From: budaraju@cae.wisc.edu (Srinivas Budaraju)
Subject: Babri Mosque - some background - 8/10
Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering
Date: 11 Dec 92 15:21:27 CST

The following are excerpts from an interview of Asghar Ali Engineer by Sridhar
D. Damle, a free-lance reporter for India Tribune (Chicago) and co-author with
Walter K. Anderson of the book "The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism", Vistaar Publications, New Delhi,
1987.  Some extraneous or redundant material has been deleted; a few
grammatical errors have been corrected; subheads have been put in for clarity.
 
The interview took place on Dec 2, 1990, in Chicago.
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8. SHAH BANO CASE
 
D: I was in India in 1988. I talked to many journalists. I asked
them, "What is this Hindu backlash, what is this Hindu militancy,
what are the reasons?" One of the explanations that I liked is -
the middle class people's psyche was hurt when Indian
Constitution Amendment in Shah Bano case and people began to
believe that the political policy would be appeasement for the
vote bank and they compromised their secular credentials for
that.  They don't care about secular credentials, do you have any
comments there?
 
A: You know, as far as Shah Bano movement is concerned, I myself
was very critical of Muslim leadership, their role. I maintained
that it is not even in keeping with the Islamic law, teachings to
deny maintenance to Muslim women after three months. I said, even
Quran has not specified any period about maintenance. It is the
opinion of some jurists. Muslims are following the opinions of
jurists. Well, that was my stand and I also felt that Muslims
should not have rejected the Supreme Court judgement. That
certainly communalized Hindus because they thought that Muslims
don't honor secular laws of the country, because that judgement
was given under criminal procedure code section 125. So, even if
it affected Muslim personal law to some extent, they should have
shown grace to accept it. Because, after all they have a separate
Muslim personal law, but they should have respected the common
criminal court, which applied to all.
 
But, as I am repeatedly saying, there are opportunistic leaders
among Muslims, they are also competing with each other to
monopolize leadership. So, they try to outdo each other. So, I am
quite critical of the role of the Muslim leadership and I have
always maintained that the Muslim leaders are not working for the
welfare of Muslims, they are not working for their economic
uplift, they are not working for spreading education among them,
they are only raising emotional issues like Muslim personal law,
Aligarh Muslim University. They raise these emotional issues
because it is easier to become a leader then, it is easier to
establish oneself then, but they are not taking honestly the real
issues facing Muslim masess:  poverty, illiteracy, unemployment,
economic backwardness, so on and so forth.  But Muslim leaders
have no answers for this, because they want to play politics and
it definitely made Hindus more communal because of this.
 
Now, as for the question of hurting psyche, again we should not
take holier than thou attitude. If their psyche is hurt, then
Muslim psyche is also hurt by the BM issue. So, all of them are
playing political games according to me. I don't think VHP or BJP
is interested in Ram mandir only because they are good Hindus but
because they see this as an easy way to grab power.
 
And Muslim leaders see that the easy way to grab power is to
raise religious sentiments. So do certain communal Hindu leaders.
So, we have to be critical of both. Unless we are honest and
honestly criticize all these leaders - Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs -
whatever religious group they may belong to, we cannot remedy the
situation. I am critical of those - when it comes to their own
community they want to hide weaknesses of their leaders, but when
it comes to the other community, they want to examine things very
objectively and be very critical.
 
D: When I mentioned Hamid Dalwai, among Hindus there were so many
social reformers who took a very critical view of their own
community, like Agarkar [?] in Maharashtra, for example.
 
A: Hamid Dalwai was totally ignorant of what happened in Islam in
India. He went by certain shibboleths, which cannot help the
situation. There was Maulvi [?] Chirag Ali, there were regional
reformers among Muslims. They faced the wrath of the society, but
they persisted in their attempts for reform. There was reform
movement among the Bohra Muslim community.
 
D: But that came in the 70s or 60s..
 
A: No,no. That was there in the early '20s. It was an early
movement among the Bohra Muslims. It's not new.
 
D: I think some American did a PhD on it.
 
A: No, not PhD, but some research on it. From SUNY, Theodre
Wright, Jr.
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-Srinivas				budaraju@cae.wisc.edu

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