Not minor matters

Fri, Aug 28 03:25 PM

Once it is granted that in India we practise a different kind of secularism, a secularism unique to us, it becomes very difficult not to grant the same status to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. This may seem bizarre given that some of those are avowed theocratic States.

However, the contemporary State, given the kinds of tasks of enumeration, surveillance, discipline and welfare that it is asked to command, can only ever be secular. The reason I bring this up in particular relates to the case of Pakistan.

Pakistan was declared an Islamic republic only in 1956. But it took over 25 years of pressure, and two wars with India, before the secular socialist Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto declared Ahmadis as non-Muslims and appointed Friday as the national holiday.

But becoming an avowed Islamic State has not allowed it to satisfy the urgings of different kinds of Islamists. And, indeed, it never can do so simply because protecting its citizens and assuring them equality is also one of its declared goals.

The clash between the principle of treating each citizen as an individual, equal before the State, and the demands of different kinds of communities is precisely the playground of struggle that all South Asian, and now some European, States grapple with in their pursuit of secular goals. Women's 'nudity' and dating arouse as much angst among Hindu nationalists in India as does female education in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.

The biradari and panchayat injunctions of western UP and Haryana on Dalit-non Dalit matrimony, for instance, which periodically arouse grave concern in the media are issues that the Taliban has a lot to say on. In all such cases, however, across borders, the State finds itself treading ground that is all too common.

It cannot be seen to be passive; yet it cannot unilaterally and high-handedly uphold simple liberal values that you and I may espouse. All States, democratic, authoritarian or military-Islamist must engage different communities at the same time and seeking rationale among simultaneously irreconcilable demands of identity politics is precisely the plaything that secularism is made up of.

Pakistan, too, has a minority welfare ministry, at the federal and state measures. It also has so-called sops and special measures for the uplift of minorities.

The media periodically express concern over the plight of minorities. Newspapers and wider civil society in Pakistan consistently set up aspirational models where a rational attitude to life and social organisation is highly valorised.

At least in theory everybody is equal before the law. Religious practices, shrines, peculiar customs of tribes and other ethnic groups often clash with the avowed rationalistic and economistic goals of the State.

So while the fate of Pakistan may always be bedevilled by its origins, as long as it continues to survive, we need to understand it better. For what is happening in Swat and in the NWFP is nothing else but a struggle for the kind of secularism that the Pakistani State would like to - or is able to - practise.

A true Islamic State is an oxymoron; it can only function at the level of a unitary village. The rest is a negotiation with power.

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