South Asia Citizens Wire | 8 July, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2270 [1] Pakistan: Study in temporising (Tahir Mirza) [2] UK: Bangladeshis in east London: from secular politics to Islam (Delwar Hussain) [3] India: Delay in communal violence bill (Syed Ali Mujtaba) [4] India: Temple Tantrums (Rajeev Dhavan) [5] South Asia: Interrogating religious radicalism (Yoginder Sikand) [6] India: Letter to National Commission of Minorities re Harassment of Christians (John Dayal)
___ [1] Dawn July 07, 2006 STUDY IN TEMPORISING by Tahir Mirza PRESIDENT General Pervez Musharraf is reported to have directed the Council of Islamic Ideology, of which otherwise one hears very little, to draft an amendment to the Hudood Ordinances. This should be done by "consensus", says the relevant report, and the amendment should be "compatible with Islamic law and values". According to the report, the general said: "The Hudood Ordinance (sic) was authored by one man and it can be changed. However, it should not be abused." Whether or not the president has taken an interest in this oppressive piece of legislation on account of the recent media debate that has been generated only he can say. But there has been an outcry against the ordinances almost ever since they were promulgated in 1979 by Ziaul Haq, the "one man" mentioned by Gen Musharraf. There have been several committees or commissions that have gone through the ordinances and almost all have recommended their repeal on the grounds both of their anti-women bias and because, in the view of many scholars, they do not conform to Islamic principles of justice. The most notable of the recommendations for their repeal were contained in the reports of the Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid commission and the National Commission on the Status of Women, which was headed by Justice Majida Rizvi. Two elected civilian prime ministers had two terms each to ponder over the legislation and to amend or rescind it. In view of the fact that Mr Nawaz Sharif at one time wanted to establish a system based on the Shariat, he may not have been too keen on tackling the ordinances. Ms Benazir Bhutto had no such inhibitions, and yet she too shied away from taking on the religious lobby. General Musharraf made some encouraging "liberal" noises when he took over, but he quickly learnt the trick of pushing all socially or religiously sensitive issues into the background. His latest pronouncement is another study in the art of temporising at which our political leaders excel. He wants the ordinances to be amended, not repealed, and amended through consensus and in a way that is compatible with Islamic law and values. The commissions and committees that have urged repeal of the ordinances apparently did not arrive at a consensus considered satisfactory by the general and, in his view, did not make suggestions compatible with Islamic laws and values. According to the Hudood Ordinances, women reporting rape can end up by having to confess to zina, adultery, because they have to produce four male eyewitnesses to testify to rape. This is not a dead law that is not invoked: the AsiaNews website quotes the NGO Madadgar as saying that 196 Hudood cases were registered in the first four months of this year alone - 106 in Punjab, 77 in Sindh, 11 in Balochistan and two in the NWFP. Such is our powerful feudal culture that couples marrying without the blessings of their families can be and are charged under the Hudood laws: if a man wants to victimise a woman, all he has to do is to go to the police station and have an FIR registered against her under the Hudood Ordinances. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that of the nearly 6,000 women and children in prison, about 80 per cent of the women have been charged with adultery under the ordinances. Most of them come from disadvantaged sections of society, are poor and illiterate. One newspaper article had pertinently asked whether such women were more promiscuous than the rich and the famous. Thus, again we have a piece of legislation that discriminates against the poor and in favour of the rich. While referring the issue to the Council of Islamic Ideology, General Musharraf also asked that an ordinance be issued for the immediate release of women prisoners accused of crimes other than murder, robbery and terrorism (and presumably also drug smuggling). The release process was to be finalised by Monday, but the federal law minister now seems to be saying that this will form part of a "package" of reforms. So we can expect a little more delay, a little more of temporising. General Musharraf has sounded confident and full of bravado on other issues, often invoking the personal pronoun to assert that he will do this or he won't let that happen. On this issue, he has proved to be as pusillanimous as any other of our political leaders, although he has far more authority at his command. One hopes this is not due to the fact that he holds previous military rulers, - Ayub, Yayha and Ziaul Haq - in some reverence. He should have denounced at least his immediate predecessor as a military dictator when he took over. But loyalty to the service and no doubt the esprit de corps prevailed over good sense. One should be forgiven for believing so, but the general seems so beholden indeed to the Ziaists in the military that he keeps Ziaul Haq's son in his cabinet as minister. The son may be gifted with qualities of head and heart of which we are unaware, but wasn't a principle involved somewhere about bestowing a high office on the progeny of a dictator who inflicted incalculable damage on Pakistan? One dilemma in all such matters is of course caused by the fact that we call ourselves the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, as clearly stated in the Constitution by which we all swear. This "Islamic" provision has not prevented anti-Islamic and anti-social practices to prevail. We have lied and cheated and given and taken bribes and usurped the rights of innocent people, exploited the poor and the downtrodden, sated our appetites while the poor have gone hungry, blown the rule of law to smithereens and behaved in the most uncivilised fashion, and, as a state, patronised regimes that have destroyed historical monuments and have indulged in all kinds of clandestine, extra-legal activities. Yet the provision provides a reference point to question the government on any matter that someone considers to be contrary to what he believes to be Islamic values or Islamic laws. Few individuals have invoked this provision to challenge the actions of the government, but the religious right merrily uses it any time that it wants to make political capital out of a particular situation. It's the easiest thing to describe something as un-Islamic and then watch ministers and rulers run for cover. The second problem is lack of religious scholarship and of men learned in Islamic jurisprudence. As a result, most public discussion on matters concerning religion is uninformed. The discourse has been cornered by the mosque imams, many of whom are barely literate, by clerics motivated by sectarian prejudices, and by politically bankrupt politicians who turn to religion to justify their actions. What many of us consider to be Islamic may on closer scrutiny turn out to be totally contrary to our religious values. Unnecessary confusion and schisms have been created in society. Many of us believe that since we don't know enough about religion, we should keep it out of political argument, which should be conducted on secular lines and on the temporal political issues confronting us at every step. Others think that we should imbibe enough of religious learning and scholarship to take on the mosque imams and leaders of the religious-political parties on their own wicket. The secularists have been fighting a losing battle because our state is constitutionally a religious state. Thus, it has become easy for the more reactionary minded to mix up "secularism" with being anti-religion or irreligious. No one stops to ask how this can be possible in a country where the majority is religious and consists of what are described as practising Muslims. Secularism as a belief system that extols tolerance and acceptance of all religions is never considered pertinent to the Pakistani situation. This has bred much of the hypocrisy that we see around us and which results in laws like the Hudood Ordinances, described by eminent Muslims jurists as un-Islamic. The contradiction that is at the root of many of the bewildering problems we face should at some point of time at least be recognised even if at the present moment it seems impossible to resolve it. If the Hudood Ordinances are not altogether scrapped, which is the demand of civil society, then any revision of the legislation must take into consideration the views of women representing all sections of society, and the link between the misuse of the legislation and the feudal system should be thoroughly investigated. Any insular exercise conducted in the airconditioned comfort of Islamabad, away from the district towns and hamlets where the ordinances provide only another means of terrorising and exploiting women, will prove meaningless. _____ [2] www.opendemocracy.net July 7, 2006 BANGLADESHIS IN EAST LONDON: FROM SECULAR POLITICS TO ISLAM by Delwar Hussain Who speaks for the mostly poor Bangladeshi community in east London? Delwar Hussain charts a long-term shift from secular leftism to Islamism - one in which British state policy has played a significant role. The connection between events in Bangladesh and the large Bangladeshi community in east London is intimate but not static. The influence of economic, political and generational change on the transformation of personal and public identities is profound. In particular, there has been a significant movement in recent years from alignment with secular politics as a vehicle of representation and empowerment towards Islamic-based organisation. An important element in this is that the British state has helped create and support this process through its funding policies and its application of a "multicultural" model of relating to and supporting community organisations in the area. To understand the context of this change, it is necessary to understand the trend of events in the Bangladeshi homeland itself. In 2001, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) came to power in coalition with the vehemently Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami, which at the time of Bangladesh's liberation war in 1971 had fought to maintain the country as a province of Pakistan. "East Pakistan" (the forerunner of Bangladesh) shared a Muslim identity with "West" Pakistan - today the state of Pakistan proper - but most Bengalis wanted a secular society, rooted in Bengali culture rather than in Islam. Almost immediately after Jamaat's arrival in government, attacks against religious and ethnic minorities in Bangladesh began to be reported. A British peer and parliamentary human-rights representative, Eric (Lord) Avebury, said that "Bangladesh is an increasingly dangerous place for women, minority faiths and ethnic groups, opposition parties and secular organisations". He argued that at the root of these problems lies the "cancer of a maverick branch of Islamism" that aims to "transform the country into a Taliban-style dictatorship". Five years on, Bangladesh approaches an election scheduled for January 2007 with its politics bitterly divided between the Awami League (AWL) and the BNP (see Liz Philipson, "Bangladesh's fraying democracy" (26 June 2006). The Jamaat openly advocates "Islamic revolution" and calls for the establishment of a worldwide Islamic khalifah (caliphate). This is the culmination of a process that began soon after independence with the assassination of Bangladesh's architect Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and the seizure of power by the army. Bangladesh's new rulers sought legitimacy for their nationalistic vision by turning to religious parties. They removed secularism and socialism from the constitution, and declared Islam the state religion. This issue lies at the heart of the country's present predicament: the attempt to revive religion as an instrument to redefine the national identity. The war of liberation appeared to have resolved the problem, but the faultline persists. Jeremy Seabrook argues that it goes to the heart of the people's identity, "(setting) Bengali culture, language and tradition against the growth of a form of Islam not rooted in Bengal". Seabrook makes the important point that for centuries, the distinction between these two realities was not experienced as a problem or a division at all. The diaspora and the city These issues - Islamic and Bengali identity, religion and culture, political struggle and political power - are very much alive in London's Bangladeshi diaspora, centred in the Tower Hamlets area. At their forefront are organisations such as the East London Mosque (author of conspicuous and effective Islamist initiatives) and the Shadinata Trust (a secular body that seeks to increase awareness of Bengali culture and history among British Bangladeshis). The battle is an unequal one: the secular effort is faltering against the vibrancy and energy of the Islamists. One of the trust's primary objectives is to bring collaborators in the liberation war, some of whom live in Britain, to justice. For many young people in deprived Tower Hamlets, this is ancient history with no relevance to their lives: they regard Bangladeshi politics as distant and corrupt, and day-to-day issues of drugs, gangs and unemployment as far more relevant. The Islamists, by contrast, are sophisticated and up-to-date in their focus and appeal. The East London Mosque (and its affiliate, the London Muslim Centre [LMC]) shares the ideology of the Jamaat-e-Islami. The mosque is no fringe organisation; it was at the centre of the campaign that helped elect the local Respect party candidate and vocal critic of Britain's New Labour government, George Galloway, in the 2005 general election. An article on the website of the Islamic Forum Europe (IFE), an organisation associated with the mosque, urged voters to vote for Galloway; although it said he was "unlikely to establish khalifah in East London", and he has "passionately (campaigned) for Muslim political prisoners far more than some of our Muslim community elders who are still living in the days of the subservient maharajas in British India." The London Muslim Centre hosted an event in honour of the new MP, where he expressed his gratitude to the young volunteers who "gave their blood" for him. The IFE's president, Muslehuddin Faradhi, said: "We made sure that people (were) able to cast their votes without fear and intimidation and make an informed judgment. The way we attempted to educate people was significant. We believe the impact of this will be felt for years to come." A Bangladeshi Jamaat MP, Delwar Hossain Sayedee, has regularly appeared at the mosque and raised funds for his party there. These visits are controversial: older Bangladeshis accuse him of involvement in the massacres of Bengalis during the liberation war. But the Jamaat has made strenuous (and successful) efforts to distance itself from its extremist and anti-Bengali past, and young, third-generation, British-born Bengalis have demonstrated in support of Sayedee's presence. It is striking that a party with the Jamaat's record can attract young people in Britain, when for the most part, they have little interest in the politics of their parents' or grandparents' country. In south Asia, the party has drawn support from those both promoted and dislocated by modernisation - middle-class people (teachers, lawyers, and engineers among them) repelled by western ideas and attracted to the ideological rigour of fundamentalism. Indeed, societies in transition often generate fundamentalism. In London, the absence of a Bangladeshi middle-class has meant that support for the Jamaat was negligible, but it has discovered another constituency: the British-educated Bengali working class, those at the bottom of Britain's social pyramid, heirs to endemic poverty and exclusion. The path of social advancement may be closed to them elsewhere, but the doorway to rightwing, fundamentalist theology is broad and always open. The state and the "community" The transnational, diasporic links represented by Jamaat-e-Islami represent just one aspect of the "Islamising" of the Bangladeshi community in east London. There are further processes at work: political, religious, and "multicultural". The social policies of successive British governments have played a part in the long-term trend away from secularism and towards Islamism. The British state has since the early 1990s deferred to a generic idea of the "Muslim community". This has increasingly enabled mosques to enter into partnership with local authorities to deliver social-welfare programmes. The East London Mosque, for example, provides educational facilities (religious and non-religious), a youth centre, a gym, a meeting-space and a library. The mosque and the LMC have also positioned themselves in resistance to the culture of gangs and drugs in the area. These organisations share with others based on Islamic principles a facility in targeting youth "at risk" and helping to curb anti-social behaviour. John Eade writes: "The success of these projects in reaching out to disaffected youngsters ensures that these faith-organisations are engaged in mainstream service delivery channels and remain open and accountable, a requirement for public funding". Michael Keith, the leader of Tower Hamlets Council, observes that faith has become legitimised as a way of providing welfare facilities, such that explicitly faith-based youth associations in the borough that have become increasingly significant; to end the funding of such organisations, he says, would result in the disappearance of crucial social safety-nets of the kind once provided (but no longer) by the state. Moreover, an effect of structural economic change in Britain (especially the unemployment of many former textile workers in London as a result of the effective outsourcing of their jobs toBangladesh) has been that local authorities themselves have funded faith-based initiatives that answer the livelihood needs of second - and third - generation Bengalis. This funding has its origins in two significant events in the early 1990s - the Salman Rushdie affair (1989) and the Gulf war to eject Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait (1991) - that were crucial in the formation of the "British Muslim identity". In their aftermath, Britain's political establishment realised that British Muslims could not be ignored, believed that gestures towards fighting poverty and social exclusion would undercut support for specifically "Muslim"' causes, and at the same time sought (for economic and ideological reasons) to cut government funding to voluntary organisations. The result of these combined processes was the rapid emergence of faith-based alternatives in the social arena, whose agents urged individuals into using their "Muslim" identity to access particular services and to gain traction over social and political concerns. While in earlier periods British Bengalis were known by their national origin, today they are seen as part of a homogeneous "Muslim community". This is the irony of multiculturalism: policies aimed to create diversity in British society opened spaces for fundamentalist intolerance and homogeneity. Islamists have been the main beneficiary of these developments. The media may portray them as "backward" and "medieval" people who reject British values, but their demands on the British state have been and are legitimated within a government-created framework. However, state funding is only one aspect of the rise of Islamism. As long ago as 1992, reports suggested that Asian Muslims were deserting bars and clubs and entering mosques and religious classes. The phenomenon seems in retrospect supportive of an argument based on the idea of young people being "in-between two cultures" (alienated both from the cultural "traditions" of their parents and "modern" western culture). This led them, the idea runs, to an embrace of an Islam that allows individuals to transcend this separation by linking them into the global "culture-free" identity of the umma. The increasing self-identification of Britain's 1.6 million Muslims by faith rather than by ethnicity would seem to support this line of thinking (the summary is, a simplification, needless to say, since cultures are not static, but complex and multiple with porous borders). A more persuasive argument relates to issues of discrimination and exclusion. Bengalis are among the poorest in Britain, and among those most exposed to racial discrimination. This is not new; but the response of the maturing third generation of indigenous British Bangladeshis is. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, Bangladeshis in London used secular, socialist ideology to combat injustice - a system of thinking that could then still lay plausible claim to the future. There also remained at that time the option of return which sustains many migrants, who promise themselves they will go "home" when they have made enough money. Today, most of those born in London still refer to Bangladesh as "home", but in practice Bengal is distant from their daily lives and probable futures. Within the community, Bengali secularists appear today as archaic as the political left. Islamic brotherhood is a more potent tool in the fight against discrimination. Claire Alexander, author of The Asian Gang: contesting Britishness, writes: "Islam stands as a psychological barricade behind whichBangladeshi young people (usually men) can hide their lack of self-esteem and proclaim a functional strength through the imagination of the umma". The agency of change An older generation of British Bangladeshis saw Islam as one aspect of a plural, many-layered identity; for their children and grandchildren it has become the basis of a monolithic ideology, the supreme identity in the struggle for political and socio-economic interests. It is also both reaction to and defence against the experience of poverty and racism. The context of this mobilisation is both global and local. The Islamists have managed both to articulate and project a persuasive political meta-narrative after 9/11, and to appeal to young people in east London by focusing on issues of drugs, crime and unemployment. Their local success is in part a consequence of the state-sanctioned ideas of multiculturalism which dominated society during their upbringing. They have been able to use, adapt and extend such ideas by taking them far from their "liberal" origin, and joining very different movements which yet proclaim the same objective of "equality". The impulses and actions of what might in another age have been seen as working-class anger have thus acquired a more plausible emancipatory narrative in Islamic fundamentalism. Religion has been the agent of empowerment for many Muslims in the struggle against racism, imperialism and the extremes of capitalist inequality. That this has been facilitated by state funding along faith lines is a fact few are ready to confront. The fight of secularists against racism and poverty appears bland compared to the ardent certainties of religion. In Bangladesh, secularists and the left have been marginalised and suppressed by the post-2001 ruling coalition. While the Bangladesh Nationalist Party - and George Galloway in London - seek to ride the Jamaat-e-Islami tiger for political gain, the prospects of this strategy for resolving the enduring questions of social justice, equality and diversity are dim. Jamaat and other fundamentalist groups are sowing the seeds of future conflict, as well as obscuring more hopeful and humane pathways to equity and harmony for Bengalis, in both Britain and Bangladesh. Delwar Hussain is a researcher in Bangladeshi politics and the Bangladeshi diaspora _____ [3] Central Chronicle July 5, 2006 DELAY IN COMMUNAL VIOLENCE BILL Aligarh and Vadodra are not isolated events but part of the larger picture of the communal programme that is being carried out intermittently - Syed Ali Mujtaba The Communal Violence Bill announced by the UPA Government soon after coming to power in May 2004, seems to be gathering dust. The Government seems to have more reasons to pilot the Office of Profit and the Reservation bills than make efforts to stop the cancerous growth of communalism in the country. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister Shivraj Patil both made separate statements in Parliament on the communal situation in the country and took credit of keeping it under check. However, both maintained a stoic silence over the timeframe for tabling the Communal Violence Bill in Parliament. Meantime, two communal riots, one in Aligarh (UP) in April last and the other in Vadodra (Gujarat) in May, reiterated the necessity of the bill. The bill is supposed to give powers to the Union Government to intervene in the wake of a breakdown of the communal situation. As of now, the Centre cannot interfere in the affairs of the states and can only appeal it to control the situation. Take the Aligarh incident, where once again the dispute centred on places of worship. Every year the matter comes to boil there during Hindu festivals with Muslims objecting to the use of the blaring loudspeakers in the temple that disturbs their prayers in the adjacent mosque. As in the past, the tension this time too was building up for some time and exploded with instances of stone throwing, looting and arson. This was retaliated through police firing, killing eight people. The Minorities Commission's fact-finding team found that the police did not comply with the rulebook and fired above the waist as all the shots hit the victims directly on the upper parts of the body, suggesting its intention was to kill. The IG Police (Kanpur range) who headed the Departmental inquiry reportedly calls it a case of police high-handedness in his report. He says, sufficient evidence is there to prove that the situation could have been brought under control without the police firing, if the administration acted with a little intelligence and responsibility. Aligarh echoed in Vadodara a month later where five people were killed in the police firing. Here again the issue centred on a religious structure claimed as encroachment on road by the Vadodra Municipal Corporation, even though, the first survey carried out in 1912 by the then ruler of Baroda, Sayajirao Maharaj mention that the Muslim shrine was in existence for at least 200 years and its daily light (diya) and expenditure were borne by the Hindus. Unless motives are attributed to its act, it does not stand to reason why the Vadodra Corporation paid scant regard to the ancient place of worship and showed unnecessary haste in its demolition. The shrine was termed as 'mini Babari masjid' and was a target of attack at every communal riot that took place in the city since 1969. Muslim residents of the area that resisted the demolition were hit with police bullets leaving five of them dead and scores injured. A day after the demolition, a Muslim youth was burnt alive in his car by a fanatical Hindu mob. The Supreme Court injunction ordered swift action by the Union Government to control the situation; otherwise the Vadodra incident had all the trappings of the post-Godhra communal genocide of 2002. Both in Aligarh and Vadodra, it is ominous that the fatalities could have been avoided if the local administration tactfully handled the situation. A cursory look at the history of the communal riots in the country suggests that Aligarh and Vadodra are not isolated events but part of the larger picture of the communal programme that is being carried out intermittently. Riots after riots have similar story to tell. The communal violence invariably flares up around religious centres; the State administration allows it to escalate. The extremists then go on the prowl, unleashing an orgy of death and mayhem in connivance with the local administration. When enough damage is done and media pressure becomes unmanageable, the authorities put their act together to control the situation. The naked vote bank politics of consolidating the vote of the majority at the expense of destruction of the minority is the pet theme for the last sixty years or so in India. This is a tried and tested formula in Indian politics to first create a sharp division in the society and then ride on the insecurity wave to romp home to power. The Congress or the BJP both are two sides of the same coin, so goes the saying. Since communalism is one of the many tools on which politics centres in India, no political party wants to get this eliminated altogether. Some may talk about its banishment from the society but those who see it as a holy cow of the electoral politics, want the communal pot to be kept boiling. It was a revolutionary call of many sorts when the UPA Government announced that it was going to bring the communal Violence Bill to stop the repeat of Gujarat. The promise held credibility because the Left which is supporting the Government too showed keenness to put a lid over this recurring crime. However, the UPA Government having completed two years in office but still not keen on bringing the Communal Violence Bill, give rise to the suspicion that it may be another case of an empty promise made for electoral gains. However, if the Government sources are to be believed, it is not the real case. The Parliamentary Standing Committee of the Home Ministry is currently discussing the Bill. The discussions are centering around two contentious issues; can a communal situation in a state be dealt with by the Central Government without encroaching upon the state's rights of maintaining law and order? Second, can the deployment of Central forces be done independently or at the request of the State Government and, in any case, can such forces act independently or act under the command of the State Government? Notwithstanding the rights of the states to be encroached upon, the fact remains that in the name of State autonomy and exclusive right over 'law and order', the Central Government cannot remain a spectator to the instances of communal violence taking place in a State. Irrespective, of the delay in the Bill, the Central Government should immediately bring out a statutory order that it would have the exclusive right to intervene in the event of communal situation, and punish those who have been behind this heinous crime. It is time for the UPA Government to implement the promises made. Further waste of time would be an invitation to another Aligarh or Vadodra to take place. _____ [4] The Times of India July 7, 2006 TEMPLE TANTRUMS by Rajeev Dhavan The Sabarimala controversy tests India's dual secular guarantee of religious freedom and social justice for all. Every citizen has the right to profess, practice, propagate and manage one's own affairs in matters of religion including the myriad of essential practices that define a faith. To strike a balance, the Constitution permitted the state to provide, for "social welfare and reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus" to ensure temple entry for untouchables and others. But, religious freedom is subject to gender equality. The Ayyappan temple at Sabarimala is undoubtedly a public temple which must normally be open to all including women. The core question is whether temple entry or social reform can override what is sacral to a faith. In the Srirur Math case (1954) Supreme Court extended protection to all the 'essential practices' of a faith to strike down provisions which granted the commissioner for endowments entry to the "inner Holy of Holiness... the sanctity of which is zealously guarded". In the Devaru case (1958) directly concerning the temple entry of untouchables, Supreme Court took the view that untouchables could not be prohibited from the temple but could be excluded from all ceremonies which were for Gowda Saraswat Brahmins alone. On this logic, any court or law cannot interfere with what the faith declares as essentially sacral or profane. The legal script of the Sabarimala Ayyappan temple has already been written up. In 1991, Kerala high court not only concluded that the exclusion of women from the temple was reasonable and proper but also accorded sanctity to using astrology to discern the wishes of the deity at periodical Devapra-sanams. Accordingly, in 1985 it was declared that "the deity does not like young ladies to enter the precincts of the temple". Following this, the high court emphatically stated: "If the wish of Lord Ayyappa as revealed by Devaprasanam conducted at the temple to prohibit a woman of a particular age group from worshipping at the temple, the same has to be honoured and followed by the worshippers and the temple authorities". The court, therefore, proclaimed that the Devaswom Board "has a duty to implement the astrolo-gical findings and prediction on Devapra-sanam... (and cannot disregard) the wishes of the deity revealed in the Prasanam". The present controversy stems from the latest astrologically based Astamangala Devaprasanam in which the deity was, allegedly, upset by many things, including thefts and favouritism in the temple, de-forestation and a woman having defiled the temple sometime earlier. In a secular vein, the deity also wanted worship at the Vayar shrine managed by Muslims in the vicinity. All these supposed oracular wishes of Lord Ayyappa stand unfulfilled. But, what has attracted attention is actress Jaimala's confession that she had touched the deity in 1987, her defiant stance that she will answer to God and not high priests and her apology. The high priest refused to admit a dereliction of duty to doubt the Jaimala story. Where do we go from here? As a matter of law, Kerala high court has clearly laid down that the exclusion of women aged between 10 and 55 is essential to the faith as a core 'essential practice' of the followers of Lord Ayyappa. If this is so, the past is secured and the future sealed. Non-believers cannot be told to believe in God. Nor can believers be compelled to deny their faith. But we can ask them to re-examine the validity of their belief. We can go down a partisan bifocal BJP route of preaching a uniform civil code to Muslims in the name of reform whilst defending many irrational Hindu claims to be part of India's national heritage. Such an approach has too many 'Hindutva' contradictions to command secular respect. For the rationalist, on the other hand, empirically unproven beliefs and practices should be allowed as personal belief not social practice. Religions cannot be compartmentalised into inner beliefs, which are to be protected and external practices which can be reformed out of existence. Faiths come as an integral whole. Believers may well say that the forced entry of women into the temple will render everyone's prayer at the temple valueless. If the Supreme Court's logic is followed, women may obtain entry to the temple but not to the inner sanctum of Lord Ayyappa. The Kerala high court surmised that the reason for excluding women from the Ayyappan temple was to protect them from suffering the privations of the 41-day ordeal of penances. The rest is blind tradition based on astrological conjecture. Hindu orthodoxy may have social and political reasons for seeking refuge in obscurantism. But Hinduism is no stranger to reform and change. Temple entry of untouchables and other reformist intervention have not weakened but strengthened the faith. Hindus cannot preach gender justice to others and indulge in practices that their own reformers have found wanting. For the moment we must proceed on the basis that the practice of excluding women from the Sabarimala temple lacks critical, moral and religious foundation. That the Kerala high court decided otherwise is hardly the point. The writer is a senior Supreme Court advocate. _____ [5] INTERROGATING RELIGIOUS RADICALISM by Yoginder Sikand (July 5, 2006) A principal premise of all forms of religious radicalism-Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim or other-is a stark and rigid dualism. Religious radicalism reflects a very simplistic, and, to its adherents, a very convenient way of looking at the world, saving them from the onerous task of carefully examining it in all its complexity. It divides all of humankind into two neat compartments, hermetically sealed off from each other and projected as being inherently and permanently at odds. One part of humanity is projected as consisting of the 'chosen' ones: fervent soldiers of God, ardently struggling against all odds to implement His will. The rest of humankind is depicted as 'deviant', 'irreligious' or even worse: as enemies of God and helpers of the Devil. In this stark way of compartmentalising all of humanity, what people of different religions share in common, their common hopes, fears, joys and sorrows and their innate humanness thus come to be invisiblised, forgotten or even rudely denied. Good things in other religions or philosophies are either ignored or else referred to grudgingly as only 'partial' and 'limited' and, therefore, as inadequate for salvation. True, often enough, when pressed with evidence that belies their claims, religious radicals will admit that people who do not adhere to their particular ideology, too, are human beings, or even children of the one God. Yet, in the same breath they would also insist that for these others to be truly 'saved', to be truly true to God, they must abandon their beliefs and ways and join their ranks. Only then, they argue, would God be pleased with them. And if they refuse, they would, they contend, continue to be considered by God as His 'enemies', and their personal piety and goodness would count for nothing, failing to save them from perdition in the life after death. Aspects of the various faith traditions or alternate understandings of these that seem to question the principal premise of ideology of religious radicalism are routinely glossed over, denied or sought to be suitably 'explained' away by religious radicals. Not surprisingly, in the South Asian context, for instance, both Hindutva and Islamist religious radicals routinely denounce popular forms of religion, such as the humanistic tradition of many Bhakti and Sufi saints, which, while speaking in the name of religion, evoke a common humanity transcending narrowly inscribed boundaries of caste and creed. Such traditions are seen as a menacing threat to the stern, straight-jacketed dualist ideology that religious radicalism is premised on. Religious radicals see human beings as defined by only one identity out of the many that they actually possess: their religion. All other identities, such as of class, caste, sect, nationality, region and gender, are considered only secondary, at best. Because these identities sometimes threaten to disturb and challenge the ideological hegemony that religious radicals seek to impose in the name of religion, those who share a broader religious tradition with the radicals but interpret it differently and speak for these other identities are routinely branded as dreaded 'fifth columnists', 'agents' of the enemies of what is presented as the one true faith. Thus, for instance, Dalits who demand reservations and denounce 'upper' caste domination are denounced by Hindutva ideologues as 'pawns' in the hands of the 'enemies' of Hinduism, who are alleged to be using the Dalits to destroy the 'unity' of the Hindus. Likewise, Muslims who speak for Muslim ethnic and sectarian minorities, such as Sindhis and Baluchis or Shias in Pakistan, are quickly berated as 'enemies' of Islam by Islamists, who insist that the only identity one should possess or be proud of is that of being Muslim. To talk of other identities is thus a major threat to those who wish political discourse and people's worldviews to be defined solely by religion, and that too by their own particular, fiercely dualistic, version of it. Related to this is the point that religious radicalism often serves the function of preserving and promoting the interests of entrenched elites or of middle-class elements seeking that status. Religious radicalism, generally speaking, reflects a certain cognitive or intellectual arrogance that is sternly elitist: 'We alone are right, and others, including people of other faiths as well as people who claim to follow our faith but follow or understand it differently are wrong". But this suffocating elitist exclusivity does not remain limited to the realm of discourse. More often, it is consciously used to forcibly counter other, particularly subaltern, ways of understanding the very same religious tradition that religious radicals claim to represent-witness the fervent opposition of Hindu and Muslim radicals to popular Hindu and Muslim subaltern cults, which has, throughout history, taken even violent forms. Witness, too, the fierce persecution of various subaltern Christian sects by the Catholic Church. Such alternate forms of religion are seen as in urgent need of being countered and suppressed, peacefully or by manipulation, but, if that fails, then through force, because they effectively challenge the claims of religious radicals of being the sole spokespersons of the religion they claim to represent. Religious radicalism is also often used to suppress demands articulated by subaltern groups protesting against their subordination at the hands of elites who are associated with their own broadly defined religious tradition. As part of this agenda, religious radicals seek to entice the oppressed to turn their wrath onto people of other faiths instead, who are projected in radical religious discourse as their real 'enemy'. Hence, for instance, Dalits protesting 'upper' caste Hindu hegemony are told that they should cease serving the agenda of the 'enemies' of the Hindus and that, instead, they should attack Muslims, who are projected in Hindutva discourse as the great, menacing 'other'. Similarly, in Pakistan, workers and peasants struggling against landlords and the feudal-industrial elites and non-Punjabis opposed to Punjabi hegemony are warned by radical Islamists to cease what they denounce as their 'anti-Islamic' agenda which, they claim, is inspired by the 'enemies' of Islam and calculated to divide the Muslim 'ummah' against itself. Instead, they are told, they should join hands with their fellow Muslim oppressors in a joint struggle against a range of forces who are routinely depicted as Islam's 'enemies', including the Hindus, India, the West and so on. Religious radicalism is thus often consciously used as a device to keep subaltern groups associated with the same broadly defined religious tradition as the radicals firmly in their subordinated position. In this sense, therefore, religious radicalism is more often than not an enemy of most members of the very community whose faith tradition it claims to represent and champion. Because they speak the same idiom of religiously-inspired exclusivity and sharp dualism, different religious radicalisms, while claming to be fanatically opposed to each other, actually feed on one another, all being opposed to the recognition and celebration of a common humanity and of alternate truth claims. In effect, therefore, the ideology of religious radicalism is a major stumbling block to genuine inter-faith dialogue and solidarity. At a time when religious identities are playing a major role in shaping world affairs and local as well as translocal conflicts, religious radicalism needs to be critically interrogated. While the complex economic, political and cultural roots of many of these conflicts have to be addressed, the religious or ideological dimensions also need to be carefully understood and critiqued. Although not adequate by itself for this purpose, promoting alternate understandings of each religion, more accepting and accommodative of other religions and their adherents, is a crucial necessity in this regard. _____ [6] Communalism Watch July 6, 2006 Letter to National Commission of Minorities re Harassment of Christians Dr. John Dayal Member: National Integration Council [. . .] MOST URGENT [. . .] 6 July 2006 Jenab Mohammad Hamid Ansari Chairman National Commission for Minorities Lok Nayak Bhawan, New Delhi 11003 Re: 1. Harassment of Nuns and Christian workers at Bus Stops, Rail Stations in Tirupati government-owned areas 2. Request to have the Constitutionality of the Seven Tirumala Hills reportedly being out of bounds to Christians 3. Ending hate campaign against Christians in Andhra Pradesh Dear Ansari Saheb [. . .] I am making this formal complaint to you regarding a sustained hate campaign by the religious fanatics of the so-called Sangh Parivar in Andhra Pradesh, directed as much against the Church as against certain local politicians who may profess the Christian faith, and in particular Chief Minister Rajshekhar Reddy. While I am sure the Mr. Reddy can take adequate care of himself and counter the campaign carried out in the media as also on the grassroots level helpless Christian workers, ordinary people, cannot. Nuns and Pastors have particularly been victimized and targetted. There have been several incidents in the state in the last six months. [. . .] goons of the Sangh Parivar have taken upon themselves to be the local religious police in connivance with some ranks of the Andhra State police, to harass Christian workers in the guise of stopping their missionary activities or `conversions. [. . .] I am sure you, and other departments of the Government of India, will look into this incident and it ramifications for the health of secularism in our country. With warm personal regards John Dayal -- [ Full text of the above letter is available at: http://communalism.blogspot.com/2006/07/john-dayals-letter-to-ncm-re.html ] _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on matters of peace and democratisation in South Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit citizens wire service run since 1998 by South Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/ SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/ DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers. _______________________________________________ Sacw mailing list [email protected] http://insaf.net/mailman/listinfo/sacw_insaf.net
