Amid the public hysteria generated in the run-up to the pran-pratishtha at the newly built Ram Temple in Ayodhya in January, Mr Javed Anand sought to validate the position that he took before the mosque demolition at the site in 1991 in an article published in the Indian Express on 20 January 2024. The title of that article aptly summed up his 1991 position on the subject: “Why Muslims should have gifted away the Babri Masjid: The mandir that could have been”. However, even then it was not difficult to see through the validation of such simplistic hindsight wisdom. Now with the explosion of legal claims on mosques and mazars put forward by the Brahmin-Savarna of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it is doubtful whether Mr Javed Anand would reiterate his 1991 advice or seek to validate it via hindsight wisdom. He would certainly not be alone in agonizing and groping in the dark over the renewed anti-Muslim assault questioning the provenance of mosques and mazars and the violence that invariably accompanies it. When senior advocate and former president of Supreme Court Bar Association, Dushyant Dave, choked up over the issue in an interview to Karan Thapar, his tears carried the pain and agony of every Indian animated by humanitarian, sensitive democratic ethos.
Tears alone, however well meaning, are unlikely to stop or even slow down the genocidal frenzy gathering steam for more than a decade now. Moreover, a genocidal streak never really manages to confine itself to the people who are its direct and immediate target. Genocidal fire very often burns away many layers of unintended people as well. This is well understood even by socially, economically and politically secure Brahmins like Dushyant Dave with an alert mind and sensitive heart. The challenge, however, is to develop a democratic politics to confront such violent politics unfolding under constitutional democracy.
The first step in that direction would be to grasp the nature of democracy as it evolved in the Euro-American context over the last few centuries. During this period, violence of colonialism, world wars, Nazism and Zionism went very much hand in hand with functioning political democracies. For us, democracy unfolded during the British Raj with increasingly organized caste and communal violence culminating in the bloody legacy of the Partition. Even the Brahmin Raj that replaced the British Raj continued to host both quotidian and spectacular caste and communal violence. However, while the caste violence increasingly acquired systematic, institutional but apologetic character, communal violence became more open, rabid and unapologetic from the 1980s. The former took the shape of focus on higher education at the cost of school education, and systematic exclusion of the Bahujan from higher education, bureaucracy and judiciary while making Dalit-Adivasi inclusion and ‘garibi hatao’ (poverty eradication) part of the political rhetoric. The latter involved a political party taking on the mantle of anti-Muslim violence from non-state actors and legitimizing it. Today, scholarly opinion is emphatic in asserting that this peculiar turn is due to the success of lower and middle castes in harnessing democracy for self-empowerment. Adoption of direct, open and unapologetic anti-Muslim politics by the Brahmin-Savarna since has been their cynical and criminal attempt to maintain their Raj and derail the transition to Bahujan democracy.
It is clear that democracy as a modern mode of governance carries within it fertile seeds of violent politics. Wherever and whenever the egalitarian and humanitarian dimensions of democracy become complacent and non-creative, the violent and cynical dimensions take over. It applies as much to Indian democracy as it does to Euro-American democracies. The rise of extreme right-wing politics across the Euro-American zone, along with geopolitical violence perpetrated by those so-called old and mature democracies, calls for a cautionary approach towards the experience of democracy. In the Indian case, the Brahmin-Savarna ruling castes have demonstrated a great deal of creativity, skill and deftness so far in containing the expansion of Bahujan democracy through periodic but controlled anti-Muslim violence. In this enterprise the Brahmin-Savarna have been ably supported by the Ashraaf gospel which has sustained certain undemocratic social, legal, cultural and political practices. However, this smooth strategy is set to run into a few deadly roadblocks on both sides.
Firstly, different bloodthirsty militias that the Brahmin-Savarna of the RSS-BJP have created to execute controlled anti-Muslim violence appear to be slipping out of control. This is not surprising at all, for no power has ever managed to leash its own hounds forever. After a point, the smell of blood becomes irresistible for the bloodthirsty, especially when their desire is repeatedly quenched with the full backing of powers that be. That tipping point seems to be getting closer and closer each passing day. Secondly, no power however violent has ever managed to subdue a violated people for ever. Human spirit revolts even in the face of the most brutal power. The victims of anti-Muslim violence may be closer to this point than what people in power are willing to acknowledge.
If the dam of controlled anti-Muslim violence built to contain Bahujan society gives way, a sensitive Brahmin like Dushyant Dave will not weep alone. The entire Brahmin-Savarna class, whether sensitive or not, will end up weeping with him, flooding the dam with tears. It is high time that the Brahmin-Savarna as a class started thinking about their place of dignity within Bahujan democracy and gave up cynical politics of violence. Rahul Gandhi seems to be doing exactly this by adopting some of the popular Bahujan demands and its language. His caste brothers and sisters need to follow his lead more sincerely than they have done until now. As for the Sayed-Ashraaf, there is no alternative to democratic politics in the age of democracy. They must develop a new gospel of democratic politics to substitute the crippling Ashraaf gospel. In this enterprise, the Sayed-Ashraaf must follow the lead of the Pasmanda Bahujan ideologues, scholars and activists. Democracy does not afford the luxury of remaining aloof, unconcerned with power politics, to any group of people. By blocking the expansion of egalitarian and humanitarian dimensions of democracy, the Ashraaf are unwittingly facilitating expansion of fascism under democratic conditions. However, they are unlikely to get away with tears alone – for them, it would be a bloodbath.
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