Independent India was born from the trauma of Partition and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, events that left deep scars on its social fabric. The Republic, however, was built on the ideals of socialism, scientific progress and inclusivity. These principles helped shape the policies that aimed at universal education, healthcare and economic equity. Yet, the question remains: How robust is the Republic today in protecting its minorities, and what does the future hold?
The scars of Partition surface several times every year, whenever there are major incidents of religiously targeted violence or when two groups of young people clash in what is colloquially known as a riot.
Not still a republic, the country also survived the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. This was a core moment for the country and the people.
These twin ‘rites of passage’ were soaked in the blood of minorities, Hindus and Sikhs on the Western and the Eastern borders in what are now Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Muslims in what is now the Indian mainland. This has defined much of what has scarred or scalded the social fabric.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the Mahatma for giving us, in his sacrifice, the sustenance and moral strength to quickly knit back the torn social fabric.
And the fact that our great Republic has been built on a bedrock of socialism, rising colonial regime to an independent, thriving nation. The promise of universal education was an integral part of this socialism, in fact for the first time in its long history cultural history.
It was Jawaharlal Nehru who said that education must be for everyone—not only primary education, not only a shoddy education, a poor education for the poor and a good education for the rich, but a good education for everyone.
And all these came about through the other instrument that Nehru built, which was the scientific ethos, a scientific culture. Education, science, technology, and medicine are all fruits of a scientific temper.
To come to the issue of religious minorities, I go back to 20 years ago, when all of us were working towards finding a common lexicon based on constitutional values and based on the language that was used by Gandhi, Nehru, and even Indira Gandhi in trying to reach a common platform for understanding, co-existence and peace.
This platform focused on civil liberties, human rights, and the Constitution as the guarantee for a secular space in which every religious community, every single linguistic community, every ethnic community had a base and a life compact to overcome minor problems, to overcome hate campaigns, to overcome isolation in every other way.
So, what should be the components of this language of peace, of this language of equality and fraternity? Certainly, one thing is we do not attack anybody. We do not use violence, we do not use abuse.
We visit a grammar and a vocabulary entirely built upon the teachings of Gandhi, Nehru, Buddha, and Jesus Christ, which has no place in it for hate, for mischief, for malice, and for any of those negativities that create problems.
The second important component of this new language is the dicta of fraternity, pointing out that India has a huge cultural background. The genome project has confirmed that communities and people have come from all sorts of places on the globe to settle down here.
In settling down here, they built on what was the cultural capital here and they have expanded on it. They have added to it. They have brought in culture from North Africa, they brought in culture from Europe, they brought in culture from Central Asia, they brought in culture from the Far East.
And in that culture, India as the melting pot evolved a language and an overall civilisational agreement which does not allow anybody to be superior or inferior to anyone else.
Today Fraternity is, in fact, one of the core building blocks in the Preamble of the Constitution. And we have failed to build upon it, to spell it out, and how it spells out and lives out in everyday living in India.
The third is, in fact, a very difficult thing. It's a question of equality. What will be the terms of equality? Can you measure it mathematically, or is it again how communities end up depending on each other? So, dependence on each other for survival, for growth, for reaching your maximum potential is important.
Therefore, we need to build a platform where everybody is allowed to reach out to be equal—not artificially, but organically equal.
This is what I call the dialogue of life, but which can be called the dialogue of the citizen with each other—the dialogue of the citizen with the Constitution, the dialogue of the citizen with the instruments of the Constitution: the courts, the bureaucracy, Parliament, the media, the educational sector. It is in this give-and-take dialogue, finding out what are the needs, finding out what are missteps, and then correcting them and coming out. So this new language can learn from each other.
The Christian community in India has, in fact, not been very wise in trying to fight its battle against persecution all alone. It is a very small community and persecution mostly occurs outside its strongholds in Kerala and the Northeast. So, the persecution essentially is in areas where the Christian Community is in a minority, and in several of those areas, in fact, it is in a micro-minority, as perhaps best explained in Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and to an extent in Gujarat.
Therefore, wisdom would lie in Christians helping Muslims, Sikhs, and civil society in general to make common cause with them. Obviously, civil society would be able to make common cause with the Christians if the latter listen to the advice of the former, which is in taking everybody along, using language which is conducive, which spells and derives its strength from the Constitution, which is not supremacist, which is not sort of crying for a path alone, which is not claiming to be the best in the region.
Secularism is a fight for everyone in India, not just for the Christians. It's a fight as much for Muslims and Sikhs and Buddhists and the same segment of Hindus. All of them will have to work together. The Christian Community's educational quotient, at least in a section of it, is best suited to help people reach a minimum common program to challenge those who are cutting against the Constitution, who are being violent, who are using hate language against all religious communities and all marginalized people.
Therefore, in evolving this common minimum programme, in evolving a language based on the Constitution of India to fight communalism, to fight hate campaigns, and to fight violence is the best way going forward.
(John Dayal is an author, Editor, occasional
documentary film maker and activist.)