Resistible rise of Hindu fascism

Arundhati Roy, Author, 'The God of Small Things', New Delhi, Project Syndicate

One night a year ago, a friend called me. Weeping, she told me of her friend, a woman caught by a mob, her stomach ripped open and stuffed with burning rags. What Hindu scripture preaches this?

India's Prime Minister, A. B. Vajpayee, justified that deed as part of the retaliation meted out by outraged Hindus against the Muslim "terrorists" who had incinerated 58 Hindus on a train to Godhra. What Koran verse required those travelers to be roasted alive?

The more India's Hindus and Muslims call attention to their differences by slaughtering each other, the less there is that distinguishes them. They worship at the same altar, apostles of the same murderous god, whoever he is.

A year after the Godhra massacre and the subsequent anti- Muslim pogroms in Gujarat province, India is again sipping from its poisoned chalice -- a flawed democracy laced with religious fascism. In parliament, the government has unveiled a portrait of Vinayak Savarkar, a pre-independence Hindu nationalist, one of whose followers assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. The drive to build a temple to the god Ram in Ayodhya, on the site of a 16th century mosque demolished by Hindu mobs in 1992, is gaining new energy.

But once Muslims are "shown their place," will milk and Coca- Cola flow across the land? Or will some fresh hate arise? Will its target be Adivasis, Buddhists, Christians, Dalits, Parsis, Sikhs? Those who speak English? Those with thick lips? What depraved vision imagines India without the spectacular anarchy of its many cultures?

The parallels between contemporary India and pre-Nazi Germany are chilling, but not surprising. Many Hindu nationalists are frank about their admiration for Hitler. Luckily, we don't yet have a Hitler. Instead, we have, the hydra-headed Sangh Parivar -- the "joint family" of Hindu political/cultural organizations.

Sangh Parivar's genius is its ability to be all things to all people. While the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Congress) exhorts its cadres to prepare for the "Final Solution", PM Vajpayee assures the nation that all citizens, regardless of religion, are treated equally.

Of course, every kind of pogrom -- against castes, tribes, religions -- has been seen here. In 1984, following Indira Gandhi's assassination, the ruling Congress Party presided over the massacre of 3,000 Sikhs. Indeed, on virtually every politically volatile issue -- from nuclear testing to communal conflict -- Congress sowed the seeds and Vajpayee's nationalist BJP party reaps the hideous harvest.

But whereas Congress whipped up communal hatred undercover and in shame, communal division is part of Sangh Parivar's mandate. For years it has injected a slow-release poison into society. Hundreds of thousands of children and young people are being weaned on religious hatred and falsified history. Their curriculum is as dangerous as that found in the Pakistani and Afghani madrassas that spawned the Taliban.

Whenever hostility between India and Pakistan is cranked up, hostility toward Muslims grows. Increasingly, Indian nationalism means Hindu nationalism, which is based not on self-respect, but on a hatred of the "Other" -- not just Pakistanis, but all Muslims.

The incipient, creeping fascism that results has been groomed by our "democratic" institutions. Everything flirts with it -- parliament, the press, the police, and the administration. If any institution (including the Supreme Court) exercises unfettered, unaccountable power, the erosion of civil liberties, and the spread of day-to-day injustices, fascism will not be far behind.

Fighting religious fascism means winning back minds and hearts. It means demanding accountability from public institutions and listening to the powerless. It means fighting dispossession and the everyday violence of poverty. It means not allowing newspapers and TV to be hijacked by spurious passions and staged theatrics designed to divert attention from everything else. It does not mean banning communally minded madrassas, but rather working toward the day when they are voluntarily abandoned.

Like termites, India's Hindu fascists have weakened the foundations of our constitution, parliament, and the courts -- the backbone of every democracy. But it's futile to blame politicians and demand from them a morality of which they are incapable. If India's politicians let us down, it is because we allowed it.

Our fascists didn't create today's grievances. Every strategy for real social change and greater social justice -- land reform, education, public health, equitable distribution of natural resources -- was cunningly scuttled by those castes and people with a stranglehold on politics.

Fascist Hindus seized upon these grievances, mobilizing people by using the lowest common denominator -- religion. People who lost control of their lives, people uprooted from home and community, stripped of culture and language, are made to feel proud of something. Not of something they achieved, but of something they happen to be. Or, more accurately, something they happen not to be.

Unfortunately, no quick fix exists. Fascism can be defeated only if those outraged by it commit themselves to social justice with an intensity that equals their indignation. If we do not, we ordinary Indians will find ourselves -- like the ordinary citizens of Hitler's Germany -- unable to look our children in the eye because of our shame of what we allowed to happen.