With its multiple ethnicities, languages and sub-nationalisms a subcontinent rather than a country, India was bound to face many tensions and even centrifugal tendencies from its very beginning. This recognition by the early rulers notwithstanding multiple separatist movements have developed over the years. Consecutive Indian governments have tackled the problem to a large extent by utilizing a mix of upgraded police force and paramilitary special units plus initiatives to respond to the grievances of the local people by land reforms, new laws and their strict implementation.
Recognizing that the religious and cultural diversity of India would create problems the same early rulers had ordained that India would have to be run as a secular state, meaning that members of different religious denominations would be free to profess their creeds freely privately and in public and that no discrimination would be allowed for or against any one religion. Connected to the western understanding of nation and nationalism this concept was picked up by the anti-colonial movement in India headed by the Indian National Congress (INC).However that idea of secularism was never understood and practiced in the subcontinent that had not experienced the type of secularization as in Europe. Religion is not something to be practiced in private only by the people of the subcontinent, it is a way of life determines public and private life from the cradle to the grave. The idea of ‘religion’ was not very common, Hinduism as a religion was also a British idea. Until the 19 century Indian Brahmins would never have accepted to be in the same religion with lower castes! And until today there is a discussion going on if the caste system is religious at all or rather a socio-economic system.
Thus real understanding of secularism was rare and is until today. That is visible in the Hindutva ideology of the BJP that was developed in the 1920s. The idea of nationalism that became a uniting force for anti-colonial struggle naturally took the form of religious nationalism in British-India. Together with Congress pretensions of secularism Hindutva stayed a defining element in Indian nationalism. Hindu nationalists like Lala Lajpat Rai, Madan Mohan Malaviya and Vallabhai Patel were bona fide leaders of the Congress party. We should also not forget that Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist! Thus declaring Indian-ness to be related to being Hindu and trying to dissolve all other religions into Hinduism is an apt expression of this phenomenon. It has also resulted to regard Muslims as foreigners given that they refuse to be absorbed into this kind of Indian-ness and that the religion originated outside India while Hinduism, Sikhism Buddhism did not. It resulted in declaring Muslims foreigners while neglecting the fact that the large majority of Indian Muslims are converts from local Indians and not imports from Iran, Arabia or Central Asia. And even those trace their origins which have lived for many generations in India and mixed with the local population!
Given the new technological means there is a chance that Muslims could unite to fight against discrimination and for freedom of their religion. Such a development could take violent turns easily
The current situation in India shows that the Congress during its many years of ruling the country was unable to insert an understanding of secularism in the larger part of the Indian population. This has resulted in the fall of Congress and the electoral victory of BJP. The BJP itself has also gone through a process of radicalization which can be seen when looking at the prime ministership of Mr. Vajpayee who was bold enough to go to Lahore and sign the Lahore Agreement and the current BJP stint of Mr. Modi who had recommended himself for this higher post by his massacre of Muslims during his Chief ministership in Gujarat in 2002. During his first tenure as PM we remember sceneries when Muslims were asking Hindu mobs for mercy and pressure of conversion was evident daily for Christians and Muslims. Since Modi took office in 2014, government bodies have rewritten history books, lopping out sections on Muslim rulers, and changed official place names to Hindu from Muslim. Hindu mobs have lynched dozens of Muslims; participants are rarely punished. The second stint in power for PM Modi will be worse; as several Indian commentators have warned it will change whatever is left of Indian democracy.
By scrapping article 370 Kashmir and assaulting seven million Kashmiri Muslims militarily is only the tip of the iceberg. In Assam the place that has developed law and order problems because of the presence of Muslim refugees from Bangladesh the peculiar notion of Indian-ness of the BJP has resulted in a hunt for ‘foreigners’. More than four million people in India’s north-eastern state of Assam, mostly Muslims, are at risk of being declared foreign migrants as the BJP government pushes a hard-line Hindu nationalist agenda. The campaign aims at identifying who is an Indian and who is not. Lists with names of Indian citizens are produced and who doesn’t make it on to this list must fear to be thrown in jail. State authorities are rapidly expanding foreigner tribunals and planning to build huge new detention camps. Hundreds of people have been arrested on suspicion of being a foreign migrant. The stated purpose of the citizenship dragnet in Assam is to find undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh. But whosoever can’t prove his descent by paperwork even if born and living in Assam for generations is in danger of being imprisoned. India’s Muslim minority is growing more fearful by the day. Assam’s anxiously watched documentation of citizenship – a drive that began years ago and is scheduled to wrap up on Aug. 31. Could thus the model for other regions and states in India?
Beyond this, Modi’s government has tried to pass a Bill in Parliament that carves out exemptions for proving their descent for Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and people from other religions – but leaves out Muslims. This shows that the B.J.P. doesn’t want to stop at Assam. BJP chief Amit Shah and other party leaders have promised their supporters that they will bring mass citizenship reviews across the country. And the tendency of this policy is clear: it verifies Muslims as the enemy and as foreigners and given the popular support that BJP enjoys in India and especially among young people there is a new danger of Indian unity at the horizon: the only way Indian Muslims can help themselves is to unite themselves to fight for their rights. According to 2018 estimates there are 201 million Muslims in India, including 7 million Muslim Kashmiris. The problem is that Muslims apart from Kashmir do not build large communities but are scattered throughout India. But given the new technological means there is a chance that Muslims could unite to fight against discrimination and for freedom of their religion. Such a development could take violent turns easily. The very number of Muslims in India shows the danger of disruption that hides in the anti-Muslim policy of the BJP. Kashmir and Assam are only the beginning (the writer is a defence and security analyst)
The writer is a defence and security analyst