Introduction 5
nation and nationality in the context of the multiplicity of ethnic,
COMMUNAL HARMONY,
SECULARISM AND
NATION-BUILDING
S.M. Michael
INTRODUCTION
Communal harmony and peace-building is an ongoing process
and life-long challenge. Serious obstacles such as inequality,
discrimination, injustice, exploitation and intolerance exist in society.
Obviously, then, promoting communal harmony is a very difficult
and pro-active task. People need to get involved in social movements
to build a just and humane society.
It demands appropriate knowledge, skills and attitudes to
encounter the many conflicts life offers. To work for communal
harmony and nation-building requires much knowledge of history,
society, politics, culture and religion, as well as awareness, analysis
and critical thinking. One also needs a clear vision and a moral
commitment to human dignity and social justice. These play a
tremendous role in influencing the lives of people and shaping their
future. Max Weber and Karl Mannheim have indeed shown the
power of ideas and utopia in influencing social movements.
Communalism in India is directly linked to the understanding
of Indian identity and nation. Several historians have understood
Dr. (Fr.) S.M. Michael, SVD, is a Reader of Sociology, University of
Mumbai. He teaches Social Movements for the post-graduate students. He
is also the Chairman of the Dialogue Commission, Archdiocese of Bombay.
He is the author of 5 books and about 60 articles.
cultural and religious identities. Another very influential
conceptualisation visualises India as an ancient Hindu culture and
civilisation. This conception considers the Aryans to be the countrys
original inhabitants; or at least sees their advent as marking the
beginning of Indian history. In this view, pre-Aryan culture did not
exist, or if it did, it was a low culture that contributed nothing. This
ignores the pre-and non-Aryan peoples who constitute over 60% of
the Indian population. Most Muslims and Christians are for example
converts from castes and tribes drawn from the pre-Aryan population.
Admittedly then, Indian civilisation cannot be equated with Hindu
civilisation (Oommen, 2004, 25).
The followers of various religious faiths coexisting in India have
given birth to a plural culture. India is the homeland of a plurality of
religious, cultural and ethnic groups. Pluralism demands the
celebration of the cultural diversity incorporated in the Indian nation.
Any genuine promotion of communal harmony and nation-building
must therefore take this plural reality into account.
The methodology of this booklet is multi-disciplinary. Analysis
and information are indeed drawn from anthropology, sociology, history
and politics to construct a coherent understanding. The sources mainly
come from library research. Since the authors are also social activists
involved in peace movements and communal harmony programmes,
their personal experiences have moreover been helpful.
This booklet has five chapters. The first introduces the
contemporary scenario of growing communal crisis in India. The
second analyses the major reasons for communal conflicts, while the
third describes the dialogue that led to the formation of the Indian
Secular Republic in the Constitution. The fourth chapter focuses on
some contested issues and the need for dialogue, and the fifth gives
some concluding remarks and practical suggestions.
It is hoped that this booklet on Communal Harmony,
Secularism and Nation-Building will be of practical help for all,
especially those who are involved in dialogue, communal harmony,
human development and social action, to build a just, humane and
well-integrated society in India.

1. THE GROWING COMMUNAL CRISIS
Ram Puniyani
Recent times in India have seen a great intensification of attacks
on the weaker sections of society in general and against minorities in
particular. This violence has been unleashed in the name of religion
and hides a deep communal agenda. This process picked up tempo
after the conversion of some Dalits to Islam in Meenakshipuram in
1981 and the Shah Bano movement in 1986-87. This was followed by
events like the opening of the locks of the Babri Masjid, Advanis
Rath Yatra, the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and the
consequent anti-Muslim pogroms in Mumbai, Surat, Bhopal and many
other places, and later on by the propaganda and attacks against
Christians.
In the 1980 decade, the major target of the Sangh Parivar was
the Muslim community. Most of the violence was conducted with
precision by the various wings of the Parivar. Many enquiry
commission reports indicted the members of the Parivar for being
instrumental in these riots in one or another way. Nearly 80% of the
victims were poor Muslims, and the remaining were Hindus from the
poor strata of society. The attacks against Muslims and their
ghettoisation were preceded and accompanied by a hate campaign based
on misinformation. These views later became part of the social
common sense.
From 1998 onwards, the ire of the Parivar also turned against
the Christian community. Churches were attacked, Bibles burnt,
missionaries intimidated, and one of them, Reverend Staines, was burnt
along with his two young sons. Here again, the attacks were
accompanied by a sustained campaign to malign the members of the
community: Christianity is a foreign religion, its missionaries are
Dr. Ram Puniyani is a Professor at IIT, Mumbai. He is a member of EKTA
(Committee for Communal Amity), which was formed immediately after
the Meerut riots that shook the country in 1987. He is a social activist and
a scholar. He is the author of several books and articles.
The Growing Communal Crisis 7
indulging in forcible conversions, they spread insurgency in the North
East, they plan to evangelise the country and Christians will soon
outnumber the Hindus, thereby making India a Christian state.
1. Basic Concepts and Manifestations
Fundamentalism
The term fundamentalism is used in various ways. Sometimes,
it simply means going back to the fundamentals of religions. As a
social phenomenon, this does not however convey its full meaning. In
a broad sense, fundamentalism refers to the religious movements which
claim doctrines to be immutable and demand from believers a literal
acceptance of traditional tenets and observances. It rejects attempts
at rational interpretation and prefers blind faith.
Kanungao highlights three basic trends in this phenomenon:
First, fundamentalisms are inevitably political. Secondly,
fundamentalist movements are also genuinely religious: We will fail
to understand these movements if we neglect their irreducible religious
dimension. Thirdly, religious fundamentalisms are hegemonic, anti-
pluralist movements that are constrained in their impact by the
conflicting demands made upon them by their dual identity as inherently
religious and inherently political entities (2002, 15). Engineer speaks
of fundamentalism as the enforcement of sectarianism with all rigidity
for the political mobilisation of a community (to pursue the) power
goals of its elite (2004, 22).
Fundamentalism is thus a social phenomenon which targets liberal
values to stall societys potential march towards non-hierarchical
relationships. It is an imposition of retrograde conservative values,
selectively culled out from religious books or practices. It suppresses
the heterogeneity that exists within religions, and constructs a version
of religion that is suitable for vested interests.
The term fundamentalism was first used to denote the orthodox
trend in modern Protestantism, which emerged in North America just
before the First World War as a response to the spread of modernism
and liberalism in Christianity. In Islamic countries, fundamentalism
came to the forefront with Ayatollah Khomeini. Currently, some
countries are fully in the grip of such a movement, while others have
state-sponsored Islamic revivalism and a political and social system
8 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
resulting from the partial implementation of the sharia. Hindu
fundamentalism has become more assertive since the 1980s.
Communalism
Communalism is a belief or ideology according to which the
people belonging to one religion have common economic, social and
political interests contrary to the interests of people belonging to
another religion. One can discern three degrees or forms of
communalism: a) mild: similar interests among the followers of the
same religion; b) moderate: dissimilar interests among the followers
of different religions; c) extreme (based on fear and hatred): antagonistic
interests of people belonging to different religions.
Communalism is a modern phenomenon, mostly in post-colonial
societies, where the elite or middle classes use the religious identity to
mobilise people for their own political gains. As a result, the struggles
of the weaker sections for human rights and social transformation
get marginalised. In India, this phenomenon emerged in opposition to
the national movement. It had its base in the declining classes of the
landlords and kings of Hinduism and Islam. In spite of the appearances,
the elites of both religions indeed share some common characteristics:
absence of struggle against the British, denigration of the Congress,
belief that Hindus and Muslims form separate nations, and hatred and
fear of each other. Muslim communalism was expressed through the
Muslim League while the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS were the
vehicles of Hindu communalism.
2. The Communal Phenomenon and Its Causes
Modernisation and Globalisation
The phenomenon of fundamentalism and communalism came to
the fore in the early 1980s. The socialist economies were then collapsing
and the USSR was crumbling as a alternative power. This paved the
way for the emergence of the US as the only super-power. The US
was greatly interested in increasing its stronghold on the oil zone and
its acts of commission and omission led to the rise of Islamic
fundamentalism and terrorism.
In India the adopted model of development deeply favoured the
privileged middle class. The ascendant labour movement got a setback
The Growing Communal Crisis 9
after the 1983 Mumbai textile strike, and this signalled a change in the
labour policies of the management. The economy was progressively
transformed into a globalised economy. It was opened to
multinationals in a big way and the policies of GATT, the WTO and
other agencies severely hit the weaker sections of society.
In this overall canvas, there were multiple trends. First, an affluent
middle class emerged, comprising small industrialists, rich peasants
with urban connections, bureaucrats and professionals. Second,
globalisation was accompanied by a rise in unemployment and the
worsening of wages among workers in small factories. All this created
a massive turmoil, which was for example expressed at the
implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations. The
threat of change and turmoil precipitated the coming together of the
affluent middle classes under the banner of the communal politics of
the BJP and its affiliates.
Hindutva
Though long rooted in some social segments, the Hindutva ideology
greatly increased its social visibility in the last two decades. While its
name is derived from Hindu religion, Hindutva is a political ideology.
It has raised afresh the questions of nationality, community, identity
and a host of other issues in the social space. The Hindutva movement
basically aims at building a strong nation on the tenets of Hindu
Dharma and Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation).
The Hindutva movement is spearheaded by a plethora of
organisations, the patriarch of which is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS), the real controller of all other organisations. It was
founded in 1925. Its backdrop needs to be well understood. With the
entry of Mahatma Gandhi into the political arena in 1920, the dynamics
of the anti-British movement was tremendously galvanised. Gandhi
brought into the struggle people of all religions and castes. The
Brahminical domination in the Congress started declining. To reassert
their hegemony on the social and political scene, the upper castes and
the Brahmins, supported by zamindari elements and the Banias, came
up with the idea of a religion-based national organisation, the RSS.
Slightly prior to this, Savarkar (had) put forward the idea of
Hindutva as the basis for politics, which stood for a nationalism
10 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
based on Hinduism (Puniyani, 2000, 51). At that time the anti-
Brahmin movement was peaking and was threatening to shake the
very social power of the Zamindar-Brahmin nexus. At the international
level, the race-based nationalism of the Nazis (Germany) and the
Fascists (Italy) was on the ascendance. This was the main inspiration
for the RSS idea of nationalism. Golwalkar indeed wrote: German
national pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the
purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by
purging the country of the Semitic races the Jews. National pride at
its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown to the
world how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures having
(deep-rooted) differences to be assimilated into one united whole, a
good lesson for us in India to learn and profit by (1938, 27).
Marzia Casolari, an Italian researcher who has studied the roots
of Hindu nationalism, makes three conclusions: (a) the main historical
organisations and leaders of Hindu nationalism had a distinctive
and sustained interest in fascism and nazism; (b) fascist ideological
influences on Hindu nationalism were present and relevant; (c) to a
certain extent, these influences were channelled through direct contacts
between Hindu nationalists and members of the Italian fascist state
(Casolari, 2000, 37). The RSS decided to keep aloof from day-to-day
political struggles and began to train young boys in the doctrine of
Hindu Rashtra. As per this core ideology, Hindus and Hindus alone
constitute the Indian Nation, since they are the original inhabitants
and sole creators of its society and culture. Hinduism is uniquely
catholic and tolerant and hence superior to other faiths The
subsequent entry and takeover by foreigners created an illusion that
India was a land of many different and equal cultures Only a truly
secular Hindu Rashtra will afford protection to non- Hindus (Basu,
1993, 37).
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the RSS political wing, while
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) translates the Hindutva political
agenda on the emotive, religious ground. The Bajrang Dal is a group
of youths who are active on the streets. The Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram
is engaged in promoting Hindu norms amongst Adivasis, and the
Rashtraseviva Samiti is the RSS womens wing. In addition there are
other organisations like the Saraswati Shishu Mandirs, which inculcate
The Growing Communal Crisis 11
young minds with its social, cultural and political understanding. These
organisations are collectively called the Sangh Parivar.
The initial concern of the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha was to
counter the politics of the Muslim League and to influence the Congress
in a pro-Hindu direction. The RSS was mainly focusing on Shakhas,
training volunteers for the Hindutva movement, while the Hindu
Mahasabha was taking part in electoral politics. After independence
the number of RSS cadres increased, and the Hindu Mahasabha
gradually went into oblivion. One of the ex-pracharak of the RSS,
Nathuram Godse, murdered Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, following which
the RSS was banned for some time. Meanwhile, RSS volunteers kept
on infiltrating the army, bureaucracy, media and educational
institutions. The number of RSS volunteers went on increasing and
multiple RSS-controlled organisations came up.
The RSS undertook some campaigns to ban cow-slaughter in the
1960s, but the response was lukewarm. The movement became very
visible with its anti-communist propaganda during the India-China
war and it projected a nationalist, patriotic fervor. Its political wing,
the Jana Sangh, undertook the campaign Indianise Muslims in the
late 1960s. Meanwhile, the ideology spread by the RSS and growing
urbanisation were the key factors in the increasing intensity of
communal violence.
The RSS then gained higher respectability in the J.P. Narayan
movement (1974). Its political wing joined the Janata Party and came
to power. It got vital ministries like External Affairs, Information and
Broadcasting, and used the opportunity to further enter the bureaucracy.
It however left the Janata Party on the issue of dual membership,
when the former members of the Jana Sangh refused to leave the RSS.
The Jana Sangh re-emerged as BJP on the plank of Gandhian
Socialism.
The early 1980s saw a great turmoil in society. In 1981, the
conversion of some Dalits to Islam was given a great projection as the
threat of Islam engulfing India. In 1984, the Operation Blue Star,
when the Indian army entered the Golden temple in Amritsar to expel
the Khalistani militants, brought about the assassination of Indira
Gandhi by her bodyguards. This was followed by massive anti-Sikh
pogroms in which Congress workers led the assaulting mobs. An RSS
12 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
ideologue then wrote a document subtly supporting Rajiv Gandhi who
turned a blind eye to the ongoing pogroms (Deshmukh, 1984). Later,
to appease the Muslim fundamentalists, Rajiv Gandhi got a bill passed
in the Lok Sabha to reverse the Shah Bano verdict by the Supreme
Court granting her maintenance. In the same superficial and
opportunistic style, he went on to get the locks of the Babri Masjid
opened. Both the Hindu and the Muslim fundamentalist streams were
on the ascendant. The opening of the locks emboldened the Hindu
fundamentalists and sections of the Muslim leadership started feeling
insecure on the Babri Masjid issue. The opening of the locks gave a
fillip to the Parivar and the BJP decided to take up the Ram Janam
Bhoomi issue.
Due to his own compulsions vis--vis the politics of Devi Lal,
V.P. Singh cleaned the dust of the Mandal Commission report in 1990
and decided to implement it. This intensified the backlash of the
upper castes, who rallied around the Sangh Parivar in a big way.
The Rath Yatra got a tremendous response from these sections of
society. With the Babri Masjid demolition on Dec. 6, 1992, the BJP
became politically more powerful. It got more seats in the Lok Sabha
and also came to power in various state assemblies.
The presence of religion in the social and political space was not
considerable in the first few decades of Indias independence. Its impact
became significant later through the work of the RSS, which was
primarily conceived as the vanguard of the Hindu Rashtra, its
leaders conception of the ideal society based on the varna (caste)
system (Jaffrelot, 23). The Hindutva doctrine is the crystallised
ideology of Hindu communal politics. Its historical development rested
on the construction of Brahminism as Hinduism, which then formed
the base for Hindutva politics. Savarkar began to articulate the ideology
of the Hindu elite (the zamindars, Brahmins and kings) by linking
Brahminical Hinduism with nationalism and calling it Hindutva, which
showed the way to build the Hindu Rashtra. His key sentence was
Hinduise all politics and militarise all Hindudom (Ram, 2000).
Since the 1950s, the Hindutva ideology kept communalising
the social space, receiving due provocation from either Muslim
communalism in India or the assertive postures of Pakistan on the
Kashmir issue. The communalisation of society resulted in communal
riots, which multiplied in the 1960s and assumed ever more menacing
The Growing Communal Crisis 13
proportions. The most ghastly riots took place in the 1980s and 1990s,
the post-Babri demolition riots being amongst the worst for their impact
on the psyche of the minorities.
Minority Communalism
Muslim communal politics came up with the Muslim League in
pre-partition times. The machinations of the British policy of divide
and rule and the impact of communal politics led to the partition, and
the formation of secular democratic India on one hand and Muslim-
dominated Pakistan on the other. After partition the Muslim communal
elements left India for Pakistan in large numbers. Yet, quite a few of
them remained in India. While the Muslim League of Kerala had a
different character, Muslim communal politics became more visible
in the 1980s. Its growth can be attributed to internal factors like the
grip of the Mullahs and external factors like the rise of Hindutva.
The Shah Bano judgement saw an important surge of Muslim
communal politics, and the political formations kept using Muslim
communalism for their electoral purposes. There are several trends
amongst Muslims and their minority communalism keeps itself alive
on account of various factors. It is simultaneously the result of global
politics, a defensive response to the rise of Hindutva and a provocation
to its politics.
Ayodhya
The location of the Babri Masjid came to be referred to as the
precise place where Lord Ram was born. It was also claimed that it
was built by the Mughal invader Babur to humiliate the Hindu psyche,
and that it thus stood as a shame to the honour and prestige of the
nation. The Babri demolition came as a shocking jolt to the whole
country. While the followers of the Sangh Parivar looked at this event
as the wiping away of the blot on the face of the nation, a shourya
divas (day of bravery) and a Hindu navnirman divas (day of Hindu
resurgence), etc., a large section of the population saw it as a day of
shame for the secular and democratic values for which we stand, and
a major onslaught on the principles enshrined in the Indian constitution.
The Ramjanambhoomi-Babri Masjid controversy is not of recent
origin. It originated because of the British policy of divide and rule
around 1855 (Engineer, 1995, 74). On the night of 22nd December
14 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
1949, a few miscreants entered the mosque and installed the Ram
idols. This sowed the seeds of the controversy which came to the fore
in 1984, when in the first Dharma Sansad (Religious Parliament) of
the VHP a resolution was unanimously adopted demanding the
liberation of the birth place of Lord Ram. On 27th July 1984, the Sri
Ramjanambhoomi Mukti Yagna Samiti (Committee for Sacrifice to
Liberate Rams Birth Place) was founded under the leadership of
Mahant Avaidyanath. The campaign was to have very serious
repercussions. Its impact derived from the diversity of sects
represented in it. The Vishnuites, Shaivites and Tantrists who have
a long history of violent competition came together under the banner
of Bharat Matha, Mother India (Jaffrelot, 1996, 363).
Later the BJP entered the fray and L.K. Advani made a Rath Yatra
from Somnath to Ayodhya. The trail of the Yatra left a number of
incidences of communal violence. The anti-Muslim hatred also
increased because of repeated campaigns around the temple issue.
Advani could not complete his Yatra as he was arrested midway on 25
Oct. 1990, but many Kar Sevaks assembled at the Babri Masjid site
and tried to damage the mosque. The Mulayam Singh Yadavs
Government had to open fire and several people died.
Afterwards, a call was given for the Kar Seva at the site on 6th Dec.
1992. Nearly 300,000 volunteers were mobilised from all over the
country. The BJP Chief Minister of the State gave a written undertaking
to the court to protect the mosque. During the demolition, the police
and paramilitary forces withdrew from the site, leaving it open to the
Kar Sevaks. The mosque was demolished in 5 1/2 hours and the debris
was thrown in the river Saryu. A makeshift temple came up within a
day, which was declared the prelude of the forthcoming grand temple.
In the post-demolition period, several riots took place throughout the
country, especially in Mumbai, Surat and Bhopal. The demolition led
to the dismissal of the BJP governments in four states and the
preparation for the building of the temple began in many workshops.
Since then, the on-off game of the temple agenda goes on.
Anti-Muslim Violence
Communal violence is a festering wound on the body politic of
Indian society. The post-partition riots were followed by a period of
relative peace till 1961, when the Jabalpur riots brought to the fore the
The Growing Communal Crisis 15
unresolved problems of majority-minority relations. This was followed
by many riots in different parts of the country. Their intensity increased.
The 1980s saw the growing communalisation of society and the worst
ever communal violence. The communalisation of society, the intensity
of communal violence and the rise of the Hindu Right in politics
run parallel to each other. This dastardly process peaked in the post-
Babri demolition riots and the Gujarat violence. The latter took the
lives of over 2,000 Muslims.
Gujarat Violence
The Godhra train burning was propagated as a planned attack by
Muslim terrorists. Even before society could realise what was
happening, the bodies of the victims were brought to Ahmedabad with
much publicity. The report of the railway police debunks the theory
that the burning was pre-planned and executed by the hawkers and the
residents near the Naroda station, who are mostly Ghanchi Muslims.
The report of Forensic Science Laboratory indeed shows that the bogey
was burnt from inside, thus leaving many questions regarding the
identity of its authors. Moreover, the Government had failed to take
any precaution concerning the Kar Sevaks travelling by the train and
raising provocative slogans.
Right through the carnage, the complicity of the state Government
was obvious. Some statements of Narendra Modi, the Gujarat Chief
Minister, were the key igniting factors. His instructions to the top
officials to keep aloof from the anticipated retaliation were very
significant. Trained volunteers led the rampaging mobs and most of
them knew that no action would be taken against them. There was a
systematic erosion of the rule of law and an anti-minority bias became
part of the state policy. The fact that the rampage was not a spontaneous
upsurge by Hindus, as claimed by the VHP and other RSS affiliates,
is proved by the extensive use of crane trucks and gas cylinders. The
detailed lists of Muslim households and business enterprises and the
presence of trucks of swords and dangerous chemicals also show that
much planning had gone into the preparation of this pogrom.
Anti-Christian Violence
The last few years have seen a massive rise in anti-Christian
violence, especially in BJP-ruled states. These acts are apparently in
16 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building

retaliation to the forced conversions done by missionaries. The cases

of anti-Christian violence rose from 7 in 1996 to 24 in 1997 and more
than 120 in 1998. These included attacking churches, burning Bibles,
intimidating missionaries to Quit India, and most horrific of all, the
burning of Graham Stewart Staines along with his two sons in a jeep
on the night of 22-23 Jan. 1999. Other incidents of a serious nature
included the stoning of the Catholic Hospital Association of India
(CHAI) camp (on 14 Feb. 1998) by around 60 activists of the RSS,
VHP and ABVP at Nandurga in the Latur region, the disruption of the
Jesus festival at the Pologround, Baroda, the killing of Sister Rani
Maria in Indore and the humiliation of Fr. Christudas in Dumka.
In an interview given to Teesta Setalwad, the Editor of Communalism
Combat, C.P. Singh, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Gujarat, said
that there was a clear pattern in this violence: It was the activists of
the VHP and Bajranj Dal who were taking the law into their hands,
which posed a serious danger to peace in Gujarat. Many of the attacks
on the minorities took place after these organisations had whipped up
the local passions against alleged conversions and forced inter-religious
marriages... Our investigations revealed that in most cases these were
entirely baseless allegations (8/10/1998).
We should moreover note that the number of these attacks
significantly increased after the BJP-led Government assumed power
at the Centre in March 1998. What is most glaring is that, instead of
condemning the concerned organisations, top government leaders
defended them almost immediately after the violent incidents. It is not
just a coincidence that the maximum number of attacks occurred in
Gujarat and Maharashtra where BJP and BJP-Shiv Sena coalitions
were ruling. Most such attacks also took place against institutions
meant for the poor. The intensity of the violence was so great that
President K.R. Narayanan spoke of Graham Staines murder as
belonging to the worlds inventory of black deeds. He added: That
someone who has spent years caring for patients of leprosy, instead of
being thanked and appreciated as a role model, should be done to
death in this manner is a monumental aberration from the traditions
of tolerance and humanity for which India has been known (The
Asian Age, Jan. 25, 1999).

2. TOWARDS A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS
Ram Puniyani has already highlighted in the first chapter that,
behind communalism, lies the question of the identity of India as a
nation. We are confronted on the one hand with a militant Hindu
revivalism trying to define India in terms of an upper-caste Sanskritic
Hindu identity, and on the other hand, with the voices from below,
those of the Tribals, Dalits, religious, linguistic and ethnic groups,
who are demanding to be accepted with their specific cultural identity
in the national commonwealth. Hence, in order to understand and
counter the growing communalism in the country, we need to answer
some of the most important questions raised on the identity of the
Indian nation.
After fifty years of loyalty to the Constitutional pledge (which we
shall study in the next chapter) to honour the principles of pluralism
and secularism, India now faces a serious challenge an
unconstitutional attempt to redefine the nation only in terms of a
mono-cultural Hindu Rashtra. The steadily growing Hindu orientation
of our political culture and national self-understanding, with its
consequent marginalisation of other groups, has caused much
communal disharmony, discontent and anxiety. This chapter studies
the dialogue that, in the years of formation, gave birth to the Indian
nation. History may teach us a lesson that we need to learn in order
to continue the dialogue at the beginning of the new millennium. It is
my hope that knowledge of the past will help us in the present to
discern the road that must be travelled to arrive at a concept of Indian
identity that is comprehensive enough to include the totality of the
countrys many sub-cultural groups. Such reflections are urgent and
crucial in the context of globalisation and the present upsurge of ethnic
and religious unrest worldwide, and also for us here in India who must
find a way to respond to the challenges of the present times.
1. Indian Civilisation and Indian Nationalism
India is a sub-continent with a vast and most diverse population.
Anthropology reveals that several racial groups have migrated to India
18 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
at different times with their own languages, religions and cultures.
Since there was plenty of space, the migrating groups could pass on
and penetrate into the interior without much opposition. Thus, the
various cultural groups did not destroy each other, but continued to
live on and consolidate into the main components of the present-day
population. In a way, the caste system also helped to keep the diverse
racial, social and cultural groups apart, for it prevented them from
deeply mixing with one another. The population of India is thus very
heterogeneous. Variety and diversity permeate the whole sub-
continent, every state and district, every town and village.
Indian civilisation is the outcome of a confluence of various
cultural, religious, linguistic and ethnic traditions. Over the years of
mutual fecundation, synthesis and challenge, Indian civilisation has
come to be characterised by a diversity of cultures, religions, languages,
races and caste groups. According to Kothari, in the absence of a
centralised political authority, it was the Indian civilisational
enterprise which over the centuries achieved a remarkable degree
of cohesion and held together different sub-systems in a continental-
size society (1988, 2223). Thus, the unifying force of Indian
civilisation was the acceptance of multi-culturality and linguistic
diversity rather than political ideology.
Nationalism in the modern sense of the word is a recent
phenomenon. It developed in the 18th century in the West and emerged
at a latter period as a universal political concept. According to Kohn,
it was only between 1815-1920 that the political map of Europe was
redrawn, while the political map of Asia and Africa changed between
1945-1965 (Kohn, 1968, 63). Before this period nationalism with its
present implications did not exist. There were however city-states,
Tribal segments and dynastic states and empires (Gellner, 1994, 62;
cf. DSouza, 2000, 28-66).
The development of nationalism is seen as an integral part of the
historical process that saw the rise of industrialism and democracy.
According to Gellner and Hobsbawm, the emergence of modern
nationalism is an inevitable consequence of capitalism and
industrialisation (Hastings, 1997, 10). Partha Chatterjee expresses
similar views. In his opinion, nationalism required the replacement of
a traditional, group-based culture by the culture of an industrial society,
 Towards a Comprehensive Analysis 19
i.e., the culture of a larger group where the individual and not the
group was the primary unit (Chatterjee, 1986, 5). Nationalism thus
presupposes the existence, in fact or as an ideal, of a centralised
form of government over a large and distinct territory (Kohn, 1956, 4).
In India nationalism emerged in the context of colonialism. It
can be traced to the political, administrative and economic unification
by the British. Politically speaking, there was no India at the beginning
of the 19th century, and for at least a century before that, neither did
India possess a knowledge of its own past and ancient history
(Majumdar, 1965, 4). The introduction of English education, European
science and philosophy, as well as the pride in India as a nation and
her past culture, emerged at this historical turning-point.
In their early manifestation, the struggle for nationalism, anti-
colonial consciousness and the need for independence were not in the
realm of politics but in that of ideology and culture (Pannikar, 1995,
57). The first expression of this consciousness was in the form of
social and religious reform movements. The important question then
was what is the cultural foundation of Indian society and how are
we to reconstruct it as a modern nation on a par with other modern
nation-states? Two strands of thought emerged from the upper-caste
Hindus: one led to an attempt at reconstructing Indian society on the
basis of western ideas originating in the age of Enlightenment and
Liberalism, and the other wanted the reconstruction to take place on
the foundation of ancient Hindu traditions. A third vision of modern
India was voiced by oppressed and marginalised people in India. These
three visions of modern India shaped the course of dialogue in
India at the birth of her Constitution of the Indian nation. They
are also influencing the current political debates in India today.
Let us have a closer look at these strands of thought.
2. Building the Nation on a Rational Approach to Culture
The Enlightenment philosophy of the West began to have its impact
on the newly Western-educated Indians during the colonial period. It
gave rise to the Indian renaissance. The spirit that spread through
English education was usually that of British liberalism, rationalism
and utilitarianism, a spirit that challenged the presuppositions on which
the orthodox Brahminic Hindu system of conduct was based. With
20 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
ruthless self-criticism, the new Western-educated elite sought to lay
the basis for a total social transformation, to weld science and
rationality to Indian culture, and to recreate India.
The beginnings to this social revolt can be easily identified with
the thought of Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833). Roy vividly
described the degraded state of society and acknowledged without
embarrassment the virtues of Western learning, liberal legal and social
institutions, and Western social ethic (Damle and Aikara 1982, 77).
With a view to cleansing Hindu culture and society of its weaknesses
and incongruities, he founded the Brahmo Samaj in 1828 at Calcutta.
Its main ideological thrust was to transform Hinduism in the mould of
Christianity. It assumed that Hindu society could only be healed of its
social evils by adopting Christian taboos on polytheism and idolatry.
The purpose of the Brahmo Samaj was to restructure Hindu culture
in terms of modernity. Roy campaigned for the prohibition of sati
until Governor-General Lord William Bentinck enacted it in 1829.
His revolt against the living Hindu society and his appeal to Indians to
purify their religion and reconstitute their social institutions echoed
throughout the century after his death. The Brahmo ideologues imbibed
quite a bit of Christianity along with some Deism of the European
Enlightenment. The third-generation Samaj leader Keshub Chandra
Sen (1838-1884) professed a Christian-like veneration of Jesus of
Nazareth and interiorised the Christian concept of the profound
sinfulness of the human being.
The massive all-India impact of Brahmanism then led to a
widespread reaction to restrain the Samajs further impact and the
subsequent erosion of traditional Hindu values.
3. Building the Nation on the Aryan Vedic Culture
Whereas Ram Mohan Roy held a vision of an Indian society
ultimately renovated by centuries of exposure to Western science and
Christian morality, Dayananda Saraswati (1824-1883) urged a
regeneration of Hindus through the adherence to purified Vedic
faith. The Vedic Aryans are described by Dayananda as a primordial
and elect people to whom the Veda has been revealed by God and
whose language Sanskrit is said to be the Mother of all languages
(Dayananda, 1981, 249). They would have migrated in the beginning
 Towards a Comprehensive Analysis 21
of the world from Tibet the first land to emerge from the Oceans
towards the Aryavarta. This territory, homeland of the Vedic
civilisation, covered the Punjab, Doab and Ganges basin. From this
position, the Aryans would have dominated the whole world till the
war of the Mahabharata, a watershed opening a phase of decadence.
The national renaissance implied, for Dayananda, a coming back to
the Vedic Golden Age.
The chief object of the Arya Samaj he founded in 1875 in Bombay
was to bring about a social and religious reform through the renaissance
of early Hindu doctrines, its favourite mottoes being Back to the
Vedas and Aryavarta for the Aryans (Smith W.R., 1938, 57). This
view simply equated Indian culture with Hinduism and Hindu culture;
all non-Hindu aspects were regarded as contaminating influences. The
Arya Samaj is probably the first movement in India which defined
nationalism in terms of ethnicity: in Dayanandas writings, the Hindus
are clearly the descendants of the Aryans.
Dayanandas attack on other religions like Christianity and Islam
was vigorous. His book, the Satyartha Prakash (Light of Truth),
contains a polemical chapter each against Christianity, Islam, Buddhism
and Jainism, and several against allegedly degenerative trends in
Hinduism. The Arya Samaj had two programmes: Shuddi, meaning
purification, which was the term for the ceremony by which non-Hindus
were converted to Hinduism, and Sangathan, union, which meant the
promotion of solidarity among Hindus. In short, the Arya Samaj wanted
to form a Hindu nation by establishing a common religion and culture
and converting others to Hinduism (cf. Jordens, 1978).
The idea of world domination by the Hindus was elaborated a
little later by another Arya Samajist based in the Rajasthani British
enclave of Ajmer, Har Bilas Sarda (1867-1955). In the second chapter
of Hindu Superiority (1906), entitled Hindu Colonisation of the
World, this author rejects the Central Asia theory of emigration of
the Aryans to India, and asserts that the Aryavarta was the birth place
of a race which spread and settled in Egypt, Ethiopia, Persia, Asia
Minor, Greece, Rome, Turkistan, Germany, Scandinavia, the
Hyperborean countries, Great Britain, Eastern Asia and America
(Sarda, 1975, 109-163). According to Sarda, most civilisations
originated in the Hindus-Aryans, a race which colonised the whole
22 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
world before the Mahabharat war. The ideological characteristics of
the Arya Samaj was one among the several factors which influenced
the subsequent ideology of Hindu nationalism that emerged in the
1920s (Jaffrelot, 1996, 17).
Vivekanandas (1863-1902) thought marked the culmination of
the 19th century social revolt. He founded the Ramakrishna Math
and Mission for the dissemination of Hinduism and for social service.
He believed that India alone had a spiritual message, whereas the West
was steeped in sensuality: Up, India, and conquer the world with
your spirituality (Vivekananda, 1957, 600).
There are thus two predominant versions of nationalism in
India: Indian nationalism and Hindu nationalism. The basic question
raised by these nationalistic movements is What should be the cultural
foundation of the Indian nation? The proponents of Indian nationalism
were mainly of the western-educated elite, secular and utilitarian in
their approach. In the words of Heimsath, having as its base an anti-
traditional, liberal democratic, secular and politically oriented concept
of nation, the early nationalism developed an ideology which could
properly encompass all Indian cultures and religions (1964, 39).
Hindu nationalism developed as a reaction against the liberal and
inclusive Indian nationalism.
4. Cultural Controversies in the National Congress
A second stage in the development of Indian nationalism emerged
in 1885 with the foundation of the Indian National Congress by Allan
Octavian Hume. The Congress tried to define a new India through
borrowed ideas from the European political experience and Western
social ethics. Most of its leaders understood the need for a truly all-
India nationalism which would rise above regional and communal
loyalties (Smith D.E., 1963, 88).
By the end of the 19th century, there was a mighty struggle for the
control of the Congress. The two factions, the moderates and the
extremists, held radically different views as to the proper ends and
means of the nationalist movement. While the moderates such as
Dadabhai Naoroji, Madhava Govinda Ranade and Gopal Krishna
Gokhale promoted reforms in Hindu culture, the extremists glorified
Hindu culture and opposed any kind of reform in it. While the liberals
 Towards a Comprehensive Analysis 23
envisioned a modernisation of India through the adoption of the Western
parameters of justice, order, rationality and the secular state, Tilak
glorified the Vedic civilisation (Parvate, 1959, 463). According to him,
Vedic religion was the religion of the Aryans from a very early time.
During Vedic times, India was a self-contained country. It was united
as a great nation (Varma, 1967, 197). Tilak became the proponent of
the Hindutva ideology of his time.
Tilaks overall concern was the promotion of solidarity among the
Hindus, and so he emphasised the superiority of their religion,
encouraged revivalism, politicised the Ganapati festival in 1893 and
converted Shivaji into a cult figure in 1895, thus serving both religious
and political objectives (Michael, 1986, 185-97). Tilak effectively
invoked the spirit of resurgent Hinduism to fight the nationalist cause,
but at the inevitable cost of alienating the Muslims.
The leaders of the nationalist movement based on a revival of
Hindu culture openly acknowledged their identification of nationalism
with Hinduism. Tilak at one time put the matter this way: The common
factor in Indian society is the feeling of hindutva (devotion to
Hinduism) (Wolpert, 1962, 210). The style of the revivalists was
more aggressive and tended to reflect a kshatriya (warrior) worldview.
The partition of Bengal in 1905 created a Muslim-majority area,
widened the breach between the Hindu and Muslim communities, and
gave a further stimulus to extremist activities.
The religious symbols that Tilak used so effectively in Maharashtra
had no appeal in Bengal, but others of even greater potency were at
hand. The land of Bengal, and by extension all of India, became
identified with the female aspect of the Hindu godhead, and the result
was the concept of a divine Motherland. Bankim Chandra Chatterjees
poem Vande Mataram (Hail to the Mother) soon became the great
Congress nationalist song throughout India. The country was the
Mother, but not a defenceless female: Thou art Durga (the Goddess
Mother), Lady and Queen, with hands that strike and swords of sheen
(Smith D.E., 1963, 90). According to Majumdar, Bankims nationalism
was Hindu rather than Indian. In his novel he converted patriotism
into a religion and religion into patriotism (Majumdar, 1965, 479).
Some of the most passionate statements of the extremist creed
came from Aurobindo Ghose: Liberty is the fruit we seek from the
24 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
sacrifice, and the Motherland the goddess to whom we offer it, he
wrote in 1907. Nationalism is not a mere political programme;
nationalism is a religion that has come from God, he declared (Ghose
1965, 135).
The cult of Durga or Kali, with its tantric ritual and animal
sacrifices, quickly became associated with revolutionary terrorism in
Bengal. A pamphlet printed in a secret press called upon the sons of
India to rise up, arm themselves with bombs, and invoke Mother Kali:
What does the Mother want? A coconut? No! A fowl or a sheep or a
buffalo? No! The Mother is thirsting after the blood of feringhis
(foreigners) who have bled her profusely (Quoted in Griffiths, 1952,
296; and in Smith D.E., 1963, 91).
The marriage of politics and religion was complete with the
formation of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1915. In 1909 the famous
Arya Samajist and nationalist leader Lala Lajput Rai declared: Hindus
are a nation in themselves because they represent a type of
civilisation all their own (Jaffrelot, 1996, 19). He was echoing the
use of the German word nation, which connoted a people, implying
a community possessing a certain civilisation and culture. He published
some articles as Lala Lalchand in the paper Punjabi, on how to build
a Hindu country: This can only be achieved by asserting a purely
Hindu interest, and not by an Indian propaganda. The consciousness
must rise in the mind of each Hindu that he is a Hindu, and not merely
an Indian, and when it does arise, the newly awakened force is bound
to bring its result. In another article, Lala Lalchand wrote: The point
I wish to urge is that patriotism ought to be communal and not merely
geographical.
5. Muslim Nationalism as Response to Hindu Nationalism
The monopoly of the nationalist movement by Hindus who had a
different culture from the Muslims, created nervousness among the
Muslims as to the future of their own culture, should the Hindus succeed
in attaining independence. Moreover, the large-scale participation by
the Hindus in the nationalist movement inevitably put a stamp of its
own on the movement. The various symbols used for promoting the
nationalist movement like the anthem Vande Mataram were also
suggestive of Hindu culture. A historical figure like Shivaji was a
political hero to most Hindus; but to many Muslims he was the political
 Towards a Comprehensive Analysis 25
opponent of Muslim rule in India. All this drove a wedge between the
Muslims and the Hindus and the division became more acute with
the gradual politicisation of religion. During this time a number of
Hindu-Muslim riots occurred in various parts of India.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, a prominent Muslim leader, realised the
position of the Muslims and started a college for them in Aligarh in
1877, which later developed into the Aligarh University. An ardent
nationalist, Sir Syed affirmed that Hindus and Muslims in India formed
one nation. At the same time, however, he opposed the Congress
movement from its inception, urged the Muslims to stay away from it,
and set up some organisations with a view to opposing it, all because
he feared that the Hindus as the majority community would ride
roughshod over the interests of the Muslims.
Sir Syeds advice to the Muslims not to join the Indian National
Congress came from various considerations. He held that the Congress
aims and objectives were based upon an ignorance of history and the
present reality, and that it did not take into consideration the fact that
India was inhabited by several nationalities and lacked homogeneity.
Then again, because of differences in educational background and
political consciousness, it would not be in the interest of the Muslims
to cast their lot with the Congress, which was largely dominated by
the Hindus. Thereafter, this fear continued to dominate the minds of
the Muslim leaders and shape their political perceptions and action
programmes. Like the Hindus, the Muslims formed their own
organisations. These Islamic movements tried to assert the superiority
of their religion, culture and past and succeeded in at least spreading
the idea that their religion, culture and philosophy of life were not
inferior to others (Haq, 1992). To concretise their identity and their
place in India, they founded the Muslim League in 1906 as a political
organisation.
6. The Revivalist Response to Gandhi
When Mohandas Gandhi publicly emerged on the Indian political
scene after World War I as the Mahatma, he received a widespread
revivalist support. Indeed, many revivalists believed him to be one of
them. Yet, quite a few gradually came to oppose him as they became
better acquainted with his ideas. Gandhi indeed unceasingly strove for
Hindu-Muslim unity, convinced that ultimately both religions were
26 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
true and valid (see Gandhi, 1949). His deepest conviction was that
God, Truth and Ahimsa (non-violence) were all one and the same.
Satyagraha (truth-force, non-violence resistance) was based on
Gandhis personal religious faith. The revivalists were disturbed by
Gandhis ascetic non-kshatriya style of leadership, his definition of
dharma as the non-violent pursuit of truth, and his assimilationist
conception of the Indian nation, which he saw as a brotherhood or a
confederation of communities.
Dr. Kurtakoti, Sankaracharya of the Karvir Peeth, expressed the
views of many revivalists when he wrote in the 1920s that Gandhis
use of ahimsa in the non-cooperation movement would uproot the
very principle of Hinduism and Aryan philosophy (Mahratta, Pune,
20 October 1922). He claimed that ahimsa as employed by Gandhi
undermined Hinduism. According to him, passive and non-resisting
sufferance is a Christian and not Aryan principle. He thus implored
the Hindus to return to the militancy advocated by Tilak, Vivekananda
and Ghose. Many revivalists were in agreement, and when Gandhi
took control of the Congress in the 1920s, the stage was set for a
revivalist search for new forms of protest (Anderson/Damle, 1987, 20).
As a result of the intensification of Hindu-Muslim tensions between
1921 and 1923, the dormant Hindu Mahasabha, formed in 1915 as a
forum for a variety of Hindu interests (e.g., cow protection, Hindi in
the Devanagri script, caste reforms, etc.), was revitalised (Anderson
and Damle, 1987, 28).
It is in this setting of Hinduism-in-danger that a new influential
Hindu militant organisation known as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS) was established in 1925 by Dr. Keshab Baliram
Hedgewar, who was deeply influenced by Tilak. The RSS purports to
defend Hinduism against its so-called antagonists. Its avowed
objective is the unification of the Hindu community and the inculcation
of a militant awareness of its common heritage and destiny.
One of the most influential works in the development of the Hindu
nationalist ideology was the treatise, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?,
first published in Nagpur in 1923 by a Maharashtrian Brahmin and
future president of the Hindu Mahasabha (1937-42), V.D. Savarkar
(1883-1966), a close associate of Tilak. Hindutva refers to a people
united by a common country, blood, history, religion, culture and
 Towards a Comprehensive Analysis 27 28 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building

language. This stemmed from the mythical reconstruction of the Vedic to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far
Golden Age, originated from the Aryan race (Klostermaier, 1989, less any preferential treatment not even citizens rights (Golwalkar,
33). This idea became the foundation of the RSS organisational 1947, 55-56). Like Savarkars Hindutva, Golwalkars definition of
activities. While rejecting politics as the means to attain its particular Hindu is political rather than religious (Heehs, 1998, 117).
objectives, the RSS has nevertheless in the past supported the political Linked to the RSS are several affiliated organisations (referred to
work of the Hindu Mahasabha and has been closely linked with the in the RSS literature as the family), working in politics, in social
Jana Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). welfare, in the media and among students, labourers and Hindu religious
groups. The symbiotic links between the RSS and the family are
7. The Hindutva Vision of Nationhood
maintained by the recruitment into the affiliates of swayamsevaks
According to Golwalkar, who succeeded Hedgewar, the Hindu (members) who have already demonstrated their organisational skills
nation has existed for 8,000 to 10,000 years, and Hindustan has in the RSS.
been in the possession of the Hindus for at least that length of time. In
So the river of Hindu revivalism flows on. The origin of Hindutva
fact, the Hindus are not immigrants but indigenous sons of the soil,
and its promotion by Hindu nationalistic groups such as the Hindu
whatever scholars say to the contrary. At the heart of the Hindu religion
Mahasabha, the RSS, the Ram Rajya Parishad, the Jana Sangh, the
are the noble ideas of the Vedas. Golwalkar claimed that Bharatvarsha
VHP, the Shiv Sena, the Bajrang Dal and the BJP, have their roots in
had been a rashtra since Vedic times. He held that every race develops
the traditions of the late 19th century Hindu nationalism (cf. Anderson/
a language of its own. The diverse languages of India are offshoots of
Damle, 1987, and Malik/Singh, 1995).
Sanskrit, the dialect of the gods.
In an interesting speech, a Hindu Mahasabha leader attempted to
Race is a population with a common origin and with one culture.
list the cultural changes which Indian Muslims would have to undergo
Therefore, the maintenance of racial unity in a nation necessitates the
in order to become acceptable nationals of the Indian (Hindu) state of
assimilation, or inextricable fusion, of foreign populations in it into
the future. First, they would have to accept the Ramayana and
the mother race in other words, they should merge fully into the
Mahabharata as their epics and reject the Arabic and Persian classics.
original national race not only economically and politically but also
They would have to regard Ramachandra, Shivaji, and the Hindu gods
religiously, culturally and linguistically. Race is by far the most
Ram and Krishna as their heroes, and condemn various Muslim
important of the five ingredients in a nation. Hindustan, suggests
historical figures as foreign invaders or traitors (Deshpande, 1949,10;
Golwalkar, can learn and profit from Germany, where racial pride led
Smith D.E., 1963, 375).
to the attempt to eliminate the Jews because deep-rooted differences
prevented their total assimilation into the German race. The formation of the VHP in 1964 marks a new phase in the history
of Hindutva. The VHP was specifically set up to forge a corporate
Golwalkar makes it crystal clear that India is a Hindu nation.
Hindu identity and to unite all Hindu sects in opposition to Islam
Others like Muslims and Christians, though born in this country, do
and Christianity. The VHP uses the latest media technology to exalt
not feel that they are the children of this land, ever since they changed
the Puranic heroes as the models of the Hindu character. A bid is
their faith. He goes on to suggest that such people should be placed
made for a Hindu state ruled by an explicitly Hindu political party.
behind bars during times of national crisis.
Thus, Hindu nationalism appeared at that phase of the
Golwalkar reiterates that secularism is not his path for national
Nationalist Movement where religion was sought to be made the
integration; it should come through Hinduisation. His idea of the
basis for the emerging identity of India. As Juergensmeyer explains,
best solution to the problem of minorities is contained in one word
when a religious perspective is fused with the political and social destiny
assimilation. According to him, they should be wholly subordinated
of a nation, it is referred to as religious nationalism. He maintains
 Towards a Comprehensive Analysis 29
that religious nationalists were not just religious fanatics. For the most
part, they were political activists who were seriously attempting to
reformulate the modern language of politics and provide a new basis
for the nation-state (1994, 406).
8. An Alternative Cultural Vision of Indian Nationhood
The Voice of the Oppressed
The concern for social reform at the beginning of the Indian
nationalist movement took a backseat with the emergence of militant
Hindu nationalism. The upper-caste Hindus indeed identified the
nation and the national culture as basically Hindu, as deriving
from Vedic times, and as fundamentally a creation of the Aryan people.
With this, they tended to accept as an inherent part of their culture
some form of the varnashrama-dharma and to relegate other Indian
cultural traditions to a secondary and inferior position. It is in this
context that we should examine the alternative vision of Indian
nationalism provided by prominent non-Aryan or non-Brahmanic
leaders.
The main figures of this larger non-Aryan and anti-Brahmin
vision of Indian nationalism are Jotiba Phule, E.V. Ramaswamy
Periyar and Babasaheb Ambedkar, with many others throughout India
(like Narayanswami Guru in Kerala, Acchutanand in Uttar Pradesh,
and Mangoo Ram in Punjab). They attacked the system of exploitation
at all levels, culturally, economically and politically.
The Vision of Jotirao Phule (1826-1890)
Jotirao Phule was the first Indian in modern India to proclaim the
dawn of a new age for the common man, the downtrodden, the
underdog and the Indian woman. It was his aim to reconstruct the
social order on the basis of social equality, justice and reason.
The Aryan theory of race constituted the most influential common
discourse for discussing caste and society in Phules time. European
Orientalists used it to assert an ethnic kinship between Europeans and
the ancient Vedic peoples. The constant interest of European scholars
in ancient Aryan society and their praises of this society were an
important moral boost to high-caste Indians. Thus, Indian civilisation
was seen as primarily deriving from Aryan civilisation, and the caste
system was lauded as a means by which people of diverse racial and
30 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
cultural backgrounds were brought together and subjected to the
civilising influence of the Aryans (Omvedt, 1994, 103).
At one level, Phule simply reversed the perception, arguing that
the low castes whom he sometimes called Shudras and Ati-Shudras
and sometimes simply listed as Kumbis, Malis, Dhangars, Bhils,
Kolis, Mahars, and Mangs were the original inhabitants of the
country, enslaved and exploited by conquering Aryans who formulated
a caste-based Hinduism as a means of deceiving the masses and
legitimising their power.
It was the confirmed view of Jotirao that the ancient history of
India was nothing but the struggle between Brahmins and non-
Brahmins (Keer, 1964, 120). Hence, Phule consciously sought to bring
together the major peasant castes (these were, besides the Kumbis or
cultivators, the Malis or garden cultivators and Dhangars or
shepherds) along with the large untouchable castes of Mahars and
Mangs in a common front against Brahmin domination.
Jotiraos attack on Brahminism was unmistakable. He realised
that the seeds of the Brahmins power, supremacy and privileges lay
in their scriptures and Puranas; and that these works and the caste
system were created to exploit the lower classes. Phule also
reinterpreted sacred religious literature, for example by reading the
nine avatars of Vishnu as stages of the Aryan conquest, and using
King Bali as a counter-symbol to the brahminical scriptures and
Puranas. Phule strongly revolted against the priestly craft and the
caste system and set afoot a social movement for the liberation of the
Shudras, Atishudras (untouchables) and women.
To fulfill his lifes ambition for a casteless society, Phule founded
the Satya Shodhak Samaj on September 24, 1873. The Samaj started
the first school for girls and untouchables and organised widow
marriages, marriages without Brahmin priests, etc. Phules view of
exploitation was thus focused on cultural and ethnic factors rather
than economic or political ones.
Periyars (1879-1973) Self-Respect Movement
E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker, known as Periyar (Great Sage), was
born in 1879 in Erode of a respectable middle class family of artisans.
He married at the age of 13, but after six years he became a sannyasi,
 Towards a Comprehensive Analysis 31
travelling as a religious mendicant over the whole of India. In his
visits to pilgrim centres, he gained an intimate knowledge of the evils
of popular Hinduism and the exploitation of the masses by Brahmin
priests.
Periyar became convinced that casteism and Hinduism were the
same. He wanted Hinduism, as he saw it, to be totally eradicated once
for all. His movement took a turn towards racial consciousness and
became a Dravidian movement, seeking to defend the rights of the
Dravidians against the Aryan domination. It blamed the Aryans for
introducing an unjust and oppressive social system in the country
(Hardgrave, 1965, 17).
Periyar realised the importance of the Aryan view of race. This
view was enthusiastically adopted by the Indian elite as a new model
for understanding caste. The Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas were
held almost as a matter of definition to be the descendants of the
invading Aryans, while the Shudras and untouchables were seen as
the conquered inhabitants. In this new language of caste and race, to
claim an Aryan descent was equivalent to claiming a twice-born (Rajashekhriah, 1971, 18-19; cf. Keer, 1974, vii).
status; to say Dravidian or non-Aryan was almost equivalent to
saying Shudra. The high-caste elite of India began to take Aryan
and Sanskritic culture as the basis of Indian nationality, but by so
doing they were in fact taking a part of the culture of the upper castes
(especially the North-Indian groups) for the whole.
The Periyars movement sought to defend the rights of the
Dravidians against Aryan domination. He saw in the Brahmins
the representatives of Hindu arrogance and the stronghold of social
injustices. Naicker left the Congress and attacked it as a tool of
Brahmin domination. In 1925, he organised the Self-Respect
Movement to uplift the Dravidians, seeking to expose the Brahmin
tyranny and the deceptive methods by which they controlled all spheres
of Hindu life. Naicker publicly ridiculed the Puranas as fairy tales,
not only imaginary and irrational but grossly immoral as well. He
attacked religion as the tool of Brahmin domination.
The Hindu religion was denounced as an opiate by which the
Brahmins had dulled and controlled the masses. A Hindu according
to the present concept may be a Dravidian, but a Dravidian in the real
sense of the term cannot and shall not be a Hindu (A.S. Venu cited in
32 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
Harrison, 1960, 127). Pain was taken to destroy the images of Hindu
deities such as Rama and Ganesha. According to Periyar, Rama and
Sita are despicable characters, not worthy of imitation or admiration,
even by the lowest... humans. Ravana, on the other hand, is depicted
as a Dravidian of excellent character. In his preface to The
Ramayana: A True Reading, Periyar states that the veneration of the
story in Tamil Nadu is injurious and ignominious to the self-respect of
the community and the country (Naicker, 1959, iii-iv).
Today, several Dravidian political parties in Tamil Nadu trace
back their inspiration to Periyar in their programmes to build a
Dravidian civilisation in the Indian sub-continent.
Ambedkar (1891-1956), a Revolutionary
Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was very much inspired and guided
by the noble example of Mahatma Jotiba Phule. Phule made an indelible
impression on the mind of Ambedkar, who was determined to complete
the work started by Jotiba: this became his lifes mission
Ambedkar was a revolutionary. He led the fight against Un-
touchability, Hinduism, and Brahminism. He taught that caste was
not only unjust but also immoral. He established a new religion (Neo-
Buddhism), whose foundation is its unequivocal rejection of Hinduism.
Ambedkar vehemently criticised the caste system. For him, the
fight against casteism and untouchability was central, the heart of
his agenda. Society must be based on the three fundamental principles
of liberty, equality and fraternity. Hence, he was very critical of the
two prevalent approaches in his time to reform the caste system, namely,
those of Dayananda Saraswati and Gandhi. If caste was to be destroyed,
he said, then its religious foundation, the Vedas and Shastras, must
also be destroyed. Faith in these scriptures is nothing more than a
legalised class ethic favouring the Brahmins. If you wish to bring
about a breach in the system, then you have to dynamite the Vedas and
Shastras which deny any part to reason and morality. You must destroy
the religion of the Smritis (Ambedkar, 1945, 70).
Ambedkar also rejected the position of Gandhi regarding caste
and its reform. Gandhi felt that the ancient Hindus had already achieved
an ideal social system with the varnavyavastha. In contrast, Ambedkar
 Towards a Comprehensive Analysis
believed that an ideal society had yet to be achieved in India. For
him, the priority was not making Hinduism or Hindu society shine
forth, but building a new, equal, free, open, non-hierarchical,
modern India.
According to Ambedkar, it is wrong to say that the problem of
the Untouchables is a social problem (It) is fundamentally a political
problem (of minority versus majority groups) (Ambedkar, 1945a,
190). Hence, Ambedkar launched his revolutionary movement for the
liberation and advancement of the Dalits. On 20th July 1942, he declared
at Nagpur:
With justice on our side, I do not see how we can lose our battle.
The battle to me is a matter of full joy. The battle is in the fullest sense
spiritual. There is nothing material or sordid in it. For our struggle is
for our freedom. It is a battle for the reclamation of human
responsibility which has been suppressed and mutilated by the Hindu
social system and will continue to be suppressed and mutilated if in
the political struggle the Hindus win and we lose. My final word of
advice to you is, educate, organise and agitate; have faith in
yourselves and never lose hope (see Das and Massey, 1995, viii).
Ambedkar was thus able to put the untouchability issue at the
centre-stage of Indian politics.
Ambedkar painfully realised that in Hinduism the untouchables
would never be able to get a proper status and receive a just treatment.
He was also convinced that individual and group mobility was difficult
for the untouchables within the Hindu social system. In this context,
he saw two possibilities of social emancipation: the political unity of
the untouchables and mass conversion. Hence, in 1936 he talked of
conversion to another religion: Though I have been born a Hindu, I
shall not die as a Hindu (31st May, Bombay). He had already made a
first mention of conversion in the Yeola Conference of 1935.
Hearing the conversion call of Ambedkar, the Hindu leadership
was very disturbed. Several leaders tried to persuade him not to go
ahead. Ambedkar expressed surprise that the caste Hindus who have
never shown a fellow feeling for the untouchables were suddenly
beseeching them to stay within Hinduism. Since untouchables have
been for centuries ill-treated and humiliated by caste Hindus, why did
33 34 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
they now suddenly take such an interest in keeping them within the
Hindu fold?
After long deliberation and a conscious choice in favour of
Buddhism, Ambedkar took his diksha at Nagpur at 9:30 am, on 14th
October, 1956. Assembled were about 500,000 Mahars, who were all
converted to Buddhism on that day. His embracing Buddhism was a
strong protest for all that the Hindus had failed to do. For him,
swaraj or freedom did not mean anything if it did not also put an end
to the slavery of the untouchables (Gore, 1993, 144).
The Phule-Periyar-Ambedkar tradition represents the effort
to construct an alternative identity of the people, based on non-
Aryan and low-caste perspectives, that was critical not only of the
oppressiveness of the dominant Hindu caste society but also of its
claim to antiquity and to being the major Indian tradition. The issue,
however, was not basically racial but cultural, a matter of group
identity.
Questioning Christian Fundamentalism
Lisbert DSouza asked the Religious (and the Christians) to
question their own fundamentalism: Are we alive to the
fundamentalist attitudes within the Catholic Church that resist
a proper inculturation of our faith, genuine openness to and dialogue
with persons of other faiths, that inhibit our commitment to the
social teachings of the Church, our involvement in the struggle for
human rights, our promotion of environmental issues and womens
rights and freedom? We must seek to allay the insecurity and
fear of the fundamentalists, not through aggression but through
service, not through condemnation but through dialogue, not
through defiance but by building bridges of fellowship and unity.
This humble stance is based on our recognition that we are as
much in need of conversion as the fundamentalists and
communalists... It is through fostering within the Church true
freedom, pluralism in thought, belief and action, respect for
difference and genuine democracy that we prepare ourselves to
assist communalist and fundamentalist forces to rid themselves of
their chains (Editors addition taken from the 2002 Assembly of
the Mens CRI, cf. Appendix No. 9).

3. THE INDIAN CONSTITUTIONAL VISION
The Indian Nation is multi-cultural and the Constitution
recognises this. The Constitution grew out of the challenges and
contending visions for the future of Indias cultural, religious and
ethnic plurality at the time of the freedom struggle. Indian secularism
also developed in this context. Hence, it is important to understand
that patriotism is not the monopoly of any ideological or religious
group in India.
A) The Constitution and Indian Pluralism
1. The Constitution and the Indian Identity
Our second chapter on the identity of India as a nation has shown
that there have been several contending visions. All of them were active
in the formation of the modern Indian State during the freedom struggle.
An informal dialogue went on regarding the identity of free India. The
failure to reach a satisfactory conclusion resulted in the separation of
Pakistan from India. Mahatma Gandhi fell a victim to excessive and
narrow nationalism.
In spite of these setbacks, the Constituent Assembly of India, after
almost three years of deliberation, adopted a Constitution for the
worlds largest liberal democracy on 26 November 1949. The debate
in the Assembly reflected the paradoxes of the Indian situation, which
we highlighted as the contending visions of India. The founding fathers
defended the notion of a pluralistic society and a neutral State based
on equal rights and citizenship. The Indian Constitution may
justifiably be described as secular and multi-cultural. Recognition
and protection was offered to religious, cultural and linguistic
minorities. Equal respect, fairness and non-discrimination were to
be the guiding principles of state policies towards the minorities.
Differences were recognised but so were the values of equal
citizenship and equal rights. After protracted discussions, the
Constitution was passed upholding ethnic, linguistic, cultural and
religious pluralism in India and promising recognition and protection
36 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
for all and non-discriminatory state policies. The Constitution
articulated a secular and inclusive nationalism in which there would
be equal respect, equal opportunities and equal liberty for all,
regardless of their religious affiliations or social status. This means
that the state should not become partisan to any particular group, nor
privilege any particular religion. The equidistance to all religions
became the quintessence of secularism and this is ensured in the
Constitution.
2. Dialogue on True Patriotism and Nationalism
Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Deputy Prime
Minister Sardar Patel, Rajendra Prasad, the President of the Constituent
Assembly, K.M. Munshi and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar played an important
role in the formation of the Indian Constitution. They understood well
the different aspirations of contending groups and the importance of
recognition in the Indian nationhood. The idea that all Indian citizens
should inherit as their birthright such basic civil rights as were
recognised by all modern nations in the world was enshrined in the
Indian Constitution.
All the same, the Nehruvian and Ambedkarian vision began to
break down by the late 1960s and several Constitutional rights are
being questioned today. Over the past two decades, the rise of Hindu
nationalism and the growing political strength of regional, low-caste
and Tribal parties have exposed the tears in the fabric once again. As
a result of the differing ideologies between Hindutva and the oppressed
and marginalised forces, we observe today the emergence of two
opposite socio-political and cultural movements. On the one hand,
backward castes and classes are in search of a culture based on an
egalitarian social and economic order with greater political
participation; on the other hand, upper-caste Hindus are equally strong
in trying to retain control of their present position of privilege and
dominance by reasserting ancient hierarchical Brahmanical Hindu
values. Thus, culture in India has become polarised by the
contrasting interests of the upper and the lower groups, the former
vigorously clinging to their traditional status, and the latter fighting
for justice, equality and human dignity.
The most vociferous and militant Hindu nationalists threaten the
very basic constitutional concept of pluralism. They created a general
 The Indian Constitutional Vision 37
impression that the upper and middle classes/castes are nationalistic,
whereas the others are not. The Tribals are looked upon with suspicion
and their national loyalty is being questioned. Similarly, the vast
segment of the Dalits and their movements for equality are under
suspicion. In the mind of religious nationalists, the nation is the one
supreme value on whose altar everything including the demand for
equality should be sacrificed. The homogenisation process, therefore,
aims at safeguarding the Hindu national identity.
There is thus a distinct possibility that anti-liberal forces may
set the agenda for government policies. Especially under the previous
BJP-led government, history was being re-written to suit Hindu
nationalism. The educational system was being redefined in order to
influence young minds to believe in the Hindutva ideology. Even
presently, hate literature is distributed to create an aversion towards
other religious groups, particularly Christians and Muslims. This
propaganda is designed to turn them into enemies of true patriotism
and supporters of anti-national activities. This is highly dangerous
for Indian society, which is basically multi-cultural and multi-
religious. Today, the terms nationalism and patriotism need
clarification.
Patriotism is a much debated concept. Quite often, the word is
given such an ethnocentric and narrow meaning that it is bound to
wreak havoc among us, if applied in practice. Where nationalism
prevails, people are taught from childhood to hate the enemy. That
is why Rabindranath Tagore, long before the country witnessed
partition, wrote: Nationalism is a great menace. It is the particular
thing which for years has been at the bottom of Indias troubles
(Tagore, 1992, 83). Tagore indeed saw in nationalism self-
aggrandisement, whole peoples organised with the paraphernalia of
power and prosperity, flags and hymns and patriotic bragging, nations
engaged in a wrestling match and not listening to the voice of truth
and goodness. He therefore stated: Even though from childhood I
had been taught that the idolatry of the nation is better than reverence
for God and humanity, I believe that I have outgrown that teaching,
and it is my conviction that my countrymen will truly gain their
Indianness by fighting against the education which teaches them that
a country is greater than the ideals of humanity (1992, 84).
38 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
Writing in a similar vein, Earl Stanley Jones, a close associate of
Mahatma Gandhi, added: One of the greatest dangers to world peace
is the rise of modern nationalism. It has taken that lovely sentiment
called patriotism and has turned it into the deadliest enemy known to
the modern world. People of one nation usually have no reason to
hate people of another. But narrow and exclusive nationalism takes
hold of different communities, subjects them to propaganda, instills
fear, inspires hate, puts bayonets into their hands and flings them against
one another. In the present circumstances, a fresh dialogue, animated
by the experience of our past history, is greatly needed to clarify
the true nature of patriotism and nationalism. It is also very
important to highlight all the efforts that were made to define the concept
of Indian identity during the birthpangs of the Indian nation.
B) Indian Secularism
1) The Different Meanings of the Term Secular
In order to understand what is meant by India is a secular State,
we need to reflect on the different, ambivalent, meanings of the terms
secular, secularism and secularisation. According to John
DMello (1999), the term secular has at least three meanings, though
these overlap. The first, the most obvious and widespread meaning,
refers to the decline of religious practice the fact that people have
somewhat lost interest in religion and spiritual matters. Attendance at
religious functions and participation in religious activities have
decreased. The peoples worldviews and beliefs are much less
influenced by religion and have become secular. It is in this sense
that John Paul II sometimes spoke of secularisation as a crisis of
civilisation, especially in the West.
The second meaning of secular is political and historical. It
involves the separation of church and state. This meaning became
predominant as early as the Treaty of Westphalia in 1645, which put
an end to the religious wars in Europe and made a separation of powers
between church and state. This was the beginning of the secular state,
in which functions once performed by religion were taken over by
other institutions, for example in health care, formal education, and
social welfare. In various fields, institutions gradually differentiated
themselves from religious institutions and thus became autonomous
 The Indian Constitutional Vision 39
and secular. The most important of these was the government. This
happened in 1645 in Europe. When new countries developed and
became independent, most of them chose to have a secular constitution,
where religion was separated from the state. This was the case in
India (DMello, 1999, 90).
The third meaning of secular refers to the process of
rationalisation. Rationalisation involves the growing use of technically
efficient, this-worldly criteria instead of supernatural, other-worldly
criteria for running our lives. For instance, earthquakes and famines
were formerly considered supernatural acts of God and so people
placated the Divine through rituals. Now, such phenomena are
explained by natural, scientific causes and technical criteria are used
to avert them. We therefore say that the world has become secular
in the sense that it is organised more rationally and scientifically and
that people are moved more by rational-technical reasons than by
supernatural arguments.
In the Indian context, the word secular implies a separation adds that the State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds
between the state and religion. This approach to Indian politics has
historically developed as a practical response to the countrys social,
cultural, religious and political reality.
2. The Meaning of Secular State
The Constitution of India declares that India is a Secular,
Democratic Republic. The term secular state is commonly used in of status and opportunity.
present-day India to describe the relationship that exists, or which
ought to exist, between the state and religion (Smith D.E., 1998,
177).
According to Smith, a secular state involves three distinct but
interrelated sets of relationships concerning the state, religion and the
individual. First, it implies a relationship between the individual and
religion from which the state is excluded. Second, it means a
relationship between the individual and the state from which religion
is excluded. A secular state must view the individual as a citizen,
independently from membership in any particular religious group.
Third, the institutional arrangements for these relationships are a
separation between state and religion. This effectively excludes state
religions. It should also be emphasised that a mere separation does not
40 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
guarantee religious liberty, and that religious liberty and non-
discrimination in the political arena may exist without strict separation.
The religion-state separation is, for Smith, the institutional embodiment
of the principle of religious liberty and of the neutrality of the state in
religious matters (Bhargava, 1998, 18).
The secular state, according to Smith, is a state which
guarantees individual and corporate freedom of religion, deals with
the individual as a citizen irrespective of his/her religion, is not
constitutionally connected to a particular religion nor does it seek either
to promote or interfere with religion (Bhargava, 1998, 20).
3. India as a Secular, Democratic Republic
The Indian Constitution clearly affirms in Article 14 that the
State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal
protection of the laws within the territory of India. This is one of the
Fundamental Rights guaranteed to the citizens of India. Article 15
only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.
The Constitution acknowledges that there are differences among
Indians because of their religion, culture and language. But it wants
the characteristics of the various communities to be retained by them
and be respected by the State. The Preamble to the Constitution
moreover expresses the solemn resolve to secure to all citizens equality
The Founding Fathers knew that it was the denial of the secular
principle that had torn the country into two. The horrific and
unprecedented holocaust caused by the partition showed the awesome
results of a polity based on communal principles. Thus, the secular
principles of new India were not only integral to her democratic
constitution but were the very foundations of the state. On the day
after independence, the Prime Minister solemnly proclaimed: We
cannot think of (a) state which might be called a communal or religious
state. We can only think of a secular, non-communal democratic state,
in which every individual, to whatever religion he may belong, has
equal rights and opportunities (Sinha, 1968, 8).
Nehrus assurance was intended to allay the fears of the minorities
that in independent India their interests would be jeopardised. The
 The Indian Constitutional Vision 41
secular state could meet the demands of a multi-religious, multi-cultural
and multi-lingual society like India. It was hoped that it would create
a new sense of national citizenship strong enough to absorb and
obliterate the communal cleavages.
Secularism as defined by Professor Smith can fairly be applied to
the Indian State. The Constitution does guarantee individual and
corporate freedom of religion, citizenship rights, etc. The state is not
constitutionally connected with any particular religion nor does it
deliberately seek to promote or interfere with religion. However, there
seems to be an important difference of opinion as to whether the Indian
State has been neutral, as it is expected and needed.
4. Indian Secularism Under Great Threat
Secularism has never been taken for granted in India. From the
days of the independence struggle, two very different understandings
of secularism have competed for ideological dominance. Jawaharlal
Nehru had a vision of secularism described as dharma nirapeksata
which was based on a strong belief in the need to separate religion
and politics. In contrast, Mahatma Gandhis vision sarva dharma
samabhava rejected the idea of the separation of religion and politics,
and was based instead on the principle of equal respect for all religions.
The contest between these two visions can be seen within the broader
context of the western conceptualisations and the debates regarding
the appropriateness of secularism for the Indian context (Cossman/
Kapur, 1999, 56-57).
The liberal democratic vision of secularism is generally seen as
characterised by three principles: (1) liberty and freedom of religion;
(2) citizenship, and the right to equality and non-discrimination; and
(3) neutrality, and the separation of state and religion. The first two
principles have posed little controversy in India. Rather, the right to
freedom of religion and the right to equality and non-discrimination,
are generally recognised as important constitutional values in their
own right as well as a foundation of Indian secularism.
The problem arises, however, in relation to the third principle,
that is, the separation of religion and state. In this regard, some
commentators have argued that India is not a secular state, or that it
has some but not all of its features; yet others hold that if India is to be
42 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
a secular state, it must develop its own distinctive understanding of
the requirements of secularism. It is in relation to this third principle
that the Nehruvian and Gandhian models part company. Nehru was
committed to a separation of religion and politics, whereas Gandhi
was of the view that such a separation was neither possible nor desirable
within the Indian context. Rather, a distinctively Indian
conceptualisation of secularism was required a secularism which
would be more in keeping with the culture and tradition of the Indian
people. Sarva dharma samabhava was, in Gandhis view, such a
vision. It is this understanding of secularism as equal respect for all
religions that has come to dominate legal and political thought.
Following the dominant understanding of secularism as sarva
dharma samabhava, the constitutional discourse does not insist on a
wall of separation between religion and politics. As interpreted today,
this vision is dangerously threatening the unity and integrity of the
Indian State. Some political parties and religious and ethnic
movements indeed try to politicise religion in terms of majoritarianism.
They do not believe in the equality of all religious communities in
India.
The Hindu Right has skillfully distorted the Gandhian model and
deployed its constitutional discourse on secularism to establish a
Hindu State. Secularism has now become the official banner under
which the Hindu Right campaigns for a Hindu Rashtra, and under
which the rights of religious minorities are being savagely attacked
and delegitimised (Cossman/Kapur, 1999, 63-64). The Hindu Right
has explicitly argued in favour of sarva dharma samabhava and
positive secularism. The BJP has repeatedly stated its support for
this version of secularism.
The particular meaning that the Hindu Right gives to equal respect
for all religions is based on an equal treatment that is formal.
Accordingly, any laws or policies that provide special treatment for
minorities are opposed as pseudo-secularism or the appeasement
of minorities. In the discursive strategy of the Hindu Right, this
approach to secularism is made to sound quite reasonable. Beneath
the surface, however, this discourse on secularism and equality is
an unapologetic appeal to brute majoritarianism and an assault
on the very legitimacy of minority rights. The formal equality of the
 The Indian Constitutional Vision 43
Hindu Right means that the dominant Hindu community becomes the
norm against which all other communities are to be judged and treated.
This vision of secularism is nothing but majoritarianism. Seshadri,
one of the Hindutva ideologues, writes: Democracy in normal parlance
means the rule of the majority. In every single democratic country, it is
the majority culture whose ideals and values of life are accepted as the
national ethos by one and all The same applies to the laws of the
land No religious group can claim any exclusive rights or privileges
for itself (as quoted in Cossman/Kapur, 1999, 67-68).
One of the very cornerstones of democracy the protection of
minorities from the rule of the majority is thus simply discarded.
Through this approach, the Hindu Right is attempting to establish
majority norms as the ostensibly neutral norms against which all others
are judged. Their norm is a Hindu norm. According to this vision, the
role of the State in religion is thus not one of neutrality at all, but one
of fostering the Hindu nation.
When the principles of secularism are abandoned and
majoritarianism takes over, the country faces serious communal
problems. According to Noorani, the attacks on Christians mounted
steeply after the BJP-led Government assumed office in March 1998
(1999, 123). The DGP (Director General of Police) of Gujarat, where
attacks on Christians were frequent, observed that the VHP and the
Bajrang Dal were taking the law into their own hands (The Hindusthan
Times, 6/8/1998). A member of the investigation team sent by the
Minority Commission revealed: After initial reluctance, the officials
named the VHP and Bajrang Dal as involved in the mob attacks on
Christians and Muslims (The Indian Express, 12/8/1998). The
Director General of Police of Gujarat confirmed this in an interview
to Teesta Setalvad on Oct. 8, 1998 (cf. above, p. 16).
After the 2004 general election, there is some realisation that
communal mobilisation and the consequent riots in Gujarat were
one of the major reasons for the defeat of the BJP-led government at
the Centre. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) acknowledged that its
ties with the BJP dented its minority base. It also recognised that the
Gujarat riots had a negative effect on minorities in Andhra Pradesh
(The Indian Express, 10/5/2005). Pramod Mahajan, the BJP General
Secretary, said the BJP regretted the Gujarat riots. This proved a
44 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
dampener to our resolve to turn India into a riot-free nation. The
incidents after the Godhra tragedy are a black spot for any civilised
society... We were (then) in the government both at the Centre and in
Gujarat (ibid., 9/5/2005). The BJP itself admitted that Mahajans
views reflected the party line on the Gujarat riots (ibid., 10/5/2005).
An Editorial of The Indian Express thus commented on this
development: If Mahajans regret is genuine, it must lead to his party
taking substantial corrective measures. Mahajan should have
underlined that preventing riots is not simply an administrative affair.
The Gujarat riots were legitimised and prepared by the kind of
ideological mobilisation that the BJP carried out over the course of a
decade. It is ideology that allowed minorities to be targeted with
impunity. Unless the BJP confronts the relationship between its
ideology and violence, Mahajans regret will ring hollow (ibid.).
An Editorial in The Times of India expressed similar sentiments. After
describing the recent events in the BJP-ruled Rajasthan, it concluded:
All this sounds uncomfortably similar to Gujarat, where the political
leadership abetted a breakdown of law and order and minorities are
still feeling traumatised. The BJP must seriously debate whether
it still wants to go full steam ahead with Hindutva. Yet, with the
RSS as its soul, it cannot take a leap (10/5/2005).
Social activists and people involved in social movements for
communal harmony and nation-building must strengthen Indian
secularism by their inter-religious activities, dialogues of life, writings
and animation programmes. The Hindutva understanding of secularism
has to be constantly challenged through anthropological information.
People also need to be conscientised in their political choice of
legislators who believe in the pluralistic culture of India. The religious
minorities as well as the BC, OBC, Dalit and Tribal communities
must be united in opposing the anti-pluralistic and anti-secular
Hindutva ideology.

4. THE DEBATE ON CONVERSIONS
1. Religious Conversions and the Identity of India
Conversion to Christianity has been one of the main issues raised
against Christians in recent years by Hindutva organisations. Almost
every day there is some news item in the press on this issue. A number
of statements have also been made by different Hindutva organisations.
For example, the 8th Dharma Sansad of the VHP asked for strict anti-
conversion laws and a white paper by the Central Government on the
foreign conspiracy behind conversions. The Prime Minister, Atal
Behari Vajpayee, demanded a national debate on conversion,
thereby implying that the attacks on Christians were due to their
conversion activities. If Christian missionaries continue their religious
conversions, the government cannot stop reconversions, he said. Ashok
Singhal from the VHP argued that Professor Amartya Sens Nobel
Prize was a Christian conspiracy to open more missionary educational
institutions to convert the poor. It was often alleged that missionaries
use force, fraud and allurements to convert people to Christianity and
that funds obtained for welfare activities were used for conversion.
The Hindutva organisations claim that India is a Hindu nation. In
early 1999, K.N. Govindacharya, a BJP and RSS ideologue, for
example declared that India is geo-culturally a Hindu Rashtra
(The Times of India, 30/1/1999). The idea of a Hindu Rashtra was
also put forward in the 40-point Hindu agenda during the 8th Dharma
Sansad of the VHP in February 1999 in Ahmedabad. Included was
the demand that Bharat should be reinstated in its true sanatan (heritage)
and righteous form.
The Hindutva forces are increasingly seeking to homogenise the
culture of India in terms of an upper-caste, Sanskritic, Brahmanic
Hinduism. Anything outside this cultural orbit is denied legitimate
existence in Indian society. We already described the cultural changes
expected from Muslims by a Hindu Mahasabha leader (above, p. 28).
The present Sangh Parivar members express similar views about
Christians in India. For instance, the Bajrang Dal has threatened
Christian-run educational institutions in Karnataka with dire
46 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
consequences if they did not Hinduise them by installing an image of
Saraswati and begin the day with Saraswati Vandana (Ram, 1999, 2).
The RSS leader Rajendra Singh declared at a RSS camp in Meerut:
Muslims and Christians will have to accept Hindu culture as their own
if Hindus are to treat them as Indians (The Asian Age, 23/11/1998).
In this perspective, to be an Indian is to be a Hindu. Hence, any
conversion from Hinduism to Christianity or Islam is considered
anti-national. At the same time, conversions from Christianity to
Hinduism are encouraged and supported by the Sangh Parivar as
ghar vapasi or homecoming.
2. Historical Facts on the Identity of India
The position of the Sangh Parivar contradicts the historical facts.
A simple glance at the development of Indian civilisation indeed reveals
that, since the middle of the second millennium BC, several streams
of migrant groups from different parts of the world entered the Indian
sub-continent. This advent at different points of time testifies to the
pervasiveness of the migration process. The migrant groups and
communities brought in their own traditions and behaviour patterns.
In course of time, they lost contact with their places of origin and
underwent an extensive process of indigenisation. The process of
adaptation and interaction among these various groups brought about
Indias characteristic diversity and composite cultural landscape. This
fact is borne out by historical sources and contemporary surveys as
well as researches in folklore.
The Hindu nationalists want to deny this history for the simple
reason that it goes against their interest of consolidating the pre-
eminent position which they enjoy in the Hindu caste social order at
the expense of the Tribals, Dalits and lower castes, mainly the Shudras
(Backward Castes). A quick look at the composition of Indian society
speaks for itself. The Brahmins of India form only about 6% of the
Indian population; the other upper castes are 14%. The Backward
Castes (Shudras) are 52%, the Dalits 16% and the Tribals 8% (Time,
13/4/1992, 11).
3. Politicisation and Distortion of Conversions
Many pronouncements on conversion by Hindutva-oriented
journalists, politicians and religious leaders deliberately and
 The Debate on Conversions 47
systematically distort the facts. They reflect a lack of knowledge of
Indian history and a disregard for human dignity and freedom.
We need to analyse the issue of conversion with an open mind.
Human history bears witness to the fact that social change is an
inevitable process. Inventions, discoveries, invasions, diffusions and
assimilations affect the lives of people throughout the world. The
process of religious conversion has to be seen in the broad context of
social change. Usually, the discussion on conversions in India is limited
to conversions to Islam and Christianity. In reality, however, the process
of conversion has been going on all through the history of India (see
Michael, 1998, 2004).
a) Hindu Methods of Conversion
There have been numerous cultural and religious encounters and
interactions over the ages. This is particularly true for India. The
cultural diversity of the various pre-historical Tribal groups throughout
the Indian sub-continent has been ascertained by archaeological and
linguistic evidence. And a succession of new arrivals in historic times
has contributed an uninterrupted stream of new cultural elements from
outside. Aryans, Greeks, Scythians, Parthians, Shakas and Huns before
the 8th century, as well as Arabs, Persians, Turks, Afghans and Mongols
between the 8th and 12th centuries have all left their mark on the cultural
landscape of India. Among the migrants to India in ancient times, it
was the Aryans who vigorously tried to establish a hierarchical order,
the varnashrama-dharma as a universal social system in India.
What we today call Hinduism gradually emerged in the medieval
period. The term Hindu, originally derived from the name Indus,
was used successively by the Achaemenids, the Greeks and the Muslims
to denote the population living beyond that river. Anthropological
studies show that sanskritisation began in ancient India through a
process of absorption, assimilation and conquest. Adivasis or Tribals
and other indigenous people were drawn into the orbit of an Aryan,
Sanskritic worldview. Jayant Lele describes the process as follows:
The Brahminic worldview succeeded in the past in modifying the
diversity of cults, deities, sects and ideas (by making many
compromises) under the rubric of sanantana dharma (1995, xviii).
N.K. Bose thus speaks of the process of Brahminic incorporation,
reinterpretation, appropriation and assimilation of Tribal and other
48 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
cultures: Once a tribe came under the influence of the Brahminical
people and was converted into a caste enjoying monopoly in a particular
occupation, a strong tendency was set up within it to remodel its culture
more and more closely in conformity with the Brahminical way of
life (Bose, 1967, 214). Along with the Tribals, the non-Aryans (i.e.
the Shudras and Ati-Shudras) were also assimilated and sanskritised.
The powerful upper castes of a particular area exercised such an
influence on the lower castes and outcastes that many wanted to be
integrated into the caste hierarchy by adopting the values and practices
of caste Hindus. This process is described as sanskritisation by the
well-known anthropologist M.N. Srinivas (1989, 56).
b) Hinduisation of Tribals
The entire Tribal belt of central India is the homeland of
reconversion from Christianity to Hinduism. It was here that in 1952
a Maharashtrian Brahmin, Balasaheb Deshpande, set up the Vanvasi
Kalyan Ashram for the RSS. The land was donated by Dilip Singh
Judeos grandfather, Raja Vijay Bhushan Singh Deo. With their
consciousness of being the original settlers, the Tribals of India call
themselves Adivasis. But the Sangh Parivar claims that the Aryans
are the original inhabitants and so they belittle the Tribals as
Vanvasis, i.e., forest dwellers. The Sangh Parivar does not
recognise the specific Adivasi identity and calls them Backward
Hindus. This type of Hinduisation has been going on from ancient
times through assimilation, absorption, integration and sanskritisation.
A few instances will confirm the state of affairs. Around 1628
AD, the Nagbansi Raja of Chotanagpur, who was the head of the
Oraons and the Mundas, was impressed by the pomp and show of the
Hindu Rajas of northern India and changed his surname into Shah of
Shahi. He assumed the title of Maharaja and began to imitate the ideal
of royalty of the Hindu Rajas. A suitable palace was constructed and
Shahi Maharaja soon gathered Brahman priests, Rajput courtiers and
amlahs and palace-hunters. The Oraons and Mundas resisted and, as
a consequence, more and more outsiders were called in by the successive
Maharajas; the heavy cost had to be borne by the villagers. This period
saw the erection of a number of temples, such as the Jagannath Mandir
and the Ram-Sita Mandir. The Bhils of western India also came into
direct conflict with the local rulers and Marathi invaders (Sharma &
Sharma, 1998, 106-110).
 The Debate on Conversions 49
Because of their geographical isolation, some Tribals were still
able to preserve to a great extent their socio-religious identity, faith
and practices. But when the British introduced roads, the postal system
and civil government, easier transport and communication became
possible in the Tribal areas. This attracted traders and moneylenders.
They were followed by Hindu missionaries. This led to the subsequent
Hinduisation of the Tribals, who did not earlier intermarry with non-
Tribals and did not practice untouchability. The sacred traditions of
the Tribals were far removed from the Vedic Dharma of Hinduism.
But the Hindus who became residents in the Tribal areas were able to
introduce elements of Hinduism into their religion, thus paving the
way for their assimilation (Bose, 1975). Even today the process of
Hinduisation is going on with the full political support from the State
and Central Governments (Patel, 1999, 186-212). The Hindu Census
enumerators moreover categorised as Hindus all the Adivasis who did
not belong to Christianity or Islam (Michael, 2004).
By repeating the lie that Hinduism is not a proselytising religion,
the militant Hindu organisations want to convince the Indian masses
that, while Hinduism is a peaceful religion, Christianity and Islam
bring tension and strife in Indian society through their proselytising
activities. But the historical facts tell another story. According to B.R.
Ambedkar, the history of India is nothing but the history of a mortal
conflict between Buddhism and Brahmanism (Ambedkar, 1987, 267).
During Ashokas time, Buddhism was the religion of India, but
Buddhists were later forcefully converted to Hinduism. For example,
Pushyamitra Sung (180-151 BC) took up the cause of destroying the
Buddhist state and reinstating the Brahmanic religion. He launched a
violent persecution of the Buddhists and put a price of 100 gold pieces
on the head of every Buddhist monk (see Dahiwale, 2004, 7-8). The
Smritis and Puranas were written during the Gupta period (2nd BC to
4th AD), after the triumph over Buddhism. The issue of religious
conversion in India is thus a very complex reality and requires a
thorough analysis.
4. Understanding Christian Conversions
We can trace the origins of Christian conversions in India to the
first century. According to the tradition, Saint Thomas the Apostle
came to India in AD 52 and established Christian communities in
50 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
seven places. The spreading of the message of Christ on a larger scale,
however, did not begin until 1498. The conversions that have taken
place since then can be classified into four categories, those of
individuals, groups, Dalits and Tribals. Most of the individual
conversions came from Brahmin castes. The reasons seem to be the
dissatisfaction with Hindu religion, although this may be a reflection
after the event (Wingate, 1997, 13).
With regard to group conversions, several Hindu fundamentalists
insist that there have been forceful conversions during the last 500
years. Studies however show that the matter is much more complicated.
First, we have to assess various historical periods and political regimes;
the very different situations make it difficult to generalise. Second, the
idea that missionaries came with the sword to convert (i.e., that they
always had the backing of the colonial power and the access to military
means to enforce conversions) is simply a distortion of the historical
data. Some Hindu leaders also argue that Christian conversions are
only due to famines, poverty and starvation, but this is too simplistic.
Many factors were at work in the significant conversion movements
in Indian mission history, and all of them should be taken into account.
While Hindu fundamentalist organisations claim that Tribals and
Dalits are Hindus, these groups mostly reject this superimposed
identity. Upper-caste Hindus have also done little to alleviate the
deprived conditions of the Dalits and Tribals, whom they consider
Backward Hindus. These naturally resent such a mean appellation
and seek their own ways of moving up the social ladder of Indian
society. The conversion efforts among Dalits and Tribals have
moreover shown, despite some weaknesses, the potential of social
change inherent in the Christian outlook. According to Natarajan for
instance (1977), the mass conversion of Tribals to Christianity brought
about some tremendous socio-economic and cultural progresses
through westernisation and modernisation. The study of Snaitang, a
Khasi, further showed that Christianity provided institutions as well
as a new lifestyle and ideology, which protected the Tribal society
from the danger of detribalisation and loss of identity (1993).
5. The Census Reports on Population by Religion
As soon as the Census data of 2001 on religion were released, the
then BJP President Venkaiah Naidu said that the demographic trends
 The Debate on Conversions 51
were a cause of grave concern for all those who think of Indias unity
and integrity in the long run (The Indian Express, 8/9/2004). Naidu
pointed out that, while the rate of growth of Hindus, Sikhs and
Buddhists had come down, the population of Muslims and Christians
was growing at a higher rate. He commented: The BJP believes that
there should be a balance and more or less even growth in the
populations of various communities in the country. Any imbalance in
this regard is not a healthy trend (The Asian Age, 8/9/2004).
According to the data published by the Census Commissioner,
Jayant Kumar Banthia, Indias 24.1 million Christians accounted for
2.34% of the countrys population in 2001, slightly up from 2.32% in
1991. The detailed 1961-2001 data provided in Appendix 1 clearly
show that the all-India Christian population is not growing at a faster
rate than the Hindu population. (Though the Muslim population is
growing somewhat faster, the situation is certainly not alarming for
the Hindus, who outnumbered the Muslims almost 6 to 1 in 2001.)
The way the Sangh Parivar targets the Christian community day
in and day out on its conversion activities does not therefore stand
the scrutiny of the Census Reports of the Government.
6. Conversion as a Human Right Issue
Sociologically, conversion is a process of change from one religion
to another. It contains spiritual and faith elements, but it is also
something that is used by individuals to move forward in society, free
themselves from inherited shackles, and improve the conditions of life
for themselves and their children. They might want to liberate
themselves from the bondage of caste, illiteracy, economic slavery, or
psychological apathy. But all these factors are interlinked and none of
them should be considered in isolation. Converts do not perceive the
spiritual and material aspects of conversion as separate things, but
as a single phenomenon. It appears natural for them to use conversion
as a doorway to upward social mobility in the society into which they
were born.
Forceful conversion should always be condemned. But, can you
blame a group of people for changing their religion when they realise
that their poverty and social degradation are due to the prevalent
religious values and structures of their society? The prospect of radical
change can only seem subversive to those who are committed to the
52 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
status quo. The selfishness and egocentric aspect of human nature
being what it is, it is understandable that the beneficiaries of the
status quo resent radical changes. But to the oppressed and
downtrodden, change is a lever of hope. At a time when the right to
informed choice is upheld even in trivial matters, how can the right
to freedom of choice be denied to millions in matters of ultimate
significance? Religious conversion is a human right issue.
Blaming the Church for opening the door to the poor violates the
spirit of the Indian Constitution and makes a mockery of Indian
democracy, besides being an insult to human dignity. A condescending
paternalism that denies the poor the right and ability to make rational
and intelligent decisions will be condemned by all civilised people of
the 21st century. Does our Constitution exclude the poor from voting?
Indian elections have often reflected the power and wisdom of the
poor and the common man/woman. They have their own wisdom and
can see through fraud, pressure and coercion. Hence, any
underestimation of the capacity and wisdom of poor and ordinary
people by the upper-caste Hindu fundamentalists is totally
anachronistic and out of place in a civilised society.
Moreover, conversion efforts are not only a Christian phenomenon
but are also common to all religions. Let us not forget the revolt of
Dr. Ambedkar against Hinduism and the mass conversion to Buddhism
in 1956. A deeper look into the history of India reveals that Buddhism
and Jainism were once widespread in our country, but today they are
reduced to small minority religions, partly because of Muslim
conversions and partly because of the aggressive missionary activities
of Brahminic Hinduism. The Arya Samaj and other Hindu
organisations like the VHP promote conversion and reconversion (ghar
vapasi) not only in India but also in many other parts of the world.
There is so much distortion, so many rumours and political
misinformation with regard to Christian conversions that to lay bare
all the facts would require superhuman efforts on the part of journalists
and scholars. Hindu fundamentalists do not recognise the pluralistic
nature of Indian society. Hence, they make a political issue of the idea
of conversion to Christianity. Behind their political agenda there is a
vision of a total Hinduisation of India. Such an agenda is out of tune
with the pluralistic tradition of India and makes a mockery of the
fundamental rights of the people of India.
 The Debate on Conversions 53
The sweeping statements and accusations often made against
Christian conversions should not be taken at face value. They must be
subjected to rigorous questioning and analysis. We should not lose
our objectivity and allow truth and goodness to be dragged into the
mire of false subjectivity sustained by lies and distortions and
propagated by biased and spiteful instigators, in order to influence
public opinion against the Church and Christian mission.
Playing the Hindutva and upper-caste cards, some state
governments in the Indian Union have either enacted or are promising
to enact a law against religious conversions. This goes against the
fundamental rights of Indian citizens.
7. Conclusion
India is a sovereign nation. It has a written Constitution, the
invaluable legacy of our founding fathers to the Indian nation; it is a
document especially treasured for its breadth of vision and egalitarian
values. The Constitution was drawn up to protect the multi-cultural,
multi-religious, multi-lingual and multi-ethnic nature of Indian
society. No religious community can put forward the monopolistic
claim that India belongs to them alone.
But today the notion of a modern, pluralistic, democratic India is
in danger of being forcefully suppressed. Hindutva forces are
increasingly seeking to impose a strongly regimented cultural lifestyle
in terms of an upper-caste, Sanskritic, Brahmanic Hinduism. But the
Tribals and the Dalits are struggling for survival, human dignity and
cultural identity. Sociologically speaking, conversion is being used
by the oppressed masses for their upward mobility and social
emancipation. All the same, the minorities must keep in mind that
conversion is a very sensitive and politically explosive issue.
5. CONCLUSION AND PRACTICAL
SUGGESTIONS
As pointed out in the introduction, communal harmony and
nation-building are a life-long process. Tensions and communal
problems do arise in any pluralistic society. We need to work for a
culture of peace through mutual respect and with a vision to promote
social justice and human rights.
We have in this booklet attempted to clarify the cultural and national
identity of India, which is pluralistic, inclusive and promoting
communal harmony. We also highlighted the informal dialogue, which
took place during the freedom struggle for the purpose of defining the
Indian nationhood. This past dialogue can guide us in our present
situation.
Indian nationalism should ensure the dignity of all Indians and
make them feel wanted and respected citizens. But what we see
today is that Dalits, Tribals, backward castes and other marginalised
and suppressed communities are in search of a nation inspired by
egalitarian values like social justice, economic opportunities and
participation in political decision-making, whereas the upper castes
are desperately trying to retain control of their privileged positions
through communal politics. Thus, culture and nationalism have
become deeply polarised by the contrasting interests of the upper
and lower groups, the former vigorously clinging to their traditional
status, and the latter fighting for justice, equality and human dignity.
It has therefore become imperative for the country to answer
certain questions. What does nationalism mean for the poor, oppressed
and marginalised? Are they able to experience a sense of common
humanity in the Indian nationhood? Or is nationalism the luxury of
the rich and the powerful? As true patriots, we need to be concerned
about the human dignity and the integration of all Indians. In the
context of the exclusive and narrow Hindu nationalism of Hindutva,
we need to define nationalism in such a way that the poor and the
downtrodden receive due attention and care. Behind the dreams and
aspirations of the marginalised groups lingers the hope that a nation
 Conclusion and Practical Suggestions 55
SOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS
In order to promote communal harmony, secularism and
nation-building, we need to:
1. Understand the historical and current concepts related to
communalism, secularism and nationalism.
2. Develop an appropriate perspective towards communalism,
secularism and nationalism. (These first two elements require the
acquisition of knowledge in the socio-economic, political, cultural
and religious fields.)
3. Realise the seriousness of the threat of divisive politics based on
religion.
4. Document the incidents of communal violence and the varied efforts
towards communal harmony, and develop appropriate strategies
to prevent communal riots.
5. Build bonds of respect, appreciation, friendship, collaboration
and fellowship/solidarity between different communities through
daily contacts, common celebrations (e.g., national and/or inter-
religious festivals), dialogue and prayer meetings, and involvements
in social work and action.
6. Participate in workshops and campaigns on communal harmony,
secularism and nation-building.
7. Be aware of the constitutional and legal means available to overcome
communal violence.
8. Be involved in human rights issues (including those concerning
the minorities), nation-building activities, and especially the
struggles of the poor, marginalised and oppressed to meet their
basic needs, get their rights and live with human dignity.
9. Learn to network with various civil authorities, NGOs, action
groups and peoples organisations/movements.
10.Use the press and other mass media to dispel misconceptions and
myths about the minorities and promote a proper vision of
communal harmony, secularism and nation-building.
of fairness and justice will be built an inclusive, egalitarian, just,
free and humane nation.
All of us must promote this humanistic nationalism in
collaboration with the emerging humanistic movements. Widespread
support for the cause of suppressed groups and identities will help
56 Communal Harmony, Secularism and Nation-Building
develop a more complete and integral understanding of the nation.
The Church must take part in this comprehensive and multi-faceted
movement. Lay Christians, especially, should be encouraged to get
involved in issues of justice, equality and fraternity and in ecological
questions. They must be active in civil society, including politics. A
healthy civil society marked by pluralism will foster and ensure an
authentic and humanistic nationalism. Christian intellectuals should
collaborate with humanists of different faiths and ideologies to bring
to light the history and cultural traditions of the Tribals, Dalits and
other marginalised people. All this will greatly contribute to promote
communal harmony and nation-building in India.
The Church in India is situated in todays complex and polarised
situation. She must discover how Christianity can interact with the
socio-economic, political and culturo-religious processes of Indian
society. According to us, the Church should be aware of the historical
processes that took place at the birth of the Indian nation and thus
understand better the ongoing pulls and pushes in the socio-political
arena. She should also be inspired by the past and engage herself in a
dialogue on present-day socio-political questions. The Church must
encourage and challenge all Christians and people of good will to
involve themselves in building an integral humanistic nationalism.
All should be called upon to join, or at least to support, peoples
movements to build a just and humane society in India.