The colour of persecution

The idea of nationhood is being dragged through some nasty bends in the road. In an impassioned speech in Parliament, the home minister declared that India would never turn her face away from persecuted minorities in neighbouring countries. 

For minority, read Hindu, for his solicitous concern is limited to the three Muslim-majority nations in the region. Many in the opposition raised objections to his careful selection, but the minister was quick to call them out. To read duplicity in his intentions would be malicious, he said, because it is not him who had imbued the humanitarian act with religious colour; his opponents did that, at the time of the country’s partition.

Why just go back 72 years, religious discrimination dates back even further. But if we are to draw lessons from the past to project the future, it is deceitful to view it through a keyhole. Just as there was tribalism, persecution and discrimination that Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists inflicted on each other and the British did on all brown-skinned natives, there was as much, if not greater, opposition to such divisive forces from within the religious orders. 

Collective despair over such behaviour gave rise to the philosophical underpinnings of life in the region, to the wealth of stories that power its literary canon and to spiritual movements that raised the banner of an egalitarian, humane world. It also led to the spread of Indian sacred texts in a world well beyond its borders, Dara Shikoh’s Persian translations of the Vedas and therefrom into other languages helped spread their influence. 

Language was not viewed through a religious binary as it is being done now, where students at BHU have refused to let a Muslim professor teach Sanskrit. Surprisingly, no one is raking up the past to tell the story of Kabir, who was persecuted by Muslims and Hindus during in his lifetime only to be claimed as a saint by both after his death. 

Loathing for religious discrimination is not a modern secular construct. Its roots go back several millennia and just as it led to the emergence of saint-poets, it also infused humour in the stories that people told. For example, this folk tale from North India. The story goes that a lion was slaking his thirst at a stream that he considered his private domain. However, at some distance downstream, he saw a lamb drinking from the same pool of water. Furious, the lion roared at the lamb for dirtying his water. Trembling, the lamb spoke back, saying that he was merely sipping at the waters downstream and hence could not have dirtied them. Well then it must have been mucking up the water last week, the lion said. How could he, the lamb persisted, because he had been nowhere near the stream until now? Then it must have been your mother (she died a year back) or father (dead, two years) or some brother, uncle or whoever, the lion finally burst out in exasperation and gobbled up the lamb.

Invoking the past to justify the present is the last resort of the rogue, but to do it with narrow sectarian lenses is worse. Arvind Sharma (author of Religious Tolerance) writes that the reappearance of religion in the public sphere poses a problem in the matter of religious tolerance. This has led to the rise of religious fundamentalism, which is distinct from religious orthodoxy. “Although both tend to foreclose religious choices, orthodoxy is the response of a religious tradition to a perceived loss of piety in the public sphere, while fundamentalism is the response of a religious tradition to a perceived loss of power in the public sphere,” Sharma notes. 

Army personnel control protestors during an agitation against the passing of Citizenship Amendment Bill in Tezpur, Assam. (Photo: PTI )

Ironically, Hinduism, now believed to be vulnerable to attack from majoritarian regimes in the neighbourhood did not identify itself as a religion for many years after its birth. As a result, by the time it was boxed within a set of rules, it had found ways to recognise a plurality within all traditions. 

The understanding that every god has many forms and is one at the same time found a place within the social, mythical, spiritual and literary structure of the region. That is how the Ramayana was interpreted and re-versioned in so many ways, as was the Mahabharata. Playwrights, performance artists and bards were not held back by a singular vision, of the text or of its religious undertones. 

So it is not the past that prevents us from taking a more humane look at the persecuted in the region, nor does it justify segregation in the name of religion. But the hunt for power and dominion — that can muddy everything. 

arundhuti.dasgupta@bsmail.in