Author: M.V. Kamath
Publication: Organiser
Date: October 1, 2006
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=150&page=12
It obviously does not occur to some mullahs
and other reactionary Muslims that by refusing to sing Vande Mataram and threatening
to withdraw Muslim children from schools where it is routine to sing it, they
are only telling their co-religionists to withdraw from the Indian mainstream.
Like the Muslim League of pre-Independence
days, one Minister of Uttar Pradesh has called for the formation of a separate
Muslim state within the Indian Union instead of Harit Pradesh in western Uttar
Pradesh. It is one more divisive step that the Muslim community is taking
which is self-destructive and will only alienate Muslims from their Hindu
brethren further.
Refusing to sing Vande Mataram on extremely
illogical grounds is bad enough. Demanding a separate communal state is inviting
more trouble. Not that the idea will ever get accepted. But what it reveals
is a sick mind that continues to be rooted in the medieval era. The argument
one frequently hears is that Muslims are under-represented in every State
Legislature as well as in Lok Sabha. But then whose fault is it. If Muslims
refuse to join the mainstream and insist on being treated as a minority, they
can hardly expect popular support. Past experience plainly shows that when
communal peace prevails Muslims get more seats in the Lok Sabha. It is true
that in the last fourteen Lok Sabha elections only a fraction of the number
of seats they should normally deserve proportionate to their population were
won by Muslims. The truth is that they had, on their own, forfeited the confidence
of their Hindu brethren. If a minority lives apart and stays apart from the
majority community how can it possibly win the trust, let alone affection,
of the latter?
Consider the following figures: In the first
Lok Sabha elections, if one goes strictly by population percentage Muslims
should have got 49 seats. Instead, they got 21 seats. In the second Lok Sabha
elections, the population percentage remained the same-but the passions aroused
by the Partition was subsiding and the Muslims won 24 seats, three more than
in the first elections. In the third Lok Sabha elections, population percentage-wise
Muslim should have received 53 seats but they won only 23. The highest number
of seats Muslims won was in the seventh Lok Sabha elections when, though population-percentage
wise they should have received 53 seats they managed to secure 49-not bad.
Since then, largely because of emotional estrangement,
the number of Muslims elected to the Lok Sabha has been falling. From the
tenth to the fourteen Lok Sabha elections they should have got 66 seats but
they could barely manage to get between 28 to 36 seats. The fourteenth Lok
Sabha elections were in 2004 when Muslims joined different political parties,
primarily to beat the BJP. Muslims got ten seats in Congress, seven in the
Samajwadi, four in the CPM, four in the BJP, three in the RJD and one each
in other local parties. They can win more, if they get over their antediluvian
ideas and become a modern, liberated people, instead of a people suspect of
terrorism and anti-Indian motives. They can't get votes by putting their women
in burqas and sending their children to madrasas when they should be sent
to normal primary and secondary schools to be one with their Hindu and other
students from the majority and allied religions.
There is another lesson that they should learn
which is that hating the BJP and trying to curry favour from the likes of
Laloo Prasad Yadav or Mulayam Singh Yadav or Mayavati will not help them.
They will continue to remain estranged from the majority community, no matter
what arguments the so-called secular parties may put forth to win their favour.
Neither in Bihar, nor in Uttar Pradesh has
the condition of Muslims changed because they voted against the BJP. As Chaturanan
Mishra, a former Union Minister of Labour (1996-1998) and a prominent figure
in the Leftist movement in the country aptly noted in Mainstream (August 17),
the Congress, allegedly the largest secular party nominated 39 Muslims in
1991 and 1996, of whom only 12 could win. Similarly, 32 Muslims were nominated
by the Congress in 1998 but only seven could succeed.
Religion can never be the base of getting
a ticket. Muslim citizens must come up in front and be seen as social workers,
serving people of all religions. If they insist to live in the past as in
the Shah Banoo case, or if they seem to be supporting SIMI, an ISI-financed
student organisation-no matter how wrongly-then they doom themselves to being
eternally marginalised. And they should not blame the majority community.
As Shakespeare might have said to Muslims, the fault, dear sires, lies not
in the majority but in yourselves that you want to stay separate.
Turks are not less Islamic because the Ataturk
threw out the Caliphate and liberated Turkish women. The Indonesians are not
less Islamic because they continue to adhere in many ways to their ancient
Hindu traditions. They are not hesitant to call their airlines Garuda Airlines;
they are not hesitant to give their children Sanskrit name like Meghavati
or Saraswati (a daughter of former President Waheed); nor are they hesitant
in putting the figure of Ganesh on their currency notes. An Indonesian production
of Ramayana would put some of our own Indian artists to shame; but here in
India a section of reactionary Muslims refuse to sing even the first two stanzas
of Vande Mataram because somewhere down the line in the song there is a reference
to Durga. And Indonesia is 98 per cent Muslim!
If Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a great Islamic
scholar who had his training in Islamic law and jurisprudence in the famous
Islamic University in Cairo, could respect Vande Mataram and stand to attention
when it was sung at AICC meetings, surely lesser Islamic scholars can take
a leaf from his book.
Many Muslim organisations increasingly seem
to be taking their cue from fundamentalist Islamic organisation in Pakistan.
It is not going to help them one bit and it is time they realise it. Muslims
should not consider themselves a minority. India is a democracy and all citizens
are equal. Hindus are not that stupid as to want to hurt Islamic sentiments
of Muslims. But we need to live under a Common Law as citizens are equal in
every way. For Muslims, especially, separatism should be deeply abhorrent.
It should be shunned like the very devil. We are one people and India, as
Mohammad Iqbal once wrote belongs to everyone, irrespective of caste, creed,
religion or community. Sareh jahan seh achcha Hindustan hamara should be our
guiding mission. Then everything will fall in its place and-who knows-the
time may come when under sound Muslim leadership, Hindus themselves may vote
for Muslims. Who, today, is our President? Who, our Prime Minister? And who
the leader of the Congress Party, oh?
