On the eve of Christmas, there were three reports that Santa would not be bringing any goodies this year, or the next. Santa himself is being chased in some towns as a foreign intruder, beaten up sometimes, or see his effigy go up in flames.
The most sobering report was of a private members bill in Parliament that seeks to do away with the National Commission of Minorities, and the old legislation which for the first time names the country’s religious minorities as Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsees, and more recently Jains.
Bahais, Kabir Panthees, Ravidasias, Lingayats, Sarnas, and Qadiyanis are not counted as religious minorities though in some state or some country, they may be the subject of discrimination, and even violence.
And as an aside, the National Commission for Minorities still has no Christian member, though it has a Hindu and a Jain member on board.
The BJP and RSS have also been long demanding that State Minorities Commissions – existing or planned – have a Hindu member in every region where they are a minority. These stages include Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, the last three tiny ones with a Christian majority. The National Commission for Minorities has a Hindu member.
Without a list of minorities, it becomes difficult to make other laws operational, including the right to administer schools, for instance. Schools, under the TA Pai ruling of the Supreme Court, can be set up by about anyone, but religious minorities have a historic background which is respected in matters of management, recruitment and the admission of students, for instance. The limits are health, hygiene and public order, even if the New Education Police eagerly wants to make inroads into this right.
The Ministers of Minority Affairs, is now presided over by Mrs Smriti Irani. She has clarified on TV that she is not a convert to Zoroastrianism but remains a “proud Hindu” after an inter faith marriage to a Parsi, because the BJP has no competent minority leader. Mr John Barla is a junior minister, an Adivasi from Bengal, but also assists some other senior ministers.
Religious and ethnic minorities, which include Adivasis and Dalits, will not commit suicide because they were being ignored, discriminated against or even persecuted. They know they cannot be pushed out or annihilated, even some extreme right wing groups so desire on the pattern of Hitler’s Final solution which their founding fathers so admired.
In secular India, founded on the basis of a secular constitution and governed by the rule of law, the rights of minorities will always be paramount. People realise, even if sometimes they are afraid to articulate, that the security of minorities from all threats, physical, political or economic, is of importance for the security and integrity of the country itself, and absolutely integrally to its economic development.
In the situation of targeted hate which often leads to violence, the well-being of religious minorities such as Christians, Sikhs and Muslims – perhaps not in that order – is also essential for regional peace.
Consistently since the early 1990s, certain political forces have sought to build up a narrative that the majority religious community is under threat from Muslims and Christians.
While Muslims have been painted as aggressors and destroyers of Indian values over the centuries and with some strange loyalty to Pakistan, Christians are held as agents of Western civilisation who are out to convert every Hindu in India to Christianity.
These are highly motivated lies that are spread by every mode of traditional and modern communication system, ranging from whispers at the time of elections and abusive barbs from political leaders, to the use of social media in spreading hate and mischief. Much hate has been directly traced to senior leaders and spokespersons of political parties.
In many ways, the constitutional guarantees of religious minorities have been under threat soon after the Constitution itself was adopted and India declared a Republic in 1950. The Constitution had been the work of the brightest brains of the nation, who overcame their own religious identities to insist rights and guarantees for religious minorities as well as for Dalits and Adivasis. But this was not fully palatable even to the right wing of the Congress party and they brought about amendments which effectively eroded the full strength f the constitutional protection. The Presidential Order of 1950 which effectively removed the umbrella of protection from Dalits who practiced Islam or Christianity, is one such example.
The major political parties also harboured within them rabid communal elements. This was evident not just in 1984’s anti Sikh pogrom and the anti-Muslim violence but the propagation of anti-conversion laws and such like.
The world remembers the peaks of this hate and violence. The demolition of the Babri Masjid, the attempted genocide in Gujarat, and Kandhamal, the murder of Graham Stuart Staines and his two young sons. It is a very long list of visceral hate and cruel violence, often with the state machinery a mute witness, the police bigoted, the judiciary blind and the political leadership entirely complicit.
The bulldozer, the weaponised anti conversion bills, the open threats by central and state ministers, are mere tips of the iceberg. Books can be written on these issues. The Supreme Court can, if it wishes, easily puncture this bubble of self-righteousness of the union government and the governments of many major starts.
Non-violence is the only instrument with the religious minorities to challenge political majoritarianism. Non-violence and the knowledge that the large chunk of the majority community is with them, even if at present it is frightened into silence or a section of it has been misled.
The minorities have proved their loyalty during the freedom struggle and many times since then. They have contributed more than their share of labour, brains, and love in developing its infrastructure and economy, and they have shed their blood in the defence of the motherland.
The need now is to be proud of this contribution and not allow any political or right wing religious nationalistic agency to erode this or cast doubt on it. Never retreat on constitutional guarantees and defend them with all their might against any pressure or aggression, without violence and using Gandhian principles. Also of course, continue on the path of upgrading the knowledge base of the youth through higher education, professional training and entrepreneurship.
(John Dayal is an author, Editor, occasional documentary film maker and activist. He lives in New Delhi.)
