Hindu-Muslim unity in India is superficial

I do not know why after every bomb blast in India, be it at Mumbai in a Hindu locality or at Malegaon outside a mosque, Indians, particularly the media, resoundingly say there was no communal riot. One leader after another repeats in more or less the same words that terrorists have failed in their nefarious purpose to disrupt the Hindu-Muslim unity.

So far the refrain has been that terrorists have no religion. But after the September 8 Malegaon blasts, most Urdu newspapers in the country have said that the bomb blasts were the handiwork of Hindu fundamentalists. Probably so, but if in the past the comment has been that terrorists have no religion, then why change the policy now? It does reflect anger, but smacks of parochialism.

If the blasts are engineered by particular communities, it is bad enough. But the worst is the message it conveys: the Hindu-Muslim unity is superficial. When the two communities leave the elites aside live in their own localities, have little social contact and very limited economic dealings with each other, why should Indians feel the bomb blasts were used to cut the unity asunder?

Confusing

The absence of conflict is not unity. We are confusing it with co-existence. The fact, however sad, is that even after nearly 60 years of independence, Indians have not been able to establish a secular polity which they thought they would after getting rid of the British rulers and parting company with those who wanted to establish a separate and religious polity.

India's freedom struggle projected pluralism as its ethos. Where did it go wrong? This was the question I raised in my maiden speech in the Rajya Sabha (upper house of Indian parliament) in 1997. I still have no firm answer. Either the seed of separatism has been sown so deep that Indians have not been able to uproot it or they have left things as they were because they did not care. Once India got independence, Indians hardly bothered to establish a secular society.

True, India adopted a constitution which has given all communities equality before the law. But to make this meaningful, little has been done.

The effort to blot out old prejudice or rectify communal thinking has seldom gone beyond paper. Indians have stayed more as Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs than Indians and their approach has been sectional and it has remained the same way in one form or another.

Indians have not imbibed the secular spirit which a secular society demands. That is the reason why most of them do not rise against blatant acts of communalism and a few even give shelter to terrorists, foreign or Indian.

Indians are barking at the wrong tree. Take for example, Vande Mataram (Mother, I bow to thee). It is a song which has stirred national feelings for years. To use it for political purpose is fatal.

India's federal minister Arjun Singh, a top Congress leader, was the first to throw the brick, making the singing of the song compulsory at government-aided schools on September 7, when Vande Mataram was supposed to be 100 years old. Congress president Sonia Gandhi would have done the country proud if she had said that she was not compelled to sing it. True, she did not sing, but the party's explanation was that the date of September 7 was historically wrong for the centenary year.

Message

The message that a person does not become less patriotic if he does not sing the song went awry. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which has no other programme except to communalise every facet of India feels happy that it has embarrassed the Congress.

The question is not whether the Congress has lost or the BJP has won. The question is whether the Indian nation has won. It has not.

The BJP may have scored a point but it is at the expense of Vande Mataram.

I was amused to read the comment by the Muslim Personal Law Board and some Islamic organisations. They do not have to teach the nation that Islam does not worship anyone else expect Allah. After living together for centuries, all Indians know that. They made it a religious issue and played into the hands of the BJP.

A society does not become secular by enunciating that it is secular. It requires commitment to the principle of tolerance and accommodation. Above all, it needs conviction that one's religion is not superior to that of others. All people, belonging to different religions, realise that their separate entities merge into one entity, that of India.

When there is no odium of guilt in a community which kills people of the other community, every verdict gets lost in recrimination. A secular society should be made of sterner stuff.

Kuldip Nayar is a former Indian High Commissioner to the UK and a former Rajya Sabha MP.