Assert Your Right to a Democratic and Secular Society (statement by People's Alliance for Democracy and Secularism, 6 Dec 2014)

People's Alliance for Democracy and Secularism

On the 22nd Anniversary of Destruction of Babri Mosque

Assert Your Right to a Democratic and Secular Society

December 6, 1992 must count as the darkest day in the history independent India. While the crowds mobilized by organisations of the RSS destroyed Babri Mosque under a planned conspiracy, the institutions of the Indian state, elected state and central governments, police and judiciary stood by as mute spectators. This was the culmination of a prolonged campaign of communal hatred and violence. Thousands of Indian citizens were killed in riots during the run-up to, and after the demolition of Babri Masjid. Yet the nature of our society and politics is such that not only the perpetrators these crimes have gone unpunished, they in fact have reaped rich political dividend.

Victory of the BJP in the last elections has given a significant push to the Hindutva project. Targeting of minorities and riots are becoming more brazen and routine. Though minorities are facing the brunt of Hindutva assault, it affects all Indians. Hindutva is a totalising project driven by a revanchist, casteist, and misogynist ideology. It valorises violence, and targets the vulnerable. It seeks to control what all Indians can think, read, see, wear or even eat. In the name of tradition it attacks youth making their own choices, and criminalises alternate sexualities. It is trying to propagate mythology as historical truth. All Indians who value freedom, equality, truth and human solidarity are target of its violent politics.

The Modi avtar of Hindutva has been successful due to a marriage of mutual convenience with corporate capitalism. And, as a true partner of Indian capitalism, the new government is working overtime to reverse the little welfare rights to employment, land and forests Indian workers, farmers and adivasis had won. As the ten years of UPA rule showed the bourgeois hegemony in India can exist without the overt violence of Hindutva. However, the Modi regime provides the right amount of ruthlessness and state-violence against any protests that the capitalist class needs at the time of economic recession. It can not be denied that under Mr Modi the BJP has been able to get the support of many sections of the lower middle classes, and also of oppressed castes and adivasis, which add to its core in upper caste, upper class Hindus. In a typical Fascist fashion it has skilfully sold the hope of achhe din to helpless and alienated sections through media saturated projection of Mr Modi as the ultimate saviour. It has successfully harnessed traditionally rooted prejudices, and violences of everyday life in India to dehumanise minorities. Hence, what freedom loving Indians confront is a project of bourgeois hegemony, supported by state terror and fortified with a mass appeal.

Diverse trends of Indian electoral politics, caste mobilisations, regional aspirations, and social movements, which were considered adequate anti-dotes to communal venom, failed to stop Hindutva success in last elections. Why this turn after six decades of constitutional democracy and secularism? Surely, part of the answer lies in what has gone on in the name of democracy and secularism in the country. Finding this part of the answer, and unearthing limitations of democracy and secularism in India is the first responsibility of those who stand for these two values. The common understanding of democracy equates it with institutional means that establish the rule of the majority, and associated freedoms necessary to make these means open and fair. What is missed are the conditions which legitimise the very notion of majority. Can any majority rule that does not arise in conditions of equality, and does not obey the principle of equality be ever democratic? Secularism in India is understood in two distinct ways. One current believes it to be a modern import imposed by a westernized elite on a deeply religious society; as if the life in India before its constitution declared it to be a secular coutnry did not have secular aspects! If equality among citizens is the starting point of any democracy, then it follows that a democratic state can not discriminate on the basis of religion. Hence, is it even possible to imagine a democracy without secularism? The other trend sees secularism merely as a way to manage affairs of religous diversity, to deal with the socalled majority and minority communities in an even handed way. This trend misses the fact that secularism is also essential to ensure freedoms necessary for a secular way of life for anyone, irrespective of her/his community. Secularism demands that no religious authority or community be allowed to curtail rights of any citizen, irrespective of whether she/he belongs to the community or not. The practice of democracy and secularism in our country has mostly been tortured. A serious lacuna has been the failure to realise that democracy and secularism of the state would always remain under threat if the social life in families, communities and the public sphere is not democratic and secular. How can a society with pervasive caste, gender, regional and religious oppressions and brutalities of economic exploitation be made democratic and secular? That remains the ultimate challenge.

Dec 6 is also the death anniversary of Dr Ambedkar, the architect of the Constitution of India, which guaranteed the right to equality to all Indians. Communal politics is a direct violation of this right. While the Dec 6 of 1992 was the nadir of democracy in India, it is also the day to pay homage to Dr Ambedkar and recommit ourselves to realise his ideals.