Steering Between Islamophobia and Muslim Fundamentalism: The Position of the Left in the Debate on the Veil

Introduction

Islamophobia is in many ways similar to racism. Just as racism justifies the oppression of and discrimination against certain peoples on the grounds that they are inferior to the oppressors, Islamophobia, as defined by the Runnymede Trust in 1997, justifies the oppression of Muslims on the grounds that they adhere to a religion – Islam – that is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unchanging, irrational, sexist, violent and aggressive. While use of the term ‘Islamophobia’ has been criticised by Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens and others who argue that it is ‘often used to silence the critics of Islam, including Muslims fighting for reform in their own communities,’ Meera Nanda defends its use to describe ‘prejudice against Islam itself as somehow singularly evil and backward as compared to other religions’ (Nanda 2011:63). She also notes the convergence between European Islamophobia and the Hindutva Right in India with the formation of the organisation ‘The Voice of India’, set up in Delhi in 1981 and cited repeatedly in the manifesto of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, whose mantra – ‘the problem is not Muslims but Islam itself’ – encapsulates this view.

Racism and Islamophobia are characteristics of the political Right, and even in their milder forms are conducive to the growth of the far Right. It goes without saying, therefore, that revolutionary socialists must oppose them.

The term ‘fundamentalism’ is actually a misnomer, since there are, in the case of every religion, basic disagreements about what fundamentalists claiming allegiance to it regard as ‘fundamental,’ and what progressives claiming allegiance to the same religion regard as fundamental. Nonetheless, the term has now passed into common usage, and will therefore be used here in its accepted sense. The object of faith, for fundamentalists, is clearly defined, absolute, and cannot be questioned. It therefore provides a stable point of reference in a world that is otherwise changing rapidly, creating all manner of insecurities. This characteristic of fundamentalism has led to its being explained as a response to capitalism and modernity: a clinging to certainty in a world where, in the words of the Communist Manifesto, ‘All that is solid melts into air’. In Karen Armstrong’s words, ‘Fundamentalists will often express their discontent with a modern development by overstressing those elements in their tradition that militate against it. They are all – even in the United States – highly critical of democracy and secularism. Because the emancipation of women has been one of the hallmarks of modern culture, fundamentalists tend to emphasise conventional, agrarian gender roles, putting women back into veils and into the home’ (Armstrong 2001: 141).

Thus fundamentalism is a very specific type of response to capitalism and modernity: a reactionary response. Its purpose is to provide justification and reinforcement for the domination of those who have traditionally exercised power within a community: men, religious leaders, community elders, and so on. It speaks for the oppressors whose power to oppress is being challenged by modernity and especially by democracy. It is therefore politically right-wing. It is important to distinguish between religious fundamentalism (which is not necessarily violent) and the political use of fundamentalism (which almost always is); but the abdication of the right and responsibility to think and make moral judgments for oneself makes fundamentalists easily manipulable by right-wing political leaders.

Manufacturing Offence - The Cartoon Controversy

Background

When the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in power, it revised school textbooks published by the National Council of Educational and Research Training (NCERT) in accordance with the ideology of Hindutva. After the NDA was defeated in the elections of 2004, the NCERT under Dr Krishna Kumar began working on the National Curriculum Framework, which came out in 2005. One of the main issues discussed was whether to go back to the pre-NDA texts or design new textbooks altogether. The decision was in favour of the latter course of action, for two main reasons: one, new research and knowledge that had emerged since those textbooks were written needed to be incorporated, and two, the educationists wanted to encourage students to engage in more analytical thinking and debate rather than rote-learning (Menon 2012). ‘The gist of these debates – in which more than 3,000 scholars, teachers, civil servants, activists, students and parents participated through various means – was that the knowledge imparted in schools fails to inspire children, hence any new educational initiative should first worry about reconceptualising the knowledge that different subjects comprise’ (Kumar 2012, p 13). The textbooks came out in 2006, and while they were far from perfect, the new pedagogical approach was widely appreciated by both students and teachers.

The controversy

The cartoon by Shankar Pillai that caused such pandemonium in parliament when various Dalit and non-Dalit members demanded its deletion on May 11, 2012 was published in 1949, and depicted Ambedkar with a whip riding a snail entitled ‘Constitution,’ and Nehru, also with a whip, looking down at the snail from behind. It was entitled ‘Snail’s Pace,’ referring to the slow pace of the drafting of the Indian Constitution, and appeared in a Class XI textbook. This was read as an insult to Ambedkar by Dalit activists, led by Thirumavalavan of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi and Ramdas Athavale of the Republican Party of India, who protested against it (Vijapurkar 2012). Thirumavalavan is a Tamil nationalist who extended full support to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) even while the Tamil Dalits of Sri Lanka felt that ‘the social movement against caste discrimination has been silenced and more or less co-opted by the LTTE. Caste is seen as, at best, an unnecessary diversion and, at worst, a threat to political and social unification of the desired Tamil nation’ (International Dalit Solidarity Network: 2008, p 7). Athavale (who fought the last municipal elections in Mumbai in alliance with the anti-Dalit Shiv Sena and BJP) demanded not only the withdrawal of the textbooks, but also the arrest of Prof Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav, who were advisors for the political science textbooks and resigned in protest. He even condoned the vandalising of Palshikar’s office by four activists of the Republican Panthers of India.

The Spectre of Fascism

 BOOK REVIEW

Godse’s Children: Hindutva Terror in India by Subhash Gatade (New Delhi: Pharos Media and Publishing), 2011; pp. 400, Rs 360.

The Saffron Condition: Politics of Repression and Exclusion in Neoliberal India by Subhash Gatade (Gurgaon: Three Essays Collective), 2011; pp. 475, Rs 500

If the message of both these books had to be summed up in one sentence, it would be this: The spectre of fascism is haunting India. Godse’s Children (hereafter GC) concentrates on the phenomenon of Hindutva terrorism, while The Saffron Condition (hereafter TSC) is divided into three sections: Saffronization and the Neoliberal State, Logic of Caste in New India, and State and Human Rights. There is thus an area of overlap between the two, with Hindutva terror also appearing in TSC, but treated in far greater detail in GC.

Workers, Unions and the Left: Responding to the Global Crisis

(This is the text of a talk introducing my book Workers, Unions, and Global Capitalism: Lessons from India (Columbia University Press, New York, and Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2011) at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, on 23 January 2012. It was subsequently published as NMML Occasional Paper: Perspectives in Indian Development, New Series 2.)

I started working on what became this book more than ten years ago, because I felt there was so much confusion in the way that large sections of the trade union movement and the Left responded to globalisation. They took a straightforward anti-globalisation position which, by default, reinforced a nationalist reaction against globalisation. This went against all my Marxist internationalist instincts. Also, having been involved in trade union research for decades, it was obvious to me that many of the evils attributed to globalisation, such as subcontracting and the shifting of production, had been rampant for years or decades prior to it. Most disturbing of all, much of the anti-globalisation rhetoric was indistinguishable from the rhetoric of the extreme Right. (I have given examples of this in my book.)

Therefore one of the first tasks I set myself was to come up with a working definition of globalisation that sorted out some of these confusions.