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Mainstream, VOL LI, No 9, February 16, 2013

Five-point Formula for a Riot-free India

Monday 18 February 2013

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by Asghar Ali Engineer

India’s legacy of communalism and communal violence is here to stay, if one goes by the activities of the Rightwing Hindutva forces and the government’s total inaction, nay, paralysis. Communalism in India is taking long strides and the lull in communal violence after the Gujarat riots has been broken and now communal riots are more frequent. The Assam riots had shaken the country like Gujarat did and a series of riots have been taking place one after the other or, what M.J. Akbar called during the eighties, riot after riot.

The secular forces, and I do not doubt their sincerity, do feel concerned about these riots but their concern lasts no longer than the riot itself. This halting approach does not make much of an impact. It is the RSS’ mission and they work with great zeal round the year to spread the communal poison but secular forces, much less in number, even much less in zeal, are no match for the RSS pracharaks.

And of the government, of the Congress or of Mayawati or of Mulayam Singh Yadav, the less said the better. Only the Left, and Laloo Prasad Yadav and now Nitish Kumar have tried to tackle this problem more seriously. Laloo Prasad and Nitish Kumar acted out of political compulsion but have stuck to their guns. In fact both are competing with each other to attract the Muslim vote. The way Bihar became riot-free (as well as West Bengal due to the policies of the Left) shows that if the state is determined no riots can take place.

The Congress, though ideologically secular, has always followed quite dubious policies and has never made any serious attempt to check communal violence in the States ruled by it. On the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi controversy it never took a clear and determined stand and even allowed it to be demolished and plunged the country into the inferno of communal violence.

Most of the politicians are in fact interested in promoting communal and caste divisions as identity politics benefits them immensely in terms of delivery of votes. As the gravity of the economic problem increases and inflation runs wild, identity politics becomes even more important for them since the failure to solve vital economic problems is compensated by identity votes.

Then what could be the solution for the communal problem? No easy and short-term solution is possible, to be sure. Also, whatever the solution, the politicians’ involvement is necessary. In a democracy one cannot dispense with the politicians, good or bad. If not for anything else, some politicians can respond in order to garner minority votes. After a lot of deliberations I have evolved a five-point solution to the problem in the long term as no immediate solution is possible.

Point number one is total change in syllabus, especially of medieval history and modern history pertaining to the freedom struggle and division of the country in 1947. It is regrettable that even after 65 years of our freedom, our approach to medieval history has not changed. We still use utterly simplistic versions of medieval history resulting in controversy on the demolition of temples.

The phenomenal success of the Ram Janma-bhoomi controversy was the result of a mindset created by such a version of history. Mehmood Ghaznavi and Aurangzeb lead the list of temple- bashers. There is no mention, even cursorily, of our composite culture and efforts made by Sufi saints, writers, poets and musicians to build bridges between the two communities. Sufis like Baba Farid, Moinuddin Chishti, Miyan Meer, Nizamuddin Awliya, Mirza Jane Janan, Dara Shikoh, besides musicians, architects, poets and others to fuse the two cultures together and bring two communities together.

Students studying history have not even heard their names. It would be of immense help to introduce a supplementary text, or at least a chapter, on the richness of our composite culture to make the students realise that both the communities and their intellectual and religious leaders were close to each other and contributed immensely to enrich our culture religiously, spiritually and intellectually.

Dara Shikoh even wrote a book, Majma’ul Bahrayn (Comingling of Two Oceans, that is, Hinduism and Islam), wherein Dara has shown convincingly that two religions are not at logger-heads but come close to each other. Such works can greatly contribute to bringing the two communities together even today. The fact that such important contributions are excluded from our textbooks shows we are more interested in division than in unity. We must put pressure on the politicians to include such materials in our history textbooks.

Similarly our textbooks on modern history and freedom struggle are highly biased against the minorities. They hardly highlight the role played by these communities in the freedom struggle. Names like Maulana Mehmoodul Hasan, Maulana Husain Ahmed Madani, Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi, Maulana Hifzurrehman etc. are not even mentioned; they who made great sacrifices for the freedom of the country and many of whom were exiled to Malta, Andaman Nicobar etc. They also launched the Reshmi Rumal Conspiracy to spread the message of freedom and paid heavily for that.

The textbooks give an impression as if most of the Muslims, with a few exceptions, were on the side of Pakistan though the truth is otherwise. A vast majority of Muslims was against partition and for unity of the country. Even today most of the Muslims are held responsible for partition and this remains a prominent issue in many communal riots. It will be in the interest of the country to teach the correct version of the history of the freedom struggle and the role played by Muslims in the freedom struggle.

The second point of vital importance is focus on value-education. Today the entire focus of our education is promoting career rather than character. In our education system, for the lack of values, career has become most important and character building has been completely marginalised. I do not want to discuss the reasons here but this is indeed a great tragedy for us. Also, our education system produces a conforming mind rather than a thinking mind. An education system which fails to produce a thinking and critical mind is worth nothing. Our education system produces only a career-oriented mind.

Not only that; our education system creates a prejudiced mind, prejudiced against the minorities, tribals and Dalits. It is anything but a healthy mind. Thus by overhauling the education system we will do a great service to the cause of our nation. It would respect the rights of poor, weaker sections and would be more inclusive. Today the education system is part of the problem, let us make it part of the solution.

Reforming the police system: Our police is a product of the same education system and it also gets influenced by unchallenged stories in the media about the minorities and other weaker sections of society and hence has been highly communalised. We cannot eliminate riots from India or we cannot handle riots properly without comprehensive police reforms. It is horribly prejudiced. In riot after riot after riot we hear stories of how the police promotes, rather than prevent, communal riots.

I have investigated communal riots right from the Jabalpur riot in 1961 to the Gujarat riots in 2002 and have conducted more than 150 police workshops for peace and harmony. I have found that the police too is a part of the problem rather than the solution. Mr V.N. Rai, who was a high ranking police official from the UP cadre and is at present the VC of the Mahatma Gandhi Hindi University, Wardha, concluded through his research on the “Role of Police in Communal Riots” in the National Police Academy, Hyderabad that the police is highly communa-lised. He also wrote a novel in Hindi on the Allahabad riots, Shajhar Mein Curfew, in which he portrays the role of the police in the Allahabad riots and shows how it shows solidarity with the Hindu community.

Thus I propose the secular orientation from time to time through refresher courses, apart from secular orientation along with professional training before joining the service. This is most necessary. I have seen from my experience that such orientation influences the police’s attitude a lot. I have also lectured at the National Police Academy, Hyderabad and some other police academies and seen the results. If it is done regularly and compulsorily, it will have very encouraging results. Recently in the Dhule riots in Maharashtra the police directly killed six Muslim youth by firing at them over the chest and neck in violation of the police manual. The government took no action, did not even suspend any of the concerned officers.

Enactment of Communal Violence and Targeted Bill: This law, if passed, will go a long way in curbing communal violence as it fixes responsibility on the concerned officers. This Bill has been drafted very carefully by responsible secular activists and given to Sonia Gandhi to get it enacted. The government convened the National Integration Council meeting to test the waters and BJP leaders like Arun Jaitly and Sushma Swaraj mounted such a severe attack on it that the government was unnerved and since then the Bill is lying in cold storage. It should be immediately revived, if necessary by some amendments, and enacted. Also if it is accompanied by implementation of the Fifth Police Commission Report that will greatly help. This Bill also ensures adequate reparations and compensation in the event of outbreak of violence.

Mixed and cosmopolitan living: With every riot Hindus and Muslims begin to leave mixed areas and get polarised religion-wise. This greatly harms the cause of integration. In such events communal propaganda and rumours become far more effective. The government should not register any society unless it has members of all communities in it, that is, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsis and Sikhs as well as Buddhists and Jains. In our country caste and religion-wise societies are quite common. In Singapore, as per law no society will be registered until all religious and ethnic communities are included.

These are five suggestions which, if accepted, can go a long way in promoting peace and communal harmony. I know it is not easy to persuade the government to implement these suggestions as these suggestions go against the vested interests, particularly political interests as today elections are won by exclusion rather than inclusion, on the basis of identities rather than on the basis of programmes and people’s needs. Nevertheless, these suggestions can be discussed in the public fora.

Dr Asghar Ali Engineer, who runs the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS), Mumbai, is the patron of the All India Secular Forum set up in 2002 when the Gujarat pogrom in particular and the communal forces in general were threatening the secular fabric of society; the Forum had rejected the Communal Violence Bill drafted by the Ministry of Home Affairs as it gave the police draconian powers to handle communal disturbances without any accountability, and organised a campaign for an alternative legislation. He won along with Swami Agnivesh the Right to Livelihood Award in 2004 in recognition of his steadfast commitment to promote the values of coexistence and tolerance.

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