The incident does not shock me any more or less than the fact(s) that every day millions of Indian women (rural and urban) are beaten up in their homes, that women of underprivileged classes suffer humiliation that rarely gets the same footage, that even as I type, a rape is probably happening somewhere. And when I hear the Minister for Women and Child Welfare call it an “aberration by misguided youth” (on television) the despair deepens. This is no mere ”aberration” stemming from party ideology alone. That’s just convenient, political mud-slinging. The ‘misguidance’ comes from various sources.
One source according to Prakash Kona, Indian English writer and poet based in Hyderabad, is the urban, Westernized youths’ lifestyle that insulates them from the communalization of Indian politics, thereby spawning outfits like the Sri Ram Sene. (You can read his post here.) I agree that the rise of Hindutva (and thereby the self-styled enforcers of “Hindu culture”) is in part a consequence of the indifference of the educated electorate. But I think the rot runs deeper. I think it’s time we put the much-touted “Hindu tolerance” under the scanner.
In a hard-hitting essay* that examines the genealogy of the myth of Hindu tolerance, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan points out that while the likes of Advani, Vajpayee and Singhal (predictably) take recourse to psychological and political explanations for communal violence, whether Babri Masjid, Godhra, or Kandhamal, it is significant that even Hindu religious leaders (and she refers mainly to the Shankaracharyas) haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory by denouncing such violence. If Hinduism is indeed tolerant, then practicing Hindus and Hindu religious leaders should be denouncing such violence, and the ire of this majority should be enough to snuff out the Modis and the Singhals. That this isn’t happening should force us to ask whether the Hindu religion itself could be a legitimizing or a constraining factor in such violence.
It’s a fascinating essay, but I’ll quote just one paragraph that sums up Sunder Rajan’s explanation of how the myth of Hindu tolerance works:
Since democracy passes easily into majoritarianism, the nation-state could be kept in check only by making Indian secularism an aspect of, indeed dependent upon, Hindu tolerance. In other words, tolerance was placed on the Hindu majority as obligation of secular citizenship in their dealings with minorities. As such, it soon enough came to look like a magnanimous and voluntary concession on the part of Hindu groups, one that might be condescendingly bestowed at times and capriciously withheld at others. Secularism, as the constitutional right to freedom of worship, should have freed minorities from the burden of a reciprocal accommodation (even gratitude), but has always had to yield to the implicit construction of secularism as Hindu tolerance. . . . . And in time, of course, having been tolerant for so long, Hindus could claim to feel the strain of such continued restraint.
It is easy enough to see how the leap is made from the “metaphoric time-bomb of tolerance” to the “spontaneous revenge” that the Sangh Parivar offers as explanation.
There is another shade to the Mangalore attack. According to the report in the Times of India:
The Sena activists accused the women of “involving themselves in immoral activities, including consuming alcohol, dressing indecently, and mixing with youths of other faith”.
Ominous bells ring, reminding me of the acid attacks on young girls that Andhra is now notorious for, and incidents like the one I saw on the streets of Delhi some years ago — a protest march against the Westernization of women’s attire in India. The protestors were all male and all dressed in shirts and trousers.
One could argue that the ‘misguidance’ for such acts stems from the most vocal and visible role-models we have today — the market-driven popular culture of films, television soaps and ads that exploit the binary division of the ‘good’ Indian woman and the ‘bad’ Westernized woman. Perhaps. But I believe that this binary representation is itself driven by the age-old male expectation that places the onus of safe-guarding ‘culture’ on women, and the equally ancient male fear of female sexuality and the desire to control it.
*Rajeswari Sunder Rajan. The Politics of Hindu ‘Tolerance’. Journal of Contemporary Thought. (No. 27, Summer 2008.)
