Divided by Rule

Editorial:-
Today, 06 December, is the 21st anniversary of that winter day in Ayodhya in 1992 when an unresolved issue as old as Independent India snowballed into the tragic demolition of the Babri Masjid and pulled the entire nation into a vortex of communal violence that threw up no victors and left behind only victims. The Babri Masjid vs. Ran Janmabhoomi debate is something that the dissenting sides refuse to resolve and the political parties typically refuse to get constructively involved in. As a result, we are left with an issue that is always kept on simmer, irrespective of the court verdict some years back, ready to be sizzled whenever political exigencies so demand. The nation and its people have suffered in the hands of Ayodhya, rather the fault-lines that it marks out, and yet people’s representatives refuse redress the situation, the latest move of bringing a Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill notwithstanding. This Bill is unlikely to get through in the Parliament this session, and while it all well if MPs and parties find it inadequate and hence send it back to the drawing board, it is more likely that the debate will be forced more out of political attrition than public interest. That has been the unfortunate conduct of politics and politicians in the country for a long while now and showboating will only increase as the stakes go up with more elections due in the coming months.
So where does that leave the nation on this anniversary of the downing of Babri Masjid? Unfortunately, still floundering on the same crossroad as it blundered on in the partition riots, the post Babri riots, Godhra etc. At the root of the problem is a tendency to paint problems and reiterate them but never offering solutions [save the “my way…” impossibility]. It is obvious that at the individual level, the nation harbours more empathy than hate. Somehow, however, paranoia dominates the public domain when ‘leaders’ speak up. Such a scenario in a country that has been secular since birth is unfortunate. What has happened instead is that we have created more grounds for division than the religious divides we were born as a nation fighting. Region, community, language, caste… these have all been impregnated with the potential to split people and spew violence. Where we bungled was in not allowing law to take its proverbial course when it came to matter which divide people and drive them to violence. Had law been allowed to process violations without interference, communal violence would have substantially gone done, even ended; but we interfered too often and created Frankensteins. Secularism should have meant a system under which all human beings are entitled to equal respect and consideration, equality before the law and equal protection of the law. This would have marginalised extremists. Secularism needs to become a reality under which there is no discrimination between persons on the grounds of their religion, and where a State that does not interfere in religious matters unless it becomes necessary to do so in order to protect the fundamental human and democratic rights of its citizens. But the State interferes too much in our country, untrusting perhaps of the capacity of its citizens to find their peace. Interference fans suspicion and from it is born deeper paranoia which soon gets projected on the ‘others’. Individual prejudice can be addressed only through clearer information and social reforms on a wider scale, but at a community level, some leaders need to step up to demand that traditional suspicions are not allowed to be teased for party politics. It has begun happening at the national level [with pokes from Modi and dodges from Congress] and one sees it play often in Sikkim as well when past allegations are frequently returned to the communal space and perceived threats sought to be whipped into ‘issues’. These are not nice places to be in and the least that needs to be demanded of the people are informed choices…