By Dr. J.S.Bandukwala for TwoCircles.net
A very disturbing development in the country is the alienation and anger of Muslim youth. This has to be moderated and controlled by the community leadership. The failure to do so could be very harmful to Muslims and also to the country. The under-30 age group grew up after the passing away of Indira and Rajiv. They consider themselves as Indians, without any identification with Pakistan, which they look upon as a failed state. The entire sequence of partition and its after effects is just history, and therefore of not much relevance to them. They deeply resent the ghettoization of our urban Muslim pockets. Implicit is a fury at being looked upon as second class citizens .Their attitude is sharply different from the older Muslim generation, which stoically accepted frequent riots, as the price the community has to pay for the developments of 1947.
A vital phenomenon is the wide print and electronic coverage, particularly in the Urdu and language media, of Babri demolition and the Gujarat riots. Recent court judgments .particularly on Naroda Patia as well as the police / court responses to the Owaisi , Varun Gandhi and Togadia inflammatory speeches, have only widened the divide along communal lines.. To make matters worse, the Hyderabad blasts has created a siege mentality that the police is after them. One has to just read the transcripts from the Urdu press to grasp the panic. The line between perception and truth is often very thin. It is our national tragedy that the causes of these blasts are viewed along purely religious lines. Political parties tend to heighten the gulf by exploiting the electoral value of such perceptions.
Community leadership should moderate and control Muslim youth anger.
The Afzal Guru case has kept the communal pot boiling. The BJP pressure for Afzal’s hanging, and the charge that the Congress is weak on the terror issue, led to a complete capitulation. Afzal was hanged in total secrecy. The Home Minister even had the gumption to say that the Prime Minister must have come to know of it through TV. The body was buried in Tihar before his family being informed about it. Just before the hanging, many observers believed Kashmir was inching towards India. The sharp rise in ethnic killings in Pakistan gave a picture of a country falling apart. No wonder Kashmir has had a successful tourist season. We should have built upon that momentum.. What surprises is that such a mature politician President as Pranab Mukherjee and an equally cautious Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh abandoned their Kashmir policy, just when it could have yielded vast benefits, both nationally and internationally.
In short an Afzal Guru death may make it impossible to win over the hearts of the people of Kashmir. We could have gained so much more by keeping him alive in Tihar. Now ostrich-like we refuse to send back his body to his family in Kashmir.
The price India has paid on the Afzal hanging implies we will not be able to hang any other death convict in the near future. That too will further inflame the anger of Muslim youth, who will see a religious bias to the hanging.
There is a heavy responsibility on the Government as well as on the principal opposition party. I would go further and include big business, particularly the Mumbai corporates. The country just cannot afford to totally ignore an angry population of at least 170 million. I just hope they bear this in mind while going all out to promote one individual as the next Prime Minister of India. The frightening animosity towards him may completely paralyse his functioning as the leader of India.
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Based in Baroda Prof. Bandukwala is associated with PUCL, Gujarat.