Good governance and people living in poverty

Assignement #2 – Partitions of heart

Ziani Meryam – exchange student 519026

Partitions of the Heart: “There has never been a more dangerous time in India since
Independence”. Do you agree? Base on the arguments in the book Partitions of the Heart,
what is the “idea of India”, and do you see this being unmade? What lessons does this carry
for how other countries deal with increasingly diverse populations?

Introduction

Partitions of the heart is a book that must make you react. Being indifferent while reading
it is a sign of disease of our society. As said in the book, it is either that we fear to react,
that we don’t care or that we secretly enjoy the cruelty around us which is unthinkable.
Another thought could be that the society we live in make us become numb on purpose in
front of those events in order to create a mass that will be flexible and easily controlled.
The western societies and the war of ideas capitalism has won at the end of the last
century lead us to that controlled apathy. Taking a step back and truly understand what
the consequences of our actions are and to really make an assessment of where
humankind is and where it is headed is almost impossible on purpose because of several
alienating process we are in by force or by habit.

I think that the book it as the same time a really dense and well-thought approach of Indian
society to an extant but also that it can echo in us no matter the country we are from. I
think that the only part of the population this book might not echo in is of course the more
“strategic”one. When it comes to minorities, and I think that is what make the beauty of
it, the battles can converge easily (even if they do not all the time). Once we have
experienced discrimination, we can empathize at least a little bit with minorities. Of course,
we will never understand their pain and the extent of their suffering, but it is there.
Whereas the dominant will struggle to empathize and why would they want to empathize?

In our globalized world, if you are a heterosexual western white male how can you picture
the feeling of being oppressed and discriminate? I am not saying that all the people that
are in that category cannot empathize but the gap for them is immense. Therefore,
reaching them it is at the same time the most important and difficult task we need to
handle.

Analysis and comments

Idea of India

As a foreigner my knowledge of India is rather small and heavily biased. Before I arrived,
here my understanding of the challenge of this complex and peculiar country were almost
non-existent. Thanks to several classes (GGPLP but also public policy or microfinance), I
can know at least apprehend the size of my ignorance.

Partitions of heart allows us to deepen some topics that we do not have time to focus on
during classes. Besides, the purpose is difficult because the datas on the topics of muslims
lynching are not available and not even calculated so this is almost primarily research. The
first step of research work where you collect interviews and individual stories to try to
define a trend. The only issue is that this trend is willingly hide by the government.
According to the typology of the book, India might be in the third stage of the post-
independence era. Which meant that factually maybe it is not the period in which the most
deaths and massacres are happening. This is a more subtle era in which one step at a time
and progressively you destroy the idea of India.

India is sometimes called a subcontinent. Indeed, after experiencing India for just two
months, the struggle is there. What is the identity of India? What is the common factor of
those 1.3bn people? For me, it is an unanswered question.

The book offers an answer. India is this secular democracy that survived many external
enemies and forces. The idea of India is to respect the worship of everyone and even to
promote this diversity. This should be the force of India according to its essence of a
tolerant and united country. The idea of brotherhood should be prevalent in the country
of Gandhiji. Nevertheless, currently we are the witnesses of his India being shred.

For me the concept of identity is fundamental to understand those issues. How can you
gather people that do not speak the same language or culture, that do not have the same

2
political opinions and that do not worship the same Gods? How do you make an hindu man
from Tamil Nadu feel he is the part of the same entity as a muslim women in Gujarat?

The book partition of hearts made me think about a previous reading I did “deadly
identities” by Amin Maalouf a Lebanon-French author.” “It starts by reflecting a perfectly
permissible aspiration, then before we know where we are it has become an instrument
of war” (Maalouf, p.32). Conflicts between social groups that claim different social
identities will lead to antagonistic behaviors between individuals even if they use to be
neighbors or friends (in Partitions of Heart, it is mentioned a muslim family that use to have
good relationship with their Hindu neighbors but once the tensions increased among
Hindus and Muslims their relationship vanished). The thesis of the author is that such
behaviors are now more frequent because of globalization. A dilemma appears:
disintegration of identity and fundamentalism. For me, if India keep this trend of
stigmatization, lynching this pattern will occur and maybe it has already to some extent.

Nevertheless, this pattern is rather a fake one. Your whole person cannot be defined by
one aspect of this complex and plural identity. You need to embrace this plurality and to
accept that you can be both think and in our case for instance, muslim and Indian. If the
Modi government keeps those anti-secular policies, people will just withdraw into
themselves in their community as they are already doing. This communautarianism will
lead to more violence.

An unfortunate global trend

Is India more dangerous now than it used to be? The book advances that there is a
dalitization of muslims in India (“Borders in Gujarat” chapter). India bear the burden of
hundreds of years of caste system and therefore as a foreigner it is difficult to apprehend
how bad the situation is currently because the prejudice, we have of India is caste system.
For me, India is just moving toward the model of western countries in which the hatred of
minorities exists but just in a more subtle way. Massacres, slaughters do not exist anymore
but there is special segregation, educational segregation in western country. It is not only
based on religion, but it can be based on capital for instance as liberalism and capitalism
are the main dogmas. For instance, it will not be like in India where muslims cannot open

3
bank accounts this is way too obvious for the poisonous western system nevertheless
datas will show for instance that in business school like mine for instance, 75% of the
students there come from Paris whereas 20% of the population lives in the Paris area. In an
egalitarian society, the logic data would be to have 20% of Parisian and 80% of students
coming from the rest of France.

A point I think should be mentioned from the French perspective is in the chapter
“Nationalizing the gujarat model”. “If you take out French president (…) it is not a very
encouraging picture”, about the G20 regarding countries becoming illiberal democracy
and repressive government.

The book was written before the yellow jackets movement in France which for me was a
telling example of how western democracies while pretending they are progressive and
ahead of their time are in really more vicious and can use force as soon as they feel
threaten in the slightest way in their foundations. The UN itself questioned the excessive
force by the French police. A full investigation has been required against the French
government. In February the total of victims during the protests was more than 4000,
2000 condemnations have been reported. 24 people lost an eye because of LBD weapons
and 5 lost a hand because of grenade.

Besides, one particular example during the yellow jackets movement about how the
government reacted to all the tensions in France is the episode of the hospital la Pitié-
Salpêtrière. Christophe Castaner ministry of the Interior declared that some protestors
attaqued an hospital during a yellow jackets protest. Without waiting for the fact to be
proven he declared that the protestors attacked this hospital and that they assaulted the Commenté [m1]:
nurses and doctors there. He even tweeted that his support was total to the victims
(allegedly a policeman) because worker from the hospital and policemen were French
republic proud. The day after, videos were showing what really has really happened.
Several groups were around the hospital and none of them attacked the hospital or
assaulted anyone. A video even shows protestors trying to find a safe place because they
were purchased by the police. The allegedly shocked workers of the hospitals said that
everything happened really fast and that all the protestors were calm whereas the head
of the hospital declared that it was a catastrophic event. Of course the head of the hospital

4
is well-known by the French president and all the testimonies from the nurses and doctors
were completely in opposition to this image of chaos the minister tried to advance.

The last point I would like to advance to show to some extend there are some similarities
between the issue that India and France are facing is about how muslims people are
perceived there. We cannot even count how many islamophobic events have happen in
France in the last few years : terrorist attack of an mosque in Brest (which has not been
qualified terrorist), a mother wearing a hijab accompanying a class insulted and humiliated
by a MP which lead to her son crying, a university asking for signal of radicalization
(apparition of beard, hijab, clothing change, absenteeism during prayer time etc). France
does not accept France in its plurality anymore and now people do not even have the
decency to hide it. All the barriers of decency are long gone and the example of it was the
Nicolas Sarkozy speech in 2010 in Grenoble where he publicly said that people from foreign
decent should see their French nationality taken away if they assault a representative of
the authority. Since then, the distinction between them (including me as my family
immigrated in France) and us has been legitimate.

What stroke me in Partition of heart and therefore in the president Modi policy is the
Overton window in India, the window of discourse. The Overton window theory is what
the public discourse tolerates. In India, you can almost say without fearing any drawback
that you do not like muslim or that the factor of unity is religion in India (an answer I often
receive when I ask people what the common factor amongst Indian peopleis). If the
discourse is outside of this window you are judge as radical but if it is between the lines it
is acceptable. In India, the level of acceptation is gigantic. In France, several ideas that
people nowadays are saying publicly would have been judged racist a few years ago. You
can for instance say without any second thoughts that Islam cannot match the values of
democracy or the Republique.

Conclusion

Indian people struggle to understand the unity of their nation and the current policy is
increasing this feeling among the population by showing “them”. They are making second
class citizens. Minorities can more easily empathize with other minorities because they do
know the feeling of being discriminate. The book tackle mostly the critical situation in

5
which muslims are, nevertheless several other minorities are quoted (Christians, Sikhs etc).
For me, an important point is that once a minority is targeted you can be sure that others
will be. It is a vicious circle that all societies have seen and that is why people need to react.
If muslim people are not enough to make the policy change in the country, minorities can.
The debate needs to be broadened and people need to see that the problematic that
muslims are facing today will become theirs soon enough if the idea of Humanking is not
enough. The convergence of battles could allow several oppressed people (Dalits, Muslims,
Christians etc) to be heard. Nevertheless, without priviledged people starting to refuse
this status quo, the battle will be uneven.

India has been united against the British empire. Now that a common identified enemy
does not exist anymore, some people struggle to find this unity and therefore they are
trying for their own interest to divide and create gap among people. Accepting India in its
plurality and embracing differences is the easiest path humanly nevertheless because of
power relationships and harmful policies because tend to forget. We, the bystanders, need
to be outraged by those unfair acts because in this apathic process we are losing our
essence. The first thing to do is to react and to stop our apathic behaviors. We do know in
ourselves what is right and wrong, but we are afraid of judgments, of repercussions or just
of being wrong as most people are following the dogmatic path. We are experiencing a
critical moment of time; future generation might look at us with shame. We could almost
compare this to collaboration during the IIe world war. Therefore, the only answer is
resistance.