By TwoCircles.net staff reporter
New Delhi : Shaikh Rashid Ghannoushi, founder of Renaissance Party (Annahdha) of Tunisia said partition of the country was not in the interest of Indian Muslims. "It was a great conspiracy," he said while speaking on "Muslims in Modern Plural Society" in a programme organised in his honour by Jamaat-e-Islami Hind at Indian Medical Association (IMA) here Wednesday.
To make his point home, he invited the audience to imagine the India of pre-partition days. "Today Indian Muslims are 13 or 14 per cent of the population. Had India been a united country as it had been in the pre-partition days, Muslims would have been 40-45 per cent of the population here and thus a force to reckon with," he argued with a sense of certainty in his tone.
Ghannoushi, who has been living in self-exile in England for the last ten years due to the continued intimidation of the ultra secular government of Tunisia, informed the audience that he had a chance to visit a mosque here that is now being maintained as a ‘museum’ and no prayer is held there.
Shaikh Ghannoushi with JIH chief Maulana Umari
"Had Muslims held a considerable voice here, they would have been able to restore such places of worship to their original position," he said without mincing any words.
He further said that Muslims living as a minority in any country have to opt for any one of the three options: as separatists, as non-participants in national activities and as active participants in the social and political process of the country.
Elaborating his point, he said if the Muslim minority opts for the first option and raises its voice to get separation from the country then the community would have to face untold sufferings, including large scale killings and making people of other faiths enemies. If they opt for
the second option, even then they would not be able to get their due rights and continue to suffer.
"So the only option left open for a Muslim minority is to actively participate in the social and political process of the country and thus become part of the system. In this way, they would be able to get their due rights and thus live in comparative peace," he argued.
"The Indian experiment and the situation prevailing in Chechnya both prove it," he added.
Ghannoushi spoke in Arabic while president All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat Dr. Zafarul Islam Khan translated his speech into Urdu for the audience.
He was here in India to attend the convocation programme of Jamia Islamia, Shantapuram, Kerala.