The Other Side of Communalism

Amulya Ganguli
A communal party, the Muslim League, was responsible for the partition of India. The provocative role of another group of communal outfits –– the Sangh Parivar, led by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and its fraternal organizations, like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal, has been alienating the minorities like never before.

There is little doubt that the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 by a mob of Hindu fanatics and the Gujarat riots of 2002 have spawned an indigenous brand of terrorism involving a section, though a small one, of Indian Muslims.

What has evidently made this section take to jehad in India is apparently the belief that the virulent anti-minority groups under the Parivar have been able to firmly establish themselves in Indian politics. As such, the minorities are now virtually at the mercy of these rabid elements.

Although the RSS and the Jana Sangh-BJP have long been a part of the social and political scene, they were essentially marginal forces till the late 1980s. Incidentally, a similar anti-Congress tie-up is now again evident between the Left and the BJP on issues such as the nuclear deal, inflation and so on.

The demolition of the Babri Masjid was an unprecedented incident since places of worship had never before been targeted for destruction by any political group. For the BJP and the Parivar, it provided a kind of psychological breakthrough for, earlier, they were uncertain how the people would react to such an act of sacrilege.

But once they realised that they didn’t have to pay too heavy a political price, they lost any inhibitions about sparing a house of God, as the recent attacks on churches from Orissa to Karnataka to Madhya Pradesh to Kerala by the saffron activists show. These acts of violence go against the grain of India’s multicultural polity underlining respect for all communities, not to mention the Constitution, which is based on the rule of law and fundamental, including minority, rights.

The grouse against the Christians is that they are forcibly converting people into their faith, although the census figures show a drop in the number of Christians in India from 2.5 to 2.3 per cent.

It is possible that the example of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere had primed the misguided among the Indian Muslim youths for similar acts in India. However, but for the vicious anti-minority stance of the Hindutva camp, it is unlikely that they would have adopted terrorist tactics. As is known, the Indian Muslims had taken little interest in the Kashmiri insurgency even if Kashmir was mentioned in the same breath with Palestine, Bosnia and Chechnya by the jehadi groups abroad to enlist recruits.

As the attacks on the churches show, a part of the Parivar’s game plan is to exacerbate communal tension and use any retaliatory action by the minorities as a pretext to take the campaign to a more provocative level.

It is obvious that these confrontational tactics of the saffron lobby have succeeded in driving a section of the Muslims towards terrorism. Now, apprehension has been expressed about the Christian youths, too, taking to violence if there is no let-up in the attacks on the churches. source: sentinel assam