While there is no dearth of Indians who question the validity of the concept of secularism for their country, no Indian has ever disputed that it is an antidote to communalism. This is truly extraordinary and speaks of the grip a slogan can acquire on our collective mind.
Currently a debate is on in the media on the proper meaning of secularism. In this debate the modernists and the modernisers have argued that secularism should not be interpreted as equal respect for all religions or as non-discrimination on religious grounds, as we in India have done all these years. Instead secularism must be interpreted in the original sense of separation of the church and the state and an assertion of the supremacy of reason in the life of the individual and society.
Like much else, this debate arises out of a misapplication of the western experience to ourselves and an “idealisation” of the western reality. The first point is easily settled. For there can be no question of separation of the state and the church in societies such as ours which do not possess a church in the Western-Christian sense of the term.
Second Assertion
The second assertion regarding the supremacy of reason is also open to question on two counts. First, it proclaims that Christianity has ceased to be a potent force in the west which is not the case. It is common knowledge, for instance, that the Vatican has played an important role in shaping the politics of Italy and ensuring the survival in office of Christian Democrats for over three decades. While the Vatican has not been similarly influential in other West European countries, Christianity as such has been. Christian Democrats have ruled in West Germany most of the time since World War II. In Poland in eastern Europe, the Catholic church acts as the guardian of Polish nationalism in its struggle against Russian domination, a fact which even the communist rulers cannot ignore. Above all, we have witnessed the rise of the “born again” Christian phenomenon in the United States, the birthplace of secular politics.
Secondly, the statement implies that superstition and not reason has been the dominant influence in non-European civilizations, including, if not especially, ours. This is one of the many falsehoods which western orientalists spread about us and which we have bought so much so that even our great leaders have been influenced by them. One has only to read Indian history by James Mill in the 19th and by Vincent Smith in the 20th century to know how they have misrepresented us and yet dominated our thinking.
Finally, the debate has proceeded on the erroneous assumption that communalism and secularism are two poles with nothing in between. In reality communalism, as we know it, is the result of the impact of western (secular) education on the different segments of our society. And so are regionalism and casteism of which we have not yet heard the last. Indeed, it is on the cards that as the process of modernisation (secularisation) gathers momentum, the threat to the country’s unity from these forces may increase rather than decrease and disappear. To appreciate the validity of this conclusion, it will be useful to re-examine the history of the rise of Muslim separatism.
Pakistani historians have traced Muslim separatism/ communalism back to the invasion of Sind by Mohammad Bin Qasim in the 8th century. This is a self-serving view which has little support in historical evidence. For at least up to the end of the 17th century the Indian Muslims were not sufficiently self-aware and well-defined. They carried many Hindu social practices with them into Islam and preserved them. Most of them did not even have Muslim names. They were also not a ruling community because the ruling elite under various Muslim dynasties and rulers came from outside India; the nobles were either Persians or Turks. The illusions of grandeur in this regard were the products of a much later period. These were born during the British period.
A Pan-Islamist
Then there is the second school of historians which traces the rise of Muslim separatism/ communalism to Shah Wali-ul-Allah in the early 18th century. There is more merit in this proposition than in the previous one. But the Shah was a revivalist who sought to prevent the adaptation of Islam to the Indian cultural environment, and to link it with the Arab Islam. In other words, he was a pan-Islamist and not a potential father of Indian Muslim nationalism.
The turning point, in my opinion, was the rise of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Aligarh school of Muslim modernisers; three points about Sir Sayyid are well known – that he sought to reconcile the Muslim elite and through it the Muslim populace to the British rule; that he tried to re-interpret the Koran so that it could be seen to be in conformity with modem science; and that he campaigned against Muslims joining the Congress. There is, however, another point about him which deserves attention. Sir Sayyid was the first prominent Indian Muslim leader, who said goodbye to pan-Islamism. In the specific context of India, he laid the basis of modern Muslim communalism.
Form of Radicalism
This Muslim communalism might not have been possible without the revivalism (Arabisation) which Shah Wali-ul-Allah had initiated in the early 18th century; for without it Muslims might not have become sufficiently distinguishable from the Hindus. But Muslim communalism did not represent an attempt at reaffirmation of orthodox Islam. It was the result of introduction of western (secular) education and of the attempt to reinterpret the scriptures to make them acceptable to modern (rational) men. Indian Muslim communalism was a form of radicalism. It represented a departure from orthodox Islam. By that reckoning, only a modernist such as Mohammad Ali Jinnah could lead it and not the Maulvis assembled in Deoband or Lucknow.
There is no fatal inevitability in human affairs. So it is impermissible to argue that Jinnah was a logical successor to Sir Sayyid, or that it was unavoidable that he raised the demand for a Muslim homeland, or that he was bound to succeed in dividing the country. But if Sir Sayyid’s legacy had to be picked up, only a modernist like Jinnah could have done so; similarly, the Muslims could be mobilised only on the separate homeland platform after the pan-Islamic platform had collapsed with the abolition of Khilafat by Turkish nationalists themselves.
When the Muslim League under Mr Jinnah’s leadership adopted the Pakistan demand at its Lahore session in 1940, the Muslims were not a viable political community by any definition. The League had fared badly in the provincial elections in 1937 in reserved constituencies. In all Muslim-majority provinces local parties serving dominant local interests in co-operation with similar non-Muslim interests opposed to the Congress had captured power. All in all, it is unlikely that Jinnah could have made the League the formidable power it became by 1945 and himself emerged as the main spokesman of Indian Muslims if circumstances had not been highly propitious.
The Congress had quit office and its leaders had courted imprisonment, leaving the field open to the League; affronted by Gandhiji’s opposition to the war effort, the British openly sided with the League and as early as 1942, that is barely two years after the adoption of the Lahore resolution by the League, the British government indicated through the Cripps Mission its willingness to accept the principle of partition. But even if the League had been kept in check, if Jinnah had died a frustrated man and India had achieved independence without partition, Muslim communalism could not have been contained forever. The seed Sir Sayyid (or British teachers) had sown was bound to grow into a tree and bear fruit.
Forcing Partition
While the Muslims had become sufficiently united against the Hindus to be able to force partition, they had not become a nation in their own right. This became apparent within years of partition. Pakistan virtually banned immigration of Muslims from India, thus repudiating the concept of a Muslim homeland; for all practical purposes the Muslim League disappeared as an effective instrument of forging unity among the country’s different linguistic-ethnic-cultural units. These units began to resent Punjab’s domination, exercised through the army and the bureaucracy, and to pull in different directions, culminating finally in the establishment of an independent Bangladesh. But it does not follow that the Muslim assertion could have got dissipated and been contained in united India. On the contrary, with the help of the bogey of Hindu domination it could have got consolidated.
Once Pakistan came into existence, the other divide in the subcontinent (language) began to operate in that country. The same divide did not become equally effective in India partly because the Congress party, much better led and organised, was able to cater to the aspirations of various language groups, partly because democracy provided a safety valve, and partly because no one unit dominated India as Punjab dominated Pakistan. But the current upsurge of extremism and terrorism in Punjab does not leave much room for complacency for us. This upsurge too is the result of the erosion of tradition and the impact of modernisation (secularisation) on the Sikh youth. Bhindranwale was not a fundamentalist in the sense that he wanted to restore the past. He was only using religious symbols in the pursuit of an independent Khalistan.
How then are we to cope with the problem of national integration? This would form the subject of another article.
The Times of India, 29 October 1986