[Reader-list] HOW SECULAR IS INDIA TODAY?

[Tapas Ray]

> I re-post below at the admin's advise the mail I had sent out yesterday and which had been withheld > because of the attached pdf-file.

Britta,
Thanks for forwarding the article. I think your account is very
important for all of us, on both "sides". It's a pity it refuses to go
through even in-text.
Tapas


Dear All,

I am pasting a few snippets from the opening part of Britta's article,
as it is repeatedly being blocked by the server, apparently. This
article is the result of her fieldwork in Naroda Patia, a name that
needs no introduction.

For those of us who argue against Hindu fundamentalism largely on
ideological considerations, it shows exactly what social process is at
work in Gujarat (and now in other states now). For those who talk
about "Hindus ... fighting for their own existence in their own
motherland", it offers an opportunity to pause for a moment and think
whether this can properly be called their struggle for existence or
their war of aggression against and isolation/extermination of a
minority community.

Incidentally, Britta is probably German or Austrian (Britta, please
correct me if I am wrong). I think that gives her a certain
sensitivity about and to fascism that I have noticed in a German
friend of mine. This, apart from her academic understanding of the
phenomenon, makes her words extremely significant when she draws a
parallel with Germany while noting certain differences that make the
process at work in Gujarat probably more insidious than it was in
Germany during the Nazi era.

Tapas


PS: Britta, you may want to upload the file to Box.net or X-drive and
"share" it with the reader-list email address.


silences in gujarat
december 8, 2007 Economic & Political Weekly

Narratives of the Underbelly of Democracy

Britta Ohm

Five years after the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, the victims want
to talk about their continued sufferings. No one prevents them from
doing so. Only, there are no listeners. For the Gujarat government
they simply do not exist, for the media their story is not immediate
and urgent, and for the majority their harping on grievances is proof
of an unwillingness to bury the past. In post-democracy Gujarat,
policies take precedence over the political and victims of pogroms or
genocides are merely obstacles to economic progress ...

The Gujarat pogrom of 2002 has by now trickled into the larger global
debate ... (but) ... in India itself... (has) vanished from the
headlines.

...

When I had returned to India in the company of a friend earlier this
year for some follow-up research on a project on Indian media under
transnationalisation1, it had been the lingering indifference to what
had actually happened and the absence of coverage on Gujarat in the
mass media that provoked our decision to travel to Ahmedabad. I just
wanted to see what a few reports told me was anything but "back to
normal". The very fact that there was no difficulty in accessing
sites, people or organisations in the Muslim community, already
underlined that their recognition was a matter of choice rather than
of possibility.

In this sense, Prashant Jha's suggestion that Gujarat is a "fascist
realm"2 is slightly misleading, as it conjures up ideas of
authoritarian regimes, like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union under
Stalin, that would do anything to hide their crimes, suppress their
critics and silence their victims, making an investigation an
existential endeavour. The Gujarat victims' readiness to talk should
still not be mistaken for an actual freedom to do so. Insofar as open
suppression has, at least on the surface, been replaced largely by
denial and the insistence on "normalcy", however, Jha is right if one
understands "fascist realm" as a manifestation of "everyday fascism",
i e, as the Austrian writer Elisabeth Reichart has defined it, "as an
authoritarian and hierarchical mode of thought and behaviour based on
discrimination and lack of equality, [that] renders attempts at
self-definition futile and interpersonal relations hence potentially
exploitative and explosive"3 and that is not directly opposed to
democracy.

The atmosphere was probably most comparable to Germany after the war,
when Germans, already mesmerised by the emerging economic boom, went
about the rubble and debris in their cities, unable and unwilling to
realise the degree of destruction beyond their own property and the
dimensions of cruelty and suffering they had tolerated and supported.

In today's Gujarat, though, things appear indeed far more "normal",
able to convey to the non-specified first-time visitor, who does not
venture into Muslim areas, an image of the non-interrupted every day.
A tourist couple from Italy who had just returned from Ahmedabad,
where they went mainly to look at the fabulous textile museum, had
heard about the "riots" but described the situation in the city as
"normal. People told us there had always been violence between Muslims
and Hindus, but now you can see in the old city, there is one Muslim
shop and one Hindu shop next to each other and no trouble." This is
the other commonly acceptable narrative, the cultural version of
"natural" Hindu-Muslim antagonism since time immemorial that "breaks
free" at times and is independent from changing political conditions
and technologies. Yet the non-normal lies in Ahmedabad so immediately
under the surface, and actually so obviously supplants it, that its
perception is not a matter of physical possibility.
We tried to avoid linking up with an non-governmental organisation
(NGO) or local organisation in order to get an entry into the
"normality" first. Our first exploration began with the walled city
(or old city). To the more experienced eye it became obvious that
Hindu and Muslim areas were strictly segregated along an almost
invisible pattern, while the displayed goods were mainly household
utensils in plastic or metal and an extremely limited choice of nylon
saris and salwars. The breathtaking, Jumma Masjid was hardly
frequented and the exceptional 'jalis' (lattice work) in Sidi Sayiad's
mosque were badly kept. An "audio-synchronised walking tour through
the historic walled city" that the ethno-styled house of MG offered
with colourfully designed leaflets4 – which featured state-of-the-art
portraits of Muslim and Hindu faces in different folkloristic attire
and pertinent signs of both religions – seemed like a forlorn bright
ray of light in a darkened landscape, indicating the stark contrast
between what was and what could be.

Beyond the Border
It was Naroda Patia that was first on our list, the outskirts
north-east of the city centre that had seen the most ruthless violence
in 2002 ...