FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
Muslim India 1947-1997-II
India is a state of continental dimensions. An average Muslim Indian knows little about Muslims living in other parts of the country, or belonging to other sects or to other baradaris. This is one reason why on the educational, social, economic and cultural plane, Muslim India has not succeeded in building up national organisations. There are many organisations today with the prefix "Kul Hind" or "All India" or even. "National" but they are largely local in objective and limited in activity. Muslim India still lacks an apex consultative forum which would bring under its umbrella all Muslim Indians who have their knowledge, experience, influence, resources and contacts to offer for the common cause. The irony lies in that even established institutions and organisations have broken up into two e.g. the IUML, the AIMMM, the JUH, the Dar' "1-Uloom, Deoband, the end-result of clash of ego and conflict of personal interest.
Unfortunately, Muslim Indians have also been socially dividing and sub-dividing themselves on the basis of sects and castes. This has widened the fissures within the community, sapped its inner strength and allowed hostile forces to play with one group or another, at the cost of the community.
POLITICAL UNDER-REPRESENTATION
On the political front, Muslim Indians have largely aligned themselves with national and regional secular parties during the last 50 years. The Muslim League is now confined to a few districts in Kerala; the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen is a one city organisation; the All India Muslim Majlis has long been extinct and exists only on paper. These political organisations (along with various caste and sectarian bodies) come to life on the eve of the elections and form Muslim 'Fronts' to bargain with the established parties for a few seats in the legislature or to offer them their "services". The overwhelming majority of the Muslim Indias have invariably voted for the secular parties in elections after elections, particularly in Muslim concentration constituencies. On the other hand, the Muslim masses have felt cheated and frustration with and alienation from the political process are setting in: Every secular party has a social base and wants to attract Muslim votes to its benefit but does not field Muslim candidates in adequate numbers because it is unable to transfer its non-Muslim votes, Inexorably Muslim representation has fallen in the legislatures. This is also due to selective selection of Muslim voters under one pretext or the other and deliberately hostile delimitation of constituencies. Muslims, even in the party structure, or the legislatures, have largely remained on the margin of things, because they dare not offend the party leadership and lose what they have gained for themselves and their immediate hangers-on. What is worse they dare not plead the legitimate causes of the Muslims for fear of being labelled as "Communal".
Muslim Indians are the victims of the essential weakness is the electoral system - the multiplicity of secular parties and consequential division of the secular votes. Muslim Indians can only become political players if they vote massively and unitedly but selectively, constituency-wise, without committing support, as a community, to any secular party - unless there is a secular alliance - across the country or even across the state. This calls for unity and organisation which do not exist. Alternatively, the Muslim Indians should press the secular parties into a nation-wide Secular Alliance which should field Muslim candidates from Constituencies of promise. Ironically, some secular parties have even encouraging division among the Muslims on the caste lines in order to forge a firm link between their Hindu caste base and at least a section of the Muslims in constituencies of Muslim concentration.
It is not surprising that a band of fanatics have emerged who are not only challenging the democratic and secular order but espousing the establishment of "Islamic State" or "Khilafat" i.e. political dominance of Islam, in a democratic state in which Muslims form a small minority, at a time when they are already targeted for their supposed "malevolent" intentions. All such Islamic hysteria provides welcome grist to the propaganda mills of Hindu chauvinism to claim that the Muslim Indians' real objective is the restoration of Muslim Rule in India.
CONTINUING AGONY OVER KASHMIR
The Muslim community in Kashmir has been caught in the vortex of international politics and lost between the aspiration of self-determination, leading to independence for the Valley or autonomy within India and Pakistan. Though legally the whole of the State as it was on 15.8.1947 is a part of India, nearly 50% of its territory is under occupation of Pakistan and China. Pakistan has in fact integrated the Northern Areas. Even the rest of what India calls Pakistan occupied Kashmir is only nominally Azad. Since 1971, a line of control separates India and Pakistan in Kashmir. Off and on there are suggestions to formalise this line as the international border. Since 1989, frustrated with rigged elections, the Kashmiri youth, inspired, trained and armed by Pakistan, is waging what it calls a war of liberation against the Indian State. Kashmiris have been ground between the mills of insurgency and counter-insurgency and both human rights and fundamental rights have been massively violated by both sides. There is a sense of fatigue and disappointment. The tempo of insurgency has gone down with promise of maximum autonomy and elections to the Parliament and the Assembly but the final political solution which would satisfy the aspirations of the Kashmiris, the territorial ambitions of Pakistan, the long-term interests of the Muslim community in India and of the Sub-continent still lies in the future. The Muslim Indians condemn violation of human rights and support autonomy but cannot endorse the plea of secession or separation.
THREAT OF RELIGIOUS ASSIMILATION
The Constitution grants every citizen the freedom to profess, practise and propagate his religion. The Ulema had opposed the creation of Pakistan, because they foresaw handicap to promotion of Islam in the rest of India. Muslim Indians have wisely refrained from organised propagation or even criticising Hinduism, except defending, from assimilation and Hinduisation, such sections which were only partially Islamised and practised Hindu rites and customs. They have even more wisely concentrated on making better Muslims and better citizens of themselves. Tabligh and Da'wa have thus been internalised. Indeed, if the Muslim community becomes a Community of Virtue and a Community of Service, it would attract non-Muslims to Islam by sheer force of example.
SOCIAL REFORM
Threat of religious assimilation and consequent erosion of their religious identity is real. This is manifest in anti-Muslim riots, massive anti-Islam propaganda, the content and culture of mass education and, above all, in the unrelenting pressure for changing the Muslim personal law and enforcing a compulsory uniform civil code. Muslim Indians recognise the need for social reform and the codification of their family laws, in order to purge their society of social evils. But, they do not see any logic behind the insistence on urgent introduction of a uniform civil code. Why not first have a uniform tax code, they ask. Happily, successive Governments of India, in line with the commitments of the Freedom Movement, have tried to reassure the Muslim community of non-interference in their personal law and against any change without their consent.
Over the last 50 years, social change has been accelerated by education, specially of Muslim women. The incidence of polygamy and triple divorce has come down. Thanks to the Shah Bano case, Muslim divorcees enjoy better rights than the non-Muslim. But such vices as 'Farmaish' and 'dowry-killings' have penetrated the Muslim society.
One can observe the beginning of an educational upsurge which is not localised like Aligarh, Deoband or Nadwa or dependant on 'royal' patronage as the Osmania or experimental as the EDUCATIONAL UPSURGE
Jamia. The upsurge is universal; it covers all sects, all classes, all sections of the community. It covers all forms and levels of education. It has roots in every district, town or Panchayat of Muslim concentration. Despite the handicaps faced in getting official recognition and grant-in-aid for the institution established, the first crop is sprouting. In another decade, one would taste its fruits, if the momentum is kept up and the surplus resources and savings of the community are invested in education, selectively in areas like Higher Secondary, Technical Training and Residential Hostels, in addition to universalisation and rationalisation of the Maktabs, Madarsas and Jamias, to enable the community to maintain its religious identity and produce religious functionaries. The community is also learning to take advantage of the central and state literacy campaign and educational schemes. The entire educational landscape may change, when universal elementary education upto the age of 14 becomes a reality. However, the community has to ensure that the syllabus and the curriculum, the medium of instruction, the school culture and the textbooks take into account their religious sensitivities and meet the demands of secularism and integration.
The Muslim community continues to nurse a sense of loss over Aligarh Muslim University and the Jamia Millia Islamia. But they have realised that the circle of education is expanding all over the country. A few minority institutions can hardly cater to the rising demand and they must have equitable access to all institutions of higher education in the country. This is one of the reasons for the rising demand for reservation in higher and professional education on ground of educational and economic backwardness. But the battle for the restoration of the minority character of the AMU and the JMI goes on so that they fulfill the avant-garde role in their quest of higher education.
ECONOMIC TAKE-OFF
The Muslim Indians realise that during the 50 years they have not received all that was their due; they have not progressed as much as they could have, under the Constitutional dispensation, the Secular Order and the development regime. Denied due access to higher education, public and private employment and to bank credit short of agricultural land, financial resources and industrial expertise, they have adopted self-employment as the means of livelihood and improvement of traditional skills and acquisition of lowest technology as the immediate objective. The Muslim Indians have on the whole progressed far, immeasurably beyond what the most optimistic observer could have foreseen in the dark aftermath of the Partition. This is a tribute to the will and determination of the community.
Muslim Indians have not sought any special political economic rights or privileges. Today, they only aspire to justice and equality, to a regime based on political non-discrimination and equality of opportunity in matters educational and economic, in which they have yet to attain the national average, not to speak of the highest group average. But both averages are constantly rising in a developing economy. Hence, they have to run faster than the speed of the national caravan, if the gap is to be closed in the foreseeable future.
'EMOTIONAL' APPROACH
Muslim Indians have often been accused of wasting most of their collective energy on emotional issues during the last 50 years and thus retarding their progress and their role in national development. No doubt, they were emotionally touched by the inhuman barbarities in communal violence, by the insult to their religious and historical sentiments, by the loss of their mother tongue and cherished institutions, by the organised and deliberate assault on their places of worship, throughout the country, of which the Babari Masjid became a symbol. No doubt, they had tears in their eyes and prayers on their lips, when the drama of demolition was enacted. No doubt, the wounds on their psyche have not yet healed. But it is a totally erroneous impression to say that they have not been concerned with their economic or educational backwardness, with the contracting opportunities for public and private employment, with decreasing means of livelihood, with the decay of their localities or with their low share in the fruits of development. They face hostile discrimination at every step and yet they persist. Every living community would. This argument is no more than a cover-up for the sordid reality of the gap between the secular precept and the communal practice, between the ideals of the Constitution and the working of the administration.
After 50 years of struggle, there should be no doubt left in the mind of any intellectual that the Muslims, as a community, would agree to a trade-off between identity and development, between Masjid and power. They want dignity and equality, they demand IZZAT and Identity; And they have, throughout the five decades of independence, struggled to maintain and preserve their identity against the historic forces of assimilation, symbolised by the philosophy of Hindutva and the slogan of 'Hindu-Hindi-Hindustan', despite occasional violence and persistent bias. Rooted in the soil of their motherland, Muslim Indians are conscious of their Islamic heritage and of belonging to the Ummah and have identified themselves with the Muslim cause, whether in Palestine, Bosnia or Chechenya, but without allowing themselves to be the camp followers of any Muslim State demagogue.
MUSLIM GOAL IN DEMOCRATIC, SECULAR INDIA
The Muslim goal in India is sharing power and benefits, not rule or even dominance, not separation or secession. Its self-consciousness demands it to be a Model community, God-fearing, law-abiding, hard- working, egalitarian, sharing their income and resources with the disinherited and the deprived among themselves and in the larger national community and struggling along with other deprived group for justice for all. Thus only individually and collectively it would be a true witness to the Quran, as the ~Khair-ul-Umma. New Delhi, 1 October, 1997
