Deradicalisation

In part one of this three part series, I examine the factors driving Hindu radicalisation and why liberal solutions like minorities suppressing their identities are ineffective.

On May 30, an estimated 50,000 people gathered at what was termed a Hindu mahapanchayat organised in Indri village in support of Hindu men arrested in relation to the murder of Asif Hussain Khan. Asif, a young father, was abducted and beaten to death in Nuh, Haryana on May 16. While the police have sought to downplay the communal angle, Asif’s family, including his cousin Rashid, who was an eyewitness to the attack, point out that he was forced to chant “Jai Shree Ram” during the attack. 

Irrespective of the primary motivations of the attack, the mahapanchayat organised in support of the alleged killers, and the speeches made at this mahapanchayat, were certainly communal in nature. While mahapanchayats are usually organised and backed by particular castes, this mahapanchayat was described with the broader umbrella term: Hindu. 

One of the fondest comfort blankets of progressive Hindus is the idea that Hindutva is a radical fringe ideology completely divorced from the religion, Hinduism. This elegant theoretical distinction then helps us ignore or dismiss attacks on minorities as being limited to some sort of radical “fringe” elements. This is problematic as it ignores the factors that point to a mass radicalisation of Hindu society, and minimises the extent of the problem we now face.

This latest attack and the now familiar glorification of the attackers brings to the fore two critical questions that must be discussed: First, how do we understand radicalisation in Hindu society today and second, how is this radicalisation to be combatted? Part one of this series will address the first question. To understand the process of Hindu radicalisation, it is useful to begin with understanding the construction of the Hindu identity, and in fact, the idea of identity itself. 

Identity

It is commonplace for people to use identity interchangeably with features of people like race, religion, gender, nationality or sexual orientation (as I have, when I used the term “Hindu identity”). The assumption is that one’s identity is deeply and at times unavoidably shaped by these social and cultural features. Group identity (and conflict) is then understood as the consequence of differences in these social and cultural features — Hindu versus Muslim, upper caste versus Dalit, male versus female etc. 

Some, like Amartya Sen, extend this idea by suggesting that each person possesses not just one but multiple identities that come to the fore at different points — for example a person could simultaneously be a woman, a Hindu, a member of a caste, a landowner, and a mother and could choose to prioritise different identities in different conflicts. This approach does explain some otherwise perplexing group behaviour. The same Jat farmer in western UP, for example, can violently target local Muslims on alleged cow slaughter as a Hindu, while also aligning with Muslim farmers against the government’s farm laws. 

But this in my opinion doesn’t take us far enough in understanding the sort of visceral hatred that has been demonstrated repeatedly by radicalised Hindus against minorities and more particularly against Muslims in the last decade or so. In this context, the work of British Ghanian scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah is interesting. 

Appiah begins by discussing a social experiment conducted in the Oklahoma Robbers Cave State Park in 1953. Two groups comprising 11 year old boys from Oklahoma were sent camping into the national park. The boys were deliberately chosen for their very similar backgrounds — they were all white, Protestant and from similar socio-economic sections of society. The two groups were initially kept entirely separate to allow them to settle in to their respective camps before being told of the other’s existence. The findings were fascinating. When they met, the groups developed an immediate and almost violent antipathy for each other. Each group challenged the other to increasingly competitive sports, they captured and burned each other’s flags, they raided each other’s camps, destroyed property and stole trophies. The adults supervising the experiment had to intervene to prevent one of the groups from carrying out a retaliatory raid armed with rocks. Perhaps less dramatically, they also chose to give themselves collective names (neither had bothered with this when they weren’t aware of the other group), and group characteristics that were recognised by the other group — one group self identified as boisterous and scrappy, while the other self identified as quieter and more pious. Both their internal behaviour (their policies on swearing and cursing) and their view of the other (insults like “sissies” or “bums”) came to be shaped by these labels. Perhaps astoundingly, all of this happened in just four days. 

And while a structured social experiment is not a substitute for generations of human life, Appiah’s point is simple — while cultural differences can and do cause conflict, many of our cultural practices and identities are in themselves created or shaped by conflict. In the words of Donald Horowitz, he argues: 

“Culture is important in the making of ethnic groups, but it is more important for providing post facto content to group identity than it is for providing some ineluctable prerequisite for an identity to come into being.”

Hindu identity

This is of importance when understanding the Hindu identity. The successful construction of a “group identity” for Appiah requires the presence of three elements — first, there must be a term in public discourse to describe the group that is both mutually known and some degree of consensus must exist on who this term should be applied to. Appiah suggests that the Hindu only really became Hindu when the British created the class in the early nineteenth century, to take in those who weren’t members of the famous monotheisms. And while Indian right wing scholars might challenge this theory for perhaps ignoring earlier usages of the term “Hindu” or its derivatives, or point to certain shared religious practices, it is indisputable that the term “Hindu” meets this criterion today. 

Second, there must be an internalisation of this label into the personal identity of at least some of those who bear the label. While groups like the Lingayats and certain Adivasi groups often campaign to be recognised as independent religions, there are certainly a large number of people who consider themselves to be Hindu and who consider that to form a part of their personal identity. 

Third, there must exist societal patterns of behaviour towards this group — either positive or negative (discrimination). This is a little more complicated, as a majority of social patterns of behaviour affecting people who identify as Hindu are driven by caste and not religion. What you are permitted to eat, what deity you worship, who you are permitted to marry, what professions you are permitted to undertake are all governed by caste based rules that vary widely. For example beef forms an important component of the diet of people who identify as Hindu in Kerala, while mere rumours of cow slaughter are enough to spark violent retribution in Uttar Pradesh. 

Group linked discrimination and violence faced by people who identify as Hindu is also predominantly caste based — from the mass killings of Dalit men, women and children by the Ranvir Sena in the 1990s to innumerable cases of honour killings relating to inter-caste marriages that continue until today, the most extreme form of discrimination any Hindu will face is far more likely to be linked to their caste than their religion. Caste endogamy also remains extremely high despite urbanisation, westernisation and industrialisation. Barely 6% of Indians marry outside their respective castes. 

To successfully establish a composite or group Hindu identity (distinct from the individual or personal Hindu identity), Hindu nationalists often attempt to highlight societal patterns of behaviour towards this group that are stronger than the caste based patterns of behaviour that exist today. In particular, they rely on a sense of collective discrimination and victimhood. 

Radicalisation, violence and identity

To emphasise this sense of collective victimhood, Hindu nationalists do two things: First, they delve into the past to create a general narrative of the Hindus of the Indian subcontinent being enslaved in some manner by Muslim rulers. Much of this revolves around convenient half-truths about Muslim rulers like Aurangzeb or Tipu Sultan. This collective victimhood created by past wrongs, both real and imagined, then serves to reinforce the idea of a composite Hindu identity going back for centuries. In some senses, the maintenance of this historical victimhood and ‘avenging’ it as a group is treated as more important than any constructive activities. This is evident in the case of the Babri Masjid — with the path now clear for the construction of a Ram Mandir on the spot, right wing discourse has shifted to laws like the Places of Worship Act, 1991, that prevents them from raising similar disputes about other mosques in places like Kashi and Mathura. The celebration of the creation of a large temple by itself is not enough. 

Second, they rely on creating and maintaining a narrative of ongoing, everyday discrimination. Hindus are essentially portrayed as being attacked or discriminated against as a group — interfaith marriages are recast as Hindu women being abducted and converted by Muslim men (“love jihad”), secular political parties are accused of “appeasement” of Muslims, post-poll violence after the Bengal elections is recast as violence against Hindus, the anti-CAA protests are recast as Hindus being prevented from helping their persecuted brethren elsewhere in the subcontinent. Even in the mahapanchayat held to support those accused of killing Asif Khan, the accused were recast as victims, ‘wrongfully arrested’ by the police. 

Violence against Muslims is then portrayed as the act of a saviour protecting his own community from ongoing persecution. The very name given to vigilante action invokes this sense of saviourhood - for example “gau rakshaks” (“cow protectors”) to describe murderers in cases where the victim is accused of eating or transporting beef. This classification of vigilantes as saviours of the group serves a dual purpose: it reinforces that idea of a collective group that needs saving and inspires other members of the group to commit increasingly violent atrocities against the targeted group.

If we accept this theoretical framework, then acts of violence against the Muslim community today must be seen not solely as the result of preexisting cultural differences but also as one of the building blocks on which the group Hindu identity itself is created and maintained. This has important implications for how we view identity, assertion and violence. 

Liberal ideas of integration and assimilation

Even well intentioned Indian liberals assert that any overt expression of religion by Muslims in their resistance to Hindu radicalisation will be counter productive. They term it “provocation” to the right to double down on their policies. This is because they assume that anti-Muslim violence today is driven solely by differences in culture. Accordingly, they reason that any assertion of these differences will only exacerbate the violence.

This ignores the role played by anti-Muslim violence or demonisation in the strengthening of the group Hindu identity. Given this, it’s quite likely that even if Indian Muslims were to give up every visible expressions of their faith, the demonisation would take other forms, as this demonisation has value in itself to the group identity building project of Hindutva. Some of this is already happening - successful Muslim aspirants in the UPSC for example were targeted by a right wing TV channel which termed their success “UPSC Jihad”.

Telling vocal or visible Muslims to “tone is down” is therefore clearly not the answer. 

Conclusion

A question that is often asked on de-radicalisation is whether there are no well meaning Hindu leaders with influence in the community who could work towards the de-radicalisation of the Hindu community as a whole, and put a stop to or dissuade people from the path of radical Hindutva. And while the idea of some sort of saviour Hindu leader is comforting, this is theoretically difficult, especially as we acknowledge that radicalisation plays a significant role in the creation and the maintenance of the “group” Hindu identity.

For this reason, the answer to Hindu radicalisation is more likely to come from political and social forces and interest groups that do not depend on this collective Hindu identity for their own political and social survival. In part two of this series, I will examine this idea in greater detail, including the role that can be played by caste based politics in addressing radicalisation.