Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: August 31, 2007
Those familiar with Hyderabad will tell you
that there are two faces of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), the Owaisi
family-led organisation that exercises a stranglehold over the city's Muslim
community. There is the acceptable face comprising a network of educational
institutions and healthcare centres. The flip side is not so much in evidence
on the main roads but surfaces in the by-lanes of the old city. Here, a lingering
nostalgia for the good old days of the Nizam - including the hero worship
of the Razakar supremo Kasim Rizvi who left for Pakistan in 1948 - blends
with an exclusivist and aggressive Islamism, loosely of the kind practised
by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Sixty years ago, the Razakars fought a brutal
and rearguard battle against Hyderabad being usurped by democracy. Sardar
Vallabbhai Patel, who was not inclined to be indulgent towards trouble-makers
just because they spoke poetic Urdu, sent the Army into Hyderabad State in
1948 and instructed the miserly Nizam to be content with a handsome privy
purse. Hyderabad was integrated into the Indian Union and soon assumed the
new Telugu identity of Andhra Pradesh.
The remnants of the Razakar movement - those
who didn't join the exodus to Pakistan - lay low till the 1960s and then slowly
regrouped. The revanchists found an inspiring leader in Sultan Salahuddin
Owaisi. He transformed the MIM from a fringe group to the status of a dominant
one among the Muslims of Hyderabad. The MIM has held the Hyderabad Lok Sabha
seat since 1971 and controls five of its Assembly segments. It has ruthlessly
crushed any challenge from other Muslim organisations and converted the old
city into a veritable no-go area for other political parties and even law
enforcement agencies. The Hyderabad police, by and large, is unable to enter
MIM strongholds - a reason why many undesirables use the area as havens.
It is the existence of this bizarre Islamic
state in the heart of the Andhra Pradesh capital that explains the defiant
reaction of MIM legislators to the assault on Bangladeshi dissident Tasleema
Nasreen last Thursday. The brazenness with which Akbaruddin Owaisi, the leader
of MIM in the Assembly, declared that "it is legitimate to kill Tasleema
Nasreen under Islamic law, but unfortunately we couldn't do it" reveals
two things. First, to the MIM and the Owaisis, their version of Islamic law
takes precedence over Indian laws. Second, the competitive extremism witnessed
in Hyderabad is an indication that the State is confronted by the unique problem
of the emotional secession of an entire ghetto from India.
These conclusions are not over-reactions.
All over India, indulgent political parties fearful of offending minority
sentiments have permitted Islamist ghettos where the writ of the State does
not run. Initially, this belief was couched in tacit acceptance of the "one
country, many systems" principle. However, of late, this has degenerated
into accommodation of radical Islamism, including terrorism.
It is, for example, one thing to shed tears
for a Bollywood star whose family is linked to the Congress. However, the
secularist demand for the exoneration of Sanjay Dutt (and one of the Memon
brothers) is also coupled with the claim that the March 1993 serial blasts
in Mumbai were, somehow, a legitimate reaction to the January 1993 riots.
Read with the courting of the Al-Ummah chief after he was (predictably) acquitted
in the Coimbatore blasts case and the continuing Government inaction over
the death sentence for convicted terrorist Afzal Guru, the alarming indication
is that votebank politics is moving in a dangerous direction and now includes
mollycoddling terrorists.
I don't believe any real action will be taken
against the MIM activists who assaulted Tasleema. On the contrary, the furore
over her alleged blasphemy is almost certain to result in either the cancellation
or non-renewal of her tourist visa. The Razakars are on the verge of a famous
victory which, ironically, will enhance their reputation as the real protectors
of the faith.
