Girilal Jain is a senior Indian journalist. He retired as editor of The Times of India at the end of 1988 after what he calls “a near fifty-year career in journalism. He still writes occasionally in the Indian press but says that he likes to spend most of his time “reading and thinking.” During his recent visit to Pakistan the Weekend Post held an informal interview with him on various aspects of Indian politics. Excerpts …
By Murtaza Razvi
Q. How strong are the credentials of secularism in contemporary Indian polity?
A. Indian polity has been greatly misunderstood abroad, particularly in Pakistan. I have noticed during this trip to Pakistan that many people here have come to believe that religion plays a very important role in the Indian politics. This is not true. The Indian polity is as secular today as it has ever been.
Q. Has it ever been as truly ‘secular’ as many Indians would like to claim?
A. Secularism is a process whereby a state is run on principles which are not in any way related to a religion. Political considerations play a decisive role in the management of the Indian state. There is no political party in India at present which is guided by religious principles, and this includes the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as well.
Q. You don’t mean to say that the BJP is not a Hindu fundamentalist party?
A. Hindus cannot have a counterpart of the Jama’at-i-Islami. Any theory of nationalism based on Hinduism is inconceivable. There are hundreds of sects, hundreds of thousands of codes and scriptures in Hinduism, and none can claim a majority following among the Hindus. These are the basic facts which cannot bring together Hindus as Hindus and organise them along anything like the Hindu ideological lines. BJP therefore is not a religious party. It is in my opinion a political party which is seeking to replace the Congress Party that has been in decline. So principally, BJP is trying to do just that.
Q. How far has the caste question been able to shape the course the BJP has taken?
A. Indian politics have largely remained caste-ist. All political parties are very careful in the selection of their candidates. Similarly, it is very rare for any party to select a candidate who does not belong to a dominant caste of his area. Now the BJP as the would-be alternative of the Congress has to fight this politics. Incidentally, the caste-ist politics has risen during the years that have coincided with the rise of the BJP. Now if VP Singh had not plunged the country into confusion by deciding to implement the so-called Mandal Commission Report, the politics of coalition and national accommodation would have continued.
Q. What is wrong with the Mandal Commission Report? Doesn’t it advocate the uplifting of lower castes to the level of the so-called higher castes, which in turn, is in conformity with the secular principles?
A. The MCR is not a report. It is a fabrication. To arrive at it no survey of any kind was conducted. No experts on the issues were consulted. Figures collected in 1931 were used to prepare this report in the seventies and the eighties. When VP Singh decided to divide the Hindu society on the dangerous caste-ist basis the BJP had to fight him.
Q. Hasn’t the Hindu society always remained a divided society along the caste-ist lines?
A. It had remained so in a controlled manner and never been allowed inconsistency with the overall interest of the country.
Q. If, as you say, BJP is not a fundamentalist party then why has it based its politics on the Hindutva?
A. Hindutva is a slogan which the BJP has not defined. To me Hindutva means a reference to the original Indian civilisation. This can’t be equated with what the Muslims regard as the golden age. For instance when Muslims speak in terms of Islamic revivalism they always advocate going back to the period of the rightly guided caliphs. There is no such parallel in Hinduism. And there is no period as the golden age in the Indian history. Therefore there can be no revival of Hinduism as that of Islam. However, there is an underlying Hindu spirit that the BJP talks about but it has not defined that spirit.
Q. On the face of it the Hindutva spirit, which according to you has not been defined, does appear to be bordering on fundamentalism. At least it has been so construed by both Hindu and non-Hindu secularists in India including the Congress and the National Front…
A. You’ve put me in a fix. Outside my country I do not want to say anything critical of any one person or a party, much less of a ruling party. But I must admit that the Congress has used religion in a dangerous manner. It used religion in the Punjab and in Jammu and Kashmir. Its supporters were responsible for ghastly communal riots in Delhi in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s murder. They were responsible for Bhagalpur and Meerut riots. It comes to me as a surprise that these people should now turn around and talk of secularism.
Q. What about the Janata Dal of whom you’ve earlier been very critical?
A. Janata Dal is the party which is guided solely by the caste-ist constitution. That means that you fragment politics and therefore the country in a manner that no one can ever put it together again. Again with considerable agitation, I make this statement on your soil; I would have liked to say it in my own country, and I’ve said it, that the Janata Dal is not acceptable to me.
Q. Does that mean you feel closer to the politics of the BJP?
A. You see BJP is trying to resolve the struggle between pre-Islamic and post-Islamic rule in India in which neither party had prevailed. Even the partition did not solve this problem. If the BJP says that there is one dominant culture in India that is the Hindu culture it does not of necessity mean that the other less dominant cultures are subordinate to it. Take for instance the culture of Lahore. Lahore has a dominant Punjabi culture but that does not necessarily mean that this Punjabi culture is working to suppress the Sindhi culture. Lahore’s Punjabi culture by virtue of its being Muslim is not anti-Christian. Similarly, BJP’s stress on the Hindu culture does not mean the suppression of other Indian cultures. It is certainly not being anti-Muslim.
Q. You’ve said that the Congress has been more communal than the BJP…
A. No. If I have not been careful in the use of words let me define it again. I’ve said that the Congress did use religion… to garner votes, that is.
Q. That does mean in turn that secularism has not been a strong element in the Indian politics and that religion has been present at the back of it…
A. No. Exploitation of religion by certain people belonging to the Congress is quite another thing; and that does not make the Congress a communal party.
Q. In theory it may not but in practice it does…
A. There may be communal episodes in which the Congress was involved but these do not reflect in the party’s consistent policies. So you cannot say that the Congress is a communal party.
Q. To you even the BJP is not a communal party. Let’s say for argument’s sake that it is not. Then has the entire Indian nation misconstrued the message of the BJP as communal, and this includes the Indian intelligentsia as well, who almost religiously fought against BJP coming to power in New Delhi?
A. That’s where the intelligentsia has played its very important role. A large number of the Indian intelligentsia regards the BJP as communal. But then the Indian intelligentsia is composed of people whose outlook on life is either very westernised or they tend to look at politics from a Marxist angle. The intelligentsia from among the leftists ended up supporting the Congress for that party’s socialist pretentions. Then came in the people. But for them it is a variety of elements that decide which party they are going to vote for. There are caste considerations, playing up of sentiments, the lathi culture, not to speak of the electoral malpractices and rigging by the administration which to a large extent plays its very decisive role in deciding as to who comes to power. Therefore the fact that the BJP has not been voted to power does not mean that the people have rejected it.
Q. By admitting as much, don’t you think you are questioning the entire democratic setup of the Indian polity?
A. No, I am not questioning the democratic setup.
Q. But you sounded very much like saying that while there is so much scope for manipulation of the electoral process it is difficult for India to have a representative government…
A. Listen. I’d be dishonest if I told you that manipulation did not take place. It would be naive on my part to deny this. Ideal democracy does not exist anywhere in the world and it certainly does not exist in my country.
Q. Then what holds you back from conceding that the people have rejected the BJP politics by and large whatever the reasons for their so doing…
A. No, no, no. I am not for the BJP incidentally. The point I want to make is that there is no guarantee that the BJP will even be able to sustain the strength that it has acquired in the last election. Politics in India is secular, it has been secular and it shall remain secular. Ideologies in politics may be necessary but then they are the necessary evil. Ideology in politics is quite dangerous. I prefer the everyday mundane but realistic considerations as the basis of politics than any ideology. My prime consideration at present is to work out for myself the new basis of Indian politics.
Q. And what is that?
A. I do not know. I believe India is at a turning point. We have had the longest experience with democracy in the third world. It is from this experience that we should be able to solve the problems we are now facing in India. But I can candidly say that I do not know what the new political appeal will be based on.
Q. Do you foresee any role for the Indian Muslims in deciding the basis of what you call the ‘new political appeal’?
A. Muslims cannot be sidetracked from the Indian politics. There can emerge no political order in India without the willing co-operation of the Muslims. The idea of building any political order without the Muslim participation in it is utterly rubbish.
The Frontier Post (Weekend Post), Pakistan, 10 January 1992