Blame Cong for rise of Hindutva

At about the exact moment the Congress party declared Sajjan Kumar its candidate in outer Delhi, Sonia Gandhi declared that India would not ...

At about the exact moment the Congress party declared Sajjan Kumar its candidate in outer Delhi, Sonia Gandhi declared that India would not survive without secularism. ‘‘An India that is not secular will simply not survive. Secularism is our destiny,’’ she said loftily to a Delhi newspaper. She explained what she understood secularism to mean. ‘‘Secularism in the sense of equal respect for all religions, in the sense of combating communalism of all kinds, in the sense of giving minorities safety, security and equality of opportunity.’’

Secularism does not mean any of these things. It is a European word that relates to separating the church from the state and in that sense irrelevant in India since no Shankaracharya ever ruled or had an army, as the Vatican once did, but why quibble, let us take our Italian prime ministerial aspirant up on her own definition. Combating communalism of all kinds. Giving minorities safety and security. So how should we understand the rehabilitation of a man who was seen leading mobs that dragged innocent Sikhs out of their homes and burned them alive in front of their wives and children? Did the widows of the murdered men misunderstand his purpose for being present at the scene of the massacres? Was he really there only to ‘‘combat communalism’’ and provide them security?

Can we please cut the crap? Can we acknowledge once and for all that it is because of the Congress party’s twisted ‘‘secularism’’ that we saw the rise of Hindutva. You cannot justify the killing of Sikhs in Delhi and condemn what happened in Gujarat, you cannot condemn Narendra Modi if Sajjan Kumar is your man in Delhi. But, Congress gets away with occupying the ‘‘secular’’ high ground because 50 years of propaganda have brainwashed most of our thinkers, academics and hacks into believing a lot of nonsense about communalism and secularism. On the ground this translates into many becoming partisans of Congress for supposedly secular reasons. So if you run into a ‘‘secular’’ hack you get one version of what this election is about and if you run into someone as ‘‘communal’’ as your columnist then you get another version.

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My ‘‘communal’’ viewpoint is that religion has played no role in this election and that if Muslims continue to fear the BJP they do so because they are the real victims of Congress secularism. This kind of secularism allowed the growth of an unattractive, unpleasant Islamism that was allowed to discriminate against women and promote hysterical religiosity of the kind I personally encountered at the Dar-ul-uloom seminary in Deoband last week. This institution, incidentally, is where the Taliban got their inspiration from and has been allowed in our supposedly secular country to create a little patch of Saudi Arabia.

Don’t believe me? Read on. I was in UP trying to get a sense of how Muslims would be voting and thought that the Dar-ul-Uloom would be a good place to visit. So, from Muzaffarabad I turned off the highway on to an impossibly bumpy, broken ribbon of road that took me to Deoband. A ramshackle town even by UP standards but get to the gates of the Dar-ul-Uloom and you see quite a different Deoband. Fine Islamic buildings, whitewashed and shining, and a mosque whose minarets rise so high they seem to touch the sky. Sadly for me, my problems began at the gates. The chowkidar said I could not enter till he was instructed to let me in. So, I waited and waited while he talked to someone on the telephone. When this conversation went on a little too long I took the phone myself and requested permission to meet the chief Maulana of the seminary.

The person at the other end said he had no authority to allow me in and I must go back to Delhi and make an appointment. I assumed he was some lowly employee and asked to speak to someone higher up, at which point the chowkidar said: ‘‘How dare you talk like that, you were speaking to the chief Maulana.’’

A passing student, in Islamic skull cap and beard, intervened here and told me that in any case the Maulana would not see me because I was not in purdah. Unveiled women were banned, he said, and because this struck me as curious, I did my own, un-permitted tour of the Dar-ul-Uloom premises and saw only two women, both covered in black from nose to toes.

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I also met students who told me they could speak only of the Quran and the hadith because that was all they were allowed to learn about at the seminary. Some were openly hostile and told me I had no right to talk to them and that my presence was offensive.

Tell me, please, oh fighters for secularism, how you would describe the Dar-ul-Uloom? Secular or communal? Tell me if the rigid, fundamentalist version of Islam that the students are being taught at this seminary is capable of producing anything but Taliban? Tell me how an institution that seals off not just the modern world but women can deal with the issues that concern the international community ever since Osama bin Laden became the face of Islam?

Sonia Gandhi, for her part, needs to tell us if she believes it was wrong for the Congress party to encourage and defend the worst kind of minority communalism (Muslim personal law) in the hope of keeping the Muslim vote. She needs to recognise that the Hindutva lunatics with their trishuls and saffron bandanas are the direct result of Congress secularism.

Write to tavleensingh@expressindia.com