We (Hindus) carry a collective and unconscious memory of atrocities, violence, coercion and injustice by Muslim invaders against peace-loving citizens of this country. These wounds had been reopened in the run-up to Partition and in the riots of 1947 and after. All this is real and true but not necessarily the whole truth.

To get the whole picture we have to listen to the whole story. We have to learn about the mental models and assumptions in the collective unconscious of the “Enemy”. In our country, the space for this telling and real listening to the stories replaying in the minds of Hindus by Muslims, and vice versa, has never been created.

We continue to reinforce our own images of each other. We continue to exclude the “Other” from our residential colonies and from the space in our minds and hearts. Most often our biases are so deeply entrenched, buried so deeply and rooted so firmly, embedded and entangled in a mess of roots and soil and rocks in the unconscious that we do not even know that they are there. Those invisible biases are most dangerous.

A wide and deep process of catharsis may follow all of this. In the meantime can we ask ourselves how many of us have chosen our faith. I could very easily have been born a Muslim and been socialised into the assumptions of the “Other”. In that case, I would have been campaigning for Hindus from the other side of the divide.

... contd.