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Solidarity in times of vandalism: Why the minorities need to work together
By Jason Keith Fernandes | 06 Feb, 2015,
There has recently been a lot of anxiety amongst the Christian communities in
India owing to the desecrations and violence targeting Christian churches
especially in the city of Delhi. There have been five attacks on churches in
the capital of India since December 2014, the latest being the vandalization of
the Church, and desecration of the Blessed Sacrament in the church of St.
Alphonsa in Vasant Kunj earlier this week. In the face of earlier attacks on
churches the focus of Christian leaders turned towards the Prime Minister.
These leaders report that the Prime Minister did not say anything that would
reassure them. What makes it worse is that Prime Minister Modi has chosen to
keep absolutely mum over these incidents. Public silence in this case can only
be interpreted as his unwillingness to restrain the Hindu right and make sure
that law and order is maintained. This silence is not surprising however. We
need only think back to his role in the pogrom in Gujarat in 2002. It took days
for the State machinery to get things under control, and significantly Modi has
been held responsible for allowing the violence to continue.
Old habits, it appears, die hard. What is worse is the fact of complicity of
the state in fueling the acts of violence. A number of the victims in Gujarat
indicated that the police refused to help them, claiming that they did not have
orders to do so. Further, the police failed to place leaders of the violence
under preventive detention. In the case of the violence against Christians,
this chilling pattern is re-emerging. There has been news of visas being
deliberately withheld from Catholic Bishops who were to visit the Vatican to
attend a liturgical conference organized by the CCBI (Conference of Catholic
Bishops of India). More recently, persons peacefully protesting the violence
against Christians and the lack of state action were set upon by the police,
beaten and dragged into police custody.
These events are in fact very much in keeping, not only with the history of
Modi, the BJP, but also the supposedly secular Indian nation-state. The
hostility of the Indian state to the minorities of India, is a matter of
record. In fact, in a scenario resembling the recent denial of visas to
visiting Bishops, soon after India achieved Independence the Indian state took
an aggressive stand against Christian missionaries of foreign nationality in
India. That issue did not escalate, as seems to be the case now, is largely
because the Indian and Hindu nationalism of the time was more focused on
destruction of the Muslim communities in India. Christians were, at the time,
seen as “harmless”.
While the Muslims in India were being harassed and butchered across the country
the Christian communities in India were by and large silent. On the contrary,
these Christian groups in India played along with the logic that it was “the
Muslims” who were to blame, rather than Hindu nationalists. These Christians
failed to see that the problem was not Muslims, but in fact Indian nationalism
itself. There is little distinction between Indian nationalism and Hindu
nationalism.
The difference is largely a matter of degree, since both are built on the idea
of the upper-caste Hindu as the de facto Indian. Contrary to the spiel that we
have been fed since the beginning of the Indian nation-state, these
nationalisms do not tolerate difference. The tolerance is merely cosmetic. When
push comes to shove, as has happened in so many cases, the minority group is
made to feel the pinch.
It was in light of this reality that for some decades now the Christians in
India were asked to mobilize along with Muslims in India, and see the latter
groups as allies rather than enemies.
There was, unfortunately, no real interest demonstrated by Christian groups. I
can recall efforts in Goa that attempted to involve the hierarchy and the laity
of the Catholic Church. Where the hierarchy was interested, the laity were not.
The hierarchy too, had its own reservations as to how far they would, or could,
go. All too often, and not just in Goa, the interest lies in engaging in
superficial ‘inter-religious dialogue’, rather than lending shoulders to
political battles. A significant political battle that we in Goa could lend
support to is the need that the Sunni Muslim communities in Margão have for a
burial ground. The existing burial ground is too small for the existing
population and all efforts to secure a larger ground have met with resistance,
largely from Hindu nationalist groups, but often supported by Catholic bigots.
Too often, Christians in Goa are so in the thrall of racist stereotypes about
Islam and Muslims that we fail to see the diversity that exists within these
groups. Despite the complex history of Islam within coastal south India, of
which Goa is part, Islam itself is written off as a violent religion.
Additionally, we are blinded by the nativist logics that see Goans as either
Hindu or Catholic. Muslims have no space in this vision of Goa even though
Islam has had a long presence in the territories that are today Goa, and many
Catholics in Goa would have had Muslim ancestors. The reason we are blinded to
these histories and realities is that Goan histories have been written almost
exclusively by persons from upper caste backgrounds who want to privilege their
putative Hindu pasts. They wish to embellish their pasts as Hindu, largely
because they have long seen the writing on the wall, India works best if you
are upper-caste Hindu.
Indeed, as I illustrated elsewhere, it is the caste bias among Catholics in
India that has ensured that the superficial inter-religious dialogues that take
place are often biased in favour of Hinduism, rather than Islam.
Making alliances with Muslims does not necessarily mean working with all kinds
of Muslim organizations. It would first require us to first embrace Muslims and
their worlds, get to know them and understand them better. It is only after
having effected this embrace that we can become alive to the diversities and
differences among them. It would mean learning to identify those Muslim
organizations that are no different from the RSS and working with those
organizations that are open to democratic ways of social organization.
In the final analysis it may perhaps be the lack of internal democracy within
the Catholic Church in Goa that stands in the way of effecting solidarity with
Muslims groups. There is no doubt that the Catholic Church in Goa is
appallingly lethargic and I would like to suggest that the reason lies in the
manner in which it is organized and the manner in which internal dissent is
dealt with. A group that is itself compromised, and comes out against Hindutva
only when its direct interests are pinched is hardly going to be able to
provide leadership to other beleaguered communities, or even associate
meaningfully with them. It appears that our many years of lethargy is beginning
to show and our pigeons are now coming home to roost. May God protect us.
(Jason Keith Fernandes is a legal anthropologist and itinerant mendicant based
between Goa and Lisbon).
