by Sudhir Kakar
To summarize: the story of Hindu-Muslim relations takes on different hues depending upon the colour of the ideological lenses through which it is viewed. For the liberal historian or one with leftist leanings, the story is bathed in a roseate glow of the precolonial golden age of Hindu-Muslim amity. For these storytellers, the tale is of a commingling and flowering of a composite cultural tradition, especially in art, music, and architecture.17 It is the story of a gradual drawing closer of Hindus and Muslims in the forms of their daily lives and of an enthusiastic participation in each other’s festivals. In this vision, there is little room for conflict between the communities. Sporadic outbreaks of violence needing some explanation are almost never religious in their origin but dictated by local economic interests and political compulsions. To the conservative Hindu nationalist, on the other hand, for whom the Hindu saffron and the Muslim green do not mix to create a pale pink, the rift between the two communities is a fundamental fact of Indian history. They see Hindu-Muslim relations framed by a thousand-year-old ‘civilizational’ conflict in which the Muslims, militarily victorious and politically ascendant for centuries, tried to impose Islamic civilization on their Hindu subjects through all means from coercion to bribery and cajolery, and yet had only limited success. The composite civilization, according to this view, was limited to small sections of the population around the Muslim courts and to court-patronized arts like music and architecture. It also included some Hindus who adopted the Persian-inspired language and ways of life of their rulers. The vast majority of Hindus kept their civilzational core intact while they resentfully tolerated the Muslim onslaught. In this view, the outbreaks of violence between the two communities were inevitable whenever Muslim dominance was threatened; the rage of the denigrated Hindu, stored up over long periods of time, had to explode once historical circumstances sanctioned such eruptions.
Between Enemy Lines
To look critically at any aspect of Hindu-Muslim relations today is a task fraught less with difficulty than with trepidation. As political passions run high, a commitment to either the secularist or the Hindu nationalist view is considered almost mandatory. Any critique which is seen as deviating from the one or the other easily invites the epithets of ‘cryptofascist’ from one side and ‘pseudosecularist’ from the other. Both ‘crypto-’ and ‘pseudo-’ are angry words, the former connoting a base veiling of real intent, the latter alluding to a fake or malicious deception. Yet, as important as it is to stand up and be counted, there is still a place for standing aside and counting, something I intend to do when examining the two different views of the Hindu-Muslim past. For, ideally, the psychoanalyst is essentially an onlooker and commentator on. the worlds of love and hate. Still somewhat starry-eyed after so many years in the profession, I see the psychoanalyst standing outside the fray, unmoved by the violent passions that swirl all around: his only intellectual commitment to a questioning that does not seek answers but encourages reflection, his suspicion evoked by ideals excessively noble and ideas particularly en vogue, his interest aroused by all that is tabooed. It is comforting for me to remember—to counteract my guilt at not being able to live up to the ideal—that an analyst is also compassionate toward ideals which one falls short of, including his own, since I know my own emotional involvement in the issue will not always allow me the neutrality I may strive for.
Let me begin with the fallacies of the secularist position which, I believe, has understimated the extent of the historical rift between Hindus and Muslims and has thus invited a backlash to its Panglossian view of the past. In other words, the secularist has tended to downplay the dark side of Hindu-Muslim relations in India. Scholars sympathetic to this viewpoint have pointed out that Hindu-Muslim conflicts are not only a product of the colonial period but also occurred in precolonial times and were often also communal—in the secular understanding of the term—rather than religious.18
In the medieval period, even the Sufis, the Islamic mystics who are so often held up as examples of ‘composite culture’, the syncretic Muslims par excellence, had serious limits to their tolerance. In the question of faith they were unequivocal about the superiority of Islam and the hellish fate in store for the Hindu infidels on judgement day. As Muzaffar Alam puts it: ‘Indeed, in relation to Hindus, often it is difficult to distinguish between an orthodox theologian [the obstreperous mullah of Hindu imagination] and a liberal mystic.’19 Many a Sufi was openly hostile to the religion and social practices of the Hindus, paranoid—even at the zenith of Muslim power—that the Hindus would obliterate Islamic laws, Islam, and the Muslim community if they ever captured political power. Alam summarizes the Muslim side of the Hindu-Muslim equation thus: ‘An average literate Muslim believed that Islam and Hinduism belonged to two radically diverse traditions and that the twain would never meet.’20 To emphasize the sense of separate identities, of the distance between the two communities, even common social practices came to be known as Hinduwani and Muslamani.21 Thus although Hindu and Muslim identities were not as fixed and continuous over time as the Hindu nationalist believes, neither were these identilies absent as claimed by the secularist. In the medieval period, for large sections of people, Hindu and Muslim identities were intermittent rather than continuous, occasionally flowering rather than perpetually in full bloom, evoked whenever religious symbols and sentiments moved to the forefront of conscious concern, which was mostly when they were perceived to be threatened or under actual attack.
The secularist underestimation of the aversion between Hindus and Muslims and the denial of the existence of any kind of collective, cultural identities in the past derives, I believe, from the reliance of many historians and political scientists on objective rather than subjective experiential data, which is more often mined by the anthropologist. To illustrate this, let me take the earlier example of Tipu Sultan, whose destruction of some Hindu temples and persecution of certain Hindu groups are objectively considered as motivated by his suspicion of the loyalty of these groups and of the temple priests’ close ties to the Hindu house of Wodiyar which Tipu and his father had replaced. Tipu did not go on any general anti-Hindu rampage and in fact even supported some temples with donations from the state coffers.
There is another, unwritten verison of these incidents which has gone into the making of what I would call the ‘cultural memory’ (a term I prefer to ‘collective memory’) of many Hindus. Cultural memory is the imaginative basis for a sense of cultural identity. For isn’t imagination a memory of vital moments of life freed from their actual, historical context? Cultural memory, too, is a group’s history freed from rootedness in time—it is as much imagination as the actual events that go into its construction. The cultural memory of Tipu’s actions (as of Aurangzeb’s) has a markedly different flavour from that which one reads in history texts. A very different realm of experience and distinctive emotion is evoked in a believing Hindu who reads or hears about Tipu forcibly circumcising Brahmins and compelling them afterwards to eat cow’s flesh as an unequivocal token of their loss of caste. That Hindu shares the indignation of his 17th century compatriots at Tipu’s destruction of the temple and their relief when they are finally rid of ‘the yoke of this tyrant’.22 Indeed, it would be odd to expect, as the secularist sometimes seems to do, that such a deeply religious people as the Hindus would have understood the mysterious workings of Tipu’s raison d’etat and not reacted with disgust and horror to what clearly seemed to be a brazen attack on their religious sentiments and cherished symbols of faith.
The ethnographers of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, who were also the cultural psychologists of their eras, are preeminently the European travellers. Generally looking down upon India and its peoples from the heights of European superiority, the travellers are especially contemptuous of the Hindus, who are mostly referred to as idolators or Gentiles, whereas the Muslims, clearly identified as such, are more familiar to the Christian and thus less an object of mystery or scorn. Lacking in any knowledge of th
e country’s religious traditions, the travellers’ interest is excited by what appear to them as strange Hindu ceremonies, rituals, and customs—with an emphasis on the temple courtesans, burning of widows, and orgiastic religiosity.
From the travellers, then, we can only get pointers to Hindu-Muslims relations by paying attention to casual observations and throw-away remarks that are adjunct to the European’s main interest in describing to countrymen at home the political and economic situation of India and the unfamiliar manners and mores of its inhabitants. Thus, for instance, we get the following observation from the French traveller, Francois Bernier, who travelled in the Mughal empire between 1656 and 1668:
The tenth incarnation (of Vishnu), say the Gentiles, will have for its object the emancipation of mankind from the tyranny of the Mahometan, and it will take place at a time when according to our calculation, Anti-Christ is to appear; this is however but a popular tradition, not to be found in their sacred books.23
Such scattered remarks, lacking the necessary context, cannot be taken as an accurate description of Hindu-Muslim relations. They do, however, make us doubt the picture of widespread amity, while pointing to the existence of many sullen Hindus resentful of Muslim rule, if not of the ‘Mahometans’.
The exception to most other travellers is Abbe Dubois, a French missionary who spent thirty years (1792-1823) in the south of India. As a man of the cloth, the Abbe is naturally convinced of the superiority of his faith over the religions of India. Yet he also displays a compassionate understanding for the customs of the people he observed so closely for so long. Most of the time he is remarkably fair. Abbe Dubois is a natural ethnographer, with a stance toward his ‘fieldwork’ which would meet the approval of any graduate school of anthropology.
At first glance, Dubois’s work seems to support the secularist contention that the conflict between the Hindu and Muslim was not communal but religious, no different from the quarrels between various Hindu sects. And indeed it is true that relgious strife is as Indian as mango pickle. Yet when we compare the internecine strife of Hindu sects with the violence between Hindus and Muslims, the difference between the two is obvious. Here, for instance, is the Abbe’s description of a ‘riot’ he observed between the followers of Vishnu and those of Shiva:
According to Vishnavites it is the height of all abomination to wear the lingam [the sign of Shiva]. According to their antagonists whoever is decorated with the naman [the sign of Vishnu] will be tormented in hell by a sort of fork similar in form to this emblem. These mutual recriminations often end in violent altercations and riots. The numerous bands of religious mendicants of both sects are specially apt to provoke strife. One may sometimes see these fanatics collected together in crowds to support their opinion of the super-excellence of their respective doctrines. They will overwhelm each other with torrents of abuse and obscene insults, and pour forth blasphemies and imprecations, on one side against Shiva, on the other Vishnu; and finally they will come to blows. Fortunately blood is seldom shed on these battle fields. They content themselves with dealing each other buffets with their fists, knocking off each other’s turbans, and much tearing of garments. Having thus given vent to their feelings, the combatants separate by mutual consent.
That these religious dissensions do not set the whole country ablaze, occasion those crimes of all kinds which were for centuries the result of religious fanaticism in Europe and elsewhere, is due no doubt to the naturally mild and timid character of the Hindus, and especially to the fact the greater number compound with their consciences and pay equal honour to Vishnu and Shiva. Being thus free from any bias towards either party, the latter serve as arbitrators in these religious combats and often check incipient quarrels.24
The description of this riot reveals a ritualized, gamelike quality which combines passion with restraint. It is a ritualization of antagonisms, what Erik Erikson called ‘a creative formalization’ which helps to avoid both impulsive excess and compulsive self-restrictions.25 The Vaishnavites and the Shaivites engage each other in both interplay and combat, practising ‘a form of war which can occur only among those who are at peace.’ In contrast, the Hindu-Muslim conflicts have no such playlike quality, pervaded as they are by deathly intent, with the burning down of houses, demolition of temples, mosques, and shrines.26 Their vocabulary is of mortal enmity, victory, and defeat, a combat that must lead to humiliation and grievous wounds to the collective self of one group or the other.
I have already mentioned that the Hindu nationalist may well be overestimating (in contrast to the secularist underestimation) the existence and strength of overarching Hindu and Muslim religious identities in India’s precolonial past. The Hindu nationalist is, I believe, also overestimating the role of doctrinal differences between Islam and Hindu beliefs for the difficulties in the relations between the two communities. To me the Hindu-Muslim rift appears as much the consequence of a collision between two collective narcissisms, between two equally grandiose group selves, each convinced of its civilizational superiority, as of differences in matters of faith. Abbe Dubois brings out clearly the injuries to group narcissism, the wounds to collective vanity sustained in the Hindu-Muslim encounter:
The Brahmins in particular cherish an undying hatred against the Mahomedans. The reason for this is that the latter think so lightly of the pretensions of these so-called gods of earth; and, above all, the Mahomedans do not scruple to display hearty contempt for their ceremonies and customs generally. Besides, the haughty Mussulmans can vie with them in pride and insolence. Yet there is this difference: the arrogance of a Mussulman is based only on the political authority with which he is invested, or on the eminence of the rank he occupies; whereas the Brahmin’s superiority is inherent in himself, and it remains intact, no matter what his condition in life may be. Rich or poor, unfortunate or prosperous, he always goes on the principle ingrained in him that he is the most noble, the most excellent, and the most perfect of all created beings, that all the rest of mankind are infinitely beneath him, and that there is nothing in the world so sublime or so admirable as his customs and practices.27
The Hindu nationalist may also be overestimating the depth of the Hindu’s historical aversion to the Muslim which was perhpas more prevalent in the upper castes where Muslim religious intolerance came up against the Brahminical conviction of Hindu superiority. Dubois remarks:
But if Brahmins cannot with any justice be accused of intolerance in the matter of religion, the same can certainly not be said in regard to their civil usage and customs. On these points they are utterly unreasonable…. Though they have had to submit to various conquerors who have proved themselves to be their superiors in courage and bravery, yet in spite of this, they have always considered themselves infinitely their superior in the matter of civilization.
The Mahomedans, who can tolerate no laws, no customs, and no religion but their own, used every advantage which conquest gave them in a vain attempt to force their religion on the people who had succumbed to them almost without resistance. But these same Hindus, who did not dare to complain when they saw their wives, their children, and everything they held most dear carried off by these fierce conquerors, their country devastated by fire and sword, their temples destroyed, their idols demolished, these same Hindus I say, only displayed some sparks of energy when it came to changing their customs for those of their oppressors.28
What excited Hindu hostility was as much the Muslim assault on his lifestyle as on his idols. As we shall see later, the Hindu’s shocked disgust, for example, at the Muslim eating of beef, then as now, is a far more potent factor in Hindu-Muslim relations than Islam’s reputed intolerance.
The Hindu nationalist, I believe, also overemphasizes the impact of ten centuries of Muslim domination. The explanation for the Hindu’s negative sentiments toward the Muslim as lying in a subjugated people’s ‘natural’ resentment is not wholly convincing if we remember that such aversion was negligible in the case of the British. In spite
of the fact that the Raj was economically exploitative, funneling wealth out of the country, whereas during the Muslim rule wealth stayed within, the latter evokes a hostility not due to the former. Political subjugation and economic exploitation, it seems, played less of a role in determining the Hindu reaction because the Hindu collective identity, however nebulous, was crystallized around shared religious symbols rather than based on political or economic structures. Muslims were perceived to be outragers of Hindu religious sentiment and mockers of their faith whereas the British were, at worst, indifferent. Granted that the British too ate beef—a practice deeply repugnant to most Hindus—but they were too few and carried out their private lives holed up in bungalows and barracks which were shielded from public scrutiny by high walls and thick hedges. In contrast, the Muslim lived cheek by jowl with the Hindu. This proximity created the potential for the emergence of new cultural and social forms but also occasioned simmering resentment and nagging friction. The British beef-eater was remote, almost abstract. The Muslim butcher in his blood-flecked undervest and lungi, wielding a huge carving knife, was a very visible part of a town’s life, a figure of awe and dread for the Hindu child and of a fear-tinged repulsion for the adult. The Englishman remained a stranger, the Muslim became the Other.
Looking at the Hindu-Muslim encounter as decisively coloured by the facts of dominance and subordination, by aggression and resistance, by the zero-sum game of winners and losers, the Hindu nationalist pays homage to the influential paradigm in contemporary historical, anthropological, and political science writing which considers power as the main axis around which all relations between groups are structured. The impressive work that has resulted through the emphasis on power, especially on the inequality of colonial and imperial relations, has been invaluable. But as Raymond Grew points out, this very emphasis also tends to obscure and often ideologize the processes of assimilation, transformation, reassertion, and recreation, which too are inherent in all cultural encounters.29 The Hindu-Muslim encounter has been no exception.