In the Name of the Secular: Contemporary Cultural Activism in India

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.IS B431 1998

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In the Name of the Secular

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In the Name of the Secular Contemporary Gultural Activism in India

Rustom Bharucha

DELHI

OXFORD,........UNIVERSITY PRESS CALCU'I"l'A CHENNAI MUMBAI 1998

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Oxford University Press, Great C'4mulon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford New York Athens Avckland Bangkok Cape Town Chennai Dar cs Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mumbai Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore T aipci Tokyo Toronto · ll1Ui associates in Berlin Ibadan

© Oxford University Press 1998

ISBN O 19 564222 8

Typeset by Print Line, New Delhi 110048

Printed in India at Saurabh _Print O Pack, Noida and published by·Manzar Khan, Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110001

If we could learn to look instead of gawking We'd see the horror in the heart of the farce. If only we could act instead of talking, We would not always end up on our arse... Don,t yet rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world stood up and stopped the scoundrel, The beast that bore him is in heat again. Benoit Brecht

The Resistible Rise ofArturo Ui •

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Contents

Acknowledgements I Mapping the 'Secular' 2 In the Name of the Secular

i Variables of Secularism ii The Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA)

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1 13

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iv The Third Sector Movement in Brazil

26 52 74

v The .Making of Secular Culture

99

iii The Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT)

3 On the Border of Fascism: The Manufacture of Consent in Roja

115

4 Dismantling Men: The Crisis of Male Identity in Father,

140

Son, _and Holy War 5 No More Utopias? Re-mapping. the Present

161

Bibliography

185

Index

194

Acknowledgenients his book on the struggle for ~ecularism has ct11erged in the aftermath of the demolition of the Bahri Masji.d in Ayodhya on 6 December, 1992. My first acknowledgement would be to those unnamed.activists who have sustained this struggle with enormous courage in the face of unprecedented violence and intimidation. I trust that the inevitable gaps and omissions in my narrative will be situated within the larger search for a more vibrant secularism that lies beyond the boundaries of this booic. My narrative is just one intervention in a diversity of voices and positions. Volatile in its emergent dynamics, secularism is a subject on which there are considerable differences. I am grateful in this regard f.() have received critically empath~tic readings of my manuscript by ~ Bapat, and Sadanand Menon who has been an unfailing point o( reference through all my doubts and tensions as a writer. I am also indebted to the Economic and Political Weekly, in which many of the essays in this book received their first articulations. More than a journal, EPW . is a forum, a space in which it is still possible to speak out against the new conformities of our times. My respect for Krishna Raj, the most self-effacing of editors, is deeper than I can express in words. Additional suppon for my writing has come from the editors Rasheed Araeen and Jean Fisher of Third Text, and Anita Roy of Oxford University Press, who has nurtured the publishing process of this book with painstaking care and subtle humour. My exposure to activism has been made possible through organizations like Pipal Tree and the South-Nonh Network Cultures and Development, which catalysed my reading of 'citizenship' and 'civil society' in the Indian context, by facilitating a truly inspirational encounterwith the 'Third Sector' movement in Brazil. The Indian National Social Action Forum (INSAF) and Vikas Adhyayan Kendra have also ~

x • Acknowledgements broadened my awareness of secular activism in India. More intimatdy, the co-editors of Communalism Combat, T eesta Setalvad and Javed Anand, have alerted me to many dimensions of cultural action at local levels, primarily in relation to the mohalla committees and the citizens' initiatives that have emerged in Mumbai after the riots. In the arena of theatre activism, I remember S~dar Hashmi, who has been a living presence for me in the writing of'-this book. Though I did not know him personally, I have been struck by the energy of his secular politics, so compellingly valid within the compromises of our times. In a less overtly activist mode, I wish to acknowledge the inner lessons of the 'political unconscious' that I have derived from my workshops at the Ninasam Theatre Institute, which have resurfaced in this book at critical moments. Among the many individuals who have contributed to the research of this book, I would like to thank Malini Bhattacharya for her rigorous reading of the Indian People's Theatre Association; Dhruba Gupta and Ananda Lal for their useful references to T agore; Rubem Cesar Fernandes for his insightful perspective on popular movements in Brazil; Paneer Selvan and Gagan Makar for their close viewings of Roja and Hum Aapke Hain Koun.. !respectively; Satish Sharma for initiating me into the politics of photography and the street art of chor bazaar; and above all, Rajeev and Tani Bhargava, Chandralekha, Anuradha Kapur, and ·Neeladri Bhattacharya for many intense exchanges around secularism that have helped me to articulate my position. I am grateful to Ashim Kumar Das, who has transcribed the numerous drafts and rewrites of this manuscript onto the computer. Finally, I acknowledge the warmth and generosity that I have received from all my friends. Through their dialogue and humour, they have made me aware that a secular culture begins with relationships and the capacity to share across differences.

A few sections in the title essay of this book first appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXIX, N os. 4 5 and 46, November 5-12, 1994. Earlier versions of'On the Border of Fascism: The Manufacture of Consent in Roja ' and •Dismantling Men: The Crisis of Male Identity in Father, Son, and Holy War' were also published in EPW on 4 June, 1994, and 1 July, 1995, respectively. The latter was also reprinted in Third Text, Vol. 33, Winter 1995~96. The inspiration for 'No More Utopias? Re-mapping the Present' came from Erika

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Acknowledgements • xi Munk, who had invited me to contribute an essay on theatrical utopias for the special issue of Theaterm.agazine {Vol. 26, Nos. 1-2), published from the Yale School of Drathl. Aspects of my research on secularism have appeared in an interview entitled 'Re-inventing the Secular Imaginary', Humanscape, April 1996. In the Diamond Jubliee Conference of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, on 'people-centred development' held between 1-4 November, 1996, I presented a paper entitled 'Towards a Secular Cultural Movement: Critical Hypotheses, Strategies and Models'. I am grateful to these forums for linking different sectors of activism in India today.

RUSTOM BHARUCHA Calcutta April 1997

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1 Mapping the 'Secular'

....,,,,here are many possible beginnings to this narrative on secularism-the demolition of the Bahri Masjid, the fiftieth anniversary of India's independence, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, among other critical events. I choose to begin, however, with something more intimate that is related to the actual location of my writing: the street outside my house. Dharamtala (now renamed Lenin Sarani), notorious for its traffic jams and snarls, noise and pollution, has inspired the writing of this book by persistently interrupting my attempts to formulate secular culture and action· in India today. One of the busiest streets running through the heart of Calcutta, a thoroughfare for all processions and demonstrations culminating in the Shahid Minar around the corner, Dharamtala is also the multireligious site of the. Tipoo Sultan Masjid, the Sacred Heart Church, and numerous shrines nestling in its nooks and corners. Complementing their sacred aura is the loud entertainment provided by cinema halls, the repositories of the nation's deepest fantasies. With such a conglomeration of activities, my street represents a· robust affirmation of secular culture in which the sacred and the profane, the traditional and the contemporary, share a common space. As I acknowledge the lessons derived from my street, I am alerted to those larger sites of resistance in the public sphere, which refuse to be communalizcd, drawing on a living faith in the ordinariness of everyday life. Certainly, one needs this faith in ordinariness in order to confront

2 • In the Name ofSecular

what must be the most contentious, maligned and vulnerable category of our times: the 'secular'. Abused and attacked by the forces of the Hindu Right, secularism received its most ignominious blow with the demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992. This act has been pro~igiously documented by historians and others, and I have little to add at the moment, except to say that it has made me understand the depths of violence and degradation contained in the word mleccha (barbarian). We cannot undo this act, nor should we erase it from our minds, but we need to counter it through an affirmation of a renewed secularism. At one level, this can be done . concretely by resisting communal attacks through an increased awareness of their pseudo-secular disguises and devious modes of legitimation. Secularism, however, should not be equated with anti-communalisin. This is the surest way of allowing one's dissent to be d~~ermined by communal categories. Opposition to communalism, I would suggest, can be strengthened through ~ process of relentless critical introspection and self-analysis, whereb/ ' one's dissent can be contextualized within the legacy of what has been ..i:eceived 'in the name of the secular'. In affirming a renewed secularism, therefore, one has to accept the discomfort of confronting one's deepest assumptions as to what secularism means in the first place. The amnesia of 'being secular', without feeling any obligation to define its guiding principles and limits, is an ontology that we can no longer afford. What concerns me in this book is not the political ideology of secularism as practised (or circumvented) by the State. This docs not mean that the ongoing debates on the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), the negotiation of p€~sonal laws, the politics of reservation, and the expediency of coal•itirin governments cutting across political parties, do not impinge on my own perspectives of the secular.. However, I should stress that the more immediate, preoccupations with the administration and legalities of secularisll}--"in the realpoutik lie outside my expertise as a cultural critic and wdrter. I have chosen instead to intersect, and occasionally deflect, the articulations on the politics of sem me ldngbagiJ,and;pbijtics o£si-,ctdarismi:wi>uld·Jim:o~ obMiom. lnthd impas6lioncd-,~nic p~mioolmed.alit:~hslart m~vi•·~ 1llaiah,,whme ctractnWby.JiamJNot,aifHJudilt(l996}ris dnd6antly.oddbqttoriy)ex~ition f exi1ten~r1Not10W,1Jmsrl'dos secukuifyrbmduimoseliiltmiYc}SiltJRteci

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