Author: Balbir K Punj
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: April 7, 2006
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned
to repeat it.George Santayana
The beeline that 'secularists' of various
hues - the CPI(M), Congress and Muslim League - are making to the Coimbatore
Central Jail to pay their political obeisance to Abdul Nasser Madani will
astonish only the uninitiated. The jailed jihadi reportedly masterminded the
February 14, 1998, Coimbatore serial blasts that killed 59 people, but narrowly
missing the main target, then BJP president LK Advani. Madani's communally
inflammatory speeches predate his involvement in the Coimbatore blasts. Because
of all these 'qualifications' he is a 'secular' icon in the muddy waters of
Kerala's electoral politics.
The 'secularists' strategy is to exploit Madani's
influence, real or perceived, on Muslim vote-bank. Madani, on behalf of his
People's Democratic Party, has promised support to the CPI(M) dominated LDF
coalition. It may well be construed as a political fatwa for Muslims of Kerala
- who form 24 per cent of the State's population of 32 million - to vote for
the CPI(M) and its allies. In the 2001 Assembly election, Madani had supported
the Congress-led UDF. So, in spite of his bloody record and spewing communal
vitriol, he is not politically untouchable for any of the 'secular' branded
parties.
Similarly, in poll-bound Assam, the UPA Government
is engaging in a duplicitous deal with the ULFA (now no more than an extension
of the ISI) with the sole objective of garnering votes by projecting itself
as the peacemaker in Assam. The UPA Government has reintroduced the IMDT Act
through the backdoor by selectively altering the provisions of the Foreigners
Act 1946, applicable to Assam alone. The matter is now sub judice in the Supreme
Court.
It is rather curious that ULFA has suddenly
changed its tone before the election. While earlier it used to exhort people
to boycott polls, this time it has called for voting for a party that defends
Assam's interests. While refraining from naming any party in particular, ULFA's
tacit reference is towards the Congress, not AGP or BJP, if one were to read
between the lines. Can protecting infiltrators, as modified Foreigners Act
does, be called a step in Assam's interest? The ongoing election in Assam
is perhaps the State's last chance to protect itself from turning into a greater
Bangladesh. The next Assembly election, coinciding with the next Census, might
be a date too late for Assam.
ULFA was a secessionist outfit of insurgents
when it was formed three decades ago, and remains so till today. But its degeneration
from a reluctant formation opposed to infiltration to an outfit supporting
infiltration is worth noting. This changeover occurred roughly 15 years ago.
Prafulla Kumar Mahanto's first tenure as AGP Chief Minister (1986-1990) was
the high noon of ULFA's destructive activities. Being a product of the same
movement, ULFA was known to have access to the corridors of power in Dispur.
But as ULFA overreached itself with extortion
activities from the tea-gardens, and Unilever group airlifted to rescue one
of its beleaguered tea estate managers, it brought about AGP's embarrassing
fall. The relationship between the two was estranged since then. Today ULFA's
ISI-commissioned leadership is based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. For the last 15
years, it has been subservient to the forces of jihad. ULFA camps are teaching
Assamese to would-be insurgents in Bangladesh. Thus ULFA's care and concern
for Assam's 'interests' is totally false.
ULFA has refused to observe the ceasefire
with the Government of India and abandon its demand for independent Assam.
It has been going around blasting oil facilities, killing police personnel,
and kidnapping businessmen in Assam. There is nothing to indicate that ULFA
has seen the light of reason (it won't, unless the heat is turned on it).
But now that it has abjured violence on the
election eve, calling on people to vote for a party that "defends Assam's
interest", isn't there a conspiracy of peace between the ULFA and the
Congress? It is thus concluded that the secularists are enlisting Madani's
support in Kerala and ULFA in Assam to save 'secularism'. One has still to
see a bigger contradiction.
The 'secular' Congress and Communists are
today hell bent on a rerun of history that led to partition along communal
lines. Recently, the UPA Government amended the Foreigners Act 1946 for selective
applicability in Assam to facilitate Bangladeshi infiltrators. Then, the Kerala
Assembly passed a unanimous resolution seeking the release of jihadi Abdul
Nasser Madani incarcerated in Coimbatore Central Jail.
Why talk to Ms Khaleda Zia about closing down
terror camps in Bangladesh when demographic aggression against India continues?
Why talk to President Musharraf to rein in his anonymous jihadis when you
are pleading the cause of an Al-Ummah middleman?
In 1919, Mahatma Gandhi espoused the cause
of the Caliphate, and put the entire weight of the Congress party behind a
pan-Islamic movement. Gandhi wanted to rouse feverish Islamic passion for
serving the cause of Swaraj by yoking Khilafat with Non-Cooperation movement.
But this botched movement ended in massacre of Hindus as the Moplah riots
in Malabar (1921) were followed by a string of other violent incidents. Eventually,
Gandhi had to concede in frustration that every Hindu was a coward and every
Muslim a bully.
All through the 1930s and 1940s, the Communist
Party of India supplied MA Jinnah with intellectual justification for his
demand for Pakistan. The concepts of the "right to self-determination"
and India as a "federation of independent states" came from the
Marxists. But ironically, the Marxists were completely cleansed of the newly
carved out state of Pakistan.
Today, as Islamic fundamentalism is asserting
itself from the US to Australia, 'secularism' is reviving itself with renewed
vengeance. But this feverish revival appears to approach only a terminal end.
The jihadi fires are stroking India in too many theatres. 'Secularism' will
find the burgeoning population of Muslims and their increasing jihadi assertiveness
too hot to handle.
In the centenary year of the formation of
the Muslim League in Dhaka (1906), Shahi Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid Ahmed
Bukhari has called for the formation of a federation of Muslim organisations,
eschewing 'secularism'.
'Secularism' has always been a distasteful
compromise for Muslims in independent India. It has, at best, been a strategy
to survive in a truncated country, after having achieved Pakistan and cleansed
Hindus and Sikhs from its territories. At worst, it has been inertness. Muslims
always have a grouse that 'secularism' has failed them. This seems to be an
echo from the pre-independence days when they accused the Congress of "Hindu
hegemony" and dissociated themselves from the party. But how the Congress
became a 'secular' party from a 'Hindu' one is not difficult to understand
if we address the issue methodically.
After the departure of the British and creation
of Pakistan, many Muslims in independent India faced a dead end. The fundamentalists
had not migrated to their dreamland and were citizens of a country for whose
dismemberment they had worked in cooperation with invaders. They were sandwiched
between guilt and insecurity.
The Congress was now no longer a struggling
party they could mock at but the ruler of this land. So vote-for-protection
deal was struck with the party. But subsequently, the Congress was overtaken
by other secularist brands in cultivating Muslim vote-bank. The Congress and
other 'secular' parties have stooped to crude 'competitive' secularism to
gain Muslim votes.
While many Hindus fear that communal reservation,
Sharia'h courts, infiltration, anti-Bush, anti-cartoon rallies turning violent
against Hindus presage a repetition of 1947, many fundamentalist Muslims feel
they are better positioned now to re-establish Islamic rule in India by letting
'secularists' do their work. The 'secularists' are vending Islamic fundamentalism
under the brand name of 'secularism'. With 'secularists' like these, who needs
Islamists?