Author: M V Kamath
Publication: News Today
Date: August 29, 2006
URL: http://newstodaynet.com/guest/2908gu1.htm
In the final analysis, after all is said and
done,the one big question that arises in the mind is:
What do the Indian Muslims really want? When,
during the long-drawn talks with the British, Congress leaders finally - and
may it be said most reluctantly - agreed to the country's partition, it was
not because they accepted Mohammed Ali Jinnah's Two Nation Theory as a desirable
option, but plainly because they wanted to avoid a civil war of unprecedented
proportion, having witnessed with their own eyes what happened in Calcutta,
now Kolkata, after the Muslim League leader's call for the observance of Deliverance
Day and the streets of the city flowed with the blood of the innocent.
Muslims in India clearly had an option. If
they so deeply believed in the Quaed-e-Azam's proposal that Muslims form a
separate culture, they were free to leave India and go to Pakistan. Nobody
would have stopped them. Millions of Muslims decided to stay put where they
were and one presumed that in the years to come they would remain Indian.
In States like Uttar Pradesh their rich landlords had deserted them. So had
a substantial portion of intelligentsia.
The Hindus did not take any vengeance on them;
indeed the Congress then in power pampered them with shameless zeal not only
to show that they were 'secular' but also to capture Muslim votes.
The majority of the Muslims had a sense of
guilt even if many of them secretly looked to Pakistan as their home. Perhaps,
at that point in time Indians would have been wiser to declare India as a
'Hindu' State, but that would only have justified the Muslim League's theoretical
assumption.
Nehru certainly in his life and personality
was 'secular' in every sense of the word. It was this sense of secularism
that gave India the right to acquire - quite legally and constitutionally
- the State of Jammu & Kashmir.
Secularism embodied democracy which is very
much part of the Hindu psyche. Indeed, even Jinnah, in his saner moments,
did not want Pakistan to be a theocratic State. In his address to the Constituent
Assembly of Pakistan on 11 August 1947 (which Pakistanis consciously want
to forget), Jinnah said: 'If we want to make this great state of Pakistan
happy and prosperous we should... forgetting the past, burying the hatchet...
work together in a spirit that everyone... no matter (of) what community...
(or) colour, caste, creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State,
with equal rights, privileges and obligations? But he was fork-tongued. If
that was his concept of a secular Pakistan, then he should have left Jammu
& Kashmir alone, instead of attempting to annex it by hook or by crook.
Why shouldn't Muslims of Jammu & Kashmir live in India and work together
with the rest of the people in the manner in which he wanted the people of
Pakistan themselves to live? The Pakistani leaders drove the Hindus out of
Pakistan, while Indian leaders pampered Indian Muslims, nor, perhaps, out
of love for them, but because their votes were precious. Now, they are telling
the world, they have been taken for a ride in the last six decades. Their
problem is inward.
For a thousand years their co-religionists were rulers, who laid down the
law. Now they know that no matter what, they can't be rulers; at best they
can be part of a secular society. Do they really think that by taking to mindless
terrorism they will ever be the ruling class again? Or that they can force
India to relinquish Jammu & Kashmir? The majority of them do not seem
to want to become part of the mainstream. How can one join the mainstream
if men think that they have to wear a skullcap and grow a bread and that women
have to take to the burqah? Do Hindu children go to Ved Pathshalas for their
education? If Muslims as a whole want to retain their distinct identity, how
can the State be blamed if not enough of them are recruited into the army
or the police force? And how will it help them if some among them - even if
they form a minuscule minority - take to burning railway coaches occupied
by Hindu women and children or placing incendiary bombs in railway carriages
to blow them up along with their occupants? Or play other dangerous tricks
on unsuspecting Indians at the behest of Pakistan's ISI? From the 1980s to
the 1990s, as a columnist wrote in The Hindu, 'anti-social elements and practices
were allowed to go unnoticed and unpunished (in India), all in the name of
some esoteric notion of secular correctness.' Secularism has now become a
dirty word and if things go as they have in the past, the Muslim community
in India will come to realise that it has no friends. Not even the secularists
whose duplicity has been exposed by what happened in Mumbai on 11 July 2006.
Secularists are cowards. In India, Muslims must be Indians first and don't
think of themselves as a minority. Minorityism has been the bane of this country.
The Parsis have never sought minorityism even if they are a minority among
minorities and they have always been held in great respect. In Indonesia,
they are not afraid to assert that if their religion is Islam, their nationality
Indonesian, their culture is Hindu. Malaysia which has a majority Muslim population
speak Bhasa Malayese. Its largest frigate is named Indrashakti, its biggest
oil rig is called Parameswara, a leading automobile company goes by the name
of Pradhana, the husband is swami, the wife, stree whereas putra stands for
both a son and a prince.
In Indonesia, the name of a former President's
daughter is Saraswati and how much more Sanskritic can names like Soekarno,
Suharto and Meghavati be? The Muslims are free to be what they want to be,
Hindus (really they are to be called Sanatana dharmists) are by definition
secular, but if Indian Muslims genuinely believe that they can destroy India,
they will only be destroying themselves. And let no Hindu be blamed. The trouble
with Indian Muslims is that they are a confused lot and are unwilling to accept
that times have changed. A handful of them are playing the Pakistan game and
in the process making all Muslims hated and untrustworthy. If they insist
on living in the era of Mughal rule in India to call the shots they will only
hurt themselves and isolate themselves still further and then they shouldn't
blame Hindus for their fate. Pakistan is a hoax and Indian Muslims who want
to play its game and indulge in violence have only themselves to blame if
they continue to be marginalised. July 11 should be treated by all Indian
Muslims as a sign of warning. If, in future, they do not keep the terrorists
among them under control, and continue to segregate themselves from the rest
of Indians, they will have only themselves to answer for their backwardness
and failures.
