Author: Bipin Patel (London)
Publication:
Date:
How absurd, if not sad, that India
is the only country in the world that provides a subsidy to its second
biggest majority for pilgrimage to Mecca; in the pretext of her constitutional
obligation (of secular) and latter enacted as the Haj Act, way back in
1959! Thanks to Janab Jawaharlal Nehru, who chose to give this gift to
the second biggest majority! Thanks to his stream of secular ideologists
and India's urban English press that even after 27th May 1964 (after the
Janab's demise), that they chose to remain silent on the Act that can surpass
all the Constitutional provisions that can make a mockery of democratic
republic India's secular image.
Why has India no similar Act of
Parliament that offers such a subsidy to non-Muslims? The only possible
answer that a sensible and right-minded Indian can come to is, that, in
order for India's pseudo-secularist babus (politicians) to be elected as
peoples representatives, appeasement is the easiest option to gain a seat
of power that can then help them amass wealth. It's an irony that the non-Muslims
are more engaged in regional political parties than issues that demand
immediate attention like national security, corruption and population control.
No wonder Pakistan's ISI has successfully managed to penetrate in almost
every establishment in India.
In order to monitor this year's
Haj, likely to take place on March 4, India's - all expenses paid - 15
member delegation, headed by Farooq Abdulla, the chief Minister of Jammu
and Kashmir, and having Justice Fatima Bibi of the Kerala High Court and
eminent Islamic scholar Maulana Wahiduddin Khan as part of the delegation,
has already left for Jeddah on February 25.
Economically, can India really afford
the ever-increasing subsidy? The 1994 to 2001 subsidy scenario costing
the Indians 25 crores to 150 crores respectively (a giant leap of 500%
in 7 years!), is not only alarming but also most unacceptable when the
Indian government is busy in scrapping the most needed subsidies for food
grain and fertilisers for farmers, besides the mega-urgently needed cash
for the Indian Army, Air Force and Navy.
Socially, can India afford to give
a step-motherly treatment to non-Muslims, when the need of the hour is
to instil patriotism in every son of the soil? Is it right for the India's
politicians (some of whom with criminal cases behind them) to create barriers
amongst her own children? Psychologically, can India afford to let her
citizens think that the very sovereignty and integrity for which Indians
have sacrificed their lives in the period of 90 years from 1857 to 1947,
and from 1947 to 1999, (the Kargil war), will be no more, for if the same
system continues, then India as a nation will be no more in the map of
the world?
Incidentally, the Haj subsidy has
recently been criticised by none other than the government of Saudi Arabia,
which believes the subsidy goes against the spirit of the Shariat Some
media reports indicate that, embarrassingly enough, the Haj subsidy issue
came up during the visit of External Affairs minister Jaswant Singh to
Saudi Arabia last month. Saudi ambassador to India A. Rahman N. Alohaly
elaborated upon the fact in the presence of the Indian contingent to his
foreign minister Saud Al-Faisal. Al-Faisal is said to have made remonstrating
noises. ``This is wrong,'' The minister told the Indian delegation in words
to that effect, adding, ``Our ulema will help you in explaining to your
people that the subsidy goes against the spirit of the Shariat.''
Media sources also confirm quoting
Islamic religious authorities, that, strictly speaking, the Haj pilgrimage
may not be ``accepted by God'' if expenditure on transport to the Haj holy
sites and on food is not the pilgrim's own.
Even Pakistan, in 1997, discontinued
government subsidies to Haj pilgrims as well as goodwill delegations it
would send to the holy sites. In a case before the Lahore High Court, Justice
Tanvir Ahmed ruled that any expenditure defrayed by the government was
contrary to the Shariat and therefore, wrong
Both the Government of India and
Indians, as a collective national conscience, must think that India, a
nation that aspires to be a permanent member of the Security Council of
the United Nations, and a superpower, need no more barriers. Mr Mushirul
Hasan, an Indian historian has rightly quoted Rabindranath Tagore; "Let
us announce to the world, that the light of the morning has come, not for
entrenching ourselves behind barriers, but for meeting in mutual understanding
and trust on the common field of co-operation, never for nourishing a spirit
of rejection, but for that glad acceptance which constantly carries in
itself the giving out of the best that we have."
A serious Indian needs to think
if the Haj Act 1959 has helped India in putting the barriers behind and
"giving out the best", by the Indians to the Indians? Think of a fatwa,
issued last in March, by five Muslim religious institutions in Hyderabad.
The fatwa declared that it was unlawful for a Muslim to act in films. "If
a woman gets her head tonsured without any Shariat excuse, it would be
violation of Islamic doctrine," it had been decreed by the institutions
in an obvious reference to film actress Cabaña Zamia tonsuring her
head to act in the film Water. The fatwa further declared that Muslim film
stars during the shooting of films performing acts of polytheism must renew
their faith. While three out of five religious institutions termed it as
atheism and dubbed it as mortal sin, two others defined it as transgression.
The five seminaries had issued the fatwas with their seals. The fatwas
were also been published in Gawah, an Urdu weekly in Hyderabad. Another
case of barrier; venting anger Palestinian style, about 1,000 Muslims,
including a fair number of children between three and 10 years, pelted
stones from inside a mosque in Hyderabad, shouting "Babri Masjid leke rahenge,
Bomb ki holi khelenge" and "Ram mandir todenge".
The Students Islamic Movement of
India, (SIMI) which has of late been in the spotlight for its alleged involvement
in a series of bombs blasts in Uttar Pradesh, is opposed to democracy "in
its existing Western-oriented form" and favouring to the centuries-old
caliphate system that once provided governance in the Islamic world. How
shocking that SIMI sees Jammu and Kashmir as an international problem and
believes that Osama bin Laden has been wrongly labelled a terrorist by
the United States of America.
Is it right that India needs
to have the Haj Subsidy?
Would it not be ideal to add Rs
150 crores for the rehabilitation project of the recent Gujarat earthquake
or in helping the war widows of the nation whose brave husbands gave their
life for the honour of India? Do we still have to be reminded that some
war widow in Rajasthan, even today, have to walk over two miles a day for
water?
It is about time India repealed
the shameful Act and instead spent the money for the better training of
the National Cadet Corps (NCC) and instils in the new generation a special
pride of being an Indian first and ever be ready to serve the world. If
there needs to be a special committee then let that committee have the
patriotic like India's super scientist, Bharat Ratna Dr A P J Abdul Kalam,
a mother like Mrs Hema Uddin whose son Captain Hanif Uddin made a supreme
sacrifice of his life for the honour and integrity of India at the Kargil
war in 1999, a soldier like Major General Ashraf Karim (now retired) whose
invaluable contribution to the Indian Army is rightly recorded in the military
records of India and a diplomat like Mohammad Carim Chagla, a former Mumbai
High Court Judge and India's former High Commissioner to London who quite
proudly said that he was a Hindu by culture.
India's need of the hour is right
leaders who can lead the nation to its Vedic glory, that has not denied
any one a shelter in her soil, has always treated every one with equal
respect and believed in the principle of mutual peace and co-existence.
The Haj Subsidy has failed to generate
a sense of mutual respect and co-existence. India can ill afford to preserve
it.
