MUSLIM POLITICS
Sultan Shahin on 'Milli Parliament'
A new and more dangerous element has grown and apparently taken some roots. Calling themselves Islamic radicals and working for a few years under the banner of Milli Parliament, a group of Muslims belonging to the Jamaat-e-Islami parivar, have decided to launch a Muslim political party to strive for an "unfinished Islamic agenda" to establish Khilafat (Caliphate) or Islamic rule in India. This bunch of moronic obscurantist’s has released a Muslim Manifesto which regards the last 50 years as "lost years" for the Muslims.
If all this is not provocative enough for the majority community, it refers to them as Kuffar (infidels) and Mushrekeen (religious deviants). It virtually issues a fatwa to Muslims telling them that it is completely haram (prohibited) for them to join any political party which does not share the Islamic agenda of Khilafat or works for the establishment of a secular society. It is incumbent on all Muslims, it says, that they sever all links with the existing non-Muslim political groups as these are "in open violation of Koranic dictates".
If this is not creating disaffection between communities, I don't know what else is. But if our past experience of official apathy in such matters is any guide, it would be futile to expect the government to take any action. The responsibility for maintaining communal amity, in the face of grave provocations, thus falls on the people themselves. If it is for the Hindus to beware of the machinations of various off shoots of the sangh parivar, it is for the Muslims to confront the menace of the expanding Jamaat parivar.
After Partition, any far-sighted leadership would have advised the Muslims to try and rebuild trust and goodwill. It is not too late for the Muslims to direct their energies in that direction even now. The first requirement, however, is to fight and defeat the lunatic fringe.
Vijay Simha on A.R. Antulay, MP
Even by today's standards in politics this should rank as a somersault of Olympic proportions. Just over two years ago Abdul Rehman Antulay's single point programme was to get Sharad Pawar arrested under the infamous TADA.
Today, Antulay is Pawar's spokesperson who sees Congress Lok Sabha leader as the party's saviour. In 1994, Antulay said:
"Pawar was squeezing the common people to fill his coffers. He believes in gold and diamonds. TADA is meant for the most dangerous criminals and terrorists and the most dangerous criminal of them all is Sharad Pawar. Why should he be above TADA. Pawar symbolises a total lack of values and the bestial behaviour of the police. Everybody knows this."Under Pawar, Bombay is not only unsafe, it is violent and dangerous. You never know when bullets will be sprayed all around. Varsha (Pawar's residence in Mumbai while he was the Maharashtra Chief Minister) is full of anti-social elements. I don't know how many are hiding there".
And there's more on Pawar's political ambitions and his place in the Congress. "Why Pawar should be equated with the Congress. Who is Pawar? He became Chief Minister for the first time by stabbing Dada (Vasantdada Patil) in the back. He was CM the next time because Rajiv Gandhi made him.
Antulay filed his papers as a dummy for Pawar. Once Pawar threw his hat in the ring, Antulay quickly embraced him and the duo is practically inseparable today and has joined hands in the fight against Sitaram Kesri.
Antulay hovers around Pawar almost all the time and sees the one-time defence minister as a messiah of the minority community, who can revive the Congress from the current mess.
Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind: Tahaffuz Khatham Nubuwat Conference,
Delhi, 14 June, 1997 Resolutions (Extracts)
This Conference strongly demands from the "Kafir". It is against the faith to have contacts and Government that the Qadiyanis should be distinguished from the. Muslims and declared a non-Muslim community and they should be restrained from reciting Kalima Taiyiba and other Islamic terms and from building places of worships resembling Masjids and naming them as Masjid
This Conference clarifies to the Muslims that the Qadiyanis are not only "Murtid" but "Zindig" and"Kafir". It is against the faith to have contacts and maintain friendship with such people. Therefore, all Muslims, acting on the ordinance of the Shariat should totally boycott them.
The Conference appeals to Islamic madrasas and Muslim organisations to keep a strict watch on Qadiyanis places of worship and activities and expose them before the Muslim community.
Ex-Editor 'Organiser'V.P. Bhatia
On Roots of Muslim Separatism
Muslim insistence on Pakistan is the culmination of the atavistic fear of the Hindu Raj in the Muslim psyche, according to Madhu Limaye. Perhaps they were afraidthat in free India; the Hindu would do to them what the Muslim rulers, ruling elite and the Mullah-Maulvis had been doing to the Hindus during 700 years of the Muslim Raj in northern India. For, the Muslim Raj for all practical purposes a military rule based on colonial exploitation. The Muslim elite, mostly the Iranis and Turanis, the high-caste Ashrafs imported from Arabia Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asian countries by the successive Sultans and Shehanshahs dominated the military and the landed interests during the Muslim rule. There was more loot and loss of Indian wealth during the Mughal Raj than during the British period, according to a recent study. It was a parasitic system in every sense.
This was over and above the religious persecution. No wonder, after the Marathas and the Sikhs smashed the backbone of the Muslim Raj. The Hindus welcomed even the British rule in its initial stages because it provided them the religious and intellectual freedom after a long time. They took full advantage of the western education also for a full-fledged Hindu Renaissance. All this prepared them to give a final battle to the British imperialism as well, to destroy all vestiges of the foreign rule ultimately. It is a pity that the war remained unfinished vis-a-vis the Islamic imperialism by the creation of Pakistan.
The Muslim elite, however, left behind in the race for modernisation, forged a loyal coalition with the British, firstly to delay freedom as long as possible and secondly to secure separate electorates, reservations and weight ages at every level of democratic institutions, administration and services on the plea that otherwise the Hindu majority would dominate and assimilate the minority and thereby destroy its identity. The fear of the Hindus was based not merely on their overwhelming numerical strength but also on their intellectual superiority and commercial acumen. In fact, the Muslim elite felt handicapped in every field not because of any conscious Hindu attempt to keep them down, but because of their own religious obscurantism, passion for outmoded madarsa system of education and Shariat laws which prevented them from taking part in industry and trade.
In fact, ever since the weakening of the Mughal Rajunder Aurangzeb, the Muslim elite's cry was Hindu domination and exploitation. An ingrained Muslim inferiority complex and atavistic fear of the future was exploited by their leadership to wage a relentless struggle for more and more out-of-turn loaves and fishes under British patronage and ultimately a violent civil war to carve out a separate country free of Hindu competition. They won the day as the Hindus were unprepared for it because of their preoccupation with the anti-British struggle as well as the complete Hindu subservience to the Gandhian creed of non-violence However, actually, their problem was Hindu resilience, flexibility and remarkable adaptability which attuned the Hindus to come to the top in any open system, despite centuries of oppression and depression.
K.F. Rustamji on Black Americans and Muslim Indians
An astonishing similarity exists between the Black problem in America and the Muslim problem in India. In both cases the mass-movement phase has ended. In America the unity and elan of the civil rights era is not there anymore. The Muslim League which fought for a separate Pakistan is almost out of the picture of national politics in India. In both countries there is a desire to move away from the traditional road and strike out on a new path which would lead them to the sanctuary that they seek.
Blacks are beginning to question whether race is the root of all their problems. A few are daring to vote Republican, oppose affirmative action, and raise doubts about welfare. (Toronto Star, August 18, 1996)
The American Black movement is splintered. Will the Blacks now go to Louis Farrakhan, who seems to have pan-Islamic illusions, or move away from confrontation to moderate leaders and seek shelter in a system which tends to help them? In the same way some Muslims are turning to the BJP in its new avatar as the saviour of the Muslims.
That does not mean that the 33 million Blacks do not resent the daily snubs in buses and restaurants, or feel outraged at the sight of 30 Black churches being burnt in the last 18 months, or that discrimination in education and jobs does not hurt the Indian Muslims. The average Black man has a better chance of going to jail than to a university, almost half the number of Black women are single mothers. Race is a factor which is the easiest to mark out and the easiest to raise tempers about both in India and America. It will be opportunities for education, a fair share in jobs, a gradual unwinding of the long tape of hatred that will make the 33 million Blacks and the110 million Muslims partners in the two big democracies.
