After ‘Sadbhavana- fast’, let’s all eat together…

Image Courtesy: http://exitopinionpollsindia.blogspot.com/

Narendra Modi’s ‘Sadbhavana Mission’ has stirred nation-wide debates and many speculations - from his image makeover to candidacy for the post of PM. Different people have different views on it. I am not sure if Modi would succeed with his objective of ending “vote-bank politics” [Tacitly, this means entering into Congress’ strong-holds at national level; and I am sure - he won’t give up easily. He has already done this in Gujarat]. Nonetheless, I definitely want some concrete actions out of this mission to strengthen the social cohesion in Gujarat.                                                                               

The time has healed wounds of many; and many believe Gujarat has moved on. However, we have seen any cohesive efforts which can ensure communal harmony neither by the state nor by the centre. Modi-government states that after 2002, there has not been a single riot. That is great! It means that the law and order situation has improved and the police-force maybe pro-actively tackling threats. But that is a ‘hard’ approach. What about the ‘soft’ approach? What have you done to tackle religious intolerance? What about tackling extremism? How have you controlled hate-mongers and fanatics? Have you conducted studies to measure – ‘how religiously polarized the people are?’ If so, is it increasing or decreasing as time moves on? What about counseling people, establishing community dialogs, and addressing the psychological needs of the masses? Effects of these things may not be observable in the short term, but they have grave adverse implications on the society in the long run.  

After 2002, BJP has won elections on merit bases, and the congress has never recovered. One party hold is a worrying scenario for Gujarat, because BJP is very sluggish in moving to the centrist perspective from the far right. And the weak opposition party (congress) is unable to exert any pressure on the Modi government. Moreover, it seems the congress has still not realized that the majority of people in Gujarat perceive it as sub-servant of the minorities; and this is hurting it the most. In addition, there are no prominent civil society pressure-groups that work for strengthening social-cohesion across the state. Thus, I am extremely concerned about the social cohesion and stability of Gujarat. There are three options that we have:

1.      The Modi government states repeatedly that it does not believe in “vote-bank politics” and the state policies are inclusive.  I think that is a great step forward. However, there are many indicators that point out some fault lines in the social-fabric of Gujarat. Let’s take one example-

·         The areas of our cities (take any city) are more divided by religions than a decade ago.  This means that now we have islands of Muslim-areas in Hindu majority cities, whereas a decade ago, we still had many mixed areas. Is this a sign of a healthy state? The direct inference of this fact is that Hindus prefer Hindu neighbour and Muslims prefer Muslim neighbour increasingly.  The geographical distance between the two communities has increased.  This may be happening in other parts of India as well, but is that a good thing? Sociologists would raise a red flag for sure.

The state government needs to establish a body that is solely devoted to strengthening social-cohesion, and counters all divisive forces.  It would be great to have social scientists researching and implementing large scale state-wide programs for social-cohesion and social stability in Gujarat.

2.      The congress (or any other party) should introduce visionary leaders having high credibility, competency & centrist-views (not over-focused on minorities) at the earliest; and should strengthen itself to provide a serious fight in the next election. At the very least, it should be in position to correct the government as an effective opposition and expose its loopholes.

3.      We, the people of Gujarat, should become pluralists and teach our children pluralist values.

The first two options are out of hands of common Gujaratis. But, the last option is worth implementing. Gujarat has overlooked the unique contribution of its very own son, Mohandas Gandhi, to the field of education. In all of his educational experiments, Gandhi always emphasized on teaching children the basic values of all of the major religions. The reason behind such educational practices was to nurture pluralist values in children, in order to have tolerant citizens who respect diversity. Most of the biases and bigotry have roots in ignorance and lack of empathy towards the other group of people. If an individual is well aware of the way of living, set of beliefs, and the hardships and day to day challenges of the other set of people, s/he will be more likely to see commonalities rather than differences. And these common elements will prevent compartmentalization and segregation and ensure social cohesion.

Today our schools have forgotten the idea of sarva-dharma prarthana (prayer of all religions). In addition, because of the geographical segregation between Hindus and the Muslims, our schools have hardly remained multi-religious in nature. As a consequence, the younger Hindus are losing contact with their Muslim counterparts and vice-versa. This, to me, is a very dangerous scenario. It is like waiting for a failure. Unless we Gujaratis identify this and act accordingly, it would take a small event, attack or accident for anti-social elements to instigate riots and to trap Gujarat in the cycle of violence. [Modi-government boosts prevalence of peace after Akshardham attacks & Ahmedabad blasts. This analogy does not fit well, because in a terrorist strike the masses rationalize enemy as an “outsider”. So, it is unlikely that the mass-anger discharges on fellow citizens, unless politicians, religious-extremists & media establish such rationalization.]   

Lastly, I would like to provide five simple steps for nurturing pluralist values in ourselves as well as in our children:

1. Study your own religion and cultural ethos.

2. Analyze yourself if you are biased against any religious communities.

3. Make friends of different religions (begin with the one you hate the most).

4. Learn about his/her religious literature and rituals, and identify common elements.

5. Stay with your friend (of other religion) for seven consecutive days.

These ordinary steps have an extraordinary empirical value. The choice is ours. Do we want to ignore fault lines and fight internally when there is a friction? Or do we want to create an ironclad social cohesiveness, which is riot-proof? Always remember, a pluralist country is built by pluralist states; and a pluralist state is built by pluralist individuals.

One personal fact: All the Muslims that I have met in Gujarat or from Gujarat strongly believe that they are much better off than Muslims in any other parts of India. In fact, one Muslim religious group that I got opportunity to travel with, said that they have been to most of the Muslims countries and life in Gujarat is far more peaceful for Muslims than anywhere else. 

On Modi’s skull cap controversy:  I would have gladly worn. However, I don’t think people have to pretend to be belonging to every religion in order to be considered socially acceptable Indians. Such discourse on the national media is outright stupid.  It would be highly tragic if we start exerting social-pressure on individuals to adopt practices of other religion. It’s logically same as telling a Muslim – “you have to be at a Kumbh-mela, before going to Hajj”; Or asking a Sikh boy to participate in a Brahmin like Upnayan Sanskar & go bald before admitting to a school; Or asking a Jain to celebrate the Bakra-id with same zeal as Muslims; or asking a Christian to use the word “Allah” instead of “Jesus” in public. Also, here’s another version that the national media completely ignored:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o0pct-CxT4

I welcome your comments....

A Brief History of Congress Party

Image Courtesy: http://www.udaykumar.info/uday.htm

Allan Octavian Hume, a Scottish civil servant in British India, was very outspoken and never feared to criticize the government, which he was serving. He had many ideas for reformation; and he desperately wished to implement government-policies that make life of the native people better. [It is important to note that during the freedom struggle of 1857, Hume was saved & protected by his loyal Indian officials.] He had openly criticized several policies of the government, including a strong protest of ‘land revenue policy’. His superiors were irritated and attempted to restrict his powers and this led him to publish a book on Agricultural Reform in India in 1879. He repeatedly noticed that the interest of the native people was not of concern to the British-government, and this frustrated him. In 1883 he wrote an open letter to the graduates of Calcutta University, calling upon them to form their own national political movement to secure the rights of the India people. As a result, some like-minded British-officers and educated Indians, all members of Theosophical Society, formed the Indian National Congress party to represent the voice of all of the Indians. Gradually, this party gained popularity among educated Indians and Dadabhai Navrogi became the first Indian Member of Parliament in the British House of Commons. By the end of the 19^th century, Congress had prominent leaders like – Gopal Krishna Gokhle, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Mohammed Ali Jinnah etc.

            However, the ideological and methodological differences among the party members were clear in early 20^th century. By 1907 the party was split into two halves—the Garam Dal (literally "hot faction") of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and the Naram Dal (literally "soft faction") of Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Tilak was a hard-liner and was openly opposing the British-government. Whereas Gokhle was a moderate; and he believed that things can be worked out by working closely with the government. Naturally, the British preferred Gokhle’s methods and were valuing his voice. However, under the influence of Tilak, the Congress became the first integrated mass organization in the country, bringing together urban people against the British. And later on, when Mahatma Gandhi returned to India, he expanded the reach of the Congress to the villages of India, making it representative of all Indians in a true sense.

The Indian National Congress was the only political party to provide harmony to all the sects of the Indian society without appeasing to any in the pre-independence era. The masses of India blindly believed anything and everything that the Congress said. Ordinary villagers would travel to cities to listen to some ‘UK-return’ Congress-men giving speeches in English, maybe because they could read their eyes and listen to their hearts. When the Congress-men said that violence was not the way to fight against the Brits, the people restrained their cumulative anger of many decades and created nation-wide non-violent mass movements. They fasted for days, peacefully protested and got arrested, suffered ‘lathi-charge’ and torture without showing a hint of aggression, only because some Congress-men had asked for that. When the Congress-men asked for boycotting the imperialists, thousands of people left government jobs; students left government colleges; and the masses completely boycotted foreign goods and happily celebrated the burning of their foreign-made clothes. They had appointed those few Congress-men as architects of their lives and their future. Some say the people of India were very lucky to have great Congress-leaders at that time, but I truly believe that all those Congress-leaders were equally lucky, if not more, to have millions of Indians behind them with complete faith. Undoubtedly, in those times, Congress party must have been having the world's largest public mandate. 

The moral of the story:

• For the current member of the Congress-party: Your party neither was created nor gained the national acceptance by the “Feroze Jahangir Gandhi” family. Please have some respect for the legacy of your party. The party, which was one of the biggest unifying factors of India, has turned into a political-dynasty today. How long will you use (misuse) “Gandhi” last name? 

In fact, the actual surname in Parsis is "GHANDHY", so it should be Indira Feroze Ghandhy, Rajiv Ghandhy, Sonia Ghandhy, Rahul Ghandhy and so on. Are they ashamed of Feroze Ghandhy's Parsi descent? Why do all these "secular" people spell like Hindu-sounding last name "Gandhi"? 

Reference: Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, responding to a question on Indira Ghandhy: 

• For all Politicians: People were/are/will be willingly following you devotedly if you demonstrate a combination of “competence and character”.
• For common citizens: Let’s get more involved with the political-world. Let’s make sure the candidate with “competence and character” wins every-time and everywhere. Let’s create an environment where all “dumb and/or characterless” politicians find themselves as “misfits” and are forced to change profession.    

If you're interested in Indian Politics, you may like to read: Understanding the present dysfunction  and Solution through ideology of value-based centrist pragmatism

·    NOTE: I am not a BJP (or any other party) activist. Read my other articles, which clearly criticizes religious politics. I consider myself politically a pragmatic-centrist; and vote for a candidate who seem to be doing a better job at Human Development Index and Knowledge Economy Index.

I welcome your comments....