At the altar of tokenism

I find it hard to affect the holy horror expected of the politically correct over the censoring and shelving of our long standing history books. True, I have major apprehensions as to the quality of the proposed replacements since Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi’s partisan saffron track record does not inspire confidence, but at the same time I can’t help observing ‘‘look who’s talking!’’ (In any case, the controversial history books being discarded — other than Romila Thapar’s readable text on ancient history — are dull, dense and dogmatic and would kill any child’s interest in history.)

If the saffron lobby now wants to excise references to the fact that Hindus ate beef in Vedic times and that Guru Tegh Bahadur in association with one Hafiz Adam had resorted to plunder and rapine, it is simply continuing the scholastic tradition of a school of historians who in their bid to present a leftist’s world view ignored facts which did not fit in with their theories. I belong to a vintage which learnt history from books authored by forgotten names like R C Mazumdar and Father Gense and I have often been struck by how different my understanding of history is from my daughters’.

I learnt of Aurangzeb as a religious bigot, my children indoctrinated by Satish Chandra’s book of ‘‘Medieval India’’ know that Aurangzeb has perhaps been unjustly maligned. ‘‘He took a number of measures which have been called ‘puritanical’, but many of which were really of an economic and social character and against superstitious belief.’’ Aurangzeb’s imposition of the jizyah tax was apparently of a political and ideological nature not for religious purposes and not to force Hindus to convert. I learnt that Muhammad bin Tughlaq was a mad cap who insisted on uprooting his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad unmindful of the cost, my children quote Chandra to explain that ‘‘Tughlaq was one of the most remarkable rulers of his age.’’

Even the disastrous shift backwards and forwards of capitals had apparently ‘‘long range benefits’’ such as improving communication! I understood that the battle of Haldighati was the symbolic last ditch battle of the Rajputs to stop the foreign invaders. My children learnt that Haldighati cannot be classified as a battle between the Rajputs and outsiders, Rana Pratap was helped by an Afghan contingent and it was just another battle of Afghans and Rajputs aligned against the Mughuls. The reason I focus only on a few embellishments to traditional history — though there are numerous other examples, Bipin Chandra, for instance, dismisses Lord William Bentinck’s sati, infanticide and thugee reforms as ‘‘very meagre’’ and argues that the British merely supported reforms and Westernisation in the hope that it would lead to the country’s conversion to Christianity — because they demonstrate how a respected school of historians has been slanting historical perspective to fit in with the avowedly noble objective of upholding the secular traditions of the Republic.

Everywhere else in the world a secular government is taken to be one where religion has no place in the affairs of state. In India we have altered the definition to mean respect for all religions by the state. It actually means not simply religious tolerance but treading on eggshells and making special concessions for the more belligerent elements of Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism, the last may be the majority religion but it is not officially the state religion so it should not be accorded special treatment. It is hardly coincidental that almost all illegal land grab in the guise of building places of worship is by these three religions. The docile minorities like Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Zoroastrians and Jews are not generally part of the special favours packages.

Secularism as practised in our country is about tokenism, so that the form takes precedence over the substance. Your party may not grant Muslims a fair share of nominations for elections, but you feel you have demonstrated your secularism by offering state funds for cheaper travel for private religious pilgrimages for Haj. You make it a cause celebre that Murli Manohar Joshi should not invoke the Saraswati vandana at an education ministers’ conference, but the fact that the Gayatri mantra is chanted routinely in so many secular schools and public functions escapes your notice. You allow laws which are in violation of the equality clause of the Constitution to remain, whether it is the question of Muslim Personal Law or permitting Sikhs not to wear protective helmets on scooters, as a demonstration of your secularism. You find it appropriate that Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses should be banned so as not to hurt minority sentiment, but you are outraged when references to the fact that beef was eaten by Hindus in ancient India is removed from a class seven textbook.

You are anxious to demonstrate your concern for the minorities by including Guru Nanak and Prophet Mohammed’s birthday in the already overcrowded list of public holidays but you are unwilling to permit socially deprived Muslims and Christians to enjoy the same reservation quota system which is available to their Hindu counterparts. You do not think it objectionable that our leaders who swear by secularism use the state machinery to visit temples and shrines to establish their bona fides with the Hindu voters. You turn a blind eye to Saudi Arabia funding fundamentalist madrassas all along the border, but are quick to focus on any communal manifestations in RSS-run Saraswati Shishu Mandirs, which at least prepare their students for state recognised exams.

Double standards prevail in a mindset where you are judged by what you say and not by what you do. The simplest way to establish your secular credentials is to keep beating your breast about the Babri masjid. This is not in any way to condone the barbarism of the demolition, but question the imperative to keep raking up the issue even after a decade, as if there were not enough other instances of communalism to concern us. Two years back on the anniversary of the Babri masjid demolition a church was blown up in South India. But the next day’s reports on the debates in Parliament were only about the Ayodhya temple dispute, apparently no MP thought it necessary to inquire about the church. The secular lobby by making Babri masjid its leit motif has only helped put the back up of Hindu communalists, who have discovered the best way to grab publicity is to talk about rebuilding Ayodhya. All of which only keeps exacerbating the communal divide.

In some mixed up minds a soft policy line towards Pakistan and terrorism and a permissive attitude towards illegal Bangladeshi migrants is also perceived as an extension of our secular policies. In the bargain, the real benchmark of secularism which is to ensure our minorities security and the same rights and opportunities as everyone else has become of secondary importance.

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