Author: Tavleen Singh
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: November 8, 2009
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-home-minister-needs-enlightenment/538690/0
First, let me say that in my humble opinion
the Home Minister is right to reach out to Muslims. With the Taliban at our
doorstep, it is very important for India's Muslims to understand that the
way of the Taliban is not their way. Muslims in the Indian subcontinent have
for centuries had a civilisation and culture that is very different from the
Wahabi Islam being promoted by Islamists everywhere. Let me give you one small
but important example. It is not part of Indian Muslim culture for women to
be treated as human bundles to be veiled and locked indoors, illiterate and
helpless. That is the Taliban way and we must make sure that they keep their
ideas to themselves or take them back to Saudi Arabia where a woman can be
jailed for wandering about without a man. And, whipped if seen in the company
of a man who is not a relative. Muslims in India have never subscribed to
such barbarous practices.
What puzzles me about Mr Chidambaram's exercise
in inter-faith dialogue is why he chose the Darul Uloom at Deoband as his
first stop. Having had the dubious pleasure of a day trip to that institution,
I have said more than once that I have never seen a religious institution
that has frightened me more. My troubles began at the gate when the bearded
gatekeeper told me that the head maulana would never grant me an audience
since I was not veiled. I responded that he could veil himself if he was that
shy and gave myself a little unguided tour. I met rabid, young Islamists who
refused to speak to me because they said they were forbidden to speak any
language other than Arabic. In dress, manner and beard they affected what
they thought was proper Arab culture. In the hour I spent wandering about
among the fine buildings and manicured gardens of the Darul Uloom, I saw only
one woman and she was so heavily veiled that all I saw of her were her eyes
and the tip of her nose. It was as if I had strayed into a little patch of
Saudi Arabia.
If only the Home Minister had spent some time
visiting the Darul Uloom's website before his visit, he would have discovered
that what he thinks of as 'terrorism' is quite different to the Darul Uloom
view. Listen to this. 'The struggle of resistance of the weak for securing
their legitimate rights against suppression or aggression is branded as terrorism'.
Even less ambiguous is the Darul Uloom's definition of who the world's real
terrorists are. 'According to the definition of terrorism by intellectuals
and thinkers of the West, the conduct of the governments of USA, Israel, Russia,
Phillipine (sic) and Burma may be regarded as brazen acts of state terrorism.'
Is this the position of the Government of India? Do we think of these countries
as sponsors of 'state terrorism'?
Then there is the Vande Mataram fatwa. Last
week's gathering of 10,000 Muslim clerics banned Muslims from singing this
song. Vande Mataram is not the national anthem, nobody is forced to sing it,
so it is not clear why a fatwa was needed at all unless it was to hint at
a rejection of something bigger and more important: Pre-Islamic Indian culture,
civilisation and history. I very much fear that this was the fatwa's real
intention. On the Darul Uloom's website I came across a line that described
the state of India before this fine institution came into being. 'The old
madaris in India had almost become extinct and condition of the two or four
that had survived the ravages of time was not better than that of glow worms
in a dark night'.
Is 'dark night' a description of India before
Islam came to 'enlighten' us infidels? I ask because when I read the words
I was reminded of a board outside the grave of an Iraqi preacher who came
to Rajasthan many centuries ago to spread Islam. He ended up in Nagaur and
the board outside the shrine that preserves his remains says that he came
to India because he saw it as a 'vast darkness'. So the Vedas, the Puranas,
that extraordinary treasure of Sanskrit literature, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata,
all get dismissed as pre-Islamic garbage. Right? They cannot possibly have
come out of the 'darkness' that was India and cannot compare even with the
'glow-worms' that existed before the great enlightenment that has come since
the creation of the Darul Uloom.
It really is no surprise that the Darul Uloom
spawned the Taliban. What is a surprise is the Home Minister's choice of this
institution to make his fine speech about pluralism and diversity. If he had
stopped to ask the head maulana his views on 'pluralism' he may have come
away with a new kind of enlightenment.
