Newsgroups: soc.culture.bangladesh,soc.culture.pakistan,soc.culture.indian
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 10:59:14 -0400 
From: "Arun K. Gupta" <ag3l+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: [contd.] Conflict: Remedies



Conclusion of:

Hindu-Muslim Conflict in India: Causes and Remedies

by Iqbal Ansari (Dept. of English, Aligarh Muslim University)
***



Muslim leadership will be well advised to take the following measures
to contribute towards lessening of communal conflicts and tensions:

1) In their efforts to protect their life, limb, honor and property,
they should make common cause with all groups, parties, and movements
that are committed to securing human and democratic rights for people,
especially those who are weak and unprotected, irrespective of their
religion. Muslims should never think in terms of making it an exclusive
concern of their own. They should not and cannot build their own
defences in isolation.

2) In normal times, Muslims should massively participate in actions and
programs, initiated by themselves or others, that are directed towards
securing social, economic and political justice for Indian people as
human beings. They should not make it dependent on any cost-benefit
evaluation for their own community. The apathy and the attitude of
passive spectator that their leaders have nurtured in them towards
issues that concern mankind and fellow Indians is to be replaced by an
attitude of commitment, involvement and participation in all right
causes. This will provide the surest bond of fraternization with other
groups of people.

3)Instead of quibbling about the compatibility of secular democracy
with Islam, which in any case is not a practical alternative in India,
Muslims should try to strengthen by all possible means the
liberal-humanistic and secular-democratic framework and the values and
principles underlying the Constitution of India. There may be
differences of opinion about the blueprints of social and economic
programs to secure secular values, but these can be accomodated withing
the liberal democratic framework. Any attempt to project Islam or any
other religion as a competitor for political power in India will do
harm to the Muslims, Islam and the country. It is bound to give rise to
communal conflict and tension.

4) Muslims, especially those who are concious of their Islamic destiny,
have to remind themselves that the most important aspect of Islam,
apart from belief in God and the hereafter, is its moral idealism which
needs to be translated into familiar human terms and idiom, and
actualized in socio-economic programs for all humans.

5) Any activist plan of work based on Islamic moral idealism for
justice will not rid the society of all conflicts and tensions. These
will be generated in ample measure. But they will have no communal
parameters. The dimensions of conflict will change. They will not be
between Hindus and Muslims but between the exploiters and the
exploited. To wage a jihad against the exploitative system will again
forge bonds of fraternity among members of all communities.

6) In their search for and consolidation and assertion of their
Muslim-Islamic identity, Muslims cannot ignore the fact that
historically and ethnically, they are a part of Indian society, from
which they cannot uproot themselves.  The onslaughts that they are
facing from small sections of caste-Hindus should not make them swerve
from the path of striking a right balance between their Islamic and
Indian identities.

7) Sections of Muslim masses presently engaged in a competition of
vulgarization of religion with their Hindu counterparts in the form of
ever increasing processions, and use of public address systems, should
be prevailed upon to unilaterally withdraw from it, as on introspection
they will realize that all this fanfare of religion is based not on
piety or on cultural autonomy but on sheer vanity. The beauty of Islam
is being spoiled by such vulgarization.

8) Muslim religious susceptibilities are on occasions too easily hurt.
Some mischievous persons will always try to provoke Muslims by hurting
them. But Muslims have to develop greater maturity to be able to deal
with poise such mischief-mongers, who for example, would like the Holy
Quran or parts of it to be proscribed.

9)Muslims should establish and use all existing avenues of dialogue
with all other sections, groups and communities at all levels -- of
masses as well as of educated opinion-makers. In this they should not
write off any leftist or chauvinist groups on an a priori basis.

***
[concluded]
***
arun gupta
ag3L@andrew.cmu.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bangladesh