Recent events at the Jawaharlal Nehru University are a reverse echo of the paranoia that will attend on a religious nationalist government, should it secure a majority in both houses of the Parliament. Its quest to scrub the nation clean of anti-nationals will be never ending; the goal receding with every advance and new enemies emerging.
Religion – Private or Public?
Farahnaz Ispahani, in Purifying the Land of the Pure, has detailed how the replacement of Pakistan’s founding father Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s secular nationalism with a confessional one soon after independence, and its promotion by successive governments, has drawn the country into a vortex of hate and gratuitous violence.”
“We are all starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State,” Jinnah had said rather inelegantly in his address to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly in August 1947.
But the broadcast of that speech was suppressed by a former civil servant turned finance minister, who jibed at ‘so-called progressives’ suspecting ‘theocratic motives’ when Muslims seek inspiration from Islamic principles for their government and society. Religion, he said, could not be considered a ‘personal affair’ because Islam is well, different.
Religious Nationalists Taking Over
There are those in India who believe in Hindu exceptionalism and regard the separation of church and state as a western necessity while swearing by the ideal of ‘one nation, one cultural value and nationalism.’
Even Hindu liberals who denounce the fanaticism of their co-religionists feed this view with prefatory declarations about how the lack of a prophet or holy book makes their creed – or way of life, as they put it – inherently tolerant and catholic. They overlook that all religious texts lend themselves to spin, and it is not what the texts say that matters so much as their translation into practice by adherents.
One caught a glimpse of the country that India could morph into if religious nationalists were to take over when ABP news correspondent Pratima Mishra was told by advocate Yashpal Tyagi to shout ‘Vande Mataram’ before he could answer whether he had assaulted journalists at Patiala House.
Those of the advocate’s mindset have said that such declarations should be a condition precedent for domicile in India, just as every Pakistani Muslim passport applicant is required to affirm that they regard Ahmadis as ‘non-Muslim’ and their leader as ‘an imposter prophet and an infidel.’ Fundamentalists measure the exaltation of their object of reverence by the degree of abasement they inflict on those they disagree with.
Intolerance in Pakistan
The search for authenticity does not end with the winnowing of minorities. Ispahani says in Pakistan there was no agreement on the Islamic principles on which the nation should be based.
The Munir Inquiry Commission produced a 387-page report in 1954 after 117 sittings, but found the Islamists agreeing only in their contempt for and opposition to non-Muslims. Their definition of non-Muslim often extended to other Islamic sects with whom they had doctrinal differences.
The Ahmadis were the first to be sorted and graded as non-Muslim. East Pakistan Muslims were also found to be inauthentic as they apparently privileged Bengali nationalism above Islamic fervour.
The Shias are now being targetted by the Sunni majority. In India, we do not have to speculate about the groups that will be targeted. Recent events have given them advance notice. Written constitutions wilt when people act on behalf of a higher authority. The lawyers who attacked journalists at Patiala House Court in New Delhi said they would not balk at resorting to killing or arson if national honour required it.
The Many Shades of Blasphemy
In Pakistan, the blasphemy law has power, not vested in it by the constitution. An Ahmadi tailor in Peshawar was sentenced to ten years in prison for displaying the kalima or Quranic quote when the relevant law prescribes a three-year jail sentence. (A fate that might befall Dalits concealing their conversion to other faiths for fear of losing reservation benefits).
An Ahmadi, greeting passers-by with ‘Salam Alaikum’, is punished for posing as a Muslim. An illiterate Christian labourer and mother of five children, protesting the slur of untouchability, is sentenced to death as a blasphemer, the trial court judge ‘totally’ ruling out false charges and finding ‘no mitigating circumstances.’
The Punjab governor pleading for compassion is shot dead by his own bodyguard, who is given a hero’s welcome when brought to court for trial while several mullahs decline to leads the governor’s funeral prayer (there was an outcry when the bodyguard was executed last month).
The high priests of India’s currently ruling ideology regard the constitution as a passing composition that should eventually give way to principles of the eternal dharma. When that happens, competitive interpreters of law will take over and the country will be convulsed.
Religious nationalists, like secular ones, are moved by power, not piety. At the time of partition, minorities formed 23 percent of Pakistan’s population. Their share has fallen to three percent now. But the pursuit of religious purity continues.
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