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The Intolerant Indian:
Why we must rediscover a liberal space
Dr. M. V. Kamath
One thing can be said of Indians: They attract attention, even if not necessarily positive. All the years down from Macaulay (1800-1859) to Katherine Mayo to Churchill to our present times, writers and commentators have written enough to damn Indians to perdition. For Churchill, Indians were a “beastly people with a beastly religion”. Katherine Mayo almost dismissed India as a despicable country. In recent times Indians have been described as ‘impossible’ and – glory be! –‘talkative’ and ‘argumentative’. Now we have been endowed by another writer – an Indian, if you please! – with the epithet ‘intolerant’. No doubt his work will be hailed by intellectuals as the ultimate truth. Gautam Adhikari, needless to say, has all the qualifications to see India through western eyes. He is a FICCI Fellow at the East West Centre in Washington DC, an Adjunct Lecturer at Harvard and also a Fellow at George Washington University – all excellent qualifications to see India through western eyes. Adhikari’s special talent is to run down fellow Indians. He makes statements out of context. Worse, he makes generalisations that cannot stand scrutiny. The “intolerant Indian”, according to him “does not appreciate the idea of India”. Oh really? He speaks of ‘militants' who destroyed the Babri Masjid. But why did they set out to destroy it in the first place? What made them ‘militant’? Adhikari has no time to discuss such mundane issues. He dismisses the Allahabad High Court’s ruling in October 2010 on the Ayodhya issue as a “limp compromise”. What else should it have been? He points out that when India became free Churchill gave it “little chance of surviving as a nation” and has defied the prediction by “merely existing”. Merely existing? Good Lord! India is now becoming a power in its own right! Adhikari condemns L.K. Advani for “unleashing hatred” on the Ayodhya issue. But had the Muslim mullahs, aided and abetted by the so-called liberals and secularists, sought to understand the Hindu sense of hurt, would there have been any need for the rath yatra? In the matter of the Godhra riots Adhikari mentions that fifty eight persons were burnt alive in the train “the origin of which has never been fully established” and that the “VHP alleged that train was set alight by Muslim mobs”. Hasn’t Adhikari read the final Court judgement in this matter? Why do our intellectuals always have to resort to half-truths? He damns the BJP, saying it is founded on “archaic intolerance” and is “culturally regressive”. He has obviously not read the comment on Narendra Modi’s government by a Gujarati Muslims cleric. But to be fair, one must accept that Adhikari can sometimes stumble on truth as when he says that “the problem of tolerance and intolerance within Islam… is a subject that has so far been handled with caution by most secular politicians and intellectuals who have tended to shy away from robust criticism of instances of intolerance when these have emerged within the Indian Muslim community”. Having said that, Adhikari adds that “there may be good reason for such reticence”. That is pure hypocrisy. Adhikari should write another book entitled: “The Hypocritical secularist” and he will get ample material to support his contention. The trouble is, as Adhikari was once told by a critic, that our pseudo-secularists are “only too willing to bend over backwards to appease Muslims, but are far less inclined to accommodate the religious demands of Hindus”. How one wonders can one make Adhikari learn to understand what hurts Hindu sentiment! By all means criticise Hindus. But, for God’s sake, make at least some effort to find out what bothers them. And this is relevant especially in the context of M.F. Husain’s drawings of Hindu goddesses. Husain is not, repeat not, an anti-Hindu zealot. The point can be made that Hindu temples have sculptures of nudity brazenly exhibited on their walls as at Khajuraho. So, our secularists say, what is wrong then with Husain’s stylised paintings of nude goddesses? Good question. What needs to be remembered is that seems to be right and acceptable in one age will not always remain so in another age and time. Hussain had not realised that he was living in the 20th century and not in the 12th century. Besides, if Muslims cannot accept the Prophet being in any pictorialised – and one must respect their sentiments – surely Hindus can protest their Goddesses being drawn in a highly questionable style? Meanwhile, one is surprised that Adhikari attributes sowing “the seeds of regional parochialism” to “Nehruvian India’s decision to opt for linguistic states”. Nehru was opposed to the creation of linguistic states. But it was the events that followed the death of Potti Sriramulu through fasting for the creation of Andhra Pradesh that forced his bands. Nehru can be charged with many errors but surely not for setting up for linguistic states and thereby spurring the parochialism of petty minded politicians and thereby doing great harm to the concept of One India One People. Adhikari means well, but his entire thesis is one-sided and fails to carry conviction, and that is the saddest part of it all. Indians- the majority of whom are Hindus – are basically tolerant and large hearted within their limits. They have, goodness knows, their many faults and shortcomings, especially when it comes to caste equations, but intolerance in the larger context is not one of them. Many feel hurt by the arrogance shown by westernised secularists and their lack of total understanding. Hindus are opposed to conversion and they would be the last to attempt conversion of people from other religions into Hinduism and they have unhappy memories of Islamic and Christian rulers’ cruel attempts to denigrate Hinduism. Adhikari shows total insensitivity towards Hindu feelings. For all that, one can still agree with Adhikari when he concludes that “to reconstruct a tolerant India in which its people develop faith not only in the State’s capacities but also in one another, we must strive to internalise the principle of live and let live in our collective minds. Without that core conviction India might decay into an ungovernable mess”. That holds good not only for the majority community, but also for minority communities, including – and it is important to remember that – Maoist terrorists. If there is one thing that Hindus are intolerant about, it is mindless violence.
Why we must rediscover a liberal space
Dr. M. V. Kamath
One thing can be said of Indians: They attract attention, even if not necessarily positive. All the years down from Macaulay (1800-1859) to Katherine Mayo to Churchill to our present times, writers and commentators have written enough to damn Indians to perdition. For Churchill, Indians were a “beastly people with a beastly religion”. Katherine Mayo almost dismissed India as a despicable country. In recent times Indians have been described as ‘impossible’ and – glory be! –‘talkative’ and ‘argumentative’. Now we have been endowed by another writer – an Indian, if you please! – with the epithet ‘intolerant’. No doubt his work will be hailed by intellectuals as the ultimate truth. Gautam Adhikari, needless to say, has all the qualifications to see India through western eyes. He is a FICCI Fellow at the East West Centre in Washington DC, an Adjunct Lecturer at Harvard and also a Fellow at George Washington University – all excellent qualifications to see India through western eyes. Adhikari’s special talent is to run down fellow Indians. He makes statements out of context. Worse, he makes generalisations that cannot stand scrutiny. The “intolerant Indian”, according to him “does not appreciate the idea of India”. Oh really? He speaks of ‘militants' who destroyed the Babri Masjid. But why did they set out to destroy it in the first place? What made them ‘militant’? Adhikari has no time to discuss such mundane issues. He dismisses the Allahabad High Court’s ruling in October 2010 on the Ayodhya issue as a “limp compromise”. What else should it have been? He points out that when India became free Churchill gave it “little chance of surviving as a nation” and has defied the prediction by “merely existing”. Merely existing? Good Lord! India is now becoming a power in its own right! Adhikari condemns L.K. Advani for “unleashing hatred” on the Ayodhya issue. But had the Muslim mullahs, aided and abetted by the so-called liberals and secularists, sought to understand the Hindu sense of hurt, would there have been any need for the rath yatra? In the matter of the Godhra riots Adhikari mentions that fifty eight persons were burnt alive in the train “the origin of which has never been fully established” and that the “VHP alleged that train was set alight by Muslim mobs”. Hasn’t Adhikari read the final Court judgement in this matter? Why do our intellectuals always have to resort to half-truths? He damns the BJP, saying it is founded on “archaic intolerance” and is “culturally regressive”. He has obviously not read the comment on Narendra Modi’s government by a Gujarati Muslims cleric. But to be fair, one must accept that Adhikari can sometimes stumble on truth as when he says that “the problem of tolerance and intolerance within Islam… is a subject that has so far been handled with caution by most secular politicians and intellectuals who have tended to shy away from robust criticism of instances of intolerance when these have emerged within the Indian Muslim community”. Having said that, Adhikari adds that “there may be good reason for such reticence”. That is pure hypocrisy. Adhikari should write another book entitled: “The Hypocritical secularist” and he will get ample material to support his contention. The trouble is, as Adhikari was once told by a critic, that our pseudo-secularists are “only too willing to bend over backwards to appease Muslims, but are far less inclined to accommodate the religious demands of Hindus”. How one wonders can one make Adhikari learn to understand what hurts Hindu sentiment! By all means criticise Hindus. But, for God’s sake, make at least some effort to find out what bothers them. And this is relevant especially in the context of M.F. Husain’s drawings of Hindu goddesses. Husain is not, repeat not, an anti-Hindu zealot. The point can be made that Hindu temples have sculptures of nudity brazenly exhibited on their walls as at Khajuraho. So, our secularists say, what is wrong then with Husain’s stylised paintings of nude goddesses? Good question. What needs to be remembered is that seems to be right and acceptable in one age will not always remain so in another age and time. Hussain had not realised that he was living in the 20th century and not in the 12th century. Besides, if Muslims cannot accept the Prophet being in any pictorialised – and one must respect their sentiments – surely Hindus can protest their Goddesses being drawn in a highly questionable style? Meanwhile, one is surprised that Adhikari attributes sowing “the seeds of regional parochialism” to “Nehruvian India’s decision to opt for linguistic states”. Nehru was opposed to the creation of linguistic states. But it was the events that followed the death of Potti Sriramulu through fasting for the creation of Andhra Pradesh that forced his bands. Nehru can be charged with many errors but surely not for setting up for linguistic states and thereby spurring the parochialism of petty minded politicians and thereby doing great harm to the concept of One India One People. Adhikari means well, but his entire thesis is one-sided and fails to carry conviction, and that is the saddest part of it all. Indians- the majority of whom are Hindus – are basically tolerant and large hearted within their limits. They have, goodness knows, their many faults and shortcomings, especially when it comes to caste equations, but intolerance in the larger context is not one of them. Many feel hurt by the arrogance shown by westernised secularists and their lack of total understanding. Hindus are opposed to conversion and they would be the last to attempt conversion of people from other religions into Hinduism and they have unhappy memories of Islamic and Christian rulers’ cruel attempts to denigrate Hinduism. Adhikari shows total insensitivity towards Hindu feelings. For all that, one can still agree with Adhikari when he concludes that “to reconstruct a tolerant India in which its people develop faith not only in the State’s capacities but also in one another, we must strive to internalise the principle of live and let live in our collective minds. Without that core conviction India might decay into an ungovernable mess”. That holds good not only for the majority community, but also for minority communities, including – and it is important to remember that – Maoist terrorists. If there is one thing that Hindus are intolerant about, it is mindless violence.
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