HVK Archives: Muslims leadersless
Muslims leadersless - Times Of India
Nasir Ateeq
()
8/6/96
Title : Muslims Leaderless
Author : Nasir Ateeq
Publication : Times Of India
Date : 8/6/96
This was the first time in the past 25 years that Mr.
Sulaiman Sait did not contest the election. His
supporters feel his exit will turn out to be a great loss
for the 140 million Muslims for whose cause he had fought
inside and outside Parliament.
In fact, such towering claims are essentially hollow. It
will not be wrong to compare the kind of leadership being
provided by the Muslim leaders today with what was
provided by leaders like Mohammed Ali Jinnah in the past.
Jinnah used to claim that he was the sole leader of all
Indian Muslims and that partition was their `collective
will.' Even at the time, however, his claims were refuted
by a section of Muslims who accused him of turning his
back to the community. Today our Muslim leaders also
claim that they represent the voice of all Muslims but a
large number of their `followers' do not think so. these
leaders do not understand the genuine problems of
ordinary Muslims and divert the attention of the
community towards an agenda dictated by the Hindutva
forces.
Community `leaders' never try to galvanise the Muslim
masses for modern education, the lack of which is the
basic reason of their wretchedness. They have always been
unperturbed by the fact that the rate of enrolment of
Muslim students in technical and higher education is
shamefully low and that of Muslim female students is even
more negligible.
The indulgence of these `leaders' in the culture of fatwa
has desensitised them about the new social problems,
which are arising in the community. All over India the
practice of dowry is on the rise and has penetrated many
jaats (castes) of Muslims. Several jaats have been
socially backward and endogamous. They are still far from
understanding education as a necessity. A few among them,
who have recently become financially well off, use
marriages as an occasion of pomp and waste thousands on
lavish food and empensive gifts for the bridegrooms.
Girls in these jaats suffer greatly because, being
uneducated, they cannot get themselves out of endogamy
and marry a better prospect outside their caste. On the
other hand, the nouveauriche are tightening the noose
around the others by socially pressurising poor families
to pursue consumerism.
Instead of addressing such problems, self-serving Muslim
leaders have been using the bogey of a besieged Muslim
identity in otder to feather their own nest. Their
vulnerability to the slightest provocation of the
Hindutva forces has done great damage to the whole
community.
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