When you hafta rule a plural society democratically..

Even a hard-boiled Indian like me, used to cyclical bouts of Hindu-Muslim rioting, was shocked at the entrenched hatred between the two communities in Northern Ireland. The last population survey put the number of Protestants at 54 per cent and Catholics at 42 per cent. The Catholics tend to be visibly poorer and disaffected. But some Protestants feel under siege as the Catholic birth rate is higher and it’s only a matter of time before they outnumber the Protestants. Sounds so familiar to us Indians. Remember... soon 15% Muslim population of India will outnumber 75% Hindus??

Just before visiting Northern Ireland I had attended a brilliant lecture in Oxford—‘Partition: comparative lessons from Ireland, India and Palestine’. The fundamental argument was that Northern Ireland was the laboratory where the British empire-builders perfected their policy of divide and rule. All three countries were hastily partitioned and left with imperfect arrangements that would cast long shadows and sow the seeds for the most intractable problems of the modern age. I saw several other parallels between India and Northern Ireland. The deliberate instigation of violence to polarise communities before elections is an old Indian political trick. The Orangemen’s insistence on taking their parades through Catholic strongholds is eerily similar to chest-thumping Hindu religious processionists triggering a riot while passing through Muslim neighbourhoods and from the provocatively through vacinity of mosques and Lo and Behold!! A muslim always throws a stone on the procession and all hell breaks loose with Muslims businesses and houses targeted almost like clockwork and pre-marked precision.

And after what has happened in Ahmedabad, is it a bizarre flight of fancy to imagine what would emerge if poster painters and other such artists were given a free rein in that city? Standing in the Shankhill-Falls area, I saw Ahmedabad in my mind’s eye. Saffron-hued paintings in middle-class neighbourhoods depicted trishul-bearing youth threatening Muslims with death and eternal punishment. In the Muslim heart of the old city, the graffito depicted rape, murder and pillage at the hands of the state.

- Courtesy Saba's Blog-