Author: Tarun Vijay
Publication: The Times of India
Date: November 5, 2009
URL: http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indus-calling/entry/medieval-trap
When the nation is facing grave threats from
the Maoists and the Lashkar-e-Taiba's Islamist mad-heads, and discussing how
to counter the Chinese arrogance, suddenly mullahs living in a frozen Arabian
time zone have cried that they won't sing "Vande Mataram".
Are they concerned about the people? People
whose lives they think they govern through some fatwas and scriptural instructions?
Do they realize that hardly any educated Muslim with his head firmly positioned
where it should be, listens to them leave aside "obeying" their
dictates? Still they make some noises to get media attention and register
their political presence.
What was the compulsive necessity for making
such an announcement while the home minister was there to have a plateful
of appeasement biryani in hope of garnering their votes for a 21st-century
government?
One explanation that has come to us through
Deoband observers is frighteningly pregnant with serious consequences to our
already strained social fabric. The Congress wants to create another monster
out of Muslim fanatics to further erode Mayawati's vote bank and simultaneously
distract public attention from its failure on the Maoist front and keep the
public debate away from the price rise. These are the issues it couldn't handle;
hence, the distraction was immediately needed. And the way fanatics helped
the British before India was vivisected, the maulvis have obliged the party
in power. It's advisable not to get trapped in this political lunacy, but
then the media will be taking it up in a big way for certain unexplained reasons
and there will be obvious reactions and diatribes from both sides to keep
the issue alive.
Public memory shouldn't be too thin. Remember
how Bhindranwale was created, the statements about his "saintliness",
the permission to his brigands to roam free through Delhi's roads brandishing
AK-47s on top of buses. And then only too recently, Raj Thackeray was propped
up to counter Shiv Sena-BJP's growth in the Maratha land.
They forget that a Bhindranwale and a Raj
results in self-defeat, a defeat for the national unity and collective goals
of economic prosperity. The Deoband mullahs have never helped their community
in making economic, social and educational progress. At any moment of a social
crisis among Muslims, they have delayed any decision or taken a retrograde
stand. The "shining" examples of their fossilized mentality were
too visible during the Shah Bano case, Gudiya's tragic story and equal right
to Muslim women. They kept a studied silence when five lakh Hindus were driven
out of their homes in the Kashmir valley, after announcements were blared
out on the dreadful night of January 11, 1989, asking Pandits to get out and
leave behind their women. Jammu & Kashmir is the only Muslim-majority
state in India and if Deoband is "concerned" about Islam's peaceful,
and humanitarian face, why should it not try to influence the terror groups
operating in the name of their religion and in turn, as the maulvis say, bringing
bad name to their great message of universal brotherhood?
But never will one find them engaging the
"bad elements" and issuing a fatwa against their "anti-Islamic"
action. All they would do is to irritate Hindus and punch the patriotic people
belonging to all denominations with untimely and out of context pronouncements
like the one they made while the "man with a mission" Chidambaram
was in their midst.
They know very well that "Vande Mataram"
is a song celestial for a patriotic Indian no matter to which stream of faith
he belongs. It's a song that inspired Bhagat Singh and Ashfakullah alike and
is more popular with an electrifying affect than any other song. An A R Rahman
refashioned it and offered a beautiful rendering of it with Bharat Bala making
its universal appeal more thrilling. Millions of Indians, Muslims, Hindus,
Christians and all denominations sing it with pride and confidence. It was
the song which united India against the British repression that had caused
the death of millions in Bengal creating an unnatural famine .The original
song appears in the famous novel of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay named "Anand
Math" which describes a revolution against the foreign yoke led by ochre-robed
monks. The deity is Mother India, the song is in praise of the Mother and
it's accepted as a national song by the Constitution. No organization can
be given an option to denounce or reject the icons representing the national
ethos and the spirit of the freedom struggle. If they don't belong to us,
they don't have a right to enjoy the fruits of a pluralist society, democracy
and a Constitution that gives them more than their ilk offers to any non-Muslim
anywhere. Instead of making an Indian identity stronger and helping their
community to join the national mainstream endeavouring for a happy and progressive
life, they are, at a time when an average Indian is more concerned about dal
roti and security, more concerned about a song that was opposed in the same
manner by Pakistan seekers pre-1947.
Then to which country these Deobandis and
Jamiat's big-mouths belong? What's their problem?
It's not the song they are opposing. The message is loud and clear that they
don't want to forge a sense of unity with the national life. They want to
create a divide on the lines of a Muslim Indian and an Indian Muslim for political
leverage. P Chidambaram is certainly not a scholar of Islamic theology that
they invited him for a religious discourse. The home minister was there on
a political mission. The home minister of India must have made them sing an
Indian song rather than emboldening them to oppose it.
Their Arabian-night fever must be brought
to an end with the firmness of a united Indian patriotism symbolized in our
Constitution and the ever victorious tricolor.
