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30 September 2010, Gateway House

Peacewards

The arguments in a slim compilation of essays on peace, though they do not deal specifically with the Ayodhya matter, bear upon the issues this long-running dispute is forcing us to confront.

Director, Gateway House

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In the strange vaccum created by the delay in the verdict on the Ayodhya title suit I read a slim, private-circulation-only compilation of articles by eminent thinkers published by Mumbai-based Citizens for Peace in partnership with the Times of India. Entitled Peacewards, the brief contributions deal with diverse forms of violence and intolerance, particularly religious, often intended to serve a political purpose. Although they do not deal specifically with the Ayodhya issue, the arguments bear upon the issues this long-running dispute is forcing us to confront.

Well-known public intellectual, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, has provided a first-rate essay which serves as an introduction. It should be read again at the end because he argues, persuasively, that modern religious violence is distinct from the violence that appears in religious texts because it has depersonalized the victims.He finds that unsurprising because today’s religious violence is perpetrated as an identity-marker in the framework of a nation state. “The problem for religion in the modern world is that it is impossible to imagine it playing a prominent public role without generating violent impulses.”

This is a stark challange to a world in which public religiosity has become de rigeur even in the most constitutionally and ‘by practice’ secular nations. But it is a challange that India was designed to address through “full respect for all religions,” as Mahatma Gandhi said. The theory was backed up by realistic constitutional and other provisions for taking into account our multi-religious and devout society. If at all we have succeeded albeit with horrible exceptions, then it may be only because, unlike today’s France, we are habituated to, and therefore do not feel threatened by, religious symbols, be they turbans, sindhur, burkhas, skull caps or crosses since we grew up with all around us.

Gandhian and prizewinning author of Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom Rajni Bakshi writes succinctly about the levelling effect of terrorism. She equates urban terrorism, homegrown or imported, to continuous religious intimidation and occasional violence in small towns and rural areas. Perhaps we should include violence against young women engendered by their feeble empowerment through education and employment. As she says, “whether you are an adivasi Christian in Orissa or Karnataka, a middle class urban muslim or an affluent Hindu in any city – the risk of being struck is now equal.” The answer to her question on whether this will make us less indulgent about violence against others has, unfortunately be in the negative. For we seek to justify the incidents of mass violence as a means of putting the ‘Other’ in his place, reacting on a tit-for-tat basis or a leader’s assasination or allegedly ‘forced’ religious conversions.

Political scientist Yogendra Yadav, in contrast, interprets terrorism as “politics by other means” and a terrorist as a” failed or disappointed reformer” who once believed in the system which failed to deliver for individuals or communities. Unfortunately this, in my opinion, legitimizes all grievances and requires the state to perform the impossible task of redressing those of every aggrieved group

Other contributors like journalist Dilip D’souza, human rights lawyer Mihir Desai and market research expert Titoo Ahluwalia examine the ways in which violence is sometimes justified as a form of collective recompense for perceived injury. They address the lack of effective enforcement of existing laws, made flaccid by the enactment of ever more stringent laws which serve only to increase alienation.

Psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar makes a sophisticated argument for the Gandhian stress on the overridding importance of ‘means’ over the ends. This is far better than the moral certitudes – such as the objectives of the different communities in Ayodhya – that infuse the aims and objectives of a community, but enable acts of violence and chicanery in attaining them because “the quest for ‘justice’ tends to be contemptous of the notion of fairness.”

There are so many valuable contributions in this little 50-page compilation that it is impossible even to describe, leave alone, do justice to them. Not to be omitted is mention of former police commissioner and now Nehru Centre, Mumbai, chief Satish Sahney’s comparison of the rule of law as provided in our constitution with the concept of Dharma defined as “rectitude, sincerity and the faithful performance of one’s duty.” Gurcharan Das tests this premise at length in his wonderful new book The Difficulty of Being Good and comes to the conclusion that the concept is subtle and as the title suggests, not easy to follow. But, as Aruna Roy, prime architect of India’s Right to Information Act, emphasizes, it is vital to “speak truth to power” even in discouraging circumstances.

Appropriately enough this little compilation closes with a contribution from the Dalai Lama, the world’s foremost believer in and practioner of non-violence. He reminds us that although violence may appear to resolve a problem quickly, the outcome is achieved at the “expense of the rights and welfare of others” Therefore even as violence appears to succeed, it plants the seed of another, deeper, more traumatic problem. Always pragmatic, though, he prescribes “adopting an attitude of universal responsibility [that is] is essentially a personal matter.” “The real test of compassion is not what we say in abstract discussions but how we conduct ourselves in daily life.”

Let us hope that the judges in the Allahabad High Court will be animated by a sense of fairness and justice, taking India to a more harmonious future.

Neelam Deo is Co-founder and Director, Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations; She has been the Indian Ambassador to Denmark and Ivory Coast; and former Consul General in New York.

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