NATIONAL POLITICS

Do Not Appease but Heal Their Wounds

M.K. Narayanan on Minorities

Religion and religious minorities are becoming an even more important factor than before in the calculation of all political parties. Dependence on the religious minority vote bank for success at the polls by Indian political parties, is surely a sad commentary on the state of polity in a country which has now had half a century of democratic rule.

India's pluralistic background and social resilience have been acclaimed by many perceptive observers of the Indian political and social scene - the latest being Lord Rees-Mogg who predicts that India will become "an international and irresistible force" by the year 2025. According to Lord Rees-Mogg, former Editor of the The Times, London speaking at. New Delhi recently, India would be among the four great economic powers alongside the United States, the European Union and China by the end of the first quarter of the 21st Century. Lord Rees-Mogg's estimate of India's future potential is on all fours with that of USA's Henry Kissinger, but as before the issue is whether the potential will be fulfilled if India does not accept the harsh realities and seeks, instead, to slip back in time rather than move forward.

Instead of facing up to this challenge of modernism and the winds of change sweeping across the globe, India's political leaders seem to find it safer to rely on the "Middle Ages" syndrome. Hence, come election time, no opportunity is overlooked to appease the religious minorities by exploiting their "backwardness" and deliver the community faithful into the hands of preachers and the priesthood who don the mantle of leaders of the community. The result is, that instead of taking their rightful position in society, the minorities more specifically the Muslim minority are perpetually consigned to second class status, bartering away their precious votes for promised dollops of short-term gains negotiated by their religious and community leaders for personal ends.

Today, and despite the continuing gap between the rich and the poor, class conflict is not the explicit political issue that it might well have been. The resultant vacuum has been filled by minority politics employing the medium of religion. The image created is that a religious minority deprived of its rights and rendered inadequate, which now requires a crutch, that is, external, social and governmental support to revive itself. This can be self-fulfilling.

This less than flattering image of the Muslims minority hardly squares with facts as they exist, though this may be what their self-styled leaders wish to project. Members of the community are talented, possess good business acumen and are highly skilled artisans. Many have started their own business ventures and are self- employed. Muslims are, no doubt, less well represented in areas of government and large corporations. To this extent, they are shut from the many new opportunities that have arisen as a result of liberalization. More significantly, their education credentials have suffered by failing to partake of the vast expansion that has taken place in the realm of higher education. They, hence, face, the danger of losing out on the benefits that accrue from meritocracy. The community leaders and the religious orthodoxy share a sizeable part of the blame, as also the mainstream parties and successive governments at the Centre, for this state of affairs, and the situation cannot be improved by emphasizing backwardness and putting a premium on dependency.

Unfortunately, the trends now discernible are far from reassuring. Rather than improve matters, the religious minority seems intent on compelling the polity to effect basic structural changes.

Nowhere have the more pertinent reasons for so- called backwardness and drop in education credentials of the community been addressed. The National Minority Commission is one of its reports had mentioned that the prevailing prejudice among sections of Muslims to western education was an important reason for this state of affairs. All this will hardly be rectified by the government resorting to a policy of temporary appeasement of the community, usually on election eve with an eye on the Muslim vote. Recent decisions such as increasing the quota of Haj pilgrims, increasing the salary of Imams, reviewing the implementation of the Prime Minister's 15-Point Programme for the welfare of minorities clearly beg the main issue.

Mainstream parties like the Congress must know that while professing to remain faithful to their "mainstream convictions" and secular ideals, their attempts to curry favor with the more communal segments and fringe leaders who claim to speak for the minority, would not only mean mocking those convicts but would do irreparable damage to the future interests of the minority or minorities. In the interest of electoral gain or advantage, appeasing the occupants of the margins would be self-delusion and tarnish the credentials of the mainstream parties. A marriage of convenience of this kind will also eventually sour. To respond to any and every available demand on the plea of minority rights would Balkanise sentiments in the polity, creating a groundswell of opposition and backlash from the majority leading perhaps to even greater irrationality on their part. Examples such as the "faintheartedness displayed by the authorities in executing a warrant against the Naib Imam of Delhi Jama Masjid (in a case of sedition dating back to 1993) in which he had been charged with spreading hatred and disaffection towards the government and attacking the constitutionally elected government and some religious communities, cannot but be viewed with repugnance by the vast majority of the population. It would be seen as evidence of government's desire to solicit the Naib Imam's help to secure the Muslims vote bank. In the late Eighties, there was another similar instance where the Delhi Police failed to execute a summon issued by the Kerala high court demanding the presence of the Shahi Imam of the Jama Masjid, on the specious plea that his whereabouts were not known.

It is far more important than appeasement or palliatives to see that both the majority and the minority display moderation, tolerance and forbearance. Otherwise, the spiral of action and reaction would go on endlessly enabling sectarian and communal forces to gain ground. Given the bitter competition and struggle for votes among both the minority and majority segments, the more radical and shocking the agenda the more its seductive appeal.

The government should take constructive steps for improving the quality and status of the minority by channelizing their energies into productive endeavors and upgrading educational opportunities for them. Stde by side, the government and other mainstream parties should deal firmly with the so-called "Hindu Agenda" proposed by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Without this, the cycle of minority-majority demands would continue unabated.

Indulgence can be a serious, and possibly the ultimate, danger to secular polity. There is hardly any such thing as a temporary appeasement, whether of the minority or of the majority. The real need is to do something substantial to raise the status and standards of the minority communities, but expression, or evidence, of a pronounced "tilt" at election time towards the minority at the expense of the majority can have unfortunate repercussions. If the mainstream parties are not to surrender their initiative to communal and sectarian forces and deny extremist elements in both the minority and majority an opportunity they need to make major mid-course corrections. If we are to avoid the grim scenario of communal and caste dominated politics - and possibly even a holocaust then greater enlightenment rather than the demands of narrow vote dominated politics will be needed.

 (Source: The Asian Age, 11 March, 1996)

WITH BEST COMPLIMENTS FROM

KALEEM KAWAJA

THE ASSOCIATION OF INDIAN MUSLIMS OF AMERICA

THE ORGANIZATION FOR UNIVERSAL COMMUNAL HARMONY

WASHINGTON DC USA