It has never been my view that the Muslims of India want another partition or favor Pakistan by working against the country’s interests What I had said was that the facts published by the Government of India show that in a large majority of Hindu-Muslim riots that have taken place in recent years the initial provocation has come from the Muslims.
I cannot understand this because the Muslims in the country the general run of them know very well from their previous experience that if they take the offensive in any dispute with Hindus they are bound to receive heavy punishment retaliation would be out of proportion to what they might have done.
I have propounded a theory. That these things are done deliberately by agent’s provocateurs in league with India-haters in Pakistan or maybe they are extremist communal and pro-Pakistani Indian Muslims. Their number certainly is small but it does not take many people to start a riot.
They must know that Muslims would be punished but they do not mind because there motive is political.
Finally and this may appear farfetched the India-haters might hope that the recurrence of horrors like those of Ahmedabad might one day drive the Indian Muslims to such desperation that they might feel compelled to say to the Hindu community “We chose this as our country; after partition we did not go to Pakistan; we made India our home but you people are not able to protect our lives our honor or our property Therefore after having tried our best to live with you for so many years we cannot bear our condition any longer. You are forcing us to leave. But where can we go? Pakistan will not and cannot take so many of us. So give us a part of your territory.” This might lead to a second partition.
In many cases the provocation was trivial the Hindu retaliation is always out of all proportion. The reason is Hindu communalism. There are well-organized Hindu bodies like RSS-there may be several other-who are extreme and militant communalists who believe in a Hindu nation who think that Hindus alone are the sons of the soil and that Muslim’s are aggressors and enemies. Some of them may be leaders and members of the Jana Sangh Certainly there is anti-Muslim anti-Pakistan propaganda going on all the time in the Hindu community the shakhas (morning rallies) of RSS are held every day. The RSS organization is like an iceberg a part of it is visible. It is a secret or semi-secret organization certainly not a cultural organization. I am sure there are other less known groups spreading the same kind of poison. This ceaseless propaganda is like stocking dry powder in the community and when a match is struck there is an explosion. Otherwise it is difficult to understand why Hindus should behave in a manner which brings a bad name to the country which retards its development and which might ultimately lead to its ruin. The Hindu communalists do not realize there are playing Pakistan’s game. So if the Hindus were really to realize all this they would leave it to the guardians of law and order to deal with the provocateurs and not react in the suicidal manner in which they do.
Apart from what the Government should do-and I don’t think it is doing all that needs to be done it is the duty of those whether they belong to political parties or not who have the interest of their country at heart and who understand the danger of communalism to undertake an intensive campaign of mass education. Just as the Hindu communalist is working all the time they should also be working all the time to counter the propaganda.
If healthy patriotic enlightened propaganda is conducted I don’t think communalists will be able to influence the Hindu mind as they have done so far.
By nature I believe in civil liberties by instinct I react against ban. But I also believe that by banning the guilty organization we may only drive the disease below the surface.
The real remedy is political education national education. This is something on which all nationalist secular democratic parties should get together forgetting their ideologies and personal differences their power struggle and so on. They could join hands at least on this one program and meet the challenge of Hindu Muslim or any other communalism because communalism of any kind is antinational and a danger to the country.
I don’t think any progressive party has tried to deal with these psychological questions or tried really to educate the working classes about the duties of citizenship about the dangers of communalism and so on. In the absence of any positive work on these lines among them-after all they are common people and they react like common people there is not much hope. To say that just because they are workers-there is a tendency to idolize the working class-they are revolutionizes is all wrong. They might play a revolutionary role under proper leadership; they might play a reactionary role under a different kind of leadership. So I would blame the progressive leaders for having neglected their job because in most of the recent riots the industrial areas were the worst affected. (Courtesy Muslim India)
Article extracted from this publication >> November 6, 1992
