The Secularity of India

rahul_capri: 274 (cont. 2)

3. you write ``A muslim should be allowed a good muslim even if he does not know the Q of Quran.``

Agreed. You dont need to read the Quran to be a good muslim. This logically follows if you have read my comments to your post #274 in 2. below. Indeed, it logically follows that the very concept of a muslim is a technicality per the Quran: the important distinciton in the Quran is between those who distinguish between right and wrong and do the right thing vs. those who do not.

Thus, you need not even be a muslim and still be OK by God. According to the Quran. I know this logical conclusion from the Quran will mullahs heartburn...but there it is!!

rahul_capri: 274 (cont. 2)

4. you write ``This calls for a renaissance, as Faruk said.
I know we disagree on this point.Lets agree to disagree. ``

The renaissance in europe was accompanied by the reformation, remember. btw, my emphasis on the Quran was inspired by my late father who wrote a whole book on the subject titled ``Quranic vs NonQuranic Islam``, published in Pakistan. In the January 2001 issue of ``Current History`` (a mainstream US based journal) that book was named as one of only two books in the entire muslim world (a book by a syrian writer was the only other one) as representing the first stirrings of a reformation. My father unfortunately died over an year ago.

While dost mittar is right in pointing out that this view is not shared by most muslims, the fact nevertheless is that my father`s book was very well received in Pakistan. Khaled Ahmed of the Friday Times wrote a particularly favorable review. And no mullah dared to challenge it, since my father was very careful to stick to the facts.

The problem dost mittar points to does exist - but all hope is not lost, as my father`s experience in challenging the mullah indicates.

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dost mittar #277 Actually, Pakistanis are I think much less fanatical about religion than the average Indian (hindu or muslim) is about it. This will sound like a self-serving statement, and certainly contrary to what i realize seems to be the common impression among indians, but I think a hard look at the facts will bear this out.

I say this for the following simple reason: the religious parties have traditionally been thrased in elections. Compare this to the BJP in India, which has been the largest minority party for decades (the commies are together larger in number, but are split into different parties).
Similarly, indian muslims (who had this mass movement to support the family laws as you say - and I am going by what you say since I dont know enough on this) are clearly more fundamentalist, since in Pakistan religious laws were introduced not by popular demand but by a religious dictator.

So, contrary to what you write, in Pakistan I think the problem is easily solved: introduce democracy, stop musharaff from trying to prop up the mullahs, and the problem of religious fundamentalism is solved. Of course, one would need to clean up the mess the military has created by funnelling funds to mullahs in the 1980`s and 1990`s - but surely the military can clean up the mess just as well as it created it.

Even that damned Godfather of all religious parites in Pakistan, Maudoodi, came to Pakistan from India. We didnt create him.

rahul-capri:
Tahmed is certainly sincere in his beliefs, but he represents only a very small section of his coreligionists. Whether shariat (back then nobody used the arabic shariah!) is essential or not was the key issue in the Shah Bano debate. People like me have rightly criticised Rajiv Gandhi for giving in to the fundamentalists but one had to be in India at that time to realize the kind of pressures under which he was put. Muslims came out in large and angry processions in cities large and small in response to the calls by the mullahs, ulemas and various islamic organizations against the supreme court decision. There are hundreds of islamic organizations in India, but as far as I am aware, not a single one of them came in favour of the Supreme Court. All fatwas issued were against and not one in favour. There were no muslim scholars then who said that sharia is not an essential part of Islam. Yes, a handful of prominent muslim Marxists did come in support of Shah Bano, but in their individual capacity and not as interpreters of Islam.

And if one thinks that this was true only in backward India, think again! Canadian Muslims have campaigned, and the Ontario government has unfortunately agreed, that Muslims should be allowed to settle their disputes according to their religious laws, as long as both parties to the dispute agree to it. Fine and dandy, except that the government has no idea of the kind of social pressures that would be brought upon many women to accept a maulvi instead of a court judge to deliver justice to him.

People like tahmed have no more chance of succeeding than the Mutazzils had, and they had even the support of the caliph at one time. You see, the Prophet closed all doors for them by claiming that Allah had taken full responsibility for ensuring that Quran/Islam will be maintained in its pristine form. How could Allah go back on His promise and let some latecomers claim that only the essence of quran represents the true religion?

HP #267
Sometimes to read a book you have to write it yourself:).

``.....The Quran would still be the place to go in times of spiritual or ethical turbulence/uncertainty, but scholarship of Quran should not be mandatory to be a good Muslim.......:``

You have raised an important point which most of us forget- one can still be a ``good`` and ``civilized`` person in contemporary civil societies even if one is not a practicing muslim. The fact that a namazi mullah can be a scoundral and a criminal needs to be accepted by us psychologically- This is important when we would like to separate the issue of `public morality` of what is `good` and `civil` in public living from what is `good` and `civil` as per the religious books.

tahmed32 #262
You do not care about negative profiling of Islam among non muslims and I understand that.I do.
Because fundamentalism begets fundamentalism.It is like a ripple effect.
Anyhow,We agree on some points.
We agree that there has been degeneration of Islam.
You say that this degeneration can be stemmed by accurate scholarship of Quran.
I agree with you again.But the path to accurate scholarship is fraught with pitfalls.
The path to scholarship gives some currency to the mullahs that have wrecked havoc on the real essence of Quran.
Every man cannot be his own scholar.Every man cannot even read.
What I think is that a kind of mindset has to evolve where Quran still is the guiding light,it still is the theological book of Islam, but it does not aim to define a holistic way of life.
A muslim should be allowed a good muslim even if he does not know the Q of Quran.
The Quran would still be the place to go in times of spiritual or ethical turbulence/uncertainty, but scholarship of Quran should not be mandatory to be a good Muslim.
Can this happen? I am optimistic.Islam had the onus of providing a holistic way of life when it had evolved as a reformist movement against the malpractices of other religions like Hinduism christianity.There was the issue of identity.
But now it is well established.So, it can retire to a place where religious doctrines have lesser to do with day-to-day life.
This calls for a renaissance, as Faruk said.
I know we disagree on this point.Lets agree to disagree.

#268 by omar_r_quraishi

Geez! You even get paid for this?? I must envy you mate!

calling all paki-bashers -- if i hated india and indians so much i wouldnt have written this upon my return from a trip to delhi acouple of years ago or would i -- MORONS !

strange how a closet paki-hater like veeresh sahib here (its in his subconscious so he wont admit it or acknoweledge it) gets nothing for his drivel and patronizing travelogue about his recent `walking` visit to pakistan

A Comparison of Fashion
Omar R. Quraishi



Attending a fashion show, or rather India Fashion Week in early August? As in August 2002! Just at the time when a million Pakistani and Indian army soldiers face each other on the border? Well the circumstances were such that this was an opportunity too good to miss.

In New Delhi to actually attend a conference that was not related at all to fashion, I couldn’t help but notice during the break in the conference every day the dozens of articles and pictures published in the morning papers. Indian Fashion Week was on – from August 2 to 8 – and was actually being held at the Taj Palace Hotel in New Delhi. Apparently, the shows – thirty five in all, and then a daily seminar and several other related events – were going to be open only to selected invitees like buyers from major stores or from overseas, guests of sponsors and of course the media.

Since I was a journalist – who didn’t really write on fashion all that much but did follow the fashion scene in Pakistan as an interested reader and consumer – I thought this would be a great chance to go see and judge where our fashion industry stood compared to India’s (especially since we so often love to compare ourselves with them). I began first with the Times of India since the hotel I was staying at had that paper. I called them up to ask for the correspondent who had done that days story. He was out but I was given the number of Meenakshi who was working at the media centre. Now, and sorry to say this, but if this were Pakistan I would have probably had to face a lot of attitude. Please note that this call was made on Aug 2, the day Indian Fashion Week had already begun and I was calling to ask if I could still come, and without having submitted any of the documents needed for press accreditation. Surprisingly, Meenakshi was very cooperative, especially after I told her that I was a journalist from Pakistan. All I had to do was to show up at the Taj Palace the next day and everything would be taken care off.

Several events were scheduled for Aug 3, including one that particularly sounded quite interesting. The Sunsilk Styles of the Silver Screen hair show turned out to be an extremely well-packaged and managed fashion presentation. But before I get to that, a bit on the way India Fashion Week was being organized and some details about those who took part in it.

Their fashion industry has had the good sense and professionalism, and not to mention the commercial and trade support, to come together and form what is called the Fashion Design Council of India. It’s current director, Vinod Kaul, has almost thirty years of experience in the textiles and apparel retailing and merchandising industry, and this just goes to show the extent of cooperation between fashion designers and industry in India, something that is sorely missing in Pakistan.

In its third year, India Fashion Week ran in New Delhi from August 2 to 8. It had 53 designers highlighting their talent and they used 48 models, including reigning Miss India Neha Dhupia. The other thing that set it apart from any fashion event that one is likely to have seen so far in Pakistan is the immense amount of support it received from the media, print and electronic. For all the days that I was in Delhi, all the local English papers carried front-page stories about the event on their metro sections. Some papers took the more conventional basic reporting of a show, while others tried to be more innovative, like for example The Hindustan Times which deputed one of its reporters to spend a whole day with one of the young promising designers and then do a story on that. These stories, unlike the print media here, were carried in the main news pages, something that being a reader from Pakistan I had to get used to. Interestingly enough, some Indian journalists – not those who cover fashion though – themselves were quite critical of this saying that their editors often preferred glamour and entertainment stories in preference to those that had hard news, apparently because these increased circulation.

Other than the print media, dozens of correspondents of various Indian and foreign TV channels were on hand. In fact, the Fashion TV correspondent was milling about the media room before one of the shows I attended, trying to get an interview of the new – and stunningly beautiful – Lakme girl, the 17-year-old Vinnie Kapur. Several dozen computers were on hand for correspondents who wanted to file their stories directly from the hotel and some were being used to do just that, while a few others were being used by the waiting journalists to spend some time on MSN chat. Some of the journalists managed to find out that I was from Pakistan and several were surprised that I was actually in India given the existing situation, and most of the time I did feel like an oddity, as if being constantly looked at by interested spectators. Most, however, were friendly and curious to know how things were in Pakistan, both fashionwise and politically, especially with reference to Gen Musharraf and that planned election.

Though it was obviously impossible, and not even my intention, to attend all the thirty five shows (five every day, seven days running) that happened at India Fashion Week, the handful that I did manage to go made for an excellent experience. And, it was hard not to make comparisons with the way things are done – at least in the fashion and modelling, and styling, world – back home. In fact, even the comparisons to the way the media covers fashion in India, compared to the way it covers it (or some would say, doesn’t at all) were quite instructive. For example, many designers here, notably Rizwan Beyg in an interview last Sunday to a Lahore-based English daily, complain all the time that Pakistan has no fashion journalists worth the name. However, most of the journalists – both newspaper and television – that one came across covering India Fashion Week were not specialists either in the strict sense of the word. Most, like their counterparts here, had to cover several beats, one of which was fashion. Normally, fashion is part of the ‘arts and culture’ beat. In fact, only the correspondent of The Times of India said that he exclusively covered fashion, and that he had been doing it for ten years. Clearly, some of them had been covering it for so long that they had become specialists but that didn’t mean that they had any formal training. Unfortunately, such accusations are bandied about much too often by Pakistani designers, often on the grounds – sometimes though with good reason – that those who write on fashion know nothing about it. Well, for the sake of argument even if that were accepted to be true (which it mostly is) what do these fashion designers propose to do next. I mean it’s not as if the media in Pakistan is going to get extremely qualified ‘fashion critics’ suddenly from abroad or somewhere, so they (as in the fashion industry here) really have to make do with what’s on offer. And in any case, blaming the lack of qualified ‘fashion journalists’ does not take away from the fact that the fashion scene in Pakistan – at least to people from outside – is perceived to be incestuous and ridden with personal politics and rivalries (take for example the recent interview of Tariq Amin to an English daily).

What is different in India, and is certainly a handicap in Pakistan, is that TV there covers such shows most willingly and there are none of the absurd censor policies or other hypocrisies that one has to bear with in Pakistan. This by the way usually means that outlandish shows by our movie actresses are shown while perfectly tasteful fashion shows highlighting the creative energies of our local fashion talent are ignored.

The Indian fashion industry, as their fashion week showed, is much too large and organized for these things to get in its way. The shows that I managed to attend included a fabulous one by well-known designer Rohit Bal and another by Sunsilk which showcased how Bollywood had influenced hairstyles over the decades. Both were very well choreographed and managed. The lighting was spot on and the music well chosen and with excellent sound. These two particularly stood out because they combined the fashionable and the classical with the theatrical. The organizers also had a dedicated website to the event at www.lakmeindiafashionweek.com and several designers using the services of PR companies to showcase their participation. The Sunsilk hair show did have well-known Indian comedian actor Sajid Khan as sort of an MC but his jokes – unlike those of MCs here – were actually quite funny and not at all in bad taste. The way most of the Indian models walked, and looked, was quite different from what would likely to see any Pakistani model doing, except perhaps Iraj. As far as physical proportions go, most of their models have the height and built to work abroad, something that can’t really be said of much of the talent here. And, the shows were structured in a way – showing pret-a-porter or ready-to-wear collections – that it made economic sense with invitations extended to representatives of retail chains and major department stores. Here, most of the times the buyers are rich aunties or others kinds of individual buyers, and if that’s okay with the designers then what other people say shouldn’t matter.

Pakistan plans to have it’s own fashion week next month in Lahore. This is probably a good time as any for our industry to show off its talent and creative energy to other interested Pakistanis and to the rest of the world. Let’s hope it comes off at least with the same level.

Footnote: This article appeared previously in the the daily, ` Dawn`, Pakistan.

Omar, you`re impossible, ``Whatever your name is``, hmm?As if you don`t know, you think things like that are going to hurt? Grow up, mate, it`s high time.
What I said to nikki was that we Indians find our own faults, ie Indians find faults in other Indians, outsiders don`t need to do it for us. I didn`t mean every human finds his own faults. You certainly don`t; so sure that you`re right all the time.
You`re the one picking on other people all the time anyway. I`m not the only person to have noticed this on chowk. Here you are, writing articles about everything wrong with every other country. ``That was the point of my posts`` indeed. The point of your posts is that you want to attack. And I don`t think you have better things to do-if you did, you would be doing them. Journalists aren`t the world`s hardest workers to start with, and in Pakistan, you can`t report most things, so you can sit and twiddle your thumbs...I`ve read Dawn online 2 or 3 time I think. short of time, I`d rather read the PNG Times-better journalism, for sure,assuming the way you apply your logic is the same when you write your articles for Dawn. You never answer any points anyway, just coming up with propaganda and abuse does no one any good. Least of all, you- only a few people can pull off the angry young man look, you`re not young enough and anyway, I don`t think James Dean or Amitabh Bachchan are Pakistani.
One thing wrong, anyway, is that I`m not a guy...Or maybe I`m wrong, since you can`t be, can you?
You must be a really hard person to have around.

Will whomsoever of my fellow Indians who read the article on trash(yank word) in pakistan please apologise and not do so again, because that was not for you to read.(I have my angel wings on because I couldn`t be bothered).Only those who produce Pakistani trash can have an opinion on it. I know the author is a sorry character, but he has a point, and looking through the neighbour`s rubbish is snooping. It`s quite all right to send strangers round to loot and destroy though, so do feel free to do so.
In any case, I can`t think of a less interesting topic...

ballukhan #266 Actually even the four gospels that comprise the new testament have, as i understand, discrepancies between them when relaying the same event. So much for ``the gospel truth`` (the phrase used to mean that something is absolutely right). heresy of course is very much present in christianity too - given the existence of an organized and politically powerful church through the centuries, the concept of heresy has much deeper roots in christianity.

In Islam, the major split (shia-sunni) in fact has nothing to do with any theological issue. It was a purely political split over who got to be king (the hussein or muavaia). So through the centuries the suckers (shia and sunni extremists) have been bashing each other`s heads on this issue. Then they go back and read the same Quran, which most of them dont understand anyway even though they have ``hifazed`` it. Talk about being stupid. Even cauliflower is smarter than these morons.

nikki as usual u didnt get the point --

``all of us indians of all religions and ethnicities are`nt always proud of or in agreement over all the things both positive and negative, that occurs in our country.We don`t get paid to or waste time digging up dirt on other countries.The information that you so proudly publish is reported first in the indian media and available to the rest of the world.Like i said earlier in a nation as huge as India (6th largest by land area alone), and as diverse many things will go wrong along with the right.We indians are proud of our achievements and need no validation from anyone.The world knows that overall we are doing something right. Grow up TWERP.``

well twerp since u admit that there are things that u as an indian arent proud of then (a) why not talk about them too and not only about things that are bad in pakistan and (b) why not be a bit tolerant and not rant and rave and abuse someone who talks about it (and actually i also have much better things to do than to go the NHRC website but I want to respond to idiots like you since other pakistanis seem to be sleeping or prob have done it and seen the futility) and (c) whats the big problem is someone posts that coz u do the same about your neighbouring country -- the truth hurts doesnt it nikki jee -- and for a change can u try arguing without abusing

nb: ``The thing is, we find all our own faults, and people like omar don`t understand that-we don`t pretend there are no faults`` -- hahhaa what a joke coming from this guy -- listen NB or whatever the hell your name is that is preciselt the point of my posts -- that we all have our faults so stop picking on someone else`s -- if u wanna post bad shit on pakistan then as indians be prepared for pakistanis to do the same --

#261 by sadna

Excellent article…

“The reference to a secular state drew an exasperated response from Nehru who asked, ‘May I beg with all humility those gentlemen who use this word often to consult some dictionary before they use it? ... it is brought in all contexts, as if by saying that we are a secular state we have done something amazingly generous.... We have only done something which every country does except a very few misguided and backward countries in the world.’ (cad ix, p. 401)”

How true!!!... I wonder what Nehru thought when they declared Pakistan an Islamic Republic in 1956….misguided and backward…or some other words?
Nobody-to my knowledge- has written a book or even exclusively commented on the debates and conversations before the 1973 constitution in Pakistan.

Former Gen. Ayub Khan wrote a book-actually ghost written by a bureaucrat Altaf Gauhar- Friends, not masters about the infightings and debates before the 1956 constitution. His idea was to show that politicians were incompetent but in the process he showed the misgivings that the Army had about the constitution. He abrogated 1956 constitution in 1958. I doubt that anybody can find that book now.

tahmed

``.....it is clear that the shariah has no religious standing. It is the creation of men. Even the Quran itself was not conveyed to the prophet in writing - he relayed the message, and later scribes put them together. Indeed we even had different ...............``

This fact has been under played by the powerful kings, elites and scholars for the fear of different `heretic` schools of Islam coming as in christianity- the issue was political power, But the fact remains that christian west has benefited more by these interpretations and schools because it effectively ensured that no particular interpretation or school/chruch of becomes the monopolist in it`s claim to be the `correct` interpretation of the Quaranic revelations. With the fall of church from the monopolistic position of being the `authentic` interpretation to the revelations Secularism obtained the necessary room to flourish.