AFTER such knowledge what forgiveness? We who have lived through the
last so many weeks in this once beautiful and hospitable state are
left with nothing to say. A Hindu activist on one of those mad nights
was carrying a four-year old Muslim child to safety in his arms.
Stopped and interrogated, he replied that this was a Hindu child.
They let him go. As he walked forward the child looked back over his
shoulder and cried out 'Abba'. They tore the child from his arms and
hacked it to death. No hearsay - this was told by that traumatized
activist to one of my Jesuit colleagues who works at the relief
camps; it actually happened.

At one level our voices fail in the face of such brutality. At
another, why are we quiet, why aren't we screaming that this is not
our faith, this is not the Hinduism in which we were brought up? Who
gave this group the right to take our Hinduism away from us? The
truth is we are afraid, moderate Hindus are afraid; there is no space
for us; we too are under threat, and the shameful thing we discover
about ourselves is that we are afraid. We cannot be sure we will not
be betrayed by a watching eye and punished because we have aided the
Muslims. It is now possible to understand what happened in Germany.

But why Gujarat? To have revenge on Gandhi fifty years later? Or does
its economic progress feed a certain pride in its unique 'Hindu'
culture? Perhaps the marriage between commercial clear-mindedness and
religious conservatism is a natural contract; perhaps religious
imagery readily masks hatred of competition in the market place.
Whatever the explanation, hatred has become natural here in these
times.


One does not need to be a saint to be appalled by the incidents, one
only needs to have a body. Let us admit that the psychologists
(aggression is stored in the unconscious around a demonized other),
and political scientists (civil society has always posed a problem
for political theory), and sociologists (religion is a social fact)
are all saying valid things. But beyond all theory there is the human
body. That human body experiences pain. The most fundamental thing of
all, something that every living creature knows and wants, is freedom
from bodily pain. More than any other sound we can make or word we
can utter, a cry of pain coincides with the moment of the experience.
Given this primacy of the body, how does it happen that we make other
bodies suffer unendurable pain - burning them alive, for instance?

I put it down to a failure of the imagination. When one does not feel
the pain of another, one's imagination has failed. When one does not
feel what it must be to be terrified like our Muslim friends in
Khanpur and Dariapur and Gomtipur, one's imagination has failed. When
one does not feel the flames lapping the skin of those trapped in
those coaches of the Sabarmati Express that morning in Godhra, one's
imagination has failed. The body is the final non-reducible point.
The rest are signs. All our religious beliefs, traditions, languages,
cultures, all that makes up our identity is a matter of signs.

Academics in Gujarat have failed to realize the gaps between the
signs in the mind and the pain of the body. Thinking here has ground
to a stop; the place from where progressive, decent thoughts should
emanate and spread out has itself been captured by forces that
inhibit critical reflexivity. If the best lack all conviction, it is
hardly surprising that the worst are full of a passionate intensity.

The deep and wide spread of a 'pseudo-Hinduism' in all classes, most
especially the middle class, is a matter of deep surprise. When did
this happen, and how? Those popular television versions of the
mythologicals? (Such splendid stories, but a minute's reflection
shows how they, in true epic fashion, glorify a warring society.)
Those films projecting a comfortable traditionalism replete with
modcons? Add to that the systematic and silent campaign of groups
(bitter irony, they call themselves NGOs) distributing pamphlets that
spew hatred against minority communities. An axe demolishing a cross,
with 'Father do not forgive them for they know what they do' for
caption, is an instance of the mildest of attacks against a minority
in 1998 for instance.

Far worse is the scurrilous stuff being circulated today. I thought
first of reproducing through transliteration and translation of the
Gujarati a sample that no self-respecting reader can read without
outrage. But so vile and demeaning is it, so inflammatory, that it
may do more harm than good. Suffice it to say that it incites Hindus
to engage in the most horrible and humiliating acts towards Muslim
men and women while driving them out of every town and village. And
this is in the name of Hinduism, of a world Hindu organization. Is it
our vocation to pour poison into the world? Is the blue-throated one
only a pretty icon, or are we giving him more poison to hold?

Across the spectrum of college teachers, only a tiny handful has
resisted the poison. Amazingly, shockingly, the majority offers this
reason or that for the attacks, explaining it in terms of historical
memories, of changes in agricultural patterns, of migration, of
cricket matches and 'pampering'. Worse, stereotypes of violence to be
feared from Muslims abound: protect your teenage daughters (advice
given by an educated neighbour to the wife of one of Gujarat's senior
police officers); compensation to Muslim widows will be four times
the amount for Hindu widows because all Muslim men have four wives
(an opinion reportedly expressed by a Gujarat minister at a closed
door meeting); 'they' are taught mistrust and violence in the
madrasas (a colleague with a Ph.D, no less). This from the educated
class.

As academics we need to ask ourselves some serious questions, like,
what pampering? A pilgrim subsidy? Can that bring on this kind of
madness? Clearly, not. Are we moral, responsible human beings?
Clearly, yes. Then the moral imperative leaves us with no choice.
Being good is not something we can choose; we are required to be
good, we are soldiers in that moral army. Academics and
schoolteachers have a crucial role to play here.

Finally, the only hope lies in a different socialising process and a
different kind of education: a base of ethics and a habit of, not
passive reception, but critical reflection. We need a schooling in
which, in place of a headlong rush towards the technologies, we
inculcate a sense of the human. The Humanities are not so named for
nothing; they are meant precisely to develop the humane side of our
selves. So more poems, more tragic plays (fewer epics) - not a soft
option any more, not a matter of appreciating the beautiful but of
cultivating the heart, of developing the imagination. If we are to be
damned by religion, let us turn to literature.

Last night the prime minister made a moving speech at the Shah Alam
refugee camp (but fine words butter no parsnips). The chief minister
stood stony faced beside him. When the prime minister spoke of what
needed to be done, the chief minister said into the microphone that
that was what he was indeed doing. Outside the Circuit House his
supporters shouted, even as representatives of the Citizen's
Initiative went in to meet the PM. These are sinister signs of an
utterly cynical man planning his rise to power, using his pseudo
Hinduism to fool the people. Let us read those signs right while
thinking of the body. If our imaginations serve us, we will not
forget that child in the arms of the Hindu activist crying out for
its parents in the last few moments of life.

As one thinks of what it has meant to be a Hindu, one remembers sadly
that its inbuilt 'indifference' which one sometimes critiqued was no
bad thing; at least it left bodies alone. Rationality and economic
development came to the West before it came to us; they got the
industrial revolution before we did; and the scientific revolution.
Here that gradual evolving kind of modernity did not happen; what we
have is technological advancement and a 'sudden' nation state emerged
full grown, without the processes that led up to this.

We could have profitably learned from their mistakes but we have
chosen to follow the most mad of all the ways they chose in seeking
final solutions. The worst is that the rich source of images that
move, beautiful images - the Ayodhya group, a blue skinned Krishna in
his tribhanga pose, Siva with the Ganga flowing from the knot of his
hair, the eternal Mother whose palms are stretched out to bless (ours
to love and cherish but not to fight and kill for) have been put at
the service of irrational anger and hatred only to push electoral
gains.

Sadly, those in office today have discovered the appeal of the
supernatural in moving men to madness. And our philosophy lies
discarded and forgotten. Only life (any life, every life) is sacred.
What sort of Brahman are these pseudo Hindus aspiring towards? They
have understood and loved neither our philosophy nor our mythology.
Which of us does not know this, but we are powerless to bring down a
government that engages in such chicanery. When corruption grew
beyond acceptable proportions in 1974 (was it?), all of Gujarat was
out on the streets - men, women, all - shouting till the chief
minister was removed. But today that alternative is not open; violent
threats to peace-makers and to those who help have silenced the
voices of sanity.

This was a state where we were proud that women could walk unharmed
late in the night; where a kulfi at Ashrafi at 11 pm was a treat
available to all; where at Gamtiwalas in Dhalgarwarh one could spend
hours over the bolts of hand-printed cloth. May it all be as it once
was. May peace return to this strife-torn state and fall like a
blessing once again over this golden land.

_____