuaries. Indian cultural in fluence on the Greeks of Egypt has been traced in the Oxyryhynchus papyri 20. The last external onslaught prior to Islamic invasion was unprecedented in its ferocity. It was the 'scourge of civilisation' invasion of barbaric Huns and lasted for nearly 100 years in 5th century during the Gupta Empire. The Huns were more interested in destruction than victory- and destroyed the Taxilla university and library. But, here also the most ruthless Hun King Mihir Gul, Attila of India, became a worshipper of Rudra (Shiva). But howsoever mighty, even the Huns had to ultimately yield before the resilient Hindu con federacy determined to win back freedom of their nation. And what happened to the Huns? They shared the same fate with Greeks, Sakas, and Kushanas. They remained alive in genealogical currency but culturally, religiously and historically

became Hindus. Hindus are definitely not the only chivalrous or patriotic nation in the world. But no other nation has maintained an unbroken continuity of tradition and historic integrity facing so many invasions. What makes them proudly distinctive is that many formidable invaders have been assimilated into its stream like a satchel of salt. Compare Hindus with mighty civilisations in Mid-East like Sumerian, Babylonian, Phoenician, Egyptian, Carthagians, Canaanites, Abyssinians which have been Arabised and Islamised in 7th century by a victorious expedition originating Hijjaj and Greeks and diminished Assyrians follow their ancient language but have undergone change of religion. Rightly had Allama Iqbal noted in his Tarana-e-Hind in 1904- ‘Roma ho Yuna ho sab mit gaye jahan se, magar baki hai ab tak nishan hamara/kuch baat hai ki hasti mit-ti nahin hai hamari/sadiyon raha hai dushman daur-re jahan hamara/Sare jahan se accha hindoositan hamara’.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)

ashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), roughly translated as National Volunteer Fraternity was established by Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in Nagpur (Maharasthra) in 1925. As one could see the word 'National' has been used here over 'Hindu' to allay any apprehensions about its scope and nature. This apolitical and non-religious body from its humble begin nings Sangh has now spread to nearly 30,000 places- called 'Shakhas' (branches) encompassing a total of 50,000 actual working centres meeting daily or at frequent intervals leaving no part of the country untouched. 21 A medical graduate, Dr Hedgewar chose not to join the ranks of professional practitioners but devote his life to service of motherland and society. Initially he preferred revolutionary means to overthrow the British rule. But when Gandhiji dawned over the Indian political firmament with his message of non-violent struggle, Dr. Hedgewar became convinced about its extreme suitability for Indian conditions. As a follower of Gandhian means, Dr. Hedgewar vigorously participated in Non Co-operation Movement in Central Province and consequently was sentenced to one year of rigorous imprisonment on charges of sedition. When he came out of prison the situation around him had dramatically changed for the worse. Gandhiji had withdrawn his Non Co-operation Movement for attainment of Swaraj due to an incident of violence, whereas the failure of Pan-Islamic Khilafat Movement for restoration of Khalifa (Caliphate) in far-off Turkey has dismayed Muslims. The insidious Mopla riots in Malabar, Kerala, and had led to the mindless butchering of thousands of Hindus- and neither any Muslim leader nor Gandhiji condemned it 22. Hindus were at receiving end of communal riots in 1923 so much so even Gandhiji had to say, A ‘ n average Hindu is a coward and an average Muslim is a bully”’23 and Pt. J.L. Nehru noted in his autobiography, ‘Many a Congressman was a communalist under a nationalist cloak’ and about Hindus as given to 'stupor and

baseless slordlinessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;24. Pt. Madan Mohan Malviya noted in Hindu Mahasabha's Belgaum session in 1924 that â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;But for the weakness and fear enveloping the

A Critique of Hindutva Praful Bidwai

f one looks at the shifts that have taken place on the political map of India over the past two decades, the single most important change that strikes one is the rise of militant political Hinduism or Hindutva, or broadly, the ensemble of doctrines, social movements and political formations of Hindu-supremacism or Hindu-communalism1. Hindutva has mobilised and energised large numbers of people, perhaps comparable to the numbers drawn into struggles for land, work and social justice. It is indisputably India's largest centralised social movement of the past half-century.

References

1. Reported by Aziz Haniffa: ‘Supreme Court failed to protect secularism, says scholar.’, India Abroad, (10 April 1998). Same message in Brenda Cossman and Ratna Kapur, Secularism's Last Singh? Hindutva and the (Mis) Rule of law (OUP, Delhi 1999) 2. BJS Party Documents, (Delhi 1973,)vol.1.p.174 3. BJP: Constitution and Rules, (1992, Article 2) 4. BJP: Election Manifesto, (1989) p.8 5. Gerard Heuze: Ou va l'Inde moderne?,p.99 6. Gerard Heuze: Ou va l'Inde moderne?,p.91. In this context, Heuze mentions Voice of India several times. 7. Gerard Heuze: Ou va l'Inde moderne?,p.123 8. K. S. Sudarshan in H.V. Seshardri et al : Why Hindu Rastra? (Suruchi Prakashan Delhi 1990) P 13 9. W. Andersen and S. Damle: Brotherhood in Saffron, p.82 10. Shree Vishwa Niketan (Delhi), Festival, celebrated an nually at the full moon in July. 11. Christophe Jaffrelot : Les natioanlistes bindous, p.139 12. W. Andersen and S. Damle: Brotherhood in Saffron, p.83 13. W. Andersen and S. Damle: Brotherhood in Saffron, p.104 14. ‘Settling accounts,’ The Statesman, (6 April 1998) 15. Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, (Advaita Ashram, Calcutta, 1964) p. 228 16. Subhas Chandra Bose, The Indian Struggle 1920-1934 (Oxford University Press, India) 17. Balraj Madhok, Rationale of Hindu State (Indian Book Gallery, Delhi), p.4 18. Veer V.D. Savarkar, ‘Six Glorious Chapters,’ Savarkar Samagra (Collected Works), Volume 6 (Prabhat Prakashan), p. 22 19. R.C. Mazumdar, H.C. Raychaudhuri and Kalikinkar Datta, An Advanced History of India (Macmillan, 1978), p. 135-6. 20. Ibid 21. H.V. Seshadri (ed.), R.S.S. A Vision in Action ( Sahitya Sindhu, 2000.) 22. B.R. Ambedkar ‘Pakistan or Partition of India’ Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writing and Speech (Vol-8, Govt of Maharastra) 23. H.V. Seshadri (ed.), Dr. Hedgewar- The Epoch Maker, (Sahitya Sindhu, Bangalore, 1981) p. 65 24. Ibid 25. Ibid p.64 26. Ibid p.61 27. Ibid p. 115

(Balbir Punj is a Rajya Sabha MP and convenor of BJP's think tank.)

There is clearly a paradox here. How did a highly plural and assimilative society like India's, which consciously adopted secularism as one of its crucial guiding principles at Independence, come to be, or allow itself to be, dominated by a particularistic and parochial ethno-religious politics within the course of barely four decades or so? And how did the party-level expression of Hindutva-the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or its earlier avatar, the Bharatiya Jana Singh (BJS)which for long years commanded roughly seven percent of the national vote, and only a modest number of seats (such as 20 to 35) in the 540-odd-strong lower house of the parliament (the Lok Sabha), meteorically rise to pre-eminence with the number of its seats galloping from two (1984) and 85 (1989), to 120 (1991) and now 183 (1999), with its vote-share rising from 7.4 percent of the vote cast at the national level (1984) to 11.4 percent (1989), 20.1 percent (1991) and 26 percent (1998), to fall only marginally to 23 percent (1999)? The BJP's tenure in power in India's national government for five and a half years also raises a number of other questions. How strong, committed and enduring are the party's social base and organisational structures? What is the source of its political appeal? What is its relationship with other organisations and movements which are members of that collectivity called the sangh parivar or sangh combine-the 'family' defined around the fulcrum of, and dominated by, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)? What are the strategies that allowed the BJP to break the social and electoral barriers the Bharatiya Jana Sangh faced for over a quarter-century, and thus to come into the 'mainstream' in the late 1980s and the 1990s? What larger social, economic and political processes explain the BJP's growth and the spread of its in fluence? What is unique about the BJP's policies, its political strategies, and its management of parliamentary processes and elections? It is equally relevant to inquire into other, related, issues. Has the experience of power at the national level brought about a change in the BJP's ideological orientation, its practical politics and its approaches to international relations, economic policy and to

global and regional issues of security? Has it transformed its relationship with the rest of the sangh parivar, in particular, the RSS? If so, what does that spell for the Hindutva collective?

ithin the past five years or so, the BJP has lost power (and votes) in a number of states, including important ones like Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, mid-sized ones like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, and smaller ones like Himachal Pradesh and the Capital territory of Delhi. Recent opinion polls show that its national approval ratings are in decline. But has its political in fluence really plateaued decisively and with finality? Can the BJP regenerate and reinvigorate itself, and return to power in New Delhi in a multi-party alliance, like the 24-party coalition which it currently heads? What is the likely future of Hidnutva and its impact on South Asia? This article will provisionally attempt to answer some of these questionsroughly the first half of those listed above. We start with the premise that the BJP is not just a ordinary political party, but both a political formation and a social movement which is integrally related to and driven by the agenda of establishing a society and state based on the primacy of the Hindus, who form 82 percent of India's population. The roots of the Hindutva phenomenon go back to the colonial period, in particular the late 19th century, when the encounter between Western modernity and 'traditional' Indian society produced a range of effects and crystallised many social processes, including, especially, what has been called 'disorientation', the reinterpretation of traditional cultures in order to preserve them and at the same time to give them a contemporary sense or new meanings.2 In India, a substantial section of the Hindu middle class which was exposed to Western education and modernist values adopted a broadly liberal orientation, which aspired to reform tradition and combat hierarchy and superstition (which were integral to that tradition). However, a significant minority of Hindus felt threatened by modernity, and by the restructuring of the Indian state under colonialism, and the 'reforms from above' undertaken by the state to abolish certain customs like widow-burning and child marriage.

ome conservative Hindus began to reinterpret their religion and tradition by imitating Western concepts and models in order to preserve the core of that tradition, especially its intensely hierarchical and Brahminical aspects. Some posited the 'Golden Age' of Hinduism, such as the Vedic Age or the 'Aryan period' or some other notion of a 'pure' state of India, identified with dharma (religion), quintessentially Hindu, which preceded the country's 'invasion' by 'aliens' such as Muslims, and later Christians. Thus began the formation of ethnic or ethno-religious nationalism, which received a major impetus in the 1920s, especially in a reaction to the khilafat (Caliphate) movement, the mobilisation of Indian Muslims for an apparently 'global' cause in which the mainstream party of Indian nationalism, the Indian National Congress (founded in 1885) also took part. Central to this ethno-religious nationalism or communalism was

the stigmatisation and simultaneous emulation of the supposed enemy-conquerors-the 'threatening others'.3 Equally important was the project to reorganise society as a means of producing 'a new kind of people'. This new movement of 'Hindu Sangathan' was to produce organisations like the Arya Samaj, Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

f these, the RSS (founded in 1925) was the most important and in some ways the most militant: it was a paramilitary organisation right from the outset and stressed physical fitness, exercise, and training in armed and unarmed combat. The uniform of the RSS was derived from the attire of the colonial police and the British Indian army. The RSS was the direct progenitor of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, and later the BJP. The principal appeal of these Hindutva groupings lay in their ability to exploit the sense of in feriority that many upper-caste Hindu strata felt, and the attraction of their project of re-creating or reviving a mythological 'Golden Age' of Hinduism based on 'racial purity', dharma and unadulterated devotion to religion in its most puritanical and Brahminical forms. The sense of in feriority was itself rooted in a certain reading of Indian history, largely through colonial eyes, as a succession of periods or epochs based on the religion of the rulers. The 'glorious' Hindu age of Antiquity was followed by the dark agea series of alien invasions. In this period, docile, undisciplined, unorganised and unarmed (because unmilitarised) Hindus were conquered and subjugated by aggressive, militant and well-armed invaders and marauders. The conquerors looted, impoverished and ruined prosperous India along with its thriving civilisation and supposedly unparalleled achievements in all fields of science and the arts.

he most stigmatised and vilified of the conquerors, and allegedly the most brutal, were the Muslims. But a more persuasive view is that Muslims came to India's Western shores as traders, not conquerors. Islam took roots in India well before it did in Southeast Asia or parts of Africa. There was flourishing interaction between Indians and Arabs, Persians and Turks long before Mahmud of Ghazni arrived as marauder. There were centuries-long transactions between Hindus, Muslims, and followers of other faiths, reflected in India's composite culture, its languages (many of them in fluenced by Persian or Arabic), music, dance, cuisines and eating habits, the sciences, and even in the birth of new religions like Sikhism. Distinct communal identities were formed only in the 1860s.4 A paranoid, pathological kind of Islamophobia has been integral to all currents of Hindutva. That set their priority: the Muslims were their greatest enemy, the dire 'threat from within'. No wonder the RSS shun ned participation in the anti-colonial nationalist movement which had acquired mass dimensions by the 1920s. Its appeal and membership was largely con fined to upper-caste Hindus, especially Marathi-speaking Brahmins in Western and Central India, with a sprinkling of shakhas (or branches, the basic unit of the RSS) in areas of the North where Hindu-Muslim riots had occurred, the exception being the Punjab, which had a large number of shakhas. The RSS had no significant presence in the South.

he two most in fluential theorists of Hindutva before Independence were Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, both Maharashtrian Brahmins. Savarkar pioneered the 'Two-Nation Theory', which argued that Hindus and Muslims could not co-exist within the same nation. Golwalkar developed the ethnicracist and national content of the concept of 'Hinduness' and invested Hindutva with its highly disciplinarian, puritanical, ritualistic and rigid hierarchies which defined it as an all-male secret society led by a small cabal. Golwalkar was notoriously fascinated by Nazism and Italian fascism and directly praised Hitler's view of racial purity: 'To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the semitic racesthe Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well might impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.' Gowalkar defined the RSS thus: 'The ultimate vision of our work â&#x20AC;Ś is a perfectly organised state of society wherein each individual has been moulded into a model of ideal Hindu manhood and made into a living limb of the corporate personality of society.' For Golwalkar, 'the mission of the RSS was to fashion society, to 'sustain' it, 'improve' it, and finally merge with it when the point had been reached where society and the organisation had become co-extensive.' 5

major changes in India's competitive party politics; the growth of new forms of aggressive ideologies, such as social Darwinism, bellicose nationalism and militarism within Indian society, as well as other changes..

he BJP's original avatar was far less lucky than itself. The Jana Sangh was sponsored in 1951 as a political party by the RSS, which has always sought to pretend as a 'cultural' organisation.6 The BJS employed a whole range of strategies to gain political in fluence: ethno-religious mobilisation, (apparent) moderation of hardHindutva to gain support from conservative right-wing and feudal classes, such as the former princes; electoral alliances; ideological appeal to anti-socialist ideas (the favoured platform of the Congress in the late 1960s to the mid-1970s); interest-group mobilisation focused on traders, businessmen and white-collar workers etc. Above all, the BJS used communal violence and riots as a means of polarising political sentiment, building cadres and mobilising itself politicallyan exact replica of the tactics of small groups of Muslim fanatics like the Jamaat-e-Islami in certain parts of India7.

All the different currents of Hindutva remained fairly marginal in their in fluence until the 1940s, but then registered a sharp rise, partly as a reaction to the Muslim League's adoption of the Pakistan agenda at Lahore in 1940 and the increasing likelihood, even seeming imminence, of the formation of Pakistan.

The BJS consciously projected itself as a Right-wing party in addition to being Hinducommunal: A formation that represents socially conservative values such as respect for the (unequal and hierarchical) caste status quo and one which advocates pro-trade policies, defends privileges inherited from feudal and colonial regimes (like the Privy Purses awarded by the deputing British to former Maharajas and Nawabs) and opposes land reform and good labour standards. The Jana Sangh was strongly supportive of the United States and the Western bloc in the Cold War-contrary to India's long-standing (but now abandoned) policy of Non-Alignment and in sharp distinction to most other political parties. It even went to the extent of supporting America's war on Vietnam, which was deeply unpopular in India.

he most notable act of Hindutva's adherents in the 1940s was the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in January 1948. This was committed by a former RSS member who regarded Gandhi as effete and dangerously pro-Muslim, and a disarming and emasculating in fluence on the Hindus. The RSS was ban ned following Gandhi's assassination but was later restored on condition that it stop conducting itself as a secret society and become open to public scrutiny, a condition it is yet to fulfil.

he Bharatiya Janasangh had by the late 1960s perfected a certain equation and a well-defined relationship with the RSS. The RSS was the Jana Sangh's mentor, ideological guide and political master. It was also its organisational gate-keeper. It would be the arbitrator of all internal con flicts within the BJS. The RSS pracharak (proselytiser-preacher) was crucial to Jana Sangh's vote-gathering strategy. The RSS needed the BJS as its loyal representative in the field of party politics. The two maintained some autonomy from each other. But in a dispute, the RSS would always prevail. The RSS had the last word in the parivar.

It is necessary to dwell at length on the origins and ideology of Hindutva in order to understand where some of its appeal lies for the upper-caste, upper or middle class Hindus. But being limited and narrow, that appeal can not explain how the BJP managed to win vastly greater in fluence than the RSS some six and a half decades after the sangh was set up. Nor do the RSS's origins or ideology provide adequate guidance to the practical strategies and tactics which lie at the root of the BJP's phenomenal growth, such as forging identities, gaining in fluence, recruiting cadres, fighting elections and entering into alliances with other parties.

None of the various combinations of strategies it tried could help the BJS break its isolation at the political margins for yearsnot even the huge windfall opening produced by the Congress's miserable performance in state after state in the 1967 elections, thanks to the alienation of the middle castes (officially called the Other Backward Classes, OBCs) and the formation of multi-party 'United Fronts' against the Congress, especially in the Hindi heartland.

Two other factors are vital to this understanding: The decline of the Congress (which has ruled India for fourth-fifths of its independent existence) and the political vacuum created by Hindutva's adversaries, the decline of the Left, in conjunction with other

The BJS's national vote share fluctuated between 3.1 and 9.4 percent in the Lok Sabha elections in the period 1962-77. The average works out to 6.4 percent. The number of Lok Sabha seats held by the BJP varied between 3 and 35 (the highest it ever bagged as

the Jana Sangh). By contrast, the Communists alone were at least twice as strong, and their in fluence and social base was wider and their implantation deeper and more

Procedure-widely seen as a concession to ultra-conservative mullahs who stiffly opposed any reform of personal law or practices. Simultaneously, he had the locks to the Babri mosque opened, thus allowing Hindus to offer prayers at the images of Lord Rama which were surreptitiously smuggled (with official complicity) right into the heart of the monument in 1949.

oth moves helped the VHP mount a strident campaign against 'Muslim appeasement' by the Congress and other 'pseudo-secular' parties, and for the demolition of the Babri mosque and the construction of a 'grand temple' to Rama at its site. In the intervening period, the VHP had gathered additional momentum by launching a 're-conversion' movement to bring back into 'the Hindu fold' Dalits at Meenakshipuram in Tamil Nadu who, oppressed, harassed and humiliated by upper caste Hindus, had decided to embrace Islam in 1980. Initially, the temple movement only evoked a feeble response, although propaganda about 'appeasement' appealed to many middle class Hindus who are prone to a supercilious and patriarchal view of all religious minorities and deeply cynical about democratic politics in which they only see manipulation of 'vote banks'. But soon, the term 'pseudo-secular' entered the vocabulary of the mainstream media as if it conveyed some profound truth. In reality, by using that term, the BJP was scoring points against whoever rejects Hindu primacy and supremacy. 'Appeasement' is a loaded pejorative term (Correctly, it should only be used in respect of inimical forces). It completely misrepresents the reality of Muslim life in India, which is even grimmer than the life of the average Hindu.

n the mid-1980s, the temple movement too began to pick up momentum when the VHP-RSS leadership, with the BJP's encouragement and participation, launched a series of powerful mobilisations using religious symbols and gestures, for example a campaign to collect bricks for the temple, carrying Ram-Jyotis or lamps in processions, and holding special pujas (worship) in cities and towns, especially near mosques. Some of the most committed early participants in the movement were highly politicised sadhus and upper-caste cadres of the sangh parivar. But it soon began to draw in some low- and middle-caste Hindus, many of them first-generation literates. For them, the temple movement's principal appeal was that it provided a pan-Indian or pan-Hindu and a homogenous, respectable and 'Sanskritised' identity to them, as distinct from the subaltern, marginal and oppressive reality of their (typically rural or semi-urban) existence. As soon as the BJP saw the rising popularity and potential of the Ayodhya mosque/temple movement in 1980s, most of its leaders actively joined it. In 1986, Advani replaced Vajpayee as BJP president. But even before that, a change of strategic orientation had begun, towards a Hindu 'Sanghatanist' style of organisation and an ethnio-religious strategy of political mobilisation. The BJP by 1987 had clearly formulated the three 'trident' issues, greatly and long agitated by the Jana Sangh, as its principal focus and concerns: A ban on cow slaughter; abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, which gives a special status to Jammu and Kashmir, and imposition of a

Uniform Civil Code detached from a gender-just, human rights-based, reform of personal lows. The late 1980s saw many strategy meetings being held among the top-most leaders of the sangh parivar, including the BJP and the RSS and various 'fronts' of the latter such as the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (labour federation), the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (students' union), the so-called think tank called Deendayal Research Institute and the newly formed Bajrang Dal.

ach of these 'fronts' and parivar members has a special function and a special relationship to the RSS. They are said to number between 150 and 300, span ning such fields as education (the Vidya Bharati network of over 20,000 schools), labour (the BMS claims to be among India's top three union federations), and women (the Bharatiya Mahila Sangh, which loathes modern feminism and women's liberation and believes that the traditional, highly patriarchal, Hindu family provides the best example of the women's rightful place in society). No less important are organisations like Vanavasi Kalyan Sanghwhich purports to work for tribal welfare but usually does proselytising work among India's indigenous people, as in Gujarat, and the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, which advocates a fiercely nationalist (but strongly-anti-internationalist and almost autarkic) economic policy, itself opposed to the BJP's naĂŻve and blind dedication to unequal globalisation. The functions of these front organisations are instrumental and well-defined. For instance, the VHP was set up by the RSS in the early 1960s to serve as an explicitly religious-cultural front and to recruit lumpenised sadhus and disaffected sanyasis. The VHP participates in communal and political activities of various sorts and operates worldwide amongst the Hindu diaspora. The Bajrang Dal functions like the modern-day equivalent of storm-troopers and uses physical violence to intimidate opponents. Bajrang Dal goons and ruffians periodically smash public property and burn churches and mosques, as happened in Orissa, where an Australian missionary and his two young sons were burnt alive in 2001. This is just when Prime Minister Vajpayee was calling for a 'national debate' on religious conversion!

he typical relationship between these fronts and the RSS-and most are more loyal to the RSS than to the BJP--is that of the hub-and-spokes variety. They relate to one another not so much directly as through the hub that is the RSS. Some of them are designed and deployed to occupy the space of opposition to BJP policies, and thus to marginalise the true ideological-political opposition. With the 1989 Lok Sabha elections and the installation of the minority V.P. Singh government in power in New Delhi, the BJP intensified its religious mobilisation campaign. The most eloquent expressions of this intensification were periodic semireligious mobilisations in Ayodhya, with volunteers pouring in from all over the country, as well as Ram Shila Pujas in different cities. Of particular importance was the Somnath-to-Ayodhya rath yatra launched by Lal Krishna Advani, now deputy prime minister and home minister of India ,in a souped-up Toyota van in 1990 made to

resemble the cheap commercial-film version of an ancient chariot.

his yatra (procession) left a trail of blood in numerous states. There was a close fit between its route, especially between the cities and towns where it evoked the greatest response and ferocious anti-Muslim violence. The most frequently chanted slogan during Advani's rath yatra was: 'There are only two places for MuslimsPakistan or kabristan (graveyard)'. Advani was finally stopped and arrested in Bihar by Laloo Prasad Yadav's government. But it was clear that the temple campaign and in flaming rank communal passions through hate-speech and open provocation and instigation to violence would become the BJP's principal political strategy. The BJP was only waiting for the right moment to convert the Ayodhya mobilisation into an actual, physical act of destructionmeant to 'avenge history's wrongs'and then use that to its electoral advantage. The moment would come with the installation of a weak, compromised and collusive government in New Delhi. This would remove the last barrier between the plans of the Hindutva movement to raze the Babri mosque and its actual demolition. The sangh parivar had for years described the Babri mosque as the most potent symbol of subjugation of the Hindus by Muslims â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;an 'ocular' insult,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; as Advani put it. That moment came at the begin ning of the decade of the 1990s when the Indian judicial and administrative systems retreated time and again in the face of the mounting Hindutva assault, and in particular when P.V. Narasimha Rao's Congress government took office after the 1991 elections following Rajiv Gandhi's assassination. This government was in a parliamentary minority for half its term and entered into an in formal or unstated half-alliance with the BJP which had by now emerged as the principal opposition party.

he Rao government not only failed to hold the BJP-VHP-RSS down to their specific legal commitments not to disturb the status quo in Ayodhya, it allowed them to escalate the tempo of their hysterical mobilisation and close in on their target. The Babri Mosque had by now become both an emblem of, and a kind of litmus test for, India's commitment to secularism and to defending its multi-religious composite culture against the majoritarian onslaught. Through 1991 and 1992, more and more kar sevaks (volunteers) were mobilised at Ayodhya. At these gatherings, replete with pseudoreligious rituals, they would be treated to highly in flammatory speeches and stormtrooper-style propaganda. The chain of events leading to the razing of the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992, and the developments of the day itself, could not have occurred without the collusion of the national and state (Uttar Pradesh) governments. With the mosque's razing, India suffered a terrible trauma, the worst blow since Partition to the very idea of peaceful co-existence between different religious communities. It is impossible to understand the pusillanimity of the Rao government of Congress

Party in the face of the Hindutva assault except by reference to far larger social and political processesin particular, the erosion of the 'Nehruvian paradigm' or 'consensus'

finally agreed to chair it on condition that its terms of reference would not include a departure from the Westminster-style parliamentary system centred on the Prime Minister. This review exercise in essence turned out to be a dud.

n the second issue, of nuclear policy, the BJP simply proceeded to exercise the nuclear option by detonating a series of five explosions on May 11 and 13, 1998 without the promised 'strategic defence review' and a discussion of the security environment, indeed without as much as a reference to the cabinet or the defence minister. Also excluded from this decision were the armed services. There is reason to believe the decision to conduct the tests was taken by a small cabal of people, including top RSS leaders and a handful of cabinet ministers belonging solely to the BJP, excluding even Defence Minister George Fernandes.9 By nuclearising India, the BJP not only fulfilled its own long-standing nuclear obsession and fascination with militarism and weapons of mass destruction; it successfully mopped up, gave a new thrust to and capitalised on a bellicose form of Hindu nationalism growing in the country. The growth of this nationalism is intimately related to the burgeoning of a new consumerist elite under India's neo-liberal capitalism with its intense dualism and grotesque inequalities. This elite has set its face against the people, indeed sees them as a drag on its own growth and prosperity. It lacks any commitment to liberal values or the spirit of democracy. It is culturally crass and driven by a peculiar kind of hubris and blind faith in India's 'manifest destiny 'Mera Bharat Mahan (literally, my India is great; more accurately, 'right or wrong, My Great Nation!'). This elite nationalism is highly receptive to the Hindutva notion of India's incomparably glorious past: The Vedic Age or the preMuslim 'pure Hindu' period, as the source of everything that is great in the ancient world's arts, sciences and cultures.

his elite, comprising no more than a tenth of the population, is strongly social Darwinist in orientation. As an ideology, social Darwinism holds that only the fittest survive, and ought to survive, in society as well as nature. There is no place for the weak, the underprivileged and the powerless. This is held to be some immutable law of nature. This idea rationalises the horrendous callousness with which India's globalising middle classes are seceding from, and turning against, the mass of the people, the poor and unwashed, the 'laggards' and losers. This elite is strongly drawn to the culture of authoritarianism and is fascinated by forcewhether to guard borders, settle disputes, secure the family, or deter rape through capital punishment. This is most starkly manifested in the proliferation of repressive ideas and institutions of the sangh parivar, with its 20,000 Vidya Bharati schools, 30,000 RSS shakhas and its penetration of labour and student unions, as well as institutions of culture and higher education. Of a piece with this is the role of Hindutva as a vehicle for upper-caste domination, with all its anti-liberalism, hatred for the poor, suspicion of modernity, and opposition to the constitutional values of democracy, secularism, pluralism, universal human rights

and egalitarianism. Some analysts see Hindutva as an upper-caste and upper class weapon against the weak, who are now asserting themselves and demanding their share in democratic decision-making. The malign upper-caste orientation of Hindutva, and its utility as an instrument of domination not just of the religious minorities but all underprivileged groups, finds its highest expression in what might be called the Golwalkar Programme, outlined by the RSS's most important ideologue. The Golwalkar Programme consists in systematically assaulting modern-liberal ideas, weakening and undermining all democratic institutions, and using coercion to disen franchise the minorities politically so as to turn them into second-class citizens without any rights. The Gujarat pogrom of 2002, in which 2,000 Muslims were massacred with state complicity under BJP Chief Minister Narendra Modi, shows the extent to which the Hindutva forces can go in implementing the Golwalkar Programme. The Vajpayee government has shamelessly colluded with Modi and shielded him in a variety of unseemly ways. This not only proved the secularists' contention that Vajpayee's image as a 'soft' leader or half-liberal is totally deceptive: he is as steeped in Hindutva's toxic ideology and communal politics as anyone else. It also showed that Hindutva remains the most serious and deadly menace to democracy in India.

Datta, Sumit Sarkar, Tanika Sarkar and Sambudda Sen, Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags, (Orient Longman, New Delhi, 1993); V.D. Savarkar, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?,( S.S. Savarkar, Bombay, 1969); Paul R Brass, The Politics of India since Independence, (Cambridge University Press, 1990); Paul R Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India, (Cambridge University Press, 1974); David Ludden (ed.), Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics Of Democracy In India, (University of Pen nsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1996). 3. This is further analysed in Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, op cit., to whose analysis of Hindutva's strategies this essay owes a good deal. 4. C.A. Bayly, 'The Pre-History of 'Communalism'? Religious Con flict in India, 1700-1860.' Modern Asian Studies 19:177-203. 5. All quotes from M.S. Golwalkar, We, or our Nationhood Defined, (Bharat Publications, Nagpur, 1939) 6. This permits the RSS to be unanswerable to any public agency. It does not have to be registered. Not being a political party means it is not accountable to the Election Commission; its books and accounts are not subject to public scrutiny. 7. On communal violence, see Paul R Brass's work, in particular The Polity of India since Independence op cit. 8. Cited in Frontline, (Madras, October 13, 1990) 9. For a fuller discussion of this, read Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;South Asia on a Short Fuse: Nuclear Politics and the Future of Global Disarmament,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; 2nd Edition,( Oxford University Press, New Delhi and Karachi, 2002)

References 1. Communalism or communal nationalism con notes here the doctrine that social groups form a legitimate political identity or community and as well as site of political decision-making (polis) by virtue of being members of one religious faith. 2. See Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture, (Basic Books, New York, 1973). There is also a rich discussion in the sociological tradition of the relationship of emergent nationalisations with ressentiment, 'a term coined by Nietzsche and later defined and developed by Max Scheler'. Ressentiment refers to 'a psychological state resulting from suppressed feelings of envy and hatred (existential envy) and the impossibility of satisfying these feelings'. The envy and hatred arise from the importation into a culture of a model (of the modern nation) considered superior. For an interesting discussion and further development of this, see Liah Green feld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity,( Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1992.) On the history of the origins of communalism in India, and its character, there are a number of books and analyses. But in particular, see Achin Vanaik, Communalism Contested: Religion, Modernity and Secularisation, (Vistaar, New Delhi, 1997); Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, (Viking & Penguin India, New Delhi, 1996); D.R. Goyal, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, (Radha Krishna Prakashan, New Delhi, 1979); Craig Baxter, A Biography of an Indian Political Party: Jana Sangh, (Oxford University Press, Bombay, 1971); Walter K. Andersen and Shridhar D. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism,( Westview Press, Colorado, 1987); Pralay Kanungo, RSS's Tryst with Politics: From Hedgewar to Sudarshan, (Manohar, New Delhi, 2003); A.D. Smith, Theories of Nationalism, (Duckworth, London, 1971); Bruce Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, (Cambridge University Press, 1990); D.E. Smith, India as a Secular State, (Princeton University Press, 1963); Gyanendra Pandey (ed.), Hindus and Others: The Question of Identity in India Today, (Viking, New Delhi, 1993); K.R. Malkani, RSS Story, (Impex India, New Delhi, 1980); M.S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, (Jagarana Prakashana, Bangalore, 1980); Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India, (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1994); Tapan Basu, Pradip

(Praful Bidwai is former senior editor of The Times of India. He is a freelance journalist and regular columnist for leading newspapers in India and Pakistan.)

Pakistan's Islamic Orientation

Islamic Extremism in Pakistan Khaled Ahmed

akistan was Islamised gradually but when it reached a peak in this process in the 1980s, the country became vaguely aware of an extremism that the West called fundamentalism. When the international media began using the word there was an immediate reaction against it. The cleric and the intellectual both thought it an attack on Islam and began defending Islam instead of worrying about the growing extremism at home. It appears that the biggest irritant between the West and the world of Islam was the way the West chose to define the phenomenon of return to Islam among Muslim societies. The West harked back to Christian fundamentalism, European and American, to find the vocabulary for a brand of Islam that it feared. On the side of Muslims, there was also an inability to understand what the West really wanted to say. At the level of cultural experience all Muslims were not yet ready to see why religion must be separated from the functioning of the state. Almost no Muslim, liberal or conservative, was willing to concede that secularism was a valid political concept. (Con fusion prevailed because a Western secularist may be rationalist without believing in religion; in Muslim societies, all secularists are believers). The liberal Muslim was under pressure from the fanatic with whom he had not yet learnt to disagree at the level of ideas. He was angry with the West calling the world of Islam fundamentalist.1 Pakistan's fundamentalism was mobilised and made sectarian by the government of General Zia. It also became jihadi and terrorist with a lot of financial support from the United States and Saudi Arabia. The Americans were concerned only with win ning the war in Afghanistan and defeating the Soviet Union, but the Saudis had ideological and sectarian aims. To the extent that jihad in Pakistan responded to the financial stimulus of Saudi Arabia it became mercenary and can not be discussed as a manifestation of Islam. It is quite certain that at the level of the jihadi leadership, the jihad was motivated by financial gains. Almost all the jihadi leaders came into possession of considerable wealth, which they shared with the state apparatus in Pakistan and not in sufficient measure with the young recruits who fought the war. It is possible that among the rank and file of the jihadi youth there was belief in the spilling of blood in the name of Islam and belief in martyrdom. The same is true of sectarianism. The leader who plans the killings is working for money but the man who actually kills may be moved by religious passion. There is evidence that youth from the crime underworld also joined the jihad. One has to concede that in such cases the rank and file too were motivated by financial considerations. Jihad and the consequent 'weaponisation' of Islam have in flicted permanent damage on civil society and state institutions in Pakistan.

he Pakistan Movement was not clear about the kind of state it would culminate in. The clarity that we see today is a part of the nation-building process that began in 1949 with the adoption of the Objectives Resolution by the Constituent Assembly charged with the task of framing the country's first Constitution. Pakistan became an ideological state on the basis of the Muslim experience in India. Soon after 1947, the religious parties with strong grassroots presence in the cities began challenging the vague founding principles of the state. Scholars of great standing relied on the early lineaments of the state in Islam in their rejectionist rhetoric. What helped in this was the inchoate theory of the state in Islamic history. After 1949, the process to transform Pakistan into a religious state ipso facto made the clergy the guardian of the new founding principle. The civilian politicians finally gave in in 1958 and the army began to rule directly in Pakistan. The army as an interest group was brought down in 1971 by its compulsion to operate the state on the basis of con flict with India. In the next phase, the growing power of the clergy and the offended post-nationalisation industrial groups enabled the army to stage a comeback. The army under General Zia combined three interest groups: the army, the clergy and the industrial elite. The army broke from the past secular tradition of professionalism by adopting ideology as its strong plank. This gradually led to the Islamisation of the army and the industrial elite. The democratic institutions opened up by him allowed a fuller Islamisation of the law followed by Islamisation of society. The ideological state of Pakistan was one among many in the third world experiencing gradual loss of economic viability. Pakistan army postponed an economic crisis by participating in the decade-long Afghan war in the 1980s, assisted financially by the United States and Saudi Arabia. The religious groups gained stature and power in this period. Islamisation of law and society had already given them more power than any other interest group. Islamisation within the army had dimmed the dividing line between the clergy and the military officers increasingly drawn from the country's middle class. It was after the creation of local militias under religious leaders on the pattern of Afghanistan - for use in the low-intensity war in Kashmir after 1989 - that the religious group became supreme in Pakistan. At the cost of internal sovereignty, the concept of jihad by non-state actors was allowed. Leaders of the jihadi militias as 'warrior priests' attained higher profiles than the elected leaders. The idea of the state preached by the powerful religious leaders was utopian but it allowed them to constantly portray democracy as an alien system in which only the corrupt prospered. Democracy was acceptable to them only under shariah but most clerics did not agree completely with the shariah en forced by General Zia. Deprived of real power and uncertain of their tenure in government, the elected leaders took to embezzling state funds and taking graft. The enrichment of the religious leaders through even more dubious means could not be challenged. The state began to be called a failing or failed state that could default on its debts.

efore 1947, East Pakistan was in the grip of linguistic nationalism centred in West Bengal. West Pakistan was Low Church in terms of religion as its incompletely settled land was still dominated by shrines.2 Despite the world's biggest canal system

established by the British to circumvent brackish underground water, the region had not yet surrendered to the High Church seminary. The countryside dominated West Pakistan as opposed to Central India where the Pakistan Movement had taken birth in the Muslim-minority provinces. In the Northwest, Afghanistan was High Church, strongly aligned with the seminary whose graduates had trained at Deoband in India3 and were traditionally aligned with the languishing Ahle Hadith (Wahabi) movement which had retreated from Delhi after 1857 to Bhopal. The Pakistan movement grew out of its leaders' rejection of the Khilafat Movement literally run by the Congress leadership. This led to the rejection of the Pakistan Movement by the strong city-based seminarian clergy. However, because of their rivalry with the more puritanical Deobandis and Ahle Hadith, the Brelvi clergy favoured the Pakistan Movement. In West Pakistan, the cities had opened up to the seminaries but the countryside was predominantly shrine-oriented where mystical saints were celebrated as a part of the folk song tradition.4 Since Muslim-majority West Pakistan had not responded enthusiastically to the Pakistan Movement, Muslims and Hindus celebrated the same saints. The Deobandis opposed the mysticism of the shrine, the Brelvis accepted it. Ironically, a High Islam non-clerical Pakistan Movement was rejected by the High Islam clergy of India and accepted by the Low Church and was forced to govern a predominantly Low Church territory.

The Conversion to High Church

fter 1949, the state started moving in the direction of Islamisation as a nationbuilding tool. It began to realise quite early that Islamic law-making could not be achieved under Low Church conditions. The seminary had to be taken on board for giving legitimacy to state institutions. A Council of Islamic Ideology was soon set up which was deliberately High Church, dominated by the Deobandi minority among the clergy. Mysticism could not be the foundation of the ideological state. Islamic scholars like Dr Fazlur Rehman were not tolerated for long in the Council; and the highwater mark of the High Church dominance came when General Zia appointed Maulana Yusuf Banuri the founder of the Banuri Mosque of Karachi as head of the Council.5 The NWFP was traditionally High Church because of its cultural proximity with Afghanistan. After 1947, the seminary there aligned itself with the pro-Congress National Awami Party (NAP). It should be interesting to investigate how the two parties, one secular-socialist and the other orthodox-puritanical, interacted in their pro-India orientations. The lessening of the aggressive politics of High Church was owed to its adoption by the state of Pakistan. When the war in Afghanistan began in 1979, the linkage of the mujahideen with the seminarian tradition increased the charisma of the seminary. The rise of the Taliban and the induction of jihad by Pakistan into its Kashmir policy, drove the Brelvis out. No Brelvi could go to Afghanistan for training because he would be considered an in fidel. Many boys from the Brelvi institutions had to change over to a Deobandi or Ahle Hadith seminary before going to Afghanistan. Shah Waliullah, the 18th century Muslim thinker seems to have inspired both liberal and orthodox ways of thinking in South Asia.6 His most remarkable contribution was the linkage he formed between Deobandi Islam and the Hanbali Islam of Saudi Arabia during his sojourn in Hijaz. The rise of Saudi in fluence in Pakistan during the Afghan

jihad against the Soviets cemented the old nexus further. Saudi gift of the seed money for General Zia's Zakat Fund was conditional: a significant bequest had to be made to the Ahle Hadith seminary headquarters in Faisalabad, the city from where Al Qaeda's Abu Zubaidah was to be arrested in 2002. Army chief Aslam Beg was the first to allow Deobandi seminaries in Bahawalpur and Rahimyar Khan so that their armed youth could be used as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;second line of defence' against a possible Indian attack from Rajasthan.7 The Arab sheikhs, who enjoyed extra-territorial rights, came to the area for hunting rare birds and began to fund the seminaries, thus allowing the rise of the Sipah Sahaba under an intensely anti-Shia and anti-Iran leader, Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi.8 The Deobandi-Ahle Hadith tradition in India had always been coloured with strong sectarianism. Jihad in Pakistan brought to the fore the dominance of a Deobandi consensus together with a strong anti-Shia trend among the main jihadi groups.

Birth of Religious Extremism

eligious extremism began in earnest during the second jihad which was the extension of the Afghan jihad against the Soviets to Kashmir as a low-intensity con flict with India after 1989. The first jihad had empowered the Jamaat Islami and its Pushtun leader, Qazi Hussain Ahmad. The sojourn of the Afghan jihadi leaders in Peshawar had begun a crucible process with the help of Saudi money. The High Church Afghans mixed with the local Deobandi consensus and tacitly agreed to oppose the Low Church trends in Pakistan. It was a 'hard' Islam Pakistanis knew nothing about. It came mixed with the even tougher tribal code called Pushtunwali that the 'settled' Pushtuns of Pakistan had gradually forgotten even in the Tribal Areas. The presence of the Arabs - especially the Egyptian runaways like Al Zawahiri acted to further radicalise local Islam with salafi ideals overlaid with Qutbite concept of the jahiliyya violence.9 The Deobandi seminaries became powerful on receiving their share of Zakat from the government of General Zia. After 1989, the empowerment of the Deobandis took up momentum as the jihad in Kashmir was restricted to Deobandis and Ahle Hadith. The surrender of internal sovereignty to these militias happened first in the NWFP and the Tribal Areas; it later extended to a number of cities in Punjab and, in particular Karachi, where the centre of the Deobandi consensus emerged at the Banuri Complex of seminaries. Increasingly the youth joining the jihad were made conscious of the fact that somehow Pakistan had not en forced true Islam and that Pakistanis were living like in fidels. More animus was shown towards the Shia community and to some extent the Ismailis.10 According to a report by Islamabad's Institute of Policy Studies, Pakistan has 6,761 religious seminaries where over a million young men are taking religious training. The Ministry of Religious Affairs has given out similar numbers in its report. But Herald (November 2001) says: 'According to the Interior Ministry, there are some 20,000 madrasas in the country with nearly 3 million students'. In 1947, West Pakistan had only 245 seminaries. In 1988, they increased to 2,861. Between 1988 and 2000, this increase comes out to be 136 percent. The largest number of seminaries are Deobandi, at 64 percent, followed by Brelvi, at 25 percent. Only 6 percent are Ahle Hadith. But the increase in the number of Ahle Hadith seminaries or madrasas has been phenomenal, at 131 percent, going up from 134 in 1988 to 310 in 2000. Out of the total number of youth

taking religious training in the seminaries, 15 percent are foreigners. Among the Ahle Hadith, there are 17 organisations active in Pakistan, looking after their own seminaries. Out of them, six actually take part in politics, three take part in jihad, and three are busy spreading their mazhab or school of thought. They are all puritans who do not follow the state fiqh and are also called wahabi. Most of them follow the lead of the ulema of Saudi Arabia and receive assistance from rich Saudi citizens.11

he grand Deobandi alliance is probably the biggest force in Pakistan after the state's armed forces.12 Based in Karachi, the Banuri Complex housed leaders that sat in the shuras of the various Deobandi jihadi militias. Its religious scholars sat in the shura of Sipah Sahaba as well as the shura of the two militias, Harkatul Mujahideen and Jaish-e-Muhammad. The Deobandi leaders think nothing of issuing fatwas of death against foreigners coming to Pakistan on business. It is these fatwas in part that caused the embassies in Islamabad to issue advisories to their nationals not to visit Pakistan. The Harkatul Mujahideen was once Harkatul Ansar which was ban ned by America because of its terrorist character. In 2000, it was split between two leaders, Fazlur Rehman Khaleel and Masood Azhar. Their organisations were trained in Afghanistan and were payrolled by Osama bin Laden. Both the commanders were close to Osama and had accompanied him to Sudan for some time in early 1990s. When Masood Azhar was arrested in India, Osama financed the hijack of an Indian airliner to spring him from jail. Along with him was sprung another man close to Osama bin Laden, Sheikh Umar. Umar had opened the office of Al Qaeda in Lahore in 2000 for a brief period before going underground once again.13 After his release in 1999 Masood Azhar no longer wanted to work under the Harkat leadership of Fazlur Rehman Khaleel. He founded Jaish-i-Muhammad, helped by his Banuri Mosque elders. True to Deobandi tradition, he began shooting off his mouth against General Musharraf which embarrassed his handlers among the intelligence agencies. The Harkat was split and its assets divided between the two leaders. But when the double-cabin vehicles were returned by Jaish to Fazlur Rehman Khaleel in bad repair, the two factions began to fight each other. Osama bin Laden ended the dispute by sending a dozen brand new double-cabin vehicles to Khaleel from Afghanistan.14

aulana Azam Tariq of Sipah Sahaba had built up his power outside Jhang where he was the virtual ruler. A French lady scholar writing his biography says he gave administrative orders for the area of Jhang from his house.15 His sectarian party has produced a violent offshoot, Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, whose killings Azam Tariq disavowed by saying that the Lashkar has been removed from the umbrella of his party. Yet when Lashkar activist Haq Nawaz was about to be hanged he tried all means at his disposal, including threats to the state, to get him absolved from the crime of killing an Iranian diplomat. Sipah is not only very powerful in Karachi it is also in fluential in Kurram Agency and in Gilgit, both areas being concentrations of Shia population. Azam Tariq an nounced in 2001 that he would select 20 cities in Pakistan and en force his Deobandi shariah there, mainly in the shape of compulsory business shutdown during namaz and the compulsory attendance at namaz of all Muslims. In addition, he promised to impose hijab (veil) on all women venturing out of the house. Hardline injunctions against women are also issued by his Deobandi colleague Maulana

Samiul Haq who vows to treat the women with the same severity as the Taliban.

The Salafi Connection

here are 17 Ahle Hadith organisations in Pakistan, out of whom six take part in politics and three also took part in jihad. Differences of ritual exist among them, as also differences of strategy. At times these differences become very intense and give rise to mutual vilification, as in the case of Markazi Ahle Hadith of Allama Sajid Mir and the former Lashkar-i-Tayba (Now Jamaat al-Dawa) of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed. Jamaat Ghuraba Ahle Hadith holds that its supporters should quietly reject the political system till the majority of the population becomes Ahle Hadith, after which Pakistan will automatically become Islamic. Jamaat al-Mujahideen thinks that the political system is batil (false) and as long as a caliphate does not come into being, it will not take part in politics but will struggle to establish an Islamic government. Hafiz Saeed's organisation holds the same position. The Ahle Hadith monthly journal Sahifa Ahle Hadith (Karachi) wrote in January 2000: 'We believe that General Musharraf does not represent Islam or Pakistan but America and its allies. We condemn General Musharraf's decision and demand that he should not sow the seeds of hatred between the people and the army simply to extend his personal rule. He should stop giving statements against mujahideen Muslims because America and its allies listen only to the language of violence and will not negotiate till the Muslim ummah decides to break America into pieces through guerrilla war, as it did in the case of Russia'.16 The salafi in fluence in Pakistan has also come in from the United Kingdom where a violent cleric, Sheikh Umar Bakri propagates the subversion of all Islamic states in order to impose khilafat there. The Lahore High Court recently ruled that the activities of Hizb al-Tahrir came within the ambit of preaching of Islam and could not be designated as anti-state. The government had gone to the court complaining that the Hizb was spreading sedition against the government. Hizb al-Tahrir being against democracy, it advocated the establishment of khilafat in Pakistan. It made no bones about the government of General Musharraf being in violation of the tenets of Islam and openly called for its removal. When the Hizb entered Pakistan in 2000 from the United Kingdom together with its companion, al-Muhajirun,17 it had called for the removal of the Musharraf government. The Punjab government which had rented the Alhamra Hall to the two organisations regretted the decision. (One nazim of the Hizb doing time in a Peshawar jail for distributing abusive pamphlets against General Musharraf is a medical student who took over from the earlier nazim after he went to the United States to study electrical engineering at Chicago University.) The government had no idea who these organisations were and what their objectives were in Pakistan.18 Some of the Hizb youth were English-speaking with cockney accents and therefore impressive-looking; the bureaucracy or the intelligence services had no idea of the origin of Hizb al-Tahrir. Now of course Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are complaining that the Hizb is busy undermining their governments. In Uzbekistan, international human rights organisations have sided with the Hizb against the Uzbek government. Writes Farouk Turaev (Daily Times 20 August 2002): 'The Independent Organisation for Human Rights in Uzbekistan (IOHRU), and the Interior Ministry agree that approximately 4,200 suspected Hizb al-Tahrir activists are now in prison. Most are

serving long sentences of up to 20 years for crimes, such as violating the country's constitution, run ning prohibited organisations, and distributing rebellious pamphlets.' Activists of the Hizb have also been arrested in Kyrgyzstan, and in Egypt where the party is ban ned.

Origin of Sectarian Violence

fter coming to power, General Zia took over the populist slogan of Nizam-eMustafa and imposed shariah on Pakistan. It really meant the imposition of the Sun ni Hanafi fiqh or jurisprudence followed by the majority population from which the Shias were excluded. Two early laws under shariah en forced by him, failed miserably: the first, abolition of riba (interest), failed because of the inability of the Islamic scholars to reinterpret Islam for modern conditions; the second, zakat, failed because the Shia jurisprudence, called Fiqh-i-Jaafaria, had a con flicting interpretation of zakat. In 1980, an unprecedented procession of Shias, led by Mufti Jaafar Hussain, laid siege to Islamabad and forced General Zia to exempt the Shia community from the deduction of zakat. The concept of Sun ni ushr (poor-due on land) is also rejected by Shia jurisprudence. It appears that, when the anti-Shia movement started in Jhang in the 1980s, General Zia not only ignored it but saw it as his balancing act against the rebellious Shia community. This was worsened by Imam Khomeini's criticism of General Zia. The rise of Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi in the stronghold of big Shia landlords in Punjab changed the sectarian scene in Pakistan. There is evidence that General Zia was warned of Jhangvi's anti-Shia and anti-Iran movement, but he ignored the warning and allowed it to blossom into a full-fledged religious party called Anjuman-i-Sipah-i-Sahaba of Pakistan (ASSP). In small towns, the old Shia-Sun ni debate restarted with the fury that had become dampened in the past. The tracts which carried this debate were scurrilous in the extreme and helped the clerics to whip up passions. Meanwhile, in 1986, General Zia allowed a 'purge' of Turi Shias in the divided city of Parachinar (capital of Kurram Agency on the border with Afghanistan) at the hands of the Sun ni Afghan mujahideen in conjunction with the local Sun ni population.

arachinar was the launching-pad of the Mujahideen attacks into Afghanistan and the Turis were not cooperative. Tehrike-i-Nifaz-i-Fiqha-i-Jaafaria had come into being during the dispute over zakat in 1980. When the Parachinar massacre occurred, the party was led by a Turi leader, Allama Arif-ul-Hussaini, a companion of Imam Khomeini during his exile in Najaf. (He is celebrated as a martyr in Iran with a postagestamp portrait.) Allama Hussaini was murdered in Peshawar in August 1988, for which the Turis held General Zia responsible. That was also the year of General Zia's death (within a fortnight of Hussaini's murder) in an air-crash in Bahawalpur, and for a time there was rumour of Shia involvement in his assassination although no solid evidence supporting this speculation was ever uncovered. The NWFP governor, General Fazle Haq, whom the Turis accused of complicity in the murder of Allama Hussaini, was ambushed and killed in 1991. In 1989, the Afghan mujahideen government-in-exile came into being in Peshawar after the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan. At the behest of Saudi Arabia, the exiled Shia mujahideen of Iran were not included in this government. The Saudis paid over 23 million dollars a week during the 519-member session of the

Mujahideen shura as bribe for it.19 In 1990, Maulana Jhangvi was murdered at the climax of his anti-Iran and anti-Shia campaign of extreme insult and denigration.20 The same year, as if in retaliation, an activist of Sipah-i-Sahaba shot the Iranian consul Sadiq Ganji dead in Lahore. The tit-for-tat killings were thus started. Maulana Isar-ul-Qasimi, chief of the Sipah, was gun ned down in 1991.

ince then, the state of Pakistan has had to answer for the killing of more Iranians in Pakistan. Another consular officer was gun ned down in Multan and a number of Iranian air force trainees were ambushed in Rawalpindi on inside in formation received by the killers, thus implying involvement from sectarian officers from within the army. Most commentators in Pakistan are scared of telling the truth. Most inter-sectarian dialogue is fake since its great facade of speech-making is nothing but divine-sounding rationalisation. Almost all Muslim clerics lie when it comes to sectarian deaths. General Zia allowed the Deobandi lashkars to attack Gilgit and put under challenge the historical domination there of Ismaili and Shia communities.21 In 2003, the anti-Shia violence was extended to Balochistan where the Hazara Shia community was targeted in two incidents killing over 50 men. The Pakistan government, speaking through prime minister Mir Zafrullah Jamali and interior minister Faisal Saleh Hayat, claimed that the act of terrorism could have been plan ned and executed by India through its freshly opened consulates in Afghanistan. It later came to light that the action was coordinated by the ban ned sectarian organisations, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Sipah Sahaba and Lashkari-Jhangvi.22 Jaish-i-Muhammad, as an offshoot of Sipah Sahaba, had carried out the murders of Shia doctors in Karachi in 1998. Its Al Qaeda-backed activist Sheikh Umar executed the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl in 2002.

akistan's jihad in Kashmir has created an alternative state apparatus in the outfits that fight there as surrogate warriors. The price that civil society pays for this deniable covert war has been climbing over the years and has now become almost intolerable. During the latest round of war in Afghanistan most of these outfits have opposed General Musharraf's policy of joining the world coalition against terrorism. All religious leaders of these jihadi outfits know their activity can easily fall in the category of terrorism and therefore try to scare the common citizen by predicting that the next American target will be Pakistan. They see hazily the possibility of a takeover, not by themselves, as that would be impossible given their internecine nature, but by someone else from within the establishment, that will give them a new lease of life an earlier lease having seen foreclosure the day Osama bin Laden decided to attack New York and Washington. In 2001 the state of Pakistan had to effect a volte face in its jihadi policy after the UN Security Council resolution 1373 which ban ned the jihadi militias in Pakistan and took action against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Local politics earlier aligned to the pro-Taliban policy has been severely disrupted as a result.23 The reaction of the Pakistani people and intellectuals against the United States for what ensued in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, has given fresh legitimacy to the militias dubbed terrorist by the UN resolution. The Pakistan army's policy of 'strategic depth' in Afghanistan against India, Iran, Uzbekistan and the Northern Alliance, deliberately sacrificed the earlier doctrine of the Durand Line that had divided the Pushtun nation in 1893, as a result of which the map of Pakistan was legitimised in 1947. After 2001, as a reaction to

the defeat of the 'strategic depth' policy, the Pushtun vote in Pakistan brought a government of a predominantly Deobandi consensus in the NWFP. It is the vote of a nation that wants to be reunited at the cost of the integrity of Pakistan. The public opinion in Pakistan is close to the thinking of this consensus as demonstrated by the 'million marches' in favour of the clergy.

References

1. Bobby S. Sayyid, A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism, (Zed Books London, 1995). The book discusses the problem from the Muslim point of view but with the tools of Western scholarship. 2. Daily Times Lahore (11 September 2003) quoted Ernest Gellner from his book Postmodernism, Reason and Religion: 'High Islam stresses the severely monotheistic and nomocratic nature of Islam, it is mindful of the prohibition of claims to mediation between God and man, and it is generally oriented towards puritanism and scripturalism. Low Islam, or Folk Islam, is different. If it knows literacy, it does so mainly in the use of writing for magical purposes, rather than as a tool of scholarship. It stresses magic more than learning, ecstasy more than ruleobservance. Rustics, you might say, encounter writing mainly in the form of amulets, manipulative magic and false land deeds. Far from avoiding mediation, this form of Islam is centred on it: its most characteristic institution is the saint cult, where the saint is more often than not a living rather than a dead personage (and where sanctity is transmitted from father to son).' Gellner was an outstanding theorist of modernity and a rare breed among late twentieth century scholars. He made major contributions in very diverse fields, notably philosophy and social anthropology. He is known for his path-breaking analyses of ethnicity and nationalism (Thought and Change, 1964; Nations and Nationalism, 1983), among other works. 3. Dr Rashid Ahmad Jullundheri, Journal Al Ma'aref Quarterly, (January-March 1998) Idara Saqafat Islamia Lahore. The issue contains a long survey of the Deoband seminary's birth and activities under British Raj. 4. K.K. Aziz, Religion, Land and Politics in Pakistan: A Study of Piri-Muridi; (Vanguard Books Lahore, 2002): Historian Khursheed Kamal Aziz has taken in hand an interesting but difficult theme from Pakistan's history: the relationship between ownership of land and the custodianship of grassroots spirituality as a power base for national politics. He was surprised to find that not much research work had been done on the subject. The most significant angle he provides to the understanding of the Brelvi dominance in Pakistan on the eve of 1947 is in his narrative of the participation of the Chishti order of sufi saints in the politics of a land that was dominated by Suhrawardi saints and Deobandi ulema. It was the Chishti success that brought in the Brelvi in fluence from Central India and converted what became known as Pakistan into a Low Church territory. This also makes known the Chishti support to the Pakistan Movement as opposed to the Deobandi ulema who opposed it. 5. Daily Jang, Lahore (14 June 2003), wrote that the founder of the Banuri Mosque complex, which is the centre of the powerful Deobandi movement in Pakistan, was Maulana Yusuf Banuri (1908-1977) who was born in Basti Mahabatabad near Peshawar, son of Maulana Syed Muhammad Zakariya who was in turn the son of a khalifa of Mujaddid Alf-e-Sani. He was educated in Peshawar and Kabul before being sent to Deoband where he was the pupil of Shabbir Ahmad Usmani. He returned to join the seminary of Dabheel. In 1920 he passed the Maulvi Fazil exam from Punjab University. In 1928, he went to attend the Islamic con ference in Cairo. He migrated to Pakistan in 1951 and started teaching at Tando Allahyar. He founded the Jamia Arabiya Islamiya in Karachi in 1953 while he led the attack against Pakistani Islamic scholar Dr Fazlur Rehman. He was involved in the aggressive movement of Khatm-i-Nabuwwat from 1973 onwards and was made member of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) by General Zia on coming to power. 6. Dr Javid Iqbal, Islam and Pakistan's Identity, (Vanguard Books Lahore, 2003). The Mughal rule in India and the rise of the puritan wahabi Islam in the Mughal twilight is discussed in the book as

a process of constant adjustment to reality; so is the 'enigmatic' and fantasy-ridden Khilafat Movement. But the highlight of the discussion is the consideration by the author of the role of Shah Waliullah who continues to inspire both the fundamentalists and the liberals in Pakistan. The followers of Deoband who link up with the Ahle Hadith or wahabis and subliminally apostatise the Shiites revere him because he was in the tough Naqshbandi tradition. The liberals love him because he translated the Quran into Persian. The author links Iqbal's 'liberal' interpretation in his Lectures of the Islamic hudood to Shibli's reading of Shah Waliullah. 7. This came up at a seminar in Islamabad. The in formation was given to the writer by a retired general of the Pakistan army. 8. There were secular beneficiaries too. A number of Sindhi families profited from the hospitality they offered to the Arabs who would spend an average of $1.5 million on each visit. The Mahr family of chief minister of Sindh in 2003 is said to be one such beneficiary. 9. Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, The Conference of the Books: The Search for Beauty in Islam, (University Press of America, 2003). The author traces intolerance to the anti-intellectual and antibook nature of the salafist and wahabi Islam. He describes his argument with an Egyptian salafist priest who, when finding it difficult to answer some of the questions Khaled put to him, condemned him as a philosopher and a follower of traditions apart from the Quran and Sun na. Khaled's main objection to the prevalent salafist trend is its total rejection of classical Islamic thinkers of the fiqh. 10. Daily Khabrain Lahore (22 March 2003) published a brief biographical note on late Allama Ehsan Elahi Zaheer of Jamiat Ahle Hadith who was killed by a bomb on 23 March 1987 in Lahore near Qila Lachchman Singh. Along with him four other Ahle Hadith scholars had also died. He had published a number of virulently sectarian monographs in Arabic and was known to receive direct financial assistance from Saudi Arabia. Allama Zaheer was a great orator and an equally great author who was born in Sialkot in 1940 in the home of the Sethi branch of the Sheikh community. His father did not send him to school but got him trained on Quran and then sent him for more religious education to Jamiya Islamiya in Gujranwala. In 1963, after qualifying, he was sent by the seminary to its headquarters in Madina University from he acquired the highest degree. Back home in 1967 he passed many exams: MA in English, MA in political science, MA in Persian, MA in Urdu and Law. He was made leader of prayers at the wahabi mosque Chinianwali. As a speaker he was in the mould of Ataullah Shah Bukhari and took part in agitations against Bhutto. He wrote hard-hitting books on Shiism, Ismailism and other sects, in Arabic, and wrote equally hard-hitting books in Urdu. After he was blown up by a bomb he was taken to a local hospital from where he was taken to Saudi Arabia on orders of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia who sent his personal plane for him. He died in Madina in 1987, his funeral prayer was headed by the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia Sheikh Bin Baz, after which he was buried next to Imam Malik's grave. 11. Muhammad Amir Rana, Jihad Kashmir wa Afghanistan: Jihadi Tanzimun aur Mazhabi Jamaton ka aik Jaeza, (Mashal Books Lahore, 2002). The book is the only authentic and factual account of the jihadi militias based on their in-house publications, and has been translated into English in India, which has put its young author at risk from the militias and the intelligence agencies in Pakistan. 12. John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, (Pluto Press London, 1998). As noted by Cooley, during the 1980s, Osama's Karachi con nections included the Banuri mosque, later recognised as one of the JUI-Taliban strongholds in Pakistan. It is here that he met another veteran of the Afghan war, Mullah Muhammad Umar. In 1994, Mullah Umar was to emerge as the ruler of three-fourths of Afghanistan as leader of the Taliban. In 1996, Osama returned to Afghanistan from Sudan with his wives and children. In 1998, he was interviewed in Afghanistan by an American TV news network. From a mountain hideout in Jalalabad, Osama threatened to kill 'terrorist' Americans and praised the 1993 bombing of the Trade Center in New York and the 1993-94 debacle of the American troops in Somalia, 'implying' his complicity in the two incidents. 13. The writer succeeded in arranging for a meeting with him through a third party but Umar Sheikh had to leave Lahore urgently for an unknown place on the appointed day.

14. Muhammad Amir Rana, Jihad Kashmir wa Afghanistan: Jihadi Tanzimun aur Mazhabi Jamaton ka aik Jaeza, (Mashal Books Lahore, 2002). 15. Maryam Zahab researches the Shiite faith in Pakistan and lives in Paris. The Arab name is probably a pen-name. She met the writer in 1999 after her latest series of interviews with Azam Tariq in Jhang. 16. Muhammad Amir Rana, Jihad Kashmir wa Afghanistan (Mashal Books, Lahore, 2002) 17. The Economist (September 13-19, 2003) in its survey Islam and the West: 'A movement in Britain, al-Muhajirun, pumps out jihadi propaganda and has said on its website that it wants to become “a fifth column” to prepare ‘the world-wide Islamic revolution.’ 18. Akbar S. Ahmed, Islam under Siege: Living Dangerously in post-Honour World (Polity Press, 2003): 'In Britain, Sheikh Umar Bakri's Khilafah, the journal of Hizb al-Tahrir, attacked Jin nah as a kafir, an insult for a Muslim. Moreover it accused Jin nah of being an enemy of God and the holy Prophet because Jin nah supported women, Christians and Hindus and advocated democracy. Why I asked myself did they pick on Jin nah? Because I concluded Bakri saw him as a major ideological opponent. Significantly after the American strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998, Bakri emerged in the media to claim that he represented bin Laden in Europe' (p113). Later, when Akbar started visiting Christian and Jewish gatherings to present the Islamic view he was attacked by Hizb al-Tahrir in the press. 'I was walking perilously close to the fatwa territory', he writes. 19. Barnett R. Rubin, The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: from a Buffer State to Failed State, (Yale University Press, 1995). The book discusses the formation of the 'interim government' in Peshawar and its inability to allow representation to the eight-party Shia alliance based in Iran. The interim government was sought to be set up in 1989 as the last of the Soviet troops vacated Afghanistan. Circles close to director general ISI Gen. Hamid Gul said that the Shia were ousted from the government at the behest of the CIA because of Washington's opposition to Iran. Rubin's version says that while the mujahideen groups con ferred in Peshawar, Soviet foreign minister Shevardnadze arrived in Islamabad with the proposal that some lower-echelon non-controversial elements of the PDPA be included in the government. The proposal was rejected. The Iranian shura was kept out because Saudi Arabia was against it. Saudi intelligence spent $25 million per week during the discussions in Peshawar, and each delegate was paid $25,000 to keep the Shias out. The seven parties in Peshawar appointed all the 519 members of the assembly who were mostly Pukhtun from eastern Afghanistan. Director ISI Hamid Gul promised the presidency to Mujaddidi to keep him from walking out. 'Sayyaf became prime minister in deference to the Saudis who had promised to fund the Islamic army if their wahabi sect was adequately represented'. Hekmatyar could not be accommodated as defence minister because of the ensuing squabbling in the shura. According to Rubin, this manipulation by Saudi and Pakistani bureaucrats fan ned nationalist passions among the commanders who became increasingly autonomous after this incident. 20. For an idea of the kind of orator Jhangvi was, one has to listen to a cassette of his speeches distributed by Sipah Sahaba in Lahore in 1993. Jhangvi got his audience to chant Khomeini 'kutta' (dog) and sought to prove from orthodox religious tracts that the Shia were not Muslims. 21. K.M. Ahmed in daily Dawn (21 December, 2002): 'In April 1988, armed rioters from outside entered the Gilgit environs. Eleven villages around town were torched, their wooden structures burnt to ashes and valuable goods looted. Around 40 persons were killed. The civil administration did its best with the limited police force in Gilgit (which at least managed to save the town) and when it sought the help under aid to civil power provisions of the law (as the raiders started to move to the outlying villages), this help was denied on various pretexts. It was clear to the Gilgit civil administration that the raiders, who were tribals and mujahedin elements, could not have reached this remote place from Peshawar without someone's blessing. The Frontier Constabulary, whose checkposts dot the Swat-Besham road and the Besham-Gilgit highway, did not act to intercept the raiders. (The writer is former Commissioner, Gilgit Agency.) See also: F.M. Khan, The story of Gilgit, Baltistan and Chitral: A Short History of Two Milleniums (Ejaz Literary Agents). 'General Zia was a Satan under whom the devil from Hazara, Qasim Shah, got Pakhtun-Sun ni lashkars to invade the region in 1988 with General Ayaz Mehmud, a relative of

General Zia, looking on approvingly.' (p134). The religious map of the Northern Areas given by the author is as follows: Gilgit is 60% Shia, 40% Sun ni: Hunza 100% Ismaili; Nagar 100% Shia; Punial 100% Ismaili; Yasin 100% Ismaili; Ishkoman 100% Ismaili; Gupis 100% Ismaili; Chilas 100% Sun ni; Darel/Tangir 100% Sun ni; Astor 90% Sun ni, 10% Shia; Baltistan 96% Shia; 2% Nurbakhti; 2% Sun ni. 22. GEO TV (12 September, 2003) had host Hamid Mir interviewing the imam of the Hazara Imam Bargah at Quetta where the Shiite community was blown up by suicide bombers. The imam said the attack was carried out by Sipah Sahaba, Jaish-i-Muhammad and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and this in formation had been given to the administration in Quetta. Qazi Hussain Ahmad was present at his side when he stated this. He added that Qazi Hussain Ahmad was a member of the MMA and should take measures against people in the MMA who were also involved. Qazi Hussain Ahmad instead said that it was the responsibility of the government to end terrorism. IG police Balochistan said that the mastermind of the Hazara killings in Quetta was related to Ramzi Yusuf now in prison in the United States after being caught in Pakistan in 1995. He said that the mastermind of the killings was a brother-in-law of Ramzi and thus the killings could be related to Al Qaeda. When asked if RAW was involved he said he was looking for proof after coming to know that the killers keep coming and going to Afghanistan where the Indians had consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad and Herat. A Shia website had earlier carried scan ned posters by Deobandi scholars, including MMA's Maulana Samiul Haq, declaring the Shia non-believers. These posters had appeared in Quetta days before the massacre of the Hazaras. 23. Geo TV (12 September 2003) Hamid Mir investigated the well known mystery of the perfumed soil of Kohat after Al Qaeda mujahideen were gun ned down there. The champion of the mujahideen cause was ex-MNA Javed Ibrahim Paracha who narrated the incident. After 9/11, Bulgarian and Chechnyan mujahideen fled from Afghanistan and came down to the Tribal Areas from where they came to Kohat where already 27 Arab mujahideen were in jail. They were the offspring of the Sahaba (Companions of the Prophet PBUH) and were Ahle Bait (from the family of the Prophet PUBUH). They were met by an ISI officer (hassaas idaray ka afsar) who assured them safe passage to Ban nu, but when they approached the town they saw troops. Upon this, they shot the ISI officer. After that the Flying Coach was subjected to a barrage of bullets and all of them were killed. The last beautiful youth who died said that he was going to paradise. The entire surroundings smelled sweet with the perfume of the blood of the martyrs. The people of Kohat were moved by the perfume of the blood and gathered around the dead bodies. They picked them up and took them to the CMH, plan ning to bury them in Kohat after medical care. But the administration took the dead bodies to Peshawar. A jirga was held which decided to bury the mujahideen in Kohat. When the graves were dug the soil started smelling sweet. After which Javed Ibrahim Paracha went to Peshawar to demand the dead bodies. Paracha was arrested and taken to face the FBI where he said he did not know Osama but he thought him a soldier of God. He said he had named his own son Osama bin Laden. He then organised the construction of Shuhada-i-Islam Chowk in Kohat. People had taken the perfumed soil soaked with the blood of the Al Qaeda soldiers and were keeping it in their homes. Javed Ibrahim Paracha belongs to the strong Punjabi Paracha clan of Kohat who are Hindko-speaking traders. He was a member of JUI but had a tiff with Maulana Fazlur Rehman. In 1997 he fought election on a PML(N) ticket and was returned as MNA. He has led a strong sectarian reaction to around ten families of the Shia community in Kohat and protested at their taking out tazia during Muharram. His sectarian outreach extends to Hangu and Tal where he has been responsible for sectarian violence. The Parachas of Kohat are known for their financial support to Al Qaeda. Javed Ibrahim Paracha fought the 2002 election for PML(N) but was supported by Sipah Sahaba. He lost the election.

(Khaled Ahmed is Consulting Editor of The Friday Times)

authenticity and legitimacy of the ruling elite in almost all the Muslim countries, though several other post-colonial polities also faced similar schisms.

Evaluating Political Islam Dr. Iftikhar H. Malik

slam has been historically a political force, which, unlike every other religion, created its own polity under the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) instead of waiting to be adopted by some state or kingdom. Since that classical period, there has been a steady idealism as well as an enduring activism to recreate that ultimate Mohammadan utopia across the Muslim world combining secular and the sacred for a better life here and thereafter. Over the successive centuries, through a continued salience of Islamic laws without obliterating the plural and other mundane prerequisites, Muslim monarchs and caliphs, such as in Spain, Ottoman Turkey and Mughal India, usually portrayed themselves as the defenders of faith without marginalising their non-Muslim citizens. These powerful empires largely consisted of Muslim-minority regions and resisted efforts to Islamicise their non-Muslim majorities, who, in several cases were better off than their Muslim counterparts. Metropolitan centres such as Constantinople, Toledo, Lahore, Delhi and Baghdad, amazingly, remained Muslim minority cities until very recently only when refugee in flux, demarcation of national boundaries, ethnic cleansing and such other events radically changed their demography.１ The growing intellectual stagnation, made more explicit by a colonising West largely perceived and experienced as a revived Christendom, awakened many Muslims to their own dismay. Recourse to puritanical Islam, a synthesis with the West-led modernity, or even dilly-dallying with the colonial masters mainly characterised the three respective Muslim responses to this colonial encounter. The emergence of sovereign Muslim states in the last century reignited the erstwhile tussle between the revivalists and the modernists which-given the external interference, discretionary policies and pervasive underdevelopment-has now entered a crucial stage. Reading into this fissure merely as a clash of civilisations is fallacious though the fact remains that all over Africa, Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans, Islam has continuously enthused its followers to con front colonisation or other hegemonic onslaughts. The emergence of the Ikhwanal Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood), Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Hind, Jama'at-i-Islami and several other religio-Islamic parties and the subsequent evolution of Muslim countries with a pronounced Islamic identity such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and others amidst decolonisation reflected an ever-growing duality in the emerging Muslim world. Soon it turned into an intense ideological polarity between the revivalists espousing a 'back-toroots' approach contrasted with the nationalists who offered modernist strategies. A growing quest for identity, extensive politico-economic disempowerment and a continued dependence upon the Western largesse largely weakened the ruling elite, who were increasingly seen as the lackeys of the foreign and 'alien' powers. Amidst harrowing poverty and unchecked corruption, the revivalists assertively disputed the

The ruling elite-irrespective of dynast monarchs, military dictators or pseudodemocrats-presently con front the reinvigorated groups of bearded and turbaned activists, commanding the angry, unemployed youthful millions of have-nots. Their version of Islam offers a simplistic mixture of utopianism anchored on a glorious past and an ascendant abhorrence of alien hegemonies, which largely means `the immoral West'. The West is an insensitive enemy per se because it props the enemy from within the corrupt regimes--besides it symbolises exploitation and immorality.２ Thus, the case for a pervasive anti-Americanism! The continued humiliation and anger on issues such as The Satanic Verses, Bosnia, Kashmir, Palestine, Chechnya, the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq crisis and a con frontation with the oppressive regimes propped up by their outside backers have intensified the recourse to Islam. Ballot and bullet are the two strategies to obtain centrestage for these Islamicists. In between lie the moderate voices from amongst in fantile Muslim civil societies, marginalised both by the pro-west despots and totalitarian obscurantists. Thus, political Islam is not simply a con frontation between Islam and the West; it is an intra-Muslim engagement.

he contemporary spectre of this political activism as spearheaded by the turbaned groups-following the early two phases of the colonial and post-independence phases-is characterised by a greater self-assertion and an all-out strategy to acquire power, no matter through bullet or ballot. The Khomeinites, Hizbollah, Hamas, Jamiats, the Taliban and the various constellations such as Jama'at-i-Islami or Gema'a Islam espousing a more scripturalist and anti-hegemonic version of a 'trans-territorial, classless and non-racial Islam', embody a gradual and ascendant salience of Islam in Muslim political affairs. This kind of political Islam promises the return of the lost glory; stipulates holistic answers to socio-economic stratification; and is mostly subscribed by a huge underclass of the underprivileged whose un fulfilled mundane needs and desires converge with a yearning for a collective come-back. Thus Islam is the healer, panacea and also a retort to an arrogant West and its surrogates across the Muslim world. This form of political Islam, based on simplicity, shared brotherhood, a devotion to austere lifestyles is imbued with a Caliphal vision of trans-territorial ummah. It combines scripturalist and syncretic visions of the literalists and sufis. It is vehemently anti-colonial, anti-elitist and displays an impressive mix of class and creed, never seen before in human history. It does not enjoy a single consensual platform or a central leadership hierarchy though its proponents across the lands share an impressive aura of commonalties and convergence in ideals and trajectories. Thus, without being trans-regional, it is trans-territorial as it promises a Muslim globalism among the brothers-in-faith. To its proponents,３ it is a redeemer; to its detractors it is self-immolation; and to the superficial observers it is the new enemy or sheer terrorism.４ Undoubtedly, it is a masculanisation of Muslim identity to retrieve a lost turf from other masculanised opponents. Averse to Huntingtonian reductionist view of seeing in it merely a clash of cultures, political Islam is mainly arrayed against its own ruling hierarchies, though it deeply resents their external backers. Hypothetically, if

one removes the fulcrum of ideology from this activism, it is simply a class con flict. Jama'at-i-Islami, since its inception in Lahore in 1941 to its bifurcation in 1947 accompanying the partition, and its subsequent political career in Pakistan, India, Kashmir and Afghanistan, offers an interesting and revealing perspective on this leading Islamist party that likes to be called a movement--tehreek. The centrality of Syed Abul ala Maudoodi, the founder of the Jama'at, his views on the West, nationalism, twonation theory, the concept of ummah, Jama'at's relationship with the Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and its own affinities with movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, is a vast arena of diverse activities.５ While Maudoodi's own views regarding the West reflected a serious unease with its 'immoral' cultural artifacts, his suspicion of westernised Muslim leaders remained undiminished. He questioned their credentials to liberate and then lead the emerging Muslim states, which according to the pre-eminent South Asian Islamist, owed to their lack of immersion in the pristine Islamic ethos. Like many other Muslim observers of the West, Maudoodi failed to see anything positive and constructive in the Western heritage, which is ironic. Contrasted with the apologists, whose eulogy for the West remains un-critiqued, Maudoodi, more like Syed Qutb and present-day Muhajiroon, was a persistent rejectionist. Similarly, Maudoodi's own discomfort with the idea of nationalism was reflected in his early criticism of demand for Pakistan, though the Jama'at and the other religio-political organisations in British India failed to offer a tangible succour to Muslim minoritarian apprehensions. The idea of a separate Muslim state leaving several millions back in a Hindu-dominated India was as much an uncertain path as the creation of a distinct Muslim majoritarian state. Deriding modernity and its major components such as nationalism, democracy, inter-gender equity and, of course, western education created serious anxieties among the small-town emerging Muslim bourgeoisie, compared to a more cosmopolitan Muslim elite such as Jin nah, Iqbal or Suhrawardy. Such fears held by the Islamists understandably represented the global Muslim alienation especially since colonisation, when a smaller yet technologically powerful West overran the vast Afro-Asian Muslim regions so conveniently!

owever, once Pakistan had come into being, the Jama'at busied itself towards its total Islamisation in a scripturalist mode. Given the secular tenacity of the state and a pervasive Sufi view of Islam amongst the populace at large, the Jama'at could not make any major popular inroads in Pakistan, though it still remained a powerful factor. However, its demand for Shariah, greater links with the Muslim world and specific views on women, language and economy offered a rather interesting phase in its 'nationalisation', quite in contrast to its counterparts in India and the Indian Kashmir. The Jama'at in Pakistan has remained a vanguard movement while in India, Jamiat-iUlema-i-Hind, Jama'at-i-Islami and the Muslim League all assumed a low-key profile by emphasizing the cultural and local well being of the Muslim minorities. They have been sensitive to the accusations from the various Indian trajectories of being the ‘fifth column’ for Pakistan. The Jama'at's collaboration with the military junta under General Yahya Khan and then General Zia in Pakistan, despite its erstwhile opposition to Ayub Khan's martial law,

signalled a major shift in its policies. A pronounced role in Afghanistan during the 1980s strengthened its funds and activities though within Pakistan, the Jama'at still lacked a populist electoral bank. To many observers, such dilly-dallying with the power(s) only compromised the Jama'at and its long-time tradition of resistance to statist authority. Maudoodi's death in 1979 left a major intellectual vacuum because the subsequent leaders such as Mian Tufail and Hafiz Hussein Ahmad have been more of activist mould. .The Islamic Foundation in Leicester, largely funded by Rabita and Jama'at's own moneyed sections, remains a Jama'at-specific organisation with a major focus on South Asian Muslim Diaspora. It has been gradually expanding its publications and related activities though jobs, fellowships and all the important positions are reserved only for Jama'at members. In that sense, it is not different from any other Muslim group where group and personal loyalties override every other consideration.

ome recent studies offer interesting insight on the Jama'at-ISI and Jama'at-Saudi interface over regional issues.６These studies usually found Jama'at to be electorally insignificant, though the elections in Pakistan in 2002 reveal a rather different and startling picture. The post 9/11 imprints, growing anti-Americanism across the Muslim world, the Anglo-American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the Muslim ruling elite siding with Washington and London averse to an antagonistic populism, have resuscitated Islamists including the Jama'at. The Jama'at has equally established formidable linkage with other Deobandi and Brelvi organisations that it shun ned earlier on, but all these crucial developments are yet to be researched. The Pakistani Jama'at's attitude towards the Taliban, its ambivalence towards the Iranian revolution, its own unexplained relationship with its counterparts in India, Bangladesh or the Indian-controlled Kashmir are the areas waiting for a fresher perspective. In the elections of 2002 in Pakistan, the religio-political parties captured overwhelming majority in the two border provinces of the North-Western Frontier and Balochistan besides obtaining a sizeable presence in the federal parliament. More than the mainstream politicians, it is these parties which, for a time, con fronted Pakistan's General Musharraf on domestic and foreign policy issues.７ Their ascendance, despite clipped by his arbitrary Legal Framework Order (LFO), is no less astounding to those analysts who, while aware of their street power, simply underrated their electoral potentials. The entire generation of Pakistani political observers, who had essentialised a peripheral performance of these elements, is now interpreting their salience as just one-off. This misperception is no different from that of their Indian counterparts who, in the early 1990s, considered the rise of BJP espousing a uniformist Hinduised India, and the Ayodhya Mosque/Temple issue merely an aberration with polity soon settling back to its Nehruvian secular moorings. One may differ with the dictum of such religiopolitical parties, but to write them off merely as the beneficiaries of anti-Americanism or anti-modernity is fallacious. In the post-Second World War decades of optimism and polarised realism, religion was considered to be less of a unifying force and more of a nuisance in nation building. Nationalism, despite its racist and fascist undertones in Europe, was perceived by scholars such as Eli Kedourie and Hans Kohn to be a liberationist ideology with secular

elite homogenising the emerging post-colonial states. ‘Modernisation,’ not just to these liberals but also to sociologists such as Ernest Gellner, Carl Deutsch and Benedict Anderson, after all, was a mundane project where its Western prototypes could hold truth for all. (Gellner was an exception in a sense, as he saw no clash between Islamic civil society and democracy).８ Jin nah, Nehru, Kenyatta, Fan non, Mao, Gandhi, Soekarno and Nkrumah were all modernists-nationalists in their own ways, though most of this generation were soon to give way-in several cases-to the 'men on the horse-back' being welcomed as the new, post-colonial modernisers. Simultaneously, the embryonic mediatory discourse on Islam and modernity as spearheaded by 'moderate' scholaractivists--including Al-Afghani, Abduh, Syed Ahmed, Muhamamd Iqbal, Maulana Azad, Fazlur Rahman and Allama Shariati--was left asunder. The shining armour, in flated chests full of jingling medals and their associations with the Sandhurst and West Point were sufficient credentials of these generals, adored by Professor Samuel Huntington and the others of his Harvard clan. Instead of activists and intellectuals interfacing across diverse traditions, Muslims were bequeathed to the simplistic and autocratic whims of uniformed harbingers of modernisation and development. The role of feudal intermediaries of the colonial days was now taken over by these khaki bureaucrats, submissive to their patrons yet regressive to their own peoples.

owever by the 1980s and especially after the dissolution of the Cold War, these modernisers were found seriously lacking in proper representative, professional and accountable wherewithal. They were devoid of competence and conviction to run these plural societies and in the process invariably turned out to be unpopular tin-pot dictators, proving liability to their Western backers. Despite their serious shortcomings, the Western powers, for their own partisan interests, had steadily used these generals as surrogates-Ayub, Yahya, Pincohet, Numeiri, Saddam, Zia, Suharto, Barre, Ershad and the list goes on. But the current mantra resounds with the desirability of empowerment of civil society, pre-eminence of democratic universalism and the reconstruction of a non-hegemonic modernity. Thus, the khaki leaders, like their other monarchical counterparts, largely stay exposed of their inherent weaknesses and inadequacies and if they are still in power it is largely due to external backing and internal divisions. In some cases such as General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, they are expeditiously needed to fight the ‘turbaned and bearded hordes,’ no matter at what cost to the democratic prerogatives in that country. While the post-colonial world has reasons to be cynical of being used as guinea pigs for all the run-away ideologies and neo-colonial facades, it is equally bewildered at the pre-eminence of `traditional’ conglomerates. In the case of political Islam, while several scholars are mindful of the impossibility of an Islamic state to the viability of a Muslim state (espousing redefined secular characteristics9), Islamists such as the Ikhawan, Jama'at, Jamiats, Nadwas, the Khomeinities and other Salafiaya groups fervently hope and aspire for a theocracy. This kind of intellectual debate urgently needs to reach some consensus as otherwise, Muslim people while getting out of a simmering pan may simply fall into a raging fire. Replacing one kind of unilateral oppression with another type of dictatorship, however koshered it may be, is totally unacceptable.

These differing intellectual groups need to focus on the areas of agreement as well as divergences but in a tolerant and civic man ner without dishing out rancour and fatwas. While the Muslim states are seriously lacking in many areas their substitutions must offer something tangible and all encompassing, rather than adding on to anarchy and violence. A simplistic view of Muslim past-both for idealisation or for dismissal-is not a healthy way forward. It is a complex world and requires rigorous, well-plan ned strategies but it is equally a rational world seeking logical solutions and not the emotive outbursts.

oncurrently, the relegation of Islam to a mere dogma is both a Muslim and nonMuslim preoccupation where its reformative, mundane and egalitarian portents have been side-tracked by dismissive obscurantists as well as abrasive modernists. Both of them fell into the trap of Orientalists, who saw the East mainly inhabited by emotional and half-cultured mobs, whose Westernisation was a fait accompli and equally a White Man's burden. The leading contemporary proponent of such a premise is Professor Bernard Lewis at Princeton, to whose Eurocentric outlook Islam is still lost in a medieval time gap earnestly awaiting a renaissance. To Lewis, a widely read British academic on Islam in America, Islam's resuscitation has to come from the West; otherwise its centuries-old crisis intermeshed with a severe in feriority complex remains unbridgeable and prone to terrorist outbursts.10 This hypothesis has been greatly energised in the West after 9/11 though scholars such as Edward Said, the late Albert Hourani, Fred Halliday, John Esposito and Karen Armstrong have been wary of it. While one may find several problems with the neo-orientalists like Lewis or Daniel Pipes, Fouad Ajami, Frank Graham, Pat Roberston, An n Coulter and Oriana Fallaci, it is still fair to suggest that political Islam has yet to mature into a workable and just order.11 So far, as forcefully posited by Professor Khalid B. Sayeed, the models of political Islam varying from Saudi Arabia to Ziaist Pakistan, Khomeinite Iran to the Talibanised Afghanistan, severely lack accommodation for pluralism, a universal empowerment, an egalitarian economic order and a dynamic self-con fidence.12 In all the above cases, it has been a familiar story of repression, unilateralism and intolerance. Millions were mobilised in the name of Islam, Sharia and Nizam-i-Mustafwi (Prophet Muhammad's system) soon to abysmally fall victims to the un necessary and unworthy causes whereas the problems kept on compounding. No wonder Muslim masses are not only the victims of violence from the o ‘ utside’; they are also the sufferers from within.13 Just using West and the Rest as an alibi for the entire Muslim predicament may be a convenient strategy for the Muslim autocrats and surrogates, but for how long! The pervasive Muslim disempowerment is mainly owed to their own leaders, and likewise their internal schisms are due to the vicious clericalisation of this otherwise holistic civilisation, which, in its pristine form, had broken loose from such bondage.

hile violence amongst Muslims or directed against their countries and communities may not be that unique, but its intensification in post-September period has definitely increased to a harrowing extent. Just in the United States, 82,000 Muslim immigrants have been registered and finger printed, and 12,000 out of them have been deported so far. The plight of undefined Guantanamo Bay internees is a

great question mark for the champions of human rights amidst a growing accent on neo-orientalism, or its newer manifestation in the form of neo-conservatism. Their external pressures and unilateral policies at the expense of civic rights, only exacerbate intolerance besides strengthening the authoritarian regimes. Consequently, Muslim moderate and democratic forces find themselves sandwiched between a proverbial rock and a hard place. This sad situation is not to undervalue the role of Islam as a mobiliser, aggregator and de-hegemoniser. Muslim literalists and syncretists have been vanguards in the Afro-Asian decolonisation but the tradition of resistance and sacrifice predictably more often falls victim to waywardness and schisms. Thus, like the modernists, if Islamists of today are unable to radically improve the quality of life and fail to enthuse and lead their societies to a better, peaceful and prosperous future, their fate will not be different from the others. They must realise that the contemporary problems are too complex to be resolved through mere emotional rhetoric and plain dismissal. In a plural and highly interdependent world, the way forward is through in novative cooption and coexistence rather than a permanent state of antagonism or introversion. After all, undisputedly this is a world of knowledge, science, universal human rights and sustained democratic institutions. The denial of science, democracy, gender rights, lack of clarity on economic issues and sheer muzzling of ijtihaad (in novation) and tanqid (critique) have to be shun ned for a fresh start. Obscurantism has to give way to forward looking dynamism and the romanticisation of bullet has to give way to ballot where civic forces celebrating the best in humanity rule the roost. Ritualistic and selective implementation of rather coercive measures in the name of an uncritiqued Shariah will only further divide the Muslim world. After all, these societies have already suffered for centuries and do not deserve any more collective punishment even if it is in divine name.

he proponents of political Islam need to trust, protect and celebrate their masses and a radical redirection of energy and resources on the eradication of poverty away from militarisation and violence begs prioritisation. It is only through the people's power and prosperity that political Islam may become a balm instead of a taxing and perplexing ideology. Simultaneously, there is a greater need to understand the pangs and pains of the Muslim world as the mundane realities of an unenviable existence where, instead of militarist and unilateral stratagem, the West needs to win over the hearts and souls. Rather than denigrating these regions and peoples as eternally con flict-prone, the United States, the European Union and other powers need to adopt substantive, egalitarian and non-partisan policies, away from the monolithic paradigm of markets and profit/loss. An unrestrained and honest commitment to democracy, human rights and development need prioritisation over partisan interests such as the extraction of natural resources and arms sales. The West needs to come clean on these issues, if we really desire a peaceful, plural and inter-dependent world. In the meantime, regions such as South Asia need to prioritise peace and regional cooperation over wars, con flicts and mutual denigration. The inter-state co-operation will further inter-communal harmony, helping the civil societies establish transparent and accountable democratic institutions. For South Asia, that is the only way forward and its past, unlike elsewhere, has glorious precedents to bank upon.

References 1. As suggested above, these demographic changes took place mostly during the nineteenth century when modernity, geared up with full force and nationalism, started redefining communities, earlier coexisting in a plural setting. A cosmopolitan city like Constantinople was a Muslim minority city until the 1890s when the uprooted Balkan Muslim refugees started filtering in. See Philip Mansel, Constantinople: A City of World Desire (London, 1993). Even Baghdad was a Muslim minority city with a sizeable number of Jews and Christian holding important positions until the 1940s. 2. The JI and Ikhwan were the earliest proponents of this view, which was put into practice by the Saudis and the Taliban. Both Iran and Pakistan followed a similar official model of Islam which was suspicious of the West and which considered secularism to be a threat. The problemisation of religion and secularism was both genuine and opportunistic. Saudi Arabia, in the recent decades had poured in 72 billion dollars in the various Muslim countries to support puritanical Islamic parties and movement among the Afghan, Pakistani, Central Asian and other Diaspora Muslim groups. Some of the former protegees, including Osama bin Laden or JI as seen in Iraq-Kuwait episode, turned against their patron. See Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, (London, 2003) and Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror, (London, 2003) 3. The proponents are highly politicised and populist. Even in Diaspora groups such as AlMuhajiroon seek redress through an implantation of caliphal Islam. 4. Such a view is not merely con fined to tabloid press, as there are an ever-increasing number of books and articles even in scholarly journals linking Islam with terrorism. For instance, see Patrick J. Buchan nan, Death of the West (New York, 2001) and for his columns see www.townhall.com/columnists/patbuchanan/pb20020327.shtml 5. One may refer to a number of useful studies on the subject though the best source-material can be gleamed from the books of the founder and those of Professor Khurshid Ahmad. However, studies by Syed Vali Reza Nasr and Frederic Grare are equally illuminating. 6. For instance, see Frederic Grare, Political Islam in the Indian Subcontinent: The Jamaat-iIslami (Delhi, 2002). The French author largely supports Olivier Roy's framework on Political Islam. See, Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam (Cambridge, 1994) 7. The military+mullah axis was created under a former military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq which seems to have broken down under General Musharraf though, to some observers, both the conservative and power-seeking forces may reestablish the old alliance much at the expense of forward looking democratic forces. The religio-political forces know that it is only through the marginalisation of mainstream parties that they can acquire a majority. The intelligence agencies also prefer them to the broad-based parties, which may be difficult to manage. By July 2003 it appeared as if both military and mullahs were reestablishing a closer relationship at the expense of country's long-term civic and democratic prerogatives. 8. See Ernest Gellner Muslim Society (Cambridge, 1993) 9. Such scholars are in growing numbers. Ashgar Ali Engineer has done extensive work in this area. For his views see, Mohammad Shehzad, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It's all about pluralism,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Dawn Magazine, (13 July 2003). 10. See Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (London, 2003) 11. For further details see, Angus Roxburgh, Preaching of Hate: The Rise of the Far Right (London, 2002), Naomi Klein, Fences and Windows (London, 2002) and Noam Chomsky, 9/11 (London, 2002) 12. Khalid B. Sayeed, Western Dominance and Political Islam: Challenge and Response (Albany, 1995) 13. Sectarianism not only leads to recurrent violence amongst Muslims; it equally fortifies the case for preemptive strike against Muslim regions. The Taliban manhandling of the Hazara Shias, Saudi marginalisation of Shias, Iranian peripheralisation of their Sun ni minority and Sun ni-Shia feuds in Pakistan largely in the name of a Sun ni state have been causing serious bloodshed. After committing heinous murder of 53 Shias in a mosque on 4 July 2003, the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, an underground militant Sun ni outfit, sent a cassette carrying the messages of the three perpetrators to the BBC. (www.bbc.co.uk/southasia) Not just the majority sects, even the majority

ethnic communities deny equality to fellow ethnic minorities. Though it is true that this malady is not merely con fined to the Muslim world since democracies such as India have been frequently experiencing majoritarian fascism, yet Political Islam as a homogenising project utterly fails, when it comes to pluralism unless Muslims are able to establish their own â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;third way.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

Nepal: Confronting Hindu Identity Krishna Hachhethu The adoption of the Hindu state in the 1990 Constitution of Nepal framed in the background of the movement for the restoration of democracy is, on the one hand, reverence to the uninterrupted history of Nepal's religious identity as a Hindu kingdom; but it is, on the other hand, contested by emerging trends of secularism under the democratic disposition in the post-1990 period. This paper is about state and religion in Nepal. The introduction deals with general observations on religious affairs, section two concentrates on the process of national integration through Hinduisation in the post-unification period and the last section examines emerging trends for the secularisation of the state.

Introduction

ince the pre-historic period, Nepal has always been known as a Hindu state, despite the unanswered question about which of the two religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, came to Nepal first. Nepal's recorded history is an account of rulers, not of people, but no evidence has yet been found that the King and the majority population followed different religions, as was the case of Kashmir and Hyderabad before their accession to India. Such a general belief is, however, contradicted by the Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NEFEN)'s controversial stand, asserting the ethnic groups (originally non-Hindus) as the only original inhabitants of Nepali territory and labelling the Hindu caste groups as non-indigenous and new comers to Nepal. Nonetheless, there is no record of tussle between the King and the people on the question of religion. There are only a few exceptional cases in history, of religious intolerance in Nepal, unlike several instances of communal violence between Hindu Tamils and Buddhist Sinhalis in Sri Lanka and between Hindus and Muslims in India. Besides, in Nepal there has never been any con flict between the King's temporal authority and the Brahmin's spiritual authority unlike the clash between monarchy and church in European countries in the medieval period.

(Dr. Iftikhar H. Malik, is an Oxford based academic with several books and papers on South Asia, Muslim politics and the Western world. Affiliated with Wolfson College, Dr. Malik teaches at Bath Spa University College, Bath, England)

It is important to understand why there has been an absence of religious tension of any kind in Nepal. On the liberal understanding and practice of religion in Nepal, a leading anthropologist argues that 'The Nepali word for religion is dharma, which also means duty, ethics, morality, rule, merit and pious acts. Therefore, when Nepalis discuss religion they understand it with a broader meaning than is usually applied in the Westâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (Bista, 1991: 27). So, what does Hinduism mean in Nepal? Many native and foreign scholars believe that it is signs and symbols rather than concepts, ideas and fundamentals' (Sharma, 1989; Regmi, 1989; Sharma, 2002, 2003; Michaels, 1997; Gellner, 2001). In fact, religion in Nepal is primarily thought of in terms of ritual practices. Ritual practices are different from one locality to the other and from one group to the other,

within and among the Nepali Hindus. The lack of a single uniform religious code, unlike in Catholic Christianity and Islam, is mainly due to the legacy of the amalgamation of traditionally non-Hindu groups into the Hindu fold, although they have retained their own cultural identity and traditional practices. Prithivi Narayan Shah, the unifier of modern Nepal attributes to Nepal the features of ‘a garden of four varnas and thirty-six Jats.’ The provision of the old Civil Code 1854 permitting customary practices of different Jats, can be referred to here in this regard, even though the period of the Shah and Rana regimes, from 1768 to 1950, was the time of aggressive Hinduisation. The path of cultural assimilation was not that of the Holocaust but somehow a blending of melting pot and salad-bowl models. This argument is, however, seriously contested mainly by native scholars belonging to various ethnic groups. They label it a ‘predatory Hindu state’ while referring to the state's designed project of national integration through Hinduisation (Gurung, 1998; Bhattachan, 1995, 2000; Lawati, 2002).

he modern state of Nepal has also contributed to promoting religion as ritual rather than as doctrine. Since Nepal started the modernisation and democratisation processes from 1951, dharmasastra has no longer remained the main source of laws or of the Constitution. Religion has also not yet been used for political mobilisation in competitive party politics in the post-1990 period. The following of the Hindu religion in Nepal, mainly as ritual rather than doctrine, has its own significance in preventing tension with the people of other religions in the country. The religion of the majority group-Hindus constitute 80.6 percent according to the 2001 census-has not been threatened seriously. Other religions are so small in size that out of 75 districts of the country, non-Hindus are in the position of majority or as the largest population group in only 5 districts (Kirats in two and Buddhist in 3 districts). Buddhism, religion of the second largest group constituting 10.3 percent along with Hinduism is considered a home-grown religion unlike Islam and Christianity. Moreover, Hindus would like to include Buddhists in their enlarged fraternity, though it is contested by the emerging trend of seeking a separate identity from the dominant religion. Gautam Buddha is one of the national icons of Nepal. Buddhism being the second religion of the country has received continuous patronage throughout the history of the Hindu kingdom, reflected in the construction of Buddhist monasteries and chaityas mostly in the ancient and medieval period. The coexistence of Hinduism and Buddhism in Nepal is further evident that people of both religions are devoted to the same gods/goddesses and celebrate some festivals commonly. As Gellner has observed, the 'actual practice of religion in Nepal very rarely falls neatly into boxes labeled Hinduism and Buddhism' (Gellner, 2000).

broad, Nepal is also known as a Buddhist country mainly because Kapilbastu, Lumbini southwest of Nepal is the birthplace of Gautam Buddha. This image has also been rein forced and associated with identities of places and people for tourists/foreigners' attraction and concentration. For instance, Nepal is known as a country of the Himalayas and Mount Everest and the people inhabiting the zone profess Lamaistic Buddhism. Half of the Newars original inhabitants and dominant population of the Kathmandu valley, capital of the country are Buddhist. Besides, the

state's concerted efforts to project Nepal's identity associated with Buddhism and commercialisation of the holy place of Lumbini, have complemented the objectives of its policy of diversification of foreign relations: the promotion of tourism and foreign aid from Buddhist countries, Japan in particular.

Integration Through Hinduisation

fter the unification of the country in 1768, the unifier King Prithivi Narayan Shah called Nepal ‘asali Hindustan’ (pure land of Hindus) which indicated the state's roadmap of national integration under the Shah regime (1768-1846). The Hindu polity, in which monarchy and religion have decisive roles was further enacted more rigidly during the Rana period (1846-1951). The Rana prime ministers were also monarchs by title (Shree Tin Maharaj) and by the authority they enjoyed (Hachhethu, 2003). Jung Bahadur Rana, founder of the Rana regime, promulgated a Civil Code in 1854 providing the legal framework to Vedic prescriptions of the social order in an hierarchical society. In fact, the Hinduisation process in Nepal followed the structure of casteism. The caste system previously regulated by hukum of the King and bachan of the priests was standardised into state law by the Rana rulers. The Civil Code 1854 classified the people in three broad categories in a descending order: (a) Tagadhari (sacred-thread wearing castes) at the top (b) Matwali (alcohol drinking castes and ethnic groups) in the middle, and (c) 1. Sudra (impure but touchable) and 2. Acchut (impure and untouchable castes) at the lowest position. Putting ethnic groups into the fold of a Hindu-based hierarchical caste system, suggested a model of excessive Hinduisation. In the post-Rana period, the Hinduisation process continued, albeit in a lesser degree and in a reformed way. The decade of the 1950s, with the first experiment with democracy, allowed some relaxation, but the reinstatement of absolute monarchy under a partyless panchayat system (1960-90) was tantamount to the revival of Hinduisation. The integration through Hinduisation during the panchayat period was somehow different from orthodoxy in the past under the Rana regime. The new Civil Code of 1963, in contrast to the old one, formally withdrew state's support to caste system. Though in a reformed way, the panchayat regime continued the state's policy of promoting Hinduism in various forms. For instance, national symbols set by the panchayat are associated with monarchy and Hinduism (Gurung 1997: 505).

he centrality of Hindusim in three different phases of modern history of Nepal (1768-1846 under the Shah's absolute regime, 1846-1951 under the Rana oligarchy and 1960-1990 under the Shah's authoritarian panchayat regime, is well reflected in the following observation: 'Prithvi Narayan Shah, and those after him, based the country's unification on four key ideas: the unquestioning power and authority of the Hindu King of Gorkha; the supremacy of the Hindu ethos in national life; and social integration through Hindu social system based on caste divisions; and recognition of Nepali as the language of government, administration and in more recent time, education' (Sharma, 1992: 7). The promotion of Hindu nationalism by P.N. Shah and his successors, including the Rana rulers, was taken into consideration by two major factors/interests: legitimacy and nationalism vis-à-vis India. The Hindu polity places the King as a sovereign lord, a

protector of territory and subjects, a guardian of moral order, an upholder of traditions, and the source of all spiritual and temporal power (Sharma, 1997: 475). The ruler's adherence to Hindu religion is well reflected in late King Birendra's perception of the source of legitimacy of monarchy. He said, 'In Nepal, the monarchy and its subjects have been governed by Dharma, a system drawn from the Hindu religion. The King can not change this value system' (quoted in Shaha, 1975: 7).

hose rulers of the post-unification period who had greater legitimacy problem, from P. N. Shah to the present King Gyanendra, were more active about Hinduisation. P.N. Shah, the King of Gorkha principality who unified Nepal by conquest, introduced the Shah regime based on the right of sword. The authority acquired through the sword was not sufficient to establish legitimacy among the people of vanquished lands. So his project of making Nepal an asli Hindustan was guided by his interest to gain legitimacy in newly conquered lands. The need for the establishment of a new legitimacy also explains the reason behind the initiation for active and rigid Hinduisation by J. B. Rana, the founder of the hereditary Rana oligarchy in which the prime minister's position was that of a de facto ruler while the King's status was de jure. He also introduced the Rana regime by sword and his quest for religious legitimacy is well reflected in what he said: ‘In this age of Kali this is the only country where Hindu rule’ (quoted in Sharma, 2002: 25). The revival of Hinduisation by King Mahendra is another example of invoking traditional legitimacy by a ruler who does not have popular legitimacy. By a royal coup in December 1960, he ended the multiparty system and introduced a partyless panchyat system. The Panchayat Constitution of 1962, unlike the previous Constitutions of 1951 and 1959, attributed Nepal as a Hindu state. The present King Gyanenda, brother of late King Birendra, succeeded to the throne in the background of the 1st June 2001 royal massacre in which King Birendra along with his all family members and five other royals were killed. Gyanendra's succession is in a horizontal continuation that is un natural and against tradition, if not illegal, suggesting his legitimacy problem. He is trying his best to project the kingship as the core of Hindu institutions and also cultivating leverages of a Hindu monarchy for obvious reasons. In sum, the promotion of Hindu nationalism is closely linked with the legitimacy of Nepali rulers.

nother factor propelling Hindu nationalism is the need to give Nepal a distinct identity, apart from India. The projection of Nepal as the only Hindu state in the world is a two-pronged strategy: to put itself at a distance from the Indian state and, at the same time, to associate with the Hindu population of India for the interest of the Hindu King. By adopting an isolationist policy until the mid-20th century, both the Shah and Rana rulers projected Nepal's distinct identity as Hindu state. India's image changed despite the fact that it is a secular state as defined in its Constitution following its partition on religious lines and with the creation of Pakistan for Muslims. Thus, the declaration of Nepal as a Hindu state by the 1962 and 1990 Constitutions can be considered a continuity of Nepal's policy of projecting its distinct image different from secular India.

The interest behind promoting Hindu nationalism and the expansion of sources of legitimacy overlap in projecting Nepal's Hindu identity. Nepal's Hindu monarchs have tried their best to use their leverage among the Hindus of India to counter the possible alliance between secular forces of India and Nepal against their interests (Dangol, 1999). Nehru's reaction to King Mahendra's coup in December 1960 as ‘a setback to democracy’ is a point to mention here about the apprehension of the King and his use of Nepali identity as a Hindu state and Hindu monarch trying to minimise the threat against his regime and interest. King Gyanendra's visits to India twice within a year in 2002 and his visits to a number of religious places in India, demonstrate the continuity of Nepal's Hindu King's strategy to cultivate the Hindus of the world, those of India in particular ,in times of crisis. The 7th World Hindu Con ference, held in Gorakhpur (India) in February 2003, passed a resolution to protect the Hindu state and monarchy in Nepal.

Threat to Hindu Identity

he 1990 Constitution of Nepal upholds a number of features of Hindu-based Nepali nationalism including the official title of Nepal as a Hindu state. The constitutional provision for the separation of politics from ethnicity and religion, the prohibition of cow slaughter, ban on proselytising, restriction to fundamental rights 'which may jeopardise communal harmony', etc., are for safeguarding the tradition of Hindu supremacy. But democratic Nepal, unlike in the past under dictatorial regimes, has its own limitations to espouse one particular religion since it has adopted the principle of equality, liberalism, pluralism and non-discrimination as core values of the new political disposition. Discontent with some signs and symbols associated with the Hindu state and Hindu monarchy i.e., national symbols, national anthem (phrased in a way equating patriotism with worship of the King), the use of Sanskrit language in education and media etc., have now turned into agendas of oppositional politics and minority movements. The religious identity of Nepal as a Hindu state is under attack from different corners. The constitutional position of the Nepali state and nation seems contradictory. It proclaims Nepal as a Hindu state that is closely associated with monarchy, ‘an adherent of Aryan culture and a follower of Hindu religion,’ whereas the nation constitutes the people irrespective of religion, race, caste or tribe. The separation of state as Hindu kingdom and nation as the people attempted to be bridged by a provision that 'His Majesty is the symbol of Nepali nationality and the unity of the Nepali people'. Can a Hindu monarch be a true symbol of national unity for the people of other religions? Is the proclamation of a Hindu state in which other religions are naturally relegated to secondary status in con formity with the universal principle of equality and nondiscrimination? The recognition of Nepal as multi-ethnic and multi-lingual, but the refusal to identify it as a multi-religious state, exposes the ambiguity and contradiction of the Constitution, and paves the way for the struggle against the identification of the modern state of Nepal with one particular religion. The demand for a secular state is obviously the main agenda of minority religious groups. Unlike the history of the Hindu-Buddhist coexistence, now Buddhists have built an in formal alliance with other minority religious groups in exerting pressure for

secularism. But religious activism as an independent and separate movement is not much strong in Nepal and voices for a secular state have come up more vigorously ! !

! !

Kamal P. Malla (ed.) Nepal: Perspectives on Continuity and Change, (Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies, Kathmandu, 1989), pp. 139-168. Priyag Raj Sharma ‘How to Tend this Garden.’ (Himal, 1992.) 5:3, pp. 7-9. Priyag Raj Sharma. ‘Nation Building, Muti-Ethnicity, and the Hindu State,’ in David N. Gellner, Jon na Pfaff-Czarnecka and John Whelpton, (eds.) Nationalism and Ethnicity in a Hindu Kingdom: The Politics of Culture in Contemporary Nepal (Harwood academic publishers, Amsterdam, 1997) pp.471-494. Sudhindra Sharma, ‘The Hindu State and the State of Hinduism,’ in Kanak Mani Dixit and Shastri Ramachandaran (eds.), State of Nepal (Himal Books, Kathmandu,2002), pp.22-38. Sudhindra Sharma. ‘Dharmashastric View of Hindu Kingship: Implications for Discourse on Democracy and Constitutional Monarchy.’ Paper Presented to a Conference on ‘The Agenda of Transformation: Inclusion in Nepali Democracy’, Organised by Social Science Baha (Kathmandu, 24-26 April 2003 ). The Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal, 1990.

(Dr. Krishna Hachhethu is Reader of Political Science, Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS), Tribhuvan University. His publications include: Party Building in Nepal: Organization, Leadership and People. 2002. Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point)

Sinhala Buddhist Nationalism Selvy Thiruchandran

his paper has three important factors of contemporary interest, both for political and cultural theorists. The debates arising out of them are endless. This paper necessarily deals with the way and man ner in which religion, ethnicity and the state interact in Sri Lanka with consequences which have affected the country as a whole. The concept of State is invested with certain significations which are hard to dispense with in any discussion of the state of any country. There are two perspectives which need to be articulated. The first approach puts forward a series of ideological and political factors - such as the pressure exercised by the economically dominant classes upon the state and society and how the ideological affinities build the strength of the state for action by class collaboration. The second view holds that with or without the ideological congruence, the state ensures the accumulation and reproduction of capital. The state, it would appear, in this perspective is constrained by and subordinated to external pressures. While the former view implicitly argues for the coercive function of the state, the latter does not. The latter takes away all the autonomy of the state, which is perceived to be all powerful and coercive. We take the view that while enjoying a certain relative autonomy - because of its power - and while being coercive by the nature of possessing the military, navy and police forces, it serves the interests of the dominant classes. There is a partnership of ideological affinities between those who control the state and its powers, and those who own and control the means of major economic production and activities. In democratic societies, the consent is achieved not by coercion alone as is evident by the instances of political violence during election times - but also by the consent given through the ballot boxes. Similarly, ethnicity is a broad concept; implicit in its usage are a number of factors, which are used to distinguish and differentiate people of one group from another. Significant among them are race, language, religion and sometimes the colour of the skin. Ethnicity does not remain passive or dormant as a social marker. It assumes a political force, politicising itself into sometimes passive social movements and sometimes into violent political movements. Theories are replete as to how the transformation takes place. Ethnicity is purposely used to mobilise groups into political entities with claims of exclusivity (Donald Harowitz, 1985; Joan na Pffaf-Czarnecka, 1999: 43; P. Brass, 1991). The question of identity in terms of language, religion or culture looms large in the way ethnicity is actualised. The state's involvement by design in the process of the transformation of political ethnicisation is a major factor, which has caused havoc in many countries (Nepal, Sri

Lanka and India). The interesting phenomenon that needs to be underlined here is the state's collaboration not with the dominant classes (economical) but how this collaboration is transformed into one with dominant ethnic groups (socio-political factors). Sri Lanka is a typical example of this ethnic collaboration. However, this is not to totally ignore the economic argument. The minority communities' resentment arises out of a series of oppressive experiences, both socially and economically, where the state has legislated them out of employment or deprived them of economical activities. Often the argument is that the cake is not large enough to divide economically among the various groups- whether ethnic or any other, which brings about the understanding of the phenomenon of identity formation and political mobilisation. This is contested on the ground of a thesis of economic reductionism, which takes away the issue of social marginalisation that the groups suffer.

here is an abundance of literature on the history of the ethnic con flict and the responsibility of the Sri Lankan state and its governance patterns (Obeyesekere 1975; Thambiah 1986; Roberts 1993; Silva 1994; Gunawardene 1984). In terms of how the Sri Lankan government handled the ethnic con flict, there is much to be desired. But proportionately its policy towards the man ner in which it handled the religious question of the people is much less discriminatory. However, the fact that religion is tied to ethnicity among the Sri Lankans, has its implications for an overall lack of an ideology of pluralisation. The manifestation of this implication is very well captured in the phrase: Sinhala Buddhist Nationalism. The rise of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism too, has been documented by various scholars (Gombich, Richard and Obeyesekere 1988; Nissan 1989; Obeyesekere 1975, Jayawardena 2003: 101-118) This phraseology has an in-built sense of exclusivity in a multi-ethnic society, especially when the state is the chief protagonist in the promulgation and an adherent of the ideology through legislation. The principle of democratic secularism has been eroded. The Sri Lankan state made Buddhism the state religion and introduced clauses in the Constitution which provided, amongst others, the clause that Buddhism should be protected by the state, thereby giving a privileged position to Buddhism, the religion of the majority Sinhalese. As far back as 1939 a future prime minister of independent Ceylon was to make a speech that 'we (the Sinhalese) are one blood and one nation. We are a chosen people' (Jayawardena: 2003:33). The Sinhalese, it is believed, are a chosen people because of the religion they practice, i. e, Buddhism, which according to a myth in a chronicle was specially bestowed by the Buddha. This kind of political rhetoric further contributed to the idea of the tyran ny of the majority to which the state was socially and politically held responsible.

The Legacy of Colonialism

s everywhere else in the colonial empire, the British employed a strategy of divide at empera in Sri Lanka as well. If we go back into pre-colonial history there is evidence of state patronage for religion, culture, literature and art. The temples were governed by the state. The modern concept of secularism, democracy and pluralisation are new to governance systems from the pre-colonial times. The Portuguese, the Dutch and later the British, continued with the ancient practice of

patronage in their governance patterns. When the British introduced representative governance, un fortunately the old ideology prevailed. Representation of communal, ethnic and religious interests, were adhered to in the state machinery.

he legislative council of Ceylon in 1860 had three Europeans, one Sinhalese, one Tamil and one Burgher - so to say the local Sri Lankans were treated on the principle of in ferior equality while the Europeans enjoyed superior privileges. Apart from the racist superiority that is played upon, the Sri Lankans were seen and treated as an ethnically or communally separate bloc and it was believed that they can not represent each others' interests in governance. This should be seen not merely as a practice, but also as an ideology of ethnic exclusivity - the construction of the other in terms of ethnicity, language and religion. This pattern was continued and adopted for further polarisation, when in 1889, the number of councilors was increased to eight-it extended another division, that of the low country Sinhalese and Kandyan Sinhalese, while the Tamil, Burgher composition continued and the Moor as a new inclusion was instituted. I argue that by not simply subscribing to any conspiracy theory, though there is relative truth in that, we should also look into the historical circumstances that have motivated this ethnic-oriented governance style of the British. There is evidence to show that the British were cautious - the following quote is symptomatic of the trends that were to follow: 'In a community composed of different races who are attached to ancient customs …… it is indispensable that changes in law should not be adopted precipitately' (Colebrook Cameron Report , 1829). Besides, Earl Crewe, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, adopted the view that the Governor should retain the Executive Council in its present as there is ‘the necessity of the maintenance of the principle of racial representation’ (1909; Weinman 1918: xiii).

t would seem that there is a historical continuity. The British, not surprisingly, subscribed to the main argument of orientalism which took the view that the Asiatic communities were static, they resist changes and that they are conservative and similar in structure and ideology. The orientalist discourse gained further currency with the race theory intervening to construct an otherness of the colonial societies (Said 1979). Dynamic and progressive characters are denied to the colonies. The Sri Lankans are divided by ethnicity, 'race' and religion. The modern representative governance, which essentially should be on the principle of political representation, picked up the natives from their ethnic and religious backgrounds. This had serious implications and consequences for the future politics of Sri Lanka. It extended an ideology of ethnic, race and religious exclusivity, created a sense of otherness towards other communities and groups, and created a working political ethics according to which the governors of the Sri Lankan polity could represent only group interests and work for the interests of that particular community from which they hailed; they were, thus, responsible merely for that community.

Religion is usually tied to ethnicity in pre-colonial societies, but conversions by the conquerors have changed this scenario. In Sri Lanka, we have three major ethnic groups but five religions. Traditionally, the Sinhalese were Buddhists, the Tamils were Hindus and the Muslims followed Islam. However, after the arrival of the Portuguese, Dutch and British missionaries, a few of the Tamils and Sinhalese have been converted into Catholicism and Christianity. Mercifully, there are no violent religious con flicts in Sri Lanka, though in nationalist parlance the Sinhala Buddhists is a popular political term. There are indeed Christian-Buddhist con flicts at the level of ideology and we hear of a Christian conspiracy and unethical conversions which are posited and posed as a threat to a pan-Sinhala Buddhist identity. The Sri Lankan state did not intervene so violently against the church as it did against the ethnic minorities except to appoint a Buddhist Commission to enquire into the religious grievances of the Buddhists. The attitude of the state is simply due to the fact that more often, some of the more in fluential members of the ruling elites of the state, happen to be Christians. Sinhala nationalism and Sinhala chauvinism are invariably con nected with Buddhism, though many of the Sinhala nationalists are not necessarily Buddhists. A strange phenomenon though it is, the Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka are not only members of political parties, but are involved in active politics, championing the cause of Sinhala Buddhists and often exert pressure on the state to follow a particular agenda.

thnicity and religion, therefore, are very much implicated in Sri Lanka in the state formation and in the man ner it functions. Though religion has lost its salience in the minority ethnic groups such as the Tamils and Burghers, amongst the Muslims and Sinhalese religion is a major political marker and sometimes a virulent factor. However, even among the other communities, religion plays a major role, but only as a social and cultural determinant. Through revival of various types of rituals and cult formations are familiar sights, they are not politicised but remain dormant at the socio-cultural levels, in fluencing merely the religio-social lives of the people. Language as the marker of ethnic groups is the major divisive factor in Sri Lanka. The refusal by the state to give parity of status to the Tamil language has led to claims being made now by the Tamils that they belong to a distinct society with an ancient and rich language. Tamil nationalism, however, does not include a religious fanaticism in its ideology or practice. It has a semblance of a secularism with no claims to religious exclusivity. However, the Sri Lankan state has been characterised as a failed state due to the discriminatory politics that the state indulged in since 1948, when Sri Lanka got independence from British rule.

The Handling of Ethnic and Religious Formations

ri Lanka is a typical example of how contemporary categories such as religion, tradition and modernism contribute to interlocking processes in state formation first, and then into state structures and functions. Anthropological scholarship interrogates the con nections between religion and knowledge, religion and power, and religion and subjectivity. In an era when we discourse about modernity, nation states, enlightenment and rationality, how does religion intervene, interact and disrupt certain processes of righteousness? It is an interesting exercise to show how, and to what

extent, religion and language are used as markers of ethnic identity in constructing the nation state, law and legislation, in an era of late modernity in Sri Lanka. After it gained independence in 1948, Sri Lanka, till the present era of ethnic con flict, has been in the dual process of the ethnicisation of politics and the politicisation of ethnicity. The state effectively came into being managing and serving not only the common affairs of the elite but also the common affairs of the majority community. In the man ner that the state turned into an instrument of legitimising the tyran ny of the majority, it also turned into a coercive agency. The state in its desire to satisfy the demands and aspirations of the majority community used both coercion-repressive state apparatus such as the military, and the police-and the consent of the peoplethrough the voting system. Hegemonic groups gave their consent. The modern state that came into being in Sri Lanka, which inherited certain legacies of the colonial state, also inherited from other agencies certain other ideologies, such as caste groups, ethnic groups and religious groups, which have claimed exclusivity and have a constructed image of an 'other' with regard to other communities.

hese processes are reflected in a very strange man ner when the subjects who have now become citizens start to play their roles politically. Power came to be vested in the state through a process of ethnic majority collaboration. The majority ethnic and religious community was very smoothly elected into power through the party system. The political parties have ethnic name boards and had policies and plans to carry out a particular agenda. The state was in fact trapped into action. Conversely, the state is also seen as very powerful with powers vested in it. It has the power to pass laws, regulate the lives of the people, form and create public opinion by exercising control over the state media and also to create a willing and consenting citizen. When one single party did not get an absolute majority, coalition governments were formed with other parties who could be ideological partners in the state formation. Does this mean that the state, invested with various powers, has become a necessary evil? Has democracy failed by itself or has it been made to fail? The answers to these questions are again loaded and necessarily signify the constitutional guarantees and safeguards for such pitfalls of functioning democratic structures. The post independent Sri Lankan state has had many reversals in its management of ethnicity and religion. Abandoning the principle of secularism, Buddhism, the religion of the majority Sinhalese, was made the state religion with special clauses in the Constitution for its propagation and protection with special privileges. In a country which is multi-religious with three other major religions, this act has alienated the rest of the people making them second class citizens, feeling a sense of abandonment. If, on the contrary, the state had adopted a policy of administrative indifference to all religions, there would have been no community which would have felt either favoured or neglected. The pre-modern function of the state to protect religion has been ideologically instituted into modern state formation. Another insight that we get from the modern state is the shift of the hegemonic class collaboration to hegemonic ethnic collaboration, which essentially is the majority community.

ur modern history is replete with historical instances of how the Sri Lankan state has handled ethnic and religious con flicts. The first encounter of the Sri Lankan

cultural and political discourse over the centuries has posited a particular detrimental ideology on the consciousness of the majority that Sri Lanka belonged to them - they inherited the land - it is the Dhamma Deepa, the chosen land of the Buddhists, where Theravada Buddhism has to be preserved. History was mythologised and mythologies were historicised. This exclusivist ideology was represented fully in the centralised state. The state came to represent a territorial unity which denied administrative or political decentralisation and achieved a centralised legislature with judicial power vested in it. The notion of a centralised state came to protect Sinhala interests and defined itself in opposition to other interests of ethnic and religious minorities (Uyangoda 1994:95) Significantly, the notion of a centralised state with control over the legislature and judiciary, coupled with the idea of protecting exclusively the interests of the majority ethnic groups, has resulted in very violent and bloody struggles for over two decades in Sri Lanka. This whole process questions, unambiguously, the notion of representative democracy, which essentially functions on numerical strength. In plural societies, majority rule can very easily turn into ethnic or religious majority rule, and not necessarily into political or ideological majority rule. Such shortcomings should necessarily lead one to creatively look towards the principle of regional autonomy, decentralisation and the devolution of power, and the Lijphartian notion of consociationlism (1977:25) Perhaps Sri Lanka should work towards these goals.

References ! ! !

! ! !

! ! ! ! !

! ! ! !

K.M. De Silva, . 'The Reform and Nationalist Movement in the Early Twentieth Century', K.M. DE Silva (ed.) History of Ceylon, Vol.3, University of Ceylon, Colombo, 1973), pp.383-407 1986. Managing Ethnic Tensions in Multi-ethnic Societies: Sri Lanka 1880-1985. Lanham, MD., University Press of America Rohan Edrisinha and Saravanamuttu Pakiasothy 1993. 'The Case for a Federal Sri Lanka', Uyangoda Edrisinha, (ed.), Essays on Constitutional Reform (Centre for Policy Research Analysis and University of Colombo, Colombo, 1993) Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1988) Antonio Gramsci, 'Selections from the Prison Notebooks' (1929-35) R.A.L.H Gunewardane, . 'People of the Lion: Sinhala Consciousness in History and Historiography', Ethnicity and Social Change in Sri Lanka, (Social Scientists' Association, Colombo, 1984) Jayawardena Kumari. Ethnic and Class Conflict in Sri Lanka, The emergence of Sinhala Buddhist consciousness 1883-1983 (2003) V.I. Lenin, 1917 (1969). 'The State and the Revolution' Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. (New Haven:, Yale University Press, 1977) Elizabeth Nissan, 1989. 'History in the Making: Anuradhapura and the Sinhala Buddhist Nation'. Social Analysis 25(1): 64-77 Gananath Obeyesekere, . 'Sinhala Buddhist Identity in Ceylon', in George De Vos and Lola Romanucci-Ross (eds.), Ethnic Identity: Cultural Continuities and Change (Mayfield Publishing, Palo Alto, Ca, 1975) Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, 'Ethnic Futures' The State & Identity Politics in Asia (2001) Michael Roberts, 1994. 'Tambiah or De Silva? Apocalypse or Accommodation? Two Contrasting Views of Sinhala-Tamil Relations in Sri Lanka'. South Asia 12:67-83 Edward Said, Orientation. (New York: Fontana, 1979) S.J. Tambiah, Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fraticide and the Dismantling of Democracy. (Delhi, Oxford

! !

University Press, 1986) Jayadeva Uyangoda, 'The State and the Process of Devolution in Sri Lanka' in Sunil Bastian (ed.) Devolution and Development. (Colombo, International Centre for Ethnic Studies; Delhi, Konark Publishers, 1994) pp.83-120 J.R. Weinman, 'Our Legislature' Interesting & Racy Reminisces of Persons and Incidents connected with the Old Legislation Council (1918.). Nira Wickramasinghe, Ethnic Politics in Colonial Sri Lanka 1927-1947. (New Delhi,: Vikas Publications, 1995)

(Dr. Selvy Thiruchandran, Editor of Nividini, a journal on gender studies published in Colombo, is also working as the executive director of the Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Education and Research Centre)

belief that seems to have been the reason for denying national identity to religious minorities in Pakistan. The educational process in the form of curricula and textbooks rein forces this denial.

Islamisation of Curricula A. H. Nayyar

t is quite reasonable to expect that Pakistan as a nation would do its best to impart a sense of belonging and even-handedness to all of its citizens. While demanding contributions from all, irrespective of caste, creed and faith, to its development and prosperity, it can not afford to deny equal status and rights to all. Otherwise, the deprived ones are likely to develop a sense of alienation from the society. Besides being multi-lingual and multi-ethnic, Pakistan is a multi-religious society. NonMuslims are a sizeable part of the society, many of whom have contributed enormously to its well-being. Names like Dr. Abdul Salam, A. R. Cornelius, Dorab Patel, Sobho Gianchandani, Cecil Choudhry, Bapsi Sidhwa and many others are a source of pride for Pakistan. Muslim majoritarianism has always existed in Pakistan on account of the population being overwhelmingly Muslim. Not surprisingly, therefore, the culture, the idioms and the man ners of the majority gained currency and, in turn, got reflected in the educational process also. Muslim sensibilities got imposed onto the rest. However, the effort to mould the minds of the young through textbooks is a later phenomenon, having started in earnest since the early eighties with the political agenda of Islamisation of the state. Curricula were redesigned and textbooks were rewritten to create a monolithic image of Pakistan as an Islamic state and Pakistani citizens as Muslims only. This clearly tells young non-Muslim students that they are excluded from the national identity. One could take this to be a result of the usual insensitivity of a majority towards the needs and aspirations of a minority, as would happen anywhere. Such a majoritarianism is not con fined to the religious expression alone. It shows up in the national, linguistic and other expressions also. However, since the Muslim majoritarianism was not experienced in the curricula and textbooks in the pre-Islamisation period, it leads to the obvious conclusion that this has been a result of the process of Islamisation under Gen. Zia-ul-Haq. The Muslim majoritarianism in Pakistan amounts to creating an environment for nonMuslims in which (1) they become second-rate citizens with lesser rights and privileges, (2) their patriotism becomes suspect, and (3) their contribution to the society is ignored. The result is that they can easily cease to have any stake in the society. For orthodox Islamists, non-Muslims in an Islamic society that is governed by Islamic laws are dhimmis, liable to be levied protection money, jizyah. Absolved of any military duty, jihad, they are doomed to live in an environment of limited rights. This is the

The program of study that was designed under Islamisation was in keeping with the philosophy of education of one particular school of Islamic thought which asserts that the entire source of knowledge is what was revealed by Allah and that the worldly knowledge has to be in the context of the revealed knowledge. It has been argued by Syed Abul A'la Maudoodi, founder of Jama'at-i-Islami, that in an Islamic society all that is taught would be in the context of the revealed knowledge, therefore, every subject would become Islamiat. A direct outcome of this philosophy of education has been the following basic principle that recurs repeatedly in the Pakistani curriculum documents: In the teaching material, no concept of separation between the worldly and the religious be given; rather all the material be presented from the Islamic point of view.1 Much of the educational material prepared during the Islamisation period was based on this principle, and it continues to guide the educational philosophy and practice even today.2 This paper deals specifically with three educational subjects-Social Studies /Pakistan Studies, Urdu and English, which students of all religions are required to learn. Islamiat is, of course, also compulsory, but for Muslim students alone. Four themes emerge most strongly as constituting the bulk of the curricula and textbooks of the three compulsory subjects. (A) that Pakistan is for Muslims alone; (B) that Islamiat is to be forcibly taught to all the students, whatever their faith, including a compulsory reading of Qur'an; (C) that Ideology of Pakistan is to be internalised as faith, and hate be created against Hindus and India; (D) and students are to be urged to take the path of Jihad and Shahadat (martyrdom).

A. Pakistanis as Muslims Alone

The process of equating the Muslim and Pakistani identities starts in very early school education. For example, the most recent National Early Childhood Education (ECE) curriculum3 released in March 2002 requires as an objective: To nurture in children a sense of Islamic identity and pride in being Pakistani.4 There is no mention that this is to be done among Muslim students alone. The suggested material under this objective is all Islamiat that is to be read by pupils of all religions. Or, the class IV students are required to: Regard Pakistan as an Islamic state, and acquire deep love for it 5 For Class IV and V students, the Urdu curriculum requires that: A feeling be created among students that they are the members of a Muslim nation. Therefore, in accordance with the Islamic tradition, they have to be truthful, honest, patriotic and life-sacrificing mujahids (janbaz mujahid) 6

Must believe that Pakistan came into being to safeguard Islamic beliefs and culture Must know that the real basis for the strength of Pakistan is Islam 7 To educate and train the future generations of Pakistan as a true practicing Muslim 8 [A child] knows that national culture is not the local culture or local customs, but that it means the culture the principles of which are laid down by Islam 9 The textbooks then pick up from this point and express these requirements as given in the following examples: The class II Urdu book has a lesson on 'Our Country', the first sentences of which read: Our country is Pakistan. We live in our country. Pakistan is an Islamic country. Here Muslims live. Muslims believe in the unity of Allah. They do good deeds. ..10 The Class 6 book says: Who am I? I am a Muslim. I am a Pakistani. I love my country and I love my people. … You know that you are a Muslim and your religion is Islam.11 It conveys a very harmful message: being a Pakistani is equated with being a Muslim, and that only Muslims are true Pakistani citizens. Patriotism has been equated with Islamic zeal. The way it has been said clearly alienates religious minorities.

B. Compulsory Islamiat

The educational material attempts to teach Islamiat to all the students, irrespective of their faith, through the compulsory subjects of Social/Pakistan Studies, Urdu and English. Although non-Muslims are not required to take the fourth compulsory subject of Islamiat, there is an extraordinary incentive for them in the form of 25% additional marks for learning and taking examinations in Islamiat. The curricula of all these subjects require every Pakistani, irrespective of his (her) faith, to love, respect, be proud of and practice Islamic principles, traditions, customs, rituals, etc., Both the curricula and textbooks are enlightening in this respect. The National Early Childhood Education Curriculum (NECEC) would like to impart in the primary school children the following 'life skills':12 Use greetings such as Assalam-o-Alaikum Know when to say 'Bismillah' Recite the first Kalma and understand its meaning Name the five daily prayers Learn about Ramadhan and Eidain The primary education curriculum of 1995 lays down the following objectives in the Urdu curriculum: a) To create awareness of and love for Islamic beliefs, and to bring up children according to Islamic values.13 b) Be proud of Islamic way of life, and try to acquire and adopt Islamic teachings 14 c) Should try to adopt principles of Islamic way of living 15 d) To participate in Salat Ba-Jamat in mosques, to develop a feeling of respect for Muezzin and Imam16 e) Read Qur'an, and revere it 17 f) Listen to the events from Islamic history and derive pleasure from them18 ! !

Should try to adopt principles of Islamic way of living Respect for Islamic beliefs and practices

! ! ! ! !

study religious books in order to understand Qur'anic teachings respect Islamic or national customs and urge others to do the same …. To love Islamic traditions In the textbooks, such subjects be included in sufficient numbers that emphasis …, the importance and greatness of Islam Arrange functions/ events on Islamic and national themes, and students be asked to memorise such poems, …, etc., that express national and Islamic sentiments

Urdu language curriculum even prescribes lessons. A small sample follows:19

Class IV

Suggestions on preparing textbooks (3) Topics of books (a) Events from the life of the Holy Prophet(pbuh), His family, and Islamic leaders (Imams) (b) Stories from the history of Islam (c) True friendship (from the life of Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddique) (j) …, Islamic preachers, … (k) Famous women of Islam (l) Golden quotes (sayings of the Muslim thinkers, religious scholars and spiritual leaders)

Class V

(3) (a) (b)

Topics for lessons Events from the life of the Holy Prophet(pbuh), His family and Islamic leaders Stories of Imams and the Prophet's companions (sacrifice: from the life of Hazrat Usman) (m) Stories about the Pakistan movement, eminent personalities of Pakistan, and martyrs of Pakistan (m) Simple stories to urge for Jihad (n) Unity of the Islamic world It is worth noting that the most recent Urdu textbooks in Punjab and the Federal Area have religious (Islamic) contents in the following proportion: Class I 20 4 out of 25 lessons 21 Class II 8 out of 33 lessons Class II 22 22 out of 44 lessons Class III 23 23 out of 51 lessons Class IV 24 10 out of 45 lessons Class V 25 7 out of 34 lessons Class VI 26 14 out of 46 lessons Class VII127 6 out of 53 lessons Class VIII 28 15 out of 46 lessons Class IX-X 29 10 out of 68 lessons Similarly, textbooks on Social Studies, another compulsory subject that starts from Class 3, all have at least 4 chapters on personalities, which are invariably Islamic and other religious personalities. Note the detail below: Class III: Chapters on the prophets Adam, Abraham, Jesus and Mohammad (pbuh) 30 Class III: Chapters on the prophets Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad 31 Class IV: Chapters on Prophet Mohammad (pbuh), Hazrat Abu Bakr, Hazrat Umar, and Hazrat Khadija 32 Class V: Hazrat Fatima (ra), Mohammad bin Qasim, Shah Waliullah33

Thus, all non-Muslim students in the mainstream educational system are forcibly taught Islamic religious studies. In fact, the most recent national curriculum document clearly vows: To make the Qur'anic principles and Islamic practices as an integral part of curricula so that the message of the Holy Qur'an could be disseminated in the process of education as well as training. To educate and train the future generations of Pakistan as a true practicing Muslim who would be able to usher in the 21st century and the next millen nium with courage, con fidence, wisdom and tolerance 34and requires the following as objectives of teaching Urdu language 35 To create love for religion and respect for personalities, the students must: a. have belief in the Unity of God, and know that Allah is the creator of the universe. b. regard Islamic ways as the best of all c. have reverence for all the messengers of God, Prophet Mohammad (pbuh), His family members, His companions, the Imams and the leaders, and must try to know their teachings and adopt their ways d. maintain affinity (love) with the Islamic world e. respect the leaders, books, places of worship of other religions f. be aware of the blessings of Jihad, and must create yearning for Jihad in his heart. The curriculum thus shows itself to be grossly insensitive to the existence and need of non-Muslims among the students.

Compulsory Reading of Qur'an: The second, and more disturbing part of this is to make the non-Muslim students read Qur'an, not in Islamiat which they are not required to learn, but in the compulsory subject of Urdu. Urdu textbooks from Class I to III, which are compulsory for students of all faiths, contain lessons on learning to read Qur'an. Progressing from Class I where Arabic alphabets are introduced in a lesson titled Iqra, to the lesson entitled 'E'rab' on punctuations in Class II Urdu book, to the lessons in Class III Urdu book entitled 'Qur'an Parhna' (reading Qur'an), which has seven lessons (out of a total of 51) on learning to read Qur'an. The non-Muslim students must learn these lessons and prepare them for examinations also. Interestingly, Urdu curricula of these classes do not prescribe this. This clearly violates the rights of religious minorities. The National Curriculum of March 2002 lays down the following as the first objective of teaching English: 2.5.1: 'To make the Qur'anic principles and Islamic practices as an integral part of curricula so that the message of the Holy Qur'an could be disseminated in the process of education as well as training. To educate and train the future generations of Pakistan as a true practicing Muslim ….' 36 The objective ostensibly follows the National Education policy, which describes it as a constitutional requirement. Article 31(2) of the constitution says: The state shall endeavour, as respects the Muslims of Pakistan, :

to make the teaching of the Holy Qur'an and Islamiat compulsory, to encourage facilitate the learning of Arabic language …;

and

Cleary, the learning of Qur'an and Islamiat is compulsory for Muslims only, and making non-Muslims learn them by including them in compulsory subjects violates the rights of minorities assured in Article 36 of the Constitution of Pakistan, which says: The State shall safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of minorities …” If by this exercise, the curriculum designers thought that they were popularising Islam among non-Muslim students, they were sadly mistaken. The only thing they have been able to achieve is to the alienate non-Muslim population, at a grave cost to the national integration.

C. Assertion of the Ideology of Pakistan Many scholars have forcefully argued with the help of historical record that the term Ideology of Pakistan is a construction that was non-existent at the time of the creation of Pakistan. Justice Munir has very clearly identified the first time when the phrase was coined. In his monograph From Jinnah to Zia he writes: The Quaid-i-Azam never used the words 'Ideology of Pakistan' … For fifteen years after the establishment of Pakistan, the Ideology of Pakistan was not known to anybody until in 1962 a solitary member of the Jama'at-i-Islami used the words for the first time when the Political Parties Bill was being discussed. On this, Chaudhry Fazal Elahi rose form his seat and objected that the Ideology of Pakistan' shall have to be defined. The member who had proposed the original amendment replied that the 'Ideology of Pakistan was Islam', … Thus the phrase 'Ideology of Pakistan' had no historical basis in the Pakistan movement. It was coined much later by those political forces which needed it to sanctify their particular brand of politics, especially by those who had earlier been against the creation of Pakistan. It is no wonder that the Jama'at-i-Islami and people akin to the politics of the Jama'at use this phrase extensively. Although it is a historical fact, as Justice Munir has noted, that the Quaid never uttered the words Ideology of Pakistan, yet the curriculum documents insist that the students be taught that the Ideology of Pakistan was enunciated by the Quaid. i) To get acquainted with the Ideology of Pakistan as enunciated by Quaid-e-Azam 37 Further, the same document requires from the textbook writers: The chapter should present the Ideology of Pakistan as enunciated by Quaid-i-Azam and should include relevant documented references. Needless to say that no textbook has ever been able to cite a single reference to Jin nah using the term Ideology of Pakistan. On the contrary, the speech of Mr. Jin nah to the Constituent Assembly on the 11th of September, 1947, is completely contrary to the socalled 'Ideology of Pakistan' as it is presented. It was during the Islamisation era of General Zia-ul-Haq that the use of the term was

consolidated and made to appear in every nook and corner of the educational material. In the present day curriculum documents, it has been sanctified and turned into an article of faith, as shown by the sample of quotations from curriculum documents below:

While writing the textbooks, material contrary to the Ideology of Pakistan which may injure the feelings of different sects, or which may create hatred against any Muslim leading personality may be avoided.56

The Ideology of Pakistan be presented as an accepted reality, and should never be made controversial and debatable.38

The only illegitimate beneficiary of this exercise have been the orthodox Islamic political forces.

Attempt is made to make the curriculum more representative and responsive to the Ideology of Pakistan and societal needs 39… so that the Ideology of Pakistan could permeate the thinking of young generation 40… Demonstrate an appreciation of the Ideology of Pakistan 41

It is to be granted that any political force has a right to define the future of the country as suits its political ideology. In this respect, the religious political ideologues are quite in their right to claim that 'Ideology of Pakistan' should be the basis of all the policies of the country. What, however, is completely unjustified is to present it as a historical truth, distorting history for this purpose. The problem with the Ideology of Pakistan is not just that it is historically untrue. An emphasis on it gives a message to non-Muslim Pakistanis that Pakistan is only for Muslims and that they do not have a place in it.

Care be taken in the composition and editing of the essays that there ought to come out an angle of propagation of Islam and the Ideology of Pakistan. 42 For speeches, writings and discussions, such topics be chosen that represent positive thinking about Islam and Pakistan, and those topics be avoided that negate or denigrate Islamic values and the Ideology of Pakistan. 43 Teachers must thoroughly study the Ideology of Pakistan ..44 Understand Islam and Ideology of Pakistan, and feel them deep in heart 45

Hate Material

Associated with the insistence on the 'Ideology of Pakistan' has been an essential component of hate against India and the Hindus. For the upholders of the Ideology of Pakistan, the existence of Pakistan is defined only in relation to Hindus, and hence the Hindus have to be painted as black as possible.

Enhance a sense of respect for cooperation and preservation of the Ideology of Pakistan...48

That the pathological hate against Hindus is only because of adopting the so-called Ideology of Pakistan is borne out by the fact that the pre-Ideology textbooks of Pakistan did not contain this hatred. Although a lot of animosity towards Hindus should have shown up in the new-born Pakistan because of the bloody riots of the partition, the early textbooks in Pakistan, mostly written after the partition, were free of the pathological hate that we see in textbooks today. A few examples prove this point.

Cognitive objective: Knowledge of the Ideology of Pakistan 49

Essays creating deep love for Islam and Ideology of Pakistan 46 To develop a sense of love for the Ideology of Pakistan 47

To create sentiments for the protection of the Ideology of Pakistan, love for the country...50

Be able to propagate the important values and traditions of Islam … and adopt national values in accordance with the Ideology of Pakistan;51 To create sentiments for love of the country, safeguarding the Ideology of Pakistan, …;52

deepening the awareness of the Ideology of Pakistan;53 enable the students to become responsible, con fident and patriotic towards the Ideology of Pakistan;54 To explain Ideology of Pakistan; meaning and nature of Ideology of Pakistan. To demonstrate the faith in Ideology of Pakistan; 55

The early history books contained chapters on not only the oldest civilisations of Moen jo Daro, Harappa, Taxila, etc., but also the early Hindu mythologies of Ramayana and Mahabharata and extensively covered, often with admiration, the great Hindu kingdoms of the Mauryas and the Guptas. The books indeed showed biases when discussing the more recent history of the politics of independence, but still one found school textbooks with chapters on Mr. M. K. Gandhi, using words of respect for him and admiring him for his qualities. Even in the somewhat biased history of politics of independence, the creation of Pakistan was reasoned on the intransigence of the All India Congress and its leadership towards accommodating the Muslim League rather than on 'Hindu machinations'. Some books also clearly mentioned that the most prominent Islamic religious leaders were all bitterly opposed to the creation of Pakistan.

Such was the enlightened teaching of history for the first twenty five years of Pakistan even though two wars were fought against India in this period. The print and electronic media often indulged in anti-Hindu propaganda, but the educational material

was by and large free of hate against Hindus.

made their life miserable.’

Then came the time of replacing Indo-Pakistan History and Geography with Pakistan Studies, and defining Pakistan as an Islamic state. The history of Pakistan became equivalent to the history of Muslims in the subcontinent. Students were deprived of learning about pre-Islamic history of their region. It started with the Arab conquest of Sindh and swiftly jumped to the Muslim conquerors from Central Asia. Simultaneously, there started a trend in the seventies of stressing upon the so-called Ideology of Pakistan. This involved creating an ideological straitjacket in which history of Pakistan, especially that of the Pakistan movement was to be re-written with an utter disregard for the truth. Pakistan was told to have been obtained to establish a truly Islamic state in accordance with the tenets of Quran and Sun nah. The Ulema who had bitterly opposed the creation of Pakistan were, therefore, turned into heroes of Pakistan movement. The Quaid-i-Azam was turned into a pious practicing Muslim. And hate and denigration was created for Hindus. A few examples of the expression of this hate in some recent curriculum documents and textbooks are given below.

Muslim children of India wear shalwar kameez or shirt and pajama and Hindu children wear Dhoti also.

Curriculum documents ask the following as the specific learning objectives: [The child should be able to] understand the Hindu and Muslim differences and the resultant need for Pakistan;57 Develop understanding of the Hindu Muslim differences and need for Pakistan;58 Hindu-Muslim differences in culture, .. India's evil designs against Pakistan (the three wars with India);59 Identify the events in relation to Hindu-Muslim differences, which laid the foundations for Pakistan;60 The textbooks then respond in the following way to the above curriculum instructions: Hindu has always been an enemy of Islam.61 The religion of the Hindus did not teach them good things -- Hindus did not respect women... 62 Hindus worship in temples which are very narrow and dark places, where they worship idols. Only one person can enter the temple at a time. In our mosques, on the other hand, all Muslims can say their prayers together. 63 'the social evils of the Hindus'64 ‘The Hindus lived in small and dark houses. Child marriage was common in those days. Women were assigned a low position in society. In case the husband of a woman died, she was burnt alive with his dead body. This was called 'sati'. … The killing of shudras was not punished, but the murder of a Brahman was a serious crime. … However, the people of low caste were not allowed to learn this language. The caste system had

Hindus thought that there was no country other than India, nor any people other than the Indians, nor did anyone else possess any knowledge.67 [This sentence, meant to denigrate Hindus, describes the response of the local people to Al Beruni's visit to India. It is obviously a concocted lie because of the fact that Alexander the Greek had come to this land many centuries earlier, that the rule of the Mauryas and the Guptas stretched to the lands from where Al Beruni had come, that the Arabs had conquered Sindh before Al Beruni's visit, that the Arab conquest was also aimed against the Ismailis who had settled in the area around Multan even earlier, and that the Arabic mathematics was deeply in fluenced by the Indian mathematics, etc., etc.] Hindu pundits were jealous of Al Beruni. Since they could not compete against Al Beruni in knowledge, they started calling him a magician.68 [A story 'The Enemy Pilot', about a captured Indian pilot, presumably of Hindu faith] He had only been taught never to have pity on Muslims, to always bother the neighbouring Muslims, to weaken them to the extent that they forget about freedom, and that it was better to finish off the enemy. He remembered that the Hindus tried to please their Devi Kali by slaughtering in nocent people of other faiths at her feet; that they regarded everybody else as untouchables. He knew that his country India had attacked Pakistan in the dead of the night to bleed Pakistani Muslims and to dominate the entire subcontinent.69 The Hindus who have always been opportunists cooperated with the English.70 The Hindus praised the British rule and its blessings in their speeches The Hindus had the upper hand in the Congress and they established good relations with the British. This party tried its best to safeguard the interests of the Hindus. Gradually it became purely a Hindu organisation. Most of the Hindu leaders of the Congress were not prepared to tolerate the presence of the Muslims in the subcontinent. They demanded that the Muslims should either embrace Hinduism or leave the country. The party was so close to the government that it would not let the Government do any work as would be of benefit to the Muslims. The partition of Bengal can be quoted as an example.71 …but Hindus very cun ningly succeeded in making the British believe that the Muslims were solely responsible for the [1857] rebellion.72 In December 1885, an Englishman Mr. Humes … formed a political party named Indian National Congress, the purpose of which was to politically organise Hindus.73 Therefore in order to appease the Hindus and the Congress, the British an nounced

political reforms. Muslims were not eligible to vote. Hindus voter never voted for a Muslim, therefore, â&#x20AC;Ś74 [A shear distortion, and a blatant lie that the Muslims were ineligible to vote] The height of Hindu-Muslim amity was seen during the Khilafat Movement, but as soon as the movement was over, the anti-Muslim feelings among Hindus resurfaced.75 Nehru report exposed the Hindu mentality.76 The Quaid saw through the machinations of the Hindus. 77 Hindus declared the Congress rule as the Hindu rule, and started to unleash terror on Muslims.78 At the behest of the government [during the Congress rule], Hindu 'goondas' started killing Muslims and burning their property.79 The Hindus always desired to crush the Muslims as a nation. Several attempts were made by the Hindus to erase the Muslim culture and civilisation. Hindi-Urdu controversy, shudhi and sanghtan movements are the most glaring examples of the ignoble Hindu mentality.80 The British, with the assistance of the Hindus, adopted a cruel policy of mass exodus against the Muslims to erase them as a nation; The British adopted a policy of large scale massacre (mass extermination) against the Muslims; The Muslim population of the Muslim minority provinces faced atrocities of the Hindu majority; [The Muslims] were not allowed to profess their religion freely; Hindu nationalism was being imposed upon Muslims and their culture; All India Congress turned into a pure Hindu organisation; While the Muslims provided all type of help to those wishing to leave Pakistan, the people of India committed cruelties against the Muslims (refugees). They would attack the buses, trucks, and trains carrying the Muslim refugees and they were murdered and looted.81

knowing what they learn in their schools.

D. Path of Jihad and Shahadat

The themes of Jihad and Shahadat clearly distinguish the pre- and post-1979 educational contents. There was no mention of these in the pre-Islamisation period curricula and textbooks, and the post-1979 curricula and textbooks openly eulogise Jihad and Shahadat and urge students to become mujahids and martyrs. Take the following examples; Learning Outcome: Recognise the importance of Jihad in every sphere of life;84 Learning outcome: Must be aware of the blessings of Jihad;85 Must be aware of the blessings of Jihad, and must create yearning for Jihad in his heart;86 Concept: Jihad; Affective objective: Aspiration for Jihad;87 Love and aspiration for Jihad, Tableegh (Prosyletisation), Jihad, Shahadat (martyrdom), sacrifice, ghazi (the victor in holy wars), shaheed (martyr), â&#x20AC;Ś;88 Simple stories to urge for Jihad;89 Activity 4: To make speeches on Jihad and Shahadat;90 To make speeches on Jihad;91 Evaluation: To judge their spirits while making speeches on Jihad, Muslim History and Culture92 Concepts: Jihad, Amar bil Maroof and Nahi Anil Munkar 93 Importance of Jihad 94 Affective objective: Concepts of Ideology of Pakistan, Muslim Ummah and Jihad;95 Stories: eight lessons; Folk tales (mythical, moral, Islamic, travel and adventure, Jihad);...96

Conclusion

After the 1965 war, India conspired with the Hindus of Bengal and succeeded in spreading hate among the Bengalis about West Pakistan and finally attacked East Pakistan in December 71, thus causing the breakup of East and West Pakistan.83

Among the radical reforms embarked upon by the military government of General Pervez Musharraf since taking over, education seems to have occupied a high priority. The Minister for Education, herself an acknowledged educationist and social worker, initiated an elaborate process of consultations and formulations in educational reforms, culminating in, among other things, a revision of curricula. The exercise of revision and re-writing of textbooks was reportedly spread over at least two years. However, as far as the problems discussed in this paper are concerned, things have remained absolutely unchanged, as is clear from the material cited above from the most recent curriculum documents and textbooks.

One can no more be surprised to find irrational hate among Pakistani children after

The process-chain in educational system has several key links. It starts from (1)

After the Cripps Missions, Congress raised the 'Quit India' slogan, which meant the British should leave, handing over the rule to Hindus.82

educational policy and goes to (2) curriculum development to (3) textbooks production to (4) classroom teaching and to (5) examinations. It is not the intention here to elaborate on each step, but only to show how the malaise pointed out above gets accentuated through the steps. Needless to say, teachers occupy a pivotal place in the whole process-chain because it is they who exert the greatest in fluence on the captured young minds during the school hours. It is also some of them who write textbooks and set examination question papers. Some of them also rise through the system to end up in the curriculum development process. Thus ill-educated and badly trained teachers have the potential of sowing the seeds of disaster in the entire educational system. They also fall easy prey to narrow-minded ideology and use their special position to propagate it. A perusal of education policies, including the latest Education Sector Reform of the year 2001, shows that they all look sound documents with noble ideals and ambitious goals, with just a statement or two in some place that the education should con form to the Islamic foundations of the state of Pakistan.

end-of-the-year examinations. Examination question papers over the years have invariably asked questions from the sections that have ideological overtones, forcing teachers and students to pay more attention to such material than any other. Moreover, teachers often tell students to answer such questions with a sufficient zeal to merit higher marks from the examiners. Thus a young mind is forced into articulating divisive ideologies and hate in an accentuated man ner. The Curriculum Wing of the Ministry of Education therefore occupies the central position in the process-chain. The material contrary to the national integration is emanating from there and from the provincial textbooks boards. These institutions require a radical cleaning up, if not complete abolition. A mere change of leadership will not serve the purpose because it has been repeatedly observed that the leaders are completely helpless before the already well-entrenched ideologically motivated officials.

t is at the level of curriculum development that almost all of the problems cited above originate. The curriculum documents not only specify the learning objectives and outcomes, but also specify what the textbook contents ought to be, besides giving guidelines to textbooks authors and teachers. The Curriculum Wing of the Ministry of Education in fact has the additional authority to scrutinise the textbooks after these are written at the provincial textbook boards level and return them if they have deviated from the guidelines. More often than not, this happens for material with ideological overtones than anything that concerns pedagogical issues or accuracy of the material therein. This author once took a few English textbooks to an official of the Curriculum Wing who was supposed to be the subject specialist in English, trying to show him the abundance of grave grammatical errors in the books. To his amazement, he found the 'specialist' absolutely oblivious of the errors in language, and was proud to have sent back some books for rewriting for lack of some prescribed ideological contents. Textbook writers on their part get the message and display the tendency to play safe. In order to secure the monetary benefits associated with authoring books, they often write ideological material in a colour and tone that is more than what is demanded by the curriculum guidelines. The problem gets greatly accentuated at this level. Textbook are authored and printed at the level of provincial textbook boards. A perusal of the list of authors over the years can easily lead to a suspicion of mafias having monopolised the authoring process and of a certain organised effort to keep the task to those who are more ideologically committed.

he classroom teacher can be regarded as very in nocent if he or she just sticks to reproducing the printed material without adding his or her own prejudices or illconceived notions to it. But this does not always happen and the problems pointed out above get further accentuated at this level. As a matter of rule in Pakistan, the classroom teaching is performed with an eye on the

References

1. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V, (1995), p 41. 2. The above statement exists in all the curriculum documents of March 2002. 3. The National Early Childhood Education Curriculum was developed in early 2002 by the Curriculum Wing of the Government of Pakistan following instructions to this effect from the Education Sector Reform Action Plan, Itself released on January 1, 2002. ECE is the new name for what used to be called the Kachi Class I, the very first year of education, equivalent of kindergarten. 4. National Early Childhood Education Curriculum (NECEC), (Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, March 2002) page 4 5. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K V, (National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, 1995) page 48 6. ibid, p 41 7. Urdu Curriculum (first and second language) for classes VI-VIII, (National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad, 1986) p 14 8. National Curriculum English (Compulsory) for Class XI-XII, (March 2002) p 7 9. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V, (1995) p 52

10. Meri Kitab, for Class II, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, October 2001), p 36. 11. English Class 6, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002), p 35 - 37 12. NECEC, pages 6 and 19 13. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V, (1995) pages 21, 27, 36, 42, etc 14. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V, (1995), page 48 15. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V, (1995), p 52 16. National Curriculum, Social Studies for Classes I-V, (Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Education (Curriculum Wing) Islamabad, March 2002), p 8 17. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V, (1995), page 48 18. Curriculum Document, page 48 19. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V, (1995), p 54 - 56 20. Urdu for Class I: Islamabad and the Federal territories,( Federal Ministry of Education, GOP, Islamabad) 21. Urdu for Class II: Islamabad and the Federal territories, (Federal Ministry of Education, GOP, Islamabad) 22. Urdu for Class II,( Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2001) 23. Urdu for Class III, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002). Note that Seven of the 19 lessons teach learning to read Qur'an. Also, the idea of selling books of five subjects in one volume forces students of all religions to buy Qur'ani Qaeda. Also note that Qur'ani Qaeda is not a part of the prescribed curriculum. 24. Urdu for Class IV, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002) 25. Urdu for Class V, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002) 26. Urdu for Class VI, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002) 27. Urdu for Class VII, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002) 28. Urdu for Class VIII, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002) 29. Urdu for Class IX-X, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002) 30. Social Studies Class III for Rawalpindi District, Punjab Textbook Board 31. Social Studies Class III for Karachi, Sindh Textbook Board 32. Social Studies Class IV, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore) 33. Social Studies Class V, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002) 34. National Curriculum English (Compulsory) for Class XI-XII, (March 2002), p 7 35. Urdu Curriculum (first and second language) for classes VI-VIII, (National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad, 1986), p 13 36. National Curriculum English (Compulsory) for Classes XI-XII, (March 2002) 37. Pakistan Studies Curriculum for Classes XI-XII, (National Curriculum Committee, National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Islamabad, 1986), p 3. 38. Urdu Curriculum (First language) for Classes IV and V, (National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad, March 2002), p 3 39. National Curriculum CIVICS for classes IX - X, (Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Education, Curriculum Wing, Islamabad, March 2002), p 4 40. National Curriculum CIVICS for classes XI - XII, (Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Education, Curriculum Wing, Islamabad, March 2002), p 3 41. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V, (1995), p 140 42. Urdu Curriculum (First language) for Classes IV and V, (National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad, March 2002), p 25 43. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V, (1995), p 44 44. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V, (1995), p 44 45. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V, (1995), p 58 46. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V, (1995), p 61 47. National Curriculum CIVICS for classes IX - X, (Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Education, Curriculum Wing, Islamabad, March 2002), p 14 48. National Curriculum, Social Studies for Classes I-V, (Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Education (Curriculum Wing) Islamabad, March 2002), p 43 49. Social Studies Curriculum for Classes VI - VIII, (National Curriculum Committee, National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Islamabad, 1984), p 7 50. Urdu Curriculum (first and second language) for classes VI-VIII, (National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad, 1986), p 41

51. Urdu Curriculum (first and second language) for classes VI-VIII, (National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad, 1986), p 29 52. Urdu Curriculum (Compulsory, optional and Easy course), Classes IX and X, (National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Ministry of Education, Islamabad, 1988), p 4 53. English Curriculum for Classes IX-X, (National Curriculum Committee, Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Education, Islamabad, 1986), p 7 54. National Curriculum English (Compulsory) for Class XI-XII, (March 2002), p 9 55. National Curriculum CIVICS for classes IX - X, (Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Education, Curriculum Wing, Islamabad, March 2002), p 15 56. National Curriculum CIVICS for classes IX - X, (Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Education, Curriculum Wing, Islamabad, March 2002), p 20 57. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Classes K-V, Integrated and Subject Based, (National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad, 1995), p 151 58. National Curriculum, Social Studies for Classes I-V, (Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Education (Curriculum Wing) Islamabad, March 2002), p 35 59. National Curriculum, Social Studies for Classes I-V, (Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Education (Curriculum Wing) Islamabad, March 2002), p 35 60. National Curriculum, Social Studies for Classes I-V, (Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Education (Curriculum Wing) Islamabad, March 2002, p 35 61. Urdu Class V, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002), p 108 62. Muasherati Ulum for Class IV, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, 1995), p 81 63. Muasherati Ulum for Class V, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, 1996), p 109 64. Social Studies Class VI, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002): p 59 65. Social Studies Class VI, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002): p 67 66. Social Studies Class VI, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore), p 79 67. Social Studies Class VIII, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002), p 82 68. Social Studies Class VIII, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002), p 82 69. Urdu Class VI, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002), p 221 70. Social Studies Class VI, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002): p 141 71. Social Studies Class VI, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002): p 143 72. Social Studies Class VIII, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002), p 90 73. Social Studies Class VIII, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002), p 94 74. Social Studies Class VIII, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002), p 94-95 75. Social Studies, Class VIII (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore. March 2002), p 100 76. Social Studies, Class VIII ( Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore. March 2002), p 102 77. Social Studies Class-VII, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, ?, p 51 78. Social Studies, Class VIII ( Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore. March 2002, p 104 79. Social Studies, Class VIII ( Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore. March 2002, p 104-105 80. M. Ikram Rabbani and Monawar Ali Sayyid, An Introduction to Pakistan studies, (The Caravan Book House, Lahore, 1995), p 12 81. Ref 3, p 85 82. Social Studies, Class VIII, Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, March 2002, p 110 83. Social Studies (in Urdu) Class- V, (Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore), p 112 84. National Curriculum, Social Studies for Classes I-V, (Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Education (Curriculum Wing) Islamabad, March 2002), p 34 85. Urdu Curriculum (Compulsory, optional and Easy course), Classes IX and X, (National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Ministry of Education, Islamabad, 1988), p 8 86. Urdu Curriculum (first and second language) for classes VI-VIII, (National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad, 1986), p 13 87. Social Studies Curriculum for Classes VI - VIII, (National Curriculum Committee, National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Islamabad, Year 1984), p 16 88. Social Studies Curriculum for Classes VI - VIII , (National Curriculum Committee, National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Islamabad, Year 1984), p 21 89. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V, (1995), p 56 90. Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V, (1995), p 154 91. National Curriculum, Social Studies for Classes I-V, (Government of Pakistan, Ministry of

Education (Curriculum Wing) Islamabad, March 2002), p 33 92. National Curriculum, Social Studies for Classes I-V, (Government of Pakistan, Ministry of

Communalising the Non-communal (Case study of the Baba Budhan Shrine)

Yoginder Sikand

Introduction

remarkable feature of popular religion in India is the widespread popularity in large parts of the country, of shared religious traditions which bring together people who are otherwise defined as belonging to different religions in common worship and ritual participation. These traditions are, by nature, ambiguous in terms of clearly defined communal categories, defying the logic of neatly separated and demarcated communities defined on the basis of a reified and scripturalist understanding of religious identity. Faced with religious movements for 'reform' and 'orthodoxy', however, such traditions have increasingly come in for attack as powerful organisations seek to redefine their identities. Increasingly, 'fuzzy' identities are sought to be replaced by clearly demarcated boundaries, resulting in these traditions gradually being identified as unambiguously 'Hindu' or 'Muslim' or other, as the case might be. While the origins of this process may be traced to colonial times, in particular to the introduction of the census as a tool to map and categorise religious communities and to the politics of competing communalisms, it has, in the postIndependence period, received added impetus by the intervention of communal organisations seeking to 'purify' these traditions and their followers of what is seen as their tainted association with the religious beliefs and practices of other communities. In the process, many of these traditions have today emerged as arenas of sharp intercommunal contestation. This paper analyses this process of transformation of one such shared religious shrine in contemporary Karnataka, the Baba Budhan Giri dargah, located in the Chikmagalur district of the state. My particular concern is to trace how representations of this shrine and the tradition associated with it have changed over time, so much so that today they are now the epicentre of a raging 'communal' controversy. I argue that this must be seen in the context of the introduction and growing acceptance of the notion of community based on a reified, textual understanding of religion, each community being neatly marked off from other similarly constructed communities. In addition, I seek to show that a complex interplay of economic and political forces is leading to con flicting claims about the specifically 'Hindu' or 'Muslim' identity of the Baba Budhan shrine and the cult centred around it.

Shared Hindu-Muslim Traditions

ne out of eleven people in the state of Karnataka in south India is Muslim, and various Muslim dynasties have ruled this region for centuries. Islam made its advent in the region as early as the tenth century, when Arab traders had set up settlements all along the Malabar and Konkan coasts. It was principally through the

agency of the Sufis that Islam spread in Karnataka. Using local motifs and idioms, the Sufis were able to exercise a powerful appeal, making numerous converts to a form of Islam heavily coloured by local in fluences. In addition, they attracted a large numbers of Hindus as well, owing principally to their charisma and the widespread belief in their powers as intermediaries with God. Consequently, the traditions that developed around the figures of many of these Sufis came to be shared by Hindus and Muslims alike, although this did not rule out differences in the ways in which they were seen and regarded by Hindus and Muslims respectively.

iving together for centuries, many Hindus and Muslims in northern Karnataka came to share, to a considerable extent, a common cultural world. At the level of the political elite, a shared Indo-Persian culture emerged, to which both Hindus and Muslims both made rich contributions. At the local level, although they maintained a strong sense of a separate identity, Hindus and Muslims often worshipped together at the shrines of Sufi saints (dargahs). Many Muslims were but nominal and recent converts to Islam, and as such continued to practice several customs associated with their pre-Islamic past which they shared with their Hindu neighbours, particularly in matters of domestic rituals. One of the most intriguing features of this popular religious tradition is the large number of shared religious figures, mostly of undoubtedly Muslim origin, who are venerated by Hindus and Muslims alike, and on whom both communities today make claims of their own. These figures and the shrines and cults associated with them represent a powerful popular tradition that harks back to an age when notions of monolithic 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' communities were still non-existent, and the boundaries setting apart one community from the other were still fuzzy and unclear. These figures seem to have played a central role in bringing people of various castes, Hindus as well as Muslims, together in common worship in a shared cultural universe, and, as such, also played an important role in the conversion of non-Muslim communities to Islam. Today, these figures still command a widespread popularity in certain parts of the state.

he widespread veneration of Muslim holy figures among Hindus is a phenomenon that is common to almost all parts of India, and so the Karnataka case must not be seen as, in any way, exceptional or unique. Sufi saints, seen as powerful beings capable of performing miracles, are widely propitiated as devtas or gods by Hindus, who see them as part of their vast pantheon of deities. The cults of the Muslim saints are particularly popular among 'low' caste Hindus in rural areas. Historically, and even today in several places, 'untouchables' and other 'low' caste people were denied access to Hindu temples, and the shrines of Muslim saints were often the only places of worship which they could freely enter. Stories are told of how these Muslim figures fraternised with the 'low' castes and won them over with their love and compassion. Till this day, 'low' caste Hindus vastly outnumber Muslims at many dargahs (shrines). For many Hindus, these Muslim figures are incarnations (avatar) of one or the other Hindu god, and hence, they are often called by Hindu names and incorporated as Hindu religious figures into the local set of deities. Thus, for instance, the Qalandar Dada

Hayat, with whom the Baba Budhan dargah is associated, is popular among his Hindu devotees as Dattatreya Avatar, an incarnation of the Hindu deity Dattatreya, himself a combination of Vishnu and Shiva. Muslim followers of these figures would see these figures differently, as 'friends' of God (auliya), powerful beings, capable of interceding with God to have one's desires met. It appears that the Muslim custodians of the shrines of these figures freely welcomed Hindus to worship therein, and some even popularised stories of their association with Hindu deities in order to win local support and even possibly as a means to preach Islam to them in an idiom and language with which they were familiar. Hence, as a result of Hindus and Muslims worshipping at common shrines and venerating common religious figures, local traditions evolved centred on what were undoubtedly Muslim figures, but who, with the passage of time, became transformed into figures with a dual identity, seen in different ways by their Hindu and Muslim followers. While in the past, such shared traditions served to bring Hindus and Muslims together in common worship, as well as facilitating the gradual Islamisation of local non-Muslim communities, today many of them have emerged as centres of inter-communal contestation and con flict. Boundaries between 'Hindus' and 'Muslims', between 'Islam' and 'Hinduism', have been sharply drawn, and shared shrines and their followers are being increasingly defined as unambiguously 'Hindu' or 'Muslim', their ambiguous identity being, as we seek to show, suitably reinterpreted to serve contemporary purposes and agendas.

The Baba Budhan Dargah Controversy:

he Baba Budhan dargah is said to be the oldest Sufi shrine in Karnataka, the hagiographic works describing Baba Budhan, also known as Hazrat 'Abdul 'Aziz Makki, as one of the companions (sahabi) of the Prophet Muhammad. Baba Budhan is said to have fought against the powerful landlords (palegars) of the area and to have crusaded against their oppression of the poor, putting an end to the practice of human sacrifice, whose victims were largely from among the 'low' castes. Owing to the stories of his miraculous powers as well as his having fought for the rights of the downtrodden, he gained a large following in the area. Many people converted to Islam at his hands, it is said, while several others, while remaining Hindus, began venerating him as a powerful spiritual being, an incarnation of their own principal deity, Dattatreya. The historical records tell us that the shrine of Baba Budhan was patronised by both Hindu as well as Muslim kings, both of whom endowed it with large land grants. In edicts issued by the Hindu rulers of Mysore the shrine was referred to as the Sri Dattatreya Swami Baba Budhan Peetha ('The Monastery of the Revered Lord Dattatreya Baba Budhan'), while the Muslim custodians of the shrine were granted the honorific title of jagad guru or 'Teachers of the World'. They were, in addition, the only Muslim religious heads to be exempted from personal appearance in the civil courts of the state. It appears that through the centuries Hindus and Muslims freely worshipped at the shrine of Baba Budhan, each approaching him in their own way, as an incarnation of

Dattatreya for the Hindus or as a 'friend' of Allah for the Muslims. There is, moreover, no record of any con flict over the shrine or about its Muslim custodians. In the mid-

antinomian yogi, defying the rituals and rules of purity and pollution so central to Brahminical Hinduism. He is depicted as consorting with women and drinking wine. A subsidiary shrine associated with the Baba Budhan dargah, the shrine of Biru at Palang Talab, is looked after by a Dalit priest, thus clearly suggesting the non-Brahminic association of the Dattatreya cult in the region. Many 'low' caste followers of Baba Budhan/Dattatreya see him as having bravely fought against the oppression of their ancestors at the hands of the 'upper' caste palegars and Brahmins. In contrast, however, the image of Dattatreya in VHP discourse seeks to place him firmly within the boundaries of Brahminical Hinduism. Thus, for instance, the pujas held by the VHP at the Baba Budhan shrine, in violation of the court's orders, were conducted by Brahmin priests and in Brahminical fashion, which would be equally alien for Muslims as it would for the 'low' castes who have their own ways of worship. In other words, the VHP's efforts to 'liberate' the dargah of Baba Budhan seem directed equally at the Muslims as it is at the 'low' castes, challenging both Muslim as well as Dalit representations of Baba Budhan/Dattatreya.

Conclusion

oday, the little cave-shrine of Baba Budhan atop a thickly forested hill, has become a 'national' issue, prompting some observers to liken it to Ayodhya, suggesting that the controversy about the shrine might soon turn it into a second Babri Masjid, with all the dreadful consequences that might have for Hindu-Muslim relations in Karnataka. As the case of the Baba Budhan dargah controversy suggests, religious liminality or shared religious spaces and traditions do not necessarily promote intercommunal harmony and understanding. Rather, because of their ambiguous character, many shared shrines can emerge as arenas of inter-community contestation and rivalry, as indeed many already have. In the Baba Budhan dargah case a host of factors have combined to undermine and challenge the centuries-old popular tradition associated with it. Clearly, modern government bureaucracies, in this case the Waqf Board and the Muzrai Department, used to dealing with 'Hindus' and 'Muslims' as two neatly demarcated communities, and with 'Islam' and 'Hinduism' as two rigidly separated religions, fail to understand and appreciate traditions and shrines associated with religious liminality or syncretism. Militant communal organisations, in this case the VHP, too, can not recognise fluid religious identities that defy any neat categorisation, for they forcefully challenge their understanding of 'Hindus' and 'Muslims' as two monolithic blocs permanently at war with each other. The Indian state, now increasingly Hindu in character, has, in some cases, assisted groups like the VHP to take over syncretic shrines and convert them into Hindu temples. In addition, the state as well as groups like the VHP have actively sought to promote a Brahminisation of 'low' caste shrines and traditions, absorbing them into the broader Brahminical fold. Consequently, 'low' caste traditions associated with Muslim figures are reinterpreted in purely Brahminical terms that serves to rigidly set 'low' castes and other 'Hindus' against Muslims. In this man ner, many shared religious traditions in contemporary India, as the Baba Budhan case shows, are now being transformed in order to serve contemporary political purposes, shaped largely by the growing challenge of Brahminical Hinduism and moulded by modern, reified understandings of religious and community identity. (Yoginder Sikand is of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern

World in Leiden, Netherlands)

Islamisation of Laws in Pakistan Salman Akram Raja

he debate inside Pakistan regarding the role of religion in the constitutional and legal framework of the state has been based, for the most part, on a broadly shared acceptance that Islam has made definite prescriptions about the conduct of the affairs of the state. While interventions in this debate from a secular standpoint have been vocal, and at times significant in terms of impact1, the secular-intellectual discourse has flown at a tangent to the mainstream. The argument within the framework of 'acceptable controversy'2 has been between Islamists with a conservative or orthodox hue and those who claim3, in the name of ijtehad, that implementation of Islamic law must be based on modern re-interpretation of the traditional sources..4 The Islamist standpoint, in common with most modernists, is based on the thesis that Islam as a religion requires of its adherents the implementation of Islamic law or the shariah through the authority of the state. Within this broad school are those who find in the Quran a direction to the believers to strive for the attainment of political authority as a matter of religious compulsion so as to able to en force the shariah. The clearest articulation of this interpretation was made by Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi in the 1930s.5 Since then, this view has gained widespread acceptance within the Pakistani religio-political discourse and has been espoused by modernists such as Fazlur Rehman6, Dr. Javed Iqbal7 and Ghulam Ahmed Parvez8, the last-named otherwise seen as the arch-nemesis to Maudoodi's rigid support for the classical forms of punishments in Islamic law, putting women in purdah, limited political participation for the religious minorities and his opposition to acquisition by the state of land for the purposes of redistribution. It is perhaps not surprising that the vision of Islam as a movement in constant struggle for political actualisation of the ideal shariah has come to occupy a prestigious place in the set of ideas sponsored by the state, largely since the Zia years (1977-88) as the Ideology of Pakistan.9 In the reading of history made by text books prescribed by the various government textbook boards, the creation of the state of Pakistan is seen as the realisation by the Muslims of India of the divine command to attain political authority.10 Providence itself is seen to have aided in this realisation. The writings of those such as Waheed-ud-Din Khan, originally a leader of Maudoodi's Jamaat-e-Islami who stayed back in India after partition and later challenged the view that Islam imposes on the believers an obligation to struggle for political authority in the form of an Islamic state as part of the universal khilafah, have remained suppressed in the Pakistani political discourse of the last fifty six years. In publicly disagreeing with Maudoodi, Waheed-ud-Din Khan reiterated the classical

understanding of Islam's primary objective as a religion: Moral reform of the individual in accordance with divine guidance.11 This understanding was consistent with the established Muslim tradition of treating political authority as a historical contingency rather than a religious goal. It must, however, be appreciated that even though Waheed-ud-Din Khan and others, before as well as after him,12 have rejected the thesis that Islam craves the assumption of political authority, even this group of thinkers maintains that in the event of a Muslim population finding itself in political authority over a defined territory, such assumption of authority being a purely temporal occurrence, the imposition of the shariah becomes obligatory. While this group denies that Muslim separatism in India was as a matter of religious obligation, the view that the legal framework of the Muslim majority state created in 1947 has to be based on the shariah is accepted.

he consequence of the absence of support for the secular standpoint within the various shades of opinion that make up the Islamic discourse is that secular political ideals have to be based on a synthesis of modern human rights norms, cultural motifs of universal love and disgust with the parochial biases of the mullah and the pundit found in sufi poetry along with the now iconic speech made by the Quaid-eAzam Mohammad Ali Jin nah on 11 August, 1947 to the first Constituent Assembly of the soon-to-be-born state of Pakistan. Mr. Jin nah had said: ‘You are free; free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the state. … We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state. …. Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.” Subjected to official plunder and distortion13 this speech, handed down in officially approved texts, such as Hector Bolitho's biography of the Quaid, came to read: 'You are free; free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed--that has nothing to do with the fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state. Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal …' The question of distortion, of text as well as meaning and intent, remains a recurrent theme in the Islamisation debate among the Pakistani intellectual, religious and political elites.14

framework of Pakistan. At one level is legislation that regulates specific areas of activity, mostly criminal offences and questions of personal status including inheritance. Such legislation can be traced back to the tradition of pre-independence laws such as the Musalman Wakf Validation Act, 1913, the Shariat Application Act, 1937 and the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, 1939. Post-Independence legislation claiming basis in Islam occurred in two waves of legislative activity.

he first wave resulted in the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, 1961, promulgated in liberal times, albeit by a military dictator. The Ordinance of 1961 attempted to reform significant areas of traditional Islamic fiqh16 on questions of marriage, divorce and inheritance. The reform was undertaken through avowed reliance on available interpretations of the traditional texts that offered outcomes more in line with the constitutional principles against gender discrimination and that appeared to address issues of contemporary concern. In a departure from orthodox Islamic law, a second or subsequent marriage was made subject to the existing wife's consent. Divorce was subjected to a process that entailed the involvement of an arbitration committee prior to the issuance of a divorce certificate. This replaced the traditional irrevocable and immediate divorce effected through a triple pronouncement of talaq (divorce). The object was to provide the parties with a cooling off period and to allow greater deliberation and dignity to attend the termination of a marriage. Children of a predeceased son or daughter were allowed an inheritance right in the estate of the grandparents. Traditional Islamic law, of all schools,17 recognises only the children alive at the time of a person's death as heirs while excluding the grandchildren from a predeceased child. The subject matter of the Ordinance of 1961, along with its reformist intent, allow this legislation to be seen in the tradition of the pre-independence AngloMohammedan law that had con fined laws grounded in religious precepts to the regulation of aspects of private life. Such grounding had accompanied attempted reform of classical Islamic law. The Shariat Application Act of 1937 had sought to replace customary practices that were frequently inimical to the interests of women by the formal rules of classical Islamic law as recognised in India. This was an advance in that it meant that the courts could override customary denial of women's inheritance rights by relying on the definite recognition in all schools of classical Islamic law of women's right to inherit from their parents as well as the husband. In the same spirit, the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act of 1939 had provided statutory cover to a woman's right, disputed by some interpretations of the Hanafi school of classical Islamic law, to seek dissolution of marriage in specified circumstances including cruelty of conduct (not necessarily restricted to physical ill-treatment) as well as a general reference to any ground for dissolution recognised by Islamic law. While the Act of 1937 had overridden custom by elevating classical Islamic law, the Act of 1939 had, in turn, subjected classical Islamic law to statutory reform.

Gen. Zia's Islamisation

Family Laws 15

Doctrines that claim origin in the vast body of texts said to contain the injunctions of Islam can be identified at several levels in the present constitutional and legal

he second wave of Islamic legislation, initiated in the late 1970s and the 1980s, sponsored by General Zia-ul-Haq was altogether different in its intent and scope. The intent this time around was to incorporate provisions of traditional Islamic fiqh,

human juristic effort presented as the divinely ordained shariah, into the body of the law beyond the traditional con fines of family law and inheritance. The scope of this legislation ranged from an 'Islamic' overhaul of the Evidence Act, 1872 through the Qanun-e-Shahadat Order, 1984, to the full inclusion of traditional hudood18 laws. These hudood laws not only replaced the existing penal provisions with respect to muder, theft, adultery and rape, turning large areas of offences against the state into privately compoundable wrongs, but also added entirely new categories of offences such as Qazf (false accusation of sexual impropriety), fornication between consenting adults and blasphemy.

erhaps no aspect of the Islamisation of laws has had a larger impact on the lives of ordinary people, women in particular, as the Offence of Zina Ordinance of 1979-one of the five hudood laws promulgated in that year.19 While sex outside marriage, or even the allegation of such contact, has traditionally been, and still is, a grave religious and cultural offence in all parts of Pakistan. The Zina Ordinance declares consensual sex outside marriage a distinct crime punishable by law. It also provides punishment for zina-bil-jabr (rape). The Zina Ordinance provides two different punishments for the same offence depending on the nature of the evidence against the accused. For the hadd punishment of rajm (stoning to death), the offensive act should have been witnessed by four male, Muslim witnesses of good repute. If, however, the offence is proved by any other form of evidence, the Court can award punishment that may include a prison sentence as well as whipping. The latter category of sentences is subsumed under the heading of tazir, the technical term in Islamic Law for punishments that fall in the discretion of the state. The popular perception of the Zina Ordinance, largely based on the image carried in the press, is that a raped woman must produce four male witnesses against the accused for a conviction. The legal position that a conviction leading to a tazir punishment can be maintained on the basis of other evidence, including that of the woman herself, is generally absent in the popular understanding of the Zina Ordinance. This has led to further presumption that a woman who has accused and failed to produce the four male witnesses required by the law must face the charge of slander in terms of the Qazf Ordinance, 1979. Several judgments in the last two decades have served to support this impression of the Zina and Qazf Ordinances. In Safia Bibi's case,20 a blind girl, raped by her employers, was convicted by a lower court for the offence of zina on account of her pregnancy even though the accused were acquitted for lack of evidence. Even though Safia Bibi's conviction was later set aside in appeal by the Federal Shariat Court the psychological impact of the earlier conviction has subsisted. More recently, in 2002, the case of Zafran Bibi made international headlines. In Zafran Bibi's case, the complainant, an illiterate woman who had accused her husband's brother of having assaulted her, was convicted by a lower court, once again on account of having conceived during a period when her husband was serving a prison sentence. No evidence was found against the accused brother-in-law who was, therefore, acquitted. In appeal the Federal Shariat Court set aside Zafran Bibi's conviction and held:21

'Mere pregnancy by itself when there is no other evidence at all, of a married lady, having no access to her husband or even of an unmarried girl is no ground for imposition of hadd punishment, if she come out with the defence that (the pregnancy) was the result of commission of rape with her.'

he statement of law by the Federal Shariat Court notwithstanding, it is clear that Zafran Bibi was not the last woman to be abused by the judicial process in the name of the Zina Ordinance. In a patriarchal society, a woman abused is a woman condemned. The colonial legislators were well aware of this fact. The 1997 Report of the Commission of Inquiry for Women22 set up by the government noted: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;That under the Penal Code of 1860 a woman could not be tried for zina. Zina then was only a crime in the form of adultery â&#x20AC;Ś Complaints of adultery could only be made by the husband of the adulteress. But females could not be punished under the law. The authors of the Penal Code had argued that within the prevalent feudal and patriarchal social structures women were rarely in total control of their lives and actions. Making them liable to willing adultery in such unequal circumstances, when even a false hint of it would spell doom for the women for life, would frequently amount to injustice. Besides the very criminal liability of a woman would have the effect of enlarging the chances of her victimisation since she would then be open to blackmail, to threat of her implication in willing acts of zina. Finally, it was thought that such a provision would lead to the traditional rules and norms being made even more inhibiting for women and raise the level of their social oppression and of familial control over their lives. Thus the writers of Penal Code concluded that they would not throw into a scale already loaded against women the additional weight of penal law. Their apprehensions proved only too true after the Ordinance came in. In the pre-Zina Ordinance period, there were only a handful of reported cases of adultery. As soon as the law was changed to include women within the scope of its punishment, allegations of zina started to run into thousands. This clearly indicates that as long as it was only the male who could be punished for adultery, there was a reluctance to prosecute. The Ordinance became a tool in hands of those who wished to exploit women.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;23 The view expressed by the 1997 Report has been expressed by greater vehemence by the Report of the National Commission on the Status Women, 2003. Declaring the Hudood Ordinances, the Zina Ordinance in particular, to be manifestly unjust, irrational and contrary to the injunctions of Islam, the Commission has called for the immediate repeal of the Ordinances.24

Sword of Amputation

he Offences against Property (En forcement of Hudood) Ordinance, 1979, stipulates the hadd punishment for theft of property placed in enclosed premises or in a container or in the custody of a person. Instances of criminal misappropriation or criminal breach of trust not entailing the physical removal of any property have been left out of the scope of the Ordinance. The shariah punishment stipulated by the Ordinance includes amputation of the right hand for first time offenders and amputation of the left foot for persons committing the offence for a second time. The imposition of the hadd punishment requires the testimony of two Muslim, adult, male

witnesses of good character. The testimony of a non-Muslim may be considered for the purposes of the hadd only if the accused is a non-Muslim. In the event of evidence, as

threats by the religious parties during the course of the year 2000.28 Of all the religious minorities the Qadianis* have been the most affected by legislation purportedly in the cause of Islam. Sections 298-B & 298-C were added to the Pakistan Penal Code by Ordinance XX of 1984 with express intent to 'control' Qadiani activities. Section 298-B prohibits members of the Qadiani community from using words or representations similar to those used by Muslims as regards persons held in respect as founders of the Qadiani creed. Section 298-C bars members of the Qadiani community from referring to their faith as Islam or posing as Muslims or from preaching or propagating their faith. Both sections provide a punishment of up to three years along with fine. These provisions were relied upon by the provincial government to ban the centenary celebrations of the group in 1984. The constitutional challenge to these provisions on the basis of Article 20 of the Constitution that guarantees the fundamental right of all citizens to profess, practice and propagate their religion was turned down by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in Zaheer-ud-din vs. The State.29

Murder and Blood-money

mendments made to the Penal Code by the Criminal Laws (Second Amendment) Ordinance of 1990 and re-enacted by the Criminal Laws (Qisas and Diyat) Act 1997 introduced the possibility of the heirs of the deceased victim entering into a compromise with the convicted murder who could then be acquitted by the court. Under Section 302(a) death sentence can be awarded to a person convicted of qatl-i-amd (deliberate murder) by way of qisas. Qisas is the right to punishment made available to the heirs by God rather than by the state. Under Section 302(b) death sentence or a prison sentence can be awarded by way of tazir to a person convicted of intentional murder. Tazir sentences are not divinely specified and are to be awarded where the quality of evidence required for a qisas punishment is not available or where the victim or the victim's heirs and the offender are related in a specified man ner. As regards the qisas punishment of death awarded under Section 302(a), any adult sane heir30 of the victim may waive his right of qisas in terms of section 309 of the Penal Code. In the event of some of the heirs of the victim not agreeing to waive the right of qisas they are to be paid their share of diyat (blood money). The quantum of diyat is to be fixed by the government from time to time.

here even one of the heirs has waived qisas the death sentence against the convicted murderer is to be substituted with imprisonment that may extend up to 25 years by way of tazir in terms of Section 311 of the Pakistan Penal Code. Even where all the heirs of the victim waive the right of qisas the court may still sentence the offender to imprisonment of either description for a term that may extend to 14 years. Such sentence may be imposed as tazir keeping in view the principle of fasad-filarz (serious disruption in society) in terms of Section 311 of the Pakistan Penal Code. For the purpose of the principle of fasad-fil-arz the court may take into account the past conduct of the offender, including any previous convictions, as well as whether the man ner in which the offence was committed was outrageous to the public conscience and whether the offender is a potential danger to the community. While Section 309 deals with waiver of qisas section 310 deals with the compounding of qisas. Under

Section 310 an heir may compound his right of qisas by accepting money instead. The principles of section 311 as regards the jail sentence that a court may nevertheless impose also apply in the event of a compounding of qisas under Section 310. The general rule, in practice, is that once the heirs have waived or compounded the offence the courts refrain from punishing the offender who then walks free. Where the death sentence has been awarded not as qisas but as tazir under section 302(b) sections 309, 310 and 311 of the PPC are not applicable. A tazir punishment may only be compounded in terms of Section 345(2) of the Criminal Procedure Code. The offence of qatal-e-amd liable to tazir may be compounded only with the permission of the court and with the consent of all of the heirs of the victim. Once such composition of the offence has occurred the court must acquit the offender in terms of Section 345(6). In the event of any one of the heirs of the victim refusing to compound, no composition of the offence may occur and the sentence granted under Section 302(b) will remain en forceable.31

part from the radical change in the nature of the offence of murder the so-called Islamisation of the law has introduced a scheme that has served to make the murder of women a lower category of offence, in terms of likelihood of punishments. The enhanced vulnerability of women is a natural consequence of sections 306 and 307 of the PPC. Under Section 306(b) qatl-i-amd shall not be liable to qisas where an offender has caused the death of his child or grand-child, how-low-so-ever. Section 306(c) states that qisas is again inapplicable where any heir (wali) of the victim is a direct decedent, how-low-so-ever, of the offender. Under Section 307 qisas will not be en forced where any wali voluntarily waives the right of qisas under section 307(b) or compounds under section 310. Under Section 307(c) qisas will also not be imposed where the right of qisas devolves on the offender as a result of the death of the wali of the victim or on a person who has no right of qisas against the offender on account of being a direct descendent of such offender. One or more of the instances quoted in the law regarding the non-applicability of qisas apply to the great majority of murders where the victim is a daughter, sister or wife of the offender. Even where a sentence has been awarded by way of tazir for murders inside the immediate family the offender's chances of walking away free are very high. For instance, in a case where a daughter has been killed by a father (a particularly un fortunate feature of most so-called honour killings), the heirs of the victim are likely to be the offender's own wife and other children. The likelihood of these heirs forgiving the offending father is high, who would then have to be acquitted by the court. Reporting the results of research carried out on the impact of the qisas and diyat law, the 2002 report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan states: 'after the adoption of qisas law the incidence of murder in Pakistan had gone up while the rate of conviction had gone down. This is because the courts were approving compromises without ascertaining whether an offence was compoundable under the law.'32 Research on the gender and class skewed-ness of compromises is yet to be carried out.

Islam and the Constitution

part from legislation with respect to specific offences, marriage, divorce and inheritance, the Constitution has also been Islamised over time. While the bulk of this Islamisation occurred during the Zia era, the Constitution of 1973 had, at its inception, declared Islam to be the state religion.33 Article 227 of the Constitution had declared that parliament would bring all existing laws into con formity with the injunctions of Islam and enact no law repugnant to the Holy Quran and Sun nah. Articles 228 to 230 had set up the Council of Islamic Ideology for the purpose of advising the federal parliament as well as the provincial assemblies as regards the injunctions of Islam on any issue referred to it or even on other matters considered important by the Council for the purpose of enabling the Muslims of Pakistan to order their lives individually and collectively 'in accordance with the principles and concepts of Islam as enunciated in the Holy Quran and Sun nah.'34 The advice of the Council was, however, not made binding. Similarly, as regards Article 227, the superior courts have consistently held that it was not meant to provide any ground for judicial review of legislation: the direction contained in Article 227 is addressed to parliament and it is for parliament itself to determine whether the injunctions of Islam are violated by any particular legislation.35 The first 'Islamic' addition to the original constitutional text was made in 1974 through the Constitution (Second Amendment) Act sponsored by Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's government. The effect of this amendment, whereby the definition of 'non-Muslim in Article 260(3) stood altered, was to declare the Qadiani community non-Muslim. Islamisation of the Constitution during the Zia years resulted in three significant additions to the constitutional structure: ! The Federal Shariat Court and the Shariat Appellate Bench of the Supreme were created through addition of Chapter 3A to the Constitution in 197936 which was then amended in 1980.37 ! Article 2A, making the Objectives Resolution of 1949 a substantive part of the Constitution, was added in 1985.38 ! Article 51(4A) of the Constitution was amended in 1985 so as to bar non-Muslims from voting in elections to the general seats of the National Assembly. After the amendment, non-Muslims could only vote for non-Muslim candidates contesting on reserved seats for the religious minorities.39

Shariat Courts

n 1979, a month before deposed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's execution, General Zia set up shariat benches in each of the High Courts of the country and a Shariat Appellate Bench in the Supreme Court of Pakistan. These benches were vested with specific authority to carry out judicial review of all laws, not including the Constitution itself, on the touchstone of repugnance to the injunctions of Islam. Excluded from the jurisdiction of the shariat benches were Muslim personal law and, for a period of three years, fiscal, banking and insurance laws. These benches were also vested with appellate jurisdiction with respect to cases prosecuted under the then newly enacted Hudood Laws. In 1980, the provincial shariat benches were made replaced, through Presidential Order No. 1 of 1980, with the Federal Shariat Court.40 The judgments of the Federal Shariat Court were made binding on all other courts

including the High Courts.

Rehman's case was appealed against by the government and a status quo order obtained.

owever, the existence of the judgment continued to place all bank related financing in Pakistan under serious threat. For ten years, after the initial hearing, the Shariat Appellate Bench of the Supreme Court felt unable to take up the appeal. During this period all financing arrangements in the country contained force majeure clauses containing reference to the possibility of the riba judgment being finally upheld. In 1999 the Shariat Appellate Bench finally took up the appeal and affirmed that the modern bank interest was covered by the Islamic prohibition against riba.52 A timetable was laid down for the complete overhaul of the financial system, not later than 30 June 2002. While the Government set up several committees and task forces for reinventing the economy prior to the deadline, it was clear that the impossible would not be achieved. In early 2002 the Government urged a reconstituted Shariat Appellate Bench of the Supreme Court to review its earlier judgment. It is significant that prior to the review petition being taken up Maulana Taqi Usmani, an alim member of the bench since 1980 was removed by the President. In June 2002 the Shariat Appellate Bench set aside its own earlier judgment and referred the matter back to the Federal Shariat Court.53 While a reprieve had been achieved by the government, the fundamental fault at the heart of the system remains. The status quo can not continue indefinitely.

Objectives Resolution

he Objectives Resolution passed by the first Constituent Assembly in 1949 has long been described in superior court judgments as the grundnorm of Pakistani constitutionalism. That Resolution passed, in lieu of a Constitution, had declared: 'Whereas sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to Allah Almighty alone and the authority which He has delegated to the State of Pakistan, through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him is a scared trustâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; In the years since 1949 the tussle over the authority to speak in Allah's name has threatened the stability of the constitutional framework time and again. Standing apart from the 'grundnormists' at the other end of the ideological rhetoric are those who see in the Resolution of 1949 a negation of the Quaid-e-Azam's vision expressed in his speech of 11 August 1947 to the Constituency Assembly. That the Objectives Resolution was at all passed is frequently attributed to the political rootless-ness of the cohort of politicians seeking legitimacy through recourse to religious grand-standing. This, of course, is a charge made with greater vehemence with respect to General Zia's Islamisation. It was General Zia who, through an amendment to the Constitution in 1985, lifted the Objectives Resolution from its status of a pre-constitutional document with a long shadow but little juridical impact and made it a substantive part of the Constitution. In The State v. Zia-ur-Rehman55 the Supreme Court of Pakistan had held in 1973 that the Objectives Resolution was not a substantive part of the Constitution and, therefore, could not be relied upon by any court for the purpose of judicial review of legislation. The inclusion of the Objectives Resolution as a substantive part of the Constitution was clearly a response to the judgment in Zia-ur-Rehman's case. General

Zia's emphasis on the Objectives Resolution was, however, not without distortion. One of the paragraphs of the original Resolution reads: Wherein adequate provision shall be made for the minorities to freely profess and practise their religions and develop their cultures.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; In the 1985 incorporation of the Resolution the word 'freely' was left out.

s expected, the addition of the Objectives Resolution to the Constitution opened the floodgates to challenge existing legislation as well as the provisions of the Constitution itself. For several years the entire constitutional framework of the country appeared to be vulnerable to dismantling by a small number of religiously inspired members of the superior judiciary. In Qamar Raza vs. Tahira Begum,56 parts of the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance of 1961 were declared to be of no effect being in violation of the shariah. Matters came to a head when in Sakina Bibi vs. The Government,57 a full-bench of the Lahore High Court struck down Article 45 of the Constitution as being repugnant to the injunctions of Islam. It was the Supreme Court of Pakistan itself, rather than parliament, that acted in 1992 to cut down the impact of the Objectives Resolution. In the case of Hakim Khan vs. The State,58 the Supreme Court held that despite the adoption of the Objectives Resolution as a substantive part of the Constitution no part of the Constitution could be subjected to judicial review on the basis of repugnance or inconsistency with the injunctions of Islam. The following year, in 1993, the Supreme Court further held in the case of Kaneez Fatima vs. Wali Mohammed,59 that the Objectives Resolution could not be employed even for the purpose of striking down ordinary legislation. The combined effect of the judgments in Hakim Khan and Kaneez Fatima is that Article 2A and the Objectives Resolution can not be relied upon by the courts to provide tests of validity either for the Constitution or for ordinary legislation. The courts may, however, rely on the Objectives Resolution and the injunctions of Islam in order to examine the validity of executive action. Further, the courts can import the principles of Islam to cater for situations left untended by express legislation. This amounts to a role for the injunctions of Islam that had been recognised by the courts even prior to the incorporation of the Objectives Resolution into the Constitution.60 The fact that despite the abridgement of the potentially open-ended impact of the Objectives Resolution, the role left for the injunctions of Islam in the interstitial spaces of the legislative framework, can have far-reaching consequences was underscored by the challenge that mounted in Abdul Waheed v. Asma Jahangir61 to the capacity of a woman, of any age and ability, to enter into marriage without the consent of a male guardian. It was argued on behalf of a father whose adult, educated daughter had married against his wishes that the provisions of the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance of 1961 pertaining to the formalities of marriage did not exclude the requirements of the shariah. It was claimed that in fact there was a gap in the Ordinance of 1961 which required recourse to the rules of valid marriage recognised by traditional Islamic law. It was also argued that the view taken by the Maliki and Shafii schools of Islamic law as regards the limited capacity of a woman to enter into marriage was preferable to the

view of the Hanafi school that has traditionally recognised complete capacity in women.

hile the Lahore High Court ultimately decided, by a two-one majority, in favour of a woman's complete capacity the matter was argued over a year and a half and kept the entire country riveted. Many women woke up, for the first time, to the obscurity and the distressing relevance of traditional thought. In the end the ultimate result of the case reflected the impact of the struggle launched by the women's rights organisations across the country with a high degree of visibility in the national and international press. While the appeal against the judgment of the Lahore High Court remains pending before the Supreme Court, marriages similar to the one that was in issue in Abdul Waheed vs. Asma Jahangir are being dealt with in routine by the High Courts in favour of women's capacity to order their personal lives.62 This is an important example of secular rights activism having forced a liberal judicial advance.

Conclusion

he electoral success of the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a political alliance between six conservative religious parties, in the elections of October 2002 has added a new immediate dimension to the political debate. Those who might have thought of the review of the riba judgment as a final turning of the tide against the Islamist world-view had clearly presumed too much. This was, in any case, before September 11 and the polarisation caused since that event. In August 2003 the MMA government in the North West Frontier Province tabled a bill before the provincial assembly that, if enacted, would require the mandatory wearing of the veil by women.63 Given the support for the MMA in the house the bill would have been passed into law but for frantic behind the scenes lobbying by the Musharraf government. With the bill before the NWFP assembly seen as an emblem of obscurantist religious thought in the country, the modernists and the secular groups have responded with vigour. The debate and the power-play goes on.

References

1. See the discussion in fra on the impact on the law of evidence and on the issue of a woman's capacity to enter into marriage without the intervention of a male guardian. 2. See the distinction made by H.L.A Hart, The Concept of Law, (Clarendon, 1994), between the internal and external points of view. The insiders' discourse is based on common presumptions as

regards the normativity of norms that are accepted as valid. The attitude of the insiders' towards these norms is that of critical reflexivity: the norms are taken as guides to behaviour and basis for criticism of others actions. The outsiders simply observe the practices surrounding the norms, and the consequence of these practices, without attempting to step into the insiders' discourse. 'Acceptable controversy' can be taken to be controversy within the insiders' discourse. 3. For the different shades of opinion on the role of Islam in the state see Ishtiaq Ahmed, The Concept of an Islamic State, (Frances Pinter, London, 1987). 4. See Allama Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, (Institute of Islamic Culture, Lahore, 1989) 5. See Maudoodi, Islamic Law and Constitution, (Islamic Publications, Lahore, 1980). 6. See Fazlur Rehman, Islam, (Chicago, 1979) pg 1: 'What constitutes the Community is the conscious acceptance of its status as the primary bearer of the Will of God, the 'Command of God for man' _ the Sharia; this trust being sought to be implemented through its governmental and collective institutions. The Sharia is the constitution of the Muslim Community.' 7. See Dr. Javid Iqbal, Islam and Pakistan's Identity , (Vanguard Books, 2003) pg 13: 'Since the Muslims are expected to be governed under the Shariah in all spiritual and temporal matters, and can only render obedience to the rulers from those among them, they must aspire to establish a state of their own, wherever it is possible to create a viable state.' 8. See Ghulam Ahmed Parvez, Islam: A Challenge to Religion, (Tulu-e-Islam, Lahore, 1996). 9. See Sharif ul Mujahid, Ideology of Pakistan, (Islamic Research Institute Press, Islamabad, 2001). 10. On the teaching of history in Pakistan see K.K. Aziz, The Murder of History, (Vanguard, 1993). 11. See Wahid-ud-din Khan, Taabeer ki Ghalti, (Dar-ut-Tazkeer, Lahore, 2002). 12. See Javed A. Ghamidi, Al-Meezan, (Dar-ul-Ishraq, Lahore, 2002). 13. See â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;In the name of religion?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; by Ardeshir Cowasjee in the daily Dawn, October 5, 2003. 14. See infra on the distortion of the Objectives Resolution of 1949. 15. While the basic sources are the Quran and the collections of ahadith, reports regarding the Prophet's conduct and speech, the large body of juristic works, fiqh, are taken to contain the elucidation of Islamic law based on the two primary sources. 16. Fiqh can be loosely translated as juristic thinking. The terms fiqh and shariah are often used interchangeably, reflecting a collapse between the contingent nature of fiqh and the transcendental quality of the ideal shariah. Also note Shariat is the Urdu version of the Arabic Shariah 17. The main classical schools of Islamic law are the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii and Hanbali among the sun nis and Jafaria among the shias. Most sun ni Muslims in the sub-continent have traditionally subscribed to the Hanafi school. 18. Hudood literally means 'limits' but is used to refer to punishments held to be Divine prescription for certain offences. 19. The four other hudood laws are Offences Against Property (En forcement of Hudood) Ordinance, Offence of Qazf (En forcement of Hadd) Ordinance, Prohibition (En forcement of Hadd) Ordinance and Execution of the Punishment of Whipping Ordinance, all of 1979. 20. PLD 1985 Federal Shariat Court 120. 21. PLD 2002 Federal Shariat Court 1 22. See page 66 of the Report. 23. Ibid page 67. 24. The Report of the Commission was not available at the time of going to press. The Chair of the Commission Justice (r) Majida Rizvi has, however, addressed several seminars, including one at the offices of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan on 5 October, 2003. 25. Asma Jahangir and Hina Jilani, The Hudood Ordinances: A Divine Sanction? (Sang-e-Meel, Lahore, 2003). 26. 1995 PCrLJ 811 27. PLD 1991 FSC 10.

28. Hina Jillani, 'A Craven Retreat', Newsline, (May 2000). * The Qadianis emerged in North India as a religious group within Islam during the last two decades of the 19th century. Orthodox Islamic sects consider Qadiani beliefs contrary to the fundamentals of the Islamic faith. 29. 1993 SCMR 1718. 30. Heirs for the purposes of qisas are the same as the heirs in the estate of the deceased. 31. Muhammad Aslam vs. Shaukat Ali, 1997 SCMR 1307. 32. State of Human Rights in 2002, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Lahore. 33. Article 2. 34. Article 230. 35. Hakim Khan vs. The State, PLD 1992 SC 595. 36. Presidential Order No. 3 of 1979 had created shariat benches in the four provincial High Courts rather than a centralised court. 37. Presidential Order No. 1 of 1980 substituted the present Chapter 3A whereby the Federal Shariat Court was created. 38. Presidential Order No. 14 of 1985. 39. Presidential Order No. 14 of 1985. The exclusion of the religious minorities from mainstream political process came to an end with the repeal of Article 51(4A) by Chief Executive Order No. 24 of 2002. While this was a fulfillment of a demand that most minority leaders had maintained since 1985 the circumstances of the repeal are highly controversial. Along with the repeal of Article 51(4A) General Musharraf introduced a large number of other constitutional amendments unacceptable to the entire opposition in the National Assembly, the bar councils and large segments of the intelligentsia. General Musharraf has refused to submit these amendments before Parliament. The courts have started treating these amendments as fiat accompli. 40. The exclusion of jurisdiction as regards fiscal and financial laws was extended to five years and then, through P.O 14 of 1985, to ten years. 41. Hazoor Baksh vs. The State, PLD 1981 FSC 145. 42. Justice Aftab Husain. 43. The significant exception among the ulema was Maulana Amin Ahsan Islahi. See his Tadabur-e-Quran, (Faran Foundation, Lahore, 2000). 44. The State vs. Hazoor Baksh, PLD 1983 FSC 255. 45. PLD 1981 FSC 23. 46. PLD 1990 SC 99. 47. PLD 1986 SC 360. 48. Aziz Begum vs. Federation of Pakistan, PLD 1990 SC 899. 49. Allah Rakha vs. The Federation of Pakistan, PLD 2000 Federal Shariat Court 1. 50. PLD 1981 SC 120. 51. PLD 1992 FSC 1. 52. M. Aslam Khaki vs. Syed Mohammad Hashim, PLD 2000 SC 225. 53. United Bank Limited vs. Farooq Brothers and Others, PLD 2002 SC 800. 54. Presidential Order 14 of 1985. 55. PLD 1973 SC 49. 56. PLD 1988 Karachi 169. 57. PLD 1992 Lahore 99. 58. PLD 1992 SC 595. 59. PLD 1993 SC 901. 60. See Nizam Khan v. Additional District Judge, Lyallpur, PLD 1976 Lahore 930. Also M. Bashir v. The State, PLD 1982 SC 139. 61. PLD 1997 Lahore 301. 62. Humaira Mahmood vs. The State and others PLD 1999 Lah. 494 63. The Hisba Bill 2003.

(Salman Akram Raja is a constitutional lawyer and was member of the Presidential Steering Committee on Higher Education Reform in 2002)

India: Combating Communalism Achin Vanaik

practical and programmatic perspective for fighting communalism must flow from a proper theoretical understanding of the complex relationships between secularism, religion and communalism. Secularism is widely seen as the counter to communalism in India. But this is only partly correct. Secularism as a word or concept was coined in nineteenth century Europe to denote an ideology of ethics that insisted on centring morality on the good of humans in this life rather than on some transcendent or otherworldly principle derived from religion. By justifying the separation of religion from morality, secularism provided an answer to a distinctly political question-how to live an appropriate political life? It endorsed as a political principle, a basic and substantial separation of religion from political life, more specifically, from the apparatuses of the state. This separation of the state from religious injunction and in fluence became an overt virtue, justified because this secular commitment was seen as part of a new set of democratic values ushered in by the Enlightenment and the promise of the great bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But the secular state, or at least a substantially secularised state, had made its initial appearance earlier. The secular state in practice emerges (decades, even centuries) well before this democratic discourse and this fact has, perhaps, facilitated the tendency in India to forget its powerful con nection to such a discourse. Instead, many Indian intellectuals have seen secularism as a practical feature of European history whose value in very different Indian circumstances is perhaps more problematic. But even here one should be wary of such casual historical dismissals. If the formalised and institutionalised separation of Church and state in much of the Christian world was one factor which made it easier and more possible for the emergence of a substantially secular state, another was the debilitating experience of inter-religious and sectarian strife. Thus, many a minority sect in the sixteenth century themselves called for a secular state independent of any religious affiliation for their own self-protection and freedom of existence. Those in India who argue that secularism is not relevant to our experience because unlike Europe we have no such institutionalised separation between Church and state, given the dominance (and character) of Hinduism, should not forget that in our own history we have had our own forms of severe inter-religious strife. For that reason alone, we must not dismiss the European experience of expanding secular values as having no lessons for us.

he emergence of secularism as a self-conscious ideology both strengthened the secular state and also made this situation a desirable ideal to be emulated where it

did not already exist. Secularism was now consciously con nected to the principle of tolerance but in a way very different from how secularism and tolerance as notions have been con flated in Indian discourse. There is a widespread view that India for millen nia had a unique level of socio-political tolerance and was therefore `civilisationally' secular; that this is an ancient and continuous virtue. Un fortunately, by illegitimately con flating two very different animals, such a view creates con fusion. Ancient and modern notions of tolerance should not be con flated, mixed up or made synonymous. The popular Indian view sees tolerance as effectively synonymous with being secular, regardless of the particular composition or character of the state authority. The modern notion of tolerance sees the secular state (understood as meaning its basic or principled separation from religious power, in fluence, institutions, etc.) as the vital precondition for the existence of a new kind of socio-political tolerance. This modern concept of tolerance links it to the modern discourse and practice of individual (and collective) rights. It is part and parcel of the modern discourse of rights and therefore has to be distinguished from older conceptions of tolerance that see this as expressive of a reality in which there is indifference, or relatively peaceful coexistence, between different cultural and religious groups.

o this day, ancient and modern notions of tolerance, pluralism and democracy are regularly con flated in Indian discourse. This sustains the illusion that India has exceptionally strong and original `secular' resources with which to fight communalism.1 This illusion is dangerous since it gives rise to false understandings. If, indeed, we are so uniquely gifted with such secular virtues, then what is called the rise of communalism can not be communalism but is what its supporters call it -- a Hindu awakening or reawakening. Or, alternatively, this is indeed communalism but its rise is to be understood as a reaction to the imposition of a Western-inspired secular state that has undermined and ignored our traditional sources of tolerance which have always stood us in good stead and can continue to do so, provided we recognise its strength and allow it to expand its role in our public political space and discourse. We must therefore recognise that the presence of a secular state is the crucial precondition for the existence of a modern democratic pluralism for which, a fundamentally different kind of society from India's past, with fundamentally different notions of individual and collective rights, of justice, tolerance and even of the possibilities and meanings of a good life are required. Otherwise we can not hope to succeed in our efforts to construct a stable, humane, democratic and decent India i.e., succeed in laying low the communal beast.

ut preserving and deepening the secular Indian state, urgent though the issue now is, given the access of political Hindutva to state power, is still only a part of the full antidote to communalism. The more important longer-term terrain of struggle is civil society where the forces of communalism have become more strongly entrenched. If we lose the short-term struggle to prevent communal forces from stabilising their control over state power, we will suffer gravely in our longer-term struggle to decommunalise the Indian society. But even if we win our shorter term struggle centred on the state, this does not necessarily make our longer term struggle any easier to win.2

The great strength of Hindu communalism resides in the in frastructure within civil society that the Sangh Combine led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has established, nurtured and constantly expanded. Therefore, a dual strategy is needed. It is vital to both maintain and deepen the secularity of the Indian state; and to further secularise Indian civil society. But what does the latter mean? If secularising simply means de-communalising, as it has come to mean in so much of Indian discourse, then all we have is a fairly meaningless theoretical and political tautology. To succeed in de-communalising we must further secularise which means we must further de-communalise. Fortunately, we can escape this circle once we recognise that the principal point of reference for secularisation is not communalism but religion. This, of course, raises basic questions about the relationship of religion not only to the process we call secularisation but also to that phenomenon we call communalism.

The First Myth: The Importance of Religion

et us start by countering two widespread myths in India. The first is that there has been no significant decline in the impact and importance of religion in Indian society and life through the ages. Secularisation, which denotes a many-sided process wherein the in fluence of religious beliefs, practices, person nel and institutions declines in social life with religious identity also declining in importance, is said not to have happened, or is deemed incapable of happening.3 This is not correct. Substantial secularisation has taken place, i.e., there has been significant decline in the social importance of religion. This is an inescapable decline attendant upon and accompanying (albeit unevenly and in complex combinations of the more and the less secular) the process of capitalist modernisation. It is a decline relative to the pre-modern/precapitalist past. Modernity, even in its impact on a society like India, has led to a multiplicity of dynamic processes forcing change, and to the rise of a multiplicity of authority systems among which the religious system is now only one. Given this obvious reality, it is once again only an astonishing blindness that can lead some to deny the fact of such secularisation as religious decline, and to insist on the unchanging and continuous permeation of religion in Indian society and life. Pre-modern India and today's India are fundamentally different societies. Pre-modern societies and polities, even when they cover a wide territorial expanse with the acknowledged overlordship of a single state-empire, are nonetheless highly segmented societies. Tradition in such a system is always powerfully con nected to localism and specific and limited contexts even if there are a few wider pan-local and pan-regional themes and structures. That is why what we call traditional Indian society is always in the plural. In such a situation, where the world of an average inhabitant does not really extend beyond a radius of 25 kilometres, the balancing mechanisms and norms that provide order, stability and social reproduction are profoundly different from the balancing mechanisms and norms for ordering a modern Indian society of far greater scale, complexity, depth, layers, and inter-con nections. Ancient and pre-modern pluralism is profoundly different from modern pluralism. The balancing mechanisms and norms of the past will be much more closely related to traditional kinship patterns, to rituals and customs substantially religious-based. Today, it is impossible for such

older mechanisms to have anywhere near the same weight or even to operate (where they do operate) in the `old' way. The decline in the importance of customary law and its very substantial (if not complete) replacement by modern forms of jurisprudence not based on custom, religion or ritual, is but one very obvious example of the profound change and secularisation that has taken place.

nother way of perceiving the changes wrought by secularisation-modernisation on societies is to see such societies as situated along a particular spectrum. At one end you have societies where religious power, person nel, beliefs, institutions, etc., make up the very texture of life. At the other end of the spectrum, religion fills up only the interstices of life. For example, in many a European society, religion for a great many, if not a majority of individuals, anchors rituals surrounding birth, marriage and death, but little else. India today is different from other contemporary societies but is also qualitatively different from its own past. There can be serious dispute about where to place India on this spectrum compared to many other contemporary societies. There can be serious dispute about how far or close it is to either pole of this spectrum. But compared to its own past, India has moved a significant distance away from the first pole and towards the second pole although we may have reservations about how far down the road of secularisation it has actually travelled Can there be any doubt that with regard to economic, political, social (e.g. health and education) life and processes, there has been an enormous and dramatic secularisation compared to the past? It is not at all surprising that those who insist that religion permeates Indian society in the way it is supposed to have always done, should have to centre their arguments not so much on the economy or polity but on the cultural level where the secularisation process, in comparative terms, has arguably not made so dramatic an advance. Thus, an imbalanced culturalism is virtually mandatory in the case against secularisation that has to be constructed by those insisting on the inescapable centrality of religion to life, past and present, in India.

odernity does at least four things to what we call identities. It greatly increases the number and range of identities that people have. It makes identities sharper and more bounded. Identities are more adopted than handed down. That is to say, identities become more flexible and revisable. Identities also compete, clash, repel, intersect and combine in more complex ways than ever before. The religious identity can escape none of these processes. Its importance in social life is relativised by the emergence of a much wider range of identities even though religious affiliation can, of course, be as deeply held as in the past. The sense of being a Hindu or Muslim is more sharply defined and self-conscious than in the past. The man ner of being or living a religious identity becomes more flexible and revisable. The religious identity also competes or combines with other identities in new ways e.g. Hindu nationalism, where nationalism is rather more important than Hinduism. However, to insist that considerable secularisation is a fact of modern Indian history is not the same as saying that further secularisation is inevitable. It is not. But it remains a real possibility. Furthermore, it is desirable that this takes place. To claim that such further secularisation is possible and desirable is not to claim that an atheistic Utopia is

either feasible or desirable. It is rather to insist that a more secularised society must renegotiate the `terms of coexistence between the secular and the religious'.4 This is a relationship of coexistence not of elimination of one or the other. But it is a coexistence, which has to be different from that of the past, in that the religious gives away significant ground to the secular. Religious systems have to become more modest about their own claims of importance and have to see themselves (like science) as one among many other imperfect traditions of humankind.5

he more complex life of modernity must be lived more complexly. Life now requires a constant adjustment amidst multiple identities where the pre-eminence of any particular identity (as a motivation to action) is always temporary and shifting in more dynamic ways than in the past precisely because modern life is far more dynamic in character. The more dynamic society of today relative to the past also gives rise to a more dynamised self. Religious loyalty and identification can remain a `fundamental attachment' but much less than in the past can it cope satisfactorily or humanely with the existing complexity of social life by being the regular or constant prism through which life is viewed. Religious-centred morality is less capable than in the past of providing the adequate foundation on which to cope with, or adjudicate between, the enormously greater value pluralism of modern life. In contemporary situations of interreligious tension, the last thing we need is to exaggerate the virtues of a religiously grounded moral system. T.N. Madan is fond of insisting that secularism must know â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;its place.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;6 This injunction should also be applied to religion. In renegotiating the terms of coexistence between the religious and the secular we are demanding not just that secularism be put in its place but that religion too be put `in its place'; and that place is smaller and more modest than in the past. In advocating a further secularisation of Indian civil society one is advocating a further reduction in the social space occupied by religion. In claiming that this is a desirable one is arguing that religious systems can not provide a sufficiently complex or developed basis for living morally and humanely in a more secularised world and that a more secularly founded basis for living in this way is required. Religious systems are themselves historical entities and are marked by their respective histories. Neither modern principles of equality nor liberty are natural to such religious systems. But they can and should learn from such principles and incorporate these within their own workings. But they can only carry out this learning process if they shed religious arrogance and recognise that they have to engage in such learning, and that when they actually do this they are actually carrying out a secularisation process within their respective religious systems. If secular arrogance and contempt for what religion has to offer, and does offer, is an attitude that must be rejected, so too is the attitude of religious arrogance and contempt for what secularism and secularisation has offered, and has to offer.

The Second Myth: Religion and Communalism

urther secularisation, i.e., declining social space for religious in fluence, is desirable because there is a con nection of sorts between communalism and religion. Even among Indian secularists, there is a strong tendency to deny any such con nection. This is the second myth. More precisely, the only such con nection allowed for is that religious

identity serves as a convenient boundary marker for the purposes of communal political mobilisation. But other than this there is no intrinsic con nection between

all the more necessary since religion so permeates ordinary life that the pursuit of further secularisation of civil society is considered a chimera. Many a Gandhian or indigenist or anti-secularist who denounces `westernised secularists' and communalists, would make just such a claim. Gandhi is a central figure here, for even though he endorsed the legal pre-requisites for establishing a secular state, he could still never accept the ethical premises of secularism.7 Not just private morality but public morality too had to have a religious (or multi-religious) grounding if it was to endure. What Gandhi failed to appreciate was that religious systems become less, not more, able to adequately deal with the complexities of life in modernity and that his own strong antimodernism was singularly flawed both as an ideal and as a programmatic perspective. Gandhi's own life and his in fluence on the course and character of the National Movement showed the strengths and the limitations of his understanding of the political and moral capacities of religion in public discourse and activity. Gandhi made the National Movement into a mass movement by appealing to existing identities, particularly religious ones, and to the existing levels of consciousness associated with such identities. But his hope, that by linking religious appeal and loyalties to the anticolonial nationalist struggle he would transcend such specific loyalties to forge a deeper inter-religious understanding and respect and thus create a multi-religious foundation for an overarching Indian identity, was a comprehensive failure. Not only the fact of Partition, but the resurgence of a semi-dormant Hindu nationalism of a more pernicious form in the late 1970s (and escalating since then), indicates the depth of his failure.

eing anti-secular or equivocal about the importance of secularism is not the same as being communal or even equivocal about communalism. Gandhi, after all, was deeply and sincerely anti-communal. But insufficient commitment to secularism and secularisation in the long run plays into communal hands. This does not mean that one should not try and contest the communal on the terrain of religious discourse as Gandhi often did and Gandhians often try to do. We need all the resources we can get, including those that can be derived from our numerous religious traditions. But we would be mistaken indeed if we con fused what is at most an important tactical resource for what it can not be -- the strategic line of march to deepen secularism and secularisation through which alone the communal beast can be definitively tamed if not altogether slain. The tactical resources of progressive religious activity and heritage in civil society can do three positive things. On occasions they provide powerful, even decisive, resources for carrying out what can be called `inter-religious crisis-management'. Here Gandhi was unique. Who else by their sheer presence and personality could stop a communal riot? The respect in which ordinary Hindus and Muslims held Gandhi owed a great deal to his religious persona. But effective crisis-management is far removed from the more arduous and long term task of institutionally in noculating our social structure against the communal disease. Here Gandhism has little to offer, for unlike the relationship between Marx and Marxism, where the latter has always been more important than the former, Gandhi has always been far more important than Gandhism! The legacy of

Gandhism was strongest in Gujarat but it is Gujarat that is today the most thoroughly communalised state in India. One should not read too much into what Gandhians or neo-Gandhians might claim is a mere coincidence, but nor should one read too little into this reality.

mong the weakest points in the claims made by neo-Gandhians for the efficacy of their perspective of encouraging `inter-religious and religious-secular dialogue' as the key to overcoming communalism and securing a more humane and tolerant Indian society, is the institutional and programmatic vagueness, indeed vacuousness of such a strategy, if it can even be called that. What changes does such an approach require in our political structures of governance? What changes follow from such an approach in our educational systems? What does this imply for the functioning of our public services? Can the proposed changes adequately deal with the problem at hand? What changes are required in our legal system? Should these revert back to religious-based customary laws? The third positive role that religious systems, i.e., their structures and person nel, play in Indian civil society comes from their ability to address, with a measure of success, a variety of secular needs of ordinary people, e.g., in areas of health, education, recreation, culture, economic, financial and other family support, etc. This provides the grounds for securing a more general loyalty, which in turn can then be utilised for other, including politically related, purposes. Much of the power of religious systems has always come from this ability to provide for the non-religious needs of ordinary people. Indeed, not just religious but overtly communal organisations like the RSS and VHP get their strength from such emplacement in the `pores of civil society'.

n such a context, further secularisation of Indian civil society does not mean con fronting or opposing religious forces or bodies involved in such activity. Precisely because important non-religious needs are being met, however partially, it is only when alternative structures organised on more universalist and non-religious lines of accessibility and distribution become available that one can talk of successfully pursuing a strategy of greater secularisation of civil society. Such a strategy moreover, does not always require complete secular replacement. Existing religion-related structures can often themselves be further secularised through greater democratisation of their functioning and expansion of their accessibility beyond specific religious boundaries. Secularisation is not only what takes place outside or against religious institutions or a system but is also a process taking place within them. The way Convent education, for example, has been substantially secularised is a case in point.

A Dual Strategy

he important lesson to draw then is that secularising India can not be separated from the much larger issue of democratising (in the widest and deepest sense possible) its civil society; and that this democratisation is itself more a substantive than procedural issue. As such it seeks to progressively empower ordinary people. To fight successfully for further secularisation is to fight for much more than just secularisation.

The same applies to the struggle against communalism. To fight successfully against communalism requires us to fight for much more than simply eradicating communalism! There are two obvious reasons why this is the only sensible perspective. If we make the mistake of seeing the forces of Hindu communalism as only communal forces we will live to regret it. They represent a threat not just to religious or social minorities but to the majority of Hindus, to the very fabric of a democratic Indian society because they embody a strongly reactionary and authoritarian rightwing force all the more dangerous because it has a significant and expanding populist base, the so-called middle class, which is actually an elite rather than a median social category. The appeal of strongly rightwing anti-poor and anti-working class politics has dramatically expanded over the last decade and a half. The classic `centrist populism' of the old Congress type is no longer the only or obvious avenue for securing national-level dominance in the country. Though it is a mistake to believe that a fascist danger prevails, i.e. a danger of India becoming a fascist state, one must never forget that the Sangh Combine, or the Sangh Parivar (family) as it likes to call itself, possesses fascist characteristics both in its ideology and in its organisational structure, and is guilty of fascist-like behaviour. Moreover, terminological and theoretical arguments about whether India can become a properly fascist state and society (important though they are) are not any source of consolation if the kind of barbarism (whatever we consider it to be) that we fear could consolidate itself and fundamentally transform India, actually does succeed in doing so.

he second reason why the fight against communalism has to be for much more than simply de-communalisation is because the rise of Hindu communalism emerges from a more general and deeper crisis whose sources are themselves multiple and diverse. Since the early seventies, throughout the world there has been a rise of the politics of cultural exclusivism in a variety of forms centred usually on ethnicity, religion, nation or some combination thereof. Yet everywhere the general sources of this crisis are the same--socio-economic inadequacies of development, problems and weaknesses in the institutionalisation or preservation of political democracy and ideological disarray. Once it is recognised that the sources for the rise of such politics of cultural exclusivism, which in India has taken the form of Hindu communalism, are many-sided, then it is simple logic to recognise that the resolution of this problem must itself involve a many-sided project of rectification. The specifically Indian form in which this general crisis of developmentalism was embodied had its own name -- the crisis of the Nehruvian Model with which the Congress party has been associated and for which it has paid the price of suffering a historic decline. The political-ideological vacuum created by this decline has been partly filled by rightwing reaction and communalism, so much so that in three crucial areas secularism, the economy and foreign policy -- the centre of gravity of Indian politics has shifted sharply to the right.

dual strategy then must be followed: to protect and deepen the secularity of the

Indian state and to further secularise civil society. The first is a task that can not be separated from the longer term and more fundamental second task. Secularism as a

primarily on the issues of democracy and justice in civil society and not on secularisation and religion. In this overall struggle, there is an important dialectic of secularism and secularisation, of the state and civil society that should be noted. A secular state pursuing proper policies can make an immense contribution to the effort to promote greater secularisation-democratisation-justice and, therefore, popular empowerment in civil society. The crucial strategic problems then relate to the possibilities, prospects and methods to be pursued in order to bring about greater democratisation and justice. It is at this point, that the struggle against communalism gets con nected via the pursuit of greater democratization and justice to the struggle for socialism. In the advanced western democracies, whatever their tribulations, the secular state is secure; and whatever the variations in the extent of secularisation between different countries, the resurgence of religion-related movements and forces creates a very different (and milder) set of problems in contrast to what many third world countries have had to face through the rise of religious fundamentalisms, religious nationalisms and communalisms. The inhumanity and limitations of capitalism are at its starkest and most threatening here. India has been exceptional among most third world countries in sustaining a durable liberal democratic system for so long. But the tension created by a backward and insufficiently welfarist capitalism on one hand, and a liberal democratic macro-polity having its own peculiar mix of institutionalised violence and lack of democracy at the micro-level can only become more disturbing. One of the commonest conclusions arrived at after 1989 and the collapse of actually existing Communism in the ex-USSR and Eastern Europe, was that the socialist dream of a progressive transcendence of capitalism was over. The horizon of the socially attainable could now no longer stretch beyond a humanised capitalism anchoring a liberal democratic polity, where the liberalism counted for rather more than the democracy. But what the acolytes of 'capitalism with a human face' were not prepared for was that the collapse of communism would be accompanied by, indeed encourage, the destruction of the Social Democratic dream of the last fifty years -- a `capitalism without losers'. The question that is posed today by capitalism everywhere (especially after the Asian economic `meltdown' of 1997) is what if the Right is right? What if there really is no other alternative but the more ruthless, mean and miserly `capitalism with too many losers' associated with the neo-liberal variant of globalisation that is so dominant today? We leave aside the questions of how compatible the ruthless accumulative drive of capitalism, its incessant search for continuous growth, can be with the protection of an increasingly endangered global ecological system. What if capitalism can no longer ensure full employment, continuous mass prosperity, decent health-care, social security and education for all even in its strongest heartlands? What then of the prospects of achieving a capitalist prosperity for all or most people in a more backward country like India? What then of the prospects for fulfilling a holistic project of rectification of the various social, economic, political and cultural ills of the country, which alone can promise to slay the communal beast?

If the great weakness of the socialist project was its usurpation by Stalinist developmentalism and authoritarianism in the countries where it was tried out as an alternative to capitalism, its greatest strength has always been that it is the name given to that political project which when faced with the enduring evils and injustices of capitalism, has most intransigently fought against it and sought to transcend capitalism. When, as today, those evils not only persist but have deepened, when capitalism's progressive possibilities have long passed their Golden Age (1948-73) peak, then to deny either the necessity or possibility of a transcending alternative (a renewal and reworking of the socialist project) is actually to advocate a reconciliation with communalism in India. This is not the time for Indian progressives and socialists to fall into despair. It is this broad left political tradition that, with all its weaknesses and limitations, has remained the most principled secular force with the strongest commitment to fight uncompromisingly against the agents of communalism. This struggle against communalism can not now be divorced from the struggle against neo-liberal globalisation, which in turn requires a struggle against U.S. imperialism, the most powerful force behind the neo-liberal globalising drive. This is a huge collective agenda of struggle on an extraordinarily broad front. But it also means partial successes or advances at one point or area of struggle directly or indirectly helps efforts at another point or area of struggle. Yes, the fight against communalism, given these inescapable intercon nections, is more difficult and complex than a more simplistic approach might suggest. But whoever said that a decisive and enduring defeat of communalism was ever going to be easy?

References 1. I am avoiding here the thorny issue of defining communalism and its distinguishing characteristics. For a detailed discussion in this regard see The Furies of Indian Communalism: Religion, Modernity and Secularization, (Verso Publications, London, 1997), pp.192-205. For current purposes I am simply trading on the widespread acceptance of the notion of communalism as a phenomenon expressing the politics of hostility and tension vis-a-vis a religious other. I also deal only with Hindu communalism. Though all communalisms must be simultaneously opposed, only Hindu communalism is pan-Indian in scale and only it has the capacity to transform in an authoritarian way the whole of Indian society. 2. The dialectic of state and civil society, of secularism and secularisation, is a highly complex affair. The very process of secularising the state and pushing secular policies can work to promote or strengthen de-secularising forces in civil society as in the Shah's Iran. Alternatively, the aggressive pursuit of secularising policies e.g. in education, can significantly enhance the secularisation of civil society. The secular state also has variant relationships of control and management vis-a-vis religious systems. In Turkey the extent of control exercised by the secular state over religious bodies and practices has always been much greater than in India. In the USA, separation of the state from religion has meant a much weaker and more relaxed relationship of control and management by the state over religious structures and practices. Insofar as some degree of management or control (the distribution of ultimate adjudicating powers in some spheres of contestation) always characterises the state's relationship to religion, in India this has meant a certain, historically shaped authorisation and practice of state intervention and nonintervention in `religious' affairs. But this has been a gray area of interpretation wherein the state has often intervened where it should not and not intervened where it should. 3. For a full discussion of the multiple meanings (and their inter-relationships) of secularisation, see Chapter 3 in my book, Op cit. Suffice it here to say that secularisation takes place within religious systems as well as against them and that this is fully compatible with a defence of the secularisation-as-religious-decline thesis. 4. This felicitous phrase I owe to Andre Beteille, ‘Secularism and Intellectuals’ in Economic and Political Weekly, 30 April, 1994. 5. Ashis Nandy has talked, correctly, in another context of science being one of the many `imperfect traditions of mankind' but without seriously contesting the arrogances of religion and religious systems. 6. T. N. Madan, ‘Secularism in Its Place’ in Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 46, no. 4, (Nov. 1987.) 7. These legal pre-requisites have to do with the properties of liberty, equality and neutrality as they pertain to the different relationships between the individual, religion and the state: namely, individual freedom of worship or practice of religion; equality of citizenship regardless of religious affiliation, no religious affiliation of the state.

(Political commentator and former journalist, Achin Vanaik is currently Visiting Lecturer at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. He lives in New Delhi)

by the NHRC (April 2003) as well as by public interest litigations filed in the Supreme Court in April 2003.6 If these had been heard judiciously and promptly by the apex court, when it had been first approached last year, concerns related to extremely explosive and communalised state of affairs in the state of Gujarat would have been rectified and more promptly addressed.

After the Gujarat Pogrom Teesta Setalvad

early nineteen months after the genocidal violence that rocked the western Indian state of Gujarat, searing questions that the tragedies have raised related to justice and rehabilitation, remain completely unanswered. Specifically, issues of state accountability after mass violence, independent policing and adequate reparation remain to be addressed by the judiciary. Post-Independence India has had its shocking share of mass violence, driven not just by community but equally by caste during which the archaic Code of Criminal Procedure, pen ned by colonial masters, has proved itself unequal to the task. Often official or other commissions of inquiry have examined these lapses and made recommendations. One common feature of these has been is that the political class, whatever its ideological hue, has simply not bothered to publicly debate or implement these recommendations. The Indian judiciary, at all levels, has restrained itself to minimal intervention in the matters of social justice and violence. What happened after the pogrom in Gujarat 2002? Nothing different from the past. Senior jurists and others sat in a Concerned Citizen’s Tribunal and recommended the establishment of a Statutory National Crimes Tribunal that must evolve its own jurisprudence, drawn from the International Law on genocide1 and, further urged quick reforms in the Indian Police Force. Drastic reforms in the Indian police system, including guaranteeing its independence and ensuring representation and diversity, had been recommended as far back as 1981 by the official National Police Commission.2 The work of the Concerned Citizens Tribunal that lasted several months, with no assistance from any official quarter, is available in a two-volume report published from Mumbai.3

oday, judicial matters related to the pogrom in Gujarat have been brought at the centre-stage of judicial scrutiny through two pivotal cases, currently being heard by the Supreme Court. The fact that this has happened at all is due, in large measure, to the initiatives taken by the statutory National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), backed by Citizens for Justice and Peace that has mandated itself the responsibility to continue the struggle for justice and reparation for the survivors of tragedy, .since the justice process in the state was systematically de-railed4. Efforts are alive through these judicial interventions to move the criminal trials of the worst carnages outside the state of Gujarat.5 This argument for turning over both the investigation and conduct of the criminal inquiries to an area outside the jurisdiction of Gujarat is because the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, and the state administration under him, has been made respondent since the carnage last year, both

n fortunately, judicial record in dealing with such mass community-driven carnages remains pathetic. Sikh widow-survivors of the 1984 pogrom against their community in the country’s capital (that followed the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguard)7 struggle for justice which even after nineteen years remain fruitless. Similarly, Muslim women-survivors of 53 young men shot dead in cold blood in Meerut-Hashumpura in western Uttar Pradesh in 1989,8 are still waiting for justice. The recent conviction of Dara Singh and associates for the burning alive of Christian pastor Grahamn Staines and his two sons in January 1999, is a rare case of a sessions court punishing those guilty of communally driven crimes, whereas most criminals are still at large Then how can peace and reconciliation be brought about? What actually happened in Gujarat? It is pertinent to quote from the editorial of Communalism Combat’s special issue on the Gujarat carnage, Genocide Gujarat, 2002: ‘The torching of bogey S-6 of the Ahmedabad-bound Sabarmati Express at Godhra on February 27, 2002 in which 58 passengers, including 26 women and 12 children, were burnt to death, is an unpardonable act. The perpetrators of this grossly inhuman crime must be tried swiftly and given the most stringent punishment. But, for the burned corpses of the ill-fated passengers to become the justification for armed squads of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ‘brother’ organisations-Rashtiya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal (BD) – to launch a pogrom that sits well with what the UN defines as genocide against the in nocent Muslims of Gujarat. ‘Twenty-four hours after the Godhra tragedy, 58 bodies were brought to the Sola Civil Hospital for the arthi, vengeful slogans were raised. Thereafter, from February 28 to March 6, the raging fires of hatred and venom consumed 16 of Gujarat’s 24 districts. ‘ (As of today there are no pointers as to who committed this crime, while some indicators do exist that it may have been a tragic accident. Moreover , the clever manipulation of the incident at Godhra by the leadership of the Hindu right wing at different levels, including no less a person than the Indian Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, as a stick to beat India’s largest religious minority with, is disgusting. Until 7 p.m. on the fateful day of the mass burning at Godhra that led to a cycle of the worst and most unspeakable violence in 19 of Gujarat’s 24 districts through 72 hours of organised sexual violence, killing, loot and destruction, official versions called the incident an accident. The PM’s speech at 2 p.m. in the Indian Parliament too echoed this version. Mysteriously after 7 p.m. that day, Gujarat’s Chief Minister Narendra Modi termed it an act of traitorous Muslims and the ISI. Godhra’s Ghanchi Muslims who’s track record in social harmony is not

envious and who had gathered in a large number after kar sevaks behaved in an unruly and provocative fashion at the station at Godhra that morning, joined the ranks of the traitorous lot who had dared attack the far-from-peaceful pilgrims returning from the political project of building a Ram Temple at Ayodhya.9) ‘Even during the unspeakable horrors that communities in flicted on each other in 1946 and 1947, all organs of the state had not been directly involved in stoking the fires. Not so in Gujarat in 2002. The chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, called the targetted attacks in 16 of Gujarat’s 24 districts, a ‘natural reaction.’ Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee obserbed: ‘If there was no Godhra, there would have been no Gujarat,’ at the meeting of the national executive of his party in Goa in mid-April. Both the chief minister and the prime minister have exposed themselves to the charge of complicity in ‘crimes against humanity. ‘

he BJP, the RSS, VHP and BD combine in Gujarat had laid their grounds well. Both Modi, and his predecessor, Keshubhai Patel, had systematically created, through in flammatory hate propaganda and school textbooks, an atmosphere of communal frenzy to facilitate such a pogrom. They had their men in key jobs to prevent any hindrance to their plan. They used threat and intimidation to silence those who could speak. They trained their cadres in the ‘art of killing.’ Dead bodies were either burnt or so badly mutilated that they could not be recognised. Eyewitnesses and victims, survivors and observers, put the crowds who terrorised them at not less than 2,000 and even in far-flung villages they were close to 10-15,000strong mobs who were armed with deadly agricultural implements and guns. A few in the crowd even carried mobile phones.. Rape was used as an instrument for the subjugation and humiliation of the Muslim community. A chilling and hitherto absent technique was the deliberate destruction of evidence -- barring a few cases, women who were gang-raped were, thereafter, hacked and burned. ‘ Many ministers in the Gujarat cabinet are members of the RSS, VHP and BD. It is, therefore, not surprising that survivors have named many key leaders of these outfits, even cabinet ministers, as mob leaders. Chief Minister Modi and his mobs have brazenly flaunted the CrPC, the Arms Act and the Indian Constitution. If they are allowed to go scot-free, the very future of Indian democracy will be in peril. Violence still continues in Gujarat. The police shot dead two persons on April 16; another met a similar fate on April 18. Twelve and 13-year-old girls were terrorised by mobs as they appeared for their eighth and ninth standard examinations. Gujarat has thrown an unprecedented challenge for all individuals and groups working for the restitution of sanity, humane principles, representative democracy and the rule of law in this country. Do we have it in us to challenge the fascist onslaught on the Indian Constitution?’ It was the incident of the mass burning of 58 passengers on board the Sabarmati

Express returning from the temple town of Ayodhya that was used to justify the mass crimes committed in the state-wide carnage that took no less than 2, 500 lives and economically and culturally crippled the Muslim minority. (Preliminary economic loss to the community was estimated at no less than Rs 4,000 crores and this does not include irreparable damage to homes and agricultural land that have been seized as Muslims have fled villages where they were a small minority).

he reason that the well-tested term genocide was used by us10 and later the CCT to apply to what happened in Gujarat was because evidence shows that they were crimes committed against humanity in Gujarat ---brutal sexual violence was used against at least 200-300 Muslim women and no less that 270 mosques and shrines were also desecrated and then destroyed. The calculated and state-sponsored attempts to attack the dignity of the minority Muslim community was evident. Article 2 c) of the UN Convention on Genocide clearly reads: ‘Deliberately in flicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.’ Therefore, the fact that every single Muslim was not forced to flee for threat of slaughter (sic) is not an argument that nullifies the definition of the mass crimes as genocide. Attempts were made, both by the Gujarat chief minister and also his close supporters among the existing BJP leadership in New Delhi, to scoff at the use of this term. The struggle to bring culprits, involved in the Gujarat genocide, to justice has narrowed down today. The system we are battling with forces us to pick and choose even in our struggle for justice. The impact of what happened in Gujarat has died in public memory; worse, our efforts are today con fined to get justice for only the victim’s survivors of the worst incidents where over a dozen persons were butchered. What of the in nocent victims, many minors who were shot dead by an unaccountable police? What of the girls and women who were killed after brutal sexual violence? What of some of whom survived and have been forced back to live in the same villages where the crimes were committed? 11 What of the 10,000 homes that were destroyed so thoroughly that the pathetic Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 40,000 paid in compensation to only few is barely enough to pick up the threads and start living again? What about the reparation for the businesses destroyed and the agricultural lands seized? No less than 1,16,000 Muslims became internal refugees, thrown out of home and hearth and living in relief camps for over seven months last year. During this period, the state of Gujarat refused to give them food, water and medicines, despite its constitutional obligation that it bears the cost of this internal displacement. Again, it took legal interventions in the Gujarat High Court - two writ petitions supported by CJP which included flying down a senior lawyer from Mumbai since the atmosphere was so communally charged in the state that few wanted to appear in defence of the victimes from the minority community12. As a result of this legal intervention, Rs. 10 crores had to be paid from state government coffers to the relief camp organisers.

The violence in Gujarat in 2002 was preceded by the systematic distribution of material for some months, some anonymous, that systematically spewed hatred and venom against the Muslim minority in the state. Even during the outbreaks of violence, thousands of these pamphlets could be found - some advocated systematic economic boycott of Muslims and even printed an address of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s office at the bottom,13, others that were even more graphic and vicious advocated mutilation and rape.14

he systematic use of in flammatory speech and writing has been a crucial part of the politics of communalism in India, especially since the mid-1980s when the movement of the construction of a Ram temple at Ayodhya began in place of the Babri mosque. This period saw the sharp rise of communal forces from both within the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority. The opening of the locks of the Babri Masjid in 1986 was preceded by Parliament’s enactment of a law that excluded rightful maintenance rights to Muslim women, a demand made by the patriarchal and communal Muslim male leadership. The cleverly constructed movement to ‘construct’ a Ram temple at Ayodhya was in fact (and remains to date as again October 17, 2003 is a deadline set by Hindu fanatic groups to begin construction of the temple with utter disregard for the law) always to destroy a mosque and thereby teach a much deserved lesson to the Muslim minority. Brute violence was an integral part of this movement led and inspired by no less a person than India’s deputy prime minister, L.K. Advani, when he began his rath yatra from Somnath, Gujarat, in 1990. His close aide and organiser of the procession was none other than Narendra Modi, Gujarat’s present chief minister and ‘the chief architect of the state sponsored genocide.’15 Many of these questions come to mind even as we contest for justice in the Supreme Court. This struggle took a sharp turn in July this year after a Vadodara-based fast track court acquitted all accused in the BEST Bakery case on June 27, 2003. This incident was related to the brutal massacre of 14 Muslims on the night of March 1, 2002 and could be highlighted due to the singular courage of an eye-witness and survivor, Zahira Shaikh, who testified to official and other forums on what she had seen. When the case came for hearing in the court in May 2003, facing threat and intimidation, this key witness turned hostile. Despite the fact that 37 key witnesses turned hostile under duress, the public prosecutor did nothing to either find the reasons for their reversal, nor did the police intervene. The prosecutor in fact did not conduct himself as representative of a state that (by its constitutional mandate) desires to prosecute those guilty of such mass crimes but in fact behaved as if he was in league with the accused.

had personally covered the Gujarat carnage and was working as secretary to CJP in supporting the struggle for justice. Since May 2003 when I read about Zahira turning hostile I could not believe that she could have gone back on what she had seen and so courageously testified to. I was in touch with the family and fortunate enough to inspire faith in her to overcome her fear. On July 7, 2003 at a press con ference in Mumbai, she said: ’I was threatened with my life before and in the Court.’ Her courage and strength to stand up for what she believed

was right, her quest for justice shook the country as a whole. Soon after, she testified before the NHRC on July 11, 2003 following which the legal battles started. The NHRC had, since May 2003 itself called the sessions court judgement acquitting the accused ‘a miscarriage of justice’ and even re-visited the state. Soon after the press con ference, I wrote this piece for Mid-Day, Mumbai: ‘I first met Zahira on March 9 last year, then again on March 22 when she deposed before Justice JS Verma of the NHRC and then on May 11, 2002 when she voiced helplessness before the Concerned Citizens Tribunal. Her voice trembling with the emotions of that fateful night when she witnessed her own sister, Sabira , burnt alive and her maternal uncle, Kausar Ali cut to pieces before he was consigned to the flames, but she did not waver in the details of what she had seen. A total of 14 persons were hacked and burnt that night in an attack that lasted 12 hours. She wanted justice. She went to every forum in the city of Vadodara and other places in the country to seek it, but finally on May 17, 2003, during her one hour long testimony before the additional sessions judge, she retracted some of what she had seen. The first thought that crossed my mind when I read of her retraction was her disappointment with the process of justice in a country that we call the world’s largest democracy.’ ‘In the weeks before her testimony, her older brother had been summoned and had deposed before the court that the whole family was facing severe threats and intimidation. The state public prosecutor in the BEST Bakery carnage, did not meet or brief her even once. The proceedings of the trial court that day, packed to the hilt with the accused and others of the mob who had attacked this sole Muslim enterprise in the Hanuman Tekri area, was hostile and intimidating. Direct threats were meted out to her even within the precincts of the courtroom and nothing in the behaviour of the judge or the public prosecutor was conducive for her to repeat her testimony. She denied knowledge of the accused and three days later went away to her home village in far away Uttar Pradesh.

oday, when she told the country at a press con ference in Mumbai, organised by the Citizens for Justice and Peace, that she wants to demand a re-trial, and has faith in any court outside Gujarat, natural questions about her fearless testimony over seven months and her inexplicable (to some) retraction in a court of law do get raised. When, however, a key witness to a carnage that not only claimed 14 in nocent lives but show-cased the Vadodara police and state administration for partisan behaviour and criminal negligence, comes back before the public to demand a re-trial on grounds of intimidation, where ought the real questions lie? Can there ever be justice without rehabilitation? Can there be reconciliation without justice? Are agents of the state, be they public prosecutors or any other, beyond the pale of the Indian Constitution?’ Three months later, Hindu victim survivors who lost their family members in the burning of the S-6 Sabarmati Express Coach bravely sought the aid and support of the Citizens for Justice and Peace in Mumbai and demanded that they too be given justice. Things seem to have turned a full circle and there appears a stun ned response to the cry for help from these Hindu victims because they have pleaded before the

country that they should not be used as pawns in the politics of hatred and violence.

kar sevaks behaved in an indecent man ner and were shouting provocative slogans against residents of Signal Falia. If, as Praveen Bhai Togadia of the VHP keeps saying, terrorism exists in many of India’s border areas, all the more reason for the VHP to tell the Ram Sevaks to observe restrain and not to use abusive and provocative language, or wield lathis (sticks) and other weapons.

here could be no better way to end this piece than with an excerpt from Dr Girishbhai Rawal, an 82 year old man, whose wife, Sudhabehn, was one of the 58 burnt alive last year. He has courageously filed an affidavit before the Supreme Court of India along with four others demanding also that the Godhra investigation be transferred out of Gujarat. Coming from them, the plea that many human rights groups have been making to shift investigation and trial of key massacres out of the state, gets the ultimate stamp of legitimacy. In the polarised society that we live in, in nocent Muslims being mercilessly booked under POTA for alleged (but unproven) involvement in the mass burning. The fact that the realtives of over 60 allegedly in nocent persons jailed for the Godhra crime have not even seen them for over a year is a violation of the basic principles of justice and law. Yet it happens and continues to happen even as mass and unaccounted arrests under this newly enacted anti-terrorism law continue. The latest twist in the struggle for justice in Gujarat is the plea from Hindu victims of the mass burning that this investigation be moved outside Gujarat. Dr Rawal’s affidavit filed in the Supreme Court16 reads: ‘My wife, Smt Sudhabehn Girishbhai Rawal, aged 76 years, was burnt alive in the hapless mass burning of 59 persons in the S-6 Coach of the Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002. She was a senior social worker working with the Khoja Council of the Agha Khan Foundation. She went on the in famous yatra to Ayodhya on the understanding of community leaders and women from Janatanagar, especially Neetabehn Panchal of the Durga Vahini, that this would be a religious pilgrimage. 1.

I say and submit that the Ayodhya yatra was arranged entirely by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) as is borne out by the following : a) the two-way railway fare was to be borne by the VHP, including the staying arrangements at Ayodhya; b) Ram Sevaks were to offer yagna; c) Names were enrolled and detailed forms were filled for each Ram Sevak. (One photo-copy was affixed on forms of each Ram Sevak and a copy was given as identification badge and this was burnt also) I say and submit that the moral, physical safety of the Ram Sevaks fell upon on the organisers, the VHP which they did not fulfil. The Gujarat government owed every citizen, irrespective of caste, creed or community, due protection during this yatra. The atmosphere in the country and especially in Gujarat was communally charged at the time and continues that way even now and the failure of the Gujarat police to provide security and protection to the Ram Sevaks and its failure in intelligence to anticipate trouble at Godhra has cost us the in nocent lives of our dear family members. I an nexe press clippings where the SP Godhra is quoted as saying that he had no idea that the Ram Sevaks were returning the day they were! I say and submit that since the VHP were organisers of the yatra, it was beyond doubt the duty of the VHP to instruct young Ram Sevaks to observe calmness and refrain from exciting and creating clashes between communities. It is clearly evident from many testimonies and reports about the Godhra tragedy, that many

While the Gujarat government has failed in its responsibility to promptly protect human lives irrespective of caste, creed and community, the Godhra tragedy was used politically to spread violence in rest of Gujarat. Today both the victims of the Godhra tragedy and the many tragedies and massacres that followed are without justice. I humbly state and submit that in my mind, the VHP, the BJP, the Gujarat government and the Railways are responsible for the loss of in nocent lives and for the barbaric violence not just in Godhra but also in Naroda, BEST Bakery, Gulberg society and many other places all over Gujarat. This violence has brought shame to the peaceful state of Gujarat and even now things are far from normal.

I saw and submit that my dear wife who is now lost to me was working fulltime with the Khoja Council and at the time when her burnt body was brought to my home, Shehnazbehn of that organisation was staying at my house and she cried when she saw my wife’s remains. We believe in the great Indian tradition of equal love and respect for all which Hinduism preaches. The VHP does not preach real Hinduism.

I say and submit that I also lost my son Ashwin Girishbhai Rawal, (42 years) in an incident of stabbing at Ramol, where the FIR lodged by the local inspector declared that a mob of 1500-2000 of anti-social elements had gathered for the attack. This incident took place on April 16, 2002.

I would like to narrate the facts and circumstances surrounding the death of my son, Ashwinbhai Rawal, through stabbing on April 16, 2002. He was aged 42 and a member of the VHP and local chief of the Bajrang Dal (President Janatanagar) for the past four years. As his father, I say with regret that just like any terrorist, who had become biased by propaganda, my son had also been turned in heart and mind by the vicious VHP propaganda and had been in fluenced by their activities.

Twelve days before his death, on April 4, 2002, I had, through a fax to DGP Gujarat, urged that our area (Ramol) and Jantanagar society in particular should be declared a disturbed area as per the law enacted by the Gujarat Government in 1991, and, in view of the acute communal tension prevailing, special safety and security measures needed to be taken so that no further precious lives are lost. Despite this prior intimation, which arose out of the fact that I had suffered through the miserable loss of my wife’s life, the DGP ignored it and two people, including my son died that day.

My son, an active worker of the VHP and Bajrang Dal and a card holder of BJP and one other Pratapbhai Barot were assaulted on 16 April 2002 and murdered on 500 metre outside our society. The FIR lodged by the police states that a mob of 1500

to 2000 anti-social persons were responsible for the murder. The neglect of police officers who were patrolling in police jeeps from morning right until the evening is palpable. They did nothing to disperse the large and suspicious crowd gathered there with weapons. 10. A couple of days after the murder, I received a letter from the police commissioner’s office dated 23rd April 2002 stating point blank that no police chowky ( check-point) would be located on that sensitive spot just outside our society despite such a tragedy having taken place. The police in Gujarat is clearly not interested in either protecting the lives of citizens, nor in heeding their warning when they make them. My grand-daughter who is 18 years old (Khushboo Rawal) had personally written a letter to the commissioner of police and state home minister urging a police chowky but to no avail. 11. After 19 months of loss, I say and submit that I feel that my entire family and I, as also other victims of the Godhra tragedy, have been made sacrificial goats by the VHP in their political game. I say this because my wife participated in the yatra spontaneously thinking it was a religious event. In her life and mine we did not share the communal sentiments that are part and parcel of the VHP/BJP’s politics. Since this tragedy of the Godhra incident, our family members have been used by the VHP and the BJP to amass crores of rupees, here and abroad and also win the last elections. Worst still, they were used for justifying the murders at Naroda and BEST Bakery. Fifty-nine people burnt in Godhra and 2500 people massacred all over Gujarat! Who has done all these things and who has benefited from them? On many occasions the VHP and BJP have held functions with big names from the NRI world and collected large sums of money while they made us sit on the dias as scapegoats. Where has this money gone and what has it been used for? 12. The Honourable Supreme Court should investigate the collection of funds and what they are used for by the VHP and BJP. Cassettes and CDEs were made, Tshirts were distributed, all around the deaths of 59 persons by burning in the S6 coach in the Sabarmati Express. But those forces that are capitalising on this tragedy have no concern for the poor and in nocent lives lost, they are interested in their own politics and are again trying to begin one more yatra. As victims of Godhra burning, and personally as a father who has suffered his son’s joining the VHP and becoming a victim of their hate propaganda by absorbing it in his heart and mind, I earnestly feel that all such yatras like the Ayodhya yatra which is political and not religious, which causes and uses violence, should be ban ned. The Central government will not do it so it is up to the Honourable Supreme Court to take this historic step. 13. The investigation into the causes and fallout of the Godhra tragedy too are being suppressed by the current BJP establishment. The kind of threats and intimidation that are used to avoid fair testimony in Courts and before the Nanavaty-Shah Commission, and the fact that no real impartial truth has come out so far suggests clearly that unless the Honourable Supreme Court takes a direct and personal

interest in the Godhra and other investigations, justice will not be done. The police is completely under the sway of the BJP and VHP politics in the State and, therefore, we urge you to respond to our appeal in the matter. Even courts in Gujarat can not function free of the communally charged atmosphere which the establishment is doing nothing to diffuse. In fact statements of senior functionaries of the state and the centre further aggravate the situation and police atrocities against in nocent minorities continue. 14. As one of the victim survivor’s family of the Godhra tragedy, both my daughter-inlaw and I have been denied of fair and proper compensation. Initially the Gujarat government an nounced that victims of the Godhra tragedy would be given Rs. 2 lakhs each for the lives lost. Thereafter the Gujarat government reduced the amount to Rs. 1 lakh. I say and submit that a meeting that took place at my house at the above mentioned address, in presence of Godhra victims on March 1,2002 Praveen bhai Togadia in the presence of Gujarat minister, Haren Pathak said to us, ‘Aap pachas hazaar chod do’ (forgo Rs. 50,000) and assured us that VHP would give Rs 50,000. All sorts of other promises, to look after our education were also made but none have been kept. We have received Rs. 60,000 by cheque and Rs. 40,000 in the form of Narmada bonds, both from the Government which have a very low rate of interest and at this stage of my life is no use to me. On April 4, 2003 the Prime Minister an nounced an ex-gratia payment of Rs. 50,000 each to us which we have received. The Sankat Mocha Hanuman Trust on behalf of the VHP disbursed ad hoc amounts to Godhra victim families and I received Rs. 20,000. 15. Compensation and rehabilitation is not simply a matter of money and paying rupees 1 or 2 lakhs. Compensation means bringing the lives of our family back on track. Has this happened? The Honourable Supreme Court should look at the state in which the poor victims of the Godhra tragedy and later Gujarat riots live. With my wife and son dead, a son who earned Rs. 5000 per month and who had 18 working years of his life ahead of him, our family has suffered irreparable loss. Who is responsible for this? 16. I would like to also bring to the attention of the Honourable Supreme Court that prominent members and office bearers of the VHP and BJP, living in more affluent areas of Sabarmati, for example Bhupatbhai Dave (Amrewadi Maha Mantri) and Malabehn Rawal were not killed in the fire. Bhupatbhai, who was instrumental in persuading us to send us wives to Ayodhya, in fact did not travel back with the Ram Sevaks but stayed back in Ayodhya saying that he had an important meeting there. 17.

I say and submit that the Honourable Court should demand a seizure of all the Ram Sevak forms from the VHP in Gujarat so that we come to know who all were part of the yatra and whether they have received justice and protection. The Railway Court recorded saying that many of those who were burnt alive were travelling without reservations despite assurances to the contrary by the VHP. For a proper inquiry the detailed passenger list should be made public to determine

the mystery of those who reserved seats in Coach S-6 and those who traveled in their place without reservations. Despite assurances, the railway ministry has not paid any compensation to the victims.

Naroda Pattiya and Gulberg and other major massacres inquiries outside Gujarat and to be conducted in the immediate vicinity of the Honourable Supreme Court.

18. I would like to submit here that I was scheduled to depose before the Shah Nanavati Commission on September 18, 2003. A few days before, some VHP people came led by Jaykanth Dave of the BJP came to tutor us how to speak. Our society that consisted of 35 tenements is situated in a remote place and they tried to use this pressure. I was so upset that we were being told to say that I did not go. Some others went out of fear.

23. I approached Teesta Setalvad, Secretary, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), known to me through the newspapers and then, through their Ahmedabad office, since I believe that this organisation would help us get justice. The Citizens for Justice and Peace has given me this opportunity and I wished to avail of it. I wish to seek justice for what happened, for the lives lost and the destruction caused not just to my family but to thousands others after the Godhra carnage all over Gujarat.

19. I say and submit that on October 2, 2003, the day before we left for Bombay, at 10 p.m. at night 6 persons belonging to the VHP led by Bachubhai Patel came to my house with a singular aim of making us change our minds from pursuing this case with the assistance of Citizens for Justice and Peace. They said to me they are willing to pay Rs. 50,000 that VHP had originally promised for one death but I told them I was not interested in the money but in justice. Bachubhai then made me speak with Dr. Jaideepbhai Patel of the VHP who is second in command to Praveen bhai Togadia in Gujarat. Jaideep bhai also tried to in fluence me but I am very clear that we wish to both fight for justice and dignity for ourselves and use the tragedy that has befallen us to worn in nocent victims not to fall prey to yatra politics. 20. I say and submit that the CJP has volunteered to provide us with private protection until the same is ordered by the Honourable Court but I feel no need for such protection from CJP but we would like the Supreme Court to order protection for us from the State. Of and on in the past years we have been given protection by the State. 21. I say and submit that I am making this solemn affirmation on oath, with the hope that it becomes part of the major submission before the Honourable Supreme Court of India through the backing and support of the Citizens for Justice and Peace because if I lodge the case in the Gujarat High Court my case can be easily suppressed by the government just as it has happened in the BEST Bakery Case. 22. I urge and pray that our petition that is filed before the Supreme Court through the backing of the CJP urges: a)

A Ban on Future Ayodhya Yatras especially the one plan ned from October 15, 2003; b) Adequate reparation and compensation, material, psychological and physical to all victims of the Godhra and post-Godhra violence from the VHP, BJP, Gujarat Government and Railway Ministry irrespective of caste, creed and community and with total impartiality; c) The investigation of source of funds and their use by the VHP and BJP received in the names of the Godhra Victims after February 27, 2002; d) The immediate transfer of the Godhra inquiry and also other inquiries like the

24. The compensation in the case of my son’s death I leave to the matter to the Honourable Court.’ There could be no better description of how in nocent persons can be made victims to the politics of hatred and division which is communalism. Dr Rawal’s eighteen year old daughter Khushboo lost both her father and grandmother to the politics of hate. She told The Times of India in Mumbai on October 5, 2002, ‘My father a Bajrang Dal worker was drawn to the politics of Hindutva ( to convert Indian democracy to a Hindu state). We were never drawn to it. The construction of a Ram temple is not important. Peace and communal harmony are most important.’ Zahira and Khushboo are the voices of the victim survivors. Does Indian democracy have the resilience and maturity to respond to their pleas for reparation and justice?

References 1. Crimes Against Humanity, Volume II, Long Term Recommendations ‘Concerned Citizens Tribunal Report’; Tribunal headed by Justice VR Krishna Iyer and with members like Justice P.B. Sawant, Justice Hosbet Suresh, K.G Kan nabiran, K.S Subramaniam, Aruna Roy, Tanika Sarkar, and Ghanshyam Shah. 2. Ibid; section on Recommendations--Police 3. Ibid, (Sabrang Communications for Citizens for Justice and Peace, Mumbai) 4. NHRC Report and Recommendations during and after last year’s carnage in Gujarat proved particularly embarassing for the State 5. Plea in the SLP filed by the NHRC, dated August 1, 2003 and the SLP(Criminal) filed by CJP and Zahira Shaikh dated August 8, 2003 in the Supreme Court of India 6. Two petitions filed by DN Pathak and others and Mallika Sarabhai and others prayed for the transfer of key cases to the CBI and Investigations in these through this Independent agency 7. Darpan Kaur, a Sikh widow who lost 12 family members and even filed a First In formation Report with the police against former Congress minister HKL Bhagat was first offered a bribe of Rs 25 lakhs and when she refused, was even beaten brutally. She has refused to give in. 8. The FIR in this crime was filed by a police officer of the rank of SP in his own name, Vibhuti Narain rai who today is the IG of Uttar Pradesh 9. Note added later 10. Communalism Combat’s special issue was entitled Gujarat genocide 2002, March-April 2002 11. ‘Short Term Recommendations of Reparation, Relief and Rehabilitation’ CCT, Volume II 12. Mr Aspi Chinoy along with Mr Suhel Tirmizi argued the matter for over five hours before the Judge actually appointed a committee and thereafter passed orders that made the state

government liable to make good the damages to the organisers of relief camps. 13. ‘Pamphlet Poison,’ Gujarat Genocide 2002, Communalism Combat (March-April 2002) 14. Ibid 15. ‘State Complicity’ CCT, Volume II. 16. A joint impleadment application along with Citizens for Justice and Peace.

(Ms. Teesta Setalvad is the Editor of 'Communalism Combat.' She is involved in several initiatives to stimulate Pakistani Indian dialogue and has made an outstanding contribution in the field of human rights for which she was chosen for the year 2001 Pax Christi International Peace Award)