In a brisk 830 words, Robert D. Kaplan of The Atlantic explains some of the smoldering tensions that led to this past week’s slaughter in Mumbai.
Behold two key paragraphs:
In the early Cold War decades, India’s ruling Congress Party, the party of independence, sought to unite both Hindus and Muslims under the umbrella of a shared community and new nation-state. It worked, more or less, until the 1970s, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi enacted dictatorial emergency decrees that erased much of the romantic sheen from Congress’s image. New imagined communities then started to form. In the 1980s, and particularly in the 1990s, with the opening up of the Indian economy to the outside world, Indians, especially the new Hindu middle class, began a search for roots to anchor them inside an insipid world civilization that they were joining as a result of their new economic status. This enhanced status, by the way, gave them new insecurities, as they suddenly had wealth to protect.
Consequently, we had the rise of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party, or BJP). The BJP is one of several Hindu nationalist organizations that promotes a revisionist view of Indian history, in which the Mughals and other Muslim dynasties of the medieval and early modern era (which helped create India’s dazzlingly syncretic civilization - but who also brought terrible depredations upon the Hindus) are considered interlopers in what should have remained a purely Hindu civilization and story-line. Mass communications have helped Hindus in this historical journey, enabling the creation of a standardized and ideologized Hinduism out of many local variants. It goes without saying that a similar process simultaneously occurred within parts of the Indian Muslim community, who joined a world Muslim civilization that competed with Indian nationalism for their loyalty. Bottom line: this is not an ancient historical divide so much as a recreated modern one.
Kaplan, the author of Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos, is understated and subdued in identifying the many important factors in this horrible drama. His closing sentence explains why The Atlantic is essential reading these days: “I have just spent a month reporting in Gujarat on Hindu-Muslim relations, and will have much more to say on the subject in the future.”
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Comments (11) |
November 30, 2008, at 11:43 am
Hi Doug,
I’m not sure why you like this. Kaplan seems to be deliberately avoiding reference to the partition which was only 60 years ago. It seems like trying to explain the hostility between Israel and the Palestinians without reference to how Israel was established.
Regarding the partition, from Wikipedia
November 30, 2008, at 3:13 pm
Besides what Perpetua said, there are two points that could be raised.
One is that we don’t know who carried out the attacks right now. It could easily be Pakistani terrorists who had indirect support from the ISI and were raised on a diet of hatred from Saudi-sponsored schools.
From a larger perspective, there is also a world-wide phenomenon of rising interest in religion and spirituality. This is apparently taking different forms in different places. What Kaplan wrote about could easily be the local manifestation of that larger phenomenon, but I think the jury is still out.
November 30, 2008, at 5:18 pm
Further Jerry’s point, we now have an interview with one of the terrorists. According to him, his group of ten were all Pakistani citizens and had undergone a special course conducted by the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
November 30, 2008, at 5:59 pm
I quote from Kaplan’s first paragraph:
November 30, 2008, at 7:16 pm
BBC news has a fascinating take on it, that the terrorists may have just been thugs and celebrity junkies, who wanted to go out with a bang:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7755684.stm
November 30, 2008, at 7:53 pm
Well, from this article, it would seem these are Kashmiri separatists. The sole surviving terrorist is from “Faridkot in Pakistan- occupied Kashmir” and says he trained with Lashkar-e-Toiba , one of the Kashmiri separatist groups.
November 30, 2008, at 8:18 pm
Doug,
Commenting on your #4, I was reacting to your comment which implies stated that the tensions led, at least in part, to the slaughter.
. I admit I did not read the entire article, but it might be that the tensions he writes about had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks. And it’s not clear that the long term effect will be to exacerbate the tensions. It is possible that non-fanatics of both religions will draw closer together out of disgust at the bloodshed.
November 30, 2008, at 8:22 pm
Jerry, I stand corrected about my overly broad description of Kaplan’s article. I should have at least qualified those smoldering tensions as possibly leading to the slaughter.
November 30, 2008, at 9:19 pm
I was a bit disappointed that Kaplan failed to bring in the recent Hindu/Christian tensions as well. This could have been due to the limited size of the article, and we may hear more later, but I’m disappointed nonetheless.
December 1, 2008, at 2:56 pm
There isn’t necessarily just one motive behind this attack. The terrorists may have personally been publicity martyrs. They may have been trained by Laskar-e-Taiba to advance that organisation’s goals of shaking up India to loosen its grip on its part of Kashmir. Al Qaeda may have coached L-e-T on how to mount a coordinated, sustained attack on soft targets to foster tension between India and Pakistan, leading to a shift of Pakistani troops from their Afghanistan border (where Al-Q is dug in) to their border with India.
I pity the journalist who tries to sort all this out in the face of both a deadline and a word limit.
December 1, 2008, at 3:30 pm
Thank you, Dave, for explaining that it is in A Queda’s interest to foment discord between India and Pakistan to divert Pakistan’s focus from the Afghan border. I hadn’t thought that through.