Author: Kanchan Gupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: November 23, 2007
For all his bravado, Mr Idris Ali, who heads
a little-known Muslim organisation that operates under the name of 'All-India
Minorities Forum', panicked when he saw his followers run riot in those parts
of central Kolkata where there's dancing in the streets every time Pakistan
wins a cricket match against India. Hence his sly attempt to distance himself
from the rioters who set upon innocent people, torched cars and police vehicles,
attacked school buses and held petrified children hostage in their schools
till the Army was called in on Wednesday late afternoon.
"They (Marxist cadre) have infiltrated
our ranks and sparked the violence. We wanted to protest peacefully, but the
Marxists are trying to discredit us," he told newspersons on Wednesday
evening, obviously hoping to be spared the punishment that he justly deserves
but is eager to escape. To paint himself and his murderous mobs as innocent
victims of 'state repression', he claimed that "the disturbances broke
out after the police, without reason, arrested 200 protesters owing allegiance
to the AIMF and Furfurasharif Muzaddedia Anath Foundation at Park Circus".
Without reason? Mr Ali's foot soldiers were
armed with swords and an assortment of weapons, including Molotov cocktails,
which they used generously to terrorise people and attack the police. The
high casualties reported by Kolkata Police -- two Deputy Commissioners were
among those grievously injured -- and the widespread destruction of public
and private property bear witness to the ferocity of those whom Mr Ali has
sought to defend. But he is not alone in being indulgent; the anchor of a
Delhi-based 24x7 news channel described the rampaging mobs as "civil
society in ferment". So much for media integrity.
The issue, however, is not Mr Ali's too-clever-by-half
defence of his criminal deed. Thankfully, the marauders were forced to back
off before lives were lost; but the 'peace' that has been enforced with the
help of the Army and night curfew is at best tenuous: Only the naïve
and those who subscribe to Communist calumny will believe that Wednesday's
communal violence was an aberration and that Kolkata is back to being a 'city
of joy'. Nor should we get distracted by the suggestion that Kolkata's Muslims
are up in arms against the CPI(M)'s thuggery in Nandigram where many of the
victims are their co-religionists.
Indeed, it is doubtful whether Mr Ali is truly
concerned about the plight of the maimed, the raped and the homeless of Nandigram.
Had this not been the case, he would have mobilised political opposition to
the CPI(M)'s atrocities in Nandigram and elsewhere. After all, Mr Ali, apart
from being the chief of All-India Minorities Forum, is also a Congress leader,
or at least is known for being close to certain individuals in the party who
have defended his action.
By seeking to convert Nandigram's mind-numbing
tale of human misery into a 'Muslim issue', he has tried to add to the list
of the community's imagined grievances. For, the CPI(M)'s 'Harmad Vahini'
was, and remains, indiscriminate while letting loose its reign of terror in
Nandigram. Among the thousands of villagers who have lost their near and dear
ones, or have been forced to flee their home and hearth and take shelter in
'refugee camps', are a large number of Hindus. Two men whose names have become
synonymous with pillage, murder and rape in Nandigram, and who led the CPI(M)'s
bloody campaign, are Shahjahan Laskar and Selim Laskar.
The real objective of Mr Ali and his friends
-- Maulana Toha Siddiqui of Furfurasharif Muzaddedia Anath Foundation, Mr
Roshan Ali of Qaumi Awaz Welfare Society and leading lights of Milli Ittehad
Parishad -- who organised Wednesday's violent shutdown was to inflame Muslim
passion by raising the bogey of Muslim sentiments being hurt by the Left Front
Government. Hence the attempt to convert the atrocities in Nandigram into
atrocities on Muslims; hence, also, the demand that the visa given to Bangladeshi
dissident writer Taslima Nasreen, who has been living in Kolkata for the past
couple of years, should be cancelled.
In fact, the second underscores the real purpose
behind Wednesday's violence: Of taking the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen's
shameful attack on Ms Nasreen in Hyderabad to its logical conclusion. Mr Ali
and his friends allege that Ms Nasreen has "abused Islam and denigrated
the Prophet", and hence must not be provided with refuge from those who
want to kill her, as ordained by Shari'ah, for 'blasphemy'. If their reference
is to Lajja, whose publication led to her first clash with Islamists, then
it is rather late in the day. If they are referring to Dwikhondito, then we
can only presume that neither Mr Ali nor his ilk has any regard for the law
of the land which, they believe, does not apply to India's Muslims.
Here we must digress to understand why the
CPI(M) is as guilty as those who ran amok in Kolkata on Wednesday. Ms Nasreen's
autobiographical book, Dwikhondito, was banned by the West Bengal Government
on November 28, 2003, soon after its publication. The initiative to proscribe
the book because "it contains very derogatory and provocative references
that go against the grain of the tenets of Islam and of Islamic beliefs"
was taken by West Bengal's 'intellectual' Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee
at the behest of fellow travellers, many of them Bengali writers who take
perverse pleasure in denigrating Hindus and Hinduism. One of them, Mr Sunil
Gangopadhyay, has waxed eloquent in Thursday's Anandabazar Patrika on how
India is "not a theocracy and we cannot accept fatwas". He did not
display such tolerance while pushing for the ban on Dwikhondito.
The ban was declared illegal by the Calcutta
High Court on September 22, 2005. Since then, Ms Nasreen has neither said
nor written anything that can be considered, by any stretch of the imagination,
'derogatory' of Islam. Two years later, Mr Ali has raised the issue of Ms
Nasreen and her controversial book, skilfully avoiding any reference to the
court order, taking a cue from the MIM and using Nandigram as a cover.
This is calculated mischief -- as calculated
as the mass hysteria that was unleashed by bogus propaganda on the cartoons
published in a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, allegedly lampooning Mohammed,
or the equally bogus breast-beating over the execution of Iraq's former dictator,
Saddam Hussein. On those occasions, the CPI(M) was vocal in its support of
the 'Muslim cause' and rallied its forces behind a convoluted worldview that
has now come to haunt West Bengal.
Wednesday's communal violence in Kolkata is
only the beginning. Having sown the proverbial dragon's teeth, the CPI(M)
must now prepare to harvest its poison yield. The first signs of West Bengal's
Marxist Government cravenly giving in to Muslim violence are already visible.
Even before calm was restored in the riot-hit areas of Kolkata, CPI(M) Polit
Bureau member and Left Front chairman Biman Bose sought to placate Mr Ali
and his goons by offering to expel Ms Nasreen from West Bengal "to maintain
peace". On Thursday, Ms Nasreen was flown out of Kolkata to Jaipur. Her
visa expires on February 17 next year. It is entirely possible that the Marxists
will now force their obliging friends in the UPA Government to either not
extend Ms Nasreen's visa any further or cancel it right away.
But this is unlikely to serve any purpose
in containing 'Muslim anger' and preventing incidents similar to what was
witnessed on Wednesday. For, Mr Ali and his friends will come up with other
grievances that have nothing to do with the genuine problems of India's Muslims.
Make no mistake of that.
