|
from The
New York Times/opinion
Hinduism's Political Resurgence
By PANKAJ MISHRA
NEW DELHI --
A few weeks ago I was in Ayodhya, a North Indian pilgrimage
town. In 1992 a crowd of Hindu men demolished a 16th-century mosque in
Ayodhya. They claimed it had been built by the Mogul emperor Babur over
the birthplace of Lord Rama. India changed fast after that moment of
Hindu nationalist rage. The politicians who had led the crowd to the
mosque that morning and later watched their followers erect Hindu idols
over the rubble — and who for most of the 50 years since independence
had been on the political sidelines — now hold top positions in the
Indian government.
Since the 1992 destruction, an enthusiasm for the free market has also
overtaken India, but the new middle- class affluence hasn't reached
Ayodhya. Down its monkey-infested alleyways, the richest people are
still Hindu abbots. One whom I met in Ayodhya was Ramchandra Paramhans,
who helped initiate, in 1950, the legal battle for the temple and who in
the early 1980's entered into an opportunistic alliance with Hindu
nationalist organizations then attempting to attract Hindu voters
through an explicitly anti- Muslim program.
Mr. Paramhans described to me, as he fed cows in his vast straw-littered
compound, how he had upbraided India's home minister, L. K. Advani, on
the phone that morning for having neglected the temple issue. In his
white dreadlocks and long beard, he seemed like a Hindu version of the
self-important mullahs I had met in Pakistan. But senior bureaucrats
really had traveled, a few weeks before, to his compound to mollify him
after he threatened to bring down the government. And a few days after
my visit to Ayodhya, Mr. Paramhans showed up in New Delhi at the head of
a heavily publicized procession of abbots to deliver personally a blunt
ultimatum to Prime Minister Behari Vajpayee.
I couldn't help but recall my meeting early last year with some
prominent Islamic clerics and politicians at an old madrasa near
Peshawar, Pakistan. The madrasa had become notorious after some of its
alumni became the leaders of the Taliban. Its teachers were keen to
impress upon me the apolitical nature of their work. I suspected they
were dissembling, but I was more struck by their defensiveness. It was
as though they could sense what has been confirmed since by the
fundamentalists' failure to stir up trouble for Pervez Musharraf: that
public opinion overwhelmingly opposes the fanatical ideologies that have
undermined Pakistan in every way. It is this strong anti-extremist
sentiment that General Musharraf now relies on — much more than American
support — in his crackdown on militant groups and his more discreet
confrontations with the ideologues given high places by the previous
military ruler, Mohammad Zia ul- Haq.
While General Musharraf strives toward a secular polity, the ruling
politicians of India head in the opposite direction. Hindu nationalists
have long exalted Hindutva, or Hindu-ness, over the secular identities
proposed for India by Gandhi and Nehru. So now the federal minister for
education, Murli Manohar Joshi, promotes a new Indian history that
highlights the depredations of Muslim invaders (as they are called) and
celebrates Hindu bravery. Mr. Joshi has also allocated funds for such
"Hindu sciences" as astrology. This sectarian-minded education is
objected to by many of India's distinguished historians — especially
those who had stressed India's pluralist traditions in their now
discarded textbooks. Mr. Joshi recently denounced these historians as
"academic terrorists" who were more difficult to fight than the usual
kind of terrorist.
This may be bluster; and perhaps India's largest-circulation news
magazine, India Today, describes an isolated mood in a recent cover
story on the "return of the militant Hindu." But that mood does exist.
Fed by a patriotic media and film industry and reflected in bellicose
posturing against Pakistan, it nearly dominates public life now; its
urban middle-class constituency hopes that nationalism may provide a
measure of security against the economic and political crises that, in
the early 90's, had looked so threatening. And nationalist leaders
continue to strengthen their hold over the heavily centralized Indian
state as their constituents continue to gain from a globalized economy.
An antiterrorist ordinance — introduced by the government before the
recent attacks on the parliaments in Kashmir and Delhi — would have
required up to three years' imprisonment for a journalist who failed to
assist government authorities. It has been challenged by human rights
groups and political parties concerned about the possibility of its
misuse against minorities. In any case, the ordinance is unlikely to
curtail the activities of Hindu extremist outfits affiliated with the
government like Shiv Sena, which claimed some credit for demolishing the
Babri mosque in Ayodhya in December 1992 and was indicted by a judicial
commission for inciting the pogrom against Muslims in Bombay in 1993.
What was once quickly identified as unreasonable and aberrant — Hindu
majoritarianism — enjoys a growing influence and legitimacy as the
ruling ideology of the Indian government. Oddly, the illiberal
tendencies a military dictator seeks to expel, with popular support,
from Pakistan seem to be finding a hospitable home in democratic India.
PANKAJ MISHRA
February 25, 2002
Pankaj Mishra is author of ``The Romantics,'' a novel.
source: The
New York Times
back to discussion |
