Keynote address in the two-day National Seminar on Globalisation, Religious Fundamentalism and Terrorism: Issues in south India. Organised by Department of Political Science, University of Kerala
I
We are living in times when the interpretation of events has taken a sharp turn from the earlier decades. Currently most of the political phenomenon is going on in the garb of religion. The language of religion and other identities has come to the fore of social affairs. The issues related to the needs of the people, the issues related to the rights of people has taken a step back in the face of severe onslaught of identity politics.
The twin phenomenon of terrorism and communalism are in the center of the political stage. The process of social transformation for better society has also been stalled if not reversed as far as the social values are concerned. It is in this context that we see the People’s movements in current times. The major people’s movement in our county has been around the problems of workers, caste, women, adivasis, and minorities. Globally the issues pertained to enhancement of the rights of working classes, the issues related to over coming injustices to nationalities, ethnic and linguistic groups in the main.
The decades of 1950 to 1970s were the times of dynamic changes all through, with people raising their flags of rebellion against the injustices at various levels? There were the issues related to nationalities and ethnicities. The political space was available for expression of the economic, social and gender issues of the people.
Around the end 1980 the things started changing for the worse. Till then the bipolar nature of the world gave enough space to the people to march for their demands, rights and strengthening of human rights in general. Various crucial changes took place which had far reaching effect on the nature of polity and the expression of people’s aspiration.
The first major set back was the collapse of socialist states. Most of the states overcame the colonial oppression and feudal system within, through communist revolutions and through the socialist economic system. This meant the control of communist parties on all the affairs of society, economy, foreign policy, political power structure. This was very much necessary as colonial powers were ruling the colonies in alliance with the local feudal powers and yielding only minimal social and political reforms. The result was that the rising bourgeoisie was not strong enough to lay the foundations of industrial society on its own. The state had to step in as the one to introduce and sustain the material modernization, under the supervision and control of the party bureaucracy. In the world dominated by capitalist production and regulated by market forces, these states began well with solid foundations for infrastructure, and the planning controlled from the top. This planning failed over a period of time due to the lack of built in feed back mechanisms.
The presence of Soviet Union was a good counter check to the imperialist designs of the US and its other allies. It is due to this that some countries did get their freedom from colonial yoke, under the banner of socialism. This period of two superpowers, the era of cold war saw the competition between the imperialists and Soviet block. It is during this period that countries like India strove towards the path of non alignment, which was criticized by US, block and welcomed by Soviet block. During this period the United nation also flourished and despite limitations came up with valuable interventions in the world, including its charting out the values for the global associations, Charters for Human Rights, Minority rights and a whole such valuable aspirations. Many a countries saw the flourishing of liberal values in gay abandon. The language of politics was revolving around the issue of rights, ethnic rights, national rights and attempt to improve the lot of the people.
II
The decade of 1980s saw a rapid turn around in many a fields. The socialist economies collapsed under the weight of inner contradictions of lack of proper control, lack of inner democracy on one hand and external pressures of the arms race and pressure of the western assertions, dominance of capitalist economy on the other. The Iranian revolution, coming to power of Ayatollah Khomeini, the defeat of US puppet, Raza Shah Pehlavi and the imperialist lust for oil, made it focus its attention in the West Asia, where already the seeds of problem were sown with the promotion of Zionism and formation of Israel. US seeing its unrivalled power with the collapse of socialist states, changed its swan song to ‘oil is too important to be left to the natives in West Asia’, took up the tactics to control and dominate this oil zone. The language which was devised was Islam the new threat, succeeding the threat of Communism as the threat to freedom and democracy. The ideological propaganda was unleashed in full swing to demonize Islam and Muslims. With collapse of socialist state multiple phenomenons took place and this was the major transition in the language of global politics.
The foremost of this was the emergence of US the only super power in the world. Its policies now had no brakes and it went on to undermine the authority of United Nations, which was an attempt towards democratic relations amongst the nations of the world. Now US felt its might can go unchecked and it launched its economic offensive in the form of globalization at the new level in which the adverse impacts of its implementation were too severe, the welfare measures by states were downgraded and privatization became the mantra which the industrial houses were to take full advantage of by plundering the industrial sectors run by public sector. The type of economy unleashed was the one where GDP rose high along with social differentiation, riches for the top few and pauperization for the bottom majority.
The unemployment started rising, underemployment was the key and the biggest victim of this was the agricultural sector. The farmer’s suicides have become the major phenomenon and in a way express the major part of the problem of the way globalization is rampaging the lives the people. The economic disparity, economic deprivation is also leading the people to desperations and some of them get drawn to the rising breed of Babas, Acharyas and Sri Sri’s. The rise in the religiosity in society in general and a proactive promotion of events around religion are significant. Amongst the middle classes the rising fondness for Yoga, the discourses of long robed one’s with bald head or flowing manes seems to be the core around which the tense nerves are clamed and people are made to forget their real problems.
A section from the deprived groups forms the ideal fodder to recruit the foot soldiers of the violence which is unleashed by communal forces. The economic instance heightens the identity politics in a subtle way. It is during this period that different social strife’s are assuming the religious language, wearing the cloak of religion.
III
Last few years have seen many attacks of terror, more so after the ghastly tragedy of 9/11, 2001. Since then many formulations have also been popularized, like all Terrorists are Muslims. The impact of this formulation on the popular psyche has been immensely negative.
After all what is terrorism, is it due to religion or a religious community? As such it is difficult to define terrorism, as some people whom we regard as terrorists, others may regard as freedom fighters, those fighting for a particular cause. LTTE a terrorist organization is looked up a fighting for the cause of rights of Tamils by some. Roughly one can say terrorism is an act which may be done by a state, a group or and individual for a political motive and due to this innocent people get killed. This act is a part of political statement or political purpose. Those acts where there are no deaths but people feel intimidated can also be called as terrorism.
As such terrorism is due to social, economic, political reasons and terrorists have come from all the religions. Let’s recall the killer of Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Similarly today’s biggest terrorist organization is Liberation Tiger of Tamil Elam. The Irish republican Army constituted mainly by Christians has been indulging in the acts of terror in Ireland for long time.
Terrorists are not born. Some youth take to the path of terror due to gross injustice or to such a perception, done to them or their community. This is associated with a feeling that society-state will not give them justice. This was witnessed in Guwahati, in November 2007. A group of Adivasis had come to city for demanding their rights over land and forest resources. They were not only beaten up, also one girl accompanying them was molested. A week later an Adivasi National Liberation front was formed which planted bombs in Guwahati Rajdhani express and in this 7 people were killed. We remember that after the Mumbai violence a group of frustrated-dejected people took help of underworld to plant the bombs in Mumbai trains.
There is another reason of terrorism, and that pertains to the political goals of dominant nations or dominant groups. In the decade of 1970s, when the Russian army occupied Afghanistan, US in order to fight back the Russian army and to control the oil wells, set up Madrassas in Pakistan to indoctrinate the Muslim youth. The indoctrination module was made in Washington. According to this the youth were made to believe that Russians/every Non Muslim is a kafir, killing kafirs is Jihad and sacrifice for Jihad will take you to Jannat (heaven) where 72 virgins will be welcoming you. After defeating the Russian armies the Al Qaeda turned against other South Asian countries and also against US itself. India is a victim of the offshoots of this particular as they now firmly believe what was taught to them in the Madrasssas, specially set up to indoctrinate them, in the territory of Pakistan by the US.
The global phenomenon of terrorism has affected all the nations in some way or the other and the global war on terror, is the overarching slogan for hiding the imperialist ambitions for oil hunger. Terror as such is not an abstract concept. Today it is a product, retaliation against the global imperialist policies, the ethnic aspirations gone sour and also a response to the communal violence. Lately one is also witness to the competitive terrorism, resorted to by majoritarian groups also. Most interestingly terrorism, though not well defined, has been brought to the fore as a religious phenomenon. The turning point in such insane acts of violence came with the formation of Al Qaeda by CIA through ISI of Pakistan, through the mechanism of indoctrination of youth in Madrassas.
The other major cause of terrorism is ethno-national, like Srilanka-Jaffna where LTTE came up, in Kashmir, where the issue of autonomy of Kashmir turned to become ethno national one’s, the North East where the integration of NE into Indian stream gave the hiccups of terrorism. Similarly Irish Republican army also came up to due ethnic injustices.
Lately we saw the involvement of some Hindutva elements, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and others in the acts of terror related to the blasts in front of the mosques, Malegaon, Ajmer Dargah etc. This again is due to the indoctrination of the mind by the political process, by ideologies which are totally anti democratic and look at politics in the colors of religion. Here the indoctrination has been done that a particular community is under threat due to another community. One knows that the threat is not due to religious community, but since this politics is based on communal principles they attribute all the reasons to religion and so the misconception are deliberately produced resulting in violence.
The type of terrorism which we witnessed in Mumbai (Nov 2008) is the left over of the Al Qaeda type groups, the indoctrinated one’s. Let’s remember that once a person is indoctrinated for the political goals, the reversal of such process is practically impossible. Toady the country is the victim of this insane process, which has been the result various global and local political an economic processes.
The need is that we look beyond the symptom of terrorism and try to look at the deeper disease which is infesting the social fabric. Just tightening the security wont do as the terrorists are willing to loose their life for ‘their’ cause. We have also seen that some global powers may be assisting and promoting them. So we need to revive the role of United Nations at global level and see that the places where terror camps are going are brought to book be international agency. Locally we must ensure that the culprits while being punished without any discrimination; we ensure that our politics is based on ethical and moral values. All those projecting that they are working for religion, religion based nationalism have to be discarded as our principles must be that Religion is a private matter and it should not be mixed with politics. The basis of our political logic has to be the values of Liberty Equality and Fraternity. At global level a democratic arrangement between different nations and undermining the hegemony of dominating nation states has to be aimed at.
IV
The global phenomenon as reflected in Globalization-terrorism is getting reflected within the country in the form of rising economic distress and communalism. The communal politics began from the declining sections of society in the light of rising democratic values, the process of social transformation. It was started by the landlords, Nawabs, Rajas and later was upheld by a section of middle class ideologues. In India they began in the face of rising industrialization, education and the upcoming of low caste and women in the social space. It got expressed by targeting the other religious group, Hindu and Muslim. It did spread venom against the other community and communalized the social space. The same supplemented in the British designs of divide and rule leading to the partition of the country and massive violence. The violence was to come back soon and was to go to maddening heights in the decades of 1980s, the worst of which was seen in the post Babri demolition Mumbai violence, burning of Pastor Stains and the Gujarat carnage.
It has marginalized the minorities into second class citizens, created their ghettoes and strengthened the conservative elements in those communities. The fear psychology of the minorities has triggered the conservatism in the community to a large extent. The violence against minorities has become a regular phenomenon. Some of these are ghastly and others are ‘low intensity scattered ones’. In a way this violence and the accompanying erosion of civic norms is a big blow to the democratic values and an attack on India’s constitution. The most immediate observation is that it is creating a mass hysteria, raising the violent storms, which ensure suppression of the real issues of the people related to their worldly needs.
V
In India it is RSS combine which poses the major threat to the democracy, while the minority communalism is comparatively anemic, but despite that is able to give provocations to the majority communalism, led by RSS combine. This combine is opposed to the democracy and is using the democratic space to ensure its abolition in due course. Already there is a talk of the Anti Hindu nature of our constitution and the need to bring in the one based on Hindu holy books. The communal violence and the inherent communal politics are surely the biggest threat to Indian democracy today.
RSS was formed in 1925 in Nagpur. The immediate cause of its formation was the discomfort amongst the upper castes/landlord elements due to the non cooperation movement launched by Gandhi as a part of freedom movement. This movement brought into fold the average people into freedom movement; this caused discomfort to the elite sections of society. At the same time the Non Brahman movement was shaking the social relations of Brahmin landlord on one side and the dalits-workers on the other. The founders of RSS were very inspired by the ideas of nationalism of Hitler. RSS had contempt towards the concept of Indian nationalism, which was the ideology of Nationalism, led by Gandhi.
RSS took off from Hindu Mahasabha, an organization which was formed by the Hindu Kings and landlords. Later this organization was led by a middle class intellectual, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. He propounded the ideology of Hindutva, Hinduness, which is the concept of Nationalism based on Brahiminical values of hierarchy of caste and gender. RSS founders were to make this concept of Hindutva and Hindu rashtra as their base ideology and politics.
RSS began with training its volunteers into the version of History, which was communal and had nothing to do with the truth. It said that India has always been a Hindu state and Muslims are aggressors and foreigners. The concept being promoted by Gandhi-Nehru that India is a land belonging to people of all religions is wrong and that what is needed is to build a Hindu nation and undermine the Muslim nation. It decided to keep aloof from direct electoral politics and went to create a set of volunteer, swayamsevaks trained in the ideology of Hindutva. It kept aloof from freedom movement, as freedom movement was based on the values of secularism and democracy, while RSS was for Hindu nation and perpetuation of Brahminical values in newer garb.
It was/is exclusively male organization and when Laxmibia Kelkar wanted women to be taken into RSS, they were advised to form a subordinate organization, Rashtra Sevika Samiti. In the very name of this organization the word swayam (self) is missing as this organization, like all other communal organization stands for superiority of males, believes in patriarchy. It discouraged people from participating in movements related to freedom. Barring few exceptions none from RSS went to jail during freedom movement. And those who happened to go to jail went either for looking for more recruits for RSS or accidentally went to jail and later on apologized to British and got themselves release from the prison.
RSS, Hindu Mahasbha held Gandhi as the person responsible for appeasement of Muslims, for partition of the country etc. On this charge Nathuram Godse and ex Pracharak of RSS, who joined Hindu Mahasabha killed the father of the nation. At that point Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel said that it is due to the hate spread by RSS that the country had to loose its father, Gandhi. Savarkar was also one of the accused in the murder of Gandhi, but he was let off for lack of corroborative evidence.
RSS started forming other subordinate organizations. One of them was Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, which started working amongst students. In 1951, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee of Hindu Mahasabha in collaboration with RSS formed Bhartiya Jansangh. Bhartiay Jan Sangh raised identity related issues and resorted to war mongering by calling for the Nuclear weapons to be made by Indian state. It also demanded that, Muslims should be Indanized. It remained a marginal force till it joined the Jaya Prakash movement and got the chance to become part of Janata Party. Meanwhile RSS was silently infiltrating in all the wings of state and society, bureaucracy, police, education, media, judiciary and army. It was working to oppose the progressive liberal values by promoting religiosity and conservatism in cultural arena.
Jansangh joined Janata Party and came to power in 1977, its leaders became the part of Government. Using this opportunity they further planted their workers in media and other parts of the state apparatus. After splitting Janata Party, the Jan angh component remerged as Bhartiya Janta party on the grounds of Gandhian Socialism. The values which it never believed, but had to project those for electoral purposes! It lent support to Rajiv Gandhi in 1984 elections Meanwhile it gave birth to Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram. VHP started taking up emotive issues and Ram temple issue was made the center of their political credo. Also they went on to form Bajrang dal on the lines of storm troopers of Nazi party in Germany.
During 1960s and 1980s, also it kept doing its work of propagating Hate against minorities, first against Muslims and then against Christians. The result was anti minority violence. In anti Muslim violence, amongst the victims of violence around 80% are Muslims. Most of the inquiry committee reports have concluded that riots are generally begun by RSS affiliates, pretexts are created for that right in advance. Also due to communalization of state apparatus most of the guilty of the crime are generally not punished. Many a times other political leaders have also used the communal violence for heir narrow political goals. The agitation around Ram Temple created a great deal of social hysteria, leading to Babri demolition and intense violence in Mumbai-Bhopal-Surat and other places. Mumbai violence of 92-93 shook the whole country and instilled a great amount of fear amongst the minotieis.
Due to violence the RSS base went on becoming stronger and its political wing BJP went on becoming stronger to the extent that it could grab power at the center in 1996. Later again it came to power and ruled the country, under RSS supervision for six yeas. From 1997, in order to scare away the Christian missionaries from Adivasi areas, the areas where their work is leading to empowerment of poor Adivasis, the violence started and during its course, they also burnt Pastor Graham Stewart stains, on the charge that he is doing conversion work. The Wadhva Commission, which went into this murder, opined that Pastor had not done any conversions. Most horrific form of anti Christian violence was witnessed in the BJP ruled Gujarrat and later BJP ally Biju Janata dal ruled Orissa (2008). With every act of communal violence BJP becomes stronger.
After the 9/11 2001 when globally the phenomenon of terrorism started going up, RSS intensified its campaign of demonization of Muslims saying that all terrorists are Muslims. At the same time Bal Thackeray an associate of RSS gave the call for formation of suicide squads. The acts of terror were so presented by media and in particular by RSS propaganda that it started being felt that Muslims are responsible for acts of terror. With this RSS affiliates, went on to make bombs and some of them started participating in the bomb blasts, especially the one’s occurring in front of Mosques and other places where concentration of Muslims is higher. First such act came to light after the acts of blasts in Parbhani, Aurnagabad and Jalana in Maharashtra. Around this time in April 2006 two Bajrang Dal workers got killed while making bombs in Nanded. The Mahrarahstra ATS did bring this fact to light but it was not pursued, and other acts of blast in Kanpur (August 2008) and Kunnur in Kerala also came to light.
With the Malegaon blast of 2006, one concrete evidence against RSS affiliate ABVP’s member Pragya Singh Thakur came to light. It was her motor cycle which was used in the blast, which brought the matters to surface. It led to other RSS workers associated with Sadhvi. A serving military officer Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, Swami Dyanand Pande, ret Major Upadhyay’s role in the blasts was being pursued doggedly by Hemant Karkare, the chief of Maharashtra ATS, before the 26/11 2008 terror attack took place on Mumbai.
Most of the link of these blasts led to those who were indoctrinated in to the ideology of Hindu Rashtra by some or the other affiliates of RSS. The Hindu Jagran Samiti, near Thane-Mumbai also resorted to acts of terror. This organization is inspired by Hindu Mahasabha and RSS leaders and believes that, Hindus, the devs (Gods) are facing the Danav(demons) in the form of Muslims and Christians in the Kali Yug so such acts of terror should be engineered to teach these communities a lesson.
VI
South India did not see much of communal politics during freedom movement. While a large section of Muslims stay in Kerala and other parts of South India, it became victim of communal politics much later. Initially the influence of returnees from Gulf brought in a conservative version of Islam. Also later one Deendar Anjum was implicated in the act of terror. The Coimbtore blasts were another event which shook the South and brought it on the map of terrorism communalism. As such the major communal build up for communal politics took place in the name of Baba Budan Giri Dargah near Bangluru, and BJP succeeded in communalizing the state to the extent of coming to power in due course.
Karnataka with BJP Government in saddle has seen attacks on Churches and Christian missionaries. The RSS trained Pramod Mutalik and his Sri Ram Sene is at the forefront of street violence, to the extent of attacking girls in Mangalore. The older illusion of South India being free from communalism does not hold any longer as the number of Shakhas present in Kerala is very high and communal violence has been seen in Kunnur and other places. The major factor has been the communalization of social space which is very much there in the Southern states also. Andhra is another place where not only communal violence is frequent but also the acts of terror have been witnessed. Bangluru also saw acts of terror including the attack on Institute of science.
Today no place in India is free from the impact of communal divisions and prevalence of social common sense, which aims to demonize the minorities. With BJP coming to power on its own in Karnatka, there has been a big set back to peace in this region. While generalizations cannot be made, one can say Karnataka and Kerala have heavy presence of communal mind set.
VII
The challenge to social sciences today is to change the paradigm of analysis. The period of 60s and 70 did see a set of frame works and scientifically accurate methods in analyzing the prevalent phenomenon. A small section did tell us about the real nature of socialist states and the nature, agenda of religion based nationalism. In the contemporary times the things have been very obscure as the new phenomena of religion based nationalism is becoming more dominant, similarly the issue of terrorism also requires a much different approach than the one dished out by the propaganda mills of the dominant powers and dominant sections of society.
The major challenge is to remove the lid of language of religion on this phenomenon which is at core political, which are retrograde and are throwing the society back in time. The need was never more necessary and urgent as the popular perceptions are much distorted and these perceptions intensify the impact of oppressive politics. Today social sciences not only need to grapple with phenomenon of communal violence and acts of terrorism, which are major problems in contemporary scene, but need to reach a proper understanding of these issues to the people. Social scientists have also to intervene in the ongoing debate of terrorism-communalism to bring rationality to ensure that the world, India can provide better space for the struggle of people for better society.
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