My take is that with the total intellectual and political bankruptcy of the Communist left, there is a void, and liberals are not sufficient in number to fill that gap. Nor are they active enough politically to mobilize the masses.
On the present problem, I see it as another nail in the coffin of the Gandhi-Congress alternative to the Two Nation Theory, what might be termed the Unity in Diversity model. Now we have a situation where both models used for visualizing our future nation state have failed.
In India, we have to acknowledge the issue of each of us owning multiple identities. These are successive in nature, and once one identity is addressed, and its needs for recognition are met, we need to cope with the next.
Take the case of a man who is Hindu, Bengali and Dalit, and poor. His immediate, primary identification is likely to be Hindu, if that is felt to be threatened. Once that is protected, he stops using that identity unless he reverts to it in a moment of crisis. Until then, however, his next identity is Bengali, and his ethno-linguistic identity takes over. He is defensive about Biharis, for instance, or Oriyas, at the labouring classes level, or about Marwaris, perhaps Punjabis, at a business community level.
In the villages, however, he is not directly confronted with this challenge, so he shifts to his Dalit level, or his poor level, and he takes a stand whereby whichever identity faces the greatest threat is the identity on top.
In the city and in towns, he is directly confronted, but is wholly unable to cope with the challenge, and is prey to populist ethno-linguist demagogues like Mamata Bannerjee. It will take time to penetrate beyond that level.
Finally, when all else is done, he faces his dilemma on the gender front. Actually women face this dilemma earlier, as their gender identity is always the most threatened identity.
The point of this elaborate explanation is to convey my personal reading of the situation, that it is not a secular issue at all. It is an issue of our failure to cope with the identity demands of the tribes and of tribals. The failure in central India has led directly to the so-called Maoist problem, which is not a Maoist problem at all; it is a tribal problem, and the tribals are flocking to the Maoist cause simply because the apparatus of state has let them down. The failure in the north east has led to the development of a number of tiny rebellions, as a number of small tribes have taken to arms against being flooded by caste Hindus from the plains. The Naga and Mizo rebellions were the biggest of this kind, and that India has been able to bring them under control shows that solutions are possible.
The present troubles are plainsmen against tribals, not Muslims against Hindus or Animists or Christian. It is just that the communal composition of that area is far more Muslim than in other parts.
Having said that, clearly successive Congress governments in Assam have behaved in a criminally irresponsible manner by behaving with leniency towards unofficial migrants from Bangladesh, who have added to the older Bengali Muslim population. At this level, they were still operating at the level of religious identity, and were opposed at the ethno-linguistic level, Ahom versus Bengali, by the AAGSP and the AASU. When the anti-migration agitation broke out, the Congress was caught flat-footed and thought matters could be resolved by resolving the competition between religious identities. Naturally, they failed, since the Ahom had moved on. They have failed again, in failing to recognize and address the plainsman-tribal divide, and that is what is at the root of these problems today.
Has there been a failure of secular India?
No.
These are not problems related to religion, these are problems related to a wholly different thing, the question of the future of the tribes. Until we address the problems of the tribals, we cannot get a resolution of this clash.
