Chapter Fourteen

The second conference of this Council was held in June 1962. In the speeches made on this occasion, various measures were suggested to promote communal harmony. Yet, no action was taken on these suggestions. Moreover, no more meetings of the Council were held during the rest of Nehru’s life. The third meeting of the Council was called by the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, in Srinagar, in 1968. It called for promoting hatred between communities to be made a cognizable offence. Some other steps were also mooted. A few laws and rules were also passed. But still, no practical benefit emerged from all of this. And so, even today, the situation in the country is about the same as it was in 1947 as far as the issue of communalism is concerned. What caused this failure? The basic reason is that this issue has been thought of simply as a law and order problem. However, in actual fact, the nature of the issue is different. It is not really a law and order problem. Rather, it has to do essentially with the lack of intellectual development or lack of awareness. To solve the problem, what is required is to properly educate the people and to promote proper thinking and right judgment. People should know how to make the distinction between actions that are efficacious and those that are not. They must know what they should do and what they should abstain from. They should learn the importance of thinking before acting. This sort of aware or awakened society is one where communal harmony can flourish. It is by promoting this sort of social awareness, rather than by approaching the issue as one of law and order and reacting accordingly, that the problem of communalism can be solved. The purpose of the law in this regard is only to deal with exceptional cases of violence in society, and not for improving the general health of society. In the case of surgery, only the affected part of a patient’s body is treated. But if the whole of a patient’s body is affected by disease, then surgery is of no use at all.