Why Salman Khurshid is Wrong in Equating Hindutva with Islamist Terror
By
Arshad Alam, New Age Islam
20 November
2021
There Are
Fundamental Differences Between Islamist Terror And Right-Wing Hindu Groups
Main
Points:
1. Islamist
violence primarily draws its inspiration from religious scriptures.
2. Hindutva is
confined to national boundaries which is an anathema to Islamist terror groups.
3. Islamist
violence is primarily directed at Muslims while the victims of Hindu right-wing
violence are religious minorities.
4. Are Muslims
supposed to forget the pre-2014 violence against them because it was committed
by the Congress party?
----
Salman Khurshid, Congress leader
----
Salman
Khurshid, the Congress leader landed himself in controversy after the
publication of his book ‘Sunrise over Ayodhya: Nationhood in our Times’. In a
small portion of the book, he compares a ‘robust version of Hindutva’ with
Islamist terror groups like ISIS and Boko Haram. While some in his own party
have supported him, many inside and outside have opposed him for this
comparison. The Hindu right-wing groups have demanded banning of the book and
have indulged in arson; targeting one of his houses in the hills.
If someone
else had made this comparison, one would not have seen this level of consternation.
But Salman Khurshid is a Muslim, and hence this comparison was bound to stoke a
controversy. May be, he should have been more measured but what if he himself
wanted to generate such a controversy?
But despite
the brouhaha that has been generated, it is fair to ask if Salman Khurshid was
right in his comparison. Even if he did not take the name of the RSS, he
certainly meant that certain strains of Hindutva are similar in their violent
proclivities as some of the heinous Islamist terror groups. Certainly, we have
seen in multiple riots and state-controlled pogroms that the Hindu right-wing
has committed revolting violence, particularly on Muslim women. From being
stripped and paraded to their wombs slit, cases of deranged yet premeditated violence
are all part of documentation. Men have similarly been killed in extremely
heinous fashion. On the other hand, Islamist groups like the ISIS and Boko
Haram have indulged in kidnapping, rape, torture, sex slavery and many other
atrocities, especially on the women of religious minorities or those who they
have declared beyond the pale of Islam.
One can
keep arguing that one kind of violence is different from the other. That the
brutality of Boko Haram is more pugnacious than that committed by the Hindu right
wing. But for the Yazidis and Muslims and especially their women, who have
suffered at the hands of such brutes, these differences simply do not have any
value. Any violence leaves a permanent scar on the psyche and any attempt to
get into the semantics of ‘type of violence’ is not just pointless but also
bereft of any empathy for the victims of such violence.
But beyond
the effects of the violence, it needs to said that there are fundamental
differences between Islamism and Hindutva of whatever variety. First of all,
Islamist violence primarily draws its inspiration from religious scriptures.
Whether it is ISIS, Boko Haram or the Taliban, they all derive their legitimacy
from within the Islamic tradition, relying primarily on religious teachings. Hindutva,
on the other hand, is primarily political in its orientation. Hindu right-wing
groups treat other communities as insufficiently socialized in the national
culture and therefore perceives them as a threat. No doubt this understanding
is faulty as there is no singular way to belong to the national culture but it
is important to distinguish that the motivations of Islamist and Hindu
right-wing violence comes from very different sources.
Secondly,
Hindutva is confined to national boundary but Islamist terrorism does not
recognize any such boundaries. Rather, Islamist terror groups understand these
boundaries against the teachings of the Quran and hence makes all possible
efforts to obliterate them.
More
importantly, Islamist violence is primarily directed at those Muslims who do
not subscribe to their ideology. Thus, Sunni militancy in Pakistan and other
places primarily targets the Shia who are deemed as heretic in their eyes.
Despite the numerous terror incidents which have targeted and killed non-Muslims,
the data is clear that most victims of Islamist violence have been Muslims
themselves. The same cannot be said with regard to the violence enacted by the
Hindu right wing groups which are primarily and solely directed towards
religious minorities.
In perhaps
deliberately conflating the two, Salman Khurshid might have ensured higher
sales for his book. With his party in the wilderness and without a clue as to
how to negotiate its way back to power, Salman Khurshid might have thought that
a little controversy might help him. And it certainly did with no less that
Rahul Gandhi coming out with a video distinguishing between Hinduism and
Hindutva. Essentially, he gave the same formulation as that of Khurshid:
arguing that Hinduism is a lofty religious philosophy while Hindutva is a
pernicious political ideology of hate, otherness and violence.
Even this
formulation is problematic to say the least. Granted that Hinduism is one of
the most sophisticated religious philosophies but as some Dalit intellectuals
have pointed out, the whole edifice of this religion was based on the
suppression of oppression of multitudes of lower caste people. How does one
convince an Ambedkar about the greatness of Hinduism when he states that this
religion has been responsible for the undignified existence of lower castes and
women?
It is not
just that Salman Khurshid is wrong in equating Hindutva with Islamist terror,
he might be equally mistaken about the fundamental difference between Hinduism
and Hindutva.
It is also
very important to ask some hard questions to Salman Khurshid. History is amply
clear that anti-minority violence in this country hasn’t been inaugurated with
the coming to power of the BJP. The whole effort of Khurshid and his ilk is to
whitewash the crimes of Congress regimes before 2014 which saw the
brutalization of Muslims in many parts of the country. The important question
to ask Khurshid is whether all that pre-2014 was also done by Hindutva forces?
Or is it that Muslims and other minorities are supposed to forget such crimes
because they were committed by a so- called secular party?
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A regular columnist for NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is a writer and researcher on Islam and Muslims in South Asia.
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-politics/salman-khurshid-hindutva-islamist-terror/d/125806
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