It's probably an apocryphal story that when the Japanese bombed Calcutta's dockland during World War II, the guardians of the Golden Temple declared Amritsar, nearly 2,000 kilometre away, an open city. The alarm was understandable, but India's demographic mix cannot afford another panic response to the far greater outrage the jihadists who call themselves the Islamic State perpetrated in Brussels last Tuesday.
Like Europe, India must work out its strategic response to the carnage. It must plug failures in policing and intelligence, and tighten security at airports, land borders and other sensitive locations. Narendra Modi's business-as-usual decision to go ahead with his visit to Brussels next week must be commended. But it should also be a return to business as usual at home, without provocative explosions of ultra-nationalist fervour. For instance, even before the attacks in the Belgian capital, the National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language demanded that writers should guarantee that their work "does not contain anything which goes against the policies of the Indian government, or anything that is against national interest, or anything which promotes disharmony between the various communities". The circular might arguably have been less objectionable if it had been sent to writers in all Indian languages. Although purists might argue that Urdu is the non-denominational language of the camp and around 99 per cent of Urdu verbs have Sanskrit or Prakrit roots, the popular mind will see any action that singles out a language that uses the Arabic script and reads from right to left as targeting the 180 million Muslims who comprise 15 per cent of India's population.
Apart from the injustice and impracticability of a course that is bound to aggravate resentment, discrimination will also play into the hands of the jihadists. Belgium, which General de Gaulle once described as "a country invented by the British to annoy the French", is probably not crucial to the strategy of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. But Belgian generosity to North African Muslim immigrants has made the country vulnerable. Brussels is also Europe's de facto capital. It hosts the European Union, which enshrines the values of plurality, inclusion and social cohesion, as well as the humanity that has prompted European governments to accept more than a million refugees from war-torn Syria. Drawn into this symbolic battle, European leaders are intensely aware of their responsibility. Although the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, spoke of "war" within hours of the massacre, reiterating the "This time, it's war" declaration by France's president, François Hollande, after last November's bloodbath in Paris, Europeans are too sane to repeat the virulent anti-Muslim rantings of Republican American politicians like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Yet, ironically, problems with the Islamic world began with - or, at least, were exacerbated by - the reckless adventurism of a Republican president who thought nothing of squandering resources on forging alliances to topple even secular Muslim leaders. Europe and the world are paying the cripplingly high wages of George W. Bush's sins.
The most difficult battle is in the war of ideals. Now, more than ever, European cities have to ensure that their Muslim inhabitants, often living in ghettos, are not the victims of hate and discrimination. Shutting the door on Syrian refugees would reinforce the politics of exclusion and strengthen the grievances on which the ISIS feeds. India must be no less careful for a different set of reasons. The legacy of history, the flow of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, and Gujarat's shameful record make it even more important for the government to make a special effort to ensure that Muslims also share in the promised acche din. Shahid Rafi, the legendary singer's son, recently reiterated the All India Muslim Personal Law Board's complaint that Muslims are "increasingly feeling insecure" under Modi. The AIMPLB spoke of "several recent decisions by the Centre and various state governments and hate speeches by Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leaders" creating "a difficult and unnerving atmosphere" for the community.
Therein lies a baffling conundrum. If the government's "one basic mantra... is development, development, development", the prime minister has obviously forgotten to mention it to Bharatiya Janata Party luminaries like Rajnath Singh, M. Venkaiah Naidu, Smriti Irani or Mahesh Sharma. They, and not the Opposition, are so "enmeshed in trivialities" that their rhetoric distracts attention from Modi's "single-minded commitment to development." Making a mountain out of the Jawaharlal Nehru University molehill has landed the authorities with a demagogue who will not be easily silenced. Pointless controversies over yoga and surya namaskar, the respective merits of "Bharat Mata ki jai" and Jai Hind, and the decision to hoist permanent flags in central universities rank with the excitement over ghar wapsi, Valentine's Day and beef as frivolous diversions we can well do without.
Two recent incidents strengthen suspicions of an underlying pattern. When a mob set fire to a butcher's shop in Rajasthan and beat up university students from Jammu and Kashmir over the unfounded suspicion of eating beef, the police arrested the victims, and not the assailants. Nor did the former receive either compensation or apology from Vasundhara Raje's regime when it turned out that the hullabaloo was over goat's meat. The police in Madhya Pradesh, where another BJP stalwart, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, is chief minister, arrested a college student for allegedly circulating on Facebook a morphed photograph making fun of the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, over the switch from shorts to trousers. The student was booked under Section 153 of the Indian Penal Code (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion) and a non-existent section of the Information Technology Act forbidding the publication or transmission of obscene material in electronic form that the Supreme Court struck down last year.
The arrest also highlighted the influence of the Bajrang Dal and the VHP, whose activists had complained about the picture. It was a reminder of the sangh parivar glee in 2014 that the new regime would enable them to reinvent the state in light of their own beliefs. While the prime minister earns international acclaim by inviting investment and expertise and is applauded by expatriates' jamborees in London and New York, his henchmen are free to pursue the saffron agenda. Clearly, Pramod Muthalik, who founded the Rashtriya Hindu Sena, parent organization of the Sri Ram Sena, after even the Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal found it difficult to stomach his militancy, did the BJP a gross injustice by dubbing it the "Bharatiya Jesus Party".
Perhaps this matches the national mood. The BJP wouldn't have been elected with such a handsome majority only on the promise of " sabka vikas". It would be idle to pretend the party's propaganda doesn't touch an emotional chord. Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic are heroes in Srebrenica. The idea of reinventing India as Hindustan and Indians as Hindus appeals to a substantial number of Indians. Some feel the national identity should reflect the culture and thinking of the majority. Others grumble that too many concessions are made to the minorities. This is not, however, something in which even the most xenophobic Hindu has a choice. The reality check of the Pew Research Centre's prediction that by 2050 "India will retain a Hindu majority but also will have the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, surpassing Indonesia" leaves us with no alternative but to return to the multicultural harmony that was the ideal of the founding fathers of the republic. It would be folly to try to use Brussels as an excuse to avoid that obligation.
