How BJP and Congress undermine minority rights in India
It has been a year since the BJP-led government triumphed at the polls in India, but with the riots in Ballabgarh as well as the failure to figure out how to manage the Kashmiri Pandit issue, it seems that the debate, and problems, for minorities in India remain as entrenched as ever. The dictionary defines a minority as, “a group differing, especially in race, religion, or ethnic background, from the majority of a population”, but this definition leaves unsaid why the state of minorities – in India or elsewhere – should matter. The answer is simple: minorities, due to their small number, have often been denied fair treatment.
Two arguments on minority rights
One argument about why they are denied fair treatment is that their fewer numbers mean that they will be bullied, like a sickly child among larger, healthier and hostile classmates. This would require that the state take special care of minority rights. This has been, crudely put, the Congress position. This argument defines the interests of the minorities as separate from the rest of the community within which they reside. The rights of one section of society are placed in competition with the rights of another with state institutions standing as umpire. In such a situation, state institutions can act against a larger community to secure rights for a small community, and create resentment within the larger. Or they can choose to ignore discrimination and create resentment in the smaller community. It also ignores the fact that the same groups that dominate the society would dominate state institutions, so how would they be bias-free?
A more sophisticated explanation is that criminality and violence is something that all types of Indians experience, but minorities are more vulnerable because of their fewer numbers and fewer resources. The strength of the second argument was brought home to me forcefully in Kashmir where my work had put me in touch with the Hindu Welfare Society, which looks after the interests of the few Kashmiri Pandit families still living in the Valley. In 2005 the PDP-Congress coalition was offering many opportunities, including housing, loans and job packages to convince Kashmiri Pandits to return, but with little effect. I asked my contact with the HWS why this was so, and he replied, “What argument do I make to invite my nephews to come back? Can I promise them jobs, security, a better future? This is their land, but I cannot ask them to sacrifice what they have just to come back to it.”
Kashmiri Pandits and Indian Muslims
This was part of the failure of the promises of 2005 in Jammu & Kashmir. The return of Kashmiri Pandits was a necessary part of that process,but such a return could not be engineered in isolation from the problems everyone in the Kashmir Valley faced. One of the initiatives by the J&K state government at that time was to create apartment complexes in small compounds separate from the general population, but most Kashmiri Pandits living in the Valley felt that this would only make them better targets.This initiative ignored the first part of the identity of Kashmiri Pandits, their Kashmiri-ness, that they were part of a larger distressed polity.There has been no justice for the hundreds of Kashmiri Pandits murdered since 1989, nor has there been justice for the tens of thousands of Kashmiris, whatever their ethnicity, since that fateful year. Justice works for all, or none. Similarly when we talk of reassuring minorities in India, we seem to forget that you cannot reassure minorities alone without reassuring all Indians that they will receive justice, or fair treatment.
The day-to-day discrimination that minorities face in India is part of the harassment experienced by weaker sections of Indian society who have no way to ensure the accountability of the government systems. When a sub-divisional magistrate refused to verify my college transcript in Gorakhpur saying, “You have a Muslim name,” he was able to behave that way because he could not be held accountable for that decision. The PAC personnel who called my cousins out of their house during curfew hours in 1990 in Kanpur, then arrested them for breaking curfew, would never have dared to do so if police oversight mechanisms worked. I could go on and on but as I do so, it is with the knowledge that such grievances are shared by many, many others who are not Muslim. Their principal identity is Indian, and they suffer as other Indians do, when state institutions behave without transparency or accountability. Asking for protection for one set of people without doing something for all of us is just not a viable option, which is one of the reasons it has failed.
The failures of the state
One of the outcomes of such patronage style protection of minorities is that it has exposed them to greater resentment. The BJP has been at the forefront of articulating this resentment, speaking of it as "pseudo-secularism". It has suggested that there should be no difference in treatment towards anyone, and all that is necessary is for a well-governed state. This argument resonates because it is partially true. Systems of accountability are necessary for everyone, not just minorities. The dishonesty in the argument is that unfair treatment already exists, against minorities. Whether we speak of the 1961 Jabalpur riots, the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms, the attacks on Kashmiri Pandits from 1989 onwards, the 1991-92 Bombay riots, or the 2002 Gujarat killings, all are examples of state failure and complicity.
Nobody expects a criminal to reform himself if left alone, why should we expect anything different from a state? It is made up of people after all, not angels.This flaw was highlighted on 19th May 2015, when the Supreme Court dismissed a case that the Gujarat government had pursued against six people for the 2002 attack against the Akshardham Temple. “Instead of booking the real culprits responsible for taking so many precious lives,” the Supreme Court said, “police caught innocent people and got imposed the grievous charges against them which resulted in their conviction and subsequent sentencing.” Among the people specifically criticised by the court was the home minister of Gujarat, a portfolio held by the Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, at that time. He is now the prime minister of India, and is unlikely to be held to account for his failings.
Citizens holding the state to account
In relation to minorities, it is the state itself that needs to be held to account, but creating a system to look after minorities alone will lead us back to the problems of the past. After all if the six innocent Gujaratis had been Hindus instead of Muslims, they would deserve as much protection of their rights. And the blood of Kashmiri Muslims killed is as precious as the Kashmiri Pandits killed. When it comes to human rights there are no majorities, no minorities, only individual citizens, each a majority of one, with equal inalienable rights promised by the Constitution. Luckily in the last few years institutions of accountability have been created that are driven by citizen activism in a non-discriminatory manner. Foremost of these is the RTI Act, but there have also been advances in community policing in Kerala, and in the jansunwais of Andhra Pradesh. Such systems allow ordinary citizens to hold the state to account, and create a level playing field.
These institutions are not perfect. Better organised and more literate actors will gain more than others - as is true of the judicial or electoral systems. Moreover the mere presence of such initiatives will not remove bias, just as good laws and the judicial system do not stop crimes. What they promise, though, is that if the state acts in a biased manner any citizen can demand accountability. These institutions pass the responsibility of ensuring far treatment to citizens, and while that is burdensome, the basic truth of freedom has always been that it is won, not given. Those denied their rights will have to fight for them, and they will find allies to the extent that they can demonstrate that the way they are able to access their rights allows all other Indians to claim their full share of rights as equal citizens in a just state. Unfortunately there is always a cost to such a fight. For all the good it has done, the RTI Act has exposed activists to all forms of harassment, including murder, by those unwilling to be held to account. But if hope exists it is among those Indians willing to fight for their rights, not with a state that has regularly violated them.