From insecure to over secure Indian Muslims

Muslims are en bloc vote bank in India. Muslims are not just a minority but considered as the good catchment area during election season and communal season. For ages Muslims are playing a potential role in the Indian society in these forms. Unfortunately there is no farsighted Muslims coming out. Using the limited vision of the Indian Muslim leadership, political figures of all hues are exploiting to the fullest extent. As long as Muslims are confined to the narrow mental territory there is no scope for the betterment.

Javed Anand writes in The Deccan Chronicle on 29 April 2011

Indian Muslims just got luckier. Already spoilt for choice, the Spring of 2011 has brought two fresh bonanzas for the country’s “second largest majority”. One comes gift-wrapped as a brand new political party; the other is a forum of Muslim advocates of Maharashtra. Many compliments of the season, Badhai ho badhai!

But hang on a moment. It perhaps is too early to exult. The Jamaat-e-Islami’s (JI) invitation to a party has met with more jeers than cheers. Not many Muslims, it appears, are keen on singing Happy Birthday to the new-born named Welfare Party of India. The Muslim advocates’ meet in Mumbai on a Friday (April 22) saw the enthusiastic participation of around 300 advocates from all over Maharashtra. The stars of the show were two retired Muslim judges from the Mumbai high court: Justice Bilal Nakzi and Justice Shafi Parkar. But outside the venue the reception was mixed.

Let’s take the second one first. What on earth is the meaning of a separate Muslim lawyers’ forum? What’s coming next: Muslim doctors’ forum, Muslim journalists’ forum, Muslim IAS/IPS officers’ forum, Muslim consumers’ forum? Thane city’s advocate Abdul Kalam explains the rationale for such a forum thus: “After the communal riots, it has been found that Hindu advocates are reluctant to fight cases of Muslim victims or accused. We don’t say that all non-Muslim advocates are biased, but during moments of crisis, many upright advocates have developed cold feet”.

Is that so? What about Kapil Sibal, Shanti Bhushan, Anil Divan, P.P. Rao, M.S. Ganesh, Kamini Jaiswal, Sanjay Parikh, Aspi Chinoy, Navroze Seervai, Gautam Patel, Mihir Desai, Aparna Bhatt and Ramesh Pukhrambam, all of whom have contributed time and talent pro bono, fighting for justice to the Muslim victims and punishment to the perpetrators of the state-sponsored 2002 Gujarat carnage? What about Teesta Setalvad and her non-religious organisation Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), which for over nine years has led the Gujarat victims’ struggle for justice from the front? What about Mukul Sinha, the lawyer from Ahmedabad, and the hours and days that he has spent before the Nanavati-Shah-Mehta inquiry commission?

As for the JI and its new baby, the Welfare Party of India (WPI), if you’ve never heard of Syed Abu Ala Maududi, the maulana who founded the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1941, here’s a crash course. Throughout his life Maududi preached that unlike other religions, Islam is not just about worship and religious rituals like prayer, fasting, charity and pilgrimage. Instead, Islam is a revolutionary ideology; to be a Muslim is to be a revolutionary committed to debunking man-made ideas (democracy etc.), institutions (Parliament etc.) and laws (Constitution etc.) and striving by every means possible to establishing Allah’s rule (Islamic state etc.) and Allah’s laws (Sharia etc.).

This is what every Jamaati has fervently believed and preached for the last 70 years.

Among those who were deeply impressed by Maududi was a person named Syed Qutb of Egypt who proceeded to argue that striving by “every means possible” includes killing those who are Muslims only in name in the interest of ushering Allah’s sovereignty on earth.

Now that the same JI has chosen to place itself at the service of man-made laws, should we not welcome this change of mind and heart? We should if the JI were to publicly declare that Maududi’s views now belong to a library that houses outdated, intolerant, outrageous ideology. But that’s not what the JI is telling us. Instead, it wants us to believe that the WPI is a secular, democratic entity, never mind the fact that 11 out of its 16 office-bearers are Jamaati stalwarts.

That’s reason number one for the non-Jamaati Muslims’ lack of enthusiasm. To many of them, the JI-WPI relationship looks like a mirror image of the RSS-BJP equation. The goal is the same: infiltrating the institutions of democracy for subverting the constitutional spirit from within.

But the facade is all too transparent: How much cover can you expect from one of WPI’s several vice-presidents, including a Christian priest who chanted the Gayatri Mantra at the party’s launch, to provide? Some Muslims see him as the WPI’s Sikander Bakht!

Reason number two: Less than two years ago, in July 2009, we saw the Popular Front of India (home in south India to ex-Students Islamic Movement of India leaders and activists following the ban on the radical outfit) give birth to the Secular Democratic Party of India. Simi, remember, emerged from the womb of the JI in the early ’70s, and the PFI still draws inspiration from Maulana Maududi and Syed Qutb of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. In its spare time, the PFI runs a moral police enforcing Islam on Muslims in a manner that might make the Bajrang Dal and the Ram Sene envious. Ask Kerala’s Muslims.

Adding to the Indian Muslim’s embarrassment of riches is the All-India United Democratic Front of India floated by the Assam-based Badruddin Ajmal of the Jamiatul-ulema-e-Hind in 2005. And let’s not forget the nearly half-a-dozen Muslim organisations in Uttar Pradesh that have sprouted in recent years.

What then should Indian Muslims expect from this abundance of Muslim-floated parties? Ideologically speaking, it means secularism by daylight, Sharia after dark. Politically speaking, at best they’ll cancel each other out; eat into votes of mainstream parties that swear by secularism. At worst, they’ll provide propaganda fodder to Hindutva, feed Islamophobia.

The increasing political disempowerment of India’s Muslims in Parliament and in the Assemblies, continuing discrimination and “red zoning” are no doubt problems crying to be addressed. But a cancer cell like proliferation of Muslim parties will, if anything, compound the malady.

Secular Communal Terror

Violence has a unique branding in India. Different people see killings of innocent lives differently. According to their political nature interpretations differ. One group can defend dreaded terrorists who maimed many people by blasting bombs. The other group can justify their attack against fellow Indians in the name of region and religion. Even a police enquiry creates uproar. 48 bomb blasts and 180 incidents of communal clashes in the last six months. Can we separate these two?

Violent activities carried out by Hindu groups are fancifully termed as “Communal” whereas by Muslims are protected as innocent minorities which I refer here as “Secular violence”. The minority syndrome started during the partition days to reassure the Muslims for an equal treatment is misused by political leaders to play vote bank politics. This segregated politics is the true divider between communities and destroy the secular ethos of the nation. India will lose its secular sheen if the law breakers are allowed to have field days. From the day of Babri Masjid demolition this divided politics of communal vs secular is getting louder.

Law is not allowed to function as per the written script. Police are handicapped. A senior IPS officer told me that everyday his official life is getting complicated. Trial by political figures, media, court and common people are disturbing his peace of mind and normal working ability. Despite their powerful positions, power breathing people are feeling helpless. This is amply clear from the statement of Shivraj Patill, Union Home Minister in the Times of India on 19 October 2008 (p.1), “If I am distracted by unfounded criticism, I’d not be able to discharge my duties. The terrorists are to terrify people, demoralize and defame the police and the government. If we succumb they’d succeed. That’s true of not just me but of my predecessors and those who might follow”. According to Patil, the number of violent incidents (communal, J& K terror strikes, Naxal killings) has come down from 36,000 to 24,000 during the tenure of UPA in comparison to NDA record. He puts the decrease in casualities from 11,000 to 6,000.

Politicians invoke “human rights”, “Innocent before final judgment”, “Hindu bias against minority community” and many other forms of rhetoric to protect the accused for petty political dividends. Another group goes on rampaging railway board exam writing students in the name of safeguarding their regional rights. There is a divisive method employed to trigger violent passions in the name of promoting the cause of community, caste, language, religion and region. It is easily understandable all these causes are not the real ones but political motives are the real motivator. Internal troubles by political groups and external terror by anti-national forces are testing the strength of the nation.

A democratic nation which believes in unity in diversity cannot afford to be a mute spectator towards this segregated violence. All forms of violence should be dealt severely and no one should be allowed to rise above the law of the land Whether SIMI or Bajrang Dal or Maharastra Nava Nirman Sena or Bodos all trouble makers should be delivered instant punishments. Any prolongation in punishment sends wrong signals and encourages more challenges to the law enforcing agencies. .

The simple solution advocated to end all these menaces is “ban them”. The past experience shows that a mere banning is not the solution. The groups can resurface under new names. The cross border terrorists have specialized in creating more fanciful names and structures if they are banned. What the nation needs today is a unified command with one vision to put an end to all root causes of violence. This team will not be controlled by any political motives or diktats. Total freedom and time bound action plan are required for such a force which will have only people with fire in their bellies to end violence without any distinction. No more debate or speculation about communal vs secular violence.