Prodigy17
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Secular Congress and communal BJP
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Aakar Patel
In India, secularism means inclusion: respect for all faiths. The traditional meaning of the word secular is not understood, because for Indians faith -- dharm -- can never have menace. The world understands secularism as distance from religion. In India the closest word to describe that would be adharm -- that-which-is-not-religion -- which is a negative word. Adharm means irreligious but also something unnatural, and bad, because dharm is very good.
Indians use binsampradayik, which means non-sectarian, for secular, and because of this the meaning is lost to us. A second word that is understood differently is nationalism. In all Indian languages nationalism -- rashtravad -- is a good word. It is easy to build consensus against the external enemy because of this. National wounds, like the war with China or Partition, are collective, heal slowly and infect the next generation through education.
Nationalism is associated with the positive and uncompromising sentiment towards the nation. The threat arising to itself from a mob marching lockstep is not feared. Because it is always looking forward at the positive, the Indian mob marches on and does not acknowledge what it has trampled upon. It is able to put its violence behind it easily.
To return to secularism, we take it to mean 'letting each faith do its own thing'.
Political parties with names like Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (Hyderabad) and Indian Union Muslim League (Kerala) refer to themselves as secular. By this they mean they are aligned against the BJP, which is communal, a third word that is coloured in Indian application.
India's national politics revolves around two parties, the BJP and the Congress, and their allies. The BJP has a little over a fifth of India's votes and the Congress has a little over a fourth. The allies of the Congress do not support the BJP because it is seen as divisive party, one that uses religion, and violence, to divide the population. But how secular is the Congress?
A book by journalist Manoj Mitta and lawyer H S Phoolka on the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 shows us that the Congress is not very different from the BJP in its divisiveness. On October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi was shot by two of her Sikh bodyguards. They were angry over the storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar by the Indian army, which flushed out Sikh terrorists that the temple authorities were unable or unwilling to evict.
After Indira Gandhi's assassination, the government of Rajiv Gandhi stood back as the Hindus of Delhi settled scores with the Sikhs, killing over 2,500 of them. The Congress party led the attack.
Those Congressmen who were named by the victims as leading the attackers are still in the Congress. Some, like Commerce and Industries Minister Kamal Nath, hold high office. Others, like Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler, are still in the Lok Sabha but made to step down from their posts after an indictment a couple of years ago. None of the Congressmen has been convicted.
The Congress party presided over the massacre of 2,733 people in the first week of November. In East Delhi, H K L Bhagat's constituency, 1,234 people were killed, half of them on November 1. On that day the police arrested 26 people, all of them Sikh. Rajiv Gandhi promoted Bhagat to cabinet minister. Sajjan Kumar, the man named in the most number of affidavits as leading the mob that was murdering and raping, got 8.5 lakh votes as he won his seat from outer Delhi as a Congressman in the last election. Policemen who did their duty in 1984 were punished by the Congress.
At Sabzi Mandi police station, Assistant Commissioner Kewal Singh and Inspector Gurmail Singh arrested 90 rioters and established peace. When they asked for permission to enforce a curfew, they were relieved of duty by Additional Commissioner Hukam Singh Jatav. They two men, both Sikhs, were the only two officers punished for action during the riots. Two years later, a commission of inquiry found that they were "guilty of absconding their positions of duty". In an Indian riot, the state disappears as an obstruction to the mob because police officers do not want to get into trouble.
The former finance minister of India, Madhu Dandavate, saw Sikhs being pulled out of his train at Tughlakabad, outside Delhi. He saw a mob butcher them and burn their bodies on the platform. The police watched; the more enterprising joined in. Kalyanpuri's police chief Soor Veer Singh Tyagi at gunpoint disarmed all the licensed Sikh gun-holders in his locality after they fired on mobs attacking their homes. When the mob returned and the disarmed men, who were blacksmiths, put up a fight, Tyagi came and arrested 25 of them.
At Trilokpuri the next morning, a group of Sikhs used their kirpans to keep at bay a mob of 400 from inside a Gurudwara. Tyagi ordered the Sikhs out of the Gurudwara and forced them to return home, firing in the air to show he meant business. As soon as the group broke up, the mob fell on them, and killed and raped.
Air force Captain Manmohan Singh Talwar was awarded the Mahavir Chakra in 1971 for five raids on Pakistan, including an attack on Sargodha. His shop in central Delhi was attacked on the morning of November 1. A mob of 2,000 people laid siege to his store and set it on fire after breaking the windows.
Captain Talwar and his family doused the flames. Then they went out to plead with the mob. Captain Talwar had his licensed 12-bore rifle while his sons held hockey sticks. He did not fire even when goaded by the mob, saying that he had no enmity with them. They did not disperse. When the family went back, the mob broke in and looted the shop. They found the family hiding and broke Captain Talwar's teeth, hitting him with a bar. That is when he fired. The mob fled outside. The police came and gave their guns to the mob, which began firing at the Talwars. Five people were killed in the shooting. Deputy Commissioner Amod Kanth arrived and disarmed Captain Talwar. Then he arrested him, charged him with murder and jailed him.
On November 5, Amod Kanth arrested and jailed 16 Sikhs, including five women and six children. The head of the family, Amir Singh, was killed in his house and his family fired on the mob in self-defence. Another member of the family, Narinder Singh, also died after the police opened fire on the family.
For jailing women and children, Rajiv Gandhi's government gave Deputy Commissioner Amod Kanth a gallantry award in June 1985. The award citation mentioned Amod Kanth's 'conspicuous gallantry, courage and devotion to duty of a high order' after 'miscreants started indiscriminate firing' from a house and '16 persons were taken into custody.' No mention that 11 of them were women and children. Last year, Commissioner (retired) Amod Kanth contested from Delhi on a Congress ticket and won the election from South Delhi. India's mobs always reward the parties that let them do violence, as the BJP learnt in Gujarat.
The problem of civil violence in India does not originate at the political party, but in the population, which forms its nasty consensus -- nationalist or religious -- quickly and acts on it. Both the BJP and the Congress are similar, and will stand aside when a dominant community wants to expend its hatred on a minority. Both parties even used the same judge to whitewash their actions in Delhi and Gujarat. Justice Girish Nanavati, from Gujarat, absolved both the Congress and the BJP through his reports.
The difference is that the Congress does not carry with it the desire to keep wounding its victims. It uses violence for power and once it achieves it makes some attempt at reconciliation. The state of Punjab, which has a Sikh majority, has elected Congress governments even after 1984.
The BJP is different, and lethal because of that difference. After the violence in Gujarat, the party has stopped giving tickets to Muslim legislators because it wants Hindus to see that it does not want anything to do with Muslims. Out of 182 assembly seats, not one was offered to a Muslim in Gujarat by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who does not attempt reconciliation.
Muslims are nine per cent of the state's population. The BJP wants the Muslims to know that they are being shown their place. Because of this, the Gujarati is unable to let go of his hatred of the Muslim, which remains on the boil as the BJP's calibrated politics periodically injects its venom into him.
It took Sonia Gandhi, a European to show Indians how to do reconciliation, when she chose Manmohan Singh as prime minister. The state can prevent violence quite easily, through the use of force, which the Indian mob respects. The British kept us apart for a century because they were neutral, and uninterested in the mob because it could not vote.
The writer is a former newspaper editor who lives in Bombay. Email: aakar.patel@gmail.com
Secular Congress and communal BJP
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Aakar Patel
In India, secularism means inclusion: respect for all faiths. The traditional meaning of the word secular is not understood, because for Indians faith -- dharm -- can never have menace. The world understands secularism as distance from religion. In India the closest word to describe that would be adharm -- that-which-is-not-religion -- which is a negative word. Adharm means irreligious but also something unnatural, and bad, because dharm is very good.
Indians use binsampradayik, which means non-sectarian, for secular, and because of this the meaning is lost to us. A second word that is understood differently is nationalism. In all Indian languages nationalism -- rashtravad -- is a good word. It is easy to build consensus against the external enemy because of this. National wounds, like the war with China or Partition, are collective, heal slowly and infect the next generation through education.
Nationalism is associated with the positive and uncompromising sentiment towards the nation. The threat arising to itself from a mob marching lockstep is not feared. Because it is always looking forward at the positive, the Indian mob marches on and does not acknowledge what it has trampled upon. It is able to put its violence behind it easily.
To return to secularism, we take it to mean 'letting each faith do its own thing'.
Political parties with names like Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (Hyderabad) and Indian Union Muslim League (Kerala) refer to themselves as secular. By this they mean they are aligned against the BJP, which is communal, a third word that is coloured in Indian application.
India's national politics revolves around two parties, the BJP and the Congress, and their allies. The BJP has a little over a fifth of India's votes and the Congress has a little over a fourth. The allies of the Congress do not support the BJP because it is seen as divisive party, one that uses religion, and violence, to divide the population. But how secular is the Congress?
A book by journalist Manoj Mitta and lawyer H S Phoolka on the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 shows us that the Congress is not very different from the BJP in its divisiveness. On October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi was shot by two of her Sikh bodyguards. They were angry over the storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar by the Indian army, which flushed out Sikh terrorists that the temple authorities were unable or unwilling to evict.
After Indira Gandhi's assassination, the government of Rajiv Gandhi stood back as the Hindus of Delhi settled scores with the Sikhs, killing over 2,500 of them. The Congress party led the attack.
Those Congressmen who were named by the victims as leading the attackers are still in the Congress. Some, like Commerce and Industries Minister Kamal Nath, hold high office. Others, like Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler, are still in the Lok Sabha but made to step down from their posts after an indictment a couple of years ago. None of the Congressmen has been convicted.
The Congress party presided over the massacre of 2,733 people in the first week of November. In East Delhi, H K L Bhagat's constituency, 1,234 people were killed, half of them on November 1. On that day the police arrested 26 people, all of them Sikh. Rajiv Gandhi promoted Bhagat to cabinet minister. Sajjan Kumar, the man named in the most number of affidavits as leading the mob that was murdering and raping, got 8.5 lakh votes as he won his seat from outer Delhi as a Congressman in the last election. Policemen who did their duty in 1984 were punished by the Congress.
At Sabzi Mandi police station, Assistant Commissioner Kewal Singh and Inspector Gurmail Singh arrested 90 rioters and established peace. When they asked for permission to enforce a curfew, they were relieved of duty by Additional Commissioner Hukam Singh Jatav. They two men, both Sikhs, were the only two officers punished for action during the riots. Two years later, a commission of inquiry found that they were "guilty of absconding their positions of duty". In an Indian riot, the state disappears as an obstruction to the mob because police officers do not want to get into trouble.
The former finance minister of India, Madhu Dandavate, saw Sikhs being pulled out of his train at Tughlakabad, outside Delhi. He saw a mob butcher them and burn their bodies on the platform. The police watched; the more enterprising joined in. Kalyanpuri's police chief Soor Veer Singh Tyagi at gunpoint disarmed all the licensed Sikh gun-holders in his locality after they fired on mobs attacking their homes. When the mob returned and the disarmed men, who were blacksmiths, put up a fight, Tyagi came and arrested 25 of them.
At Trilokpuri the next morning, a group of Sikhs used their kirpans to keep at bay a mob of 400 from inside a Gurudwara. Tyagi ordered the Sikhs out of the Gurudwara and forced them to return home, firing in the air to show he meant business. As soon as the group broke up, the mob fell on them, and killed and raped.
Air force Captain Manmohan Singh Talwar was awarded the Mahavir Chakra in 1971 for five raids on Pakistan, including an attack on Sargodha. His shop in central Delhi was attacked on the morning of November 1. A mob of 2,000 people laid siege to his store and set it on fire after breaking the windows.
Captain Talwar and his family doused the flames. Then they went out to plead with the mob. Captain Talwar had his licensed 12-bore rifle while his sons held hockey sticks. He did not fire even when goaded by the mob, saying that he had no enmity with them. They did not disperse. When the family went back, the mob broke in and looted the shop. They found the family hiding and broke Captain Talwar's teeth, hitting him with a bar. That is when he fired. The mob fled outside. The police came and gave their guns to the mob, which began firing at the Talwars. Five people were killed in the shooting. Deputy Commissioner Amod Kanth arrived and disarmed Captain Talwar. Then he arrested him, charged him with murder and jailed him.
On November 5, Amod Kanth arrested and jailed 16 Sikhs, including five women and six children. The head of the family, Amir Singh, was killed in his house and his family fired on the mob in self-defence. Another member of the family, Narinder Singh, also died after the police opened fire on the family.
For jailing women and children, Rajiv Gandhi's government gave Deputy Commissioner Amod Kanth a gallantry award in June 1985. The award citation mentioned Amod Kanth's 'conspicuous gallantry, courage and devotion to duty of a high order' after 'miscreants started indiscriminate firing' from a house and '16 persons were taken into custody.' No mention that 11 of them were women and children. Last year, Commissioner (retired) Amod Kanth contested from Delhi on a Congress ticket and won the election from South Delhi. India's mobs always reward the parties that let them do violence, as the BJP learnt in Gujarat.
The problem of civil violence in India does not originate at the political party, but in the population, which forms its nasty consensus -- nationalist or religious -- quickly and acts on it. Both the BJP and the Congress are similar, and will stand aside when a dominant community wants to expend its hatred on a minority. Both parties even used the same judge to whitewash their actions in Delhi and Gujarat. Justice Girish Nanavati, from Gujarat, absolved both the Congress and the BJP through his reports.
The difference is that the Congress does not carry with it the desire to keep wounding its victims. It uses violence for power and once it achieves it makes some attempt at reconciliation. The state of Punjab, which has a Sikh majority, has elected Congress governments even after 1984.
The BJP is different, and lethal because of that difference. After the violence in Gujarat, the party has stopped giving tickets to Muslim legislators because it wants Hindus to see that it does not want anything to do with Muslims. Out of 182 assembly seats, not one was offered to a Muslim in Gujarat by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who does not attempt reconciliation.
Muslims are nine per cent of the state's population. The BJP wants the Muslims to know that they are being shown their place. Because of this, the Gujarati is unable to let go of his hatred of the Muslim, which remains on the boil as the BJP's calibrated politics periodically injects its venom into him.
It took Sonia Gandhi, a European to show Indians how to do reconciliation, when she chose Manmohan Singh as prime minister. The state can prevent violence quite easily, through the use of force, which the Indian mob respects. The British kept us apart for a century because they were neutral, and uninterested in the mob because it could not vote.
The writer is a former newspaper editor who lives in Bombay. Email: aakar.patel@gmail.com
Secular Congress and communal BJP
