June 2002

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

The Beast Awakens in India

Rajiv Rawat is an activist with the Boston Global Action Network and the Jubilee USA Network, and a supporter of social and environmental movements in his home state of Uttarakhand in India through his web site at: http://uttarakhand.org

"Unfortunately there's no quick fix.
Fascism itself can only be turned away if all those who are outraged by it show a commitment to social justice that equals the intensity of their indignation."

--Arundhati Roy

Over the past spring, while world attention has remained fixed on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the riveting resurgent right-wing drama in Europe, the inter-communal carnage in India has escaped scrutiny, despite being far more savage and arguably more ominous in import.

While government sources peg the death toll at slightly over 900, most credible human rights organizations have cited figures more than double that number. In addition, over 100,000 mainly Muslim citizens have been rendered homeless.

Although India has been wracked with bouts of communal violence over the last century, the latest massacres have taken on the character of a systematic pogrom against the Muslim religious minority. Sparked by the burning of a train carriage carrying Hindu activists, killing 59 people, towns and villages in Gujarat state went up in flames. Muslim stores were looted and torched, while scores of people were brutally massacred in their homes, either by being burnt to death, shot, stabbed, or even worse. The fury of the mobs was further abetted by police inaction and state collusion with the organizations behind the atrocities, as party workers of the Hindu nationalist BJP government and allied front groups were found to have participated in the rampage.

While world reaction has been relatively muted and distracted, the Indian press has been horrified by the violence, and both the elite and vernacular papers have come out strongly against this tragic episode in India's civic life and the shredding of its secular fabric. Most politicians, even within the ruling coalition headed by the BJP, expressed shock and have called on the Chief Minister of Gujarat to resign. Yet a censure motion moved by the opposition in parliament came short by a hundred votes, and the chief minister and his government seem to have escaped political sacking for now. Even more perplexing have been opinion polls that have consistently indicated that the Hindu nationalist BJP would win again in Gujarat, even though a majority held the state responsible for much of the carnage.

The weakness of Left and liberal-minded Indians in providing a direct response and moving public opinion against what can only be described as Rightist terror, has been a disheartening but predictable outcome of both their own failures and the entrenched power of chauvinist forces. Unfortunately, in the fifty years following Indian Independence, the secular and socialist parties have suffered a steady erosion of their credibility through both their record in government and their political betrayals. This has largely been the fault of the Congress Party's autocratic hold on power, the venality of its rulers over the decades, and the dangerous games it has played with the kaleidoscope of constituencies that constitute India's diverse body politic. The collapse of state socialism in 1991 in favor of neoliberal reforms further eroded popular support for the Congress, allowing space for a century-old ideology, that of militant Hindu nationalism, to emerge as a new unifying force in Indian politics.

As such, the identity crisis stemming from rapid globalization has found its outlet not in progressive, socially liberating movements, but in a reactionary response with an identifiable internal scapegoat. The fact that the Left in India has never seriously attempted to Indianize their largely foreign socialist ideology has left the cultural ground wide open to more chauvinistic right-wing forces. In light of recent developments, this failure to renovate may prove to be the Left's gravest historic error, setting back the cause of radical progressive reform and allowing the poisonous weeds of hate to take deep root, as vividly illustrated by the recent political turmoil in Europe and Israel-Palestine. Indeed, both historically and in contemporary expression, Hindu nationalism has shared a greater kinship to fascism than to the fundamentalisms of Islam and Christianity. An outside observer cannot but be struck by the baleful sense that today's Hindu nationalist's grievances and rage--based in a reading of history that emphasizes Muslim atrocities against Hindus--stem from the same overwrought sense of victimhood and siege mentality shared by Serbian nationalists, Rwandan Hutu extremists, and right-wing Zionists.

What makes that sentiment so powerful is that the Hindu nationalist cause addresses many historic injustices. It radically confronts both the neo-colonial anglophilia of the Indian ruling elite and the modern cultural identity crisis at the heart of the globalization process. It sponsors schools and religious institutions in India and abroad, while its national service corps renders invaluable service to far flung areas of the subcontinent.

However, the Hindu nationalists have also attempted to overcome the perceived weakness of Hindus with shows of strength, whether through the testing of nuclear weapons or putting local Muslims in their place for atrocities committed 500 years ago. No longer, they claim, is India willing to remain on bent knees hoping for the bully to soften at the turning of the other cheek. Temples devastated by Islamic invasions and internal wars over the last millennium are to be rebuilt for Hindus to reclaim their pride and dignity. India is to be transformed into Akhand Bharat (Undivided India) to usher in a new golden age of its ancient civilization, and become the only country other than Nepal to give Hinduism primacy among all faiths.

Furthermore, Hinduism, never a centralized faith nor one with a common doctrine across its 800 million adherents, is to be refashioned into a militant organized religion to face modern day challenges (for example, Hindu opponents of this militant self-assertion are often derided as "cowardly Hindus," a term not unlike "self-hating Jew"). The universal truth of ahimsa--the nonviolence or "soul force" preached by Gandhi--is to be turned on its head, replaced with the ideology of the just use of himsa--violence, akin to "just war."

Under such new guidance, the burning of Gujarat becomes only a fulfillment of Dharma.

Most alarming is the inroads these cultural nationalists have made in the perceptions of common people as well as the overseas community, perpetuating the lethal idea that Islam, including Indian Muslims, are the enemy that must not be spared in the "clash of civilization." In fact, the Hindu nationalists seek common cause with the creeds of right-wing Zionism, European anti-immigrant sentiment, and America's war on terrorism as the war against Islam. If these views get further entrenched in the Indian psyche, an apocalyptic war with Pakistan may not be so far-fetched after all. Coupled with an internal conflagration, it is no exaggeration to claim that it will be the beginning of the end, writ large over the fate of 1.3 billion people.

Even now, almost three months after the incendiary event that sparked off the violence, Gujarat still smolders. While progressives and peacemakers must pay attention to understanding the roots of the current crisis, withholding judgment and arguing patiently and passionately for sanity and justice, all those of good will must also take immediate measures to prevent India's descent into the abyss of hatred and destruction. It is still not too late to preach peace and solidarity between peoples, in India and abroad, and return the beast to whence it came.

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