by Sudhir Kakar
The Hindu nationalist may be disapproving of the flexible Hindu, tending to regard him with suspicion as the Indian outpost of globalization. He may belittle the flexible Hindu’s religiosity as carnivalesque, look down on him as someone who promiscuously adorns himself with religious stylistic scraps from all parts of the world and thus ‘weakens’ the Hindu faith and dilutes Indian identity. Yet, constrained by the narrative of Hindu openness and tolerance, he cannot exclude the flexible Hindu from the Hindu fold. Such an exclusion would also be a betrayal of one of Hindu nationalism’s greatest icons, the activist monk Swami Vivekananda, who wrote: ‘We not only tolerate but we Hindus accept every religion, praying in the mosque of the Mohammedans, worshipping before the fire of Zoroastrians and kneeling before the cross of the Christians, knowing that all the religions, from the lowest fetishism, mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realize the infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association.’15
In spite of the differences, the coming together of the Hindu nationalist religious ideals with the values of the emerging middle class has been often commented upon. Indeed, the flexible Hindu identifies with many of the religious-cultural values of the nationalist such as a fear of Western cultural domination and the danger posed by an aggressive Muslim-Arabic world. It is unimportant whether these fears are historically or otherwise justified. The worry about a decay of ancient cultural values and a diffuse feeling of vulnerability to foreign domination are sufficient for many Hindus to turn to political parties and organizations that promise an alternative modernity, a modernity in which Hindus can embrace modern global markets, technologies and lifestyles without giving up their Hindu identity, or their sense of Hinduism being the mother religion, superior to all others.
The flexible Hindu, however, is also, almost unwittingly, the biggest inner enemy of the Hindu nationalist movement. He is the Pied Piper to a whole generation. Firmly entrenched in the establishment, this English-speaking, opinion-making segment of Indian society is the ominous concretization of an otherwise abstract global threat. He is a threat to the Hindu nationalist because of his receptiveness to the liberal, indeed ‘licentious’ Western sexual attitudes and mores imported into Hindu homes through television programmes and advertisements, such as those for clothes and bodily care that excite prurient interest. The protest against the ubiquity, significance and manifestations of the sexual self, so central to Western artistic and literary discourse of the twentieth century, has been basic to both conservative and fundamentalist rhetoric in many parts of the world, and the Hindu nationalist, too, reacts violently against its ‘cultural pollution’. Whether protesting against beauty contests or denouncing the freer comingling of the sexes, the nationalist condemns all manifestations of modernity which arouse the senses instead of calming them, which stoke the sensual fire instead of dousing its flames. Equating globalization with consumerism and cynicism toward such traditional Hindu values as restraint on the satisfaction of material and sensual desires, and locating its threat in the flexible Hindu within the country, the nationalist solution is pithily stated by Swami Chinmayananda, a founder of the VHP: ‘Let us convert Hindus to Hinduism and then everything would be all right.’ This is the nationalist’s battle cry in the current contention over Hindu religious identity and a task that, ironically, requires ‘missionary zeal’16 on the part of the Hindu nationalist.
In short, the Hindu nationalist and the flexible Hindu are cousins with a common family heritage. They are, however, also often adversaries, with the nationalist chafing against the restraints imposed by the grand recit of traditional Hinduism, while the flexible Hindu revels in the freedom it grants him to explore the spiritual byways and materially beneficial constructs of other traditions. There is no sign that the tension between the two will disappear any time in the near future.
Conflict: Hindus and Muslims
In the year 1924, writing on the causes of Hindu–Muslim conflict, Mahatma Gandhi observed, ‘I see no way of achieving anything in this afflicted country without a lasting heart unity between Hindus and Mussalmans...There is no question more important and more pressing than this. In my opinion, it blocks all progress.’1
Gandhi’s observation on the importance of finding a solution to the conflict for India’s future integrity and well-being continues to be valid, although he may not have sufficiently appreciated that what appears to be a perennial conflict between India’s two largest communities is not about religion. That is, it is not about matters of religious belief, dogmas, worship or adherence to different faiths and gods. Most knowledgeable commentators have identified factors other than religion as the root cause of an ostensibly religious conflict. Yet while there is near unanimity on the conflict not being religious, there is a singular lack of agreement on its root cause.2
Historically-minded Hindu nationalists, politically represented by one of India’s two largest political parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), view the conflict in civilizational terms. They see Hindu-Muslim relations framed by the fundamental divide of a thousand-year-old conflict between two civilizations in which the Muslims, militarily victorious and politically ascendant for centuries, tried to impose Islam on their Hindu subjects through all means, from coercion to bribery and cajolery, and yet had only limited success.3 In the Hindu nationalists’ view, the vast majority of Hindus kept their civilizational core intact while they resentfully tolerated the Muslim onslaught. The rage of the denigrated Hindu, stored up over long periods of time, had to explode once historical circumstances sanctioned such eruptions.
Other historians, of a more liberal or indeed of a leftist bent, belonging to the ‘secular’ school, aver that Hindus and Muslims are relatively recent categories in Indian history.4 In precolonial and early colonial times, there was a comingling of Hindus and Muslims, most of them converted Hindus in any case. Persian and Turkish elements were incorporated into Indian society and there was a flowering of a composite cultural tradition, not only in music, art and architecture but also in the development of a syncretic popular religion. According to liberal historians, the large-scale violence between the two communities, which began to spread in the late nineteenth century, was chiefly because of colonialism, namely the British policy of deliberately strengthening Muslim identity because of the threat of Indian nationalism in which Hindus played a prominent part.5 Nevertheless, the composite culture shared by Hindus and Muslims is still alive, especially in rural India, and comes under strain because of the need of political parties to polarize Hindu and Muslim identities for electoral gains.
In contrast to the historians of either camp, ordinary Indians operate with both versions of history. In times of heightened conflict between the two communities, the Hindu nationalist history that supports the version of age-old animosity between the two assumes pre-eminence and organizes cultural memory in one particular direction. In times of relative peace, the focus shifts back to the secular history that emphasizes commonalities and shared pieces of the past. Many of the cultural memories that were appropriate during the conflict will retreat, fade or take on new meaning, while others that incorporate the peaceful coexistence of Hindus and Muslims will resurface.
Then there are those, mostly of a Marxist persuasion, who accord primacy to the economic factor. The conflict between the two communities that leads to violent clashes, they believe, has less to do with religion than with ‘communalism’. Communalism is a specifically Indian concept which signifies a strong identification with a community of believers based not only on religion but also common social, political and especially economic interests which conflict with the corresponding interests of another community of believers—the ‘enemy’—sharing the same geographic space. In the economic vision, the ‘real’ cause of violence generally embraces some version of a class struggle between the poor and the rich. This, it is claimed, is as true of the anti-Semitic pogroms in fourteenth-century Spain, of sixteenth-century Catholic–Protestant viole
nce in France and of anti-Catholic riots in nineteenth-century London,6 as of contemporary Hindu–Muslim riots in India.
Political scientists add another dimension to this Marxist theory. They point out that Hindu–Muslim conflict, a consequence of competition for resources, may have become worse in the changed political context of the last sixty-odd years since the end of colonial rule. If Hindu–Muslim relations were better in the past, with much less overt violence, it was also due to the kind of polity in which the two peoples lived. This polity was that of empire, the Mughal empire followed by the British one. An empire, the political scientist Michael Walzer observes, is characterized by a mixture of repression of any strivings for independence, tolerance for different cultures, religions and ways of life, and an insistence on things remaining peaceful. It is only with the end of the empire that such political questions as ‘Who among us shall have power here, in these villages, these towns?’ or ‘Which group will dominate, what will be the new ranking order?’ that lead to a heightened awareness of religious-cultural differences and create the potential for violent conflict.7 (The rise of fundamentalist groups and the politicization of religious differences in many parts of the world at the end of colonialism have been amply documented.8) Other political scientists, emphasizing more local than international relations, show that riots between Hindus and Muslims in India generally occur in towns and cities where formal professional and trade associations which include members of both communities are weak or non-existent.9
Social psychology, on the other hand, would emphasize the threat to identity that is being posed by the forces of modernization and globalization to peoples in many parts of the world as a root cause for Hindu-Muslim conflict. There are feelings of loss and helplessness accompanying dislocations and migrations from rural areas to the shanty towns of urban megalopolises, the disappearance of craft skills that underlay traditional work identities, and the humiliation caused by the homogenizing and hegemonizing impact of the modern world, which pronounces ancestral cultural ideals and values outmoded and irrelevant. These changes heighten the group aspects of identity as the affected—and afflicted—look to cultural-religious groups to help them combat their feelings of helplessness and loss and also serve as vehicles for the redress of injuries to self-esteem.
Besides the relatively sophisticated descriptions of historians, political scientists, sociologists and social psychologists on the roots of conflict, we also have the rough and ready brush strokes of the demographic perspective which says that urban areas, and within them only those with a Muslim minority population ranging between twenty and forty per cent of the total population, have always been prone to violence between Hindus and Muslims.10 Presumably, with a population share of under twenty per cent, a minority is much too scared to retaliate against anything that it may perceive as a provocation. Violence, in such a situation, if it occurs at all, will have the nature of a pogrom rather than a riot.
HINDU IMAGE OF THE MUSLIM
The dominant Hindu image of Muslims encountered in many parts of the country, and especially when tension between the communities is high, is of the powerful and animal-like Muslim. Common to the two attributes of Muslim power and animality is the Hindu conviction that a Muslim is ‘naturally’ aggressive and prone to violence. Although newly reinforced by the militancy in Kashmir and the spate of terrorist acts by Muslim extremists, this image goes back a long time. Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, who was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic because he was believed to have a ‘soft corner’ for Muslims, held the view that their young religion and imperialist expansion for thirteen centuries had made Muslims an aggressive lot.11 Shared alike by men and women, the image of the powerful Muslim is more pronounced in men, especially when violent conflict between the communities is imminent.
This is in contrast to the Hindu self-perception of being weak, weak because divided. In interviews conducted shortly after riots in 1990 in Hyderabad, several Hindus spoke of the unity among the Muslims. ‘Anything happens in a Muslim community, they all become one. We don’t because of our different castes. Every caste has its own customs and life style...We are not united. Each one is engrossed in himself. The rich try to exploit the poor. This does not happen with the Muslims. Though they have rich and poor, at least at times of prayer they are one and they all do it together at the same time. It develops unity among them. Our system is not like that. Each one goes to the temple to perform puja at his own time and in his own way and then leaves. There is no communication between us. If we could also show togetherness in our prayers, we would definitely become united and stronger than the Muslims.’
For many Hindus, the Muslim is powerful not only because he is united, but also because he is armed, favoured by the state in India, and in times of conflict supported and even armed by Pakistan. ‘Muslims have a constant supply of weapons coming from Pakistan, or maybe they are locally made. They are always well-stocked. Even the poorest Muslim house will have at least a butcher’s knife because they all eat meat. Hindus are not so well-equipped. If the government continues to please the Muslims and makes laws against the Hindu majority, these riots will continue forever. If processions are to be banned, both Ganesh and Muharram processions should be banned. Why is only the Ganesh procession banned? It is like blessing and protecting only one community and behaving like a stepmother toward the other.’12
It is interesting to note that generally a Hindu’s self-identification as a Hindu occurs only when he talks of the Muslim; otherwise the conversations on his affiliation are more in terms of caste. A Hindu is born only when the Muslim enters the scene. Hindus cannot think of themselves as such without a simultaneous awareness of the Muslim’s presence. This is not so for Muslims, who do not need Hindus for self-awareness. The presence of the Hindu may increase the Muslim’s sense of his religious identity but does not constitute it.
The second ingredient of the Hindu image of the Muslim, as we’ve said earlier, is that of his animality. In other words, Hindus attribute to the Muslim male a physical ferocity, rampant sexuality, search for instant gratification and a dirtiness which is less a matter of bodily cleanliness and more an inner pollution that is a consequence of the consumption of forbidden, tabooed foods: ‘The Muslims are good only in two things—they eat and copulate like beasts. Who else except a Muslim would even think of going to bed with his uncle’s daughter, who is next to his real sister?’13
The above quote, from a fifty-year-old anthropological account, reflects an image of the Muslim that has remained consistent to this day. As is the following: ‘Muslims always had an eye for our women. This habit persists. Good thoughts and thoughts of god come into their minds only when they shout “Allah-u-Akbar!”...They force themselves on women; they are obsessed by women and sex. Look at all the children they produce, dozens, while we are content with two or three.’14
Muslims are not only sexually rapacious, they are also considered dirty (‘They bathe only on Fridays, the day of communal prayer in the mosque’). The ascribed dirtiness is not only a matter of personal hygiene but is more fundamental: the Muslims eat beef, an abomination for the Hindu, a more serious violation of the moral code for many than conversion to Islam or marriage to a Muslim.
The eating of beef and thus the killing of cows by Muslims has perhaps historically been the most important source of Hindu bitterness. Travelling through Tipu Sultan’s dominions in the seventeenth century, Abbe Dubois tells us that though Hindus witnessed the slaughter of cows without uttering loud complaint, they were far from insensible to the insult.15 Powerless, they contented themselves with complaining in secret and storing up in their hearts all the indignation they felt about this sacrilege. For centuries, Hindus who had been forcibly converted to Islam could not reconvert if they had eaten beef, even if under duress. The Muslim eating of beef and the Hindu abomination creates perhaps the most effective barrier against ‘lasting heart unity’ between the two communities that was Gandhi’s ardent wish for India. It is
difficult to be close to someone with whom one cannot share a meal and whose eating habits one finds disgusting.
Such images of the other community lead a stubborn existence in the deeper layers of the psyche that are impervious to rational discourse. Thus when studying the phenomena of spirit possession in rural North India, it was instructive to see that in a large number of cases, the malignant spirit possessing a Hindu man or woman was that of a Muslim. When, during the healing ritual, the patient went into a trance and the possessing spirit spoke through him, expressing its wishes, these wishes—for forbidden sexuality and prohibited foods such as meat—invariably turned out to be those that would have been horrifying to the possessed person’s conscious awareness.16 Possession by a Muslim spirit, then, seemed to reflect the afflicted person’s desperate efforts to convince himself and others that his imagined transgressions and sins of the heart belonged to the ‘unclean’ Muslim alien and was farthest away from his ‘good’ Hindu self. In that Muslim spirits were universally considered to be the strongest, vilest, the most malignant and stubborn of the evil spirits, the Muslim seemed to symbolize the alien in the more subconscious parts of the Hindu mind.
MUSLIM IMAGE OF THE HINDU
Besides the inevitable attribution to the ‘other’ of immorality and lack of control over impulses—a dirtiness of the soul—Muslims also see Hindus as a cruel and cowardly people.
‘If a Hindu woman or child walks through a Muslim street, the Muslim will let them go, thinking the fight is between men and should not involve women, children and the aged. A Hindu does not think like that. It is enough for him to see the other person is a Muslim before he strikes without regard for age or gender.
‘Hindus are cowards who can fight only when they are in a large group. Muslims are not afraid even if they are few and unarmed and their opponents have swords. Allah gives them courage and they know if they die the death will not be in vain but a martyrdom which Allah will reward in paradise.’17
