Author: Saeed Naqvi
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: June 27, 2003
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=26512
Introduction: The community gains
by keeping the Kanchi seer's proposals confidential
Hyperactive Muslim individuals,
with leadership pretensions despite the fact that they have been roundly
defeated in recent elections, are running around in circles in a state
of desperation to find out the details of the proposals on Ayodhya the
Shankaracharya of Kanchi has given to the Muslim Personal Law Board.
It would be healthy curiosity if
their purpose was constructive. It is not. They are being nosy because
they are not in the core group involved in the current negotiations. This
marginalisation is galling because the trend threatens a closure of their
political shops, a termination of their twilight days as channel hoppers.
But whether or not the details of
the proposal are available to them, they will persist in publicly airing
their reservations on something they, at the time of writing, do not know.
"If the construction of the temple
is allowed to start on the undisputed land, the situation in the future
will be more explosive than it is today?"
Why would that be so? "Because according
to the original temple plan, the garba-griha, the sanctum sanctorum of
the temple, is projected to be on the spot where Ram Lalla was supposed
to have been born or where the Babri Masjid stood - in other words the
disputed land, the ownership of which the court is considering."
The line of argument continues:
"If the title suit is not decided and the construction of the temple continues
according to the old plan, then a situation will arise where the incomplete
temple will be hovering over the spot where the sanctum sanctorum ought
to be." Then comes the clincher: "Will this incomplete temple not be much
more provocative?"
First, all such speculation is premature
because the executive of the MPLB will consider the Kanchi seer's proposal
only on July 6. Second, speculation is based on unreliable information
because neither the Shankaracharya nor Syed Rabay Hasan Nadwi, president
of the MPLB, are likely to have leaked the proposal before it has been
perused.
For the first time even liberal
Muslim opinion, such as it is, is veering around to the view that the leadership
of the MPLB is handling the issue with the enlightened purpose of defusing
it politically.
How does one defuse an issue like
Ayodhya? By placing the results of the discussion between the Kanchi seer
and MPLB for Messrs Singhal and Togadia to tear into, whatever the nature
of the compact?
Both the Shankaracharya and the
MPLB appear to be of the view that negotiations on the package should be
held in confidence and not tossed into the public domain prematurely. "The
solution shall be such as to bring the two communities closer, re-establish
the warmth between them which the politics of the recent decades has destroyed."
Those who agitate in public, speculating
about the package, will be increasingly isolated in popular perception
because they will be seen to be in opposition to the approach outlined
above.
All of this dovetails nicely into
the "problem solving" track the prime minister is embarked on both, internally
and externally. The landmark event in this path was the prime minister's
April 18 speech in Srinagar.
The sceptics whisper: all this is
being done to facilitate the prime minister's election campaign! If the
environment is being denied active focus on a nagging communal issue, surely
neither the Muslims nor the Hindus can complain. If relations are being
harmonised for elections, surely elections so conducted would be extremely
welcome by all sensible people.
All of this leads to a huge psychological
road block for the Muslim mind. Is this Hindu-Muslim compact to clear the
air of communal tension being promoted ultimately to facilitate a BJP prime
minister's appropriation of the middle ground in Indian politics, to ensure
his political longevity?
Suppose that is the design. Do we
then tear up the Ayodhya proposals, go out flailing our arms and pave the
way for the sort of atmosphere that prevailed during the Gujarat pogrom
when taunting Muslims as "Mian Musharraf" was advantageous political tactics?
Should we help the tolerant Hindu isolate Ashok Singhal and Praveen Togadia
or leave the field wide open to them?
Until 1964 the undisputed leader
of Indian Muslims was Jawaharlal Nehru. Since then the world's second largest
Muslim population has floundered from crisis to crisis - now a Congress
votebank, now parceling itself behind caste groups for survival. Its disenchantment
with the Congress became irreparable after the fall of the Babri Masjid.
Where should the Muslim go?
With Kamal Nath who would not allow
Sonia Gandhi to visit Muslim camps in Gujarat for fear of losing Hindu
sympathy? With Digvijay Singh in Madhya Pradesh who is giving Uma Bharti
fierce competition as to who is more saffron? Heaven knows why it is considered
politically incorrect for Muslims to spell out what they have believed
these five years: that Sonia Gandhi has been the enabling factor that allowed
the BJP-led NDA to continue in power for its full term.
Bereft of leadership the community
was invited to focus on Shah Bano, Salman Rushdie, Babri Masjid, Israel
as issues of life and death. The result has been the total marginalisation
of the community from the mainstream. Happily this realisation has dawned
on those of the community who have been invited to play a leadership role
in the Ayodhya dispute.
The Muslim is at the crossroads.
Any leader who can have the courage to see the peace process through with
Pakistan will have his support. This is not because there is a Muslim-Pakistan
nexus but because Indo-Pak amity lowers communal temperature across the
subcontinent and enlarges the spaces for harmony and peace without which
the ambitious economic agendas of the future cannot be realised.
In my experience Muslims are increasingly
of the view that time has come for a new deal in which issues of the three
temples and cow slaughter should be handled in such a way as to pave the
way for a grand rapprochement which would smash the "Mian Musharraf" brigade
and the politics it feeds on.
