archive: Message from a mother and a lawyer
Message from a mother and a lawyer
Saeed Naqvi
The Indian Express
July 23, 1999
Title: Message from a mother and a lawyer
Author: Saeed Naqvi
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: July 23, 1999
It is universally acknowledged that Pakistan stands exposed in Kargil
and in the corridors of diplomacy world-wide. But are we in the
process of defeating the "idea" of an extremist Pakistan?
Mir Taqi Mir said : Chashm ho to aayina khana hai dahar/Munh nazar
aata hai deewaron Ke beech. (If you have that inner eye, this world is
a hall of mirrors; you can see your face in what the physical eye sees
only as a blank wall).
I saw the idea of Pakistan take a drubbing when a composed and
dignified Begum Hema Aziz received the body of her son Lt.
Haneefuddin, of the Rajputana Rifles, who was killed in action in
Kargil. Brigadier Prakash Chaudhary made sure that the body of the
24-year-old officer was recovered at all costs, under intense firing
in the Turtuk sector.
I saw the "idea" corrode when Indian jawans raised their hands for
Fateha over the Pakistani dead on the Kargil hills -- also with pious
dignity. Images of returning soldiers, dead or alive, have an emotive
appeal which sometimes transcends reason. That is why it is important
to locate instances of victory over the "idea" in the normal
intercourse of our daily lives. Well, I saw the idea trounced in the
courts of Lucknow on Wednesday when Shabihul Hasnain, a young and
distinguished lawyer, won a keenly contested election as senior vice
president of the Avadh Bar Association.
The significance of this victory deserves explanation. During the
Babri Masjid fiasco of December 6, 1992, the section most severely
gripped, intellectually, by the prevailing mood of madness was the
legal community of Lucknow. The RSS and the BJP were not only on the
ascendant, they had taken charge. They remain the dominant group.
The electoral college consisted of 1,100 senior lawyers of the high
court of whom only 125 are Muslims. P.N. Mathur, 65, won the contest
for president without much fuss. But Shabihul Hasnain, 41, was in the
field with nine other candidates. And he defeated all the others by an
impressive margin. Obviously, political parties are not directly
involved in a bar association election, but, as Shabihul admits "there
is no way I could have won without overwhelming support from the
majority community a sizeable number of whom are privately affiliated
with the BJP. The reason why Shabihul's success, and his reasoning for
it, comes across as a bit of surprise is the decades of "secularism"
versus BJP indoctrination people have been subjected to in which the
BJP is portrayed as the ogre out to devour the Muslims.
In hindsight, it may be possible to infer that much of the communalism
of the past decades was on account of the political contest between
the BJP (which itself was an advance on the Jana Sangh) and the
Congress which cast the "secularism" net to retain the Muslims as a
vote bank. Since the Congress was in power for most of these years, it
was politically expedient to portray this captive vote bank as the
"pampered" minority. This came in handy for greater Hindu
consolidation. Once this consolidation began to take shape Indira
Gandhi gave that famous twist to the elections in Jammu. One thing led
to the other until a confused Rajiv Gandhi, rather simple-mindedly,
opened the locks of the Ram temple in Ayodhya to please the Hindus and
handed Shah Bano to the Muslims.
By the time P.V. Narasimha Rao appeared on the scene, backward caste
politics as a result of Mandalisation made it essential for both the
Congress and the BJP to rush for upper caste support. This competition
in saffronisation between the two reached its climax with the fall of
the Babri masjid. The "pampered minority" defected en bloc from the
Congress. The rest is history.
But the consequence of all these developments has been that the
minorities have been freed of their past immobility. They are now
creating a room for themselves free of political prejudice. Shabihul
Hasnain, an active member in his community's numerous religious
festivities and observances, is a metaphor for the new, "freed"
Muslim. He is not a "westernised", non-religious secularist either. In
his private life, he is a deeply religious man. It is in his social
interaction that he is the quintessential Indian whom, earlier, his
Hindu supporters elected to the executive committee of Lucknow
University as well.
The Shabihul Hasnain episode is but a tiny strand in the complex
tapestry of a harmonised, tolerant, democratic republic on the move.
It is this harmony, with minimal false notes, which will eventually
defeat the "idea" of Pakistan.
It is a delicate business because defeating the "idea" does not, by a
long shot, entail the erasure of our neighbour. It entails applying,
by example, pressure on its institutions which are lurching towards
extremism and intolerance in the name of Islam. We need in our
neighbourhood a tolerant, democratic society, where land reforms are
overdue; where the Mohajirs, Sindhis, Pashtun, Baluchis are all
groaning under a Punjabi yoke. A society which, to keep itself
together, harps on Kashmir as its only focal point; a society which
exports terrorism so that our tapestry is frayed, so that Shabihul
Hasnain does not win elections but retires into a Muslim ghetto, so
that Begam Hema Aziz is not celebrated as the proud mother of a
martyr.
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