The majoritarian impulse

Farahnaz Ispahani's compilation of essays provides a comprehensive, varied, and critical analysis of the rise of religious majoritarianism in South Asia

Politics of Hate: Religious Majoritarianism in South Asia

Editor: Farahnaz Ispahani

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pages: 311

Price: Rs. 599

Hatred, dislike and revulsion of specific social groups have become endemic in South Asia. In India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, it would be apt for members of a dwindling civil society to recite the late Pakistani poet Fahmida Riaz’s poem, tum bilkul hum jaise nikle, ab tak kahan chhipe the, bhai... (You turned out to be just like us, where were you hiding till now, brother…)”

Given this backdrop, Farahnaz Ispahani’s compilation of essays that provides a comprehensive, varied, critical analysis of the rise of religious majoritarianism in South Asia, is timely. Various essays draw on the constants of hatred, fear, vilification, religious intolerance and political authoritarianism in this region. The essays stick to their carefully selected brief, which ensures that the book does not become a tedious tome, but provides an across-the-board peep into various dimensions of the social and political hostility in the region.

Besides the introduction and the chapter exploring the constitutional and legal maze of Pakistan and how this subordinates the religious minorities in the country, which Ms Ispahani wrote, there are 10 other chapters. She reminds readers in the introduction that at the time of Partition in 1947, there were 17 per cent religious minorities in Pakistan; this number has dwindled to only 3 per cent of the country’s population. This disturbing reality was used by the Indian government in 2019 in the course of justifying the amendment to India’s citizenship law.

Reading about blasphemy laws in Pakistan, there is no escaping a question, given the kind of electoral sway the idea of majoritarianism has in several numerically significant states of India: Is Pakistan’s slide into constitutional intolerance and drastic reduction of its minority population likely to be followed by India too? This worry is accentuated by Ms Ispahani’s observation while laying out the framework of the volume, that Partition did not put an end to the craving of the majority communities in the (then) two nations for establishing hegemony over the minorities. Instead, events of 1947 merely “exacerbated the desire of the majorities within the countries of the region to further consolidate their dominance.”

The people who wrote these essays are well-known in their particular areas of specialisation and the editor has identified a competent set of scholars while putting together the volume. There are three essays on India, four on Pakistan, while there are two essays each on Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Of the papers on India, this reviewer’s natural inclination was to first read the one entitled “The Indian Media’s Role in Fuelling Communal Violence: Media Divides and Hates for Profit”, written by TV-professional-turned-media academic, Maya Mirchandani. Aptly titled, the subject area of this essay is an ever-developing one. There is the added reality of Lal Krishna Advani’s observation on Indian journalists and media company owners during the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi coming a full cycle. He famously asserted: “they were asked to bend but they crawled.”

Large sections of the Indian media have not just been supine but also partnered the Bharatiya Janata Party’s IT cell, which is “tasked daily with ensuring its message goes out across all media platforms and drowns out any dissenting or critical voices.” The writer highlights that the partnership follows five levels at which there is collaboration between the government and media personnel as detailed by Noam Chomsky. The essay also details the role of the media in almost giving a religious identity to the Covid-19 virus in the early weeks of the pandemic. This was done by the media’s coverage of the Tablighi Jamaat’s congregation at Nizamuddin, New Delhi.

The limitation of Niranjan Sahoo’s essay, “Hindu Majoritarianism and Unmaking the Idea of India”, is its length. The subject is too vast, spanning more than a century and justice cannot be done to the subject in barely 15 pages of the book.  A Faizur Rahman followed the brief of tracing Islamophobia (or Muslimophobia) in India and his essay is much longer than Sahoo’s. The limitation of this essay remains similar and this is also largely due to the large number of similar works done over much greater length and, therefore, depth.

Given that India has grappled with the rising tide of hate in the country over three and half decades, the minds of many among the intelligentsia have been focussed on trying to unravel the emerging scenario in the country. As a result, Indians remained by and large unaware of how the situation has evolved in other nations — especially in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The four chapters on the two nations provide an overview to the issues confronting these countries. Pick up the book for a ready reckoner. But if anyone is looking for in-depth analysis and re-examination of the quagmire, it is better to look for books that deal with the subjects in greater detail.

The reviewer is an NCR-based author and journalist.@NilanjanUdwin