Books
DESPERATELY SEEKING PARADISE: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim by Ziauddin Sardar. Granta Books, London, 2004.
I WAS at the University of Hull in the late eighties and the early nineties, and shared a university accommodation with an Afghan refugee who was pursuing a degree in education. Let us call him Ali (not his real name). He was the undisputed leader of the South Asian Muslims and was feared by all his followers. Often Ali and myself would end up discussing our part of the world in the common kitchen we shared. I sympathised with the plight of his country, brutalised by the contending pulls of power politics of the Cold War. Ali was more concerned with saving my soul though, and worried endlessly about my decadent lifestyle. He was resentful of my ‘foreign’ friends, pained by the kind of women that I associated with, dismissive of my liberal talk and surprised at the fragility of emotions I entertained in relation to religion and country. I found this kind of talk odd and decided to humour him. The BJP was not such a formidable presence then, and I reduced all that Ali represented to the melancholy of an exile.
Reading Ziauddin Sardar’s magnificent book, Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim, reminded me of Ali, as much as it now reminds me of the rhetoric of the lunatic fringe within the Sangh Parivar. Sardar is a liberal, a sceptic and believes in reason. Like many of us, he tends to perceive Islam as a faith which is essentially founded on a tradition of dialogue and endless interpretation. In the early pages of the book, Sardar offers a comprehensive definition of ‘his’ Islam:
The thirst to know, the imperative to think and reflect was the most resonant chord, the insistent theme I found running through the Qur’an. This urge to question and seek answers I had taken as my basic creed and cue for all the ills of the world, and possibly the next. (p. 13)
Sardar’s definition, then, brings to fore a tension that ravages the core of all religions commonly in the technological and scientific modern world. This is the insistence that followers of a religion follow certain laws and precepts in this world in order to gain entry into paradise on the one hand, and the idea that an individual does not need any mediation between himself and his access to divinity. For those who are forever questioning and sceptical, the latter becomes a better option, not because they are less rooted in faith, but because they inhabit, and here, one must use Sardar’s evocative phrase, so many ‘worlds of belonging’. St. Augustine understood the conflict well, and divided the world neatly into various cities: of God, the earthly city and the pilgrim city. Like him, most faiths made little provision for human affairs in this world, or to put it differently, made little room for what we call politics.
Sardar sees the need for a notion of paradise because the idea represents a sense of disquiet with the way things are here and now. Therefore, he cannot live with the idea of ‘the virtual obligations of religion’ without a parallel set of ethical norms that prevent us from converting the earthly city into the opposite of all that paradise stands for. It is this paradox that binds all fundamentalisms together. All forms of extremism are founded on the notion of a pre-social and pre-political unity, and there is little to distinguish between them except the odd detail and the random nuance.
Another misunderstanding prevents us from perceiving the extreme, seamless and monochromatic world of the fundamentalist. In this sense, Sardar’s book represents the anguish of the liberal well, but stops short of understanding the motivations of religious extremism. Simply put, it is about the way we know the world. In other words, is there a multiplicity of ways to know reality or truth? For the past 300 years, liberals have rested their faith and hope on the idea of reason, knowing full well that there is little guarantee that reason would necessarily produce rationality. In sharp contrast, revealed knowledge for a very large number of people across faiths is the purest form of knowledge. Spinoza recognised this and sought to privilege this kind of cognition (in an essay titled, Of Revelation). Even in the West, thinkers such as Hamman and Kierkegaard warned against excessive faith in reason and rationality.
A sharp incommensurality of ultimate values, therefore, divides the fundamentalists and well-meaning liberals like Sardar. Wittgenstein once said that a man who thinks he can enter a tradition at will is like the foolish man who thinks he can repair the web of a spider with bare hands. This has often been wrongly interpreted as an appeal to cultural relativism. Far from it, it is an explanation of the difficulty that besets our moral and ethical choices, which are far from being easy or arbitrary. Sardar’s plural and dialogical Islam is as much a choice as is the murderous, jihad-infested Islam of Osama bin-Laden. The point of departure between them lies in our judgement about the kind of politics that we prefer.
Sardar’s book, then, represents a conflict that is at the very heart of western politics from the time of the Greeks. To caricature the argument a little, Plato suggests that for bad morals in society, the solution lies in infusing an extra dose of good morals. If this is to be done at the cost of curtailing choices, so be it. Aristotle, on the other hand, is also concerned about morals in society, but suggests good politics as the solution for bad morals. In the debate between various fundamentalisms and liberalism, the tragedy lies in liberal polities failing to deliver what they had promised. Put differently, the recent fervour for a heavenly paradise is the direct consequence of the earthly city being converted into a veritable hell. In this sense, Sardar’s nostalgia for a fast disappearing world of ethnic pluralism, religious tolerance, thirst for knowledge and culture is really a dirge for the loss of liberal pieties and failure of liberal politics. In fact, this admission figures in the book in its opening pages itself:
It is the norm that when all else fails, the mosque offers a place of refuge: material and spiritual, real or metaphorical.
Jyotirmaya Sharma
IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY: Debates on Religious Conversion in India by Sebastian C. H. Kim. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2003.
RELIGIOUS conversion has often been a matter of excessive reaction and debate all over the world. In India, where the issue needs to be located in a multilingual, multicultural and multi-religious milieu, it has been even more complex. Sometimes it has been tackled very well in the context of local or of personal or group or institutional views of the religion. Occasionally, after a bout of major violence the matter may be discussed and books written about it. Very few have, however, discussed the matter in a pan-Indian context. They have not taken up the representative debates that highlight the argument of religious conversion – whether pro or against. This book both promises and delivers this very perspective. As such it creates a landmark in studies on conversion that can form a basic text for those who would like to add to the argument and for those whose researches would uncover further detail of the periods discussed in the book.
The book discusses why individuals or groups of people change their religion and why conversion is so problematic in India. The latter is due to communalism, challenge to the socio-economic establishment, provocation by the Hindu counter-conversion movement and the fact that Hindus and Christians hold conflicting conceptions and definitions of conversion, which place them at cross-purposes.
Key discussions in each chapter highlight arguments between Christians and others in a specific periods. In the period of the British Raj, Rammohan Roy argued that Christ could be experienced without conversion. Joshua Marshman in Srerampore did not agree. John Muir claimed that a true religion has a miracle-working founder, a Holiness of scripture and a universality of the scripture. According to the Enlightenment rationality these features were present only in Christianity. A number of pandits took issue against John Muir between 1839 and 1845 on this question. Their arguments were based on the Vedas and the philosophy of dharma-karma.
Mahatma Gandhi was firmly against conversion, especially in relation to Christianity. Religion, according to him, is something one is born with. On this issue, E. Stanley Jones in 1931 argued that Christians should not use hospitals and schools as an aid to conversion. He claimed that religious ideas could be separated from one’s socio-cultural heritage. M.K. Gandhi had also seen conversion as yet another political move by the Harijans. He saw the Indian Christian community as an appendage of the missionaries and not as a separate spiritual community in its own right. According to him, conversion takes place legitimately in the spiritual realm of the individual. In contrast to this viewpoint, V.S. Azariah, in his various writings on mass conversion between 1935 to 1937, claimed that conversion also embraced socio-political realms of the human community. It transformed the community. This was challenged by many Hindus.
According to Kim, the 19th century debates focused on the individual conversion of high-caste Hindus while the 20th century debates focused more on the mass conversions of Harijans.
In the next part of the argument, the author focuses on the debates on conversion that took place in the Indian Constituent Assembly between 1947 to 1949 and led to the adoption of the statement on religious freedom in the Constitution of India. At that time, the Raigarh State Conversion Act of 1936, the Patna State Freedom of Religion Act of 1942, the Sarguja State Apostasy Act of 1945 and the Udaipur State Anti-Conversion Act of 1946 raised objections to conversion.
Some of the objections to conversion raised by Hindus included the establishment of the fact that the Hindu religion was a true religion; that all religions were the same; that conversion denationalizes and that it was imposed by a colonial power, it brings about denominations, is socially disruptive, involves religious controversy, and that conversion uses abusive and unfair methods, among others. Yet, it is a fact that such conversions were ultimately permitted as the following statement from Article 25(1) of the Constitution of India makes clear: ‘Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practise and propagate religion.’
Considering the above, why would a majority of Hindus concede the right of conversion to the Christians? The author answers this in the following terms (p. 55): ‘As the ferocity of the debate showed, the Hindu concession was less than an expression of Hindu tolerance or the triumph of the spirit of compromise. Instead, Hindus were compelled by circumstances to accommodate minority rights because of the communal tension and outbreaks of violence around the time of Independence.’
The next section describes the debates over the Report of the Christian Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee of 1954-1957, better known as the Niyogi Report after its Chairman, the retired Chief Justice Bhawani Shankar Niyogi. What is fascinating is a comment made here that in 1952 there was a mass conversion of Oraon tribes in which 4,003 were recorded as being converted. In a comment, it is mentioned that while 4,000 had been converted in two years, in some cases 50 out of 200 converts had ‘backslided’ to their original religion.
If the author had checked previous records, he would have discovered that this was no recent trend. The process had been going on for several years and a number of pamphlets had been published by Hindus, especially from Gaya, and read by educated Indians and which aided in such ‘backsliding’. These pamphlets included those like Main Hindu Ho Jaoonga (I Shall Become A Hindu) and others in the 1930s which recorded fictional conversations between Hindus, Christian padres and Oraon converts who wished to revert back. The problems of these converts had been highlighted in pamphlets, though it is clear that such Hindus considered the tribals to be an appendage to Hinduism. Of course, it ultimately caused a division in the German Evangelical Lutheran Church in the region.
In fact, this issue highlights that Christians were at pains to maintain differences between recent Indian converts and themselves. It is also relevant in the light of recent appointments to high positions in the church from the Chotanagpur region among the indigenous converts in 2003. As the debates on conversion among Protestant theologians in India between 1966-1971 show (p. 108): ‘In spite of their honest search for an answer to the communal problems supposedly caused by conversion, Indian Protestant theologians appear, by limiting the implications of conversion to the individual and spiritual realms of life, to have caused a weakening of the "character and energy" of the Christian community. Any theology that encouraged Indian Christians to conform to Hindu society left them in a dilemma that they were neither accepted as Hindus nor able to identify themselves with a Christian community.’
A major event took place on 19 February 1981 in Meenakshipuram, Tamil Nadu, when 200 families of the Pallan community converted to Islam. By 23 May, 27 more families had converted. On 15 August, a dalit community in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, threatened to convert to Islam. The Hindu response to such events was to campaign against untouchability among the Hindus and to raise more aid for dalits from the government. Under these conditions, conversion was relieved of its religious import, according to many Hindus. It was carried out for social objectives. Conversion, in other words, need not be done only by Christians; any religion could be a vehicle for such social change. As a result, ‘conversion, especially mass conversion, lacks spiritual motives’ (p. 130). However, for dalits and tribals, many motives could be important for conversion. Both Christianity and Islam had problems of caste and class inequality. The debates also centred around the fact that ‘dalits lack spirituality’ and conversion was just a mode of opportunism for them (p. 130).
From the 1980s the debate shifted to the arguments presented for Hindutva against world evangelization between 1994-95. For Arun Shourie, Hinduism was ‘a unified philosophy with only one acceptable expression, Hindutva. He not only tried to make Christianity conform to this mould but also ignored the changing nature and diversity of Hinduism’ (p. 153). He articulated what many Hindus thought and felt at the time – that Christian missionaries, instead of reforming Hindu society and Hinduism itself, chose to convert Hindus to Christianity. They saw, according to him, that Hinduism was primarily responsible for the injustice and problems of Indian society and the only possible solution was to convert and to renounce the ‘past’ (p. 152). The author, in conclusion, also points out that the same unification and lack of communication between different kinds of Christianity was apparent among Christians also.
This was the background to the violence relating to conversions in the Dangs region of Gujarat and the murder of Graham Staines, coupled with the increase in numbers of Christian missionaries in India. In 1998-99, the author points out that both the Sangh Parivar as well as the Christians accused each other’s practice of conversions as being politically motivated and lacking in spiritual dimensions. Both are clearly religious movements. Arguments from both are based on their understanding of religious conversion.
In conclusion, then, Hindus saw Christian conversion as proselytism. They saw the Church as encouraging people to leave their community and join the Christian community leading to the attendant communal tensions, use of unethical methods, and the dubious motives on the part of Christian converts. The Christians reacted on the basis of the fundamental rights in the Constitution and the fact that conversion was the heart of Christian belief and practice. Indian theologians took three routes. The secular approach looked to the integration of Hindu and Christian communities. The liberation approach reinterpreted the motives for conversion. The inculturation approach emphasized the continuity between the two religious traditions.
What comes through in the book is a careful disengagement of the author from taking a religious stance. It leads to a growing respect for the scholarship that has led to this work and a respect for both religions. Yet, there are few comments on Islam, almost none on Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists. There is no comment on the fact that tribal religions are different – that they are neither Hindu nor any other. It is their own form of animism which has been influenced in their close encounters with other religions. Perhaps these ideas should also occupy centre-stage in further work on conversion. The appendices in the book include important documents that are invaluable to researchers as are the list of references.
Abhik Ghosh
TELL ME LIES: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq edited by David Miller. Pluto Press, London, 2004.
WRITING, it has been suggested, is the loneliest job in the world. But, unlike the writers, their creations are never alone. The price of loneliness exacted from the author inoculates the text against a solitary shelf-life. As a result, no book is an island in itself; together they form provinces of a great textual tradition that often amplifies their singular meaning and makes them part of a larger family of texts. As if by a silent magical language, books, old and new, establish relations among themselves and with the parental thesis they constitute, irrespective of the barriers of time and space. As the book is noisily welcomed by fellow ideational beings, the lonely author becomes a dot in the horizon as the creation comes to life reducing its creator’s scholarly intervention as an excuse for something inevitable. Oneness of texts is a reality that has been under persistent assault by the modern penchant for categorisation of texts according to their ‘disciplines’. The role of review of literature thus is to situate the text under a scanner within its broader precincts, establish its unhighlighted relations and analyse the extent to which it has served its parental thesis while actually varnishing its credentials as a work of courage.
The above mentioned conditions visit the reader one after the other as one is led unrecessed through the pages of Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq. This book is like an oyster that holds its text full of incisive criticism of the US-led invasion of Iraq that is like a sturdy pearl. The close observers and commentators of the ‘war’ unspool the secrets of the military machinery installed by the governments of the US-UK combine and their relation with the western military-industrial-media complex. This formidable collection of comments by the likes of Yvonne Ridley, Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk and others seeks to inform the reader that it is a part of the invigorating tradition of the criticism of unipolarity in the politics and culture of the ‘New World Order’ that appeared during the twilight of the Cold War. While identifying itself with the larger tradition of fearless criticism, this book unclothes the fearful nature of the matrix of violence that has caught the planet in its web.
To better appreciate the efforts of the contributors, it is pertinent to recall the implements deployed by Jacque Derrida to capture a situation similar to the one that arose in the aftermath of the tragedy in Iraq in 2003 – an alliance of ‘embedded journalism’, state power and the shameless exhibition of unzipped military might, and the consequent violence. To help us see through the haze of post-Cold War rhetoric of hyper-nationalism, xenophobia, anti-immigrationism, neo-conservatism and the rest, Derrida offered the unique concepts of artifactuality and actuvirtuality. While facts are procreated as a result of the artificial insemination of the ethically challenged mass media by the recession-struck western super ‘state-nation’, the nature of the actual world in question would be a fate-altering chimera in virtual space; while the all-powerful beast of information would change the nature of actuality, the latter would have no means to protect itself from its harmful spell. It is this actuvirtuality that has been probed in this collection as the contributors examine the issues of missing WMDs and word games, which introduced words like ‘embeds’ and its antonym, the ‘unilaterals’, the independent journalists. This book tells us that the 2003 Iraq War has been the most dangerous conflict the media has ever covered with 15 journalists dead and two missing, presumed dead. The death of the ‘unilaterals’, often in ‘crossfire’ had the desired effect: the US Army had the prompt service of unpaid spin masters round the clock.
The conflict in Iraq is one non-stop show of fireworks unfolding 24x7 all around the television viewer. Yet for each frame telecast there are many others being pushed under the editorial carpet. ‘Coverage’ of the festering conflict in Iraq thus is about stifling the war info and make financial and political killing out of the little that is misreported. Reading Tell Me Lies coincided with a viewing of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 – each as enticing as the other – making a comparison between the two in order. This book, like Moore’s documentary, is a scathing documentation of governmental deceit between its covers. Quite revealingly, the highest point of the war recorded here happens to be the moment when the BBC turned its camera at the electronic media and accused news reports from Iraq of being nothing more than rumour. By joining such neglected information the contributors forensically reconstruct the web of ‘propaganda and media distortion in the attack on Iraq’ and establish a brave counter discourse to what was considered as the definitive truth from the war zone.
The role of the technological media in the latest crisis in Iraq has established that little has changed between Gulf Wars I and II. In this unchanging ‘World Order’, Derrida’s comments about the shape of the world in 1993 are still relevant. The summary of Derrida’s celebrated interview in the monthly review Passages informed us that technology, nationalism and growing militarism were the new partners in the ‘New International Order’ where uniformity of views was the tribute of the new court to ‘justice’.
‘Tell Me Lies About Vietnam’ is a famous poem by Adrian Mitchell that the poet re-read in Trafalgar Square on 13 October 2001, replacing Vietnam with Iraq and Palestine. The greater narrative of criticism and democratic dissent referred to earlier in this review finds its lost links to the world today through the shadow of that poem cast across this book as its words become part of the archipelago formed by preceding texts that similarly undid lies. By the time one finishes the book, the authors and commentators vanish in the restless current of truth released by their ink and Tell Me Lies becomes a testimony of unspeakable truths unspoken, in time.
Kallol Bhattacherjee
DISINVESTMENT IN INDIA: Policies, Procedures, Practices by Sudhir Naib. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2004.
IN Disinvestment in India, Sudhir Naib seeks to present to students of economic history a comprehensive and inclusive guide to the gradual shift of Public Sector Enterprises (PSEs) in India from the public domain to the private sector. This book has turned out to be an important collation of a critical mass of theories, data and case studies in a single volume. It is a commendable endeavour at condensing a process that, in many ways, belies rational explanation.
The opening pages of Naib’s book define basic and introductory concepts in economics that are then used freely in the rest of the tome. The book is written providing a great deal of theoretical context and background to equip the reader with the conceptual frameworks through which to analyse the disinvestment process. Naib uses multiple benchmarks, ranging from selected financial ratios to subjective considerations of the external business environment, to compare the relative performance of PSEs with that of private enterprises.
The book provides us a chronology of PSEs in India from 1947 onwards, with a particular focus on the Government of India’s (GOI) disinvestment process from 1991-92 to 2002-03. This period has been divided into three distinct phases: Phase I 1991-92 – 1995-96, Phase II 1996-97 – 1997-98, and Phase III 1998-99 onwards. The book spans the past and the present of the economic reform process and thereby enables the reader to reach conclusions about the progress made, warts and all. For example, in the 12 year period from 1991-92 to 2002-03, and based on the annual budgetary target set, GOI budgeted consolidated proceeds from disinvestment at Rs 78,300 crore (or approx. US$17.4 billion). The amount actually realised in this period was approximately Rs 26,647 crore (or approx. US$5.9 billion), a dismal one third of the goal. Naib deconstructs this painstakingly into its component pieces.
Naib also compares the Indian experience with that in other nations, including the United Kingdom, China, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia.
The case study method is used frequently in the book, especially when examining the global disinvestment experience, the Indian experience after 1991 and also post-privatization stories. Seven PSEs are examined in some depth. These are the Steel Authority of India, Bharat Heavy Electricals, Indian Oil Corporation, Indian Telephone Industries, Bharat Electronics, Bharat Earth Movers and National Fertilizers Ltd. The use of the case study method makes this volume an intense work, the Harvard Business School of the disinvestment process in India.
Having served in government as an officer, Naib is particularly insightful about the procedural aspect – the proverbial red tape – of the bureaucratic maze that must be navigated in disinvestment. Making this real and transparent, he presents a flowchart that goes a long way in clearing one’s head on how precisely this is meant to work (p. 251). However, seemingly deliberately, Naib steers totally clear of the politics of disinvestment in India. This is a glaring omission in the book and leaves the reader with only half the story. There is no political examination of the momentum of the privatisation process in the early disinvestment years versus more recently. There is no analysis of the pressures and strains within the BJP/NDA administration which created internal and often ideological strife in this regard. More recently, Naib could not have predicted the current UPA coalition administration and the influence of the Left on governmental policy-making in disinvestment.
A recurring theme in the book is the realization of fair market value or maximisation of value for the government from the sale of PSE stakes. Naib outlines alternative valuation methodologies and potential sale processes, but again from a largely theoretical standpoint. The breadth of industries that PSEs in India span does not lend itself to a single valuation metric or methodology. Here Naib’s recommendation, that a core technical cell of professionals be created in the Ministry of Disinvestment to police financial advisors or investment bankers, is unlikely to work. In any event, the sequence of political events of the last several months has resulted in the aforementioned ministry being disbanded.
Disinvestment in India is a handy resource of data surrounding the Indian disinvestment process, its history and the theoretical landscape. For this reason, it is a useful reference book with a critical mass of information. However, do not look to it to provide a viewpoint or an opinion.
The chronology of disinvestment in India, as outlined in the book, ceases in 2002-03. However, the disinvestment process, far from complete, will likely plod on in fits and starts. Naib’s data-heavy reference work will need periodic updating of a story that has all along been one of a mixture of grief and high delight.
Kanishka Singh
A TIME OF COALITIONS: Divided We Stand by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Shankar Raghuraman. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2004.
COALITIONS are here to stay, but charting the processes by which they come together or fall apart is easier said than done. Contrary to the older line of the Congress party, exemplified in its August 1997 resolution, one-party governance in New Delhi seems a thing of the past. In some sense, developments in major states like West Bengal, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh prefigured the changes at the Union level. But the art of crafting and managing coalitions at the Centre is still a nascent one. Vajpayee crossed a historic milestone in May this year when his multi-party government lasted a full term in office. The dharma of coalitions got a further shot in the arm when the Congress, for the first time, came to head an alliance government.
How did a political system that has given us as many as 40 years of one-party government since independence unravel so rapidly into something so very different? A number of explanations spring to mind, but far more debate is a must to make sense of why things turned out this way.
The work of scholars like Christophe Jaffrelot and Yogendra Yadav has done much to unravel the emergence, if in fluid and shifting form, of new social alliances that undergird the changes in party politics. But few journalists have attempted to make sense of the sometimes bewildering changes in the body politic since the momentous general elections of 1989. Guha Thakurta and Raghuraman are seasoned observers of the political scene and embark on their task in a methodical and painstaking manner. In the process, they have generated a book that will be indispensable for specialist and lay persons alike. Where the book really succeeds is in evolving a framework that organizes complex events in a simple pattern.
Though the book was published prior to the 2004 general elections, the poser in chapter one shows how prescient the authors were. ‘Can the Congress regain its past glory on its own?’ they ask. They proceed to answer. ‘That is a rather remote possibility. Can the party then head a collation that will replace the NDA after the 14th general elections? That is a possibility that cannot entirely be ruled out’ (p. 173).
The first two chapters are predictable enough. The collapse of the Congress and the inability of the BJP to fill the space vacated by the older party opened the door to smaller players. These parties are then viewed under separate heads: the caste-based formations of the Hindi belt, regionalists and the left. What is critical is the sense of perspective, with key players and policies in each party being given their due place.
This makes the book a ready reference, all the more so due to the tidbits about major politicians. Who recalls for instance that N. Chandrababu Naidu was once a Minister for Animal Husbandry and Cinematography in a Congress ministry or an active member of the Sanjay-led Youth Congress? Or the fine print of the allegations about Vajpayee’s role in the 1942 Quit India movement? These are all helpfully recounted but blended into a flowing narrative.
The pick of the lot are undoubtedly the last two chapters. The authors believe that coalitions can and do govern effectively. They are kinder than most to the United Front governments of 1996-98. While unsparing of the NDA’s insomniac role in abetting and aiding the Gujarat massacres, they give full marks to Vajpayee’s skills as a coalition manager. Coalitions are a better and more representative form of government in a large, heterogeneous society like India. Federalism has been a beneficiary of the process.
The book gets really interesting at the end, though one wishes to hear more on two counts. One is the issue of how the left sees its long term role in the polity. There is little doubt that the six-year reign of the NDA drove it closer to the Congress. But there are fundamental and unresolved differences of perception and policy between the two. Is there any indication that there will be rethinking on the ‘historic blunder’ of 1996 when the CPI (M) chose to stay out of office? Can there be coherent governance when a large and significant grouping stays out of office but wields enormous clout?
It would have been instructive to know more about the contrast with the older Congress-CPI relationship that was built around the twin poles of close ties with the USSR and expanding the role of the government in a ‘mixed economy’. The experiment ended disastrously for the CPI. In a sense, the CPI (M), by far the most crucial actor, plays a dual role as both a regional hegemonic force in West Bengal and as a party with an all-India outlook and perspective. But how far this ‘walking on two legs’ is a viable strategy in the long term remains unclear.
There is a second, more worrying, issue which the work raises. While it would be unfair to expect the authors to answer it, the questions do require some serious engagement. In Gujarat 2002, a determined and emboldened state government presided over massacres even as the Centre lauded its ‘performance’ in handling the ‘riots’. At the time of writing, the coalition government of Okram Ibobi Singh in Imphal has proved to be out of touch with popular anger over the atrocities of the security forces.
In the days of one-party rule, a Union government would summon up courage to invoke Article 356. Without whitewashing her role in Punjab, Indira Gandhi did not hesitate to impose President’s Rule in the state once Darbara Singh was unable to contain terrorism. Even critics of a strong Centre would concede that the Union government should have acted, if necessary under provisions other than Article 356, in the case of Gujarat. In Manipur, the players include not only the state Congress but also the CPI which shares power in Imphal.
In the process, the existence of coalitions can hamper the Union government from stepping in as a measure of last resort. The constraints and situations may vary. But the fact the national parties only rule in a few states, makes these provinces more vulnerable to a breakdown of order in which the Centre does little to stem the rot.
These are issues no single work can possibly tackle and do not in any way detract from the book’s quality and coherence, a refreshingly lucid work that will stand the test of time. The reader is left wanting more, especially about the interest groups and lobbies that are so crucial to the making of economic policy. Perhaps the authors will keep this in mind as a future project.
Mahesh Rangarajan
VOTES AND VIOLENCE: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India by Steven I. Wilkinson. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2004.
FEW subjects, barring Indo-Pak cricket, excite as much passion in India as Hindu-Muslim violence. Yet, despite numerous articles, fact-finding reports, commissions of enquiry, and scholarly monographs, there is little consensus on causes, far less on strategies for action. In a country whose birth was marked by a violent partition on religious grounds and which subsequently has suffered the loss of thousands of lives in riots, such a situation can only be described as tragic.
Is this because far too often we ask the wrong questions, mistakenly believing that irreconcilable religious differences are behind the violence? Officially we call ourselves a secular state and every leader stresses that no religion teaches hate and violence. Yet, no matter how painful the admission, distrust of the religious ‘other’ continues to run deep and every resource – history, memory, literature – is mined to deepen the divide. Possibly this is why, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, primordialist thesis’ like Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations find such ready resonance.
That religious faith is an important constituent of collective identity is undeniable as is the reality of inter-faith differences. What is less clear is why differences, even antagonism across religious divides, must inevitably lead to violence. Fortunately, we now have a sufficient body of researched literature to conclusively demonstrate that Hindu-Muslim conflict and violence is not endemic/given, that it is not as widespread as people mistakenly believe with areas and phases of peace far outstripping those of conflict, and that we can trace specific secular causes behind acts of violence and riots. In short, rather than accept the inevitability of Hindu-Muslim violence, thereby seeking religious homogeneity (read Hindu rashtra) as the principal route to peace, it is possible to institute measures in the secular domain which can substantially reduce the potential and impact of such violence.
Steven Wilkinson’s monograph is the latest in this line of argument. It is worth noting that the last three years have seen three major studies by U.S. based researchers, all incidentally students of the late Myron Weiner, seeking to explain Hindu-Muslim violence – Ashutosh Varshney 2002, Paul Brass 2003, and now Wilkinson. In 1995 Varshney and Wilkinson together produced the most comprehensive data-set on Hindu-Muslim violence for the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. Nevertheless, despite this shared history, both foreground very different causal factors. Varshney’s book, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life, had struck a fresh methodological note in being self-consciously comparative, moving away from theological/ideological reasoning and country-wide analysis to focus instead on cities as a more appropriate site of research. Further, it examined not just cities which experienced violence but those others, comparable in other attributes to the selected set, which did not. Though his principal explanation – cities with strong inter-faith associational ties are less likely to experience violence than those without – elicited its share of criticism, his methodological innovation won praise.
Paul Brass’ book, The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence, presented a longitudinal analysis of one city, Aligarh, regarded by many as exemplifying a riot-torn city. And even as many reviewers doubted the wisdom of extrapolating from the understanding of one city (Aligarh is not India), some even questioning his ‘reading’ of the city, most commentators found his elaboration of ‘an institutionalised riot system’ incorporating both the pre- and post-violence developments, both insightful and useful. Equally, those involved with controlling riots, found the focus on the state, state machinery and media, significantly downplayed in the Varshney thesis, helpful. A focus on an agency is seen as more amenable to corrective action.
Wilkinson has the advantage of building on these earlier books. With Ashutosh Varshney, he shares the selection of cities as an appropriate spatial site of analysis as also the concern of being able to simultaneously explain why riots break out at certain places and not in others. What he does not share with the former is the excitement with the building of ‘social capital’, inter-faith associational ties, as a robust enough factor for preventing and controlling riots.
Wilkinson argues that riots, ‘far from being relatively spontaneous eruptions of anger, are often planned by politicians for a clear electoral purpose. They are best thought of as a solution to the problem of how to change the salience of ethnic issues and identities among the electorate in order to build a winning political coalition.’ But perchance this is read as an argument against electoral democracy or political competition, Wilkinson stresses that political competition can lead to either peace or violence, and identifies broad electoral conditions under which politicians will prevent ethnic polarization and violence rather than incite it.
Using systematic data on Hindu-Muslim riots in India, Wilkinson demonstrates that ‘electoral incentives at two levels – the local constituency level and the level of government that controls the police – interact to determine both where and when ethnic violence against minorities will occur, and more important, whether the state will choose to intervene to stop it.’ This he does by looking at inter-state and town-level variation in ethnic violence – why apparently similar towns and states experience such different levels of violence and the role of political incentives for ethnic violence. He argues that town level incentives account for where H-M violence breaks out while the state level incentives account for where and when police forces are used to quell violence.
Democratic states protect minorities when it is in the government’s interest to do so, i.e. supply of protection to minorities happens when either the ruling party or its coalition partner needs their support or when the inter-party competition is high so that if not now then in the future minority votes will be needed for electoral survival and victory. So if Gujarat burnt, it was because Modi and the BJP not only incited violence to consolidate their electoral base, but let it continue because they could do without minority support. Bihar, despite a weak state machinery, exemplifies a situation where governing elites need minority support and thus give clear signals to the official, particularly police, machinery. It should be evident that unlike Varshney who bets on inter-ethnic associational ties to prevent and dampen riots, relying essentially on town level factors, Wilkinson foregrounds electoral competition and incentives at multiple levels.
To explain state level differences, Wilkinson finds both ‘consociational’ and ‘state capacity and governance’ arguments unsatisfactory. He points out that while the Nehru years did see less Hindu-Muslim violence, it was not because effective levels of the state were more sensitive to minority interests and representation. If anything, he shows otherwise; Nehru may have been a secular liberal, his colleagues controlling the provinces were not. The Congress Party remained an elitist, upper-caste Hindu dominated coalition and only now, with its decline, are we seeing the growth of caste-based and minority-representing regional formations – in the long run significant factors for muting Hindu-Muslim violence.
Wilkinson’s discussion of the differing intensity and frequency of H-M violence in the states of the North and South is traced to the cumulative effects of caste-based affirmative action policies. What began, as far back as the 1920s, as a policy for increasing minority and lower caste presence in the education and employment market, slowly resulted in ethnic political formations seeking to consolidate and expand the gains made by the community. Even though the Indian Constitution does not permit reservation/quotas on religious grounds, the fact that a vast proportion of Muslims are from lower caste groups permitted state governments to incorporate them in the policy.
Because Muslims are, in many states, a large enough voting block to swing elections, they become a ‘sought after’ base for many backward and scheduled caste parties. This, in states with a higher index of political competition, implies that all major parties seek Muslim votes and accept the need to protect minorities. ‘Supplying protection to minorities moves from being a positional (with politicians taking different positions) to a valence issue (all politicians in public are for it) as politicians in competitive systems try to neutralize the issue as a vote loser.’
Wilkinson presents a plausible thesis, one making intuitive sense. It does however appear that, like in the Ashutosh Varshney book, a focus on violence (defined as death) ends up underplaying the continuation of ethnic differences and the ideological project of sectarian and communalist formations. Also, since the index of political competition, i.e., the need to rely on minority vote for the ruling coalition or party happens over a long period, it almost appears that remedial action like police and judicial reform has limited efficacy. Finally, Wilkinson underestimates the role of ideas and global forces in promoting a distorted understanding of religions and communities, crucial after 9/11.
Nevertheless, this book, like the two earlier monographs, pushes us into creating richer and more disaggregated data on violence and conflict, deploy both historical analysis and cross-sectional comparative data, and above all, eschew simplistic explanations of either Hindu or Muslim communalism in seeking to come to terms with the continuing presence of inter-ethnic conflict. One only wishes that our (Indian) researchers too would produce similar work.
Harsh Sethi
