Volume 19 No 19 May 2002
Science & Technology
Muslims in Indian Secularism
BY Sagittarious
A couple of month back Jawan Nagar, a village in Allahbad, was like any other village in India. Though marked distinctly, with a street, the village inhabited two groups, Muslims and Hindus, but men carried out daily business together irrespective of dividing street. The women folks from both communities in bright saries and shalwar kameez spent time in their favourite gossips, while children played cricket as combined Hindu Muslim teams, any where, at any place in the village.
Came Feb 28th, 2002, and the whole scene changed. Jawan Nagar is located where it was, but with entirely different look. Children are playing cricket, women in their bright saries are busy gossiping and men are carrying out their normal business, but only within the Hindu side of divide. The Muslims are no where to be seen, and if any one strays around to his former home, he is chased away by the fear of being lynched by Hindu fanatics. Muslim side of Jawan Nagar is now nothing more than heaps of rubble, burnt household and layers of dried up blood of slain Muslim men, women and children.
Such scenes are visible in many parts of Indian Western State of Gujarat. Another village, Naroda Patia is no different than Jawan Nagar. With the silent support of the police and the local government, Hindu Fanatics desecrated mosques, torched Muslim
homes and businesses, and burned to death dozens of Muslim inhabitants. Rafiq, a Muslim in sandals and a soiled yellow shirt, fled in terror with his wife and two children. Today he has come back, his fear overcome by a desire to salvage something, anything, from his former life. What he finds, however, is a community utterly destroyed. "Nothing is left", he says, staring blankly at the twisted metal minarets on the remains of the mosque. "It's completely gone." As Rafiq surveys the ruins of his house a policeman walks upto him and says, "you'd better leave now. You are not safe here and I do not guarantee your safety." Rafiq looks towards bustling "old Hindu neighbourhood". A chill of fear ran through his veins and he dashed away as advised by the policeman.
"Innocent lives and property are not all that have been lost in Naroda Patia. So, too, has the possibility that Hindus and Muslims can live here together in pace, the core of India's secular dream. On the wall that separates the decimated Muslim street from the untouched Hindu neighbourhood next door, there is a chilling message chalked in neat Hindi script: THIS IS THE KINGDOM OF LORD RAM. NO MUSLIM CAN STAY HERE INDIA IS FOR THE HINDUS". Wrote Brook Larmer of Newsweek.
150 million Muslims form the second largest Muslim community in the world (only Indonesia's is bigger), but outside of Kashmir, they are nearly invisible on the global stage. Even after September 11, with the West riveted by the threat of so-called Islamic militants, Indian Muslims have not be considered as threat. The form of Islam that has flourished in India is a gentle strain that seems resistant to radicalization. Moreover, as a minority, the Muslims who stayed behind after the bloody partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 have always been the most fervent supporters of the secular ideals espoused by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. But now with continuous killings in Kashmir and latest state assisted fracticide in Gujarat, the things are shaping differently.
Can the world turn a blind eye? The Muslims in Indian Kashmir had been suffering for decades, while the world conscious remained insensitive to it. Now the Muslims in Gujarat face the menacing threat where more than 825 people, almost all Muslim, have been hacked, shot and burned to death in the past six weeks. But the fear and anger created by that orgy of violence have only exacerbated a disturbing trend; turning Muslim Community in ghettos "Over the past decade, as India has tried to hitch its fortunes to the global economy, its Muslim minority has fallen farther behind the Hindu mainstream. Why? The most obvious culprit is the rise of Hindu extremism, which has infiltrated everything from school textbooks to government policies.
But critics say the Muslim community itself has not given sufficient attention to education, entrepreneurship and achievement. And now many Muslims are retreating more deeply into their religious identity, embracing a more conservative brand of Islam and, in some cases, turning away from the modern world". Observes Brook Larmer of Newsweek.
Looking at the past history of 54 years, despite being largest minority of millions, the Muslims have not been able to get as much representation in running national affairs as per ratio of population. Yes, India can boast about having two Muslim as former presidents, the country's richest man (high-tech entrepreneur Azim Premji) or Bollywood heartthrobs like Oscar nominee Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh, Salman Khan, Shabana and Tabu.
But the vast majority of Muslims live in extreme poverty, and they're being pushed deeper into the ghetto. Muslim representation in the National Legislature, or Lok Sabha, has dropped from 9 percent in 1980 to 5 percent today. Discriminated against in almost every field most Muslims earn their living as cobblers, tailors, artisans or other menial work, earning an average of Rs. 3700.00 a month, compared with Rs. 5000.00 for an average Hindu. Some Muslim Intellectuals think that the country has moved forward, but Muslims have not kept in step. The blame again falls on the Hindu dominated administration. A vast slum called Jamia Nagar in New Delhi, having thousands of Muslim has not even a single public school. That speaks of the "intentions" of Hindu mindset, regarding equality. While 70 percent of Hindi children from ages 6 to 14 attend school, less than half of Muslim children do. Compelled by the poor economic conditions the Muslim parents often pull their kids out of school to earn money for the family.
But in recent years more Muslim students, especially girls, have withdrawn as a reaction to the Hinduization of the public schools. Muslim literacy rates are, on average, 5 percentage points lower than the national level. Experts believe that, unless school enrollment rises, the gap will continue to grow.
"Partition put Muslims under the complete domination of Hindus. Despite being the second largest Muslim population in the world, Indian Muslims are nothing more that slaves." These views by Zakria; a Muslim Intellectual, are shared by many Indian scholars. "In 1947 most Muslims hailed independence as the end of 200 years of British colonialism; some Hindus, however, perceived it as the end of 1,000 years of foreign domination, beginning with invasion of the Moguls. (The vast majority of Muslims in India are descendants of lower-caste Hindus who converted to Islam under the Mogul Empire). The riots that accompanied partition only drove the wedge deeper. Hindus blamed Muslims for dividing India. And as Muslim elites migrated en masse to Pakistan, they left behind an orphaned community, poor, uneducated and leaderless. Muslims today account for 12 percent of the population, compared with 33 percent before independence, and they are spread out areas where they are a minority and thus politically disempowered". Says Larmer
The first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru tried to create a secular state that would respect all religions equally, and prevent any communal violence. But that dreams faded out by the late 1980s, as India's political scene broke into a political parties based on caste, region, language and, most explosively, religion. The Muslims lost their political cover, as the Congress Party fell to an upsurge of Hindu nationalist parties, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Being in large number having political strength yet, Muslims failed to form their own party, thus remain to date, dependant on others to get their rightful rights as first class citizens. One of the reasons as political analyst say, for not forming their own party had been a fear of backlash from the Hindu radicals. The oppression over decades has subdued the will of Indian Muslims to stand up and be counted. The collective will has become a psychological wreck.
The secular ideal got another blow in 1992, when howling mobs of Hindu zealots tore down a 450-year-old mosque in the town of Ayodhya with their bare hands. The destruction of mosque, supposedly built on the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram, led to riots in which nearly 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed. In Ayodhya today, as in most towns across India, Hindus and Muslims get along well enough. But the ideologues who fanned the flames of the Ayodhya conflict have only hardened their positions recently. Mohammed Ansari, a 77-year-old local Muslim leader, says the government has used its endorsement of the United States' war on terror to further harass local Muslims.
Government agents have descended on Islamic religious schools, shutdown a local Muslim market and issued Ansari, one of Ayodhya's best known citizens, a bogus electoral card that makes him ineligible to vote. Ansari asks: "Is this our country or not?", says Larmer
The Gujarat episode started when a train full of Hindus returning from Ayodha arrived at the station in Godhra. The kar sevaks, as the Hindu militants are known, reportedly refused to pay a Muslim tea vendor, forced Muslims to sing praises to Ram and then allegedly brought a Muslim girl into their car. Enraged with such unwarranted provocation the young Muslim men killed 59 Hindus when they set two train cars ablaze, succeeded only in turning every Muslim in Gujarat into a target.
The Hindu mobs that swarmed into Muslim communities over the next three days were exacting more than just an eye for an eye. As they killed hundreds of Muslim men, women and children, they were carrying out a more sinister policy, one that is embraced by a wing of the ruling BJP: the purification of a Hindu state.
"Nowhere is the religious cleansing more horrifyingly apparent than in Jawan Nagar, a village 15 kilometers north of Ahmadabad. For more than 50 years, the village was split evenly, and by all accounts, harmoniously, between Hindus and Muslims.
Today the Hindu side seems almost normal: children play cricket, men chew betel nut, women in bright yellow saris sweep the dirt out of their near little homes. But walk 20 meters down the road and the landscape resembles a bombed-out war zone. The rubble-strewn Muslim streets, empty except for a stray cow and a group of Hindu looters, only hint at the atrocities that happened here. In one home, pots are on the stove, toothbrushes are in their plastic cup and the Calendar is stuck on Feb 28. The floor is covered with pools of dried blood. Above the door, a tricolour decal proclaims: I Love INDIA". Writes Larmer of Newsweek.
The violence in Gujarat has left nearly 100,000 Muslim refugees, and most are too scared to return home.
A middle aged Muslim schoolteacher from Jawan Nagar who hid in his rooftop bathroom during the attack, says: "How can I go home when I saw my Hindu neighbours, students that I myself had taught, raping and killing our village girls?" When the relief money dries up, these families will have little choice but to move deeper into all-Muslim ghettos". Says Rahim, a 35-year-old cigarette vendor whose shop was razed: "The government hasn't given us any security, so what can we do?"
Finding no other way to seek security, safety or solace, the Muslims now are struggling to seek their identity as a nation. For any devastated faithful soul, troubled constantly with worldly
affairs, the religion plays a vital role in bringing the inner harmony. Indian Muslims are feeling the same enrage. Mosques are starting to overflow, and the new faces are mostly young Muslims like Mohammed. A handsome 30-year-old wearing blue jeans and a closely cropped black beard, Mohammed emerges from "fajar" prayers in the magnificent white marble Bandara Mosque in Mumbai. "A few years ago, this place was only half full, but now it's so crowded that we have hundreds of people praying on the terraces and roads".
The embrace of religion has been accompanied by a reinvigoration of Islamic religious schools, or madrasas. The numbers are not big, there are about 100,000 madrasa students throughout India, but their tradition-bound mullahs have a pervasive influence on Muslim social affairs. The madrasas teach a conservative brand of Islam and none more so than Darul Uloom, a school in the town of Deoband, 160 kilometers east of New Delhi. "Darul Uloom was founded in 1866 as a way to save Islamic culture from the onslaught of British imperialism, and it sees a similar role for itself today. This time, its main antagonist is not so much Hindu radicalism as Western-style modernism. The school's 3,500 pupils, all boys in white robes and skullcaps, are not allowed to use radios televisions, newspapers, or even chairs. The Deobandi mullahs, however, are careful to distinguish themselves from their most famous adherents, the leaders of Afghanistan's Taliban. "We are not a breeding ground for terrorist," insists Marghboor Rahman, the school's 83-year-old vice chancellor, adding provocatively: "The real cause of terrorism is the United States itself". Observes Larmer of Newsweek.
Already pushed behind in the educational and economic fields, the Indian Muslims are likely to be relegated to last, in an economic sector like IT. True, the Muslim community itself is responsible for this sorry state. As some scholars say that the Muslims are too engrossed in voicing their grievances than securing some achievements. The school enrollment of Muslim children is clear 10% less than Hindus and the gap is further widening. Literacy among Muslim males is 6% less than Hindus. Not to be educated or remain away from mainstream is turning the Muslim community into nothing more than "garbage".
Agreed, that the poor economic state of Muslim families, cannot afford to waste "earning hand" by sending them to the school, but than they should also realize that living like slaves of their own mind set shall not improve their lives. They are living in the century old frame of mind. What are they waiting? Another Sir Syed Ahmed? Sure, they can have one from among their ranks. No one is going to come from outside. Their shackles are to be broken by themselves.


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