From: aagarwal@Cadence.COM (Alok Agarwal)
Subject: View From Afar
Organization: Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
Distribution: usa
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 19:31:02 GMT


This interesting atircle appeared in 'The Afternoon Dispatch And Courier'
an afternoon newspaper in Bombay on 9/15/92. This is by a non-Hindu/Muslim
writer. I am reproducing it here without any permission.

I tried posting this a few days, but was apparently unsuccessful.
If this is a repeat, my apologies
	Alok Agarwal

	                      VIEW FROM AFAR
			      By K F Rustamji


"The cover of India Today put me off completely, when I saw the crowned heads
of the Hindu political pantheon on it", an Indian professor said to me in 
Toronto. "VHP's Singhal looked like the high-priest of some ancient cult 
reverently offering the sacrifice of our country's youth. Dr. Murli Manohar
Joshi also with a golden crown on his head seemed to be saying with a flick of
his hand 'even in physics, there is a lot of non-sense'. The two women in the
picture look like Ramlila queens, waiting to go on rickety stages with golden
crown and spectacles. Several times I put off reading that issue. How
incongruous...how distant it makes India appear to me...how depressing that we
should be spending our time on Ayodhya today when the world is busy preparing
a new order of unity and integration.

This is the way a lot of people from the Indian sub-continent are speaking
in Canada and the USA today. The men and women of the BJP and allied parties
are a strange mix of science, sadhus, retired generals and chauvinism, and
they want to rule the whole of India. They may get the chance, and they will
be out in quick time, unless they discard religion and shed the desire to
tyrannise the Muslims.

MUGHAL RULE

Indian politics seems clearer from a distance and it is easier to speculate on 
where it will take us if you see it against the background of world events.
The first thought that comes to me is that the Muslim is the all-time loser.
He craves for all the wonders that he never had under Mughal rule. All that
the illusions of grandeur gave him was the readiness to believe Jinnah, that
if Pakistan was secured, he would live in paradise. So he agitated about music
before mosque, a separate electorate, reservations in services, and so on, and
made a capital nuisance of himself in undivided India. He could whip up a riot
at a moments notice, and then plead that he was being crushed before the British
district officers, who felt sympathy for him and were grateful to him for
giving them a reason for staying as the mai baap of the Raj. He discovered
that the people of Punjab and N.W. Frontier were not interested in Pakistan, he
went to drive the Hindus out with fire and looting. When Pakistan was formed,
Jinnah said that all would be treated alike, and promptly the Hindus packed
their bundles and fled from Pakistan. The first blow to the Muslims of India
was that the were barred from entering paradise. Although there was much
feeling against them, India under Nehru rehabilitated them, gave them a 
distinct place in the affairs of the land by calling it secularism. Today
the Muslims who are prominent in India are almost all from the sparkling 
generation that true secularism produced.

From a democracy, Pakistan moved to an Islamic dictatorship under Zia-ul Haq,
complete with floggings and purdah, to the happiness of power that came to the
soldier and bureaucrat. The common man in many parts began to look at the
British rule as the better part of his life.

For Bangladesh, one troubled year followed another like the typhoons that
racked the unfortunate country. First it was the revolt in East Pakistan, in
which thousands of Muslims were killed by the Pakistani army. Then the Bangla
leaders were cut down one-by-one by ex-army assassins. The land, which had
a rich outlet to India become mesmerized by its limited independence, and now
grows smaller and smaller, and poorer and poorer.

FOREIGN POWER
The Indian Muslim has been left in the lurch by all his compatriots. As a
voter in a democracy he is steeped in ignorance, misled by every crook posing
as an agent of a foreign power. He is unable to comprehend what went wrong, why
his life is so wretched. He is prepared to believe any editor that tells him
that India betrayed him, that democracy is unworkable, and that he must face
all troubles in a communal way, and fight the Hindu at every turn. He is a 
perpetual loser, exploited and conned by his own leaders. At their instance, he
has spurned the hands of friendship offered to him in the shape of secularism.
Instead he has opted for communalism, gone deeper into separatism, community 
schools and ghetto living. He is subjected to frequent attacks by those that
want his land and business. The list of riots is long, the number of those
killed is heart rendering. In each riot like Bhagalpur, and now Ahmedabad, the 
administration has shown scant regard for precautious and preventive measures,
and in many they have shown downright partiality and disdain for the 
constitution and the law.

In Jammu and Kashmir, the Muslim has been seduced into terrorism by intelligence
agencies in Pakistan. We can hardly say that we gave them no cause. The Kashmiri
patently bore misrule. Then broke out, expecting a immediate result owing to 
world support, which never came as expected. We can only plead in extenuation
that whenever violence comes in, mistakes do occur, the world of the citizen
sinks to zero, from which he must be rescued at once. We have recklessly 
squandered the support of those who were the true secularists in India.
The Muslim has damaged himself no end owing to the ignorance of the clerics 
and the wrong approach of his leaders. Together, they have also damaged
secularism and democracy. Each stubborn rejection of peace over Ayodhya has
been followed by an escalation of violence by fanatical Hindu groups, whose
climb to power has been due to their opposition.

RIGID MEANING

In between, the Congress tries to swear by secularism in a weak sort of way,
makes compromises whenever it suits the party, gives a wrong and rigid meaning
to secularism, and in the process, has began to appear as a party without any
new idea, any initiative, any fighting spirit and any dependable leader. It
has lost election after election, lost its majority at the center, and has
finally ended up seeking consensus, and making appeals to sadhus and sants to
stop construction at Ayodhya. As a final and grievous blow to our democratic
polity, it is endeavouring to drag the Supreme Court into this Ayodhya dispute
in a manner that reminds people in Canada of witch doctors appealing to the
gods to save them from cholera.

We can see the mess we have landed ourselves in when we talk to Indians here in
America, among whom there is a mixture of people from our three countries
living in closest amity. All their pride is beginning to shrivel and die.
All their hopes for a transformation are fast disappearing. Instead, they say
that the worst tragedies of the past that ruined us and drove them out are 
being repeated, and golden crowns are being put on heads of people who are
creating disunity. While the world in the west is consolidating, reforming
and making constitutional concessions to minorities, we are all reduced to
international begging and building up armaments when we cannot give a decent
home or a square meal to millions. Gandhiji gave us an ultimate test of
civilization -- "You can judge a nation by the way it treats its minorities".
We have failed by that test, whoever we may blame. 

"If you cannot stop communalism", a Parsi lawyer said to me in Vancouver,
"you must be prepared for its spread to ethnic and caste disputes. Thus
violence in an overpopulated country will go on forever, and we will slowly
become another Somalia. Why not act now -- light the lamps of friendship --
and sort out disputes in a democratic way by debate, election and referendum.
Secularism is out sacred heritage. If we give it up, we will not go into the
next century, but into the 17th or 18th, the worst in our history, while the
world moves into peace and prosperity."

PS
The author is a Parsi (not Hindu/Muslim) writer. Parsis are a progressive but
minority community, many of them in many pockets in Bombay, and their business
successes in India is legendary (Tata/Godrej). It will be interesting to 
know what the netters feel about the above viewpoint.
________________________________________________________________
Alok Agarwal			aagarwal@cadence.com
Xref: sparky soc.culture.indian:33736 soc.culture.indian.telugu:535