The ‘minority’ confusion

WITH EYES WIDE OPEN
D. N. Bezboruah
The Indian politician is a remarkable creature. Regardless of the level of his education, he can change the meanings of words, coin new words and get people to accept all of it. And the beauty of it is that he can do all this not just with his mother tongue, but also with English. He can change the semantics of words in a way not only to create confusion, but also to make that confusion a permanent fact of life. As on many other issues, there is a great deal of confusion about the word 'minority' within the Indian polity that has taken in its grip the large majority in India that wants to have nothing to do with dictionaries. And this is true also of the words 'secular' and 'secularism'. But given the importance of the word 'minority' in the context of recent events, it might make sense to start with this one.
The dictionary gives quite a few meanings of the word 'minority', and all of them have to do with a number that is less than half the people or votes or whatever is being spoken of. Thus we have "smaller number or part, esp. within a political party or structure"; "the number of votes cast for this (a minority of two); "the state of having less than half the votes or of being supported by less than half the body of opinion (in the minority)"; "a relatively small group of people differing from others in the society of which they are a part in race, religion, language, political persuasion, etc."; "(attrib.) relating to or done by the minority (minority interests)" and so on. Thus, in day-to-day use of the word (outside the context of votes and of the legislature) one would tend to use the word in referring to any group of people that do not constitute the majority in any sense of the term - racial, religious, linguistic and so on. Thus, Muslims, Christians, Jains, Buddhists or Sikhs would qualify to be minorities when we have religion in mind, Assamese speakers would be minorities in Chennai in the context of language, and Congressmen would be minorities in West Bengal in the political context and so on. And even in the religious context, the Hindus who constitute the majority in the national context would be minorities in Jammu & Kashmir, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland. (They are being turned into minorities from having been the majority community in Asom by our own elected government - through the simple process of importing people from Bangladesh to take over the State.) It is, therefore, a semantic perversion to give the meaning to the word 'minorities' that our politicians have done. In the world of our polity, 'minority' has only one meaning: Muslims. When the politician talks of 'minorities' in India, he does not have Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Parsees or Sikhs in mind. For him, 'minorities' is Muslims -- period. In fact, the Bangladeshi migrants don't even have to be a citizen to be a minority! It is like me standing in Times Square of New York and claiming to be 'minority' because I am not part of the majority there!

Why has this semantic aberration come about? It is because the politician has identified the one minority group that is most important for elections because it is this minority group that holds the determining votes in all close contests. That is why all politicians who cannot hope to win elections on the basis of their performance, must bank exclusively on the votes of minority groups that are large in number and on gimmicks like reservations and quotas. And because these politicians cannot do anything even for the 'minorities' that will give them durable benefits and improve their quality of life, they do what they can handle with their limited abilities and intelligence. So, come election time it is placate, placate and placate the minorities. Thus far, we would have had no problems. The majority can take it all in its stride. After all, it accounts for about 80 per cent of the population. But things don't end here. The ruling party or coalition tramples the rights, needs, demands, aspirations and dreams of the majority underfoot and is obsessed with the minority. It is as though democracy is minority rule rather than being majority rule. The majority is constantly undermined as being 'communal'. This so-called secular democratic republic of ours is the only country in the world that subsidizes haj pilgrims. Not even the Islamic countries do this. But India does not subsidize the pilgrimage of any Hindus, Christians or Buddhists. How is this a secular action? The ruling party or coalition, as the case may be, insists on treating even the criminals among the minorities as gentlemen and winking at all their crimes, minor and major. The Congress, that actually organized the massacre of innocent Sikhs in Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, is unable to hang Afzal Guru who masterminded the attack on the Indian Parliament resulting in the death of several security men who gave their lives to protect our MPs. What he did symbolized an attack on India itself. The Supreme Court has sentenced Afzal Guru to death by hanging, but he has not been hanged. So the equation for our 'secular' politicians is quite clear. They can organize a massacre of a minority community in Delhi over the assassination of an individual, but cannot execute the death sentence of someone who mounted an attack on the entire nation because of his religion. In other words, the dynasty takes precedence over the nation any day for some political parties.

Let us just consider the latest serial blasts of Delhi. Like the earlier blasts of Delhi, Mumbai, Varanasi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Bangaluru, all those connected with the bombings were Muslims. And did we see any concerted action to nab the terrorists who were killing innocent people? Not that I can recall. Even the latest Delhi blasts only served to underscore the incompetence of the Home Ministry and our intelligence agencies. People were rightly blaming the Union Home Minister for being completely in the dark about the culprits. Fortunately, Sonia Gandhi bailed him out and he was saved. However, the one who really shook up the system was a brave, patriotic and dedicated police officer, Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma, who barged into the den of the terrorists in Jamianagar without the protection of his bullet-proof jacket and gunned down two of the five. They shot him down with an AK-47. Yet this brave and patriotic deed made it impossible for the police and the politicians to keep looking the other way every time the Indian Mujahideen organized serial blasts in crowded places. Inspector Sharma forced the hand of our police force and our conniving politicians. The confessional statements of Mohammad Saif led to the arrest of seven more terrorists in Delhi and five more in Bangaluru. They were all Muslims and all were from the Azamgarh district of UP, once known for its scholars.

If anyone were to claim that all Muslims were terrorists, the nation would dismiss such a statement as utter rubbish. But what does one do when we discover that all the terrorists in this case were Muslims? What do we do when an organization like the SIMI that has now spawned the Indian Mujahideen organizes serial bombings all over India and had even planned to blast Nehru Place to smithereens with 20 powerful bombs? What do we do when two of the terrorists who are students of Jamia Milia University become "alleged terrorists", courtesy the metropolitan newspapers called 'national dailies'? And the Vice-Chancellor of the university even decides to pay the expenses of their legal defence! What is even worse, Union Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh backs the decision of the Jamia Milia University to pay for the legal defence of traitors of the country! And why wouldn't he do this? Did the university not name its distance learning centre after this secular HRD minister last year? And having got a grant of Rs 40 crore from the minister, has the university not renamed a road leading to the teachers' residence complex as "Shahrah-i-Arjun Singh"?

What the distortion of the meaning of 'minority' has done in India is to give just one minority community pre-eminence even over the majority in all matters political. And what human activity do we have in India that our politicians have not politicized? But this is not the worst of it yet. This undue indulgence shown to just one minority community (including their worst criminals and terrorists) has created new equations for everyone in the country. One is that the minorities can do no wrong. Which translates to the pragmatism of converting to Islam if you wish to have the best of everything in today's and tomorrow's India. The other is an implied rejection of virtues like patriotism, love for one's country and all that claptrap. This will totally destroy the equation of nationality and allegiance to one's flag and country. It will promote allegiance to religion and maybe even to the principle of jihad which has no place in a democratic or secular set-up. So what I called confusion at the beginning could well have been called a dilemma that the opportunist politician, the politician without performance and the politician without homework who still hankers for power faces at all times. He has to pretend that he doesn't. How can he really call himself a minister of a democratic country when he is actually instructed to go all out for minority rule and for the best interests of one dynasty? How can he talk about his country being secular when only one community has the right to retain its own personal laws? We can call ourselves democratic and secular only when we acquire the guts to tell just one minority group like Australia did: "We believe in parliament, we believe in the rule of law (with our own laws, of course), in free elections and all that goes with democracy. We believe in monogamy. We believe in freedom. If you think these laws and these norms are not good enough, and if you prefer your personal laws to ours, you also have the freedom to leave and to go to a land where the laws and customs of your choice exist. But as long as you live in India as an Indian citizen, you will have to abide by our laws which are the same for everyone." When we acquire the courage to say this to all Indians alike, we shall acquire the right to call ourselves both democratic and secular. And when we have done this, we shall no longer need labels to proclaim our real status to the rest of the world. source: sentinel assam