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Sunday, June 05, 2005

Advani and Jinnah 

[June 5, 2005]

ADVANI PRAISES JINNAH: OR HOW HINDU AND MUSLIM
COMMUNALISTS MAKE PERFECT BEDFELLOWS

Yoginder Sikand

L.K Advani's recent utterances during his visit
to Pakistan have created considerable
consternation in the Hindutva camp. His statement
recognizing Pakistan as an 'unalterable reality
of history' has been received with shock and
horror by his fellow Hindutva-walas, who have
been taught to believe, by leaders such as Advani
himself, that the ultimate cause that they are
struggling for is Akhand Bharat, stretching from
Iran to Myanmar. Further aggravating his Hindutva
sympathizers, Advani made so bold as to visit to
the mausoleum of the founder of Pakistan,
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the bete noire of the
Hindutva brigade. He even went so far as to lay a
wreath at Jinnah's, paying what he called his
'respectful homage' to Jinnah. In his comments in
the visitors' book at the mausoleum he described
Jinnah as the 'Qaidñe Azam' or 'great leader', a
'great man', an ardent 'secularist', and as one
of those rare men who 'actually create history'.

Critics might argue that Advani's latest antics
are a typical example of fork-tongued Hindutva in
action. Hindutva ideologues speak in different
many voices as the occasion demands. To expect
them to be logical and consistent is, therefore,
obviously asking for too much. This, however, is
only a partial explanation for Advani's remarks
that appear, on the face of it, to cut at the
very roots of the cause that he and his fellow
Hindutva-walas claim to espouse. In actual fact,
and contrary to what some of his fellow Hindutva
critics insist, Advani's comments are entirely in
line with the logic of Hindutva itself, rather
than constituting a cruel betrayal of its
supposed ideals.

Hindu and Muslim chauvinists, while claiming to
be arch-enemies, are actually the greatest allies
of each other. Hindu and Muslim communalism share
a common conceptual universe. Both are predicated
on the notion of a religiously defined community
that transcends internal boundaries of class,
caste, sect, gender and ethnicity. Both
desperately need an 'enemy' to shore up the
imagined monolith that they claim to represent.
Hence, the notion of the monstrous religious
'other', constructed in equally monolithic terms,
occupies a central place in their discourse.
Hindu and Muslim communalism, therefore, cannot
survive without each other. Ironically, their
visceral hatred for each other necessitates not
just the existence but even the flourishing of
the 'other' in order for them to claim to be the
defenders of the community and religion that they
claim to represent. Further underlining this
symbiotic relationship between Hindu and Muslim
communalism is the fact that both are united by
what they regard as common threats, such as
secularism, democracy, and, above all, communism.

All this, then, clearly suggests that Advani's
recent controversial noises in praise of Jinnah
do not constitute in any way a betrayal of the
Hindutva cause. Nor, for that matter, did the
enthusiasm with which a range of militantly
anti-India Islamist groups in Pakistan responded
when the BJP first came to power in India mean
that they had suddenly abandoned their
irrepressible hatred for India and the Hindus.
Muslim communalists and Islamic fundamentalists
are just the allies that Hindu chauvinists crave
for in order to whip up Hindu sentiments and
press their claims to leadership of the imagined
Hindu community. And vice versa. Hindu
communalists would willingly accord Muslim
communalists the position of sole spokesmen of
the Muslims if by doing so this gesture is
reciprocated, in turn, by them. Muslim
communalists would act identically. In this
seemingly fierce, but actually rather friendly,
competition between Hindu and Muslim extremists,
Hindus and Muslims who seek to challenge the
politics of communalism come to be jointly
branded as 'pseudo secular', 'anti-national',
'enemies of religion' and so on. It is truly
amazing that what unites Hindu and Muslim
chauvinists so overwhelmingly overshadows their
apparent differences. And this, once again, makes
Advani's recent utterances appear all that less
inexplicable.

The common discursive framework that Hindu and
Muslim chauvinists share is predicated on the
notion of Hindus and Muslims as two separate
nations. In this sense, Advani's praise of Jinnah
should come as no surprise. In actual fact,
although Hindutva-walas would hate to admit it,
Hindutva ideologues can claim the dubious
distinction of inventing the notorious 'two
nation' theoryóof Indian Muslims and Hindus being
two separate, irreconcilable nationsówell before
Jinnah and the League stole it from them to use
it to spearhead the cause of a separate Muslim
state of Pakistan.

The Hindutva invention of the two-nation theory
is a carefully guarded secret. Hindutva-walas
are, of course, understandably reluctant to
broach the subject as it would expose the
hollowness of their patriotic claims. The notion
of Hindus and Muslims being separate,
antagonistic, nations was central to the Hindu
'nationalist' discourse articulated by 'upper'
caste, principally Brahmin, ideologues in late
nineteenth century Bengal and Maharashtra. It was
these ideologues who laid the basis of Hindutva
as the full-blown ideology of Brahminical fascism
in later years. Advocates of this discourse of
Hindu supremacy sought to create the notion of
what they called a single Hindu 'nation' out of a
bewildering number of castes and sects by setting
them up against an imagined monolithic Muslim
'other' that was branded with all that the
'Hindu' was not meant to be: violent,
iconoclastic, lascivious, murderous, and, above
all, an 'enemy' of 'Mother India'. Muslims, they
insisted, could not coexist comfortably with the
Hindu 'nation'. Accordingly, the nationalism that
these ideologues of Hindu racism devised made no
provision for Muslims to exist on terms of
equality. Muslims were given three unenviable
choices: migration to some other country;
conversion to Hinduism, or else acceptance of
second-class citizenship, being forever at the
mercy of the Hindus [read Brahmins and other
'upper' castes].

In pre-Independence years the principal
organization representing Hindu communalism was
the Hindu Mahasabha. The Mahasabha was
essentially an 'upper' caste outfit, representing
as it did 'upper' caste interests while at the
same time claiming to champion the rights of
'Hindu nation'. A number of RSS leaders were
schooled in the Mahasabhite tradition of Hindu
'nationalism'. As Jinnah and his Muslim League
were to later go on to do, from its very
inception the Mahasabha spoke in terms of Hindus
and Muslims being two separate and antagonistic
'nations'. In fact, Hindu supremacists associated
with the Mahasabha were peddling the 'two nation'
theory at a time when Jinnah was still being
hailed as the 'Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity'.

The Maharsahtrian Brahmin V.D. Savarkar, inventor
of the term and concept of 'Hindutva, also spoke
of the Hindus and Muslims of India as two
separate 'nations'. He served as the President of
the Mahasabha for six years, from 1937 to 1942.
Addressing the Ahmedabad session of the Mahasabha
in 1937, he declared, '[T]here are two nations in
the main, the Hindus and the Muslims, in India'.
The official biography of the Hindu Mahasabha
extols Savarkar's commitment to the 'two nation'
theory in the following words: 'To Veer Savarkar
[Ö] goes the credit of creating the ideology
which is popular by the name of Hindu Rashtravad.
It is Veer Savarkar who gave the national soul to
Bharat and asserted that Hindus are a nation by
themselves'.

In actual fact, then, it could be said, Hindu
supremacists, and not Jinnah and his ilk, were
the founders of the pernicious 'two-nation'
theory. Although earlier ideologues of Hindu
supremacy did speak of Hindus and Muslims as two
separate 'nations', none of them went so far as
to suggest that a possible solution to the
Hindu-Muslim question was geographical separation
or the partition of India. The credit for that
goes not to Jinnah, as is generally believed, but
to leading Hindutva ideologues. One of the first
to suggest this drastic measure was a certain
Bhai Parmanand, a major Hindutva icon and
one-time President of the Hindu Mahasabha.
Shortly after the British government announced
the division of Bengal in 1905, Parmanand was
provoked to demand that 'the territory beyond
Sindh should be united with Afghanistan and
North-West Frontier Province into a great
Musulman Kingdom. The Hindus of the region should
come away, while at the same time the Musulmans
in the rest of the country should go and settle
in this territory'. Parmanand's suggestion for
the Partition of India, it should be noted,
preceded the Muslim League's Pakistan Resolution
by over three decades.

Parmanand's proposal was not a mere personal
whim. Rather, it seems to have reflected a
considerably important shade of Hindutva opinion
for the official biography of the Hindu
Mahasabha, published in 1966, mentions that 'very
few understood the Hindu-Muslim problem better
than Bhai-ji (Parmanand)'. The obscure Bhai
Parmanand, not Jinnah, then, could well be said
to be the ideological founder of Pakistan!
Advani's visit to Jinnah's mausoleum may not be
that inexplicable after all, although some might
be distressed that, given Hindutva-walas'
remarkable penchant for claiming a Hindu origin
for just about everything, from the Taj Mahal to
the Ka'aba in Mecca to the Notre Dame Cathedral
in Paris, Advani did not make so bold as to
declare that the credit for establishing Pakistan
should go to the Hindu Mahasabha and not to the
Muslim League!

Another pioneering proponent of the 'two nation'
theory and Partition was Lala Lajpat Rai, hailed
in Hindutva circles as a great advocate of the
Hindu 'nation'. Pandit Sunderlal, a close friend
of Gandhi, and for six years Lajpat Rai's
personal secretary, claimed in an article
published almost four decades ago that 'The idea
of Partition of India into a Hindu India and a
Muslim India for solving the Hindu-Muslim problem
occurred first to the mind of the late Lala
Lajpat Rai'. Well before Jinnah came up with his
demand for Partition, Rai had suggested that the
Frontier Province and the Muslim-dominated parts
of Punjab 'should be separate from the rest of
India and allowed under exclusive Muslim
administration', while the rest of India should
'remain Hindu India'. Sunderlal adds that 'the
majority of Indian Muslim leaders of that day not
only pooh-poohed the suggestion but even called
it a device to exclude the Muslims from the
country'.

The Maharashtrian Brahmin M.S.Golwalkar, the
second RSS supremo, was yet another of the early
Hindutva advocates of the 'two nation' theory. He
fiercely condemned that the 'composite' or
'territorial' nationalism propounded by groups
such as the Congress that sought to build an
Indian identity that transcended religious
differences. He insisted that Hindus were a
'nation' by themselves and that India belonged to
them alone. Muslims and Christians, he argued,
were not part of the Hindu or Indian 'nation',
using these two terms interchangeably. In
contrast to Parmanand and Lajpat Rai, he did not
envisage Partition as a means for resolving the
problem of the 'two nation' theory. Instead, he
held out to Muslims the bone-chilling choice
between death, conversion to Hinduism or complete
capitulation to Hindu (read 'upper' caste)
tyranny. 'The non-Hindu peoples in Hindusthan',
Golwalkar pronounced, 'must either adopt the
Hindu culture and language, must entertain no
ideas but the glorification of the Hindu race and
religionÖor may stay in the country wholly
subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming
nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any
preferential treatmentónot even citizens'
rights'. If Muslims and other non-Hindus refused
to accept this, he warned, they would be treated
in exactly the same way as Hitler treated the
Jews.

Hindutva-walas and Islamic fundamentalists make
the most comfortable ideological bedfellows.
There is little to distinguish the ranting of
Hindutva ideologues from the likes of the Muslim
League or even Islamists like the Lashkar-e
Tayyeba and the Jama'at-i Islami on the question
of 'authentic' religious, communal and national
identity. Looking at the world through the same
conceptual lens and speaking essentially the same
discourse of exclusivism and exclusion, they
desperately need each other to survive and
thrive. Advani's recent utterances, should,
therefore, come as no surprise. Contrary to what
some in the Hindutva camp insist, far from
constituting a betrayal of the ideology of
Hindutva they actually amount to an enthusiastic
endorsement of it.