Islam and Politics - The Stimson Center

Amit Pandya | 101
it. In circumstances of perceived existential threat, this may make the more bellicose, more
supremacist schools of thought more persuasive than others.
But surely the proclivity to violence is mutual. And not without cogent justifications offered
on either side. It might also be observed that what is said here of the encounter between the
West and the Muslim world is as true of the encounter between the Muslim and the Hindu
worlds.
There is also a mutual sense of superiority over the other. For every insulting Western
assertion of the superiority of secular democratic values over what are perceived as the
less enlightened social, legal, and political precepts of Islam, one may find an assertion of
the superiority of Islamic values, tradition, and way of life. Even among intellectuals of
cosmopolitan education and terms of reference, there remains a deep ambivalence toward
Hindus and Muslims
Hindus in India take pride in their history of religious tolerance and in their philosophical authorities
validating religious pluralism. Yet too many do so as a basis for triumphalism and a sense of superiority.
Few evince awareness of parallel traditions of tolerance among their Muslim compatriots. They
focus instead on the historical instances and philosophical sources of zealotry in Islam. Muslims in
good measure return the compliment, focusing on the narrow exclusiveness of Hindu social structure
rather than its tolerant traditions.
What is unmistakable in the Hindu-Muslim encounter is that the key symbols of cultural identity have
become significant grounds of contestation, if not outright tools of contention. Attempts to ban cow
slaughter to please devout Hindus inflame Muslim sentiment, which sees these attempts as deliberate
attacks on the Muslim way of life. The cancellation of commercial inland fishing licenses in
Gujarat is widely understood as a discriminatory policy of an openly anti-Muslim state government,
but is rationalized as respect for the religious sentiments of the radically nonviolent Jains. The public
expression of faith by both communities, in worship or religious festivals, is a significant casus belli
between them.
There is no dearth of parallels in the extremist Hindutva movement to the worst “Islamic radicals”
that the anti-Muslim imagination can conjure up. There is violence against those who allegedly insult
religious figures or challenge the tendentious view of history propounded by the zealots. There are
the international networks for propaganda to, and raising money from, expatriates for purposes of
militant mobilization, often in the guise of charitable or educational activity.
On the beneficial side are found Hindu intellectuals, paralleling Muslim intellectuals, who stand
against bigotry and violence: those who appeal to established Hindu religious thought and authorities
to argue for a more tolerant and inclusive vision, and who remind us that Hindu religious faith
and Hindutva political ideology are quite distinct.