In a wholly lacklustre address to Parliament by President Zail Singh, his reference to the upsurge of communal violence in various parts of the country deserves attention. This is so not because the government has said something profound or new on the subject but because the formulation is at once inane and wrong-headed beyond words. The following two quotations should establish the banality and the naivety of the approach. First, “while governments must firmly put down violence wherever it may occur, it is essential that political parties committed to democratic values should deal with the root causes of violence through purposive and sustained work among the people”. Second, “communalism… is being reinforced by religious fundamentalism and fanaticism. These trends represent a reactionary social outlook directed against the struggle of the poor and the underprivileged against vested interests”.
Apparently after decades of bitter experience it has not occurred to those who prepare and approve the President’s address that it is so much nonsense to talk of eliminating the “root causes of (communal) violence”. And the talk of “a reactionary social outlook directed against the struggle of the poor and the underprivileged against vested interests” is almost offensive to intelligence. Communalism, it is hardly necessary to say, is a highly complicated phenomenon; class conflict may at best be one of its components; it is not the central or main component; at our stage of social, cultural, economic and political development, the best that we can hope for is management of the problem of communalism so that it does not erupt into violence too often and on a large scale; in this management the government’s role is of critical importance; by and large most state governments have failed to live up to this responsibility for the good and obvious reason that they have more than acquiesced in undermining law enforcement agencies.
While we do not want to be dogmatic, we feel that this time the trouble began with the supreme court’s judgment in the Shahbano case. If we may say so with due deference, the judges in question did not show much understanding of the psyche of Indian Muslims in a part of their judgment. The issue is not whether they were right or wrong in saying what they did in respect of the status of women in Islam or whether or not they were qualified to interpret the Koran and the Shariat. The issue is whether or not they anticipated, the response. Clearly they did not. The Union government too was living in amake-believe world of its own. Or else one of its ministers would not have made the kind of speech Mr. Arif Mohammed Khan made on the subject in Parliament and the Congress party would not have greeted it in the manner it did. Then it beat an unseemly retreat. So another Muslim minister, Mr. Z.R. Ansari, went about making very different kinds of speeches. On top of it all, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi made remarks which indicated that he was prepared to amend Section 25 of the Criminal Procedure Code to exclude Muslims from its purview. A lot of Hindus saw this as a surrender to Muslim communalism. Whether this was so or not, an amendment is in fact not necessary. The matter is already taken care of by another provision in the Cr.P.C., so at least some experts believe. In any case, Mr. Gandhi’s statement only further vitiated the atmosphere. Amidst all this has come the judicial decision to reopen the Rama Janam Bhoomi temple in UP. The way that issue has been handled speaks of the same ineptitude that has characterized the handling of the Shahbano affair. So we are plunged in a grave communal crisis.