On 2 June 1853, a London writer mailed his friend in the north, asking: “Why does the history of the East appear as a history of religions?" He then digressed about the nature of oriental rule—basing his account on the travels of François Bernier in Mughal India—and how its secret was, in his peculiar words, the absence of private property. The king was the holder of all wealth in his land, his followers merely subsisting on his goodwill. The London writer was, of course, Karl Marx and his friend, the Manchester magnate Friedrich Engels.

Hundred years later, almost down to the date, another Indian prince began collecting baubles of another kind. This time, the trinkets were far more expensive: fertilizer plants, dams, hydroelectric power stations, steel smelters and plants that manufactured everything from pins to power equipment. The collecting binge, however, was no less pernicious than that seen in the Mughal age: his subjects—and yes that is the word to describe them—could only find useful employment in government. Those left outside, searching for some meaningful existence, were castigated as being unworthy of a new dream unfolding in the land. This ruler once told a Mumbai industrialist not to talk to him “about that dirty word profit". The prince was Jawaharlal Nehru and the outsider, J.R.D. Tata.

This dreary history is often blamed for India’s economic woes but is hardly ever considered as a starting point for what happened in Ayodhya 20 years ago when an ancient mosque was demolished by a mob of enraged fanatics. There is nothing unusual in that many Indians think that it was a group of fanatics and “fascists" who indulged in that orgy. But one class, Marxist intellectuals, should think harder. For it was in the halcyon days of socialism from 1952 to 1990 that forces responsible for the mosque’s destruction were incubated. It is worth asking—as Marxists often do with market economies—that if communalism is a part of the religious-political ideological “superstructure", what was the economic “base" that generated the ideological apex?

Imagine yourself in small town India in the 1950s, where the only source of employment is either shopkeeping or petty trading of some form. Think what this situation would do to your daily existence: would you rather believe in god for your daily well-being or believe in “secularism"? There has been no accounting of the phenomenal uncertainties of those decades. It is the history of these “unknown Indians" and their struggle to cope with vast economic uncertainties that magnified, religious tendencies in society.

The result was that in this closed system, accounting of costs and benefits, social gain, mobility and employment took a religious hue. The gain for one community—however minuscule in comparison to its needs—was a loss for others. Nehru and his successors, while being aware of these realities, did nothing to undo them. They did, however, try and make use of the “opportunities" in this situation.

But the view from the top of the political system is often occluded and miscalculations are quite likely, if not certain, in these conditions. Rajiv Gandhi—in contrast with the skill of his mother—fell victim to them. His advisers served him poorly. Wild experimentation in Punjab, recklessness in Assam followed by cynical attempts to manipulate the situation in Ayodhya, paved the ground for what happened on 6 December 1992.

It is into this gap that a crafty prime minister, a dishonest chief minister and an opposition political party desperate for growth, stepped in. The results were disastrous. The calculations of the prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao—Machiavellian as ever—defied any rational assessment. By most accounts, he slept through the day as the deed was done. The chief minister, Kalyan Singh, lied to the Supreme Court about a solemn promise that he had made about protecting the mosque. The opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) smelled a “chance". All three actors were products of the uncertainties described above. A closed economic system, which corresponded to virtually no opportunities at the political level beyond the rigid struts of the Nehruvian system, made for this explosive combination of events.

This, lest one think otherwise, is not a denial of what happened on that fateful day in Ayodhya but a questioning of the adequacy of our understanding of contemporary history. If, for example, one believes in the Hindu fanaticism theory of mosque demolition, surely the period after 1991 should have seen major communal disturbances in India. If anything, since the economic reforms of 1991, the Indian economy has expanded vastly, leading citizens to pay more attention to their economic interests rather than devote attention to religio-political affairs. Economic expansion has greatly secularized India after 1991. Similarly, to take another comparative control, the carnage of 1947 and the creation of Pakistan should have simply put paid to the political use of religion. It did not, as 1992 showed. The point is we need “thicker" theories that explain religious fury better than the mad-crowd-demolished-the-mosque shortcuts that have been peddled so far. Marxist theories of history offer a good starting point. But then, those are meant to analyse the sickness of capitalist societies and not an imagined golden age of 20th century India. An honest appraisal of that unsettling episode is still awaited.

Siddharth Singh is Editor (Views) at Mint. Reluctant Duelist will take stock of matters economic, political and strategic —in India and elsewhere—every fortnight. To read Siddharth Singh’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/reluctantduelist-

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