Daily Times

The circle of communalism is now complete in Uttar Pradesh (UP). The desire to see saffron installed with full force inside the highest corridor of power has been met. Now the saffron is literally there, at the top, to guide, control and to supervise over the cherished goals. No matter how much attempt the intellectual sympathisers of the right-wingers try to convince us, the Yogi, with all his colourful past in the mind is, to recall King Lear, a ‘prince of darkness’ who is being sold as a ‘gentleman’. For a cursory look at the gaudy past of the man clad in saffron take a quick look at the first couple of paragraphs of Mani Shankar Aiyar’s rebuttal to Chandan Mitra’s celebration of Yogi Adityanath. Among other feathers the man can pride in having in his personal profile is an ‘attempt to murder’. He is one of the eminent inspirations for uprooting centuries old minority villages, and threatening others with similar consequences. The future looks grim for one-fifth of the population in UP. His anointment comes about the same time when the Supreme Court of India has asked for a settlement to the Babri Masjid issue outside the court. With a landslide majority, days are not far off when the legislature will come into action and decisions are made to the detriment of the interests of the minority as well as to the disadvantage of the very of idea of India; An idea which may survive in the form of token elections, courts and parliaments, but will be purged of its inclusive ethos. Anyway, whatever the history of Adityanath, and the problems he will create for the leftover of secularism in India, there is an essential contingency that has emerged for the minorities and the most important minority in this regard is that of the Muslims.

For the Muslim minority, the Yogi is bait. There is an easy temptation to fall for it; which means rashly reacting to the communal dose that will come from him every other day. There are potent signs already there, with the burning of some slaughter houses, and indications of pulling down some 17th-century mosques. If the minority does not fall for the bait, there can be nothing wiser. His presence in the chair is in many ways intended to be a provocation. So far the response from the minority has been mature and befitting the situation. One shudders to imagine the possibility of a counter response if the minority decides to take the bait and makes an inclination towards violence. The test for the minority in UP and in India at large is the response made to the widening grasp of the right wing on the structures of power. Either the attempt should have been to stop him from becoming bait by using the electoral power against him. In that the failure of the community has been stunning, and the responsibility is spread across community leaders of various hues. Some members of the community even displayed the Stockholm Syndrome by associating themselves with the person designed to put the minority in place. However, now that he is the chief minister, the responses have to be cautiously deliberated lest any foolhardy endeavour will unleash a flood over the homes and hearths of minorities. With the aligned systems of judiciary and election commission apparently appearing to favour the ruling dispensation, there will be few to listen to complaints whether genuine or made-up. So what are the options left for the minority?

A celebrated short story writer once said that the tragedy of love is not forgetting but indifference. The electoral victory of the right-wingers can turn somewhat tragic if the response of the minority is calculated indifference

A celebrated short story writer once said that the tragedy of love is not forgetting but indifference. The electoral victory of the right-wingers can turn somewhat tragic if the response of the minority is calculated indifference without resorting to the kind of actions which are foreseen by some of the advocates of the right-wing. The focus can move from the jubilation of the current regime to the reform in various sectors of the minority existence. Instead of wearing the mantle of defending the idea of India, and thus get muddled up in the politics of the elephants of Indian polity, it is more fruitful for the community if the reform in education is given a top priority. There are vast swathes of Indian Muslim community which still, in the 21st century, resemble the streets of mid-19th century. The outlook of people living in these areas makes one wonder whether another Sir Syed Ahmed Khan is required to pull the masses out of a deeply-set parochial perspective. There are big worries and challenges for the Indian Muslim community than entering into a kind of one-upmanship with the new incumbent in Lucknow. There is scope for alliances with other downtrodden communities to forge common peaceful and progressive paths in terms of the all-round development. These alliances can be with men and women at the local level, and gradually the circle of networks can be enlarged to higher levels.The point being that the question of idea of India, and which direction it should adopt is, mainly, for the majority community to decide. The minorities world over learn to make creative adjustments to the direction which any majority community and country chooses to assume. By making unnecessary interventions, especially the violent ones, the responses are both equally violent and worse, an institutional prejudice takes shape, with its serious long-term implications. The indifference referred to here is not surrender but consolidation of various strengths, and channelizing them for internal reform and development. The communal versus secular debate has so much exhausted the otherwise progressive energies of the Muslims of India, and divided their attention into issues over which ultimately they have no control. Adityanath’s accession is an opportunity to reassess the strengths and revise the response to the dichotomy of secularism and communalism. Instead of being a testing ground for the rates of secularism a country will get, it is far more prospective to quietly work on internal reform and development.

The writer is a columnist, and lecturer at the University of Kashmir, Srinagar. He can be reached at javjnu@gmail.com