Author: M.V. Kamath
Publication: Organiser
Date: August 12, 2007
First, an explanation: When one speaks of
Muslims, it does not mean all Muslims in India, just as when one speaks of
Hindus, it does not mean all Hindus think alike from Kanyakumari to the snowy
mountains of the Himalayas. And yet, one can't help generalising at times
as when one says that as a result of a long history of tyrannical Muslim rule,
Hindus have come to attach an abhorrence of Muslims in general and Islam in
particular.
Muslims did not rule all of India all the
time. Neither were all Muslim rulers tyrannical all the time. But one speaks
here of 'impressions', just as did Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh when,
addressing the National Press Club in Washington a year ago, he said: "We
have 150 million citizens who practice the faith of Islam. And I say it with
some pride, that not one of them has joined the ranks of these gangs like
the al Qaida or other terrorist outfits.." Famous last words. If he eats
them he would have indigestion.
As Aroon Purie of India Today recently pointed
out, there is a strong possibility that al Qaida cells are active in India.
As he put it: "Our Parliament, commuter trains and crowded market places
have already been attacked." But go back to recent times. Even if we
don't take into consideration the torching of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra
and the incineration of over 53 women and children at one go and the bombing
of the Akshardham Temple in Ahmedabad, remember these acts of terrorism: On
August 8, 1993 there was a bomb blast at the RSS office in Chennai killing
11 and injuring seven. On February 14, 1998 there was a serial car bombings
in Coimbatore killing 46 and injuring over 200. In May-June 2000 there was
a series of 13 bomb blasts in churches in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa,
killing nearly 50. On December 28, 2005, an LeT-backed group attacked the
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and on May 18, 2007 again the Lashkar-e-Toiba
arranged a blast at the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, killing 16 persons. We
need also to take into consideration the attack twice, on the Raghunath Temple,
the Delhi Deepavali blasts in 2006 and Sankat Vimochan, Varanasi also in 2006.
According to the Anti-Terrorist Squad, ISI-sponsored
groups like the LeT and al Badr have both active and sleeping modules in India.
Outlook has pointed out that "There is a sizeable educated Muslim population
who are now seen as likely candidates for jihadi indoctrination".
What does it say of the Muslims? One generalisation
is that Muslims have not come to terms with history and can't stand the thought
that they have now to live in a country with a predominantly Hindu-oriented
government, no matter how loudly it claims to be 'secular', after having for
centuries been the rulers. To Muslims, Hindus are still kafirs and they blanch
at the thought of having to be governed by a Common Civil Law. They have still
to accept the fact that times have changed, that they have to live with Hindus
as fellow citizens and not as masters. That would explain the Two-Nation Theory
and Jinnah's insistence on a separate Muslim state. That may also possibly-just
possibly-explain the irritation in many Muslim minds of being a minority that
can't lay down the law as in ancient times when though they were numerically
few, politically and militarily they ruled as a majority.
It is also possible that because of that very
fact, they think that Hindus are deliberately keeping them down out of vengeance
and therefore must react violently to it. These are guesses and anyone is
free to question them. But what, one may ask, will the Muslim community gain
through violence? Where will extremism and religious fundamentalism take them?
Can one blame Hindus if they smear all Muslims as potential terrorists?
Hasan Saroot, writing in The Hindu (July 17) made the point that "Islamic
extremism has not descended from another planet or been imposed on the community
from outside" and that "it breeds within the community and is the
product of a certain kind of interpretation of Islam".
The general argument made by our secularists
and enraged Muslims is that Islam is a religion of peace. But Hasan Suroor
writes: "Let's face it; there are verses in the Koran that justify violence..
When Islam was in its infancy and battling against non-believers, violence
was deemed legitimate to put them down. Today, when it is the world's second
largest religion with more than one billion followers around the world and
still growing, that context has lost its relevance. Yet, jihadi groups, pursuing
that madcap scheme of establishing Dar-ul-Islam (The Land of Islam) are using
these passages to incite impressionable Muslim youths."
Are Hindus to blame? What have Hindus done
to invite Muslim angst? The demolition of the insignificant Babri structure?
One should put that against the background of the numbers of temples-counted
in hundreds-demolished by Muslim rulers, especially Aurangzeb and some of
his predecessors and contemporaries, in the past. Are Hindus supposed to forget
them and let bygones be bygones? Then comes the argument that the claims that
Sri Ram was born at the exact spot where the Babri structure was built is
an untenable one. But that is a matter of faith.
Can Hindus question the belief that it was
Allah who dictated the Koran to the Prophet or that-to move a little further-that
Christ was born to Virgin Mary? Has anyone questioned Malayasia which in the
past few months has razed to the ground several Hindu temples to the utter
distress of Hindu devotees? And this is not history but done in the living
present. Has any Muslim or secular organisation raised its voice? How many
illegal mosques have not the Musharraf regime pulled down in Pakistan in recent
years? Then there are many who try to explain Islamic violence to what the
United States and Britain have done to Iraq and what the US has done to Iran.
But what has that got to do with India?
India has neither officially or unofficially
condoned the US invasion of Iraqi; indeed India has show clearly its unwillingness
to accept the US thesis that Iraq was accumulating weapons of mass destruction
and therefore needs to be brought to order. Another excuse for Islamic violence
is that it is poverty and lack of education that is the driving force. But
as Perves Hoodbhoy, who teaches at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad notes,
'deprivation and suffering do not, by themselves, lead to radicalism, that
lack of educational opportunities too is an insufficient cause, considering
that the 9/11 hijackers and the Glasgow airport doctors were "highly
educated men supported by thousands of similarly educated Muslim in Pakistan".
Muslims in India must look inwards and think
of what a reformed British extremist, Hassan Dutt, said about "the role
of Islamic ideology in terrorism" that preaches "a separatist message
of Islamic supremacy" and seeks to establish a "puritanical caliphate".
What Muslims in India and, for that matter,
in Pakistan must come to accept is that times have changed and that they must
change for the better. Hoodbhoy says that Pakistan must take strict action
against mullahs who spread hatred. Will Musharraf dare to take such action?
He was forced to get Lal Masjid in Islamabad vacated of would-be terrorists.
But there is a greater job ahead of him to be discharged, and that is to modernise
Islam as once his political icon, Kamal Pasha of Turkey, did. But will Musharraf
last? Word is going round that Washington wouldn't hesitate to wage war in
Waziristan and elsewhere to root our al Qaida. One can only wait and see.
