Subcontinent’s Tolerance and Modi’s Darkness
By Syed Osman Sher
Mississauga, Canada
Tolerance assumes a special position in the history of the Indo-Pak subcontinent. From antiquity, it has experienced a continual inflow of alien people. Like a magic land, it has fired the imagination of all sorts of people: wanderers, settlers, raiders, merchants, conquerors, and colonizers. They came to this country, and, brought with them strange ethnicity, culture, custom, religion, and language. Its canvas is thus a mosaic of many resplendent colors, each radiating in its own peculiar light. Very few countries have seen such an influx of people as the Subcontinent has seen. Its lands and rivers, forests and deserts, hills and plains have become havens to whosoever wanted to make this country their abode. And, they have invariably not only been accommodated but assimilated. No distinction was made on the basis of as to who arrived in this hospitable land earlier and who came a day later.
India has thus been host to hordes of aliens such as the Aryans, Greeks, Scythians, Parthians, Kushans, Huns, Arabs, Turks, Afghans, Dutch, French and British. They entered here not as ordinary migrants but as conquerors. They were impure, mlechchhas according to the Hindu caste system, but could not be taken as a source of irritation for long. After living together, they had to be treated as one's own. This way the people have learned new arts and sciences from each other; they took many things of value from one and gave their own to the other. This openness and togetherness have proved to be great spurs to the development of civilization in India. In the context of the Indian pluralistic society, therefore, we have to see tolerance as the story of equality in diversity and co-existence of peoples of different ethnic or religious backgrounds.
History stands witness that in all ages, religious tolerance had been an Indian tradition and a hallmark of Indian culture and civilization. Religion has not been used either by the state or by the populace as a tool of persecution. On the contrary, it has been used as an instrument for demonstrating tolerance. Comparing it with the British tradition, Percival Spear writes: “The Mughal policy of tolerance was extended and amplified by the British. But while it was more complete it was more frigid; for the Mughals, while occasionally demolishing temples, would also endow others, give grants to Hindu as well as Muslim divines, and patronize Hindu festivals. The religious neutrality of the government, as pressured by Christian groups in Britain, forbade all this and left the people with a feeling of aloofness and disdain. The tradition of aloofness from religion as a complement to the policy of tolerance is not one calculated to endear the idea of the secular state to the average Indian heart.”
The fabric of society, which was woven with diverse strands for one thousand years was, however, torn into shreds during British rule by creating intolerance. Immediately after the war of Independence of 1857, fought jointly by the Indians of all shades and colors, was over, the East India Company had appointed a Commission of Enquiry on the uprising: why this happened and what was to be done to preserve the British power in the future? Lord Elphinstone, a very experienced civil servant of the Company and the then governor of Bombay, sent a note to the Commission: “Divide et impera was the old Roman motto, and it should be ours”. Following this advice, the Secretary of State, Sir Charles Wood, in a letter of March 3, 1862, to the Viceroy of India, Lord Elgin, instructed, “We have maintained our power by playing off one part against the other, and we must continue to do so…Do what you can, therefore, to prevent all having a common feeling.” And, again on 10 May, Wood wrote: “We cannot afford in India to neglect any means of strengthening our position. Depend upon it; the natural antagonism of races is no inconsiderable element of our strength. If all India was to unite against us, how long could we maintain ourselves”? Subsequently, the official oratories and policies were so maneuvered that the Indian nation really felt divided. As a result, we see for the first time in history the springing up of a mushroom of literature, speeches, and organizations full of communal hate, and most importantly, the eruption of Hindu Muslim riots, which never had occurred during the Muslim rule of many centuries. We do not find any record of such incidents in history.
In following the policy of divisiveness, the British may be justified to some extent because in a socially and administratively advanced country like India that was the only recourse left for the alien rulers to extend their rule by inciting animosity among the natives and keeping them engaged in fighting with each other. However, in the post-Independence India, after about seven decades of somewhat peaceful and tolerant policies and a peaceful social environment, the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party under the leadership of Narendra Modi has sunk India deep down once again in religious hatred and violence. Little does he realize that the British policy had not had a salubrious effect on the country, lest his own policies cause similar darkness. Probably, Modi is trying to emulate the Aryan conquerors of India who had destroyed the Indus Valley Civilization and degraded the local habitants by instituting a regime of apartheid, declaring them a separate people, a caste belonging to a lower birth of Shudras and Dalits, and subjecting them to all sorts of disabilities and humiliations inscribed in Manu Smriti. This time the victims are the Muslims but the people of all other religions, Sikhs, Christians, Bodhs, etc. seem to be standing in the queue to be dragged down ultimately to the category of Shudras.
Prime Minister Modi has now with him the authority of the government, the brute power of the police, the propaganda machine of the sold-out media, the backing of a handful of saffron dyed people, the cruelty of the street-prowlers and lynching brigade, etc., but all would prove to be of no avail in recreating the old intolerant society of the early semi-barbarians. The Gujrat massacre of the Muslims, the beef-eating ban, the cow-vigilantism, the Triple Talaq Act, the conquering of a piece of land called Babri Masjid, the removal of Article 370 from the Constitution, the brutalities being perpetrated on the citizens of Kashmir, the enactment of Citizenship Amendment Act, and the National Citizenship Register, cannot succeed in changing the nature of the people and the country. Modi’s recent efforts to write a new history, blackened with hatred, bigotry, and discrimination, are not being left unchallenged. The present outburst of rage by the students, intellectuals, professionals, artists, men and women, young and old, educated and uneducated, villagers and city dwellers of all castes and creeds demonstrate clearly that the people of India would not allow Modi to put a scar on the face of their tolerant civilization. A coterie of goon-like people cannot change the country’s ethos of equality and brotherhood, born out of the noble nature of an array of rulers like Ashok, Kanishk, Harshwardhan, and Akbar, and of religions philosophies of Gautam Budh, Mahavir, Guru Nanak, Kabir, and. Chaitanya.
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