THE APPROACH OF THE MODI GOVERNMENT TO MUSLIMS IN INDIA-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR: DOES IT SMACK OF HINDU RIGHTISM?

Modi has stated that he would like to continue a dialogue with the Kashmiris on a humanitarian basis, like former prime minister Vajpayee, known to have been a moderate. It would be appropriate to acknowledge that several military personnel have been court-martialed for human rights violations in Kashmir (and the court-martial verdict in the Machil fake encounter case in 2014 was hailed by the defence minister Manohar Parrikar), and a certain instance of a shootout of two innocent Kashmiri Muslim boys by army personnel was strongly condemned by the then defence minister Arun Jaitley, and the army issued an official apology for the same, something Modi proudly took credit for in a speech he delivered in Srinagar. Provincial elections took place in Kashmir in December 2014, with the BJP fielding local Muslim candidates in the valley (one of the candidates, a Kashmiri Muslim woman, sought to restore the functioning of cinema halls in Kashmir, which had shut down during the peak of militancy, owing to some Muslim rightist militants having decreed that cinema is un-Islamic) and several sections of Kashmiri Muslims supporting that party, and though the BJP could not win a single seat from the valley, it had a considerably high vote-share cutting across constituencies. Modi even went to visit flood-affected Kashmiris on the Hindu festival of Diwali, though there also other states then recently affected by floods.

While the riots in Gujarat in 2002 still remain fresh in the public memory of very many Kashmiri Muslims, leading not many of them to become die-hard fans of Modi’s, many of them do appreciate his approach to Kashmir.

In fact, his approach has disappointed Hindu rightists, even the relatively moderate ones, who often refuse to acknowledge that there are rogue elements in the Indian Army deliberately engaging in human rights violations for promotions, medals, lust or bloodlust, and all the killings of innocent Kashmiri Muslims by army men cannot be categorized as unintended errors, though some indeed are, and such people, without even trying to understand the nuances of the Kashmir issue, just label Kashmiri separatists as being “anti-national elements”, “traitors” and so on, and this is not to say that I support the separatist movement in Kashmir.

Also, as far as the Kashmiri Hindus displaced from the valley are concerned, they, in fact, have valid reasons to complain that the Modi government hasn’t offered them much beyond tokenism, offering scanty relief packages to resettle in Kashmir, and even let them down to an extent on the issue of the Kosur Nag pilgrimage. To know more about the Kashmiri Hindus and the Kosur Nag pilgrimage controversy, read this article. Thus, it cannot be said that the approach of the Modo government to the Kashmir issue smacks of Hindu rightism.

More interestingly, the BJP has recently, in March 2015, entered into a coalition with the PDP, a Kashmiri political party, to govern the province of Jammu and Kashmir, and has expressed its willingness to give up its stance on abrogating Article 370 of the Indian constitution conferring that province autonomy, as also to have a second look at the presence of military personnel in the valley and the considerable statutory immunity they enjoy, which has been misused to commit human rights violations.

IS NARENDRA MODI’S FOREIGN POLICY HINDU-RIGHTIST IN CHARACTER?

If the author were asked what he considers the most interesting dimension of the Indian national election season in 2014, it would be Narendra Modi, in spite of his Hindu rightist image, citing how the Indian territories of Pondicherry and Goa, regions in India colonized by the French and Portuguese respectively (unlike the rest of India, which was colonized by the British), should be encouraged to develop relations with their former colonial masters based on their historic connections. This, more than anything else, to the author’s mind, demonstrates a pragmatic approach to viewing the present and the future in the context of the past, a reading of history that is not laced with prejudice, for even many secular Indian nationalists do view colonialism from a very biased eye-lens. Many Hindu rightists today have a very strong aversion to many Western cultural facets, such as Valentine’s Day, and in some cases, the game of cricket and even the English language, and hence, for Modi to suggest celebrating a cultural connection with former imperial powers does come across as pleasantly surprising, especially in the context of the Portuguese rulers of Goa, who had, during the early period of their rule, engaged in forced conversions of Hindus to Christianity, which must be condemned.

Modi, when he was chief minister of Gujarat, had invited investors from Muslim-majority countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and even Pakistan.

Back in November 2013, as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi met a delegation of seventeen district governors from Afghanistan. They sought Gujarat's cooperation in the development of their dairy sector to which Modi reacted positively. Modi also shared details of the contribution of his provincial government to the rehabilitation of earthquake victims in Afghanistan.

 

Now, as prime minister, Modi has relaxed visa norms for Afghans, and India’s assistance to Afghanistan in cash and kind in different sectors has continued, with the Indian government under Modi even organizing a training programme for Afghan civil servants, and tweeted congratulating Afghanistan for its victory against Scotland in its first match in the cricket world cup in 2015.The Modi government even ensured the release of an Indian Christian priest engaging in social work in Afghanistan, held hostage by the Afghan Taliban.

 

Interestingly, so much for Modi’s foreign policy being possibly anti-Muslim right-wing, the government of India, with him as prime minister, actually supported a resolution against Israel (a country adored by Hindu rightists) in the UNHRC. Modi’s government even officially welcomed the formation of a joint government of the Fatah and radical Hamas in Palestine, which may be borne out of pragmatism, but cannot be said to reflect a Hindu rightist approach!

 

Modi, in fact, invited Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan, for his (Modi’s) prime ministerial swearing-in ceremony. More recently, Modi even offered assistance to Pakistan for flood relief operations, and on the sad occasion of over a hundred school children being killed in Pakistan by the Pakistani Taliban, Modi instructed all schools to observe two minutes of silence for the departed. Later, Modi even called the Paskisrtani prime minister, wishing his country, the best of luck for the then coming cricket world cup in 2015!

 

In fact, after coming to power, far from being jingoistic, Modi has drawn much flak for not actually taking a tough stand against Pakistan and China, as promised (http://www.ndtv.com/article/opinion/where-s-the-pakistan-tough-talk-now-modiji-563571).

 

At a later stage, however, Modi did adopt an aggressive posturing with respect to firings from Pakistan, but going by the Indian version of events, that was only in retaliation, and defending one’s borders, even aggressively, cannot be said to be jingoistic nationalism, leave alone being religious rightist.However, his willingness to engage with the Pakistani establishment even thereafter, possibly under American pressure, has generated some resentment within India from strategic experts (http://idsa.in/idsacomments/IndiasNonPolicyonPakistan_ssareen_260215.html).

Is it True that Hindu Victims of Hate Crimes by Muslim Extremists Inevitably Get Justice Faster than Muslim Victims of Hate Crimes by Hindu Extremists?

This is a myth.Speaking of the riots in Gujarat in 2002, for example, the Muslim extremists who burnt a railway coach, which triggered the riots, were convicted as late as in 2011, while the Hindu extremists responsible for killing innocent Muslims in the Best Bakery were convicted in 2006. Also, none of the Muslim perpetrators of the mass murders of Kashmiri Hindus in 1989-90 have been convicted (in the case of one Muslim militant Bitta Karate who confessed to his crime in a televised interview, the judge acquitted him pointing to the shoddy manner in which the local Kashmiri Muslim policemen had investigated the case), in contrast to many cases involving the riots in Gujarat in 2002, in which hundreds of Hindu rioters have been convicted. Those in denial of what the Kashmiri Hindus were subjected to by militants acting in the name of Islam would do well to read this article - http://globalyouthindia.blogspot.in/2014/11/the-hypocrisy-of-islamist-sympathizing.html.

What Led to Narendra Modi's Electoral Victory in the National Elections in 2014?

To consider Modi’s electoral victory nationally as being a reward for the anti-Muslim violence in 2002 would be naïve. It is noteworthy that Modi’s current electoral victory was owing to the ‘first past the post’ system, given that Narendra Modi’s party, the BJP and its allies got only about 38.5% of the vote-share (the votes in very many constituencies got divided in favour of political parties in opposition to the BJP – to explain this in simplified terms, imagine a hypothetical scenario with only ten voters in which three votes go to one candidate and the seven others go to seven different candidates, leading the candidate with just three out of ten votes to win), but even that vote-share should not be seen only from a religious rightist eye-lens.

In the last two national elections in 2004 and 2009, the BJP could not come to power, in spite of seemingly standing very good chances, not in the least because of its hardline Hindu rightist image.

In 2004, the horrific riots against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 were fresh in Indian public memory and definitely contributed to preventing the BJP from coming back to power in the centre, in spite of its excellent performance in terms of economic growth and road connectivity. In fact, what happened best exemplifies Indian pluralism – in Hindu-majority India, Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, a Christian lady, gave the prime ministerial seat to Dr. Manmohan Singh, a Sikh gentleman, who swore his oath of allegiance in the presence of the then president Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, a Muslim gentleman, who is much loved in India as the architect of India’s nuclear missile programme.

Likewise, in 2009, the Indian populace was very disgruntled with the party then in power, the Congress, over its inability to check terrorism, given a series of terrorist attacks in 2008 by the Indian Mujahidin, an Indian Muslim terror outfit backed by nefarious elements in Pakistan, in the cities of Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Delhi, which was followed by the ghastly 26/11 Mumbai attacks by Pakistani terrorists (in which some Indian Muslims gave logistic support), which could have evoked a strong Hindu rightist sentiment; nonetheless, very many Hindus felt disgusted by BJP member Varun Gandhi’s alleged anti-Muslim hate speech, which, by all means, was horribly vitriolic, and the BJP lost the elections yet again, with the Congress party coming back to power. If antipathy to Muslims was an important priority of the Hindu electorate nationally, which constitutes the majority, then it was the most opportune moment for the BJP to come to power, but that did not happen. 

This time around, the BJP did seem to have read the writing on the wall that anti-Muslim hate-mongering does not augur well for national politics, for even a sizable number of Hindus find the same highly objectionable, which is why Modi vocally adopted a tolerant approach to Muslims, leading to his gaining more acceptability at a time when many Indians, including those strongly committed to religious tolerance, were very disgruntled with the Congress party for a variety of reasons, including a slowdown in economic growth (spare a thought for the unemployed university graduate or even the industrialist facing unnecessary bureaucratic roadblocks sensing better prospects under Modi and voting for him), inflation (spare a thought for the common man finding it difficult to continue buying even the same quantity of foodstuffs), corruption, rising rapes (an extremely brutal, fatal gang-rape took place in a bus in Delhi), acting in a very authoritarian fashion with anti-corruption crusaders (for example, arresting activist Anna Hazare and literally baiting peaceful protesters led by one Baba Ramdev at Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi) and anti-rape protesters (some of them were subjected to water cannons) and not being seen as tough against viewed-as-aggressive neighbours like Pakistan and China, and to make matters worse for the Congress party, the man regarded as their undeclared prime ministerial candidate, Rahul Gandhi, gave an interview on the reputed Indian television channel Times Now [1], which, to put it mildly, was rather unimpressive. To be fair, it has to be accepted that Modi’s track record at industrial growth has actually been quite remarkable, and while his economic development model in Gujarat may not have catered to the economically weaker sections as much as it should, as many of his critics point out, the government led by the Congress party too failed to protect the poor from food inflation (Modi is also facing flak over this issue after having come to power, but that has no bearing on people voting for him before he became prime minister). Modi’s adopting a tolerant tenor in the context of religion, coupled with his excellent oratory showcasing a seemingly tough and assertive personality, understandably won him a huge fan following, also including some Muslims, even those from Gujarat.

Speaking of other alternatives, many Indians saw a coalition of regional parties as potentially very unstable given the past record, and a newly emerged political party, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), as unlikely to get a requisite number of seats to form a national government, other than being perceived as not being experienced enough (especially to handle defence and foreign policy), and the AAP resigning from office from the provincial government of Delhi in a short span of 49 days led it to be rejected by many of its erstwhile supporters. The average Indian voter cannot be expected to only keep in mind what happened twelve years ago, in 2002, and simply turn a blind eye to all ongoing events in the tenure of the then ruling government (2009-2014). In an article fiercely critical of Modi and the BJP, Indian academic Professor Aditya Nigam nonetheless had this to say about the Congress party–

‘The Congress, ably supported by a large section of secular, leftist intellectuals, has made secularism into a joke. We are supposed to deposit ourselves, bound hand and foot, at the feet of the Congress, never oppose their loot of the public exchequer, stay silent at the plunder of the commons sanctioned by them, and simply sing bhajans [devotional songs] to them for “protecting us from fascism”. … This cynical game of secularism is what has now come to an end.’ (Nigam, 2014)

Fareed Zakaria, an American Muslim intellectual of Indian origin, has broadly captured the essence of these elections, referring to them as “encouraging” and amounting to making “remarkable progress” in the following words-

‘The country has been mired in deadlock and paralysis for years because of a weak coalition government, ineffectual leadership and an obstructionist opposition. So people voted for a single party to take power (the first time in 30 years) and gave the new prime minister, Narendra Modi, a mandate. Modi campaigned brilliantly and effectively, and his message was unrelenting — development, development, development. Despite his party’s roots in Hindu fundamentalism, he chose to appeal to  the country’s hunger for economic growth.’ (Zakaria, 2014)

And for all the talk of the BJP being a fascist party (indeed, that some of its members have, from time to time, been involved in hate-mongering is undeniable and ought to be condemned in the strongest terms), the fact is that it has Muslims and Christians at senior positions, and Muslims and Christians in BJP-ruled provinces, on the whole, lead normal lives just like their counterparts in provinces governed by supposedly secular parties. In fact, in some provinces like Madhya Pradesh and Goa, the BJP has a strong mass base even among Muslims and Christians, for its good track record at economic development in those particular provinces. The BJP has even been a part of a coalition government governing the Christian-majority province of Nagaland, where there is a strong secessionist movement against India, partly fuelled by a Christian rightist sentiment [2]! On the other hand, the supposedly non-fascist Congress party sometimes did act quite ruthlessly (in a somewhat fascist or at least undemocratic fashion) against those peacefully protesting against corruption and rapes.

So, what are the steps Modi took to demonstrate his commitment to religious pluralism? Other than raising the slogan of 'sabka sath, sabka vikas' roughly translating into 'unity and development for all', he, in a speech in Delhi on 19th January 2014, concluded by saying that his “idea of India” entails the upholding of non-violence as the highest virtue and the peaceful coexistence of all religions. [3] In an election rally in the province of Uttar Pradesh, he asserted that secularism is an article of faith for him. [4] In a televised interview, Modi clearly stated that he did not want to talk in terms of Hindus or Muslims but only wished to talk in terms of Indians. [5] In an election rally in the city of Patna, he appealed to Hindus and Muslims to fight poverty together rather than fight against each other. [6] Modi even asserted that according to him, building toilets was actually a more important priority for India than building Hindu temples. During the campaign for the national elections in 2014, he touched the feet of a 104-year-old Muslim veteran of the Indian National Army (INA), a revolutionary army that fought to liberate India from British colonialism. Back in 2010, advertisements were published in newspapers about how Muslims were prospering in the province of Gujarat with Modi as chief minister, and even for these national elections, bearded, skull-capped Muslims were showcased as supporting the BJP in their advertisements. He sat on a fast for harmony between religious groupings in 2011. There has been no major riot in Gujarat after 2002, and Modi visited in hospital Muslim victims of a relatively minor one in Vadodara in 2006, even warning rioters of legal punishment. That Modi had to take such steps to fulfill his prime ministerial ambitions bears testimony to the importance of religious tolerance in India. Modi’s refusal to wear a skull cap on one occasion, though much hyped, does not necessarily amount to religious intolerance; it is a personal choice and most Muslims would also not be comfortable sporting symbols of other religions.

Also, though the Congress party has appeased religious minorities, it doesn’t have a fully clean record when it comes to anti-minority riots either, the most significant example being the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 (sparked off by the murder of the then Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards, who had joined a theofascist and secessionist insurgency), in which some of its then prominent leaders are believed to have actually participated (BJP workers actively protected Sikhs during those riots [7]). In fact, when supporters of the Congress party cite the riots in Gujarat in 2002 to discredit the BJP, supporters of the BJP retort by pointing to the anti-Sikh riots in 1984, though it is unfortunate that often, “(i)n this scenario, 1984 and 2002 are no longer signs of human brutality and loss, they have become useful weapons in one’s political arsenal” (Kaur, 2013). On a different note, fortunately, hundreds of people have been convicted in connection with the riots in 1984 [8] as well, though some prominent Congress leaders have yet to be convicted. Even other than that, the Congress party is blamed for deliberately not effectively checking the dreadful Hindu-Muslim riots in Bhagalpur in 1989 and even in Gujarat back in 1969, in which most of the casualties were Muslims.

Certainly, a Hindu rightist agenda is not the primary plank on which the Modi-led BJP fought these elections in 2014. Yes, there were a few inappropriate remarks against Muslims by BJP leaders like Amit Shah and Giriraj Singh during the course of this campaign, but while the former apologized for his remarks (while some would point out that he did so only after being barred from campaigning by the Election Commission of India, even that tells us that India’s constitutional bodies won’t allow the country to slip into fascism easily) [9] , Modi condemned the remarks of the latter in no uncertain terms [10].

In fact, interestingly, an ultra-rightist Hindu leader, Pramod Muthalik, was expelled from the BJP owing to his hardline image. Some excerpts from an editorial in one of India’s leading national dailies is worth quoting in this context -

‘(S)uch divide-and-rule politics, with cycles of resentment, bans and hate, are approaching the beginning of the end. Given secular education and post-reforms opportunities, a huge number of young Indians — over 65% under 35 years — have outgrown caste, creed and gender prejudices.’

 

‘This change made BJP cancel its deal with Muthalik.’

‘Young Indians are rejecting majoritarian bullying, ultra-conservatism and a narrow-minded view of the world.’ (The Times of India, 2014)

A sensitive issue like constructing a Hindu temple on a site disputed by Hindus and Muslims in the city of Ayodhya was put on the back-burner by the BJP, and it stated that it sought to resolve the issue by constitutional methods, which means having to accept the verdict of the judiciary.

Yes, Modi did talk of a uniform civil code (uniform family law) cutting across religious lines, but that is a secular demand. Secularism is about separating religion and state, and suggesting that just as India has a uniform criminal law, tort law and contract law, it ought to also have a uniform family law cutting across religious lines in conformity with a modern understanding of human rights, does not amount to being a Hindu rightist. India’s secular constitution mentions having a uniform civil code as a directive under Article 44, and most developed countries of the West have a uniform civil code, while allowing everyone to practise his/her religion in the personal sphere. Some argue that the demand for a uniform civil code is not borne out of genuine human rights concerns, but rather, as a metaphorical stick to beat the Muslim minority with, given reservations over this legislative proposal from a sizable section of that community, but whatever the motivations, the demand is perfectly legitimate.

Likewise, the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which gives special privileges to the Muslim-majority province of Jammu and Kashmir, though a contentious issue advanced by Modi, cannot be said to basically be a Hindu rightist demand, given that Article 370 was initially meant as a temporary measure, being titled ‘Temporary provisions with respect to the State of Jammu and Kashmir’ with ‘temporary’ in its name.

Nor did Modi talking of putting a stop to the illegal immigration of Muslims from Bangladesh, but allowing the entry of Bangladeshi Hindus, many of whom are genuine refugees suffering from Muslim extremism, amount to being intolerant.

Scams involving Modi’s ministers in Gujarat (two of them have been convicted in connection with a fake passport racket and illegal limestone mining respectively, while another is being tried for a fisheries scam running into millions of Indian rupees), a rise of rapes in the province and several flaws in his development model in Gujarat were seldom properly highlighted by the Congress party or most other parties opposing the BJP, nor his hypocrisy in supporting a mass agitation for a strong anti-corruption ombudsman at the centre but providing for the corresponding office in his province to be rather weak in terms of legal powers (though corruption, rapes and a slowdown in economic growth, as mentioned earlier in this article, were among the main reasons for resentment against the Congress party among many Indians) and most of his political opponents primarily only harped on the carnage in 2002, and Modi rebutted the charge just by pointing to his acquittal. On the important issue of national security, the Congress and other such parties failed to highlight two major instances of terrorist attacks in Gujarat, one in the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar in 2003, and the other in Ahmedabad, even in hospitals, in 2008, or that India’s Comptroller and Auditor General had slammed Modi for not taking enough steps with regard to coastal security in Gujarat, even though the most dreaded terrorist attacks in Indian memory happen to be the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, in which the Pakistani terrorists had come by sea. Even in connection with the riots in Gujarat in 2002, Modi’s supporters, to suggest Modi’s innocence, erroneously made it seem that Modi had been acquitted by the Supreme Court of India though the acquittal came from a district court based on the report of a Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team, with the matter still pending in appeal with the High Court of Gujarat, but Modi’s political opponents hardly even seemed to seriously attempt to dispel this highly incorrect notion. Nor did they highlight the undoubtedly divisive remarks passed by Modi in the immediate aftermath of the riots in 2002, for which Modi was, on at least one occasion, rapped by the then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. [11]

[1] That interview of Rahul Gandhi’s (it is in the English language) can be accessed here-<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB_eWW5ttaM&hd=1>.

[2] See, for reference, <http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/nagaland/terrorist_outfits/NSCN_IM.HTM>.

[3] That speech  of               Modi’s                 (it      is      in      Hindi,       an      Indian       language)        can      be      accessed        here-<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGg4QW31w7k&hd=1>.

[4] That     speech      (in                  Hindi,     an               Indian     language)     can                     be            accessed                         here-<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCpQzgyGG2U&hd=1>.

[5] That interview (in Hindi, an Indian language) can be accessed here-<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvaL4gycvf8>.

[6] See, for reference, <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Fight-poverty-not-each-other-Modi-to-Hindus-Muslims/articleshow/24786913.cms>.

[7] This fact was acknowledged and appreciated by the highly renowned late Sikh journalist Khushwant Singh, who was otherwise extremely critical of the Hindu right. To quote him (it may be noted that Vajpayee was a senior leader of the BJP, and the RSS is a Hindu rightist organization)-

‘It was the Congress leaders who instigated mobs in 1984 and got more than 3000 people killed. I must give due credit to the RSS and the BJP for showing courage and protecting helpless Sikhs during those difficult days. No less a person than Atal Bihari Vajpayee himself intervened at a couple of places to help poor taxi drivers.’ (Singh, 2005)

 [8]See, for reference, <http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/newdelhi/442-convicted-in-various-anti-sikh-riots-cases-delhi-police/article1-875466.aspx>.

[9] See, for reference, <http://www.ndtv.com/elections/article/election-2014/election-commission-allows-amit-shah-to-campaign-in-up-510169>.

[10] See, for reference, <http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/narendra-modi-giriraj-singh-pravin-togadia-petty-statements/1/356921.html>.

[11] See, for reference, <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/PM-raps-Modi-for-remarks-on-Lyngdoh/articleshow/20086174.cms>

[12] This fact was acknowledged and appreciated by the highly renowned late Sikh journalist Khushwant Singh, who was otherwise extremely critical of the Hindu right. To quote him (it may be noted that Vajpayee was a senior leader of the BJP, and the RSS is a Hindu rightist organization)-

‘It was the Congress leaders who instigated mobs in 1984 and got more than 3000 people killed. I must give due credit to the RSS and the BJP for showing courage and protecting helpless Sikhs during those difficult days. No less a person than Atal Bihari Vajpayee himself intervened at a couple of places to help poor taxi drivers.’ (Singh, 2005)

The Distinction Between India's Hindu Rightists and Christian/Muslim Rightists in Christian-Majority/Muslim-Majority Countries

Speaking of the Hindu right, it is very crucial to understand that while it is convenient to dehumanize rightists under any religious banner – Hindu, Muslim, Christian or any other - that is not the solution to the problem, and the solution, as the author sees it, lies in impartially understanding the narrative of the religious rightists and countering the same in the language they understand, as the author has attempted to do with respect to the Hindu right in a book authored by him titled 'Anti-Muslim Prejudices in the Indian Context: Addressing and Dispelling Them' (http://www.free-ebooks.net/ebook/Anti-Muslim-Prejudices-in-the-Indian-Context-Addressing-and-Dispelling-them).

Minorities other than Muslims and Christians, like Sikhs, Buddhists, Zoroastrians and Jews, have never been the subject of criticism or violence by most Hindu rightist groups. In fact, Buddhism and Sikhism are seen by most Hindu rightists as offshoots of Hinduism, with Sikhs especially loved by them, owing to their (the Sikhs’) historically having fought Muslim emperors, including emperors specifically intolerant to Hindus. In fact, when some members and supporters of the Congress party, a supposedly secular party, engaged in rioting against Sikhs, owing to the fact that some Sikhs were involved in a theofascist and secessionist insurgency, which even entailed killing the then prime minister of India, Indira Gandhi, who was from the Congress party, some Hindu rightists even protected Sikhs from the rioters. This fact was acknowledged and appreciated by the highly renowned late Sikh journalist Khushwant Singh, who was otherwise extremely critical of the Hindu right. To quote him (it may be noted that Vajpayee was a senior leader of the BJP, a supposedly Hindu rightist party, and the RSS is a Hindu rightist organization)-

 

‘It was the Congress leaders who instigated mobs in 1984 and got more than 3000 people killed. I must give due credit to the RSS and the BJP for showing courage and protecting helpless Sikhs during those difficult days. No less a person than Atal Bihari Vajpayee himself intervened at a couple of places to help poor taxi drivers.’ (Singh, 2005)

 

As for the Jews and Zoroastrians, they had historically come to India fleeing persecution at Christian and Muslim hands respectively, and were granted asylum by Hindu rulers in India, and these communities in India do not resort to identity-based violence against Hindus, nor do they usually proselytize anyone to their faith, and so, these communities are projected by most Hindu rightists as being the model religious minority communities in India (that their faiths were not introduced to India by foreign invaders, as Islam and Christianity were to a great extent, also matters a lot in the Hindu rightist psyche), whose example Muslims and Christians should emulate, and highlighting this also brings to focus the tolerance of the asylum-giving Hindus back in history and the intolerance of those Muslims and Christians engaging in religious persecution, which is in line with the agenda of the Hindu rightists, whose intolerance (varying in degree, and all Hindu rightists do not condone or support sweeping negative generalizations, vandalism and riots, and many of them, even extreme ones, ironically have close inter-personal relations with Muslim and Christian individuals), stems primarily from chauvinism about the supposedly not-so-reciprocated Hindu tolerance, rather than Muslims and Christians supposedly being doomed in hell for following another faith, an idea completely alien to Hindu theology. By and large, even extreme Hindu rightists do not engage in unprovoked violence against Muslims or Christians.

 

Also, the Hindu rightists, while romanticizing India’s “Hindu past”, do not have any clear agenda of putting in place any ancient or medieval legal framework, for Hinduism, given its pluralistic character with no single, objective truth (something many Hindu rightists take pride in, and emphasize that as a reason for India’s sustenance of democracy), does not offer any divinely ordained legal framework, and the Hindu right prides itself in having fought for democratic values when a state of emergency had been declared in India in the 1970s in an authoritarian fashion. There have been several law codes (as distinct from scriptures) among the Hindus in ancient and medieval India, though the Manusmriti, one ancient law code that emphasizes caste discrimination, was somehow given exaggerated importance by the British, and that text has been denounced by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), an extreme Hindu rightist outfit, which advocates Hindu unity, as you can see here - http://vhp.org/featured-article/vhps-view-of-manu-smriti-and-other-smritis.


Also, Hindu rightists are usually not averse to any kind of scientific research (though they also make claims of science in the scriptures of their faith, as many Christian and Muslim rightists do, as has been discussed here - http://globalyouthindia.blogspot.in/2014/12/international-yoga-day-history-of.html) and are more open-minded on issues like homosexuality (as you can see here - http://www.firstpost.com/living/gay-sex-may-not-be-a-crime-rss-softens-stand-on-section-377-1546037.html), given the ambivalent stance of the Hindu scriptures on this point.

WHAT DOES ISLAM SAY ABOUT IDENTIFYING WITH ONE'S COUNTRY AND ITS HERITAGE? - AN ANALYSIS WITH RESPECT TO INDIAN MUSLIMS

Very many Egyptian, Iranian and Indonesian Muslims identify with and appreciate their Pharonoic, Zoroashtrian and Hindu heritage respectively. While there is indeed no dearth of Indian Muslims who are staunch Indian nationalists, there is indeed a section that tends to identify with a global pan-Muslim fraternity more than India (like there are some Indian Tamils who identify more with Sri Lankan Tamils than with India, and there are some Indian Jews identifying more with Israel than with India, joining the Israeli army rather than its Indian counterpart) and do not identify with India’s composite culture, instead portraying the arrival of Islam in India as the onset of civilization in India. In doing so, they are being as biased as the extreme Hindu rightist historiographers who try to portray India’s “Hindu past” as civilized and Muslims as barbaric foreigners, and neither narrative should be acceptable in a country that claims to reject Jinnah’s two-nation theory (interestingly, Muslim rightist historical narratives of the subcontinent and even Jinnah’s two-nation theory have been questioned and rebutted even by liberal Pakistani Muslim intellectuals). The fact is that the one who manned Shivaji’s artillery was a Muslim, Ibrahim Khan Gardi was a Muslim from the Maratha camp and fought Ahmad Shah Abdali, and Man Singh and Jai Singh respectively fought Rana Pratap and Chatrapati Shivaji at the behest of the Mughals, other than Jahangir and Shah Jahan having Hindu mothers. The global pan-Muslim line of thinking is anachronistic, and I can prove my case on this point, even employing Islamic theology as a valid touchstone, and even the idea of having to delink oneself from one’s non-Islamic heritage is not Islamic. Those time and again talking of a Muslim ummah or global pan-Muslim fraternity cite the following verse of the Quran-

“The believers are to live as nothing else but brothers.” (49:10)

However, in this process of heavily emphasizing a global pan-Muslim identity, such Muslims are providing an anachronistic interpretation. During Prophet Muhammad’s lifetime, Islam was largely confined to the Arab world and Muslims were under threat, since Islam had emerged as a challenge to the existing social order; thus, in that context, the emphasis on a religion-based fraternity meant something else (even Buddhism, which was a challenge to the existing order, emphasized the sangh in addition to Gautam Buddha and the dhamma, and even Christianity talks of a community of believers). However, with the passage of time, and especially now with the rise of nation-states (accommodating people of multiple religions) with a defined sovereignty that ought to be respected and global human rights activism (there were people of diverse faiths and nationalities, including people of Israeli origin, aboard the Gaza Flotilla), the concept hardly remains relevant in the same form. In fact, the fundamental message in the Quran is one of humanism. Verse 49:13, cited earlier and which comes after verse 49:10 (and later verses are believed to supersede earlier ones), illustrates this spirit and is stated hereunder-

“O mankind, indeed we have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted.”

The above verse, while emphasizing human unity, also acknowledges nature’s law of diversity that makes the world beautiful, explaining the multiplicity of nations and tribes (without any religious connotation). This verse makes it clear that embracing Islam should not come in the way of being loyal to your nation, even if the majority there isn’t of Muslims, nor does following Islam imply a need to culturally or politically delink yourself from your country. In fact, Prophet Muhammad reportedly even explicitly stated that a true Muslim must love his/her country (Hub al-Watan e min al-Iman). Moreover, the term ‘ummah’ appears in the Quran only twice and has been used to refer to nations, without any religious connotation, and it was also used in the constitution of Medina drafted by Prophet Muhammad to connote a nation where Muslims and non-Muslims coexisted harmoniously. In this connection, I’d like to quote some excerpts from Tariq Ramadan’s book ‘The Messenger – The Meanings of the Life of Muhammad’-

“Abdullah ibn Judan, the chief of the Taym tribe and a member of one of the two great alliances of Meccan tribes (known as the People of the Perfume), decided to invite to his home all those who wanted to put an end to the conflicts and establish a pact of honor and justice that would bind the tribes beyond alliances based merely on tribal, political, or commercial interests.

Chiefs and members of numerous tribes this pledged that it was their collective duty to intervene in conflicts and side with the oppressed against the oppressors, whoever they might be and whatever alliances might link them to other tribes. This alliance, known as hilf al-fudul (the Pact of the Virtuous), was special in that it placed respect for the principles of justice and support of the oppressed above all other considerations of kinship or power. Young Muhammad, like Abu Bakr, who was to become his lifelong friend, took part in that historic meeting.

Long after Revelation has begun, Muhammad was to remember the terms of that pact and say: ‘I was present in Abdullah ibn Judan’s house when a pact was concluded, so excellent that I would not exchange my part in it even for a herd of red camels; and if now, in Islam, I was asked to take part in it, I would be glad to accept.’ Not only did the Prophet stress the excellence of the terms of the pact as opposed to the perverted tribal alliances prevailing at the time, but he added that even as the bearer of the message of Islam - even as a Muslim - he still accepted its substance and would not hesitate to participate again. That statement is of particular significance for Muslims, and at least three major teachings can be derived from it. We have seen that the Prophet had been advised to make good use of his past, but here the reflection goes even further: Muhammad acknowledges a pact that was established before the beginning of Revelation and which pledges to defend justice imperatively and to oppose the oppression of those who were destitute and powerless. This implies acknowledging that the act of laying out those principles is prior to and transcends belonging to Islam, because in fact Islam and its message came to confirm the substance of a treaty that human conscience had already independently formulated. Here, the Prophet clearly acknowledges the validity of a principle of justice and defense of the oppressed stipulated in a pact of the pre-Islamic era.”

“From the very start, the Prophet did not conceive the content of his message as the expression of pure otherness versus what the Arabs or the other societies of his time were producing. Islam does not establish a closed universe of reference but rather relies on a set of universal principles that can coincide with the fundamentals and values of other beliefs and religious traditions (those produced by a polytheistic society such as that of Mecca at the time). Islam is a message of justice that entails resisting oppression and protecting the dignity of the oppressed and the poor, and Muslims must recognize the moral value of a law or contract stipulating the requirement, whoever its authors and whatever the society, Muslim or not. Far from building an allegiance to Islam in which recognition and loyalty are exclusive to the community of faith, the Prophet strove to develop the believer’s conscience through adherence to principles transcending closed allegiances in the name of a primary loyalty to universal principles themselves. The last message brings nothing new to the affirmation of the principles of human dignity, justice, and equality: it merely recalls and confirms them. As regards moral values, the same intuition is present when the Prophet speaks of the qualities of individuals before and in Islam: ‘The best among you [as to their human and moral qualities] during the era before Islam [al-jahiliyyah] are the best in Islam, provided they understand it [Islam].’ The moral value of a human being reaches far beyond belonging to a particular universe of reference; within Islam, it requires added knowledge and understanding in order to grasp properly what Islam confirms (the principle of justice) and what it demands should be reformed.”

Thus, Muslims in their respective countries, following their religious edicts, should be humanistic nationalists of their respective countries devoted to the truth. To defend the wrong actions of Muslims is not in line with Islam. Prophet Muhammad himself said that Muslims must stop fellow Muslims from oppressing anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim. To quote the relevant Hadith (Shahi Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 43, Hadith Number 624)-

“Narated By Anas : Allah’s Apostle said, ‘Help your brother, whether he is an oppressor or he is an oppressed one.’ People asked, ‘O Allah’s Apostle! It is all right to help him if he is oppressed, but how should we help him if he is an oppressor?’ The Prophet said, ‘By preventing him from oppressing others’.”


I know that some Muslims would question whether I, as not being a Muslim, can give my own interpretation of Islam. But if non-Muslims are not expected to study and analyze Islam, how do Muslims expect non-Muslims to possibly embrace Islam, or at the very least, not misunderstand it?

A REJOINDER TO A REJOINDER: WHY I THINK ABUL KALAM AZAD (FROM IIT-CHENNAI) HAS GOT IT WRONG (by Karmanye Thadani)

This piece is a rejoinder to the The Islamophobia of our ‘secular’ liberals by IIT-Chennai student Abul Kalam Azad (no, not the late nationalist leader), published in Tehelka on 22nd November 2014.

As I set out to write this rejoinder, I may state at the outset that it is not meant personally. I had once written a piece on the online portal Khurpi where I had expressed my support to the demand for a province by the Gorkhas of West Bengal to carve out a state for themselves, Gorkhaland, within the Indian Union. My piece sought to only explain the grievances of the Gorkha people as also to highlight how, given that all Indian states have been carved out on a linguistic basis, the assertion of a linguistic or cultural identity within the Indian Union should not be seen as a negation of India’s pluralism or India’s unity in diversity, for respecting the diversity makes the unity possible, as also to draw attention to the Gorkhas’ genuine economic grievances as well. My piece did not seek to trace the history of the Gorkhaland movement, suggest that the methods that the Gorkhas employed were always correct (they certainly were not, and vandalism and attempts to internationalize the issue were particularly in bad taste) or go into the merits of whether the size of the territory they claimed for their prospective state was appropriate. A Bengali, Riad Azam, wrote a rejoinder to my piece that, in my opinion, went beyond the scope of my piece and even misread certain statements made by me, but I welcomed his rejoinder, for debate and discussion is important if we believe in democracy, and he was glad to see my taking his piece in the right spirit. Riad and I are friends on Facebook, and I would love to meet him in person if and when I get the opportunity. I hope Azad sees this rejoinder of mine in the same spirit.



Interestingly, Azad’s piece (to which this one is a rejoinder) is itself a rejoinder to a piece written by Arun Srivastava, namely Why Secularism is a Bad Word for Muslims. The underlying fallacy in Srivastava’s piece, according to Azad, is the menace of generalization, of not using the word ‘some’ in the title to describe what only a section of Muslims may be doing (though Arun has used the word ‘many’ throughout the text of the article) and ascribing the entire Muslim community as having a herd mentality, and of making assertions, which are not backed by empirical data. However, Azad’s own rejoinder too suffers from exactly the same ‘drawbacks’ he accuses Srivastava of. To quote from Azad’s piece-



“This is just to point out that the source of the ailment rests, untroubled, elsewhere — somewhere deep inside the fabric of the Indian polity, where the eyes of the upper-caste liberal Hindu can never reach. It is not the Muslims who have become communal. It is the society surrounding them that has long been communal and is becoming more so with each passing day. It is this society that has distanced itself from the Muslims and ghettoised them.”



Now, wouldn’t this again amount to generalizing, and that too without any empirical evidence “the upper caste liberal Hindu” (which includes the ilk of Pankaj Mishra, Kuldeep Nayar and Romila Thapar who speak the language of Muslims being victimized that Azad would like them to), for never seeing the problems of the Indian Muslims without preconceived notions? And if Abul Kalam Azad is entitled to his generalizations, then why can Arun Srivastava not generalize the Muslim clergy as regressive without naming Shia and Sunni clerics specifically, as Azad would like him to? Then, Azad points to “numerous self-appointed messiahs of the ‘Muslim community’ who left no stone unturned to ‘liberate’ Muslims from the clutches of mullahs and fundamentalists”, but while using the word ‘numerous’, he has only two examples to show – Arun Srivastava and Chetan Bhagat. Would these two examples qualify as “numerous” by any statistical yardstick? And if it is legitimate for Azad to use the word ‘numerous’ without showing empirical evidence, why is it not legitimate for Arun Srivastava to use the term ‘many’? It is a convenient modus operandi to bash others for generalizations, even glossing over the reference in Srivastava’s piece to Muslims in West Bengal voting for the BJP in the latest Lok Sabha elections, rejecting identity politics (and this is obviously not to say that Muslims must vote for the BJP to prove their secular credentials). Moreover, the accusation of the entire society around Muslims having been communal and turning more communal with every passing day is much more generalized than anything Srivastava wrote, for Azad hasn’t given any exceptions of genuinely secular Hindus (going by his yardstick of most Hindus being communal, which I firmly disagree with), the way Srivastava gave with reference to those Bengali Muslims. And no, Azad hasn’t given us any empirical evidence, so to speak, of the society around Muslims, in general, being communal, with this communalism gaining strength with each passing day.




Moving beyond the argument of statistical evidence, I hope I wouldn’t have to furnish the same for every statement I make. I have, however, tried to be as detailed and incisive as possible, since Srivastava’s brevity has been portrayed by Azad as ambiguity to reinforce prejudices, and I have also sought to dispel many misconceptions about Muslims in this article, for not only do I not want anyone to accuse me of Islamophobia, I do not want my critique of Muslim communalism in this piece to be misused by the extreme Hindu rightists. Much of what I say may be clichéd, but clichés are not always wrong.



The crux of Azad’s argument lies in the fact that the measure of secularism in India lies in doling out narratives of how Muslims are victimized as a community. As soon as any Hindu, even while condemning anti-Muslim violence by Hindu extremists and acknowledging Indian Muslims’ economic and educational backwardness, asks the Muslim community to look within, to introspect, to acknowledge that communalism in India is not a one-way alley, he/she is branded by the likes of Azad and even many leftist Hindus as actually being anti-Muslim, with his/her expression of concern for the problems of Indian Muslims only a façade (“crocodile tears” to quote Azad) to conceal his/her hidden agenda, without an honest debate, while the Hindu communalists also dismiss such unprejudiced Hindus as being pro-Muslim, and I have faced this myself on more than one occasion (interestingly, Gandhi and Nehru, owing to their impartiality, were bashed by both the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League for being biased in favour of the other religious grouping). This is not surprising for such people speak the truth, and the truth is not pleasant to hear for those who have embraced the communal narrative of victimhood among the Muslims or the desire to entertain a superiority complex of being among the few truly open-minded people among the Hindus. Not only centrist Hindus like Srivastava, but even Muslims who have raised these concerns are dubbed as “enemies of Islam” or as having been sold out to non-Muslims for vested interests, the biggest example in the Indian context being Abul Kalam Azad’s namesake, the maulana who suffered and sacrificed for India’s independence, strongly opposed the creation of Pakistan and became India’s first education minister, and I was involved in making a film titled “Aashiq-e-Vatan Maulana Azad” produced by Doordarshan on this legendary figure of Indian history, which was screened in the India Islamic Cultural Centre on 16th November 2014.



I may clarify what I mean when I say that communalism in India is not a one-way alley, for Muslim communalism in independent India is a subject many Hindus shy away from even so much as acknowledging, leave alone addressing, for fear of being labeled anti-Muslim hate-mongers, as Srivastava has been by Azad and leftists like Dibyesh Anand. I say that Muslim communalism in independent India exists, given that Hindus have also died in riots (in which Muslim politicians like Azam Khan also allegedly have had a role to play, as in the cases of the riots in Muzaffarnagar and Sahranpur, and even in the riots in Gujarat in 2002, which hundreds of Hindus also did lose their lives and were rendered homeless by Muslim rioters, as has been pointed out by Human Rights Watch and respectable media publications in India like The Hindu, which is a favourite of left-liberals, the Times of India and India Today, and the riots started with the burning of a railway coach by Muslim extremists) and terrorist attacks. I say so given some Indian Muslims’ cheering for Pakistan in Indo-Pak cricket matches based on religious affinity (two Indian Muslim friends of mine, who don’t know each other, once told me how they were respectively once cheering for India and were heckled by some other Indian Muslims for the same, and both these incidents predate Modi being declared the PM candidate by the BJP) and rejecting secular Indian nationalism (which would inevitably not send very positive signals to Hindus, and I, like many Muslims, believe that their interpretation of the Quran and Hadiths is anachronistic; also, those Indian Muslims like Azad who complain of their loyalty to the country being doubted, I dare say, have only some people of their own community hailing Pakistan to blame, who have not let the wounds of India’s partition heal – I am not at all saying that generalizing Indian Muslims as anti-national is justified, but if some come forward to hail Pakistan, it is only understandable that the majority community will have some suspicion); those justifying this should honestly ask themselves whether they would support Indian Hindus cheering for a Nepalese Hindu tennis player against Sania Mirza or Leander Paes or an Indonesian Hindu long-jumper against Anju Bobby George only on a religious basis (then, our ‘secularists’ would express their horror at how this is yet another instance of Hindus alienating the religious minorities), and isn’t secular nationalism all about relegating religion to the sphere of a personal belief system, with little place in public life except festivals or worship congregations? I am not suggesting that Indian Muslims should not have the legal right to exercise their personal liberty in terms of the team they support, but what ought to be legally permissible (such as telling lies in day-to-day affairs) may not be morally correct, and holding one’s pan-religious fraternity above your country is not the same as Indian Hindus cheering for Brazil or Argentina in football matches only on the merit of that team (not religious affiliation), and that too perhaps never against India (let’s await the day India qualifies to the FIFA world cup!), nor can this be equated with sections of the Indian diaspora in England or Australia cheering for their country of origin against their country of citizenship (which I also condemn, by the way), for Indian Muslims are not diaspora and they (barring arguably Kashmiri Muslims, though this is not to say that I support the separatist movement there, and that can make for another discussion) chose secular India over theocratic Pakistan at the time of the partition, and supporting Pakistan amounts to rejecting secular Indian nationalism, also given the Indo-Pak belligerence and sponsorship of terrorism by Pakistan’s military establishment, and I do also condemn those Indian Tamils who place their contempt for Sri Lanka (owing to the problems of Tamils there) above India’s national interests. While I believe that humanism ought to be above nationalism, nationalism would and should remain relevant till national boundaries are a reality (which will remain so, and it is utopian to imagine otherwise, when serious conflicts erupt even within countries), though just like I am against religious fanaticism, I am also against nationalist fanaticism, which, for example, in the Indian context, would condone the human rights violations by rogue elements in the Indian security forces in Kashmir and the northeast. I speak of Muslim communalism in the context of some Muslims in India’s Hyderabad assembling to celebrate Pakistan’s Independence Day (and this was before Modi became India’s prime minister, though this is not to say that such an activity should not be condemned even now). I speak of Muslim communalism in the context of very many Indian Muslims spewing venom against Jews as a collectivity, instead of only condemning those in Israel responsible for human rights violations, and it would not be wrong to say that many such Muslims are more concerned about Palestinian Muslims than Kashmiri Hindus living as refugees in a country they always identified as their own - India. Innocent Kashmiri Hindus were made to suffer for the Hindu-majority Indian state resorting to violent repression of protests by Kashmiri Muslims against allegedly rigged elections, just like innocent Gujarati Muslims were made to suffer for a few Muslim miscreants’ burning a railway coach at Godhara (though, of course, in both cases, the prejudices were deep-rooted and dated back to much earlier, and given the convictions of some Muslims for the burning of the railway coach in Godhara, I do think we can take that judicial verdict as a valid reference-point, for the Indian judiciary has also let off many Muslims supposedly falsely accused of terrorism, as in the Akshardham case or Lajpat Nagar blast case, and convicted hundreds of Hindus in the Gujarat riots cases, in cases involving massacres that took place in the Best Bakery, Naroda Patiya, Ode, Sardarpura and the likes). I talk of Muslim communalism when the student-wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami-Hind declares Abdul Qadir Molla in Bangladesh, hanged till death for his role in anti-Hindu violence in 1971, to be a martyr. I speak of Muslim communalism when the Jamaat-e-Islami-Hind supports the Jamaat-e-Islami-Bangladesh in asserting that riot-affected Bangladeshi Hindus should be evicted from the relief camps but takes exactly the opposite stand for Indian Muslims who suffered in the riots in Muzaffarnagar, as pointed out by Ramachandra Guha. I talk of Muslim communalism when Muslims in Mumbai violently protested against the killing of Muslims in Bodo-Muslim riots in Assam (don’t Bodo lives matter?) and even the killing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (though the Indian government had already sent aid for the Rohingyas), with a ‘secular’ Muslim like Javed Anand praising the police of Mumbai for not acting against the violent communal Muslim mob.



Azad even tries to suggest that the MiM is only supposedly communal, going by his never calling it communal himself, but saying that Srivastava calls it communal, though Azad does say only once that he doesn’t condone the politics and rhetoric of hate. Here is a political party openly seeking to basically represent only one religious grouping (as reflected even in its name). Its leaders have taken very communal stands. Think of Akbaruddin’s alleged speech, outraging Hindu religious sentiments and suggesting that Muslims can have the upper hand in communal riots were it not for police intervention. That aside, even Asaduddin has spewed venom against Jews, and India does have a tiny Jewish minority. Such a party can only be called communal, and those who refuse to accept the BJP claiming to be secular, in spite of its having Muslims as senior members (including the likes of Shahnawaz Hussain who have won elections in Muslim-majority constituencies) and spokespersons, cannot accept the MiM being secular just because it has sometimes fielded Hindu candidates. The MiM winning three seats in the Maharashtra state elections is understandably alarming, though not surprising, given Modi emerging as India’s prime minister, and the failure of our intelligentsia to reach out to the Muslim minority and try to assuage the fears that many Muslims had and explain to them that most of those voting for Modi did so on grounds of development, not expecting him to pursue a communal agenda. Unfortunately, our intellectuals in the “civil society”, unlike the general populace, are mostly sharply divided between those who either usually view Indian Muslims as a victimized community (as represented by Qutubuddin Ansari folding his hands during the Gujarat riots) or as a community with very many ills (as represented by the terrorist Yasin Bhatkal), and while those of the former category only sought to reinforce the unfounded fears of many Muslims (though those fears are understandable given that Muslims are a minority, and those fears are reinforced by exaggerated propaganda from ‘secular’ Hindu ‘intellectuals’), the latter category did not feel the need to engage with them.



And no, my pointing to the existence of Muslim communalists is not to suggest that all Muslims are communal. I personally know several unprejudiced, humanistic and strongly patriotic Indian Muslims (including some Kashmiri Sunnis), and indeed, many such Muslims have died martyrs fighting for India against Pakistani soldiers and militants, Hawaldar Abdul Hamid and Brig. Mohd. Usman being the most prominently highlighted examples (contrast these to Hindus like diplomat Madhuri Gupta leaking national secrets for money), and I see no reason to see Indian Muslims loyal to their country as being exceptions to the general norm. In fact, a Hindu acquaintance of mine, who studied at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), told me that while those cheering for Pakistan were quite a vocal lot there, most Muslims cheered for India, and this was in a Muslim-majority setting where the apparently pro-India majority did not have to conceal its true feelings, and another friend of mine, who is an Assamese Hindu from Guwahati and who is very resentful of the Bangladeshi Muslim influx in his state, told me that on a train journey, he overheard a conversation between two Muslims from AMU bashing the students who cheer for Pakistan. Also, another friend of mine whose father is an Indian Army officer once told me that he loves the entire Muslim community (though I don’t support any stereotyping, positive or negative!), for once, his father was fired at by militants in Kashmir and his father’s driver, a Muslim, rushed to bear the bullet to save his father’s life! He also narrated another anecdote of how a Muslim once donated blood to save his father’s life and asserted that he was not in the least ashamed of the fact that "Muslim blood" (whatever that is supposed to mean!) runs through his veins!



I am not even suggesting that it is so much as possible to classify any religious grouping into watertight compartments of ‘communal’ or ‘secular’, and communalism among those we identify as communal does vary in degree. I would even assert that not every instance of Muslim communalism in India necessarily amounts to affinity with Pakistan or hostility to India, and while communalism, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or any other, strikes at what Tagore called the “idea of India”, any communal statement from a Muslim, like Azam Khan’s ridiculous statement attributing India’s victory in the Kargil war only to Muslim soldiers (but he did indeed explicitly glorify these Muslim soldiers serving India’s national cause in the same speech), should not be seen as “anti-national” in the conventional sense of the term if Hindu communal statements are not seen in the same vein, and even Asaduddin Owaisi has ridiculed Pakistan for the partition dividing the Muslims of the subcontinent as also being backward to India but bearing animosity towards India, making life difficult for Indian Muslims. Also, I do not believe that communalists under any banner, except arguably those actually resorting to killing innocent civilians, should be dehumanized or can never be logically made to modify their views, and this is amply demonstrated by the example of Kasim Hafeez, a British Muslim of Pakistani origin, who was initially strongly antisemetic to the extent of desiring to kill Jews, but his visit to Israel and impartially analyzing the same led him to now give lectures dispelling misconceptions about Israel, and I myself have transformed the outlook of some Hindu acquaintances of mine vis-à-vis Muslims, and I believe, even of some Indian Muslim acquaintances of mine vis-à-vis not only Hindus but also Jews and Westerners.



Also, given that Azad from IIT-Chennai accuses India’s Hindu majority of having been communal for long (I wonder if most of his fellow students at IIT-Chennai maltreat him all the time for his faith, which usually doesn’t happen in Indian colleges; the National Law School in Gujarat I graduated from, which had students from all backgrounds, did not witness any such phenomenon and we had a Muslim alumnus conferred the Best Alumnus Award a few years ago; he was hired by one of India’s best law firms with a high pay package, and he was dating a Brahmin girl), would he explain how and why the Hindu Mahasabha could not defeat the Congress in India’s first ever national election even after such a bloody partition, or even how the national electorate, rejecting the Hindu rightist venom allegedly spewed by Varun Gandhi and which manifested itself in violence against innocent Christians in the Kandhamal district of Odisha, made the Congress win the elections in 2009, in spite of the Congress having failed to check repeated blasts by the Indian Mujahidin and the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in 2008? And since he is tending to justify very many Indian Muslims’ tilt towards the Owaisi brothers’ MiM on the basis of economic aspirations rather than communalism, I wonder whether he would apply the same logic for the 38.5% of the Indian electorate that voted for the BJP and its allies in 2014. The fact that the NDA managed to win the elections with such a low vote-share proves that while the majority of the Indian electorate (mostly Hindus) did not support them, that majority got divided in terms of those they voted for (say, to draw an analogy, there being ten voters in a constituency with three voters voting for one candidate and the seven others voting for one different candidate each, leading the candidate with three votes to win), for there was no consensus on an alternative, and over a period of time, from Modi’s sadbhavana fast to not allowing any major riot in Gujarat after 2002 to asserting that Hindus and Muslims need to fight poverty together rather than fight against each other in his Patna rally, several secular Hindus developed a sense of confidence that Modi’s plank would be much needed economic development rather than the chauvinistic assertion of a Hindu identity, and Modi condemned Giriraj Singh’s divisive remark, other than Amit Shah rendering an apology for his communal statement. I am not passing judgment on whether or not Modi or his party was genuine in his commitment to secularism, but the point is that much of the minority of the Indian electorate that voted for Modi (including some Muslims) did not do so out of communalism. And going by the “guilt by association” theory, if Modi is guilty, so was Jinnah for the Direct Action Day riots in 1946 and so is Yasin Malik for the killings of Kashmiri Hindus in 1989-90, and this is not to say that two wrongs make a right or even that I am asserting Modi’s innocence, and the matter is pending in the High Court of Gujarat (no, Modi hasn’t been acquitted by the Supreme Court, as many of his bhakts shouted from their rooftops, but by a district court based on a non-binding report submitted by an SIT appointed by the Supreme Court). Also, it is noteworthy that in the by-elections to the Lok Sabha, ‘Yogi’ Adityanath, who had resorted to communal hate-mongering, lost.



Azad asserts-


“It is extremely amusing for me to note that the middle-class, liberal Muslims, who are normally manipulated to debunk the claims of poorer Muslims that their socio-economic conditions are worsening day after day, have today become a cause of concern for writers like Srivastava.”



What amuses me, on the other hand, is how Azad has implicitly accepted that “middle-class, liberal Muslims” do, on the whole, lead normal lives as Indian citizens, going to colleges, offices, restaurants and multiplexes alongside their Hindu peers, which contradicts, to an extent, his earlier stand of the society in general around Muslims, especially economically well-off upper caste Hindus, being communally oppressive. The truth has its own way of surfacing from narratives that give themselves what journalist Rahul Pandita has called an “academic halo”, but are actually based on contradictions and inconsistencies. Furthermore, since “middle-class, liberal Muslims” (note Azad’s own bracketing of ‘liberal’ as an adjective for middle-class Muslims; does that suggest something about his acknowledgement of Muslim communalism and orthodoxy, which he has otherwise denied, and whether Muslim communalism and orthodoxy is more rampant among the economically downtrodden?) have been spared of suffering from the supposed Hindu communalism increasing around them day by day, I would like to know – how do we assert that the economically backward Indian Muslim, in his daily life, is suffering increasingly at the hands of Hindu communalism? Is it that most government schools, low budget private schools and government colleges in India have stopped admitting Muslim students from economically backward backgrounds, or that Muslim students in these institutions are made to feel ostracized and are slurred for his faith to their faces all the time? Or is it that Muslim tailors, carpenters, plumbers and artisans, who are not very well-off, are being boycotted by Hindus based on the religious identity of the former, or that Muslims are not being hired as cleaners or for other chores? Or do the economically downtrodden Muslims no longer have Hindu friends? Or have the courts and minority commissions stopped entertaining pleas relating to discrimination against Muslims, whether real or perceived, and examining them on the basis of legally admissible evidence? As far as I know, nothing of the sort has happened, and so, I have only one word for Azad’s assertions - baseless. Many of the Muslims who have emerged as prominent and much loved public figures in our country do hail from economically humble backgrounds, examples including Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam and the Pathan brothers, who focused on excelling by virtue of merit rather than whining about the much exaggerated discrimination!



The very many examples of Muslims who have excelled in diverse fields, even other than sports or cinema and other fine arts, such as business entrepreneurship (Wipro, Cipla, Himalaya and Vockhardt are companies established and run by Muslims, and there have been several prominent Muslim entrepreneurs in independent India) and serving in the armed forces (very many Indian Muslims have won gallantry awards) and intelligence agencies (the IB is currently headed by a Muslim), bust the myth of Muslim victimhood in India. It is very important for secular Hindus (many of whom, out of genuine but misplaced conviction, echo the views expressed by Azad and the likes) to delineate the difference between prejudice and that prejudice actually translating into maltreatment. It is wrong to misconstrue all those Hindus with the mildest anti-Muslim prejudice (it is worth noting that the anti-Muslim prejudice among those who bear such prejudice, varies in degree, and very many Indian Muslims too bear prejudice, again varying in degree, against not only Hindus but even Jews and Westerners) to be the likes who actually maltreat Muslims, and hence, arrive at the fallacious conclusion that Indian Muslims are a very oppressed lot, though as a matter of fact, most Hindus, even those with some degree of anti-Muslim prejudice, don’t translate that prejudice into maltreatment in their actual interactions with individual Muslims (the human mind is complex, and often distinguishes the individual one is speaking to from the notions one may have about his/her community), and often even have genuine friendships with some. Indeed, one wouldn’t have witnessed Muslims being slurred to their faces very frequently.



Azad suggests that the poverty of most Indian Muslims and the social stigma associated with them comes in the way of their going to school and dropping out if they do go to school. Now, while he may cite the Sachar Committee Report to suggest that Muslims are often deprived of access to schools in their vicinity, is there any evidence (even anecdotal, coming from very many people, leave aside empirical data) to suggest that in every Hindu-majority locality in a village, there is a school at close quarters where a student can go and study, or even of very many public schools frequently rejecting Muslim students for admissions only on the basis of religion? Isn’t the state of access to elementary education in our country, as a whole (which led to the passage of the Right to Education Act, 2009, that effectively makes education for the age bracket of 6-14 years a right, and more and more schools have to be set up to that end in the vicinity of all localities), dismal and not only for Muslims? It is easy to carry out a study only of a certain section of the society and point to its woes as though those woes are exclusive only to that section and not the nation as a whole, and interestingly, a study in Uttar Pradesh revealed that regions which were backward in terms of girls’ toilets were also, in general, backward in terms of infrastructure (including boys’ toilets), for which the local panchayats/municipalities and the state government are to blame, which negates the allegation of a specific gender bias, and likewise, another such study on access to schools can negate the allegation of communal bias. And the fact is that Hindus and Muslims do study alongside each other even in most rural schools in India run by the government or private agencies, and it is not as though Hindu and Muslim students don’t befriend each other or that most of the teachers discriminate on religious lines. Also, given that Azad writes off Srivastava’s claim of Muslim clerics discouraging or even opposing modern, non-religious education and instead only encouraging madrasa education, I may cite my own experience of interacting with Muslim parents in Bavana on the outskirts of Delhi, who refused to send their child to the non-formal schools set up by the NGO Navjyoti for this very reason, and a good acquaintance of mine based in Delhi, Mr. Shams Tabrez, an alumnus of the Deoband Madrasa, who runs a trust to promote education among Muslims, points to this problem as well. It may be true that according to the Sachar Committee Report, only 4% of Muslims getting any kind of education go to madrasas (though I do not know if they counted all the unrecognized madrasas as well, and there were serious allegations of the Sachar Committee Report being politically motivated, but I understand that it is most valid and legitimate to take it as a reference-point), but in real numbers, even this would boil down to hundreds of thousands of Muslims. However, I do acknowledge that there are students who go to a madrasa where only religious learning is imparted as also to a school of a modern variety, and there are also some modernized madrasas imparting modern education as a supplement to religious education and even admitting non-Muslim students just as convent schools also admit non-Christian students. A devout Hindu friend of mine from Bihar, who rattles off Sanskrit verses at the drop of a hat and who happened to have studied in a madrasa for some time, tells me that he never faced any discrimination and in fact, cherishes some of the lessons in virtue he was taught from the Quran there. And while this has nothing to do with Azad’s piece, I may mention to Hindu readers that a very vast majority of madrasas in India (most of them the not-so-modern ones) do not preach terrorism. Also, many of the ‘secular’ parties (such as the Congress, TMC and Samajwadi Party) Azad accuses of having done little for Muslims did introduce scholarships for Muslims in schools and colleges, and some of them even distributed free bicycles to Muslim students, though I have problems with viewing economic and educational backwardness through the eye-lens of religion (if terrorism has no religion and it indeed doesn’t, nor does economic or educational backwardness), and the same steps should be taken to alleviate the plight of Hindus and Muslims at the same income levels, failing which Hindu communalism is strengthened, other than such pro-minority discrimination being wrong in itself. Also, however simplistic this may sound, I would like readers, especially Muslim readers, to note that government policies that benefit Indian businessmen or farmers benefit all businessmen or farmers in India, cutting across religious lines, and more educational institutions and more avenues of employment help all Indians. The economic interests of Indian Muslims are not distinct and separate from those of Hindus, Sikhs, Christians or Parsis, and Indian Muslims’ development lies only in India’s development. We do not need political leadership on caste or religious lines. The strengthening of Muslim communalism in the form of the MiM would only strengthen Hindu communalism, and in a clash between the two (violent or otherwise), even the non-communal would have to suffer, and Muslims, being in minority, more so.



This is not, however, to suggest that there is absolutely no discrimination against Muslims in India, and one sphere in which it manifests itself is in the context of being sold or rented out flats or bungalows in very many (though not all) Hindu-majority localities, but that again either has to do with a generalized sense of discrimination against all non-vegetarians (Hindus can lie about being vegetarian, but given that vegetarians among Muslims are extremely few and far between, many real estate holders would find it hard to believe that a Muslim is a vegetarian even if he/she really is one!) or the suspicion about terrorism, which is not to mean that such real estate holders imagine all Muslims to be terrorists, but given that all major terrorist attacks in India’s big, cosmopolitan cities (be it Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore or Ahmedabad) have been carried out by some Muslims, they view any Muslim stranger as possibly being a terrorist (and it matters little in this context what the causes of terrorism by some Muslims are or that Muslim terrorists in India and abroad, including in Muslim-majority countries, have also killed Muslims, for a non-Muslim doesn’t wish to be bombed by a terrorist, even if that terrorist also poses a threat to his own co-religionists). Sikhs too faced this discrimination till the mid-1990s when Khalistani terrorism was at its peak (as pointed out by Kashmiri Muslim writer Basharat Peer in his much-acclaimed book Curfewed Night), and those from the northeast do so too. Another real form of discrimination against Muslims in India I can think of is very, very occasionally being subjected to slurs like ‘Pakistani’ and ‘terrorist’ to their faces, especially in the wake of terror attacks, and most Muslims I have interacted with (and on this point, I have interacted even with bearded, skull-capped ones whose religious identity is visibly evident) have told me that they have been slurred in such a fashion only once or twice, and I may also point out that as a Hindu, I have also sometimes (though not always) been made to feel uncomfortable in Muslim-majority gatherings and localities in India, and some other Hindus have also shared such experiences with me. Also, it’s not as though only Muslims have to encounter such slurs or not-so-pleasant remarks about their community – ask Bihari Hindus, Bengali Hindus and even Sindhi Hindus like myself! And the third kind of discrimination is Muslims being subjected to untouchability like Dalits in some villages, but that is disappearing fast, and in such villages too, Muslims are invited to Hindu homes and for Hindu weddings, though served food in different utensils and given different cutlery (which I strongly condemn), but even among Muslims, there are those who practise their own kind of caste discrimination evolved in South Asia. Discrimination by some Hindus needs to be fought against, but that is one thing and bashing the entire Hindu majority (or most of it) is quite another, and the latter does little to bridge the Hindu-Muslim divide, but specifically dispelling misconceptions about the other religious grouping on both sides in the spirit of humanitarian affection does help to bridge the divide.



The detentions of innocent civilians in terror cases or killing of innocent civilians in fake encounters (another issue flagged by Azad and other such Muslims in an open letter to Chetan Bhagat, a piece different from Azad’s rejoinder to Srivastava’s article in Tehelka), cuts across religious lines, and has happened with Hindus in Assam and Naxalism-infested regions and Sikhs in Punjab, and has little to do with hatred on religious lines (but instead greed for promotions and medals), and has even happened within Muslim-majority countries like Morocco and Turkey that have seen violent secessionist movements. To cite fake encounters of innocents branding them as terrorists as the basic cause of terrorism is to gloss over the fact that it was terrorism in the first place that led to the excesses by rogue elements in the security forces. Fake encounters of Hindus too take place with respect to regular crimes (not only terrorism), as the Ranbir Singh episode in Uttarakhand demonstrates.



While I condemn any and every kind of discrimination, the cause of such discrimination in the form of denial of accommodation or sporadic slurring or even if we count as discrimination the killing of innocent Muslims in fake encounters, lies in the fact that some Indian Muslims have resorted to terrorism, which brings us to Azad accusing Srivastava of showing “dubious concern over Indian Muslims being usurped by ‘global jihad’.” Why should this concern be seen as dubious when some Muslims from Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have joined the ranks of the ISIS to kill innocent Syrian and Iraqi Christians, Yazidis, Shias and even Sunnis who don’t accept their worldview? Why should this not be seen as a concern when we have a terror outfit, the Indian Mujahidin, which, by way of its very many bombings in various Indian cities, like Delhi, Jaipur, Bangalore and Ahmedabad, has taken the lives of many innocent Indians, including Muslims? Can we forget the attack on the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar? And if acts of terrorism by some Indian Muslims can be rationalized (even if not justified) by pointing to anti-Muslim violence in the riots in Gujarat in 2002, then why not also rationalize (even if not justify) the anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat by pointing to the burning of a railway coach in Godhara? Is it more acceptable for Muslims to dehumanize Hindus than vice versa? I understand the responsibility of the majority to make the minorities feel secure (this also applies to the Muslims, especially Sunnis, of Kashmir, in the light of the Hindus still living in the valley and those who have returned), but that apart, the minority interacts with more people of the majority than vice versa; so, logically, there should be less stereotyping from their end, even if there is more insecurity on the part of the minorities, though some people from the minority targeting the majority is not a symptom of insecurity. We have a well-entrenched system of law and order, thanks to which we have seen the convictions of hundreds of Hindu rioters in the Gujarat riots cases (including of politicians like Maya Kodnani) and even, the 1984 anti-Sikh riots cases (though some of the big politicians among the accused have yet not been convicted), as also hundreds of rogue soldiers responsible for human rights violations (recently, justice was done in the Machil fake encounter case, though a lot more needs to be done in this regard, but a lot more needs to be done in Pakistan where perhaps no one has been convicted for gross human rights violations in Balochistan and the erstwhile East Pakistan), and even many Muslim terrorists (though not one of them responsible for killing Hindus in Kashmir in 1989-90 has been convicted so far). Judicial recourse, with all its weaknesses in India (which need to be overcome), is the only way forward to secure justice, not compromising on the rule of law to kill innocent people of any community for crimes committed by some of their co-religionists, and this applies to Muslims as much as Hindus. Also, for those trying to childishly disassociate terrorists completely from the community the terrorists come from or the ideology that they believe they derive their legitimacy from, should realize the fallacy in their contention. I agree that terrorism is not a Muslim monopoly but in the context of terrorists, be they those killing in the name of jihad or Ranvir Sena terrorists who killed innocent Dalits or those who bombed the Samjhauta Express and mosques in Hyderabad, Malegaon and Madosa or Khalistani terrorists who killed innocent Punjabi Hindu civilians or those Maoists in India killing innocent voters by bombing election booths or even Catholic fanatics resorting to terrorism in Northern Ireland or the Jewish Defense League that targeted Soviet civilians in the United States or the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka who forcibly recruited children and bombed banks and marketplaces (interestingly, more innocent civilians have died at the hands of non-Muslim terrorists in India as well as in Europe, where only 3 out of 249 terrorist attacks in 2010 were carried out by some Muslims, though since terror attacks by Muslims take place in some of the most prominent urban centres, they tend to attract more media attention), the civil society has to ideologically fight every kind of terrorism by placing the terrorist in his/her social background and what inspires him/her to commit these heinous crimes. It is neither practically possible nor should it be desirable to conceal the religious identity of the terrorist or what led him/her to take up such inhuman activities. This is not to say that the Quran advocates violence against innocent civilians. It doesn’t, the verses advocating violence being contextual, as in the Gita, and the Quran does have several verses - 5:8, 5:32, 6:108, 49:13, 60:8 and 109:6 - to mention a few that speak of peace, religious tolerance and human brotherhood, and it is a lie that peaceful verses are not to be found later in the book, for verse 109:6 appears after many of the supposedly violent verses. I know of the website run by an apostate and basher of Islam who has offered a cash prize to anyone who can disprove his allegations against Prophet Muhammad (but there are books by apostates of other religions criticizing their former religions too, the most famous one being Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell, and there’s also Why I am Not a Hindu by Kancha Ilaiah, indeed leveling very strong allegations, and yes, there are verses in the Bible like Deuteronomy 13:12-15, 1 Samuel 15:3 and Matthew 10:34 seemingly advocating violence against “non-believers”, which are even cited by Christian extremists, though most Christians treat these verses as contextual), but practically, he is the judge of the debate, or to go by what he is saying, the “readership” of the website, a rather non-defined entity. In fact, he has acknowledged that he came across a Muslim who “intelligently argued his case and never descended to logical fallacies or insults” and while that Islam-basher “did not manage to convince him to leave Islam”, that Muslim earned his “utmost respect”, which implies that practically, the Islam-basher is the judge of the debate. Likewise, that Islam-basher has mentioned with reference to a scholar of Islam he debated with, that the latter was “a learned man, a moderate Muslim and a good human being” and someone he (the Islam-basher) has “utmost respect for”. So, that Islam-basher’s critique of Islam, whether valid or invalid, has no relevance in terms of making blanket stereotypes about the people we know as Muslims, or even practising Muslims. By the way, that Islam-basher bashes Judaism too.



A counterterrorism strategy would have to entail promoting the peaceful, mainstream interpretations of the Quran and other religious texts in this respect, and it is heartening that even many otherwise regressive Muslim clerics in India and abroad have strongly condemned terrorism, explaining how it is antithetical to Islamic theology, aside from Indian Muslims carrying out demonstrations against terrorism, and having refused to bury the bodies of nine terrorists killed in the 26/11 attacks.



And yes, all those advocating conspiracy theories about terrorist attacks attributed to Muslims (including the killings of the Kashmiri Hindus) being carried out by other entities ought to read my article The Conspiracy Theories About the 26/11 Mumbai Attacks and The Hypocrisy of the Islamist-Sympathizing ‘Liberals’: The Case of a Pilgrimage by Kashmiri Hindus.



Azad also questions who the regressive Muslim clerics in India are, whether they are Shia or Sunni, and it seems that he would like an exhaustive list of the same, implicitly denying the fuss created about Muslim clerics being regressive. For one, I would count as regressive those clerics in Deoband who decreed a few years ago that women working in sectors other than nursing, sewing and medicine in the same offices with men, was haram. I count as regressive Imam Bukhari of the Jama Masjid who supported the destruction of ancient Buddha statues in Bamiyan by the Taliban, something that was otherwise strongly condemned by very many Muslims across the globe. If one wants a longer list of regressive religious decrees, he/she would do well to read the book The World of Fatwas (a fatwa is a religious decree to do or not do anything, and is not necessarily a death-warrant; the misnomer arose with some fatwas to kill Rushdie and Nasreen, though there have also been a few progressive fatwas, such as one from Farangi Mahal promoting girls’ education) by Arun Shourie, and though I do not agree with all the assertions and inferences in the book, it does indeed do a commendable job of exposing regressive clerics in our country, and this is not to say that all Muslim clerics in India or elsewhere are regressive, and I, for one, particularly like Maulana Wahiduddin Khan from our own country for his forward-looking outlook. The complaint against regressive sections of the Muslim clergy comes not only from Hindus but even many sections of Muslims. Arif Mohammed Khan, a great intellectual whom I have had the honour of knowing personally, resigned from his ministerial post in Rajiv Gandhi’s cabinet over the government conceding to the demands of regressive clerics following the Shah Bano case. Tehelka has carried several articles by Muslims disappointed with regressive sections of their clergy, such as South Indian Muslims Are Not Keen on Issues Related to Identity by Maqbool A. Siraj (dated 13th November 2010) and The Imam’s Wrong Call by Zokia Suman (dated 3rd September 2011), and though I don’t personally endorse everything these articles say (the second one even echoes some of the exaggerated narrative of Muslim victimhood that Azad points to, which I disagree with, though the first one is brilliant in my opinion, though going a little too far in its North India-South India binary), I do indeed agree with their disillusionment with many sections of their clergy for having failed to address real social issues within the Muslim community, particularly pertaining to women and dispelling communal notions. Far from addressing these issues, much of the clergy has only encouraged regressive attitudes. I may add that the clergy has, by and large, even failed to even so much as try to systematically deconstruct and dispel misconceptions about Muslims as a monolith, and the activities of much of the clergy have, in fact, been the cause of some of the misconceptions.



Azad has felt the need to rebut Srivastava’s article on the ground that a lie repeated multiple times comes to be accepted as the truth. Well, indeed, it is precisely this very conviction that got me to write this rejoinder as well, for I view the truth differently. The lie I wish to rebut as a mission is the exaggerated narrative of Muslim victimhood in India (or, in other words, Hindus in general being a very oppressive majority), for this lie, other than strengthening Muslim communalism, when coming from Muslims as also Hindus claiming to champion secularism, also offends Hindus and strengthens Hindu communalism, and both the communalisms feed off each other by stereotyping the other religious grouping in a negative fashion by pointing only to its communalists. And though we, Indians, have to set our own standards and do justice to our citizens, irrespective of what happens elsewhere in the world, Indian Muslims do enjoy better civil liberties and better security of life and property than even Muslims in Pakistan and many other Muslim-majority countries do, not to speak of the non-Muslim minorities in those countries, and this is especially significant for those romanticizing Pakistan and/or a global pan-Muslim fraternity.



To reject any constructive criticism by using terms like “anti-Semitism”, as many Israelis do, “Islamophobia” as the likes of Azad do , or “anti-national” like Hindu rightists and other jingoistic Indian nationalists do when the subject of human rights violations by rogue elements in the Indian security forces in Kashmir and the northeast is raised (many Pakistanis have the same attitude when you point out the human rights violations by rogue elements in their security forces in Balochistan and the erstwhile East Pakistan), is not the solution to any problem, and we should rather address contentions logically, taking them on face value, rather than allege prejudice, and even prejudiced people (barring possibly those blatantly spewing hate-filled venom), I believe, deserve engagement if we want to modify their standpoint.