India After Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  In the first year of his term the prime minister was often on tour, making his acquaintance with parts of the country he had not previously seen. Rajiv Gandhi’s ‘Discovery of India’ was appreciatively covered in the press, and on television. The 1980s had seen an enormous growth in the ownership of TV sets. With broadcasting still a state monopoly, the government channel, Doordarshan, shot and showed hundreds of hours featuring the young and handsome prime minister in the field: on a houseboat in Kashmir, in a remote tribal hamlet, among coconut trees in Kerala. Everywhere, he met ordinary Indians and received their petitions, passing them on to the district administration for action.14

  The first crisis of the new regime was, in fact, caused by a petition. It had, however, been submitted not to the prime minister but to the Supreme Court of India. The petitioner was an elderly man named Mohammed Ahmed Khan, who wished to appeal against a lower court’s decision demanding that he pay monthly maintenance to his divorced wife, Shah Bano. Khan contended that he had fulfilled his duties by paying Shah Bano an allowance for three months, the period specified (he claimed) under Islamic law. In rejecting Khan’s appeal, the Supreme Court invoked Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code, whereby a divorced woman was entitled to claim an allowance from her ex-husband if he had taken another wife (as Khan had), and if she had not remarried and could not otherwise maintain herself (as was the case with Shah Bano). Section 125, noted the Court, ‘was enacted in order to provide a quick and summary remedy to a class of persons who are unable to maintain itself. What difference would it then make as to what is the religion professed by the neglected wife, child or parent?’ In their opinion, the explanations to the Criminal Procedure Code showed ‘unmistakably, that Section 125 overrides the personal law, if there is any conflict between the two’.

  M. A. Khan had first filed the appeal in 1981; it took four years for the case to come to judgement. Dismissing the appeal on 23 April 1985, the Supreme Court confirmed that Khan would have to continue to pay Shah Bano maintenance as fixed by the High Court (at the curious figure of Rs179.20 per month). Then the judges went beyond the specifics of the case to make some general remarks. They deplored the fact that Article 44 of the constitution, mandating a uniform civil code, ‘has remained a dead letter’. They observed that ‘a belief seems to have gained ground that it is for the Muslim community to take a lead in the matter of reforms of their personal law. A common civil code will help the cause of national integration by removing disparate loyalties to laws which have conflicting ideologies.’15

  In some circles these remarks were taken as a gratuitous chastisement of the minority community as a whole. Muslims took exception to the judges, saying that ‘it is alleged that the “fatal point in Islam is the degradation of women”’. (In fairness, they had also noted that the Hindu law-giver, Manu, believed that the woman does not deserve independence’). Muslim clerics criticized the judgement as an attack on Islam. Mosques up and down the country resounded with the voices of mullahs and maulvis denouncing Shah Bano and the Supreme Court judgement’.16 On the other hand, some Muslim scholars supported the verdict, or at any rate held it to be not inconsistent with scripture, where there existed ‘ample and respectable Islamic authority’ for the proposition that the divorcing husband must provide maintenance until his ex-wife’s death or remarriage.17

  Three months after the Supreme Court judgement an MP named G. M. Banatwala moved a private member’s bill in Parliament seeking to exempt Muslims from the purview of Section 125. The bill was opposed in the House by the minister of state for home affairs, Arif Mohammed Khan, representing, so to say, ‘the progressive’ Muslim point of view. He defended the Court’s judgement by quoting Maulana Azad, who was at once the most famous nationalist Muslim and an acknowledged authority on the scriptures. The Maulana had written that the ‘Quran takes occasion to re-emphasize that proper consideration should be shown to the divorced woman in every circumstance’. This call ‘was based on the reason that she was comparatively weaker than [a] man and her interests needed to be properly safeguarded’. Further, argued Khan, we should have better practices these days and only if the down-trodden are uplifted, the Islamic tenets can be said to have been followed and justice done’.18

  Arif Mohammed Khan had the support of the prime minister; with the Congress voting against it, the bill was defeated. However, the debate carried on outside the House. In her native Indore, the 75-year-old Shah Bano was denounced by conservatives as an infidel; demonstrations were held outside her house and neighbours were asked to ostracize her. On 15 November Shah Bano succumbed to the pressure, affixing her thumb impression to a statement saying that she disavowed the Supreme Court verdict, that she would donate the maintenance money to charity and that she opposed any judicial interference in Muslim personal law.19

  Towards the end of 1985 the Congress Party lost aseries of by-elections in northern India. Commentators saw a ‘Shah Bano factor’ at work, with rivals of the Congress ‘whipping up religious fervour’ by attacking the Supreme Court in constituencies with large Muslim popu-lations.20 Reports of the alienation alarmed Rajiv Gandhi, who, within his party and Cabinet, began increasingly taking the advice of the conservative Z. A. Ansari rather than the liberal Arif Khan. In a three-hour speech in Parliament Ansari attacked the Supreme Court verdict as ‘prejudiced, discriminatory and full of contradictions’. The judges, he added maliciously, were small men who were incompetent to interpret Islamic law’.21

  By now, it was not merely Shah Bano who had succumbed to the pressure. The Congress itself had ‘accorded recognition to fundamentalists as the sole spokesmen of their community’.22 In February 1986 the government introduced a ‘Muslim Women’s Bill’ in Parliament which sought to over turn the Supreme Court verdict, by taking Muslim personal law out of the purview of the Criminal Procedure Code. The bill placed the burden of supporting the divorced wife on her own relatives; all the husband was obliged to do was provide three months’ maintenance. In May, the bill passed into law, with the Congress issuing a whip to its members to vote for it. Abandoned by his leader, his party and his government, Arif Mohammed Khan resigned, telling an interviewer that with this new legislation Indian Muslim women will be the only women to be denied maintenance anywhere in the world’.23

  The controversy sparked by the Shah Bano case was in many ways a reprise of the debates over the reform of Hindu personal laws three decades previously. Then, too, attempts to enhance gender equity had been bitterly resisted by priests claiming to speak for the community as a whole. The claim was tested and found wanting, when Jawaharlal Nehru fought and won the 1952 elections on, among other things, the issue of the Hindu Code Bill.

  Faced with a comparable situation in 1985–6, Rajiv Gandhi already had the support of 400 MPs. A reform of Muslim personal law to enhance the rights of women was comfortably within reach. So, even, was a gender-sensitive common civil code (as asked for by the constitution). What was lacking was a prime minister consistently committed to social reform. For as a high official in Rajiv Gandhi’s government was to recall later, in the handling of the aftermath of the Shah Bano case the young P[rime] M[inister] was suddenly overwhelmed by the political system’. His initiatives in the Punjab and Assam had shown boldness and independence, but here, after first supporting the reformists, he had given way to the conservatives for fear of losing the Muslim vote. And so, ‘Rajiv Gandhi the statesman started transforming himself into a politician’.24

  IV

  Ten months after the Supreme Court handed down its verdict in the Shah Bano case, a judgement by a lower court provoked a controversy more furious still. On 1February 1986 the district judge of the town of Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh, ordered that the locks be opened to permit worship at a small Hindu shrine. Despite its modest size this was a rather special place. It was located inside a large mosque, built as far back as the sixteenth century by a general of the Mughal emperor Babar (and hence known as the Babri Masjid). Moreover, it was claimed that t
he site was the birthplace of the Hindu deity Ram, and that before the mosque was built, it had been home to a temple devoted to his worship.

  There is no evidence that the hero of the epic Ramayan was a historical character, but Hindu sentiment and myth widely held that he was, and that he had been born in Ayodhya at the very spot where the mosque was later built. The site was known locally as Ram Janmab-hoomi, literally, the piece of earth where Ram was born. Through the nineteenth century there were a series of clashes between rival groups claiming possession of the place. The British rulers then effected a compromise, whereby Muslims continued to worship inside the mosque, while Hindus made offerings on a raised platform outside.

  Two years after India became independent in 1947 an official sympathetic to Hindu interests allowed an idol of the child Ram (Ram Lalla) to be placed inside the mosque. This was done under cover of darkness, and devotees were persuaded that it had appeared miraculously, a sign that the displaced deity wanted to reclaim his birthplace. Fresh tension broke out, defused only by an order allowing the worship of Ram Lalla on a single day in December. For the rest of the year, the idol was kept locked away from worshippers.

  For three decades the status quo held until, in the early eighties, an organization named the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) began campaigning for the ‘liberation of the spot where Ram was born’. The VHP brought under one banner hundreds of monks from the numerous old temples that dotted Ayodhya. Processions and public meetings were organized, where fiery speeches were made urging Hindus to free their god from ‘a Muslim jail’. A local lawyer then filed a suit seeking public worship of the Ram idol. It was in response to this appeal that the district judge ruled that the locks be opened, and worship allowed.25

  The judge’s order was widely believed to have been directed from Delhi, from the Prime Minister’s Office, no less. The local administration seemed to know of the judgement beforehand, for the locks were opened within an hour of the verdict. Remarkably, even the national TV channel was at hand to capture on camera the precise moment when devotees rushed into the newly opened shrine. There appeared to be a strong connection between the Muslim Women’s Bill and the Ayodhya verdict. It was said that Rajiv Gandhi opened the locks on the advice of his colleague Arun Nehru, who thought the Congress now needed to compensate the chauvinists on the other side. A left-wing MP commented sarcastically that while the prime minister presented himself as a thoroughly modern man, striving to take India into the twenty-first century, in fact ‘he has a mind as primitive as the mullahs and the pandits’.26 Or, as the political analyst Neerja Chowdhury wrote, ‘Mr Rajiv Gandhi wants both to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds’. If one act was aimed at the ‘Muslim’ vote, this other one seemed to target the far larger ‘Hindu’ vote. Chowdhury warned that ‘a policy of appeasement of both communities being pursued by the government for electoral gains is a vicious cycle which will become difficult tobreak’.27

  The opening of the locks emboldened the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. They now sought nothing less than the demolition of the mosque, and its replacement with a grand new temple dedicated to Ram. The VHP was working closely with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the older Hindu organization which was enjoying afresh lease of life. The RSS and VHP held meetings across India demanding that the ‘majority’ stand up for their rights. The Muslim Women’s Bill was adduced as yet another example of the Congress government seeking to placate the minority. Only Hindus, it was alleged, were asked to disown their faith in this mistakenly ‘secular’ state. A new slogan was coined and broadcast: Garv se kaho hum Hindu hain! (Say you are a Hindu, and say it with pride.)

  This message, as the weekly India Today wrote in May 1986, ‘struck a high-strung emotional chord. Slowly but surely, like a juggernaut gaining angry momentum, a palpable, resurgent, united and increasingly militant movement of Hindu resurgence is sweeping across the land’. Here was a movement that was ‘revanchist’, but which had also begun ‘to smell the political power that comes with unity’.28

  V

  It is possible to view the Hindu faith as a river with many tributaries, some that feed into a main stream and others that leave it. Perhaps the image itself is mistaken, for in many respects there is no main river at all. This is a religion that was decentralized like no other. Each district has its own holy shrines, each run by its own, locally revered priest. Sometimes the allegiances are to caste as well as region; Madhava Brahmins of, say, the Uttara Kannada district have their own chosen temple, and their own religious preceptor.

  It was the Ayodhya controversy that opened up the possibilities of bringing these far-flung traditions together into a unified movement. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad had formed a Dharam Sansad (Faith Council) composed of the major dharmacharyas or leaders of Hindu sects. These in turn liaised with the lesser holy men, the thousands of sants and sadhus who each had a modest following of their own. Beyond the building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya, these moves towards apan-Hindu unity had rich political possibilities. As one leading priest explained:

  There are dozens of dharmacharyas [in] Hindu society and each has a vote bank of approximately twenty-five lakhs (or 2.5 million). For example, there is Gujarat’s sant Sri Murari Bapu, Rajasthan’s Sri Ramsukh Dasji Maharaj, UP’s sant Sri Devrah Baba, RSS’s Sri Deorasji, Ayodhya’s Sri Nrittya Gopal Dasji Maharaj, etc. Besides them there are hundreds of dharmacharyas who wield avote bank of at least one lakh. The Hindu society has about ten lakh strong team[s] of sadhus. If each mobilises a hundred people, the politics of this country would take a new turn and get hinduized.29

  On the other side, the threats to the old mosque in Ayodhya had mobilized Muslim opinion in its defence. A Babri Masjid Action Committee was formed, which urged the state to prevent this and other Muslim shrines from being taken over by radical Hindus. In some sections of the community the mood was truculent. There were calls to allow worship in mosques controlled by the Archaeological Survey of India, and even a call to boycott the Republic Day celebrations if the government did not heed their demands.30

  The growing Hindu consolidation was immeasurably helped by two contingent events. In September 1987 a young woman named Roop Kunwar committed ritual suicide in a village in Rajasthan, following her husband’s death. Although sanctioned by Hindu tradition, sati had long been banned by law. While deplored by the state and, more actively, by feminist groups, Roop Kunwar’s act inspired a groundswell of devotion in rural Rajasthan. A temple was built at the site of herself-immolation, attracting thousands of worshippers. Rallies were held hailing Roop Kunwar as an exemplar of Hindu womanhood in her devotion to her husband’s memory.31

  The other and more significant event was the telecast on Doordar-shan of anew, spectacular production of the Ramayan. Episodes were shown every Sunday morning, beginning in January 1987 and ending in July 1988. There were seventy-eight episodes in all, with the series interrupted by a four-month break.

  The Ramayan is a capacious epic, a story of love, sacrifice, heroism and betrayal, with plenty of blood and violence thrown in. It has a rich cast of minor and major characters, and lends itself well to soap-operatic treatment. And it was shown at a time when television viewership was rapidly increasing, with3 million new sets being sold every year.32 Still, the success of the show exceeded all expectations. With an estimated 80 million viewers, ‘city streets and marketplaces were empty on Sunday mornings. Events advertised for Sundays were careful to mention: “To be held after Ramayan”. Crowds gathered around every wayside television set’. Hotels, hospitals and factories reported large-scale absenteeism on Sunday mornings.33

  As much as the numbers of viewers, it is the intensity of their experience that merits attention. Rising early on Sunday mornings, viewers would take a ritual bath and make their prayers. Before the show began, television sets were garlanded and smeared with sandal-wood paste. Notably, the appeal of the serial cut across religious boundaries. Muslims watched it with pleasure and enchantment while churches resc
heduled their services soastoavoidaclash.34 As the anthropologist Philip Lutgendorf wrote, ‘never before had such a large percentage of South Asia’s population been united in a single activity, never before had a single message instantaneously reached so enormous [an] audience’.35

  While Muslims and Christians watched the Ramayana for entertainment alone, for many Hindus delight was also mixed with devotion. By accident rather than design, the televised epic was introducing subtle changes in this pluralistic and decentralized religion, long divided into sects each worshipping different deities, lacking a holy book, a unique and singular god, or a single capital of the faith. Now, in front of their television sets, ‘for the first time all Hindus across the country and at the same time listened to [and watched] the same thing: the serial in fact introduced a congregational imperative into Hinduism’.36

  The Ramayan serial had been commissioned by state television independent of the happenings in Ayodhya. In the event, its appeal and influence contributed enormously to the VHP’s movement to ‘liberate’ the birthplace of Ram. Hitherto one of many gods worshipped by Hindus, Ram was increasingly being seen, courtesy of the serial on television, as the most important and glamorous of them all.

  VI

  One of the new prime minister’s more daring departures was on the economic front. Rajiv Gandhi appointed as his finance minister V. P. Singh, a low-key politician from Uttar Pradesh with a reputation for integrity. The government’s first budget, introduced in March 1985, sought to remove some of the controls and checks in what was one of the most tightly regulated economies in the world. The trade regime was liberalized, with duties reduced on a variety of import items and incentives provided for exporters. The licensing regime was simplified, with key sectors such as machine tools, textiles, computers and drugs deregulated. Curbs on assets of individual companies were partially lifted, and rates of corporate and personal income tax reduced. These changes, it was argued, would result in increased production and greater competitiveness. The Indian economy, said the prime minister in February 1985, had got ‘caught in a vicious circle of creating more and more controls. Controls really lead to all the corruption, to all the delays, and that is what we want to cut out.’37