With the recent blasts near Delhi’s Red Fort, the ugly head of terrorism once again became visible. The news reminded me of what former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had said in 2002 at a gathering in Goa, immediately after the BJP’s national executive meeting. Without mincing the words, he shared that when he had discussed the menace of terrorism with his Singaporean counterpart, the latter told him to make a correction and describe it as “Islamic terrorism”. Vajpayee, as reported by the media, elaborated later stating that there are two “faces” of Islam: one “pious and peaceful”, and the other “fundamentalist and militant”.
Vajpayee was neither the first nor the only. Well-known reformer Hamid Dalwai of the Muslim Satyashodhak Samaj had elaborately reflected on fundamentalist tendencies among Muslims. In a 2011 column, historian Ramchandra Guha quoted Dalwai to have said, “Unless a Muslim liberal intellectual class emerges, Indian Muslims will continue to cling to obscurantist medievalism, communalism, and will eventually perish both socially and culturally.”
A deeper analysis and elaborate thinking about Dalwai’s observations has become relevant today as we see the emergence of ‘white-coat terrorism’. Highly-educated persons falling for obscurantist ideas and religious fundamentalism, and ending up becoming extremists in their thinking and actions, is appalling to say the least. However, it is fairly established now that education cannot be looked at as an antidote to terrorist tendencies. What is required, in fact, is a structured academic programme aimed at enhancing the understanding of the idea of India, so as to ensure an enduring mindset change.
The moot question then is how to re-present the idea of India before youngsters and try to inculcate a truly modern, forward-looking approach in the thinking of all youths—including Muslims—in India? There are at least five important points that need to be explained to next-gen India.
The first is seeing the global community as one family. During the G20 presidency, India very thoughtfully selected its motto: ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’. The message is that all living beings are one family with a common future because it is intertwined with our collective responsible conduct. Our message of ‘Vasudhaiva kutumbakam’ or global community as one family, therefore, is not just theoretical. It is an undeniable truth, a fact of life.
The second and the supremely important one is our spiritual democracy. This country never was and never could be a theocratic state. Our approach of ‘Ekam sat, vipra bahuda vadanti’ (Truth is one, the wise express it in different ways) absolutely rejects any monopolistic approach when it comes to ways of worship. This principle of ‘ekam sat’ is echoed even in the social context in the writings and speeches of great thinkers like Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.
Almost a century ago, while delivering an Upton lecture at Harris Manchester College in Oxford, he said; “The world is now full of racial, cultural and religious misunderstandings… We are groping in a timid and tentative way for some device which would save us from our suicidal conflicts. Perhaps the Hindu (read: Indian) way of approaching the problem of religious conflicts may not be without its lessons for us.” Importantly, spiritual or cultural democracy abhors any claim of supremacy over others. It nips a ‘my way or highway’ approach right in the bud.
The third point stands on the shoulders of the second. It is about the fact that our apparent diversity is only the manifestation of our innate unity in myriad ways. The unity inherent to our diversity has enabled us not just to accommodate but also celebrate our all-pervasive diversity. With diversity, naturally, comes the question of simultaneously aligning oneself with different identities—regional, linguistic and spiritual. The idea of India provides for frictionless coexistence of multiple identities in one individual. Also, the Hitopadesha tells us through a well-known shloka, ‘Gramam janapadasyarthe svatmarthe prthivim tyajet’—abandon smaller identities to become part of a larger identity. Remember, although the spirit of accommodation has been central to the Indian worldview, it can’t be stretched too far to have diversity as a fodder for divisive tendencies.
Many social scientists believe that excessive domination of the market economy has imposed some kind of excessive competitive spirit. Such cut-throat competition in this era, which is also called the Attention Economy, makes most of us insecure. This situation provides fertile ground to terrorist tendencies thriving on narrow fundamentalist ideas.
As the phenomenon of white-coat terrorism clearly indicates, mere academic instructions are woefully short to remove the influence of fundamentalism. A kind of renaissance within the Muslim community is extremely critical. It was A B Shah, a social reformist thinker, who wrote in his foreword to Dalwai’s book Muslim Politics In Secular India: “Dalwai’s thesis is that the basic malaise of Muslim society (in India as elsewhere with the exception of Turkey and perhaps Tunisia) lies in the fact that it has never had a renaissance in its entire history of more than 1,300 years.”
Shah further writes, “However, the type of integration that is necessary here cannot be achieved unless Muslims no less than Hindus learn to separate religion from the rights and obligations of citizenship of a modern state. “Dalwai himself wrote in the 1968 book, “Whenever Muslims are in a majority, they have refused to recognise the equal rights of non-Muslim minorities, and where they are in a minority, they have been generally reluctant to regard themselves as part and parcel of a non-religious nation. The recent revolts of Muslims in the Philippines, Thailand and Ethiopia are merely expressions of the Muslim unwillingness to participate in a common social order on equal terms with others and this unwillingness is rooted in a long and deeply entrenched historical and religious tradition.”
All in all, not just education, but true enlightenment ending the darkness of negativism gripping minds can overcome the threats of white-coat terror.
Vinay Sahasrabuddhe | Senior BJP leader
(Views are personal)
(vinays57@gmail.com)
