A society of divisive diversity

It was in the 1960’s when PN Oak started writing, publishing and distributing small booklets on how prominent ‘Muslim’ monuments were actually magnificent ‘Hindu’ buildings and why we should be proud of their ‘Hindu’ origins. People even in Hindutva organisations like the RSS made fun of him. But he unflinchingly kept at his job.

Then in the 1980’s, another self-styled scholar by the name of Dinanath Batra started a campaign vehemently asserting the Hindu identity of Muslim monuments. Even then, his Hindutva- centric ideas were dismissed lightly by the political and social quarters.

Today, some of Dinanath Batra’s theo¬ries have become part of the history school syllabi. And there is a very serious and concerted effort to rewrite and retell facts of history.

We were a country which bragged about unity in diversity. Now, that very diversity has turned divisive everywhere, even at places and situations where we never thought of a conflict.

Now, we hear of separate canteens for vegetarian and meat dishes. We have always had this difference in our eating habits — at some places in India, beef is eaten, at others cow is revered, in some places dog meat is eaten— but this separation of canteens was never before done. One may look at it lightly, but such separations also lead to cracks in the society.

The thing is, even a weird and bizarre idea of a difference between class, caste, community or even gender gradually gets a place for itself in our mindset. And when the flames of these differences are stirred, they catch a serious fire.

Partition in itself was a unique and tragic event, the scars of which still haunt societies of three countries. In fact, when we talk of Hindu-Muslim divide, that fear of Partition is always evoked.

There’s a very strong streak in our milieu to reestablish certain trends and traditions giving them certain twists which almost amount to be regressive.

Take for example, cows. Cows were, are considered sacred in India, because of the multiple ways a cow can be useful to man. A few years ago, people had even started making fun of the superficial attitude we have towards cows. But now we have tak¬en upon ourselves to ‘protect’ them, as if they were not earlier. The truth is, we as a society do not take care of our cattle, we leave them to wander around and even eat plastic and dirt.

But when it comes to worshipping, we at once take cows in our patronage as if they were sent to Hindus only to be taken care of. The result is creation of another di¬vide. We have love also to be taken care of. It’s not only Hindu-Muslim love jihad we have to be wary of, but also of inter-caste, inter-gotra, love marriages, etc. Love, which is supposed to unite, is also now a major dividing factor.

Then we have land conflicts too. A recent phenomenon of land jihad has emerged. Although all smart citizens of this country are deft at occupying land in the name of religion, nowadays only Muslims are being blamed for this.

There has always been a steep gap be¬tween upper and lower castes in India. But in recent years, we had witnessed a remarkable change in the attitude of upper castes, but not anymore. Suddenly the high handedness of upper caste Hindus has flared up and so has the resentment in lower castes.

Never before has the country witnessed such a serious and consistent protest by farmers. The rural man was always laughed at for his innocence, ignorance, or inability to change. Look through our films or jokes, etc and at times even literature, we always tended to look at farmers in a lighter vein. They were either very funny or very sad because they ended up being poor after the crops failed them. But we never took them seriously. The rural and urban divide is now so deep and the farmer’s problems so humongous that farmers are out on the streets protesting while the city people are almost indifferent to their issues.

Last but not the least, women have nev¬er before witnessed such deep male anger and violence directed against them. Never before have women/girls been so grue¬somely brutalised. There is a great divide there. When there are efforts to treat them equally, when women, well some of them, have started speaking up against inequal¬ity and oppression, they have become a target of violence. It is not a simple issue of just women being victimised, it’s an intri¬cate matter when women belong to certain castes and faiths.

Is it because these oppressed sections of the society could never speak and now they have found a voice? So, is all this being done in order to silence them?

Or is it because there is something very profoundly wrong in the way we are ‘prop¬agating’ equality? Are we being regressive in the way we are ‘developing’?

It is high time that we, at the social and government levels, just pause and think. If we don’t, the divide, which was initially touted as being just between two religions, will engulf our psyche as a whole. And a society ridden with divides and differences is as good as no society, no order at all.