Communally Yours

-Harsh Arora

India is the single largest stereotypical representation of a country divided on almost every single parameter that forms a part of demography – be it gender, religion, caste or class. It's not this division in itself that lends India a unique identity, but it is the politicization of these differences that make our country's different co-existing groups uniquely placed at the cusp of turmoil almost every second day for almost every small issue that would barely ruffle a feather in a simpler, less complex democracy. Be it Varun Gandhi's remark on cutting the arms of Muslims or Arundhati Roy's perceived secessionist remarks – motivations that public figures have for flaring the communal set up of the national fabric are diverse, ranging from the need for media airtime compensating for bad policy making and just being a bad politician in general, to satiate certain inner values and inherent notions of empathy for suppressed classes.

In this piece I wish to examine the idea of identity and its association with habitation in a community. Is it necessary for us to exist in a society with a diverse set of identities? Why is intuitively assumed that Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Christians all living together in one nation is the best kind of nation we can have, when history has time and again proved us wrong? Is there any abstract value of the national fabric or the idea of India in isolation to the inevitable clash of civilizations that is bound to happen? Is it possible for a nation state to exist only on the idea of communal homogenization? To be able to comprehend even the more plainer nuances of these arguments, one must drop any notions they have of identity as a tool of defining communal existence. One must reject the notions with which we have been systemically indoctrinated with – that living together is the best possible way; that all identities necessarily must co-exist together.

My principle idea is crystal clear – I believe that mere existence of different identities is not the reason for conflict in society. It is only when you assume a sense of utility in cohabitation that you allow the scope for the differences in these identities to turn into conflict. To understand this, let us examine the kind of value that people attach to their notions of identity – be it religious or cultural. Religious beliefs and values are extremely intrinsic to the average religious individual, to the extent that they start to define every single aspect of his life at some point of time – the clothes he wears, the schools he goes to, the food he eats, the person he marries, and the values he espouses.

Parents today irreversibly pass on their religious identities and notions to their children through numerous manifestations of these beliefs in the way they shape their child's identity. It is essential for a devout Christian to get his son baptised at birth, and for a Jewish or Muslim person to get his son circumcised at birth, or for Brahmins to tie the sacred thread on their child's body. These ideas are so fanatically manifested in a common man's mind that they take precedence over everything – either the respect for the law, or the value of even their own life.

The fact that you see Muslims burning French flags for its policy decision to ban burqas or Islamist clerics issuing fatwas against the Swiss administration for banning minarets in the public sphere, or even the mere act of refusing to be frisked at American Airports for the purpose of national security clearly displays people's association with their religion first and the law of the land later. The fact that devout Muslims are ready to whip themselves to a death like pallor in the name of Allah during Muharrram, or the idea that fanatic Catholics would rather let their lives be changed forever by bearing unplanned pregnancies than resort to abortion supports the assumption that life is considered to be a derivative of God, with religion being his gift to people.

The same arguments can be extended to issues like race and class – the only differences being that in these cases, people's motivations to hold on their identities is based on the idea of self preservation instead of a greater god telling them to do so. Self preservation here implies having a sense of association on the basis of material similarities – like how you look, how much money you have, what the colour of your skin is, what common ancestors you come from, what areas you have traditionally inhabited etc. People attach more value to people who have similar material status and aspirations in society which forms the basis of the race and class divide.

Let us now put the above analysis in context of what we're talking about. When it is clear that one's  identity is fundamental to an individual, two things happen – firstly, one can begin to appreciate how counter intuitive it becomes to promote virtues like tolerance, respect for all identities, and mutual peaceful existence. Second, (and this explains my assumption that a conflict must necessarily arise out of co-existence of identities), that the politicization of the differences of identity for personal gain or mere empathy is A) inevitable in a democracy where flaring communal set ups to establish vote banks is an important strategy to become an elected representative which is the end goal of all politicians and B) the main reason why different identities are bound to clash when pitted together in the same environment.

The final link in my argument is the analysing the causation between the politicization of identities and conflict in society. It is not my burden to prove that every single conflict between identities and communities has political undertones, but my aim is to only prove that politicians in our country have a direct incentive to harp on communal sentimentality to achieve their end of attaining political office, which directly results in a higher propensity towards conflict in a heterogeneous society. The ramifications of the intermingling of identity divisions and politics are analyzed two fold.-

 A) Politics removes the scope for organic discourse to happen in society to reduce friction between two communities which may be at odds at a particular point of time. Take the example of the Godhra Riots. When the horrendous slaughtering of Muslims first happened back in 2002, it was obvious that there would be a huge divide created between Hindus and Muslims nationally, but more specifically in Gujarat. One would assume that over the years, through awareness drives, government initiative, intellectual engagement in media channels, meetings of representatives etc, a the level of animosity between the two groups would have reduced gradually and organic and hatred would be replaced with acceptance and closure. Yet none of this has happened adequately, because the issue has been picked up by politicians from both sides as a constant reminder to their respective electorates of they are the right leaders to A) exact revenge on the other side (read- Varun Gandhi) and B) instil a sense of pride because on being communally represented, or being represented by one who is from amongst them and of their own identity. This kind of interference with organic discourse hampers communal relations.

B) The kind of stature that politicians like Jayalalitha, the late Bal Thackeray, Mamta Banarjee amongst their common party cadre is literally that of Demi-gods, where these people are literally willing to put their life on the line at the beck and call of their political and literal masters. Often this mad ascription to a particular individual and his destructive ideology leads these politically brainwashed sheep to do the worst kinds of things in the name of their leaders, the most glaring of which is inciting riots. (be it the 1984 anti-sikh riots, or the 2002 godhra riots, or the numerous cases of violence by the Marathi Manoos in Maharashtra). The problem in such a scenario is the

inability of legal mechanisms to hold the top level political leaders accountable for motivating and ordering such wrongful actions, as they have a plethora of  disposable young party cadres who have been entrenched with propaganda for years and years just waiting to take the fall in the name of their god in the hope of furthering their own political aspirations and getting an implicit approval from their own personal god.

I would do injustice to my ideas if I do not leave you with an idea of what could have been if there was no abstract value attached to an overarching 'Indian Identity'.  Imagine a society where separate electorates were granted to the dalits at the time of independence, wherein only dalit leaders could stand for election from those constituencies as against the compromise that was eventually reached in the Poona Pact wherein the reservation was given for nomination of candidates and not for their election. I believe there is no legitimacy in the idea that such a move would create a divide in society and isolate other Hindus, because I don't believe that such a divide is bad thing if it was the only way to have ensured complete dalit empowerment right from that point of independence. Draw a parallel to the black movement – blacks across the world today have embraced their suffering and used it as a source of unity and pride. Their are classes in black majority schools where they are taught about their suffering and suffrage for rights to ignite a catharsis – wherein they think they deserve equal treatment not because they are also humans, but because they're an identity of their own and that the source of their power is their suffering. It is for this idea of association that many blacks still prefer to live in downtrodden, economically backward areas called 'ghettos' in the USA even when the government provides them affordable and better housing elsewhere. It is for this reason that blacks prefer to marry within their own race and live in established black communities. One might argue that this kind of an existence, like in the case of separate electorates for dalits, fuels social exclusion as it isolates them from the rest of the world. But the metric for evaluating exclusion or inclusion isn't physical as much as it is the psychological evaluation and perception of people's choices. Social inclusion in these two cases is derived from the fact society as a collective conscience has begun to respect the choices of the blacks worldwide and the dalits in India, recognizing their cohabitation as collective pride and not collective suffering. They respect the fact that dalits and blacks want to marry dalits and blacks only. They respect the fact that dalits and blacks want to live with dalits and blacks only. They respect their cultures more, and society as a whole makes an effort to integrate them as much as possible into mainstream discourse in various forms – be it culture courses in universities, reservations in political as well as normal offices, special privileges given to certain individuals from within their communities, etc. This is a clear indication of how you can promote tolerance and respect even when the physical distribution of your demography is homogenized. In simple terms, imagine an India where states existed on the basis of different religions or cultural identities alone. Then, instead of preaching such values of tolerance and respect to every individual within one state, you would teach them to different states as collectives. There is a greater scope for success in the latter case as A) people will be generally happy with the idea of self representation extended to the highest level and B) politicization of such differences will no longer flare communal or identity differences as homogenization would ensure that, well, there are no two discourses prevailing in one society to clash with each other.

Of course, my ideas are fairly radical and may be susceptible to many problems – most of them being unique to the mass homogenization and cultural isolation of people. But that is the beauty of good governance- that there is no foolproof system. Every single system of governance has many fundamental flaws, which signifies the diversity of our nation in the fact that it is impossible to accommodate every single interest at any given point of time or in any one policy decision. But then again, my aim with this piece was not to convince you of the irrelevance of communal cohabitation, but to merely introduce the idea of a counter narrative, that an existence purely on the basis of communal similarities may just be possible, something that 9 out of 10 common men today would intuitively reject.