Have India, Pakistan, B'desh, & Sri Lanka Made Politics of Hate Into A Religion?

South Asia emerges as a battlefield of religious ideologies that are exploited with impunity for political gains

Farahnaz Ispahani's book on religious majoritarianism in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka is a difficult read—for the soul. South Asia emerges as a battlefield—no surprises there—of religious ideologies that are exploited incessantly with impunity for political gains.

Image; Kamran Akhter/The Quint

In the larger arc of history, all societies move ahead leaving blood-stained footprints. However, heterodox societies walk on a particularly treacherous, razor-sharp path to peace and coexistence. A slip here, a stumble there, and blood spills. Farahnaz Ispahani, a former member of parliament in Pakistan and scholar, has decided to make this footprint the subject of her latest political enquiry. In her latest book, an anthology of 11 essays written by experts, Ispahani has made an attempt to understand hate and politics in South Asia.

Ispahani's stated aim in putting together Politics of Hate: Religious Majoritarianism in South Asia is to exposit how the forces of realpolitik dovetailed neatly into religious factionalism to plunge the region—Pakistan in particular—into a bubbling cauldron of violence and institutionalised hate.

India, Pakistan, Partition and a Chequered History of Sectarian Violence

However, no comprehensive discussion around Pakistan's religious struggles can happen without talking about India. Ispahani, therefore, pays a lot of attention to what has been happening in Pakistan's south eastern neighbourhood. This 'India discourse' also allows her and other essayists to examine Pakistan's violation of the promise made by its founders to create an ostensibly equal nation.

The collection, as a matter of fact, questions the utopia of equality in a region with a chequered history of religion-based violence. Compound this with the recruitment of various sects and religious groups to further electoral politics, and we have a disaster at hand that we cannot wish away. South Asian polity has heavily relied on religious identity, owing a good deal to British colonialism, and leaders have been sometimes cavalier and sometimes cunning in exploiting it.

For example, locating Pakistan's tryst with sectarian violence—perpetrated mostly by the majority sect of the Sunni against other religious minorities as well as coreligionists of different sects—Mohammad Taqi's essay does not sugarcoat the bitter pill of his indictment of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah. He argues that Jinnah's dangerous approach with respect to his religious identity not only precluded any foresight about sectarian violence but, arguably, also spawned it.

Muslim Identity and Ambiguity

Taqi's essay delineates the history of Shia identity that transcends geographies. He treats the event of the Partition as both a symptom and outcome of religious hypocrisies. Though it is a dispassionate academic essay, the author's adoration for all things Awadh—a kingdom founded in 1722 by Saadat Khan, a Mughal-court affiliate from Iran that became the fulcrum of Shia theology, culture and polity—is palpable.

Husain Haqqani's essay which looks at India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka also recognises Jinnah's culpability in creating a difficult situation for Pakistani minorities through his penchant for evading difficult questions and keeping things ambiguous. Haqqani, like many of his compatriots, also blames General Zia ul Haq's forced Islamisation of Pakistani society for causing a hitherto irreversible change. While discussing Sri Lanka, he draws parallels between the Buddhist revivalism of the late 19th century and what was happening in undivided India around the same time.

Media, Muslimophobia, and Hindutva

A Faizur Rahman examines the growth of Muslimophobia—choosing the phrase over the more commonly used Islamophobia—in India in recent years. Rahman argues that the rise in anti-Muslim discourse has roots not in the Hindu dissing of Islam but "political insecurity born out of exaggerated fears of a Muslim demographic threat". This chapter is perhaps the weakest in the volume. Rahman has suggested a way forward by promoting Hindu-Muslim harmony through combating disinformation and propaganda. There is an overarching sense of naive optimism in this part of the essay. He, however, moves beyond that and also proposes a rethink of Muslim theology without which the community lacks the werewithal to mount any counter campaign.

Niranjan Sahoo's essay traces the genealogy of 'Hindutva'—the socio-political war cry of the present day BJP-led government of India. Sahoo's essay starts with examining the colonial times and moves to the contemporary manifestations of majoritarianism.

Maya Mirchandani, a former television journalist, looks back in anger at media's role in fomenting mutual hatred resulting in sectarian violence. Mirchandani shines a spotlight on how PM Narendra Modi comes armed with an uncanny ability to manipulate and subjugate the fourth pillar of democracy. Mirchandani's essay, however, could have suggested ways out of a vicious cycle of hate and profit principle that media in India finds itself—largely of its own doing—getting too comfortable in.

Smaller But Seething Pockets of Hate 

In their respective essays, Neil DeVotta and Gehan Gunatilleke, draw the reader into the gory world of Sri Lanka's civil strife. DeVotta's essay offers insights into the Sri Lankan society where Buddhist majoritarianism is on the rise on one hand and on the other there is a growing Wahabi/Salafi influence on the Muslim community. A deadly cocktail that has given a filip to Islamophobia in the country. Gunatilleke takes the analysis further in his essay to paint a rather morbid picture.

Conducting extensive research, C Christine Fair and Parina Patel put forth the case of Bangladesh. They argue that Bangladesh's image as a moderate Muslim country doesn't stand the academic scrutiny of both its public's attitudes and the governance. "There is little in these data that motivate optimism," the authors say in their conclusion.

Is There a Way Out?

Ispahani's essay on Pakistan's legal superstructure sounds like a lament for a lost soul. In the tradition of Urdu poetry, this would have fit in well as shahr-e-ashob, a dirge for the fallen city. It is to be noted that Pakistan has one of the strictest blasphemy laws in the world. Not just that, several legal amendments have ensured that there's no respite for religious minorities and smaller Muslim sects like the Ahmadiyya. She examines the multiple ordinances that have allowed "bigoted Muslims to persecute, settle scores or otherwise seek advantage against them under the vaguely worded blasphemy law".

As is clear from above, Ispahani's book is a difficult read—for the soul. South Asia emerges as a battlefield—no surprises there—of religious ideologies that are exploited incessantly with impunity for political gains. Is there a way out? Perhaps not, even though some of the essayists have dared to recommend some approaches. Both scholarly and anecdotal evidence from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka suggest that the wounds of history have festered so long that they have turned into deep faultlines and no salve seems potent enough to heal them.

So why should anyone read it? Beacuse no diagnosis can happen without examining and reexamining the oozing sores, however unsightly they may be.