Muslims in India: Communalism vs. Backwardness-Minority Syndrome

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Every community should fight the ogre of communalism. For minorities there cannot be a better and safer system than secularism. However, for secularism to work all communities must adopt secularist attitudes. Christian missionaries who proselytize aggressively are as dangerous to secularism as Hindutva leaders. The same goes for Muslim leaders. If we confine our religion within our homes, the majority will also do the same. I have had no problems with Hindus although I know some enthusiastic missionaries who have been threatened. I have seen Hindus becoming more and more conscious of being had by others. I think that is a natural reaction for which we cant blame Hindus.

Pakistanis including SameerJB and Saima who talk of how ideally India should be many nations, I will like to ask you a personal question, tell me which of these nations should I go?

Let me explain I am Hindi speaking and my father is from Rajasthan but I have never lived in the Hindi-speaking areas of India(in fact neither did my mother, for most part). I was born and lived all my life in another state Kerala 2000 km away. If India is not one nation, please tell me, where do I belong? Is my(or any other Indian`s) identity supposed to be restricted to primarily the language I speak and the exact spot where my father was born? Or if I belong to the nation where I was born, are my parents to be foreigners, to be banished from where they have lived and worked for last many decades?

The other day I happened to meet a Malayalee who grew up in Mumbai, and we had a good laugh about how he had never lived in Kerala whereas I lived there most of my life, but he was the Malayalee speaking one and I was the Hindi speaking one. I have come across this situation many times, a Bengali colleague who grew up in Agra and married a Punjabi, a Kannada friend who grew up among peanut farmers in Gujarat, a Manipuri friend who has actually lived in Rastrapathi Bhavan as part of the President of India`s household(and at that time the President was a Tamilian).

I am not the only one, many of my friends and neighbours have parents from different regions or have themselves married people of other regions or religions or have moved out of `their` region and settled down elsewhere for work.

And its not only my generation. Almost 50 years ago when my father was leaving for studies abroad, in his hometown in Rajasthan, he paid farewell visits to a number of elders, including family friends who I now realise(being faced with this multiple nationhood issue on chowk) happened to be Malayalees. Tell me where do I belong and where do those Malayalees belong?

Our Army is integrated, our paramilitary forces are integrated, our central IPS cadre is integrated(for example you can find N.Indian police officials in S. India and vice versa) how do you propose it should be split?

Our bureacracy is integrated. One of my school classmates in Kerala was Sikh whose Sikh father was true blue Punjabi but his job was in the Kerala cadre and so he spoke better Malayalam than I who had grown up there. The other day I spotted my Malayalee school classmate on ZeeNews promoting tourism in Chattisgarh. He is a Indian Administrative Service officer in the Chattisgarh and is evidently assigned to the tourism department. I know from personal friends that he is married to a Punjabi or Hindi speaking N.Indian. A N.Indian family friend I grew up with in Kerala joined the Indian police service and ended up policing in W Bengal. If India is not one nation, but many nations which are better separate, tell me which nation should both these people go, where should they work? And I am just one Indian relating only PART of my experience with Indian diversity.

Perhaps Pakistanis donot comprehend the huge diversity of India, a diversity which has only grown since 1947. Dalits from N.India get together with Dalits of S.India on common issues. A Cong MP from Kerala is sent to sort out party issues in Maharashtra(for example) When terrorists kill sleeping laborers in Jammu, often its Bihari migrants who are killed. In the Gujarat riots, there were UP/Bihari Muslims also who were killed. In the TV news reportage of the Cauvery river dispute from Bangalore, one can see a Sikh (or two) accompanying the Karnataka CM. A Sikkimese woman was India`s Foreign secretary, a person from the Khasi tribal community in Meghalaya is presently India`s Chief Election Commissioner who made the decisions about elections in Gujarat and J&K.

In summary, our institutions are integrated to a large extent, our lives are integrated to a large extent, our national consciouness is integrated to a large extent, and face it, an Indian currency note has at least 11 languages on it. An Indian from a given region and their talents are not restricted to that region, he/she has the run of the entire country, its institutions and the scope the whole country offers.

The Indian challenge is NOT to repudiate all this and split this consciousness up and restrict people to their `own` regions `for their own best interests` as Pakistanis keep asserting, its to expand the national consciousness and expand the scope for achievement so that no group, or region or individual is left out.

The idea that Tamils cannot live with Kannadas and Keralites cannot live with Maharashtrians so all Kannadigas must leave the rest of India and go back to Karnataka and all Keralites must return to Kerala, that Punjabis in Tamil Nadu or Kolkatta must leave and go back to Punjab and all Maharashtrians in N Delhi must leave N. Delhi and go back to Maharashtra, etc and
that the borders must be drawn around areas which are to be ethnically or linguistically cleansed in Indians` `best interest`, sorry to say such an idea can only occur to someone either not adequately informed OR a determined enemy of modern Indians who wants to see India go through a thousand-fold magnified repeat of the dance of death in 1947.

quick comments: very interesting article. naive hope, ultra simplistic projection of theories.

``consociational model of democracy`` in effect divides nation into parts with unique governance?

sameer #12 very callous attitude my man. Taking away identity is not the solution.

Rajiv Gandhi two-facedness well brought out.

#105 ylh2 (not much change here)

Have your or have you not publically proclaimed (on Chowk) your descent from arabs either connected to Mohammed or part of his slawe/servant retinue? Please answer YES or NO.

I will personally find your message in which you proclaimed your august descent and post to this list. It is clear that you are now passing from sophistry to plain lying, and the world needs to understand the mindset of individuals such as yourself.

As for your silly propaganda that indians consider people like Khushwant Singh traitors, consider the following facts: Mr. Singh is a regular columnist in about a dozen leading indian papers, his views are often quoted and discussed on a weekly basis in dozens of other magazines and papers.

Only an ideologue with vested interests would try to characterize Khushwant Singh as outside the indian mainstream. Some of us are also old enough to remember the khalistani insurgency and KHushwants denounciation of a Sikh theocratic state. For this his home was sandbagged against bombs and he had four armed guards for 10 years !! So lets not waste time on silly arguments about his grand-dad or grand-uncle or whatever.

sadna #111

I realised many maynot be able to read the script in that photo. It said `Sun le beta Pakistan, Baap hai tera Hindustan` :).

Yasser # 113, please be absolutely assured, that ``categorisation`` of Khushwant Singh`s status in India has nothing to do with his sentiments towards Pakistan. It is simply that if you as a Pakistani wish us as Indians well, then you would kindly take the trouble to secure a holistic view on Mr. Khushwant Singh`s attributes before making statements like Long Live KS India.

Thank you, it is always a pleasure debating with you.

BTW, did anybody see the Aaj Tak/Musharaf interview earlier today?

Jay and the Pakistan India Cricket Match,

According to Jay Cricket mirrors political realities (all of a sudden after Pakistan`s loss)... perhaps he will tell us what political reality is mirrored by the fact that Pakistan has won more than 60 games against India while India has won close to 30?

POLITICS/RELIGION and SPORT DON`T MIX you freakoid and there is a good reason for it. What happened was Sachin Tendulkar... that little master is a gem of a player, a genius at this sport... instead of thanking providence for him, freaks like Jay are busy establishing their idiotic notions of Indian racial superiority.

It was a pleasure watching Tendulkar bat, especially the cut for six against the over rated and loud mouth Shoaib... serves him right... Gharoor ka sar neecha... shoaib was going on and on about he is going to crush Tendulkar and the little master taught him a lesson. Perhaps a word also needs to be said for the excessive booing of Waqar Younis.. Magnanimity in victory sadly is a rare virtue... even for the little master.



Sameerjb`s posts numerous:

One thing I don`t understand how you are associating Chaudhry brothers
with the Pakistan movement.. if I understand correctly their father was sub-inspector ... it is only in the 1980s that they actively joined the new muslim league reinvented by the martial law regime and it is only recently that they have gotten to the position of ascendancy.

From a point of view of a Pakistani concerned about the intellectual cultural and social well being of Pakistan, I must there is much we can imbibe from the critical onslaught of Sameerjb that is if we can look past emotional extreme leftist ramblings (peoples` history vs elitist history, gandh-jinnah-nehru presided over killings etc) ...

These are the questions I wish to ask our Government:

1) Why have we abandoned the tradition gurmukhi and dev nagri script?

2) Why don`t we teach Hindi atleast on University level? I find that an average urdu reader in Pakistan is totally oblivious of some of the better works in Hindi literature... Munshi Prem Chand is a perfect bridge.. why isn`t enough attention paid to him?

3) Why isn`t gujurati taught in Karachi which has a large Gujurati speaking population (remember Jinnah was also gujurati speaking) ?

4) Why isn`t Punjabi taught in schools in Punjab and why isn`t the oath of office in Punjab administered in Punjabi?

I was amazed to find that Jinnah`s tomb the inscriptions are in gujurati in the traditional gujurati script... hence one can deduce that when the mausoleum was complete, this sad attitude had not yet crept into our mentality... one of the stated purposes of Pakistan as per the 1930 address of Iqbal was to save South Asian Islam from the stamp of Arab Imperialism and Jinnah himself had to intervene to block attempts by Agha Khan 3 and some Bengali leaguers asking to make Arabic the national language of Pakistan.

So how do we go about changing this trend of Arabicization that set in 2 decades ago, and how do we move towards more decentralization and greater provincial autonomy so that various ethnic nations don`t feel choked? Any thoughts Sameer? Or do you just criticize to win brownie points with the Indians?

-YLH

PS One thing I am particularly worried about is the characterization of Khushwant Singh as a `white supremacist` and `colonialist by Veeresh Malik :

1) It has no logic to it

2) will any Indian who is friendly to Pakistan be caricatured in these unflattering phrases? and if yes why?

-YLH

Amit 98,

That is a comprehensive vision for the future of Pakistan and India... I wholeheartedly reciprocate your views and sentiments...

This caught my attention :

``6. Teach a balanced history in both countries ``

I have made this proposal many times on this side ... (Whatever happened to Daudpota`s attempt)... Perhaps K K Aziz on the Pakistani side would be a good candidate .. also Mubarik Ali.. What do you think?


``4. Hammer out a reasonable solution on Kashmir. Given that Kashmiris have their own government and they control the land, surely we can work out some compromise, where everyone in India and Pakistan have equal access to Kashmir for tourism, pilgrimage etc``

Agreed once again! The land grabbing antics are useless.... with an Independent and peaceful Kashmir we will effectively bury the threat of nuclear war...


You are welcomed anytime in my house in Lahore...

-YLH

Announcing and Anti-Dote to TNT: The OPC (One Person Corollory): Ladies and Gentlemen, in one more attempt to put an end to the constant mumblings about TNT by Jay from his ``pink padded cell`` (per hamidm. (But why pink incidentally? Is Jay Gay in addition to being an obssessive, compulsive, thakerayesque modiite??)), I present to you the (drum-roll please)....the OPC.
The OPC follows from the following quote from Rousseau: ``Man was born free, yet everywhere he is in chains.``
The corollary: In order to be free, we must break these chains. In order to break these chains we must understand the nature of these chains. These chains are that say ``you are part of this nation, this community``. Break them, and there is only one nation left - the nation of mankind and other living creatures on earth. Pakistan is not a nation, the Indian subcontinent is not a nation. All of mankind is one nation. Increasingly this seemingly ideal notion is becoming an everyday reality.
Thank you for reading my profound thoughts for the day. :-)

#106 by jayjay
A good analysis. I have always felt that hindu militancy will not have any takers the day muslims forge a close alliance with hindus. This does not mean giving away one`s religious identity and belief. They just need to shy away from people who speak of Islam in a confrontational way. It is heartening to note that BJP lost in Himachal Pradesh. Modi`s hindutva ideology is a dangerous concept. It should not be allowed to succeed.
Sridhar

Ref jayjay #106

While what you say about Indian Muslims might be true of SOME of the Muslim leadership, I am afraid that you are painting with a broad brush all Indian Muslims as villains. A vast majority (in excess of, I would venture, 99%) are peaceable, law-abiding citizens; the rich leading a luxurious life, the middle-class managing to survive and the poor barely ekeing out a livelihood. Just like their Hindu or Christian neighbors. Don`t blame them for the minuscule minority that might have bought into Wahabi fundamentalism and consider India dar-ul-harb.

Your comments about changing in the thinking of Indian Muslims (towards modernity, scientific education while retaining their culture, identity and religious piety) having a positive influence on Pakistan is right on.

Piscatiqua #104
You bet Indian Muslims are in the mainstream, check this out :) :

http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=298427

BUT but, if you look at the polio incidence cases(India accounts for a majority of the cases in the world), inspite of the repeated highly publicised Pulse Polio campaigns, the highest number of instances seem to occur in Indian Muslim pockets in UP and other places. The primary reason for uneducated Muslim parents not to bring their children to be inoculated seems to be distrust of the perceived `Hindu`-intentions of the state.

NOT BY JAY

``They kill at home for their own salvation, and in quest of martyrdom when they go out to fight the infidels in foreign lands. Mercenaries also join in to inflate their ranks. These are the two faces of the same doctrine - the two sides of the same coin. The troublesome heretics at home deserve the same fate as the oppressing non-believers elsewhere.

The problem thus has to be tackled where it arises and not when it culminates in bloodshed. Trying to catch and punish the culprits has long been a futile exercise and will increasingly so remain. Commenting editorially on the Alfalah massacre, Dawn disclosed that 200 people were killed in 194 incidents in Karachi alone but only four were convicted over ten years. The countrywide picture would be grimmer.

The dogma which leads to intolerance of dissent is nurtured in mosques and madrassahs and later given a violent twist in public life in pursuit of political ends. The attempts by the government and civil society to make the mosques and madrassahs centres of learning and tolerance have been half-hearted and unsuccessful. Bigotry has mushroomed as have such institutions` numbers.

The latest and most elaborate of the plans to change the environs of the madrassahs from parochial to liberal was announced by President Musharraf with great gusto when he was at the height of his power. He undertook to broaden the base of their education by adding to their syllabi the subjects secular and scientific. Scared by the resistance the move encountered, he scaled the plan down to mere registration. Even that did not happen. His relentless zeal which disfigured the country`s political and administrative scene withered when confronted by the clerics, as had his first ambition to reverse the tide of obscurantism and make Pakistan into another Turkey.

Changing his strategy, Musharraf then gratefully acknowledged the service the 8,000 odd madrassahs rendered to the community by imparting lessons and providing lodgings free of cost to half a million poor children and promised to provide computers and other modern teaching aids to them. There is little possibility of that coming about when many of the government`s own schools do not have even blackboards and jute mats for the squatting students.

Musharraf`s plan to cleanse society of illicit weapons floundered as had his madrassah reforms. The weapons recovered, mostly given up voluntarily, were few and old, not worthy even of publicity stunts. Last to surrender would have been the militants.

Religious fanatics, armed with unlicensed weapons and cruising in stolen or smuggled vehicles, thus continue to strike at will at any of the numerous places that the dissenting ones frequent at all hours. The police, as organized at present, are unable to stop them from attacking or catch them while fleeing. They operate with impunity. ``

///HAMIDM, I have company in the cell, above is from dawn of today, written by a pakistani. It cinfirms my view that per the book, even domestic killing is OK for heaven.

Being a Punjabi-Paki myself, I know well that the communal politics (read Muslim League and its Two-Nation Theory) of the British India had its genesis in the chattering classes of the Muslims of UP and CP. ML’s top and middle leadership came from the so-called “culturally-and-linguistically superior” Muslim elite of Urdu-Hindi-Hindustani speaking areas. However, the Muslim majority areas of India on the other hand could not reconcile themselves to the TNT until they were left with no choice. The Muslims of North-Western and North-Eastern India did not actively support the creation of Pakistan until the political atmosphere became so polarized that they could not disassociate themselves from the flow of the political developments.

I find it amazing that these proponents of the communal political (TNT) quickly changed their political colours after the vivisection of the Subcontinent. These communalists became the biggest advocates of secularism. They promptly sheltered themselves under the umbrella of the Congress Party (the target of their hate before the Partition) and have still been hiding there, bar a couple of brief affairs with Desai, VP Singh, Shekhar-led secular collations. How long would they be able to conceal their real self? Their secularism is only façade for the public consumptions. These Indian Muslims are closet religious fanatics. Otherwise, India would not have separate personal/family laws for these so-called secularists. The Muslims of India are nothing but walking and thinking (?) 110 million “Pakistans” (repeat PAKISTANS) tarnishing the image of the secular-minded India. You cannot eat your cake and have it too.

The rising Hindu nationalism is nothing but a reaction to the long-tolerated hypocrisy of Indian Muslims. It is not too late if they stop looking towards west and try to assimilate within the larger Indian society. An attitudinal change in the thinking of the Indian Muslims might also help us, Pakistanis, to re-evolve our national and cultural identity with reason and rationality.