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BOTH India and Pakistan have yet to decide to which century they wish to belong. Does India seriously want to return to the Vedic age? Or Pakistan to an Arabia that predated Wahabi-ism?
Never have these two neighbours stood so far apart: politically, culturally, linguistically, and ideologically. Their governments under Shri Narendra Modi and Mian Nawaz Sharif, taking a cue from the range of their nuclear-tipped missiles, prefer different focal lengths, differing horizons.
It is no secret that their armed forces glare at each other with sinister concentration. Official spokespersons hurl snowball epithets at each other that sting for a moment, then melt without trace. Their civilians ache for the human contact that dissolves barriers. Peaceable voices continue to be shouted down by the louder cacophony of extremists, then drowned out by the deafening silence of political leaders.
Peaceable voices continue to be shouted down in the subcontinent.
Over the past few days, the definition of courage has been amplified by such noted Indian public figures as the historian Romila Thapar, IT entrepreneur Narayana Murthy, and the poet-lyricist Javed Akhtar. Each has spoken out against the rising levels of intolerance that threatens the very persona of India.
Romila Thapar, one of the subcontinent’s most respected scholars, has documented its history. She has interpreted it. In books such as her even-handed analysis Somanatha: The Many Voices of History, she has challenged it. What she has refused to do is to rewrite it. Her belief in a secular society is well known: “You can have coexistence of all religions, but unless there is a social equality amongst all religions, it is not secular.”
Another concerned voice of reason has been that of Narayana Murthy, described by Time magazine as the founder of Indian IT. “The reality today is that there is considerable fear in the minds of minorities in India,” Murthy told NDTV recently, “...in the minds of people of one region living in another region.” His wife Sudha demonstrated their personal pluralism when, during a visit to Lahore, she asked to visit the tomb of Emperor Jahangir. Her reason? She wanted to honour Jahangir as a symbol of secularism — the union of a Muslim Mughal father and a Hindu Rajput mother.
Javed Akhtar has asserted that Urdu did not derive its DNA from religion. “Urdu was the first language that was secular, anti-fundamentalist and anti-conventions since the beginning,” he has said. “Now, we label Urdu as a language of Muslims or a particular region or country.” Being a poet, he left his meanings unspoken, floating between his words. Unsaid was the insidious equivalence: Hindu=India, Muslim=Pakistan; Hindi= Indian, Urdu=Pakistani; and at a stretch Hindu=vegetarian, Muslim=cow-eating carnivore.
Palates can distinguish readily between mutton and cattle meat. The distinction between cow meat and buffalo meat, though, is not noticed as clearly in Pakistan as it is in India.
India is the largest exporter of beef in the world (overtaking Brazil). Hindu Indians take pains to explain that while the slaughter of cows is both irreligious and illegal, the decimation of buffaloes does not attract an equivalent religious censure. Might this be the reason why Nandi (Shiva’s vahana) is always depicted as a benign bull, and Mahish-asura as a demonic buffalo?
In this overcrowded subcontinent, Indians and Pakistanis (and Bangladeshis) share a common geography, common religions, common musical and cultural traditions. But to paraphrase Winston Churchill’s witticism about the British and the Americans (‘divided by a common language’), these three nations stand divided by a common history. Today, they mouth separate historical narratives, venerate separate heroes, foster separate credos, and nurse separate un-assuaged grievances.
Hindu and Muslim theists in all three countries are so confident of their dogmas that they are unaware how close they skirt to Richard Dawkins’ definition of an atheist: Someone who believes “there is a god — from Ra to Shiva — in which he does not believe”.
Their politicians practise their own style of ‘atheism’ by advising their constituents which countries, which communities, which religionists they should not trust. For example, in the Indian Bihar elections this week, the BJP tried to alarm voters with the absurd bogey that should BJP lose there, Pakistan (not Indian Congress) will celebrate by exploding fireworks.
Why do governments choose to remain tongue-tied? Bertrand Russell, writing in war-torn 1943, foresaw their predicament: “The power of governments over belief in the present day is vastly greater than at any earlier time. A belief, however untrue, is important when it dominates the actions of large masses of men ... It is easy, given military power, to produce a population of fanatical lunatics. It would be equally easy to produce a population of sane and reasonable people, but many governments do not wish to do so, since such people would fail to admire the politicians who are at the head of these governments.”
The writer is an author.
Published in Dawn, November 5th, 2015
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