Milk the faith, worship the cow
AFTER intensive debate in the constituent assembly between modernists and reactionary lobbyists the new Indian state agreed to encourage citizens to move away from the slaughter of the milch cow.
The directive principle advocated by the founding fathers was a compromise of sorts between two rival political tendencies and not as forthright as, say, Mughal emperor Babar’s advice to his son to desist from cow slaughter in his kingdom lest it hurt his subjects’ feelings.
And though the members of the constituent assembly may not have conclusively legislated to halt the cow slaughter practised by various social strata and regions of India they unwittingly ended up creating and even protecting a new milch cow, one with greater utility to the political elite. This milch cow assumed the identity of obscurantism and its conjoined twin, communalism.
Hindu-Muslim communalism in India has mutated from its purpose that prevailed prior to Independence. There is neither the foreign master to stoke it for social control, nor a feudal order that leans on its survival for its own sustenance. Its new users, ironically enough, are the beacons of hope for a new shining India — the astute corporate elite that is overwhelmingly upper caste, and their downstream urban offshoots.The rural sociology continues to get succour from levers of social control forged in caste, though vestiges of religious bigotry are not entirely absent. Be it a Dalit Jatav boy daring to elope with a middle-caste Jat girl in Barsana, the unlikely village of Radha, Lord Krishna’s consort and muse, or a Muslim boy falling for a Hindu girl in Madhya Pradesh, everyone is liable to be lynched by powerful village panchayats that remain a notionally defiant adjunct of an otherwise conniving state.
In its new format, Hindu-Muslim communalism has evolved into a byproduct of political economy pursued by the country’s two main predominantly Hindu parties — Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Both actively encourage blind faith and religious revivalism not only among vulnerable Hindus but also Muslims. Christians and Sikhs are not exempt from their purview.
As for the largest minority, Indira Gandhi shrewdly but again narrow-mindedly handed over the country’s Muslims to a hopelessly reactionary clergy. The move recoiled on the Congress, however, just as his brief flirtation with religious fundamentalists boomeranged hard in Pakistan on Z.A. Bhutto. Under the very canopy of the Muslim Personal Law Board she had created, Indira Gandhi suffered an unprecedented rout in 1977 and the Congress has never completely recovered from that loss of face and trust.
The Congress feels the pinch of this betrayal while the BJP naturally revels in its rival’s agony. Both need riots though — the BJP to galvanise a reticent Hindu constituency by stoking revivalism, the Congress to ensnare a frightened vote-rich minority into its aching talons.
In times of communal peace, the minorities assume the visage of swaggering kingmakers, as they recently did in Uttar Pradesh when they weighed in to reject both the national parties for a regional one. This was not liked by either of the two parties.
Logically, therefore, we should be prepared for a major communal mobilisation before the next general election, even riots, if that is what it takes to win power. The reason is not difficult to divine. Neither of the two pretenders has anything by way of policy to offer to canvass support.
They speak the same language on crucial issues, on economics, on advocating a veritable police state in the country, on military jingoism, and on foreign policy with a very subtle difference if any towards ties with China or Pakistan. On communalism, they behave as the pot calling the kettle black. But most importantly, they both know that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s reforms would not have happened without the air cover of Ayodhya and its long-lingering aftershocks.A small sample of the shape the future mobilisation could take came from Hyderabad a fortnight ago. Police arrested four Hindu agents provocateurs for planting body parts of a cow in a Hindu temple. The ensuing riots were meant to help a liquor merchant and a moneylender consolidate their hold among the Hindutva hordes. False flag attacks are the easiest to stage and can be camouflaged well to make detection difficult.
Private television channels, India’s Murdochian avatar, play both sides of the street, which only boils down to playing just one side — upper caste dominance of state institutions, but in any case of the media. They serve another purpose, that of promoting and sustaining a discourse that is completely unrelated to the daily issues that people want to hear about.
In other words, the corporate media has two objectives — to make the Congress look good; if not, to give the baton to the BJP. The Narendra Modi makeover is entirely the media’s handiwork. One side promotes him as future prime minister. The other side dumps him as a communal threat thereby seeking to assist the Congress by handing it a panic-stricken constituency of Muslims, Christians, Dalits and Advisais.
The corporate elite has abiding influence with both parties. But it knows that no party can win an election by promising to privatise state assets or by putting people’s hard-earned pensions on the stock market. The mobilisation has to be a parochial one regardless of who is better placed to win.
In this suffocating climate, I was heartened to see the Supreme Court on Tuesday directing the central government to abolish the Haj subsidy for Muslims in 10 years and invest the amount — averaging over Rs6.5bn a year for last five years — in education and other measures for social development of the minority community.
The order by Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana P. Desai reflected a grudging resolve, which successive governments had failed to muster in the last 60 years.
Will the Indian state now cut the remaining subsidies of arranging and supporting other religious carnivals and pilgrimages?
Let’s hope so. However, the worry is that despite the Supreme Court’s bold initiative, the state will find a way to cultivate the religious order that has served its purposes so well. There is already a move under way to revive the old campaign to ban cow slaughter. After the disaster in Uttar Pradesh, the two pretenders that claim to own the Indian state will be smiling in anticipation.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
i have just one question to ask? have you ever seen him praising India on any account? i have never read a single line in any of his articles which suggests that he admires anything about India. Have we as a country gone so wrong that a rational honest intelligent journalist like him ( as some of you find him to be) can not find anything good about us? I dont care about what he says or feels about us but this is just to raise my doubt about his job as an unbiased journalist. or is he here with some other agenda?
Jawed wants India to follow the magnificent example of the Soviet Union,Cuba,North Korea etc. We can see how well that turned out for them. Anyway India is a hundred times better than Pakistan in treating her minorities.
The only hope for India is to take Government's hand out of religion. Best place to start is to get rid of multiple religion based laws (i.e., Hindu law, Muslim law and Christina law).
Jawed, your articles are good as always. I do not agree with you 100% in any of the article but that is fine. Let me also say that I am a moderately conservative Brahmin if Rarh region, I observe both morning and evening achmans and prayers in Brahminical orders. But I think I understand the points you are making especially at the entrenched caste systems and its tendency to prolong through local economic structures.
I really wished that you published your articles in Indian newspapers as well. You may be unpopular, but you dare to bring up the issues vividly which has been swept under the carpet for long. So long, that this generation doesn't know about them. Look at the comment thread. It is simply denial all the way.
Regards, Sandeepan Banerjee
mr Naqvi did you ever write anything good ??????????????????????
Good writing there, Mr Naqvi. Specially well-suited to thinking readers of Dawn. However, there is exactly one mistake I think you often make in your mind – you probably think that there can be some sort of abstract classification which will filter out good people in India, leftists, obscurantists, brahmins, the hunger-ravaged, capitalists, the denied or whatever.
No Sir – the clear emerging truth is this: – after the spread of gunpowder in India, any Indian in power is bad, and nothing can be said about defining those who might be good. Now, if you view your own pieces from that perspective, you will yourself appreciate still more the accuracy of your analysis
Thank you Mr. Naqvi for writing this great article. Facts are hard to swallow for those whom ego gets hurt easily. However for greater good of largest democracy, these facts should be analysed to avoid harm in future. Some comments here paint you as anit-indian, I consider you as humanitarian that forewarns about harms that could come our way.
Under the guise of left leaning sentiments, Mr. Naqvi has turned into a cynic – lord knows there is a lot to be cynical about in India. Still, his unrelenting and often irrational criticism of the "upper classes", his penchant for Brahmin baiting, his soft pedaling the Mayawati crimes, and other crimes of omission and commission by the so called Dalit leadership, make his observations less meaningful, and makes him prone to biases, which are obvious to everyone. In fact, his motives are suspect.
This is sad. Even in Pakistan here, any writer who dares to speak about things as they really are is accused of having '' susupect motives''. How could you all be deaf to what Mr. Naqvi is saying. He only wants India to live up to the secular ideals it procalims.
BRR, very well put. But you have to understand that Naqvi's core audience is Pakistani Dawn readers. Ironically online it seems that more Indians read and subscribe to Dawn than Pakistanis nowadays.
If this thread of comments is any indicator of the sort of minds reading these columns,it is chilling to the bone. how do so many of you deliberately miss the point and fail to see the humanity in what the author is trying to say? Where is your integrity and why are there so many of you running loose? congratulations Jawed. this is an excellent piece and a very important point you make. best Francesco Alvarez
Those – the Hindu/India leaning kind of whiners, need to know a couple of things before you get too emotionally involved,
a) Jawed is as much a proud Indian as you guys are with as much right as you have to whine
b) He is way beyond seeing things in broad brush strokes – Hindu and Muslem, he has the intellectual ability to see things in much finer details as evidenced here in the article
c) It is a journalist's job to point out the problems of a system, not to crow about the status quo like many others in corporation owned media of these days and be in cahoots with them….if you like that, go read the Indian papers- all are the same except perhaps the Hindu.
Long live Jawed and the likes of him.
Mr Naqwi, you stay in India and berate India. Why don't you leave India? Trust me, no one will miss you or your ingratitude to the land that gives you the liberty to belittle it.
NO NO
there are tons of people who will miss his thoughts on contemporary india.
You just have to come up with your mind open to comprehand and understand what he is saying.
Mr Naqvi – well done and well said…magnificent article. thanks for portraying the truth
Who exactly is the author pointing fingers at? .Is it the State or political parties or the constitution or corporate elites or the media or the people’s communal outlook? .World can’t be what you want it to be, Pressure Groups and Special Interests group will continue to shape a country’s future . I see nothing to whine about . Author seems to be suffering from some kind of depression and is clearly venting the frustration on the country as a whole.
Once again directionless article by Jawed, all the corporate houses are villian and USA is the biggest of them. Best way to go forward is to follow Stalin, Mao , Kim Jung (Norh Korea ) , Pol Pot (Cambodia) and replicate their mass revolution in india.
I feel facts are twisted and in particular in the Para that start’s with ‘As for the largest minority, Indira Gandhi…………’
Just easy pickings of small incidental incidents… cherry picked .. not mentionening Mayawati as Dalit Chief minister .. Reservations for minorities… and so many achievments by the Indian Govt. may it be Congress or BJP..
As they say in India … U should always have a critics house next door… so is Mr. Jawed Naqwi..
I really wonder who is the critic next door to his house … just to show him the mirror..
I feel facts are twisted in the para that starts with 'As for the largest minority, Indira Gandhi ……….'.
Sorry to say this but I was reading Naqvi’s articles for quite some time and can strongly feel anti-Indian leniencies.
I don't understand this.
The cow may give us milk, but the humble chicken gives us eggs for our children and meat to eat.
Is the chicken not worthy or does it not have the attention of the Media.
With only two national parties, the media discourse will obviously also follow a binary support/oppose paradigm. Ditto with the Modi makeover, none of the courts or independent panels that were appointed could find a clear link, maybe there is no link to really hold him legally guilty and responsible for the violence that transpired in 2002. In this case, the media has to look toward the future and acknowledge Gujarat's undeniably impressive accomplishments under Modi.
It is somewhat similar to Pakistani media's overt support to the army or muted support to civilian democracy.
Mr Naqvi….pls do not spread false message.
The Indian Haj subsidy covers only travel expenses of the pilgrims to Mecca & back. For no other religion viz Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist etc etc does the Government of India dole out travel subsidies. Again Mr Naqvi, with some responsible reporting i hope you can help bridge the divide.
In a country of 120 Crore people many such things happen Jawed.
Still You are safer than your neighbours, practice your faith freely, proclaim 5 times on loudspeaker that your God is greatest and still criticise the state of Bharata.
We Hindus (No caste Specs plz) are trying our level best to assimilate Muslims in our society and we have succeeded to a great extent.
Still you are Unhappy, Still you feel more needs to be done, Still you ridicule Indian values, customs, rituals and religion.
Unfortunately Jawed this will lead to radicalism among us as we cannot do more. We proud to be Hindu and Indians.
We are proud of our culture and tradition.
We request you that if you dont feel free and good in India you can report from Karachi not Delhi.
Thanks
Jawed Naqvi, you are among those who get frustrated when India is not in trouble. Well, do you think India bashing gets you a good will in Pakistan? may be you can make so called defense councils happy with this but certainly not DAWN readers. No matter how hard you try to deny the secular credentials of India, having traveled across the globe for last 20 years or so, I can firmly state that among all countries where Muslims are not in majority, India is among very few countries where minorities are sound, safe and breath easy.