INDIA’S MUSLIM PROBLEM!

INDIA’S MUSLIM PROBLEM!

By Mohan Guruswamy

Hindustan Times, June 22, 1995

(Things have changed much in the past three decades. There seems no middle ground now. The dominant leadership of the Hindu community has been seized by neo Nazi revivalists who want to wipe out a thousand years of India’s past.MG)

 

 Pakistan, the land of the pure, was carved out of India as a homeland

for Muslims, a fact that was doubly ensured by the "cleansing" out of

most of the non-Muslims who were living within it. Yet India continued

to be homeland for all Indians, Hindu and Muslim, Christian or Sikh, from Assam to Rajasthan, from Kerala to Kashmir - a nation of many faiths and nationalities. Even those Hindu nationalists who for long took a simplistic view of the partition as India for Hindus and Pakistan for Muslims have now largely come to accept this as the reality and, therefore, have begun to come to terms with it.

 

 One of the greatest ironies of Muslim separatism and the partition that it culminated in was that those who wanted it least for Pakistan and those that wanted it most got left behind in India. Separatism was most vehemently espoused by the aggressive and fanatical Muslim elites of UP and Bihar. The Muslim League was strongest in these two regions. The Punjabi and Sindhi Muslims who for long had little to do with the politics of separatism got swept up by the communalism that was unleashed by the UP and Bihari Muslim Leaguers.

 

 Barring a few, the majority of these Muslim separatists stayed on in India and soon joined the "secularist" bandwagon of the COngress. In due course nationalist Muslim leaders made way for communalists. It did not take long for the Muslim community to become a vote bank to

be represented and manipulated by the former separatists who now began to project it as nation within a nation. We are reaping the bitter harvest now.

 

The other great irony of partition is that while an aavowedly Islamic Pakistan, for long under military rule and now a military aided democracy, tackled the minorities question with typical sectarian despatch, democratic and self-professedly secular India still seeks to find ways and means to tackle Muslim communalists and separatists. The reason for this is as much due to the natural dynamics of democracy in which the competition for power creates an impetus for the solidification of

lesser identities, as to the single minded and selfish pursuit of power by Congress politicians and their clones in other parties.

 

We have to only look at the manner in which the Congress party reacted on the Shah Bano judgement and thus negated the impetus it would have had provided to the enectment of a common civil code. When Arif Mohammad Khan spoke in the Lok Sabha, with the encouragement of Rajiv gandhi, he was applauded by all except the orthodox and neo-separatist Muslim lobby. Then Rajiv Gandhi, like a typical "secular" politician panicked at the thought of the Muslim vote bank dwindling and unleashed Zia-ul-Ansari. Soon neo-separatist Muslims all over the country joined in the attack and Arif was manhandled, jostled and jeered in an organised manner wherever he went. Seeing the Congress leadership, if not, tacitly encouraging this, then certainly inert to happenings. Arif resigned. The term "pseudo-secularism" entered our political lexicon shortly thereafter.

 

Arif's travails did not end there. Things were no better in the VP Singh-led Jan Morcha. Syed Shahabuddin has a precondition to his campaigning for VP Singh in Allahabad. If Arif, till then VP Singh's closest associate and co-founder of the Jan-Morcha, were to campaign in Allahabad then he would not campaign. Suddenly Arif was taboo in Allahabad and Syed Shahabuddin joined in VP Singh's battle to change the system! Manuy of us in our anxiety to inflict defeat on Rajiv Gandhi countenanced this. VP Singh soon changed his position and came

out against a common civil code. In private he justified this as a

tactic dictated by the compulsions of the electoral calculus. In public, he called his pandering to Muslim communalists secularism.

Electoral compulsions were soon to become the only calculus for him.

Just as communalism became secularism, casteism became social justice.

 

 Arif's travails did not end even here. The BJP which applauded all

his bold and truly secular positions defeated him in 1991. But there

was a silver lining to this. The Congress and the Janata Dal which

both made a habit of compromising with the crasest form of Muslim

communalism were soundly trounced in the same elections and Arif with the support of the majority of Bahraich's Muslims and many Hindus came a close second to the BJP's Rudrasen Chowdhury.

 

    Clearly many Muslims, particularly the younger generation, are now tiring of the politics of neo-separatism. As the so-called secular and allegedly liberal parties continue to pander to the neo-separatists, the younger Muslim is seeking avenues to express his or her aspirations. One of the fallouts of the chaos and destruction in the wake of the Ayodhya incident is that, both,

Hindus and Muslims are now congnizant of the potential each community has for assuredly inflicting upon the other a painful degree of destruction and damage.

 

   This has injected new dynamics to the Hindu-Muslim equation. For

the first time many Muslims have expressed reservations of the brand of secularism or pseudo-secularism being practised by the so-called liberal parties. This is reflected in the fact that a good percentage of Muslims voted for the BJP in Gujarat and Maharashtra. This new reality has apparantly been recognized by the BJP leadership as in recent days we have seen some moves that reflect this.

 

   Now that the dilapidated and disused mosque has been downed, many Muslims realise that little purpose can be served by insisting on its construction at the very site. The Andhra Congress president, Kamaluddin Ahmed, for one had not long ago publicly appealed that the Muslim community and more particularly its leadership must now rethink this position. But as long as the "secular" parties like the Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party give shelter or support to rabid Muslim communalists, it is unlikely that good sense and reason will come to the fore. For Hindus the Ayodhya site is important. For Muslims the building was. As long as Hindus are a majority in this country no confluence of political compulsions can come about that will allow the site to be given back to the Muslims for building a mosque there once again.

Demanding the site for this by the neo-separatists is only a provocation, particularly as it has no theological or sentimental value except perhaps as a symbol of the alien Muslim power that once dominated most of India.

 

   Even at the individual level many Muslims continue to be provocative

in their actions. GO to any small Muslim owned shop, or restaurants, or even to Muslim homes. It is by far more likely than not that all the persons employed in them will be Muslims. If Muslims continue to behave in this manner how can they demand and expect anything different from the Hindus who are not immune from chauvinism.

 

   Another issue which aggravates Hindu-Muslim ties is the apparent

lack of concern for the national position on Kashmir displayed by the Muslim leadership so far. If the only region in India where Muslims are in a majority wishes to secede because they belong to a different faith, it becomes incumbent on the Muslims in the rest of India to make known their opposition to it. The future of Kashmir has a vital bearing upon their future also. If Kashmir were to be lost the risks of the old and now discarded idea of India for the Hindus and Pakistan for the Muslims will gain momentum again. Yet Muslim leaders who are quick to make an issue over relatively trivial issues like the movie "Bombay", have preferred to remain silent on this vital national concern.

 

   This writer once asked Syed Shahabuddin to speak out on this issue. Shahabuddin's reply was something to the extent that why should he speak out when what is happening in Kashmir is happening to Muslims in the rest of India? What is happening in Kashmir is because there is a fundamentalist fanned war for accession to Pakistan being waged there on the State of India. By no stretch of imagination can it be

said that similar conditions prevail in the rest of the country.

Muslim localities are not being subjected to cordon and search. The army and paramilitary are not out in the narrow streets of Ballimaran or in Kishenganj. There is no night curfew in the old city area of Hydrabad.

 

   This is not just Shahabuddin's position alone. Abdullah Bukhari,

Salahuddin Owaissi and others have also expressed similar views.

What is even worse is the silence of the so-called secular Hindu

on this. No VP Singh or Chandra Shekhar or Arjun Singh has called

upon the Muslim community to take a position on Kashmir with a view to positively influence the situation there. Of late, a few Muslim intellectuals have taken natinalist positions on this. More

need to be encouraged. Leaders of the main national parties have a

duty to provide these persons with appropriate platforms to extend

the reach of their opinions. So far there has been little sign of this.

 

   Shahabuddin who is also a prolific writer of letters to editors, has in a recent letter on the movie "Bombay" while criticising a reviewer's rather simplistic view that the Hindu-Muslim divide can be bridged by interreligious marriages wrote that "the solution lies in mutual respect and tolerance." For once he is right. But to expect mutual respect and tolerance in the face of constant and deliberate provocation is to expect the impossible.

 

   Sensitivity to each other's feelings and aspirations has to be a mutual affair. An essential precondition to this is to share a common perception of history. Dr BR Ambedkar postulated that a shared perception of history is one of the essentials of a common nationality.

The Indian Muslims' history did not begin with the conquest of Sind by

Muhammed Bin Kasim. Our common odyssey began much earlier than that. The Indian Muslim needs to identify with that period also. The Muslim conquest of India equally victimised the Hindu as it did the indigenous Muslim.