Tag: Hindu nationalists

Are they killing Gandhi’s soul now?

Mustafa Malik December 29, 2019

SYLHET, Bangladesh: India is in turmoil from an historic clash between two “nations.” Most Indians and most of the rest of the world are waiting to see which of the two triumphs in the “world’s largest democracy.”

The latest clash between the two types of nations has centered on a couple of pieces of legislation, passed by the Hindu nationalist Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. These laws would relegate the country’s 200 million Muslims into second-class citizens. If implemented, they would also drastically erode India’s foundational ideology of secularism. Widespread public protests against these a ti-Muslim laws have led to violent police action and the death of a score of protesters and bystanders. So far the Modi government has shown no sign of quashing or amending those parliamentary acts. The question is whether India will endure as a secular, pluralist nation, or relapse into a religious one.

India’s Hindu nationalists are represented by Modi’s ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). These zealots consider Hinduism, or rather a manufactured version of it, as the only legitimate source of Indian nationhood. Adherents to Islam, Christianity, and other faiths that did not originate in India do not, according to them, belong to the Indian nation. A Hindu nationalist state can be compared with the early Islamic caliphate, Byzantium under its early Christian rulers and the present-day “Jewish nation” of Israel, propagated by its ruling Likud and Haredi parties.

Challenging this credal concept of nationhood in India are a cluster of secular political parties – the Indian National Congress, Trinamool Congress, Communist Party of India- Marxist (CPI-M), and so on – which view India as a “civic nation” in which all citizens – irrespective of their faith, ethnicity and membership of other groups – are equal members of that territorial nation. The United States of American, the United Kingdom, Japan, Malaysia and Bangladesh are among secular, civic nations, some with obvious shortcomings.

I have long been wondering whether India would endure as a Western-style secular, pluralist nation. India’s secular democratic model was chosen by its Oxford-educated founders – Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru – who knew of the deep religious affinity of the everyday Indian and the bigotry of Hindu nationalists. But they and some other Westernized leaders of the Indian independence movement believed that in course of time Indians’ religious passion and sentiments would, to use Nehru’s words, “dissipate” and “recede into the background.” The Hindu nationalists believed, on the other hand, that it was the secular, pluralist system, which they said was alien to Indians’ religious and cultural tradition that would eventually wither away.

On the sunny afternoon of Jan. 30, 1948, Hindu nationalist firebrand Nathuram Vinayak Godse, outraged by Gandhi’s stubborn opposition to anti-Muslim riots in India, pumped three bullets into the heart of the father of the nation, eliminating Gandhi physically. The BJP’s rise to power and many Indians’ unswerving support for it make me wonder if the Hindu nationalists finally would snuff out his soul? Could they replace his creed of a secular democracy with a Hindu theocracy of sorts?

~Mustafa Malik, an international affairs commentator, hosts this blog.

The Hindus outrage Hindus

Mustafa Malik February 15, 2014

Arundhati Roy is one of my heroes. Yet I’ve a problem with her stand on The Hindus: An Alternative History.

The icon of the progressive movement in India has blasted Penguin India for pulling out the book. It was written by Wendy Denier, a respected American Indologist. It’s a serious piece of work, which debunks some of Hindus’ cherished beliefs about their religious tradition. Not surprisingly, it has outraged a whole lot of Hindus in India. Many of them are Hindu nationalists and traditionalists. Roy has demanded to know why the publisher had “caved in [to] the fascists.”

It saddens me indeed to see that the junking of this scholarly work would deny millions of Hindus the opportunity to take a refreshing new look at their society and tradition. I’m persuaded, however, by the reason Penguin India has given for its decision to call off the publication and destroy the copies in its stock. It explained that being an Indian company, it had to abide by Indian laws, which make it a criminal offense to deliberately outrage or insult “religious feelings” by spoken or written words.

Roy and many other critics of the publishing company’s action have offered the typical Western liberal argument. They maintain, in effect, that withholding the publication of a work of art or literature under public pressure flouts what they consider publishers’ duty to defend the freedom of speech, as it’s understood in the West, everywhere in the world. Yes, Viking defied enormous pressure from the Muslim world to publish Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, which maligns the Prophet of Islam. But Viking did so in the West, where the laws and social consensus support its action.

Freedom of expression, as many other Western values, stems from Enlightenment liberalism. Many liberal values have been emulated productively by Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, ex-Communist and other non-Western societies. Free and rational inquiry, pluralism and scientific investigation have enabled those societies to make remarkable intellectual, scientific and technological progress; speed their economic development; and greatly enhance the quality their citizens’ material life.

All the same, many of these societies, especially those with rich and enduring traditions, are adapting liberal ideas and institutions to their own social priorities, which lend most meaning to their lives. India has embraced democracy of the Westminster variety. It retains, however, many religious institutions in the public sphere, which Western democracies wouldn’t. It has banned cow slaughter, forbidden by Hindu scripture. The Indian state patronizes many religious shrines and projects, instead of relegating them to the private sphere. Indian voters have twice elected the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party governments and could do so again this May. The BJP espouses using laws and state institutions to Hinduize Indian society and culture.

The founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and his followers used state power to ban Islam from politics and Europeanize Turkish culture. The Turks, heirs to the Ottoman Islamic civilization, have subsequently cast off most of their Westernization projects and elected an Islam-oriented government thrice in a row.

Enlightenment liberalism, as all other ideologies, has emerged from a particular set of historical circumstances of particular societies. It came about mainly as a reaction to the omnipresent church’s rigorous rules suppressing the desires, expressions and creativity of everyday Christians. It wasn’t much of a surprise, then, that the ideologues and activists of the Enlightenment avenged the harsh religious repression by banishing religion from the public space.

Few non-Western societies faced religious persecution of that scale. Not certainly the Hindus, Muslims or non-Western Christians (Coptic, Maronite, Assyrian, etc.). They all cherish their traditions, founded mostly on religious values, while emulating many liberal political and social ideas and institutions.

This should help explain why Americans and Europeans cared less about Martin Scorsese’s movie “The Last Temptation of the Christ,” which portrayed Jesus as an imperfect, vulnerable man. Muslims around the world were, on the other hand, repelled by The Satanic Verses, as are many Indian Hindus by The Hindus.

The right to free speech can’t be absolute or universal. The free-speech doctrine notwithstanding, American society wouldn’t permit you to use the “n” word for African Americans or question the prevalent narrative about the Holocaust. Crying “Fire!” in a movie theater is a crime under American law. Because values and moral standards vary from civilization to civilization and often from society to society, so should the definition of rights and freedoms.

Luckily, progressive, far-sighted minds throughout history have spoken out and struggled against societal norms and taboos that they saw afflicting man and impeding human well-being. By so doing they’ve promoted needed social reforms and evolution.

Arundhati Roy is among Indian activists who would want Indians to be open to criticism and reevaluation of their religious institutions so Indian society can evolve and progress further. Yet I wouldn’t support her attack on Penguin India for refusing to violate a duly enacted Indian law under which publication of the book could be a crime. Penguin India needs to operate within India’s legal framework until India’s moral and legal system evolves, if it does, to alter that framework.

Mustafa Malik, host of the blog Beyond Freedom, is traveling in the Indian subcontinent.

Mustafa Malik, the host and editor of the blog ‘After the Clash,’ worked for more than three decades as a reporter, editor and columnist for American, British and Pakistani newspapers and as a researcher for two American think tanks. He also conducted fieldwork in Western Europe, the Middle East and South Asia on U.S. foreign policy options, the “crisis of liberalism” and Islamic movements. He wrote continually for major U.S. and overseas newspapers and journals.