By Kaleem Kawaja,
The golden jubilee observance of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Muslim Majlis Mashawarat on August 31 was supposed to be an occasion to congratulate the founders of this veritable struggling organization of Indian Muslims. It was also designed to recognize the stalwarts, Muslim and Hindu alike, who have over the years courageously fought within the norms of the democratic and secular Indian constitution to restore the equitable rights of India’s Muslim citizens.
Mashawarat was formed by a set of Muslim intellectuals and religious leaders led by Dr Syed Mahmud in 1964 when Lal Bahadur Shastri was the Prime Minister and Moraji Desai the Deputy Prime Minister of India. It was the founders’ hope that in time Mashawarat will be a conduit to draw the attention of the government and the national mainstream towards empowering the Muslim community. After a brilliant start it got trapped in the fast developing decades’ long sectarian storm that engulfed the nation leading to the Ram Janambhoomi movement, the demolition of Babri mosque and the Gujarat anti-Muslim conflagration.
Through it all Mashawarat tried to keep its head above water and be of use in helping Muslims in the area of their intense political and social problems. Prominent Indian Muslim leader and former member of Indian parliament Syed Shahabuddin made a major contribution to the rebuilding of Mashawarat and putting it on the nation’s center stage for over 25 years that he was at the helm of affairs.
The event, a day-long conference appropriately held at the India Islamic Center, New Delhi, turned out to be very successful with many luminaries attending it, thanks to the hard work of the Mashawarat President Dr Zafarul Islam Khan and the Mashawarat team. It was very heartening to see such good friends of Indian Muslims as Teesta Setalvad and Justice Rajinder Sachhar grace the occassion sending a clear message to the Modi era India that indeed the principles on which the minorities of India claim their place in the nation are alive and well.
Vice President Hamid Ansari was the keynote speaker in the conference. He was supposed to perform his usual role lending dignity and respect to the conference and saying a few nice words about Muslims being an integral part of India and such other pleasantries. He surely did that, but he moved one step ahead of that and gave clear recognition to the current not very pleasant existence of Muslims in India today. As Vice President he also sent a clear notice to Prime Minister Modi and his BJP government asking them to institute definitive measures to correct the wrongs of discrimination and lack of justice to the community.
Ansari made a clear advisory to the BJP government that it owes specific programs to invigorate and empower the Muslim community that finds itself on the sidelines of the national mainstream. Instead of using ambiguous wording he chose to be specific and prescriptive and asked the government to install an Affirmative Action programs for the beleaguered Muslim community. Notably he refrained from laying the blame for the backwardness of the Muslims on themselves while at the same time he did exhort Muslims to work harder or the national vision of India.
Indeed Ansari’s clear words were so specific that, the mainstream media that typically ignores conferences and events of the Muslim community woke up and covered his speech without any rejoinders to it. For 5 straight days the media and the social media kept covering Ansari’s speech and even asked BJP and VHP to respond to it. They did that in their usual style of blaming Ansari for giving a communal speech. Their bhakts on Facebook are still continuing with that line of disrespectful attack on the Vice President and the Muslim community.
But such is the sting of the genuineness of Ansari’s speech at Mashawarat that one week later BJP and VHP have not been able to come up with any specifics to disprove Ansari’s assertions on the situation of Muslims and his prescriptions to the government to make the fix.
It has been after many years that a Vice President, who is supposed to just mouth ambiguous pleasantries, has spoken clearly on a major issue o the nation. He has thus demonstrated leadership in the office that he holds, and has demonstrated that the office of the vice president is not a ceremonial position but is a position of national leadership. VP Ansari has one more year remaining in the vice president’s office. In the last one year some VHP and BJP leaders have frequently targeted him with not showing enough respect to the office that he holds. Yet VP Ansari showed no apprehension of being put in a corner or potential future barbs and proceeded to speak meaningfully of the problems that face minority Muslims and the responsibility of the government towards resolving them.
Unbeknown to all, the simple feel-good golden jubilee conference of Mashawarat took a life of its own and turned the corner from being ceremonial to being the initial step of an action plan to uplift and redeem the post-independence Muslims of India in the 21st century. Ansari’s clear demonstration of courage and integrity in the difficult circumstances of the Modi government should be a study for the mainstream Muslim leaders and leaders of the major Muslim organizations, who often fear from not speaking clearly about the problems of their community lest they be branded as lacking in either secularism or nationalism.
(The writer is the executive director of the Association of Indian Muslims of America, Washington DC)