No place for hate in democracy

It is perhaps one of the biggest ironies of Indian politics that the BJP has welcomed the Supreme Court verdict banning the use of religion and caste in politics while the Jamaat-e-Islami in India has expressed concerns over the ruling.

While the reservations of the Jamaat – which does not take part in electoral politics in India – are bewildering, the BJP’s stance is most interesting considering the party owes its phenomenal growth and ascent to power entirely to its successful use of the Hindu majority’s religious sentiments on issues like Ayodhya.

The BJP’s strength in parliament remained just two people – represented by its stalwarts Vajpayee and Advani – for years until Advani decided to take charge of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP)’s Ram temple movement.

It was Advani’s Rath Yatra that helped the BJP multiply its strength from two to around 200 seats, eventually bringing the party to power under Vajpayee. Narendra Modi’s stupendous success in 2014 had been built on the efforts of the two giants  His own rabble-rousing rhetoric and the defining events of 2002, burnishing his antecedents as a tough-talking strong Hindu leader, did the rest. The more he refused to formally atone for the 2002 riots, the more his legend as the messiah of Hindutva seemed to grow.  

By refusing to apologise or even acknowledge the 2002 carnage Modi turned the blemish into a badge of honour even as an unsure Congress danced around him.  Without the Gujarat 2002 on his bio data, it’s doubtful Modi would have made it to the BJP’s nomination for the top job, let alone win the electoral battle.

True, Modi did not openly seek votes in the name of religion or caste in 2014. But then he did not need to. Everyone knows and understands what he stands for. Even during the 2014 elections – ostensibly fought in the name of development – there had been repeated references to Pakistani plots, terrorists and Bangladeshi infiltrators, which are loosely and interchangeably used in Hindutva Speak to refer to Muslims.

But why blame the BJP alone? The Congress actually invented this game of using religion and caste, often hunting with hounds and running with hares. Indeed, the history of this politics of tokenism and using people’s religious beliefs or caste affiliations to garner votes is as old as the party itself. Everyone else learned from the grand old party in this respect.

During its long history of struggle against the British colonialism, the party of Gandhi and Nehru often spoke and acted in a fashion that the BJP later perfected. That is, using religious sensibilities and symbols and often acting as the spokesperson and guardian of the majority.         

Indeed, it was this tendency that forced Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a staunchly secular and liberal politician – then inspired by the ideals of Dadabhai Nauroji and Westminster liberals – to leave the Congress in disgust and join the Muslim League which he had long regarded as a communal party.

Indeed, this majoritarian approach and the ‘soft Hindutva’ of the Congress played a crucial role in convincing Jinnah and his followers that Hindus and Muslims couldn’t live together and a separate homeland for Muslims was the only way to protect the interests of the country’s largest minority.

After India’s independence, the Congress and the Hindutva camp have long played a classic good cop-bad cop routine with the Muslims. On the one hand, the Congress governments literally presided over thousands of communal riots across the country, allowing the Hindutva forces a free rein to target the helpless minority community, breaking its back economically and psychologically again and again. On the other hand, the party presented itself as the only protector and guardian of Muslims and other minorities, demanding their votes as wages of protection.

This is an endless saga of classic doublespeak and hypocrisy of the Congress in the name of secularism and democratic fascism of Hindutva with the Muslims getting caught in between, and creating an endless cycle of exploitation and injustice that the Muslims understand but haven’t been able to break. This is why they eagerly jumped on the bandwagons of new messiahs like Mulayam Singh, Lalu Yadav and Mayawati when they surfaced.

Although the new players are not as exploitative as the old guard, it is more or less the same game with a new cast.   All that the Muslims have gotten in return all these years for their votes is ‘protection’ from their eternal foe. Of course, this is still a democracy – the world’s largest and most colourful one. However, the religious and communal identity of both the electors and the elected remains crucial for the final outcome. It is the elephant in the room that everyone pretends not to see.

In a country where one’s birth is as crucial as one’s beliefs, perhaps one cannot expect anything different. India’s constitution acknowledges and recognises this reality. This is why even reservations (affirmative action) in government jobs and other areas are determined on the basis of caste.

No wonder political parties for years have shamelessly and repeatedly exploited sectarian identities of voters often appealing to their basic communal instincts and religious sensibilities to laugh all the way to the vote bank.          No wonder candidates are carefully selected by parties according to the communal and religious composition of constituencies. You cannot pick a Muslim candidate for a Hindu majority constituency or a low-caste Dalit for a constituency dominated by upper castes and hope to win. Like it or not, this is the truth of Indian politics.

Even if you accept this as an inescapable reality of Indian democracy and society at large, clearly the time has come for putting an end to all the hate, exploitation and injustice that politicians have inflicted on the country’s voiceless minorities and Dalits for decades with their so-called politics of identity.

The SC verdict banning the use of religion and caste to seek votes is therefore most welcome. Let’s hope this will finally drain the swamp. However, the curbs on exploitation of religion and caste shouldn’t be limited to elections. There must be a total and blanket ban on the use of sectarian and religious identities and issues by politicians as a shortcut to power and glory. Everyone knows who they are and how the cynical game has been played all these years.

For years, thugs like Thackeray got away with murder and much more in the name of Hindu sentiments. The same Supreme Court led by Justice J S Verma gave him the fig leaf of an excuse, arguing that Hinduism and Hindutva is not a religion but a way of life. Indeed, no prominent politician in India’s history, from Delhi 1984 to Ayodhya 1992 to Gujarat 2002, has ever been held to account. And now the BJP has the gall to use the court ruling to target the usual suspects like the Muslim League and Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen.

But a clear and present danger to the nation’s integrity and security are those who betray no sectarian identity but whose real agenda is little different from that of  European fascist parties and those who see and treat all minorities as second class citizens. While their leaders sing of inclusive growth and progress, they encourage their second lieutenants like Sakshi Maharaj and Yogi Adityanath (both MPs) to spout venom against Muslims.         

All this must stop if the highest court in the land means what it says. This may be the best and most needed judgement in India’s history. The judicial system must truly act as a watchdog of the constitution and protect the secular and inclusive character of Indian democracy. Those who openly purvey hate and discriminate against a community or section of society for electoral gains and power should have no place in a democracy.

The writer is a Middle East
based columnist.

Email: aijaz.syed@hotmail.com