By Kaleem Kawaja for Twocircles.net
I applaud Bobby Naqvi for a very thought-provoking article published on Twocircles.net. The creation of Pakistan as a result of the confrontation between Muslim League and Congress, and Pakistan adopting a confrontational attitude towards India since 1947 as their national policy are an unending gift to Muslim-hating Hindus in India. After the 1971 Bangladesh war, Pakistan should have realised that the event made a game changing shift in the futility of their policy of confrontation towards India. However successive parties and governments in Pakistan have continued to pursue that policy while they have remained a weak nation.
Every time there is relative peace between the two countries, the hostile attitude of right-wing Hindus towards Muslims cools a little. But then some lumpen elements in Pakistan take some idiotic cross-border violent action against India and the “punching bag” situation of Indian Muslims goes back to Square One.
Keeping mum helps no one
But there is more to the issue than just Pakistan. The totally unthinking and impotent attitude of Indian Muslim organisations and leaders in the last couple of years alone, when RSS and their goons targeted Muslims with violence on the ruse of cow protection in Dadri and Muzaffarnagar and elsewhere, is shocking. There are several venerable Muslim organizations like Jamiat Ulema, Jamat e Islami, All India Majlis e Mashawarat which could have held conferences and peaceful rallies comprising of secular forces in several cities on the matter to draw attention to the grievous issue, without using any religious or emotional exhortation. But out of their inordinate fear, and having been dissuaded by the Hindu power structure in major political parties whose signal they did not receive, not to mention infighting in their ranks, they did nothing other than lamenting and a few mercy appeals.
The attitude of the Indian Muslim media has been equally pathetic.
Their lack of response is not limited to the issues of the activities of the right wing. In Kashmir, the Indian army has unleashed an unprecedented brutal repression on the unarmed civilians. More than 65 Kashmiris have died at the hands of the army in response to public protests, and the United Nations, the CPI and some other Indian leaders have asked the army to exercise restraint, but not a single Indian Muslim leader or organization has even appealed to the government to restrain the army from using pellet bullets and disproportionate force. So for what purpose these Muslim organizations exist? Is being an MLA or MP such a precious gift that they forget that they were elected from sizeable Muslim population constituencies to represent them?
Why can’t Muslim leaders emulate their Dalit counterparts?
In contrast, when Dalits experienced similar violence from the cow vigilantes, they organized a huge rally in Una (Gujarat) where they sought and received support from many upper caste secular Hindus and human rights groups. They also held supporting rallies in other cities. Now this is a golden opportunity for Muslim organizations and leaders to lend full peaceful, democratic support to the Dalits in the name of basic justice, human rights and humanity. Islam tells Muslims to help anyone who is being persecuted, but Muslim leaders and organizations always forget to read this in Islamic texts even though they endlessly quote verses from Quran.
Although in the Una rally I did see some ordinary Muslim faces lending their presence to the cause, their leadership and their media showed total indifference and zero action. Maybe they still think that they cannot mix with the lower caste Dalits. The Muslim leaders and organizations are not only substandard in their thinking and planning, they are always waiting for signals from the Hindu power structure, whether secular or right wing, to take any social or political action. In discussing this with an Indian Muslim leader last week he told me that if Muslims support Dalits on this (Una) issue, will the upper-caste Hindus not take out their anger on Muslims? Such is the state of helplessness of the mindset of the Muslim leadership.
In India Dalits are 33% of the population and Muslims are 14%. With Modi as Prime Minister, RSS is clearly targeting Dalits to try to roll back the recently gained middle-class social status that some of them have gained via reservation and shove them back into their pre-independence servitude. Therefore, it is the time for Muslims to support them in the hour of their need. In fact the RSS is deftly exploiting the OBCs to push down Dalits from gaining any more power. Look at the ministers in various states where BJP is in power and you will find that many of them are OBC folks.
While it is true that with 14% votes Muslim distributed in the country cannot make a change, they should remember that collectively they are a substantial number. The Muslim middleclass still retains significant strength in quite a few places in the country. Together, the Muslim and Dalit vote in the elections in Gujarat, UP and elsewhere next year can send a resounding message to BJP. Just as the deft Muslim alliance with Nitish Kumar and Laloo Yadav routed BJP in Bihar and with Mamta Bannerji they routed BJP in Bengal recently.
The major vision of Muslims leaders in this country remains the membership of the Rajya Sabha or Vidhan Sabha or getting an election ticket from a major party, and they are happy to use their community for the same. Instead, let them become like Dalit leaders and think of how to break the trap of helplessness. Let some new Muslim leaders emerge.
Equally harmful are the small Muslim parties and their leaders who wear beards, skull caps and sherwanis and regale the Muslim audiences in the low income Muslim ghettos with recitations from the scriptures and talk in veiled confrontational rhetoric. Their biggest goal is to give fiery speeches to illiterate and semi-literate Muslims whose three generations have continued to live in the same ghettos for seventy years. But they are happy with empty titles like “Naqeeb-e-Millat”, whatever that means.
The idea of Muslims supporting BJP is dangerous as it comes with the heavy price of total adaptation of Hindu culture and way of life and for Muslims to remain Muslim in name only. The clear objective of RSS and BJP is to relegate Indian Muslims to the status of a permanently deprived minority community that simply accepts what the majority gives it.
Fortunately a lot of upper-caste Hindus remains secular and very wary of RSS and BJP and their obscurantism. Muslim leaders and organisations need to link up with these secular Hindus and with Dalits. And more importantly, this must not only be at the time of elections, but in the struggles for justice too.
The writer is the Executive Director of the Association of Indian Muslims of America, Washington DC