The Solution to Communal Conflict
One day, I spotted an Urdu poster in a Muslim locality in Delhi. In bold letters, it declared:
Indian Muslims, wading through blood and fire, demand to know!
Once, while on a trip to Europe, I came across a young man who was enthusiastically distributing a booklet in Arabic and English. On the very first page were the following words:
India has become a vast slaughterhouse for Muslims!
Now, it is true that in some places in India, some violent incidents have taken place. But to generalize like this for the entire country is absolutely false. It is against reality. And those who want to build their case on the basis of claims that go against reality can definitely not earn God’s help.
Another thing to be noted in this regard is that a sensational way of speaking, writing and thinking robs people of their realism. God has made the system on the basis of which this functions entirely on the basis of realism. Here, in this world, if you want to obtain a certain result, you will have to be entirely in harmony with the principles and laws of nature. Given this, people who derive great pride and pleasure in falsely blaming others are bound to be bereft of realism. They will have no status left in the real world. People who keep blaming others for their woes always prove to be a cause for strife and conflict. The government of the country where they live, or the people who live around them, may do 99 things properly, but if the government or other people falter on just one thing, they whip up such a furore as if that is the only thing they know how to do!
The writer Robert Multhoff says something very interesting. He writes:
He who likes to generalize generally lies.
If you make a generalization on the basis of an isolated event, you are giving that exception the status of a general rule. For instance, something happens as a matter of chance but you claim that it is a general phenomenon. If you easily resort to making such generalizations, you will soon come to inhabit a false world, a world of lies. And you will never be able to find Truth or to arrive at the right solutions to your problems.
Often, newspapers come out with bold headlines: ‘Communal Riots in India!’, ‘Riots in Aligarh!’, ‘Riots Break Out in Hyderabad!’ Despite being true, such news reports are always also false. They tell the truth, but not the whole of it, because no communal riot ever engulfs the whole country or even the whole of a city or town. But the language and style that some of our writers and commentators use create the wrong impression that the whole country or an entire city is torn apart by communal violence.
Whenever communal violence breaks out, it does not happen all across the country or even in every part of a particular city. In India, such violence happens more in the north than elsewhere. Likewise, in the city of Aligarh, inter-communal violence sometimes breaks out in the Old City, but rarely, if ever, in the relatively new Civil Lines area. Similarly, the older parts of Hyderabad are more vulnerable to communal violence than the newer parts.
Our leaders are engrossed in the falsehood of generalizations. And that is the greatest reason why they have failed to find a proper solution to this very sensitive problem of violence between communities. Because some of them claim that the entire country or a whole city is drowned in communal violence, they do not see those parts of the country or of a city that are not affected by such violence. If they could see these parts, too, they might be able to investigate what had kept these parts free of violence. And then they could seek to evolve appropriate solutions, based on this knowledge, to address communal violence in those parts of the country or of a city that are affected by such violence.
It is worth thinking about what leads some parts of a city to be rocked by communal violence at the same time as other parts of the city remain violence-free. The lessons one draws from this sort of analysis can be very helpful. If you know what keeps a certain locality free from such violence, you can draw lessons which you can apply to other localities that are prone to such violence.
In this regard, it is instructive to reflect on the difference between North and South India in terms of inter-communal relations. The basis of this fundamental difference lies in the fact that it was mainly in the north that politics based on the so-called ‘two-nation’ theory gained a firm foothold, while the south remained free from this sort of divisive politics to a large extent. As a result, an atmosphere of inter-communal rivalry prevails in much of the north, unlike in much of the south.
Similarly, there is a fundamental difference between Old Aligarh and the Civil Lines area. Many people in Old Aligarh are uneducated, in contrast to the Civil Lines area. Likewise, many of the denizens of Old Hyderabad are poor, unlike in the newer parts of the city.
From this sort of comparative study one can gauge under what conditions inter-communal violence generally breaks out, and also under what conditions such violence remains absent. The method to end inter-communal violence, then, would be to try to create in North India conditions that prevail in large parts of South India that have remained free of inter-communal conflict. Likewise, in the old parts of towns like Aligarh and Hyderabad, efforts should be made to replicate the conditions or factors that prevail in the new parts of these cities that keep them free from communal violence—for instance, better education and economic development among Muslims. These conditions are what have kept some parts of the country free from inter-communal violence, and if replicated elsewhere, they can help put an end to such violence there, too.
In this regard, one must also add that Muslims must put an end to all those factors that engender an atmosphere of conflict between them and others—such as for instance, demanding their rights, engaging the politics of protest, raking up disputes over mosques and temples, and so on.
The fact of the matter is that to end inter-communal violence in India we do not have to search for a new solution. All we need to do is replicate those factors or conditions that prevail in communal violence-free parts of the country or a city and that serve as a deterrent to communal conflict in those parts that are prone to such violence.
