Part 5 Conclusion
Remembering acculturation
Whereas for Savarkar it is stories of loyalty and commonality that are the basis for differentiating between minorities, for Golwalkar it is also the minority's public acculturation of Hindu symbols (Jaffrelot 2011, 46). He expressed this in the story that began this article in which Parsis were required to accept Hindu symbols such as respect for cows. As the question of loyalty simultaneously includes Parsis and excludes Muslims, so too does the demand to acculturate and be commensurable. Again, the comparison denies their very different historical experiences and is the remembering of a story designed to exclude Muslims. It is not a neutral demand.
Zoroastrianism and Brahminical Hinduism have a shared origin, they are familial. The oldest religious texts of both Hindus and Zoroastrians are composed in mutually intelligible coeval languages. They have a common ancestral Indo-Iranian religion from which they are both derived. They have diverged and there are differences but their common root provides a fertile ground for a discourse of acculturation and commensurability. The similarities and differences enable a comparative exposition of each tradition in their early stages. Zoroastrians and Hindus have engaged in a productive comparative dialogue for many centuries. Parsis and Hindus have been translating Zoroastrian ideas into a Hindu idiom even prior to the 1599 Qesse-ye Sanjan in the form of the Sixteen Sanskrit Slokas (Williams 2009, 233; Verse 167-181 Williams 2009, 87–91). From the 19th century both drew upon philology to understand both of their traditions historically (Chattopadhyaya 1894; Desai 1904; Hodivala 1925; Chapekar 1982). In the story by Golwalkar that began this article, the Hindu king demanded that the Parsis respect the cow. This is an adaptation of the Parsis own tradition. In the Qesse-ye Sanjan the Parsi priest says to the Hindu king 'We offer our respect to fire and water, and likewise to the cow, the sun and moon.' (Williams 2009, 87 Verse 169) The demand to acculturate does not entail a demand to shed Zoroastrianism. It is the public adaptation of certain practices of a familial tradition. The similarities and differences are constitutive.
In contemporary Hindutva thought Parsis and Muslims are distinguished by their acculturation. In an interview the playwright of the 2013 Gujarat Day play lauded the Parsis' contribution to the states culture as pioneers of Gujarati journalism, drama and their celebrated poets. He exalted the nationalist Parsis involved in the freedom struggle and his Parsi friends. It was not only in their contribution to Gujarat but in his words, that they 'have become 100% Gujarati'. For him Parsis have acculturated the traditions of Gujarati Hindus. He recounted the ancient links between Iran and India, of the Iranians who featured in the Indian epic the Mahabharata and the customs that Parsis and Hindus shared. There was a commonality between the Parsis traditions and his own Hindu traditions.
This is not the case for Muslims for whom the demand to acculturate Hindu symbols is a demand to shed Islam. The ancestors of South Asian Muslims have come to Islam through a variety of complex processes from migration to conversion (Eaton 1985; Eaton 1993). Muslims often share cultural expressions with Hindus of the same ethnicity while parting with those radically incompatible with Islam. Given that the difference between Muslims and Hindus belonging to the same language group is primarily in religious practice, the demand to acculturate is a demand to shed Islam. If Muslims concede and discard Islamic practices and symbols they become good Muslims, but only for a transitory moment. In this denial they cease to be Muslim and are subsumed at the bottom of the Hindu caste system. If they retain any outward expression of Islam, they are an anti-national threatening minority. This is not to suggest that there are no grounds for a dialogue between Hindus and Muslims. Such a dialogue is ongoing in India, but it is not one of acculturation and it is not one that Hindutva draws upon.
The Hindutva story of Muslims in India is the antithesis of acculturation because it remembers forced conversion and the destruction of temples. An official involved in the annual Gujarat Day play said ‘Parsis don't create problems over religion and are not violent.’ The religious problem he alludes to is conversion; an exemplary minority does not proselytise. Parsis generally do not accept converts to their religion of Zoroastrianism. With proselytisation, Muslims and Christians do not seek to adopt Hindu practices but negate them through conversion. Christian and Muslim proselytising is intimately tied to Hindu nationalism (Jaffrelot, 2007, 233). For Hindutva conversion presents two problems. First is that their movement is founded on the idea of a majoritarian Hindu nation, the gradual erosion of that numerical ascendency undermines the argument for a Hindu India. The second is in a democracy a Hindu nationalist movement requires a Hindu majority if it is going to form government (Menon, 2003, 43). Comparing the acculturation of Parsis and Muslims is comparing the incomparable. It is comparing a story of coexistence with a story of exclusion in order to advance a contemporary political agenda.
Conclusion
The ethnic nationalist framework for understanding movements such as Hindutva explains how a majority ethnic group is imagined against a threatening Other but it does explain their affection for some minority communities. While the use of threatening minorities establishes the nation as unitary, the use of exemplary minorities by ethnic nationalists movements such as Hindutva or terms such as Model Minorities enables the imagination of a plural society. A nationalist movement in an ethnically diverse society needs an exemplary minority in order to imagine the self as plural. Parsis serve this purpose, they illustrate the munificence and plurality of Hindus.
An exemplary minority establishes why other minorities are threatening. In plural societies an exemplary minority is predicated on the existence of a threatening one. In India, Parsis are exemplary because Muslims are threatening and vice versa. The exemplary minority is the model of what other minorities must but cannot become. Its use in India does not address Parsis, but Muslims exhorting them to follow the Parsi example.
Whether a minority is exemplary or threatening has little to do with their actions, rather it is determined by the political requirements of the present and how the demand to be loyal and acculturate has previously been answered. These are rhetorical questions and demands. A hierarchy of minorities is established by remembering a story of loyalty and acculturation that denies each community’s historical specificity. It is a denial of how each person and community came to find themselves in the situation they are today. It is the use of a politically charged remembered story in the guise of a historical understanding.
For ethnic nationalists a story of coexistence is tied to a story of conflict. When a story of coexistence that uses a treaty trading refuge for loyalty and acculturation is used on its own it can constitute a community as a unique entity and negotiate the similarities and differences between the majority and minority communities. But when that story is read against another of disloyalty its effect is to exclude. The comparison is not problematic for the exemplary minority, but it is for the threatening minority. The use of the exemplary minority, or model minority is not benign, it is an assault on those already discriminated against in order to imagine the self as plural.
Concluded
Source: https://openresearch-repository.anu...k-Parsis-Hindutva-ethnic-nationalism-2017.pdf
Interesting piece. Not dissimilar to what has been often said here. By the Other.
Cheers, Doc
