Author: Prafull Goradia
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: April 27, 2002
The happenings in Gujarat, beginning
at Godhra on February 27, 2002, continuing sporadically thereafter, have
understandably had a traumatic effect on the country. The Muslims are particularly
shaken, although more than a third of the casualties have been Hindu.
This is not the first time when
heinous terrorism has shown its claws or when a Hindu-Muslim riot has had
its tragic consequences. An extraordinary trauma of what has happened in
Gujarat, could well be due to the mass upsurge wherein even the middle
and upper classes took part. Equally surprising was the conduct of the
Adivasis who also resorted to rioting.
Unfortunately, Hindu-Muslim riots
have been taken for granted. Such human suffering cannot be justified on
the ground that hardly a year has passed in the course of the last century
when somewhere or the other in the subcontinent a riot has not taken place.
On record, the first riot took place at Mumbai as well as in Azamgarh during
1893. And 2002 is unlikely to be the last year of a communal clash.
The Hindu leadership, regrettably,
must bear the brunt of the responsibility for allowing the climate of riot
to perpetuate. The Muslims led by Qaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah were
clear in their minds about wherein lay the final cure to the cancer of
Hindu-Muslim clashes. The British rulers were ambivalent for many decades
probably because they wanted to hold on to their empire. However, Lord
Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, diagnosed the ailment and offered
a cure within weeks of his arrival in Delhi. "It was Jinnah, and the Muslim
riots and massacres, that convinced me of two things soon after my arrival.
The first was that we had to be quick to find a solution. The second, that
it was more important to be quick than to have an undivided India. Government
was losing control. I decided that we had to be out not in fourteen months
but in five months."
This was remarkable because Mountbatten
was, by training and experience, a sailor; neither a politician nor a civil
administrator. (page 218, Mountbatten by R Hough, Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
London, 1980.) The Muslim vision could be credited to the community's fundamental
belief that a momin was unlikely to blossom fully as a servant of Allah
unless he lived in a Dar-ul-Islam. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan had said way back
in 1883 that the Hindus and the Muslims constituted two separate nations.
Amir Ali, who had founded the Central National Muhammedan Association in
Kolkata, pressed similar views as confirmed on page 265 of Studies in Islamic
Culture in the Indian Environment by Professor Aziz Ahmad (Oxford University
Press, New Delhi 2000).
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who in
1930s edited his journal Al Hilal, had written that no Muslim need join
any party because Islam itself was the Party of God and its name was Hizbullah.
The creation of Pakistan is unique in the annals of history. It was the
first country to be carved out of another specifically for the purpose
of giving the Muslim ummah of the subcontinent a separate homeland. The
leaders led by Jinnah had a comprehensive plan. It was not confined to
territorial vivisection. The leaders of the League had a comprehensive
plan which included a complete exchange of populations.
The Muslims of the subcontinent
were to transfer to the new dominion of Pakistan which, in turn, was to
be emptied of all non-Muslims. Of course, the Pakistani rulers were no
less sincere about welcoming the Mohajirs. Consistent with their exchange
of population plan, they had created conditions whereby the non-Muslims
had to emigrate to Hindustan. Thus, they had created living space for the
Mohajirs but most of them chose to remain in India.
Many Indian leaders and members
of the elite did move but most others remained behind on promises made
by the government at New Delhi of those days. The proof of all these assurances
is enshrined in the Constitution, Articles 29 and 30, which give special
privileges to the minorities, whether in terms of the Haj or grants to
their religious schools etc.
In the meantime, communal riots
have been taking place inexorably. Dr BR Ambedkar has quoted ad lib the
Government of India reports prepared in his times for the benefit of the
British Parliament. There was no year between 1920 and 1939 when a significant
riot had not taken place in some part of the country or the other. Then
came the War. Hardly it had ended when in 1946 the Muslim League ordered
Direct Action which led to the death of 18,000 people in the Great Calcutta
Killings. Several thousand others were killed elsewhere.
Even more tragic is that the riots
have continued even in Independent India. Godhra and Gujarat are only the
most recent occurrences. The Muslim in India is seldom at ease. At the
best of times, he is uncomfortable and, at the worst, like now, he is shaken.
In the absence of leadership and direction, he is unaware of what really
ails him. In fact, he is missing his Dar-ul- Islam. He is not getting the
space he needs to fulfill himself as a momin or a devout Muslim. If only
there was someone to remind him that what he needed was to follow the line
laid down by the Muslim League led by Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah, that is migrate
to his Dar-ul-Islam.
