Terms of Trade | Is the communal tail wagging the secular dog in India?

What do these incidents signify? The simple reply is that each one of those are indicators of the politics of polarisation taking part in out.

The tougher query, nonetheless, is the next. Does an awesome majority in India agree with such politics? If there’s such assist, does it imply that the destiny of secularism, or extra importantly, communal concord within the nation is doomed? If the bulk doesn’t assist such acts, why are there no protests after they occur?

For no matter it’s price, findings from a 2019-20 Pew Survey counsel that whereas an awesome majority of Indians border on conservatism and segregation with regards to faith, they’re additionally dedicated to respecting different religions. “Throughout the nation, most individuals (84%) say that to be “really Indian,” it is extremely essential to respect all religions. Indians are also united within the view that respecting different religions is a vital a part of what it means to be a member of their very own non secular neighborhood (80%). Individuals in all six main non secular teams overwhelmingly say they’re very free to follow their faiths, and most say that folks of different faiths are also very free to follow their very own faith”, the survey discovered.

If the findings are certainly correct, we appear to be within the proverbial state of affairs of the (communal) tail wagging the (secular) canine in our society. However, is that this the case?

Answering this requires readability on another query. How does one know whether or not persons are being truthful in responding to surveys such because the one carried out by Pew?

One doesn’t, exhibits analysis. A 2016 Social Psychology Quarterly paper by sociologists Phillip S Brenner and John DeLamater discovered that “direct survey questions on normative behaviour (comparable to voting or angle in the direction of different religions) are pragmatically interpreted to be in regards to the respondent’s id, asking whether or not she or he is the “sort of individual” who conforms to the norm”. This sort of interpretation, the authors argued transforms the query “from an inquiry about “what I do” to ask about “who I’m.” Importantly, this self-view is probably not rooted within the precise self. Moderately, it might be strongly reflective of the best self—the individual the respondent aspires to be, the paper added.

Of their 2019 ebook Good Economics for Dangerous Instances, Nobel Prize successful MIT economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo cite analysis primarily based on an experiment, which suggests that folks really feel extra assured in displaying their true selves within the aftermath of a beneficial political verdict. The experiment requested People to donate to an anti-immigration charity and located that the prospect of others studying about such a donation was prone to scale back the probabilities of individuals agreeing to make such a donation. This distinction between willingness to make such donations, relying on whether or not others got here to learn about it or not, nonetheless, disappeared after the 2016 election victory of Donald Trump, whose marketing campaign championed anti-immigrant politics.

The findings cited right here open up the chance that many individuals might need grow to be vocal about their Hindu majoritarian views with the Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP) gaining political power. Whereas that is unlikely to have had an impact over the Pew Survey numbers, it may well assist clarify an enormous exodus of political leaders from different events to the BJP.

To make sure, neither of the 2 arguments cited above — specifically individuals mendacity about their normative decisions in surveys or turning into extra vocal about their majoritarian beliefs after beneficial political verdicts — essentially indicate that majority of individuals in India are completely happy to see communal concord is disturbed. Nevertheless, if one does assume that almost all helps mutual respect for religions, the query to ask is, why do individuals not protest when makes an attempt are made to disrupt communal concord? And why has communal politics not suffered in elections?

Answering these questions necessitates delving into the subjective consider politics. It additionally brings into play the function of the so-called secular events within the nation right now. To know the significance of each these elements, historic details can supply essential insights.

Earlier than delving into modern analysis which may also help us reply such questions, it’s price asking a query that goes again into India’s historical past. Is communalism, or a minimum of communal violence, a brand new factor in India or has it all the time existed? A big part of Left-liberal scholarship claims that communal concord was the norm in India, and the seeds of what’s described as communalism right now had been sown by our colonial rulers to swimsuit their political ends.

Whereas it’s no one’s case that the British Raj didn’t encourage fissures between Hindus and Muslims in India, blanket claims of communal concord have been questioned by many Indian students.

One such tutorial is the historian Sunil Khilnani. “Non secular battle was restrained by distinctive strategies: not, as later nationalists fondly appreciated to suppose, on the idea of a genuinely ‘composite’ tradition based on an energetic and mutual respect amongst practitioners of various religions, however on routine indifference, a back-to-back neglect, which on events like non secular festivals might be bloodily allotted with,” Khilnani argues in The Thought of India.

One other tutorial who has questioned such claims is considered one of India’s most well-known financial historians Dharma Kumar. In a polemical piece referred to as Left Secularists and Communalism, which was printed within the Financial and Political Weekly in 1994, Kumar argued that claims of existence of a composite tradition throughout the interval of Muslim rulers in India may be a half-truth as such accounts solely captured the tradition of the royal courts fairly than lives of individuals at giant. “Undoubtedly, a courtly tradition in artwork, structure, music and literature developed below sure rulers welding varied strains—Hindu, Persian, Saracemic and so forth…Undoubtedly this north Indian courtly tradition can precisely be termed as composite tradition, and in my opinion its achievements in structure and music are wonderful. However this was a really small a part of north Indian life. The fantastic thing about the Taj tells us nothing in regards to the absence of battle between Hindus and Muslims on the time it was constructed,” wrote Kumar.

You will need to be aware that Kumar declared herself as a “fashionable unbeliever” and passionate believer in secularism and was making an attempt to level out that the Left Secularist tackle historical past vis-à-vis communalism in India was not simply incorrect historical past but in addition “unhealthy politics, since these histories have alienated many Hindus who ought to assist a secular coverage”.

On reflection, Kumar had an unlikely ally in Aijaz Ahmad, considered one of India’s most distinguished and partisan Marxist intellectuals, who handed away not too long ago. In a lecture delivered days after the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992, Ahmad warned his friends from the Left in opposition to counting on historical past to imagine beneficial political outcomes within the current. “If you don’t have the initiative within the battle and the battle itself comes ultimately to be recognized with a collection of defeats…actual will takes on the clothes of an act of religion in a sure rationality of historical past”. Ahmad quoted the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci to argue that “Historical past, doesn’t, in different phrases, lead routinely to Cause, Progress, Socialism; it might, and infrequently does, equally properly result in mass irrationality and barbarism”.

Does an acceptance of the truth that India’s previous has not been as harmonious as it’s claimed to be imply that communal concord can by no means be achieved in a rustic like India? Not essentially.

Analysis by Brown College political scientist Ashutosh Varshney provides an attention-grabbing reply to this query. In his 2002 ebook Ethnic Battle and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India, Varshney tries to reply the query why some Indian cities noticed riots whereas others didn’t. He argues that the same old response of blaming complicity or apathy of the administration and police shouldn’t be sufficient, because the communal state of affairs varies even inside states, which have by and enormous related administrative equipment. The ebook argues that “it’s the atmosphere of a peaceable metropolis that makes the police and administration carry out its law-and-order capabilities higher, no matter the biases or the extent of professionalism”.

One of many examples Varshney cites to make his argument is the function of neighbourhood committees comprising Hindus and Muslims in stopping communal riots in Bhiwandi, a city simply exterior Mumbai which had a troubled communal historical past within the Seventies and Eighties. After such committees had been made within the late Eighties, Bhiwandi managed to keep away from communal violence regardless of main communal riots in Mumbai within the aftermath of the Babri mosque demolition.

The thought, whereas it seems to be fully intuitive, doesn’t appear to have many takers right now, even inside the ranks of so-called secular events. Even in states the place the BJP is in energy, it’s price asking whether or not the current violence may have been contained if there have been efforts to have interaction members of each Hindu and Muslim communities beforehand.

This brings up the final query we need to reply. Why are there no large-scale protests when efforts are made to disrupt communal peace?

The secular trigger might need grow to be a sufferer of its weak point, suggests analysis by political scientists Selim Aytac and Susan Stokes. Of their 2019 ebook, Why Trouble? Rethinking Participation in Elections and Protests, Aytac and Stokes have tried to develop a idea of why individuals take part in protests. A essential issue that determines participation or lack of it in protests is the price of abstention, the authors argue.

“People who care in regards to the protest’s objectives will bear larger prices of abstention, and thus can be extra prone to take part, the bigger the (anticipated or precise) dimension of the protests…Bigger crowds would possibly sign that “success” is imminent, and never taking part in these circumstances would result in better psychic dissonance than when fewer persons are taking part. Nonetheless others may be drawn emotionally to protests when giant crowds are concerned; they may expertise enthusiasm after they agree with their objectives, driving up prices of abstention,” the ebook says.

Their analysis suggests that each occasion of a muted protest in opposition to makes an attempt to disturb communal concord is prone to improve the chance of bringing down participation in related actions sooner or later as a notion of lack of assist for the secular trigger will deliver down abstention prices even for individuals who assist the trigger.

Whereas there isn’t a level in arguing whether or not Indian society will grow to be fully resistant to communal flare-ups, it may be mentioned with an affordable diploma of confidence that the tactical silence of most anti-BJP political events on such situations may be bringing down the abstention prices for individuals who may have stood up for communal concord in India.

Antonio Gramsci’s perception that historical past doesn’t routinely result in motive didn’t make the Italian Marxist an escapist. In actual fact, Gramsci all the time believed within the dictum of pessimism of the mind and optimism of the desire and spent the final 10 years of his life in jail. However, sadly, India’s secular events appear to have reversed Gramsci’s precept. Whereas they proceed to wax eloquent about India’s composite tradition and the eventual defeat of communalism, there appears to be excessive reluctance to make efforts on the bottom to counter communalism.

The views expressed are private