1998 was a year of shock and reappraisal but also of a new beginning, cautious movement for accommodation to a new situation. Despite frustration and disappointment and non-representation in government and administration, the year also witnessed a reassertion of its political weight and re-activation of its legitimate demands.
In 1998, after the General Election, for the first time in the history of independent India and 75 years after the RSS was born, the Sangh Parivar entered the portals of governance and firmly established itself in the halls of power, aided and abetted by some 'secular parties' particularly the Telugu Desam Party of AP, the Trinamul Congress of W. Bengal and surprisingly, the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference which overcame overnight their ideological repugnance for the RSS and the BJP and came forward to provide ballast to stabilize the rocking ship of the ruling coalition. Atal Behari Vajpayee, the liberal poet and the most acceptable face, took over the reins of Government but Advani served as its arms and Joshi as its heart. The head was elsewhere - in Nagpur, the headquarters of the RSS, which exercised, or at least tried to exercise, long distance extra-constitutional control over the affairs of the Government. For the sake of the coalition, the BJP, no doubt, agreed to place on the back burner the controversial issues like the construction of the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir on the site of the demolished Babari Masjid, the promulgation of a uniform civil code and the deletion of Article 370 from the Constitution. But the Sangh and therefore the BJP had its own secret agenda - to infiltrate into the government machinery, to control its critical parts, to give a free hand to the forces of Hindutva, though more than 50 members of the Sangh Parivar, to promote with confident transparency, their long-term mission of the Hinduisation of the Indian society and culture, under the benign umbrella of the Government. Naturally there are some skirmishes on the fringes, between the hawks and the doves, between those in a hurry to make the best of the opportunity and those anxious to avoid premature explosion. In the process, however, many faces were unmasked; many hidden liaisons came into the public view.
With the Indian National Congress, under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi, deciding against the strategy of a counter-coalition the Vajpayee Government, initially on daily wages, has lived longer than expected and is poised to survive longer, if the Congress takes time to put its house in order, particularly in UP, Bihar, Tamilnadu and W. Bengal. However, at the end of the year, with its impressive victory in Delhi Rajasthan and MP, pressure began building up within the Congress to take a plunge but Sonia Gandhi does not appear to be in a hurry. The anti-Christian pogrom and the revulsion it has caused, nationally and internationally, may force her hands.
From the Muslim point of view, it was unfortunate that the secular parties not only failed to form a national alliance but even make electoral adjustment and come to any understanding. Had they put up or even supported common candidates against the BJP and its allies, Vajpayee would have been the Leader of the Opposition and not the Prime Minister. Muslim Indians, however, realised that along with the division of secular votes the division of Muslim votes in many Muslim-concentration constituencies also contributed to the victory of the BJP candidates. In the meantime, their experience with the secular parties has also disillusioned them, in power and out of power, whether in UP under Mulayam Singh Yadav or -Mayawati or in Bihar under Laloo Prasad Yadav, or in West Bengal under Jyoti Basu or in AP under Chandrababu Naidu or in Tamilnadu under Karunanidhi.
In the Assembly elections in November, 1998, the Muslim Indian voted largely for the Congress primarily because almost in every constituency, the Congress appeared to be the only winnable alternative to the BJP and also because under Sonia Gandhi, the Congress had made a conscious effort to woo them. This has set a trend which is likely to become more pronounced during 1999, as more States hold elections, provided the Congress, once again, does not play the old game of competing with the BJP for the 'Hindu vote', the game that Indira Gandhi initiated in 1980 and which was taken to its logical conclusion by Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao, with disastrous consequences for the country and for the party. On the whole, Muslim Indians have welcomed the revival of the Congress.
Muslims have also taken the BJP government in their stride. They have not been overawed into silence or retreated in fear on confronted it in hostility but while thinking of possible options for political empowerment they have been concentrating in the meantime on their educational and economic agenda. They have also begun cooking for a political strategy, beyond the limited choice between the Congress and what are essentially regional parties.
For the first time, Muslim Indians have taken note of their persistent under-representation in the legislatures. The first ever Muslim Parliamentarians' Meet demanded effective steps by the secular parties to raise the level of representation or agree to proportionate reservation. This was spurred by the threat of further reduction in the number of Muslim legislators implicit in the proposed Constitutional amendment to reserve 33% of the seats for women. Throughout the country, the Muslim community has unanimously demanded a proportionate sub-quota for Muslim women.
1998 did not witness any major communal incidents, partly because those who wielded the lathi had turned into watchmen and the BJP-led government was anxious to build its reputation. But there was palpable tension at the grassroots level with the Hindutva forces asserting themselves in arrogance and the administrative machinery either buckling and looking the other way or acting in collusion, particularly in BJP-ruled States like UP, Rajasthan and Gujarat. So while the physical pressure has waned, psychological pressure has increased. So also the ideological and cultural pressure, through deliberate and steady saffronisation of education and mass media.
The long-term objective .of the Sangh Parivar is not the physical liquidation of Muslims but the absorption of Islam in the Hindu fold. The Kalpa Yagna introduced in UP schools, the persistent propaganda about financing of Madarsas and Masjids by foreign money and their serving as the ISI hideouts and even training camps, the adoption of Hindu symbols and rituals by the State, the introduction of Sanskrit as a compulsory language, the Hinduisation of 'moral instruction', the blatant misuse of Government controlled mass media for propagation of Hinduism have indicated the shape of things to come. The A.I. Deeni Talimi Council, under the presidentship of Maulana Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi, supported by the Fatwas of Darul Uloom, Deoband and other leading seminaries, was forced to advise Muslim parents to withdraw their children from government schools in UP in protest against the compulsory imposition of Vande Mataram, Saraswati Vandana and the Hindu rituals. The State Government was forced to exempt the Muslims students but the task of keeping school education secular, in terms of syllabus, curriculum, textbooks, medium of instruction and culture, under pressure all over the country, is so enormous that Muslim Indians can hardly undertake it all by themselves.
Despite psychological pressure and slow progress in the judicial proceedings in the title suit, the criminal case and the judicial inquiry, the Muslims have refused to sign on the dotted line and surrender the Babari Masjid site. Indeed the anniversary of the Demolition this year served to mobilise all secular forces successfully against the VHP threat of commencing the construction of the Mandir on its site.
In the meantime, the VHP has launched the Programme of Reconversion whose targets are not only those who have recently embraced Islam or Christianity but practically all Muslims and Christians who largely descend from Hindu converts. The immediate targets are the Christian tribals, in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Orissa and MP – resulting in physical violence and desecration of Churches which -thanks to international Christian solidarity has already become a worldwide scandal. During his visit to Gujarat, P.M. Vajpayee gave a good chit to his party's government and called for a national debate on conversion, which has been ridiculed by the secular parties as an irrelevant and diversionary move, since the Constitutional, and legal provisions are crystal clear.
In a replay of Aziz Pasha case on the AMU, thanks to the ill-advised moves by some Khatibs in Calcutta, the ban on the use of the PA System for Azan has been confirmed by the Supreme Court. Inexorably, the ban will now come into force in all states, particularly in urban areas. Muslim Indians have to be vigilant against discrimination by local authorities.
During 1998 Muslim women have shown some signs of awakening to demand access to Masjid for Namaz and to Righer education, a review of the customary purdah, marriage and divorce rules. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board's campaign of social reform, though launched more than a decade ago has not gathered strength and the orthodoxy is not prepared to take a fresh look at the fiq'h of marriage and divorce to bring it into line with the practice in most Muslim States or even squarely within the framework of the Shariat. If the simmering articulation is not to give rise to a crisis, the Ulema and other community leaders must take up social reform in right earnest.
Education has become the highest priority of the Muslim Indian but there is no consensus yet on the balance between religious and modern education, on the syllabus and curricular of Maktabs and on the priority areas of educational endeavour and investment. But the open debate has begun.
Madarsas need to be standardized and affiliated to Dar-ul-Ulooms of national eminence. Madarsas and Masjids are the favourite recipients of Muslim charity but since they are largely outside the purview of social audit, the institutions are either being under-utilised or serve merely as means of livelihood for the sub-standard products of religious institutions.
Established . in Hyderabad, the Abul Kalam Azad National Urdu University completed its first year but, despite much fanfares, it has not taken any concrete shape. Unable to institute Urdu-medium degree or post-graduate courses in modern subjects, the University is concentrating on regional centres and distance education.
The creation of University is pointless if it merely repeats what others are doing and can do, and plays no role in the development of Urdu as a vehicle of information, knowledge and communication in modern subjects, including science and technology.
The year recorded no further progress in the adoption of Urdu as Medium of Primary Instruction and as the First Language at the secondary stage for the Urdu-speaking students in education or as an additional official language in administration in Urdu-concentration areas.One hopes that the new Congress governments in Delhi, Rajasthan and MP shall do justice to Urdu.
Once again the Aligarh Muslim University passed through a crisis marked by the closure of the University by the authorities almost in panic. The authoritarian style of administration, the virtual abolition of University bodies, the communication gap between the VC, on one hand, and the teachers and the students, on the other, the criminalisation of the campus, the pressure of the vested interests, all contributed towards destabilisation. The University has reopened but unless the criminal elements are isolated and the University functions as a team and the community exercises a healthy influence, one does not know when trouble may erupt again.
A UNDP-funded study has brought out that while Muslim Indians are economically below the national average, they are comparatively better off in the field of self-employment enterprises. But even micro enterprises need steady flow of bank credit which is not available to Muslim Indians, even under goverament sponsored programmes. One wishes that the Muslim Indians would establish a chain of Bait-ul-Mals, which may, inter alia, finance vocational training and micro-enterprises.
The level of Muslim representation in gazetted services including the All India, Central and State Services remains dismally low, though more and more attention is being paid to provide coaching facilities for promising candidates. There has been no perceptible rise in their level in public employment. From private employment they continue to be barred, the only safety valve being migration to the Gulf. There is at a perceptible exodus to urban areas in search of livelihood. Faced with persistent bias, their legitimate demand for reservation in public employment, higher education and development and welfare benefits is gaining momentum.
Kashmir continued to bleed throughout 1998 and there was no progress at all towards the goal of autonomy. There was no negotiation between the government the Hurriyat which tried to engage public opinion in the country in a dialogue. Militancy has ebbed largely due to fatigue but the people are politically disillusioned and economically dissatisfied. Little has been achieved on the development front. settlement of the dispute. The apprehension of greater Afghan involvement in Kashmir after the Taliban take over has not materialised.
Muslim Indian constitutes 1/10 of the Ummah but there was hardly any reciprocal involvement. The Muslim Indians took little notice of the happenings in the Muslim world. The situation in Karachi, the sectarian violence all over Pakistan, the civil war in Afghanistan, the fall of Suharto in Indonesia, the trial of Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, the US air attack on the Sudan, Afghanistan were noticed. But even the massacres in Kosovo, Israel's negation of the Palestine Accords and the US-UK aggression against Iraq evoked little reaction.
1998 witnessed many seminars, symposiums and conferences by Muslim organisations, institutions and committees all over the country but their crystallisation into united, purposive and result-oriented action remains a distant dream. The elite is not concerned; the intelligentsia is generally wary of associating itself with 'communal' objectives; the Ulema lack an overall grasp, the politicians have no respite from fawning on their masters, the youth lacks guidance and direction. There is a surfeit of organisations but few have an all India reach or posses a national vision. The old, established organisations the Jamiat-ul-Ulema, the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Milli Council and the Personal Law Board continue to plod their weary way, bound to their routine, going round in narrow circles.
Nevertheless, one can smell the whiff of new thinking, to bring all who matter and who can contribute knowledge, experience, skill and resources on a common non-political establish a dialogue on how to safeguard the dignity, promote the creativity and secure the participation and empowerment of the Muslim Indians as India moves into the next millennium.
New Delhi,
1 February, 1999
