Commentary/Mani Shankar Aiyar
It is not a new definition of secularism that is called for, but a new agenda for secular activism
Democracy has been independent India's single-greatest
achievement. Sadly, when democracy is not being taken for granted,
it is merely denigrated. The root cause of this is that democracy
touches the active life of only a small number of our citizens.
It is a participatory democracy when the voter goes to the polls;
for the rest, it is the private activity of public persons. And
because citizen involvement in the running of our democracy is
so minimal, public interest in politics is trivialised into scandal-mongering.
Justice Sarkaria has, I think, put his finger on the malaise where
he says in his celebrated report, 'The interests and aspirations
of most people are concentrated in the localities in which they
live and carry on their avocations of life. Normally, they would
be content to compete at the level of local-self governing bodies,
making way for persons interested in larger issue of regional
or national significance to opt for higher elective forums.'
Here we have the two elements that could make our democracy significantly
participative. One, a meaningful third tier of governance which
concentrates on the 'interests and aspirations' of the
people in the 'localities where they live'; two, opportunity
for meaningful interaction with governance for 'persons interested
in larger issue of regional or national significance.'
It is the absence of democracy in the 'localities where they
live' that has alienated most Indians from the actual working
of our democracy; and the absence of any forum for interaction
with governance for 'persons interested in larger issues'
that has alienated the chattering class.
Panchayati Raj is the obvious answer to the first of these
alienation syndromes. Unfortunately, only the shell of local self-government
has been put in place. No party, not even the Congress, and no
state government, not even those of the Congress, has shown the
political will to pour substance into the shell. It was the Congressunder Rajiv Gandhi which had brought Panchayati Raj to the top
of the nation's agenda. Tragically, it is the Congress post-Rajiv
Gandhi that, notwithstanding the constitutional amendments of
1992, has put Panchayati Raj on the political backburner.
If, as the party which brought the miracle of democracy to India and
which, as the natural party of governance, has done more than
any other to nurture democracy in India, the Congress were to
restore Panchayati Raj to primacy in its political profile, there
is an army of 3 million elected grassroots representatives waiting
out there to march to the Congress drum.
The Congress through the freedom movement and the Nehru years
of freedom was the sounding board for the chattering classes.
There was intensive interaction, as much in coffee-shops and dhabas
as in more formal settings, between those in the business of politics
and those not in the business of politics but 'interested
in the larger issues'. That tradition has long since ebbed.
The Congress -- without every publicly avowing it -- has tended
to retreat into a fortress where the non-party intellectual is
denied entry. This has also had the unintended but extremely serious
consequence of drying up the entry of intellectuals into the party.
The excluded intellectual has tended to riposte to his exclusion
by making a political philosophy of anti-Congressism.
Next, Secularism. It is something of a mystery that secularism
held unchallenged primacy when the majority community was most
threatened and is under most challenge when the majority community
is most secure. Secularism as a canon of statecraft was fashioned
in the white heat of Partition--and all the terrible consequence
of Partition for the co-religionists in West and East Pakistan
of the majority community of India.
Indeed, the proximate cause
of the foundation of the Jan Sangh by Dr Shyama Prasad Mookherjee
in 1951 was the maltreatment of the Hindi minority in East Pakistan
even four years after Partition was a settled fact. Yet, what
almost all Indians wanted was that India should rise above such
inhumanity.
Instead of avenging itself on the Indian minority,
the nation as a whole moved to protect them. The party of vengeance,
the Jan Sangh, got but two seats in the Lok Sabha in the elections
of 1952. Today, in their reincarnation as the BJP, they are the
biggest single party in the House.
Why has this happened? In sociological terms, I suggest the reason
is that 50 years after freedom, the parameters of the argument
have shifted from issues of citizenship, identity and security
to the question of a common charter of human rights for all Indians.
Contradictions have emerged between the 'liberal' position
and the 'secular' position. These contradictions cannot
be brushed aside or left to simmer.
Reconciling the two is feasible
-- but has not really been attempted. The result is that the communal
forces have succeeded in camouflaging their essential communalism
in the garb of human rights activism. They have masked their original
questions about the citizenship, identity and security of the
minorities into questions of human rights. While secularists must
continue unmasking the communalists and struggling for preservation
of the half-century old consensus on citizenship, identity and
security, this must be accompanied by an earnest endeavour to
reconcile identity, culture and freedom of worship with imperatives
that are commonly accepted as uninfringible human rights. It is
not a new definition of secularism that is called for, but a new
agenda for secular activism.
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