In Conversation: Farahnaz Ispahani on the Politics of Hate in South Asia

In Politics of Hate, noted scholars-experts on the subject and the region-discuss their research on the role of the media and political leaders in deploying hatred for political advantage, covering developments in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. In an era of media incitement, orchestrated attacks on mosques, churches, and temples, and identity politics, this book serves as a timely study of the phenomenon of politically motivated religious and ethnic division.

We talked to the editor of the anthology, Farahnaz Ispahani, about the rise of majoritarian politics and political violence in South Asia. Read our conversation below:

Q. The contributors in the anthology repeatedly suggest how Majoritarianism is fuelled by Otherisation and various socio-cultural insecurities. While a discussion on the causes of these anxieties and the effects of the reactions is a more nuanced one—and yet impossible-to-pin-down, seemingly—how do you feel that these tendencies have manifested themselves in South Asia? To the extent that they have cut across diverse ethno-religious conflicts and borders to become a similar pattern noticeable in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

A. Majoritarianism is currently a global phenomenon. The phenomenon is the product of majorities, ethnic, racial, or religious, being told by some leaders that minorities are somehow privileged and that the majority’s status or power, and in some cases existence, is threatened by the minorities. The U.S.is witnessing a rise in white grievance politics. Ethnic majorities in several European countries are expressing resentment against immigrant minorities. In South Asia, the phenomenon of majoritarianism is more religious, going back to the partition of the Indian subcontinent along religious lines.

Political, religious, and even military leaders of South Asia have used ethnic and religious sentiment against minorities to mobilise support from the majority. In almost every country of the region, the majority’s overwhelming numerical superiority is deemed insufficient to ensure its place in society and the political order. A sense of insecurity is perpetuated that results in the majority fearing the minority.

The minority is ‘the other’ against whom the majority can be mobilized. Any number of arguments can be, and are, invoked to explain why the majority’s social, economic, or cultural position is under threat, and why its dominance is necessary. To believers in majoritarianism, they are simply taking steps to respect or protect the majority’s beliefs, rights, or sentiments even when these appear rather extreme to everyone else. Majoritarianism is also often presented as a simple function of democracy, ignoring the fact that democracy is meant to protect the rights of minorities as much as the majority.

Hindu majoritarianism in India or Sinhala majoritarianism in Sri Lanka has a strong element of the minority giving up its way of life to comply with the majority’s view of the minority’s ‘proper place’ within the country. Hindu majoritarianism tends to view the Muslim minority as a fifth column and often portrays them as being sympathetic to Pakistan, and hence associated with India’s enemy.  Christians are denigrated as remnants of a colonial legacy even though India has had Christians since well before colonial rule. In Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Hindu minority and groups such as the Ahmadiyya are portrayed as a threat to the beliefs of the majority.

Q. How do you think manipulation of national histories (often to rewrite them) has enabled the Majoritarian project/ propaganda across South Asian countries?

A. The desire to rewrite history is rampant across the sub-continent, dating back to the Partition in 1947. Pakistan was the first country in the region to start the process of crafting a new history, partly to explain the country’s creation. The notion that the advent of Muslims in the subcontinent made India’s partition along religious lines inevitable was inserted into the educational curriculum. It created a certain image of the religious and ethnic other in Pakistan. Since the days of military dictator Ziaul Haq, everyone other than Punjabi Sunni Muslim males were relegated to second class citizens. Ideologues in Sri Lanka and India have also sought to rewrite the past, glorifying certain time periods in history, and omitting other centuries. There has been an effort to prove that the previous versions of history were somehow biased against the majority as they did not glorify it enough.  

Q. Benedict Anderson suggested how nationalism and the idea of a composite nation assumes a level of imagination. Would you suggest that the politics of hate as we know it in South Asian countries is driven by the perpetrators of imaginary grand narratives like Hindu Rashtra in India and Islamist (Sunni) Republic in Pakistan. What would you suggest is a way to challenge these grand narratives?

A. The Hindu rashtra and Islamic state narrative have multiple flaws and have faced challenges from the very beginning. In India, there have always been two imaginings of what it means to be Indian – inclusive versus exclusive. If there is freedom for debate and discussion, no single narrative wins.

The domination of a single, exclusive narrative requires shutting down or restricting discussion. In Pakistan, suggesting that the country embrace secularism is almost impossible. It attracts the response that supporting secularism is an attack on Pakistan’s ideological foundations as an Islamic state.

Few Pakistanis hear the fact that the concept of an Islamic state – in Pakistan or elsewhere – has faced criticism even from Muslim scholars and theologians for centuries. The machinery of state supports the idea that Pakistan should be an Islamic state and that leaves little room for debate and discussion.

The concept of the Hindu rashtra is also an old one. But Hindu majoritarianism always faced pushback as long as there were counter narratives in the public space. It is political support for this idea that has helped it gain broader sustenance while silencing critics as anti-Hindu or anti-India.

Exclusive grand narratives need to be questioned and debated. Their internal inconsistencies and historical errors need to be exposed. Only counter-narratives, of pluralism and inclusivity, will displace majoritarian meta narratives. But that is an uphill task unless there is some political support behind them.

Q. A recurring point in the essays is how the majoritarian project is often cracked from within. There are sects within Islam, religious and (meat) consumption habits differ amongst Hindus; yet the majoritarian modus operandi is a belligerent normalisation of an ideal ethnic/ religious identity. How does this profiling and monolithisation of religious identity prove detrimental even for the majority?

A. The more one seeks uniformity, the more fissures arise whether in an idea or imagining, or even a political entity. Diversity is key, especially to a region like South Asia that has had ethno-linguistic and religious diversity for ages. Political mobilization, what I and my fellow authors call ‘Politics of Hate’ make people ignore diversity for a while, but eventually imposed uniformity does not endure.

Majoritarianism faces challenges both from within and outside. For example, Pakistan started out by casting Hindus as ‘the other.’ Then, debate started on whether certain sects that considered themselves Muslims were, in fact, Muslim. The attempt to impose a uniform Muslim identity on Pakistan has faced pushback not just from the non-Muslims but also Muslim minority sects and from various nationalities and ethnic minorities of Pakistan.

India will likely go through a similar process. Europe in the Middle Ages realized that after fighting non-Christians in the name of Christianity, there were other battles awaiting them, to be fought between various Christian sects. That is when the idea of secularism, of separating state and religion, was born.

Using religion in politics means that while you need the support of the more radical elements, you are unable to ever satisfy them. Pakistan is witnessing the blowback from groups that now seek to make Pakistan into an even more truly Islamic state, like Afghanistan. More Muslims have been killed by these radical groups in Pakistan, to create that ideal state, than non-Muslims.

Similarly, Hindu majoritarianism is finding it challenging to deal with vigilante groups whose sustained attacks on minorities impact not just Indian society but also India’s relations with its neighbors and outside world.

Q. In light of laws like CAA-NRC and other laws across the South Asian countries that employ juridical sanction to perpetuate religious prejudices, how do you understand the religion-citizenship-politics nexus?

A. The religion-citizenship-politics nexus is as old as the nation-state, even older as Kings and Queens would often dictate which religious communities were acceptable in their kingdoms. The constitutions of most South Asian countries guarantee rights to minorities. But in practice these rights have been either ignored or denied, depending on the political dispensation in power. Sometimes they have been used instead to perpetuate religious prejudices. Even when a law or statute offers protection, the state apparatus can choose to ignore that and even if an individual finally finds justice it may be decades too late.

Q. Husain Haqqani’s essay suggests how Pakistan uses religion as an impenetrable wall to avoid international human rights organisations’ interventions in their bad policymaking. Similarly, Mohammad Taqi’s essay on the Shia predicament in Pakistan as well as your own essay in the volume suggest the Pakistani government’s fault lines. How do you think the intermixing of religious determination and political incompetence has proved regressive in Pakistan?

A. Pakistan’s founders had offered two visions of Pakistani nationalism in the process of garnering support for a new nation and state. But after Pakistan’s creation, the idea of Pakistan became tied to the fear of an existential threat from India. That created an ideology that is defined through Islam. The nexus between Islam and Pakistan’s national identity created an environment where it is difficult for the Pakistani government to act against extremist groups that wrap themselves in Pakistan’s flag and Islamic banners and claim to be fulfilling Pakistan’s raison d’etre.

Pakistan’s so-called ideology has polarized Pakistani society and politics and worsened Pakistan’s internal security. The excessive focus on security has hurt the building of human capital and hampered economic growth. Pakistan’s recurrent economic crises testifies to that. Ideological imperatives also interfere with developing a pragmatic foreign policy.

Pakistan would do better if it embraced its diversity. Instead of seeing itself as an ideological state, Pakistan could see all its national, ethnic, and religious minorities as citizens of a country committed to improving the lives of its citizens.

Q. Recently, a cow vigilante in India was awarded a silver button by YouTube—a recognition of acquiring a certain number of subscribers and views. What are your thoughts on the dystopian digital world that has become a pliant amplifier of the politics of hate in a borderless, digitally connected world?

A. The emergence of social media and the creation of an online ecosystem has made it easier to spread hate and prejudice, orchestrate fake stories, and choreograph campaigns. Across South Asia, it is groups associated with majoritarian ideology that tend to be among those who are most effectively organized to take advantage of technology for political ends. This has worked to the disadvantage of minorities throughout the region.

Q. How could we challenge the rampant politics of hate and prejudice that surrounds us?

A. Hate and prejudice can only be challenged through debate, discussion, and education. That requires allowing freedom of speech which in and of itself is increasingly difficult all across the world, not just South Asia. The antidote to the politics of hate and prejudice is politics focused on real issues – social problems, economic choices, international relations. It involves hard work but until some leaders rise and do that hard work, dividing people to secure votes and win elections will continue to impair all South Asian nations’ ability to achieve their potential.

Interviewed for HarperBroadcast by Kartik Chauhan