Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.pakistan,soc.culture.bangladesh
Date: Thu,  9 Apr 92 10:44:07 -0400 
From: "Arun K. Gupta" <ag3l+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: (I)Muslim situation in India


[The following is taken from "The Muslim Situation in India",
edited by Iqbal Ansari,  which is a publication of a seminar
held by the Institute of Objective Studies in New Delhi, July 4-5,
1987.

On May 22-23, 1987, there were riots in and around Meerut.
These cast a long and gloomy shadow on the deliberations reported
here.]

The keynote speech of the seminar:
The Muslim Situation in India: Some Observations
by Mohammad Nejatullah Siddiqui
(Prof. of Economics, King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, former prof.
of Islamic Studies, Aligarh)

When these deliberations were first planned and I was asked to make a
brief presentation, I had decided to focus on some long-term problems
facing the Indian Muslims and to suggest some methods for their proper
study with a view to facilitating their solution. The emphasis would
be on planned action based on thorough analysis. But soon after, the
gloomy shadows of Meerut cast themselves, reasserting the primacy of
the all-pervasive sense of insecurity among Muslims. How can you make a
people coolly consider their situation, plan and work hard for economic
uplift and educational advancement when they find their life, honour
and property exposed to wanton destruction by a section of the majority
community, with those responsible for enforcing law and order standing
by, sometimes, even conniving with the aggressors ?

So, we must begin, forty years after Independence, with the
question : how to protect Muslim life, honour and property  ? Who kills
them and why ?


There is no denying the fact that there are some Hindu organizations in
the country that do not accept the dispensation enshrined in the
Constitution of India vis-a-vis the religious minorities. They are not
prepared to accommodate Muslim presence in India with a distinct
identity. The killings, humiliations and destruction are a part of a
deliberate strategy to terrorise them into submission. Their vision of
a Hindu India is entirely different from that of the founding fathers
of Indian democracy.

It is an unjust and untenable proposition. If it is allowed to have its
way it will tear apart not only the Indian polity but also the Hindu
society which is essentially a diverse entity. Its consequences for the
country's international relations can be easily imagined, especially
because such a dispensation will never be acceptable to the hundred
million Indian Muslims who are also part of the international Islamic
community.

There is no reason why the legitimate cultural aspirations of the Hindu
majority cannot be satisfied within the framework of the Constitution
of India. It is time these organizations reviewed their stance in the
light of the real interests of those for whom they care, as well as in
the light of internationally accepted norms and standards of fairness
and justice to minorities.

But as long as the Hindu communal organizations continue on their
present path, the needful must be done to contain them and protect
their victims. It is necessary in this context to examine the responses
of four groups in the society. These are:

the administration,

the saner elements in the majority community who reject the stance of
the Hindu communal organizations and subscribe to the constitutional
dispensation,

the bulk of the majority community,
and the Muslims themselves.

That there is some justification for the Muslim perception that they
are often betrayed by the administration is now widely recognized.
Fortunately they still have some confidence in the Central Govt.
Despite their doubts relating to Meerut, they think the Center can, as
it has often done in the past, prevent the complicity of local
administration and the apathy, sometimes even connivance of the State
administration, towards the killers. To move the Center in time,
however, is a difficult task requiring a concerted and united political
effort which can hardly succeed without the fullest cooperation of the
saner elements of the majority community.

Far more important than the central administration, therefore, is the
section fo the majority community which sees in faithful adherence to
the Constitution of India the recipe for a united, stable and peaceful
Indian polity, which is a prerequisite for the progress of the
country. It regards cultural chauvinism as counter-productive, even
self-destructive. It accepts religious, cultural and linguistic
diversity as a fact of life.  It pins its hopes on the preservation of
civil liberties for a flowering of the national genius. It respects
human beings as human beings, irrespective of caste, creed, colour or
culture.  Its commitment to the democratic process overrides its love
for any particular way to heaven, here on the earth or in the
hereafter. How large is this section ? How strong ? How effective ?
Alas, no optimistic answer has much credibility in the face of the
recent events. But we do believe in the potentialities of this
section, a belief that sustains us in moments of despair. It is however
not a belief without any basis, for how else can we explain our
survival during the last forty years ?

What creates persistent doubts regarding the effectiveness of these
noble souls among the majority community is the behaviour of the bulk
of the majority during periods of communal frenzy. Peace-loving
neighbours are manoeuvred into becoming instruments of communalism
through a crafty concoction of perceived threats, distorted history,
false visions of the future, and what not.  It is the anti-Muslim,
anti-Constitution communal Hindu who succeeds in enlisting the support
of the Hindu masses. The saner sections wake up much later in the day,
and even then their performance leaves much to be desired.  Their
presences at the commanding heights of the  society-- the press, the
platform and the administration-- is not visible enough. It fails to
exercise its weight at the onset of events, and the miscreants carry
the day.

Part of the blame for insufficient mobilization of this crucial section
of the Indian society must lie with the Muslims, who have yet to
realize that it is only by activating and joining hands with the saner
elements amongst the majority community that they can save themselves
as well as the country. The channels of communication between community
leaders and these elements are very weak indeed. The way Muslim
leadership, especially the religious leadership, functions hardly
provides for the continuous interaction and dialogue between them and
the well-intentioned, imaginative and far-sighted Hindu intellectuals,
religious personalities and statesmen who shun communal aggression.
They can hardly wait for the initiative to come from the other side.
Much, far too much, is at stake to permit complacency.

The Millat has also failed to mobilize its own spiritual and moral
resources in the face of communal aggression. The mentality of street
fighters or that of a people under siege, into which the community is
forced by the brute logic of the events, continues to pervade even
during the calmer moments intervening any two bouts of turmoil.  That
time could be utilised to dispel misunderstandings, undo prejudice,
counter poisonous propaganda and project the  image of humane
neighbours.  In the present communally surcharged atmospheres such an
image can be earned only by sustained efforts over a long period of
time.  It requires dedicated social service for the common good of
humanity, that is, eradication of hunger, disease, filth, illiteracy
and ignorance. These efforts should involve the entire population in a
locality, men and women, adults and children, Hindus and Muslims.  It
is only by working together for the betterment of living conditions for
all and everyone that men realise the simple truth that what unites
them outweighs what might divide them.  It is through close contacts
during community works that spiritual concerns and moral commitments of
men invoke mutual respect and affection, for the the spiritual and
moral values of humanity are essentially the same, despite the variety
of cultures and rituals.

Muslims are baffled by the oft-repeated canard that it is they who
initiate riots in which they are the main sufferers in terms of loss of
life and property.  Religion, morality and love of the land, all
recognize the right of an individual or a people to self-defence.  But
when the Muslims take recourse to self-defence in view of official
apathy, even betrayal, their indictment is sealed, the cache of
hand-made arms recovered from them being taken as the final proof of
their `plot'.  A hint at the involvement of some foreign hand evidenced
by overstaying Pakistanis readily comes from officials, even
politicians, to cover all incompetence in maintaining law and order.
Expediency makes them overlook the devastating impact these
insinuations have on the Hindu masses as the communal organizations
exploit these hints.

***
[to be continued]
***
ag3L@andrew.cmu.edu