SECULARISM
Harbans Mukhia on Secular Ferment in Muslims
If one phrase could capture the mind of the Indian Muslims since independence, it would perhaps be 'siege mentality Almost everyone concerned with the Muslim community contributed to this mentality. The orthodox Musim leadership, symbolized today in Imam Bukhari and Syed Shahabuddin, reveled in projecting the image of the community as if it were on the brink of collapse The liberal Muslim intelligentsia reinforced the community in decline' picture by harping on the decline of Urdu and the under-representation of Muslims in government jobs. The Congress could feel secure about The Muslim vote by forever bringing home to the; Community the RSS sword hanging over its head. And the RSS and its family members could turn around Congress projection' to the Muslims as pampering them. The Left parties contested communalism, but they were frequently willing to underrate minority communalism and the problems it created for the Muslim community itself.
The dominant premise of this scenario may be termed the politics of visible symbols. Each group imaged the community either in decline or being overly favoured in terms of the number of heads in high flying positions. The high degree of its stratification, like in the other communities, was consequently overlooked. Had that been taken into account, both the propositions of its uniform decline or universal pampering would have appeared as dubious. Like their other fellow Indians, a small segment of the Muslims has done exceedingly well for itself since Independence a large chunk lives below the poverty line and the largest portion lives in between.
Pampering too has brought affluence and recognition to an infinitesimal number of Muslim individuals and families, though, like with the other communities, not always well merited. If the Muslim percentage in government jobs does not square with their demographic strength, it does not by itself substantiate the image of the community in an economic crisis, for the economy's reach surely is immensely greater than government jobs. Nor indeed has Urdu suffered the kind of decline attributed to it. To take just one example, the number of Urdu newspapers and journals in 1958 was 185, in 1990 it had risen to 2003. Their circulation too had risen from 4.4 lace to 25.4 lacs. In both years the Urdu papers were next only to those of Hindi and English in numbers and in circulation.
The twin images of decline and pampering are two sides of the same coin, though with an in-built tension. It was this tension which led to the demolition of the Babari Masjid at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. In the immediate aftermath of December 6 what was most feared was the withdrawal of the Muslims into insular shells in a sullen mood. What really has happened is the contrary: the community at large is, in a silent ferment, challenging the dichotomy itself, its massive participation in the elections in the wake of the Ayodhya events, and owning up the political process through which it could change governments, is one manifestation of its response.
In the late 1940s and early '50s, in the context of the country's partition along communal divide, many Muslims who rose high in India did so by virtually erasing their religious identity publicly, like Dilip Kumar, Meena Kumar and Madhubala. Today, Shahrukh Khan and Aamir Khan wouldn't think of sacrificing their names and their Muslim identity at the altar of success. A similar change is noticeable even at the lower rungs of society. The number of scooter rickshaws flaunting khuda hafiz or the number 786 in Delhi is impressive.
The mass of Muslims is thus quietly breaking out of the straitjackets in which the working of Indian polity over the past nearly five decades had tied them. They have shown a definitive will to face modern life's challenges as they come, instead of brooding over the issues of the masjid and the triple talaq. In doing so they erode not merely the leadership of their own community which had thrived on constructing the fear of ever- impending doom; they are also rewriting the digits of Indian politics, including BJP's politics.
Indeed, the whole spectrum of the Indian political scene has repeatedly given out signals that it wished to look to the future rather than the past.
(Source: The Times of India, 22 January, 1996)
