The perils of communalism

 

If we look into the communal history of the last four decades, we find a disturbing pattern in India. Big communal violence has shaken our social fabric almost once in a decade: Delhi riots (1984), Mumbai riots (1992-93), Gujarat violence (2002), Muzaffarnagar riots (2013), Manipur violence (2023). Statistically a big communal flare-up jolts the fabric of our unity once in a decade. And during the lull period, there are little-little fireworks that are kept alive by politicians, vigilantes, hardliner religious leaders or anyone belonging to the power-aspirant group—the slow-smoldering smoke in the social fuel wood that reaches its burning point after a decade.

Polarization on religious grounds is a dangerous pill of instant profits. So the communal element is a big trend in our politics these days. But statistics point to a great danger to our unity if this divisive element isn’t weeded out from our socio-political stream. As we can see from the above statistics, minor communal haggling and rhetoric creates enough fire under the social ground that it bursts out in a big flare after a decade. But the law of mathematics doesn’t stop here at the once-in-a-decade big communal flare-up. The big-scale communal fires separated roughly by a decade will churn out something far bigger in nature after their incubation period is reached. For example, the exponential growth of hate like it happened in 1947. That was preceded by a communal bug that incubated for almost 90 years when the Britishers systematically introduced the element of communal divide in the Indian society after the first war of independence in 1857. And now, with year-long little communal propagandas going full throttle, resulting in a big tragedy almost once in a decade, we may reach the very same partition-time critical limit of social breach in 2040s, that’s almost hundred years after 1947.

Even impartial mathematics is pointing to the dangers to our unity by the communal bug if political parties, organizations, institutions, religious leaders and other influential groups don’t discard divisive communal rhetoric from their plan of action to gain power and influence.