Author: M. V. Kamath
Publication: News Today
Date: August 27, 2007
URL: http://newstodaynet.com/guest/2708gu1.htm
First, an explanation: when one speaks of
Muslims, it does not mean all Muslims in India, just as when one speaks of
Hindus, it does not mean all Hindus think alike from Kanya Kumari to the snowy
mountains of the Himalayas. And yet, one can't help generalising at times
as when one says that as a result of a long history of tyrannical Muslim rule,
Hindus have come to attach an abhorrence of Muslims in general and Islam in
particular. Muslims did not rule all of India all the time.
Neither were all Muslim rulers tyrannical
all the time. But one speaks here of 'impressions', just as did Prime Minister
Dr Manmohan Singh when, addressing the National Press Club in Washington a
year ago, he said: 'We have 150 million citizens who practice the faith of
Islam. And I say it with some pride, that not one of them has joined the ranks
of these gangs like the al Qaida or other terrorist outfits .......' Famous
last words. If he eats them he would have indigestion.
As Aroon Purie of India Today recently pointed
out, there is a strong possibility that al Qaida cells are active in India.
As he put it: 'Our Parliament, commuter trains and crowded market places have
already been attacked'. But go back to recent times. Even if we don't take
into consideration the torching of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra and the
incineration of over 53 woman and children at one go and the bombing of the
Akshakdham Temple in Ahmedabad, remember these acts of terrorism: On 8 August,
1993 there was a bomb blast at the RSS office in Chennai killing eleven and
injuring seven. On 14 February, 1998 there was a serial car bombings in Coimbatore
killing 46 and injuring over 200. In May-June 2000 there was a series of 13
bomb blasts in churches in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa, killing nearly
50.
On 28 December, 2005, an Let-backed group
attacked the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and on 18 May, 2007 again
the Lashkar-e-Toiba arranged a blast at the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, killing
16 persons. We need also to take into consideration the attack twice, on the
Raghunath Temple, the Delhi blasts in 2006 and Sankat Vimochan, Varanasi also
in 2006. According to the Anti-Terrorist Squad, ISI-sponsored groups like
the Let and al Badr have both active and sleeping modules in India. Outlook
has pointed out that 'there is a sizeable educated Muslim population who are
now seen as likely candidates for jihadi indoctrination'.
What does it say of the Muslims? One generalisation
is that Muslims have not come to terms with history and can't stand the thought
that they have now to live in a country with a predominantly Hindu-oriented
government, no matter how loudly it claims to be 'secular', after having for
centuries been the rulers. To Muslims, Hindus are still kafirs and they blanch
at the thought of having to be governed by a common Civil Law. They have still
to accept the fact that times have changed, that they have to live with Hindus
as fellow citizens and not as masters.
That would explain the Two-Nation Theory and
Jinnah's insistence on a separate Muslim state. That may also possibly - just
possibly - explain the irritation in many Muslim minds of being a minority
that can't lay down the law as in ancient times when though they were numerically
few, politically and militarily they ruled as a majority. It is also possible
that because of that very fact, they think that Hindus are deliberately keeping
them down out of vengeance and therefore must react violently to it.
These are guesses and anyone is free to question
them. But what, one may ask, will the Muslim community gain through violence?
Where will extremism and religious fundamentalism take them? Can one blame
Hindus if they smear all Muslims as potential terrorists? Hasan Saroot, writing
in The Hindu (17 July) made the point that 'Islamic extremism has not descended
from another planet or been imposed on the community from outside' and that
'it breeds within the community and is the product of a certain kind of interpretation
of Islam'
The general argument made by our secularists
and enraged Muslims is that Islam is a religion of peace. But Hasan Surior
writes: 'Let's face it; there are verses in the koran that justify violence.....
When Islam was in its infancy and battling against non-believers, violence
was deemed legitimate to put them down. Today, when it is the world's second
largest religion with more than one billion followers around the world and
still growing, that context has lost its relevance. Yet, jihadi groups, pursuing
that madcap scheme of establishing Dar-ul-Islam (The Land of Islam) are using
these passages to incite impressionable Muslim youths'.
Are Hindus to blame? What have Hindus done to invite Muslim angst? The demolition
of the insignificant Babri Mosque? One should put that against the background
of the number of temples - counted in hundreds - demolished by Muslim rulers,
especially Aurangzeb and some of his predecessor and contemporaries, in the
past. Are Hindus supposed to forget them and let byegones be byegones? Then
comes the argument that the claims that Sri Ram was born at the exact spot
where the Babri Masjid was built is an untenable one. But that is a matter
of faith.
Can Hindus question the belief that it was
Allah who dictated the Koran to the Prophet or that - to move a little further
- that Christ was born to Virgin Mary? Has anyone questioned Malaysia which
in the past few months has razed to the ground several Hindu temples to the
utter distress of Hindu devotees? And this is not history but done in the
living present. Has any Muslim or secular organisation raised its voice? How
many illegal mosques have not the Musharraf regime pulled down in Pakistan
in recent years? Then there are many who try to explain Islamic violence to
what the United States an Britain have done to Iraq and what the US has done
to Iran. But what has that got to do with India? India has neither officially
or unofficially condoned the US invasion of Iraq; indeed India has shown clearly
its unwillingness to accept the US thesis that Iraq was accumulating weapons
of mass destruction and therefore needs to be brought to order.
Another excuse for Islamic violence is that
it is poverty and lack of education that is the driving force. But as Perves
Hoodbhoy, who teachers at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabed notes, 'deprivation
and suffering do not, by themselves, lead to radicalism, that lack of educational
opportunities too is an insufficient cause, considering that the 9/11 hijackers
and the Glasgow airport doctors were 'highly educated men supported by thousands
of similarly educated Muslims in Pakistan'.
Muslims in India must look inwards and think
of what a reformed British extremist, Rassan Butt, said about 'the role of
Islamic ideology in terrorism' that preaches 'a separatist message of Islamic
supremacy' and seeks to establish a 'puritanical caliphate'. What Muslims
in India and, for that matter, in Pakistan must come to accept is that times
have changed and that they must change for the better.
Hoodbhoy says that Pakistan must take strict
action against mullahs who spread hatred. Will Musharraf dare to take such
action? He was forced to get Lal Masjid in Islamabad vacated of would-be terrorists.
But there is a greater job ahead of him to be discharged, and that is to modernise
Islam as once his political icon, Kamal Pasha of Turkey, did. But will Musharraf
last? Word is going round that Washington wouldn't hesitate to wage war in
Waziristan and elsewhere to root out all Qaida. One can only wait and see.