The Hindu
Nov 26, 2003
[Karnataka] Intellectuals plan peace meet
By Our Special Correspondent
A delegation of writers, artists, and thinkers, led by the Jnanpith Award winner, Girish Karnad (third from left), calling on the Chief Minister, S.M. Krishna (right), in Bangalore on Tuesday. Gouri Lankesh and G.K. Govindarao, members of the delegation, are seen. - Photo: K. Gopinathan
Bangalore Nov. 25. Writers, artists, and thinkers will hold a peace and communal harmony meet at Chikmagalur on December 7 and 8 if the State Government fails to ban the "Shoba Yatra" at Bababudangiri. Eminent writers, artists, film-makers, and other intellectuals from all over the State will attend the meet.
In a letter to the Chief Minister, S.M. Krishna, the writers, Girish Karnad, K. Marulasiddappa, G.K. Govinda Rao, Gauri Lankesh, V.S. Sreedhara, and Sudra Srinivas, said the purpose of holding the meet was to assert the cultural importance of Bababudangiri.
Mr. Karnad told presspersons here on Tuesday that the Government should ban religious functions such as Datta Jayanthi celebration, Shobha Yatra, Datta Maala, and yagnas on the hills.
Disturbed by the constant political references to the Dattatreya Peetha at Bababudangiri, he and others visited the hills on November 21 and talked to the local people who were frightened as the situation was tense following the newly introduced so-called religious practices such as the Datta Maala.
Allowing such practices would only add to the already tense situation at Chikmagalur and surrounding localities, Mr. Karnad said and urged the Chief Minister to ban religious activities at the famed hills.
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November 26, 2003
November 25, 2003
Protests greet Modi at CII event in New Delhi
The Telegraph, November 25, 2003
Mobbed, Modi shows ‘civilised’ face
- One-and-a-half years after the riots, CM expresses regret
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Nafisa Ali (centre) leading the protest against Modi in New Delhi on Monday. (PTI)
New Delhi, Nov. 24: Narendra Modi can’t seem to shake off the ghost of Godhra.
Possibly, in frustration over another row of raucous protests today by social activists led by Nafisa Ali, the man who has been called the Butcher of Gujarat after the carnage in February-March 2002 said he wished the bloody riots had not happened.
“What happened one-and-a-half years ago is something that should not have happened in a civilised society,” Modi said after demonstrators led by Ali blocked the entry of the Gujarat chief minister to the venue of the India Economic Summit being organised here by the Davos-based World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
It is the closest Modi has ever come to expressing regret over an incident that has pitchforked him to the top of the popularity charts within the saffron brigade.
The slogan-shouting demonstrators disrupted proceedings for almost 45 minutes, protesting against the decision to invite Modi to address the annual event that gives ministers, bureaucrats, top industrialists and foreign delegates the opportunity to debate the state of India’s economy and its reform process.
Shouting slogans like “Mass murderer Narendra Modi down, down”, the protesters — who slipped into the venue and came together just before Modi arrived — slammed the WEF and CII for inviting the chief minister to address the meet.
“We want the BJP and those people who support people like Praveen Togadia and Modi to know that the people of India will not tolerate such persons and allow them to repeat what they did in Gujarat,” said Shabnam Hashmi, one of the activists of the NGO that goes by the name Anhad (Act Now for Harmony and Democracy).
Modi was invited to talk about good governance which the irate activists said was a travesty. “How can the CII and WEF even think of inviting someone who has been questioned about the quality of his governance by none less than the Supreme Court of India. The National Human Rights Commission has also questioned the quality of governance in Gujarat,” Hashmi said.
In his speech later, Modi said: “Gujarat is known for good governance and a forward looking and responsive administration.”
“It is wrong to project the state as unsafe for investment. We have signed MoUs worth Rs 66,000 crore with foreign companies during the last Navratri. Chinese and US companies have also shown interest in starting projects in the state.”
“Ahmedabad is the most peaceful city in the world and minorities like Parsis and Muslims are prosperous,” the Gujarat chief minister said.
Today’s incident is the third time that Modi has been heckled when invited to address a gathering of industrialists. The first was in January this year when a former JNU and Oxford student activist, Jairus Banaji, wormed his way into a CII conference in Mumbai and demanded to know why the industry forum was feting a “murderer who had blood on his hands”.
At another conference in Delhi in mid-February, industrialists Rahul Bajaj and Jamshyd Godrej expressed concern over law and order in Gujarat, prompting Modi to upbraid them. Today, Ali was seen urging Bajaj to join the protests — but the industrialist declined.
Most participants were unmoved by the protests. However, a few supported them. Vijay Mahajan, head of consultancy firm Basix India, said: “I refuse to hear Modi speak and preach (to) us on a subject like best practices. This is complete nonsense.”
In an attempt to clear the air after the demonstration, the CII director-general said: “It seems Davos is in Delhi. Protests in India are very normal activity. It is a free country and sections of society have a right to express their views.”
Later, asked about the protests, Modi said: “I don’t know anything about it.”
o o o
related News report
The Hindustan Times
November 25, 2003
Protests greet Modi at CII meet venue
HT Corporate Bureau
(New Delhi, November 24)
Social activist Nafisa Ali along with representatives from the Safdar Hashmi Trust, Action India, Ahad and Basix raised slogans against the decision of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and World Economic Forum (WEF) to invite Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi to speak on The Competitiveness of States: Sharing Best Practices.
About 40 activists trooped into the lobby of the Taj Palace hotel just before Modi was to address the meeting and sang, "We shall overcome". Shouting slogans like "Modi go back", "Khooni" and "Man who instigated the communal riots", the activists alleged that Modi was responsible for the communal violence and killings in Gujarat last year.
The main demand of the protesters was that Modi should not have been invited. They also said that progress in Gujarat was a sham. Nafisa Ali criticised the CII for inviting Modi. Coming as this episode does after CII director general Tarun Das apologising to Modi earlier this year, the CII-Gujarat CM relationship remains strained.
Later, answering queries from the participants, Modi refuted the charges that there was any victimisation in Gujarat and referred to the fact that Muslims in the state had the highest per capita income. He, however, admitted, "Whatever happened in Gujarat one-and-a-half years ago should not have happened in a civilised society."
Earlier, the chief minster told the conference that Gujarat was the best destination for investment that gave unlimited opportunities to industrial houses.
Mobbed, Modi shows ‘civilised’ face
- One-and-a-half years after the riots, CM expresses regret
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Nafisa Ali (centre) leading the protest against Modi in New Delhi on Monday. (PTI)
New Delhi, Nov. 24: Narendra Modi can’t seem to shake off the ghost of Godhra.
Possibly, in frustration over another row of raucous protests today by social activists led by Nafisa Ali, the man who has been called the Butcher of Gujarat after the carnage in February-March 2002 said he wished the bloody riots had not happened.
“What happened one-and-a-half years ago is something that should not have happened in a civilised society,” Modi said after demonstrators led by Ali blocked the entry of the Gujarat chief minister to the venue of the India Economic Summit being organised here by the Davos-based World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
It is the closest Modi has ever come to expressing regret over an incident that has pitchforked him to the top of the popularity charts within the saffron brigade.
The slogan-shouting demonstrators disrupted proceedings for almost 45 minutes, protesting against the decision to invite Modi to address the annual event that gives ministers, bureaucrats, top industrialists and foreign delegates the opportunity to debate the state of India’s economy and its reform process.
Shouting slogans like “Mass murderer Narendra Modi down, down”, the protesters — who slipped into the venue and came together just before Modi arrived — slammed the WEF and CII for inviting the chief minister to address the meet.
“We want the BJP and those people who support people like Praveen Togadia and Modi to know that the people of India will not tolerate such persons and allow them to repeat what they did in Gujarat,” said Shabnam Hashmi, one of the activists of the NGO that goes by the name Anhad (Act Now for Harmony and Democracy).
Modi was invited to talk about good governance which the irate activists said was a travesty. “How can the CII and WEF even think of inviting someone who has been questioned about the quality of his governance by none less than the Supreme Court of India. The National Human Rights Commission has also questioned the quality of governance in Gujarat,” Hashmi said.
In his speech later, Modi said: “Gujarat is known for good governance and a forward looking and responsive administration.”
“It is wrong to project the state as unsafe for investment. We have signed MoUs worth Rs 66,000 crore with foreign companies during the last Navratri. Chinese and US companies have also shown interest in starting projects in the state.”
“Ahmedabad is the most peaceful city in the world and minorities like Parsis and Muslims are prosperous,” the Gujarat chief minister said.
Today’s incident is the third time that Modi has been heckled when invited to address a gathering of industrialists. The first was in January this year when a former JNU and Oxford student activist, Jairus Banaji, wormed his way into a CII conference in Mumbai and demanded to know why the industry forum was feting a “murderer who had blood on his hands”.
At another conference in Delhi in mid-February, industrialists Rahul Bajaj and Jamshyd Godrej expressed concern over law and order in Gujarat, prompting Modi to upbraid them. Today, Ali was seen urging Bajaj to join the protests — but the industrialist declined.
Most participants were unmoved by the protests. However, a few supported them. Vijay Mahajan, head of consultancy firm Basix India, said: “I refuse to hear Modi speak and preach (to) us on a subject like best practices. This is complete nonsense.”
In an attempt to clear the air after the demonstration, the CII director-general said: “It seems Davos is in Delhi. Protests in India are very normal activity. It is a free country and sections of society have a right to express their views.”
Later, asked about the protests, Modi said: “I don’t know anything about it.”
o o o
related News report
The Hindustan Times
November 25, 2003
Protests greet Modi at CII meet venue
HT Corporate Bureau
(New Delhi, November 24)
Social activist Nafisa Ali along with representatives from the Safdar Hashmi Trust, Action India, Ahad and Basix raised slogans against the decision of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and World Economic Forum (WEF) to invite Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi to speak on The Competitiveness of States: Sharing Best Practices.
About 40 activists trooped into the lobby of the Taj Palace hotel just before Modi was to address the meeting and sang, "We shall overcome". Shouting slogans like "Modi go back", "Khooni" and "Man who instigated the communal riots", the activists alleged that Modi was responsible for the communal violence and killings in Gujarat last year.
The main demand of the protesters was that Modi should not have been invited. They also said that progress in Gujarat was a sham. Nafisa Ali criticised the CII for inviting Modi. Coming as this episode does after CII director general Tarun Das apologising to Modi earlier this year, the CII-Gujarat CM relationship remains strained.
Later, answering queries from the participants, Modi refuted the charges that there was any victimisation in Gujarat and referred to the fact that Muslims in the state had the highest per capita income. He, however, admitted, "Whatever happened in Gujarat one-and-a-half years ago should not have happened in a civilised society."
Earlier, the chief minster told the conference that Gujarat was the best destination for investment that gave unlimited opportunities to industrial houses.
ID crisis in Sena, cry bhaiyas
The Telegraph (Calcutta)
November 25, 2003
ID crisis in Sena, cry bhaiyas
CHANDRIMA S. BHATTACHARYA
Mumbai, Nov. 24: The city’s eminent “bhaiyas” think that the Shiv Sena is going through a severe identity crisis. Otherwise why is it attacking its own Hindu brethren coming to the financial capital for something as meagre as a railway job?
“They have to make up their minds,” says Javed Akhtar, speaking on the ongoing Sena onslaught on “bhaiyas” (Uttar Pradeshis) and Biharis. “There is an inherent confusion in the Sena. They will have to decide which vice they prefer — between being Maharashtrian chauvinists and Hindutva chauvinists,” says Akhtar, who could trace his roots to Uttar Pradesh.
“They can’t do both at the same time. As ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’, the only people Mr Bal Thackeray is supposed to dislike are the minorities. He can’t distinguish between Maharashtrians and non-Maharashtrians. That doesn’t make him a good samrat.”
Over the past week, the Sena has stepped up its attack on the lakhs of “outsiders” from north India who come to the city every year to take exams for railway posts. On Friday at Kalyan, as the candidates from outside Maharashtra who were to take Sunday’s railway board exam poured out of long-distance trains, the Sena activists turned on the heat. The activists — many of them women — kicked, punched and beat up the young men. The women screamed and pulled their hair. Not a few of their victims were Hindus.
The Sena even soft-launched a new movement on the occasion — Bihari ani Bhaiya Baher Kada Mohim (Out with the Biharis and Bhaiyas Movement). The railway board has indefinitely postponed the examination because the Sena activists damaged its office equipment. The Sena has promised more fireworks.
“It is very strange,” says actor Raza Murad, another resident “bhaiya” in Mumbai. “It’s so strange. On the one hand, they will swear by Hindutva. On the other, they will attack Hindus from other states,” says Murad, who is best remembered as the poet-singer in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Namak Haram. “But while they attack this community, they also try to woo voters at the local level,” says Murad. “If they are so against Biharis and bhaiyas, why do they nurture the Uttar Bharatiya Sena? And why do they perform the Chhat Puja with Govinda as a guest?”
The Sena denies that the Uttar Bharatiya Sena — a wing formed with north Indians to protect the interests of the community — is directly affiliated to it.
Backlash in Andheri
Two persons, claiming to be Sena activists, today allegedly assaulted the president of the Uttar Bharatiya Vikas Parishad, Mangleshwar Tiwari, in Andheri. Tiwari was going to the high court to file a petition against the Sena’s stance on north Indians appearing for railway board examinations when he was accosted by the two who reportedly told him that party leader Raj Thackeray had said no one should be allowed to move the court.
November 25, 2003
ID crisis in Sena, cry bhaiyas
CHANDRIMA S. BHATTACHARYA
Mumbai, Nov. 24: The city’s eminent “bhaiyas” think that the Shiv Sena is going through a severe identity crisis. Otherwise why is it attacking its own Hindu brethren coming to the financial capital for something as meagre as a railway job?
“They have to make up their minds,” says Javed Akhtar, speaking on the ongoing Sena onslaught on “bhaiyas” (Uttar Pradeshis) and Biharis. “There is an inherent confusion in the Sena. They will have to decide which vice they prefer — between being Maharashtrian chauvinists and Hindutva chauvinists,” says Akhtar, who could trace his roots to Uttar Pradesh.
“They can’t do both at the same time. As ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’, the only people Mr Bal Thackeray is supposed to dislike are the minorities. He can’t distinguish between Maharashtrians and non-Maharashtrians. That doesn’t make him a good samrat.”
Over the past week, the Sena has stepped up its attack on the lakhs of “outsiders” from north India who come to the city every year to take exams for railway posts. On Friday at Kalyan, as the candidates from outside Maharashtra who were to take Sunday’s railway board exam poured out of long-distance trains, the Sena activists turned on the heat. The activists — many of them women — kicked, punched and beat up the young men. The women screamed and pulled their hair. Not a few of their victims were Hindus.
The Sena even soft-launched a new movement on the occasion — Bihari ani Bhaiya Baher Kada Mohim (Out with the Biharis and Bhaiyas Movement). The railway board has indefinitely postponed the examination because the Sena activists damaged its office equipment. The Sena has promised more fireworks.
“It is very strange,” says actor Raza Murad, another resident “bhaiya” in Mumbai. “It’s so strange. On the one hand, they will swear by Hindutva. On the other, they will attack Hindus from other states,” says Murad, who is best remembered as the poet-singer in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Namak Haram. “But while they attack this community, they also try to woo voters at the local level,” says Murad. “If they are so against Biharis and bhaiyas, why do they nurture the Uttar Bharatiya Sena? And why do they perform the Chhat Puja with Govinda as a guest?”
The Sena denies that the Uttar Bharatiya Sena — a wing formed with north Indians to protect the interests of the community — is directly affiliated to it.
Backlash in Andheri
Two persons, claiming to be Sena activists, today allegedly assaulted the president of the Uttar Bharatiya Vikas Parishad, Mangleshwar Tiwari, in Andheri. Tiwari was going to the high court to file a petition against the Sena’s stance on north Indians appearing for railway board examinations when he was accosted by the two who reportedly told him that party leader Raj Thackeray had said no one should be allowed to move the court.
DEFEAT BJP, DEFEAT COMMUNALISM, SAVE INDIA
S E C U L A R M O R C H A
APPEAL TO VOTERS
DEFEAT BJP, DEFEAT COMMUNALISM, SAVE INDIA
As India is inhabited by people belonging to different faiths, caste and creeds, it can progress and prosper only on the basis of secular democracy.
Secularism is one of the basic features of our Constitution which prescribes a mechanism for solving various problems like poverty, unemployment,health, education, housing etc. Such goals enshrined in Indian Constitution can be achieved only if its basic values remain secure. Therefore every political party is required to give an undertaking on oath before its registration with the Election Commission to the effect that it has faith in the basic values of the Constitution i.e. secularism and socialism.
The main question today is : 'Do B.J.P. and its allies believe in the basic values of the Constitution?' The emphatic answer is 'NO'. Therefore they cannot be expected to solve the basic problems of the common people. As such, the undertaking and oath given by the BJP before the Election Commission is only a farce.
The open secret is that BJP and its allied organizations want to convert India into a 'Hindu Rashtra' i.e. an Hindu Empire. In such Hindu Rashtra, only Hindus will enjoy citizens' rights, while other minorities like Muslim, Christians,Sikhs, Parsis, Bodh, Jews etc. will have none. Its administration will function only for Hindus and police will give protection only to them i.e. Hindus. Supreme Court
will also be bound to pronounce judgements only in favour of Hindus vis a vis other communities. The Parliament will be converted into a Dharam Sansad and will legislate only in favour of Hindus. In the ëHindu Rashtraí, it will be legitimate to punish the present generation of Muslims, Christians and other minorities for the so-called crimes ñsupposed or real, committed by their ancestors in the Muslim and British period. Mosques will be systematically demolished and churches will be destroyed. All those who would oppose would be subjected to mass murders, rape and loot. The demolition of Babri Masjid, the brutal murder of Austrailan missionary Graham Stains and his two minor sons, attacks on Churches in Gujrat and Orissa, bloody carnage in Gujrat are living examples of the Hindutva agenda.
The BJP election manifesto may talk of the common problems of the people such as poverty, unemployment, education, electricity, water, and may promise their solutions. But as soon as the BJP comes to power it pushes its promises under the carpet and starts implementing its Hindu agenda by overt or covert means.
When BJP came to power five years back at the Centre, it carried out atomic bomb explosions at Pokharan, though it was not part of its election manifesto.
The ostensible purpose of Pokharan explosion was stated to be to ensure security of India- but in result it enhanced its insecurity. Pakistan soon acquired nuclear weapons. Previously Pakistan did not enjoy superiority in conventional army with India, but now it is equally pitted against it.
Another injurious result of nuclear explosion is that India has to spend huge amount in acquiring and maintaining nuclear weapons, so that it has no money left to reduce poverty and unemployment. The army of unemployed youth is on increase, and in many states, the locals have started detesting the outsiders who are Indians nevertheless. The killings of Beharis in Assam and attacks on non-Maharashtrians in Maharshtra are a disturbing phenomena, which may soon envelope other Indian states if BJPís hawkish polcies are not checked soon. The extent of corruption in the defence and security expenditure is a top secret, and if any citizen raises any question in this regard, he may be dubbed as 'anti-national' and may become victim of prosecution. The violence in various forms is on increase as BJPs Hindutva agenda is incapable of pursuing any socio-economic programme for the upliftman of the common people.
However the saving grace is that majority of Hindus are not supporters of this Hindutva agenda of BJP. Therefore the consistent endeavour of BJP is to utilize the administration for injecting and spreading communal virus in society so that the number of its followers is increased. It has been trying to pervert history to poison minds of young Hindus against the Muslims and Christians. It also starts filling up posts in various departments such as industry, education, police etc. by its own supporters who function with communal outlook and harass minorities.
Another term for BJP anywhere will be highly detrimental to the continuation of secular democracy in India.
Corruption and political opportunism has increased during the rule of BJP led coalition. Its leaders are found most corrupt than others. BJP rule will eventually lead to the destruction of secular democracy and Indian Constitution.
We therefore appeal to voters to defeat BJP in the present elections so that future of India is saved.
V.M.Tarkunde, N.D.Pancholi, Indra Makwana,
Pushkar Raj, Mahipal Singh, Karamvir Shastri
Indian Radical Humanist Association, Lokayan, Forum For Democracy & Communal Amity, Vasudev Kutambkam, Champa- The Amiya & B.G. Rao Foundation, Indian Social Institute, Minorities Council, Manav Foundation.
24.11.2003
APPEAL TO VOTERS
DEFEAT BJP, DEFEAT COMMUNALISM, SAVE INDIA
As India is inhabited by people belonging to different faiths, caste and creeds, it can progress and prosper only on the basis of secular democracy.
Secularism is one of the basic features of our Constitution which prescribes a mechanism for solving various problems like poverty, unemployment,health, education, housing etc. Such goals enshrined in Indian Constitution can be achieved only if its basic values remain secure. Therefore every political party is required to give an undertaking on oath before its registration with the Election Commission to the effect that it has faith in the basic values of the Constitution i.e. secularism and socialism.
The main question today is : 'Do B.J.P. and its allies believe in the basic values of the Constitution?' The emphatic answer is 'NO'. Therefore they cannot be expected to solve the basic problems of the common people. As such, the undertaking and oath given by the BJP before the Election Commission is only a farce.
The open secret is that BJP and its allied organizations want to convert India into a 'Hindu Rashtra' i.e. an Hindu Empire. In such Hindu Rashtra, only Hindus will enjoy citizens' rights, while other minorities like Muslim, Christians,Sikhs, Parsis, Bodh, Jews etc. will have none. Its administration will function only for Hindus and police will give protection only to them i.e. Hindus. Supreme Court
will also be bound to pronounce judgements only in favour of Hindus vis a vis other communities. The Parliament will be converted into a Dharam Sansad and will legislate only in favour of Hindus. In the ëHindu Rashtraí, it will be legitimate to punish the present generation of Muslims, Christians and other minorities for the so-called crimes ñsupposed or real, committed by their ancestors in the Muslim and British period. Mosques will be systematically demolished and churches will be destroyed. All those who would oppose would be subjected to mass murders, rape and loot. The demolition of Babri Masjid, the brutal murder of Austrailan missionary Graham Stains and his two minor sons, attacks on Churches in Gujrat and Orissa, bloody carnage in Gujrat are living examples of the Hindutva agenda.
The BJP election manifesto may talk of the common problems of the people such as poverty, unemployment, education, electricity, water, and may promise their solutions. But as soon as the BJP comes to power it pushes its promises under the carpet and starts implementing its Hindu agenda by overt or covert means.
When BJP came to power five years back at the Centre, it carried out atomic bomb explosions at Pokharan, though it was not part of its election manifesto.
The ostensible purpose of Pokharan explosion was stated to be to ensure security of India- but in result it enhanced its insecurity. Pakistan soon acquired nuclear weapons. Previously Pakistan did not enjoy superiority in conventional army with India, but now it is equally pitted against it.
Another injurious result of nuclear explosion is that India has to spend huge amount in acquiring and maintaining nuclear weapons, so that it has no money left to reduce poverty and unemployment. The army of unemployed youth is on increase, and in many states, the locals have started detesting the outsiders who are Indians nevertheless. The killings of Beharis in Assam and attacks on non-Maharashtrians in Maharshtra are a disturbing phenomena, which may soon envelope other Indian states if BJPís hawkish polcies are not checked soon. The extent of corruption in the defence and security expenditure is a top secret, and if any citizen raises any question in this regard, he may be dubbed as 'anti-national' and may become victim of prosecution. The violence in various forms is on increase as BJPs Hindutva agenda is incapable of pursuing any socio-economic programme for the upliftman of the common people.
However the saving grace is that majority of Hindus are not supporters of this Hindutva agenda of BJP. Therefore the consistent endeavour of BJP is to utilize the administration for injecting and spreading communal virus in society so that the number of its followers is increased. It has been trying to pervert history to poison minds of young Hindus against the Muslims and Christians. It also starts filling up posts in various departments such as industry, education, police etc. by its own supporters who function with communal outlook and harass minorities.
Another term for BJP anywhere will be highly detrimental to the continuation of secular democracy in India.
Corruption and political opportunism has increased during the rule of BJP led coalition. Its leaders are found most corrupt than others. BJP rule will eventually lead to the destruction of secular democracy and Indian Constitution.
We therefore appeal to voters to defeat BJP in the present elections so that future of India is saved.
V.M.Tarkunde, N.D.Pancholi, Indra Makwana,
Pushkar Raj, Mahipal Singh, Karamvir Shastri
Indian Radical Humanist Association, Lokayan, Forum For Democracy & Communal Amity, Vasudev Kutambkam, Champa- The Amiya & B.G. Rao Foundation, Indian Social Institute, Minorities Council, Manav Foundation.
24.11.2003
Ahmadias under attack in Bangladesh
The Daily Star (Dhaka)
November 23, 2003
Editorial
Ahmadias under attack
A blatant violation of people's religious rights
The attacks on police by around 500 people, who were planning to evict the members of Ahmadia sect from their own mosque at East Nakhalpara in the city on Friday, are but an example of religious intolerance finding expression in most unsavoury acts of violence.
The news is disquieting, not least because the attacks follow the Kushtia incidents that forced some Ahmadia families to flee their homes.
The plan to oust some people from their mosque was a blatant violation of citizens' right to have freedom in religious matters. It is also very likely to taint the country's image and send wrong signals to the outside world. Religious tolerance and attack on places of worship cannot simply go together.
If such acts are not nipped in the bud, religious obscurantism will continue to divide society and obstruct the emergence of a culture based on respect for the faiths of people, regardless of whoever they might be. The lesson to be learned from Friday's violence is quite clear: the fanatic elements are trying to disrupt social and religious harmony. We must not forget what happened in Pakistan after it failed to thwart the anti- Ahmadia campaign in the late forties, which saw the fanatics pouncing on the members of this small sect. We must also remember what Shia-Sunni sectarian violence has done, and is still doing, to Pakistan.
Bangladesh has traditionally been a moderate country with no record of such intimidating outburst of religious bigotry.
It has transpired that a section of religious leaders are trying to arouse people to frenzied action in the name of service to religion, instead of preaching peace and tolerance-- the real message of Islam. What they have conveniently forgotten is that divisiveness in any form will only add to social tension.
Friday's incidents also indicate that fanatic groups are working in an organised manner. Now, it is the duty of all sane elements in society to resist the disruptive forces. The government, for its part, should take a firm stand on the question of religious tolerance. It must not allow the bigots to decide who is a Muslim and who is not. The role of the Khatib of Rahim Metal Mosque in Tejgaon needs to be investigated by the authorities, as there is ample evidence that he instigated the mob.
Bangladesh is, and must remain, a country of religious tolerance and harmony.
November 23, 2003
Editorial
Ahmadias under attack
A blatant violation of people's religious rights
The attacks on police by around 500 people, who were planning to evict the members of Ahmadia sect from their own mosque at East Nakhalpara in the city on Friday, are but an example of religious intolerance finding expression in most unsavoury acts of violence.
The news is disquieting, not least because the attacks follow the Kushtia incidents that forced some Ahmadia families to flee their homes.
The plan to oust some people from their mosque was a blatant violation of citizens' right to have freedom in religious matters. It is also very likely to taint the country's image and send wrong signals to the outside world. Religious tolerance and attack on places of worship cannot simply go together.
If such acts are not nipped in the bud, religious obscurantism will continue to divide society and obstruct the emergence of a culture based on respect for the faiths of people, regardless of whoever they might be. The lesson to be learned from Friday's violence is quite clear: the fanatic elements are trying to disrupt social and religious harmony. We must not forget what happened in Pakistan after it failed to thwart the anti- Ahmadia campaign in the late forties, which saw the fanatics pouncing on the members of this small sect. We must also remember what Shia-Sunni sectarian violence has done, and is still doing, to Pakistan.
Bangladesh has traditionally been a moderate country with no record of such intimidating outburst of religious bigotry.
It has transpired that a section of religious leaders are trying to arouse people to frenzied action in the name of service to religion, instead of preaching peace and tolerance-- the real message of Islam. What they have conveniently forgotten is that divisiveness in any form will only add to social tension.
Friday's incidents also indicate that fanatic groups are working in an organised manner. Now, it is the duty of all sane elements in society to resist the disruptive forces. The government, for its part, should take a firm stand on the question of religious tolerance. It must not allow the bigots to decide who is a Muslim and who is not. The role of the Khatib of Rahim Metal Mosque in Tejgaon needs to be investigated by the authorities, as there is ample evidence that he instigated the mob.
Bangladesh is, and must remain, a country of religious tolerance and harmony.
Secularism: Constitution, Law and Representation
[SACW | 25 November 2003]
Reproduced from:
The Daily Star, November 25, 2003
http://www.thedailystar.net/2003/11/25/d31125110387.htm
Secularism: Constitution, Law and Representation
By Naeem Mohaiemen [Shobak.Org]
In his 11/19 response to my letter dated 11/14, Mr. Shibly Azad defends Bangladesh's record on secularism: "more than a dozen MPs from minority communities in the current parliament as well as the presence of minority cabinet members."
As far as I know, there are six minority MPs, not a "dozen". Dhirendranath Saha, Gautam Chakrabarty, Moni Swapan Dewan (CHT) from BNP; Suranjit Sengupta, Panchanan Biswas and Bir Bahadur (CHT) from AL. This makes a total of 6 out of 330. Direct demographic representation would be around 36.
There are no minority Ministers, only Junior Ministers. Chakrabarty is Junior Minister for Water Resources and Swapan is Junior Minister for CHT and Tribal affairs. Although CHT is 70% tribal (Pahari), a Pahari was given Junior portfolio, while the full portfolio went to a non-Pahari-- hardly anything to brag about.
Mr. Azad also writes, "Constitution of Bangladesh does not allow superiority of one religion at the expense of others, but grants equal status to all creeds"
In the 1972 Constitution of Bangladesh, this was indeed the case. However, in 1977, Zia government amended the Constitution, replacing "Socialism" and "Secularism" with, respectively, "Social Justice" and "Absolute faith in God Almighty." They also inserted "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful" (in Arabic) into the preamble to the Constitution. Finally, the 1972 ban on religion-based political parties was lifted.
In 1988, the Ershad government passed the 8th Amendment to the Constitution, making Islam the "State Religion". Although a general protest strike paralyzed Dhaka, the Jatiya Party-dominated Parliament (most of the opposition had boycotted elections) easily passed the measure.
At present, the Bangladesh Constitution reads as follows: "8. Fundamental principles of State Policy: The principles of absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah, nationalism, democracy and socialism meaning economic and social justice, together with the principles derived from them as set out in this Part, shall constitute the fundamental principles of state policy. Absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah shall be the basis of all actions. "(http://www.bangladeshgov.org/pmo/constitution/consti2.htm#2A)
Finally, do not forget the "Vested (Enemy) Property Act" (set up during '65 Indo-Pak war), which has yet to be repealed after four decades. According to "An inquiry into causes and consequences of deprivation of Hindu minorities in Bangladesh through the Vested Property Act" (Abul Barkat, ed.., PRIP Trust, 2000), 2.1 million acres of land were confiscated from Hindu families (by GOB and individuals) since the VPA was enacted.
Reproduced from:
The Daily Star, November 25, 2003
http://www.thedailystar.net/2003/11/25/d31125110387.htm
Secularism: Constitution, Law and Representation
By Naeem Mohaiemen [Shobak.Org]
In his 11/19 response to my letter dated 11/14, Mr. Shibly Azad defends Bangladesh's record on secularism: "more than a dozen MPs from minority communities in the current parliament as well as the presence of minority cabinet members."
As far as I know, there are six minority MPs, not a "dozen". Dhirendranath Saha, Gautam Chakrabarty, Moni Swapan Dewan (CHT) from BNP; Suranjit Sengupta, Panchanan Biswas and Bir Bahadur (CHT) from AL. This makes a total of 6 out of 330. Direct demographic representation would be around 36.
There are no minority Ministers, only Junior Ministers. Chakrabarty is Junior Minister for Water Resources and Swapan is Junior Minister for CHT and Tribal affairs. Although CHT is 70% tribal (Pahari), a Pahari was given Junior portfolio, while the full portfolio went to a non-Pahari-- hardly anything to brag about.
Mr. Azad also writes, "Constitution of Bangladesh does not allow superiority of one religion at the expense of others, but grants equal status to all creeds"
In the 1972 Constitution of Bangladesh, this was indeed the case. However, in 1977, Zia government amended the Constitution, replacing "Socialism" and "Secularism" with, respectively, "Social Justice" and "Absolute faith in God Almighty." They also inserted "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful" (in Arabic) into the preamble to the Constitution. Finally, the 1972 ban on religion-based political parties was lifted.
In 1988, the Ershad government passed the 8th Amendment to the Constitution, making Islam the "State Religion". Although a general protest strike paralyzed Dhaka, the Jatiya Party-dominated Parliament (most of the opposition had boycotted elections) easily passed the measure.
At present, the Bangladesh Constitution reads as follows: "8. Fundamental principles of State Policy: The principles of absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah, nationalism, democracy and socialism meaning economic and social justice, together with the principles derived from them as set out in this Part, shall constitute the fundamental principles of state policy. Absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah shall be the basis of all actions. "(http://www.bangladeshgov.org/pmo/constitution/consti2.htm#2A)
Finally, do not forget the "Vested (Enemy) Property Act" (set up during '65 Indo-Pak war), which has yet to be repealed after four decades. According to "An inquiry into causes and consequences of deprivation of Hindu minorities in Bangladesh through the Vested Property Act" (Abul Barkat, ed.., PRIP Trust, 2000), 2.1 million acres of land were confiscated from Hindu families (by GOB and individuals) since the VPA was enacted.
Pakistan: What should minorities do
(South Asia Citizens Wire | 25 November 2003)
Pakistan: What should minorities do
By M.B. Naqvi
[24 November 2003, Karachi]
For minorities, including smaller sects of Islam, should not organise themselves communally. Instead of being protected, they may only help set up a cycle of revenge violence. Their best chance lies in the liberals in the given majority being mobilised for promoting tolerance and peaceful conditions. Counter violence, in the name of either defence (deterrence) or revenge is to step on a slippery slope, which is sure to promote even greater counter mobilisation by the majority. When a minority organizes a militia, it does so at its own peril. For, the majority is sure to ask: they are organizing (uniting) against whom? Its extremists are sure to magnify the danger from the minority and intensify their mobilization, making it more effective or murderous.
This is an unfamiliar and unsought advice and is not likely to please. The dynamism that results from acting on common notions is generally ignored. Doesn’t every schoolboy know that unity is strength or smaller numbers can be offset by greater commitment? And yet, what is the evidence? No communal mobilisation by a minority can prevent attacks on its members in the fastnesses of the country. They can only be brought into action for taking revenge. That sets up a tit for tat cycle of violence. Once that takes hold, no minority can win; it is bound to lose more often. No minority can mobilise as many men and material as a majority can.
The experience of late 1980s and 1990s sectarian violence is before us. In order to take on Sipah-i-Sahaba, Lashkar-i-Jhangvi etc., the Shias had formed their Sipah-i-Mohammad. After a decade it is necessary to count who had more people killed? There is no doubt more Shias have died in sectarian violence than Sunnis. Supposing the Shias had not had any organisation for avenging their losses, what would be the situation. True, Shias would still have suffered, losses, in the dead and maimed but the total on both sides, would have been less. By the same token, panic and losses among Shias would have been smaller.
In order to illustrate the point, suppose there was also a Muslim militia in Gujarat last year. Would that have meant fewer losses for the Muslim minority or more? Resistance in kind would surely have meant much greater and even more efficient mobilisation by the majority. Total losses of the Muslims would surely have been far greater, even if many Hindus might also have suffered. In Pakistan, this temptation for defensive communal mobilisation is pointless for religious minorities like Hindus and Christians; they are too few to register on the majority’s radar. Sectarian minorities have occupied the place of religious minorities. Majority community takes out its accumulated spleen on the sectarian communities.
Historically too, it is about time to assess what the Muslim community lost and gained from the partition of the Sub-continent, the result of excessive communal frenzy on both sides, involving world’s largest ethnic cleansing to date. The Muslims thinking they would never get a fair deal from the Hindu majority forced the issue. As is peculiar to all communalisms, the Muslim League had taken the vast body of Hindus as one undifferentiated unit that would, for all time to come, take just one (hostile and unfair) view and oppress the Muslims. Like any majority Hindus comprised many schools and had their full share of communalists (who took the Muslims as an undifferentiated mass of united people who will always make trouble). More schools of thought will come into being with time. Isn’t this true of the Pakistani majority? Aren’t there many opinions among Sunni majority about treating the minority sects among Muslims?
The question persists: Was the Muslim League’s victory in 1947, with the help of the British, the best solution of Muslim community’s backwardness and poverty? If a separatist and inimical approach had not been brought to bear on the situation in 1940s to worsen it, Muslims would now be 400 million or more in India that could scarcely be oppressed or seriously discriminated against. Undivided India would have offered more opportunities for development. Despite the short sightedness of Congress leadership and its hatred for Quaid-i-Azam, there were many schools of thought, among them, i.e. leftists of various hues who were genuinely non-communalists who were keen to eradicate the poverty of all Indians, Hindus, and Muslims alike. Moreover, there were many Hindus who shared a lot of cultural traits with Punjabi and Urdu speaking Muslims, as was the case in Bengal and Bihar.
Opportunities for Muslims would have been incomparably greater in an undivided India; without their substantial support no government could run in Delhi. The very Hindus, who frightened the Muslim League so much had to be politically divided, and thus would have needed their votes. How long could the communalist politicians deny benefits to the voter? Only thing that would have made for fair play and justice for all was democracy. And there could be no chance for a non-democratic government in India then and now.
These are however might have beens of history. They have no direct relevance. India was partitioned, hopefully finally for the benefit of all its parts. Let us try and make Pakistan a success in terms of human freedoms and popular welfare. But Pakistan inherited the blight of a hollow militaristic mind that is moved by a shallow, indeed bogus, pan-Islamic sentiment. The result is the curse of military rule; power balance among political groups is heavily tilted in favour of the military. So it pre-empts democracy and thus subordinates human rights and popular welfare to its own needs and preferences.
One fact is obvious: sectarianism is a part of the larger phenomenon of intolerance, especially over religious matters. It won’t go away until people learn to be tolerant of differing views and faiths of other communities, groups or parties. Rationalist attitude of tolerance of the other viewpoint and resolving differences through reasonable argumentation is needed. Religious intolerance against Hindus, Christians, Parsis and others is a kin of sectarianism and all such phenomena stand or fall together. So, if sectarianism is to be exterminated, people will need a society and state that tolerate all faiths, views and groups. In other words, State should promote a tolerant and democratic society.
There are prerequisites of social peace and harmony: a pluralist society cannot be achieved unless it is embedded in human rights that are truly respected – of all men and women, Muslims or non-Muslims. Only in such a society can Shias, Sunnis, Ahle Haddis, Daudi Bohras, Aga Khanis, Zikris, and Ahmedis can happily co-exist and make progress together. Such a society, to repeat, has to recognize the supremacy of and respect for, human beings, qua human beings, over every other value. Guarantees for freedom, primarily of faith and opinions are implicit in humanistic value. In other words, it presupposes a democracy that does not discriminate in favour of any particular faith or opinion or against any religion or sect or parties. For ensuring social peace and solidarity for all Pakistanis, the basic requirement is to make Pakistan strong through unity of all truly secular approach is vitally needed.
Unnecessary confusion has resulted from demands of an Islamic State. A 95 percent Muslim country like Pakistan, any democratic government would be Islamic. Since the ulema’s 22 demands before Khwaja Nazimuddin in early 1950s, these have grown. Each time a constitution was made in 1954, 1956, 1962, 1973, or even in the case of abortive one of 19th December 1971 by General Yahya Khan – major ulema had expressed satisfaction over its Islamic provisions adequately. Even in 1971 case, Yahya Khan shared the details of his constitution to the then JI chief, who termed it was adequately Islamic. The same was true in the case of 1973 Constitution. Maulanas Mufti Mahmud, Shah Ahmed Noorani and JI’s Professor Ghafoor Ahmad signed it. Even so, they agreed with Zia that scope for more Islamisation exists.
An Islamic dispensation obviously presupposes two things: All Muslims must have no differences over what is Islam or on its rights and obligations for different Muslims and of course non-Muslims. Well, there happens to be no homogenized, simple Musalman; what is to be found, and thanks to ulema as a class, a Sunni Musalman, a Shia Musalman, an Ahmadi or Zikri Musalman. Iqbal, Jinnah or Sir Syed could ignore sectarian distinctions. But can the JUI, JUP, JI or other MMA members do the same? Mufti Mahmud’s idea of Islamic State was the enforcement of Shariah as defined by his Hanafi school of thought. For JUP enforcement of 500 fatwas, the Fatwa-i-Alamgiri, plus the acceptance of actual rites and practices of Indian Islam constituted the implementation of Nizam-i-Mustafa.
Who can escape defining a Muslim accurately to know what Islam demands from Muslims and non-Muslims. Jinnah wanted all Pakistanis to be treated equally; he asked JN Mandal to preside over the first session of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. How can now a Hindu or Parsi be discriminated against? In the Meesaq-i-Madina, the Prophet of Islam included Jews into his Ummat-i-Waheda. Like Jinnah he too wanted a secular dispensation for the Madina’s incipient state and there is nothing on record that any discrimination was ever shown towards non-Muslims in Islam other than paying a tax in lieu of compulsory Jihad.
Moreover, further efforts to Islamise Pakistan will stoke the fires of sectarianism among Muslims even, if non-Muslims get ignored. The ulema have achieved one thing: the undifferentiated Musalman of Sir Syed, Iqbal and Jinnah has been killed. For them a Musalman is either a Deobandi kind of Sunni or a Barelwi type of Sunni or sympathizer of JI or a Shia or Ahmadi or Bohra or Agha Khani or Zikri or Ahle Hadis. This sectarianism is a natural product of the efforts to capture power by orthodox leaders.
It is dangerous. Muslims are divided in over a hundred sects. Each sect believes it is the true and the only Islam there is. In matters of faith no compromise is possible. Think of the consequences of religious leaders making politics the means of acquiring more support, influence, money and eventuallypower. If sectarianism spreads, Pakistan as a state would collapse. What will then happen is not foreign invasion or intervention. Jealousies among great and neighbouring powers will prevent that. But once sectarian passions flare up, the next stops will be Somalia or Bosnia. Do we want that?
Pakistan: What should minorities do
By M.B. Naqvi
[24 November 2003, Karachi]
For minorities, including smaller sects of Islam, should not organise themselves communally. Instead of being protected, they may only help set up a cycle of revenge violence. Their best chance lies in the liberals in the given majority being mobilised for promoting tolerance and peaceful conditions. Counter violence, in the name of either defence (deterrence) or revenge is to step on a slippery slope, which is sure to promote even greater counter mobilisation by the majority. When a minority organizes a militia, it does so at its own peril. For, the majority is sure to ask: they are organizing (uniting) against whom? Its extremists are sure to magnify the danger from the minority and intensify their mobilization, making it more effective or murderous.
This is an unfamiliar and unsought advice and is not likely to please. The dynamism that results from acting on common notions is generally ignored. Doesn’t every schoolboy know that unity is strength or smaller numbers can be offset by greater commitment? And yet, what is the evidence? No communal mobilisation by a minority can prevent attacks on its members in the fastnesses of the country. They can only be brought into action for taking revenge. That sets up a tit for tat cycle of violence. Once that takes hold, no minority can win; it is bound to lose more often. No minority can mobilise as many men and material as a majority can.
The experience of late 1980s and 1990s sectarian violence is before us. In order to take on Sipah-i-Sahaba, Lashkar-i-Jhangvi etc., the Shias had formed their Sipah-i-Mohammad. After a decade it is necessary to count who had more people killed? There is no doubt more Shias have died in sectarian violence than Sunnis. Supposing the Shias had not had any organisation for avenging their losses, what would be the situation. True, Shias would still have suffered, losses, in the dead and maimed but the total on both sides, would have been less. By the same token, panic and losses among Shias would have been smaller.
In order to illustrate the point, suppose there was also a Muslim militia in Gujarat last year. Would that have meant fewer losses for the Muslim minority or more? Resistance in kind would surely have meant much greater and even more efficient mobilisation by the majority. Total losses of the Muslims would surely have been far greater, even if many Hindus might also have suffered. In Pakistan, this temptation for defensive communal mobilisation is pointless for religious minorities like Hindus and Christians; they are too few to register on the majority’s radar. Sectarian minorities have occupied the place of religious minorities. Majority community takes out its accumulated spleen on the sectarian communities.
Historically too, it is about time to assess what the Muslim community lost and gained from the partition of the Sub-continent, the result of excessive communal frenzy on both sides, involving world’s largest ethnic cleansing to date. The Muslims thinking they would never get a fair deal from the Hindu majority forced the issue. As is peculiar to all communalisms, the Muslim League had taken the vast body of Hindus as one undifferentiated unit that would, for all time to come, take just one (hostile and unfair) view and oppress the Muslims. Like any majority Hindus comprised many schools and had their full share of communalists (who took the Muslims as an undifferentiated mass of united people who will always make trouble). More schools of thought will come into being with time. Isn’t this true of the Pakistani majority? Aren’t there many opinions among Sunni majority about treating the minority sects among Muslims?
The question persists: Was the Muslim League’s victory in 1947, with the help of the British, the best solution of Muslim community’s backwardness and poverty? If a separatist and inimical approach had not been brought to bear on the situation in 1940s to worsen it, Muslims would now be 400 million or more in India that could scarcely be oppressed or seriously discriminated against. Undivided India would have offered more opportunities for development. Despite the short sightedness of Congress leadership and its hatred for Quaid-i-Azam, there were many schools of thought, among them, i.e. leftists of various hues who were genuinely non-communalists who were keen to eradicate the poverty of all Indians, Hindus, and Muslims alike. Moreover, there were many Hindus who shared a lot of cultural traits with Punjabi and Urdu speaking Muslims, as was the case in Bengal and Bihar.
Opportunities for Muslims would have been incomparably greater in an undivided India; without their substantial support no government could run in Delhi. The very Hindus, who frightened the Muslim League so much had to be politically divided, and thus would have needed their votes. How long could the communalist politicians deny benefits to the voter? Only thing that would have made for fair play and justice for all was democracy. And there could be no chance for a non-democratic government in India then and now.
These are however might have beens of history. They have no direct relevance. India was partitioned, hopefully finally for the benefit of all its parts. Let us try and make Pakistan a success in terms of human freedoms and popular welfare. But Pakistan inherited the blight of a hollow militaristic mind that is moved by a shallow, indeed bogus, pan-Islamic sentiment. The result is the curse of military rule; power balance among political groups is heavily tilted in favour of the military. So it pre-empts democracy and thus subordinates human rights and popular welfare to its own needs and preferences.
One fact is obvious: sectarianism is a part of the larger phenomenon of intolerance, especially over religious matters. It won’t go away until people learn to be tolerant of differing views and faiths of other communities, groups or parties. Rationalist attitude of tolerance of the other viewpoint and resolving differences through reasonable argumentation is needed. Religious intolerance against Hindus, Christians, Parsis and others is a kin of sectarianism and all such phenomena stand or fall together. So, if sectarianism is to be exterminated, people will need a society and state that tolerate all faiths, views and groups. In other words, State should promote a tolerant and democratic society.
There are prerequisites of social peace and harmony: a pluralist society cannot be achieved unless it is embedded in human rights that are truly respected – of all men and women, Muslims or non-Muslims. Only in such a society can Shias, Sunnis, Ahle Haddis, Daudi Bohras, Aga Khanis, Zikris, and Ahmedis can happily co-exist and make progress together. Such a society, to repeat, has to recognize the supremacy of and respect for, human beings, qua human beings, over every other value. Guarantees for freedom, primarily of faith and opinions are implicit in humanistic value. In other words, it presupposes a democracy that does not discriminate in favour of any particular faith or opinion or against any religion or sect or parties. For ensuring social peace and solidarity for all Pakistanis, the basic requirement is to make Pakistan strong through unity of all truly secular approach is vitally needed.
Unnecessary confusion has resulted from demands of an Islamic State. A 95 percent Muslim country like Pakistan, any democratic government would be Islamic. Since the ulema’s 22 demands before Khwaja Nazimuddin in early 1950s, these have grown. Each time a constitution was made in 1954, 1956, 1962, 1973, or even in the case of abortive one of 19th December 1971 by General Yahya Khan – major ulema had expressed satisfaction over its Islamic provisions adequately. Even in 1971 case, Yahya Khan shared the details of his constitution to the then JI chief, who termed it was adequately Islamic. The same was true in the case of 1973 Constitution. Maulanas Mufti Mahmud, Shah Ahmed Noorani and JI’s Professor Ghafoor Ahmad signed it. Even so, they agreed with Zia that scope for more Islamisation exists.
An Islamic dispensation obviously presupposes two things: All Muslims must have no differences over what is Islam or on its rights and obligations for different Muslims and of course non-Muslims. Well, there happens to be no homogenized, simple Musalman; what is to be found, and thanks to ulema as a class, a Sunni Musalman, a Shia Musalman, an Ahmadi or Zikri Musalman. Iqbal, Jinnah or Sir Syed could ignore sectarian distinctions. But can the JUI, JUP, JI or other MMA members do the same? Mufti Mahmud’s idea of Islamic State was the enforcement of Shariah as defined by his Hanafi school of thought. For JUP enforcement of 500 fatwas, the Fatwa-i-Alamgiri, plus the acceptance of actual rites and practices of Indian Islam constituted the implementation of Nizam-i-Mustafa.
Who can escape defining a Muslim accurately to know what Islam demands from Muslims and non-Muslims. Jinnah wanted all Pakistanis to be treated equally; he asked JN Mandal to preside over the first session of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. How can now a Hindu or Parsi be discriminated against? In the Meesaq-i-Madina, the Prophet of Islam included Jews into his Ummat-i-Waheda. Like Jinnah he too wanted a secular dispensation for the Madina’s incipient state and there is nothing on record that any discrimination was ever shown towards non-Muslims in Islam other than paying a tax in lieu of compulsory Jihad.
Moreover, further efforts to Islamise Pakistan will stoke the fires of sectarianism among Muslims even, if non-Muslims get ignored. The ulema have achieved one thing: the undifferentiated Musalman of Sir Syed, Iqbal and Jinnah has been killed. For them a Musalman is either a Deobandi kind of Sunni or a Barelwi type of Sunni or sympathizer of JI or a Shia or Ahmadi or Bohra or Agha Khani or Zikri or Ahle Hadis. This sectarianism is a natural product of the efforts to capture power by orthodox leaders.
It is dangerous. Muslims are divided in over a hundred sects. Each sect believes it is the true and the only Islam there is. In matters of faith no compromise is possible. Think of the consequences of religious leaders making politics the means of acquiring more support, influence, money and eventuallypower. If sectarianism spreads, Pakistan as a state would collapse. What will then happen is not foreign invasion or intervention. Jealousies among great and neighbouring powers will prevent that. But once sectarian passions flare up, the next stops will be Somalia or Bosnia. Do we want that?
November 24, 2003
Migration and poverty go hand-in-hand in Bihar
Gulf News (Dubai) | 24-11-2003
Migration and poverty go hand-in-hand in Bihar
by M.J. Akbar
It was the time of Lagaan. My grandfather was 11 or 12, when famine hit Bihar and made him an orphan. Starving, he left his village near Hajipur and reached the outskirts of Kolkata, to a labour colony called Telinipara. It existed entirely because of the presence of a new factory built by Scotsmen from Dundee and named, appropriately for the era, Victoria Jute Mill.
My grandfather was fortunate; he could easily have become one of the hundreds of thousands of Biharis who were being shipped off as indentured labourer for European planters in the West Indies, Fiji or Mauritius. Biharis have been India's foremost economic refugees for many generations.
The European treated the Bihari with unconcealed contempt. The Indian converted him into an unconcealed caricature. Caricature too is a form of hatred. In the old days, docility was the preferred Bihari response. Fear of hunger ensured as much.
But over the years docility had to evolve, and discover less supine manifestations. In different societies, local realities shaped this evolution. But in a very fundamental sense, the writer-polemicist V.S. Naipaul and the comedian-politician Laloo Yadav are two sides of the same coin.
Bouts of intellectual self-loathing
Naipaul, a Bihari (the term, of course, extends to Bhojpuri-speaking eastern Uttar Pradesh) driven to the West Indies, is a genius who has never been able to outgrow his insecurity, which in turn induces bouts of intellectual self-loathing. Naipaul has two answers to his insecurity. First, he needs someone safe to love, and finds the British in Oxbridge.
Protected by this security blanket, he then goes out in search of someone safe to hate. And so in An Area of Darkness he shines his torch upon the defecating Indian. It is the 1960s, and it is safe to hate the Indian who has won independence but is not yet showing much evidence of being able to do anything apart from groan under self-inflicted wounds. But gradually, India discovers a dynamic, and sneering is no longer very safe. So Naipaul transfers his disaffections towards Muslims.
Laloo Yadav, who must live or die by public support, turns caricature on its head by an extreme form of self-caricature. By living out the distorted image, he is also taking on those who have painted the Bihari into a psychological corner: "I will become what you have made me, and then deal with you on my terms." But he too needs safety, a perch into which he can retreat when threatened.
That social fortress is a limited alliance between the two most populous Bihari castes, Yadavs and Muslims (Bihari Muslims are, predominantly, a backward caste and therefore comfortable with Yadavs). Laloo Yadav's success is both explosive and limiting.
He can succeed where he stands, but he cannot move out. He can draw an audience, like any star (or filmstar); but he cannot draw a vote except in a demographic borough of Bihar. Wherever the Bihari went, circumstances forced him to survive in a ghetto. Today, Bihar itself has become a ghetto of India.
Why? It is silly to say that there is an IQ problem, although that is what the caricature suggests. Genes do not make a Bihari foolish, or, worse, a criminal. But history does.
The most startling fact of Bihar is that it has not been a centre of significant political power since the end of the Ashoka empire. Perhaps such glory demands the compensation of centuries of defeat: who knows.
The political map of modern India began to form during the two hundred years of stability in the north created by the Mughal empire, and in its chaotic aftermath when regional and sub-regional powers turned India into a complex chessboard. The only time when Bihar became a knight on this chessboard was when Sher Shah Suri took his Afghans to Delhi.
The British, who set the course for the twentieth century, had no regional power to contend with when they converted Bihar into a swamp from which they periodically drained human labour. Ironically, Bihar had great natural resources (now transferred to Jharkhand), but they were exploited for industries that branched up along the Hooghly from the British capital of Kolkata.
Indian nationalism
British Calcutta denied, and thereby destroyed, Bihar. It was entirely in order that Mahatma Gandhi should make Bihar the battleground of Indian nationalism, because the Bihari, without either people's power or feudal power to defend his interests, was decimated by British colonialism.
Gandhiji's first victory against the British (surprisingly unknown) was the abolition of indentured labour. His second, historic, fight for indigo farmers launched the Independence Movement.
Could Bihar have reversed its history after freedom? "Could" is not the correct word; "should" is more appropriate. But during the first three decades after freedom Bihar fell into an abyss of corruption and sleaze, complemented by public sector decadence and private sector loot.
The only golden lining was land reform, which, despite sabotage by grasping landlords, worked sufficiently to ensure agricultural growth. But agriculture by itself cannot meet the aspirations of Bihar. Since there was nothing else, the migrations continued.
The tensions that are now in ferment in places as far apart as Assam and Maharashtra come from a twist in the tale. As long as the Bihari in Mumbai or Guwahati filled the void left for cheap, manual labour, he was left undisturbed in the urban slum.
But those "coolies"who went in search of sustenance now have adult children who want better, because they have the education that their parents missed. They also have the hunger for achievement that burns in the deprived. That is why they compete and get jobs. This turns into resentment that explodes into violence.
The Bihari is trapped between stagnation in Bihar and anger outside. In principle, a greater law should prevail: Indian unity is cemented by the spirit of a free job market.
An Indian has equal rights anywhere in India. In practice, no region can continue to be a parasite on the rest of the body politic. There is only one way to stop Bihari deaths in Assam: Bihar must be reborn.
The writer is the Editor of The Asian Age.
Migration and poverty go hand-in-hand in Bihar
by M.J. Akbar
It was the time of Lagaan. My grandfather was 11 or 12, when famine hit Bihar and made him an orphan. Starving, he left his village near Hajipur and reached the outskirts of Kolkata, to a labour colony called Telinipara. It existed entirely because of the presence of a new factory built by Scotsmen from Dundee and named, appropriately for the era, Victoria Jute Mill.
My grandfather was fortunate; he could easily have become one of the hundreds of thousands of Biharis who were being shipped off as indentured labourer for European planters in the West Indies, Fiji or Mauritius. Biharis have been India's foremost economic refugees for many generations.
The European treated the Bihari with unconcealed contempt. The Indian converted him into an unconcealed caricature. Caricature too is a form of hatred. In the old days, docility was the preferred Bihari response. Fear of hunger ensured as much.
But over the years docility had to evolve, and discover less supine manifestations. In different societies, local realities shaped this evolution. But in a very fundamental sense, the writer-polemicist V.S. Naipaul and the comedian-politician Laloo Yadav are two sides of the same coin.
Bouts of intellectual self-loathing
Naipaul, a Bihari (the term, of course, extends to Bhojpuri-speaking eastern Uttar Pradesh) driven to the West Indies, is a genius who has never been able to outgrow his insecurity, which in turn induces bouts of intellectual self-loathing. Naipaul has two answers to his insecurity. First, he needs someone safe to love, and finds the British in Oxbridge.
Protected by this security blanket, he then goes out in search of someone safe to hate. And so in An Area of Darkness he shines his torch upon the defecating Indian. It is the 1960s, and it is safe to hate the Indian who has won independence but is not yet showing much evidence of being able to do anything apart from groan under self-inflicted wounds. But gradually, India discovers a dynamic, and sneering is no longer very safe. So Naipaul transfers his disaffections towards Muslims.
Laloo Yadav, who must live or die by public support, turns caricature on its head by an extreme form of self-caricature. By living out the distorted image, he is also taking on those who have painted the Bihari into a psychological corner: "I will become what you have made me, and then deal with you on my terms." But he too needs safety, a perch into which he can retreat when threatened.
That social fortress is a limited alliance between the two most populous Bihari castes, Yadavs and Muslims (Bihari Muslims are, predominantly, a backward caste and therefore comfortable with Yadavs). Laloo Yadav's success is both explosive and limiting.
He can succeed where he stands, but he cannot move out. He can draw an audience, like any star (or filmstar); but he cannot draw a vote except in a demographic borough of Bihar. Wherever the Bihari went, circumstances forced him to survive in a ghetto. Today, Bihar itself has become a ghetto of India.
Why? It is silly to say that there is an IQ problem, although that is what the caricature suggests. Genes do not make a Bihari foolish, or, worse, a criminal. But history does.
The most startling fact of Bihar is that it has not been a centre of significant political power since the end of the Ashoka empire. Perhaps such glory demands the compensation of centuries of defeat: who knows.
The political map of modern India began to form during the two hundred years of stability in the north created by the Mughal empire, and in its chaotic aftermath when regional and sub-regional powers turned India into a complex chessboard. The only time when Bihar became a knight on this chessboard was when Sher Shah Suri took his Afghans to Delhi.
The British, who set the course for the twentieth century, had no regional power to contend with when they converted Bihar into a swamp from which they periodically drained human labour. Ironically, Bihar had great natural resources (now transferred to Jharkhand), but they were exploited for industries that branched up along the Hooghly from the British capital of Kolkata.
Indian nationalism
British Calcutta denied, and thereby destroyed, Bihar. It was entirely in order that Mahatma Gandhi should make Bihar the battleground of Indian nationalism, because the Bihari, without either people's power or feudal power to defend his interests, was decimated by British colonialism.
Gandhiji's first victory against the British (surprisingly unknown) was the abolition of indentured labour. His second, historic, fight for indigo farmers launched the Independence Movement.
Could Bihar have reversed its history after freedom? "Could" is not the correct word; "should" is more appropriate. But during the first three decades after freedom Bihar fell into an abyss of corruption and sleaze, complemented by public sector decadence and private sector loot.
The only golden lining was land reform, which, despite sabotage by grasping landlords, worked sufficiently to ensure agricultural growth. But agriculture by itself cannot meet the aspirations of Bihar. Since there was nothing else, the migrations continued.
The tensions that are now in ferment in places as far apart as Assam and Maharashtra come from a twist in the tale. As long as the Bihari in Mumbai or Guwahati filled the void left for cheap, manual labour, he was left undisturbed in the urban slum.
But those "coolies"who went in search of sustenance now have adult children who want better, because they have the education that their parents missed. They also have the hunger for achievement that burns in the deprived. That is why they compete and get jobs. This turns into resentment that explodes into violence.
The Bihari is trapped between stagnation in Bihar and anger outside. In principle, a greater law should prevail: Indian unity is cemented by the spirit of a free job market.
An Indian has equal rights anywhere in India. In practice, no region can continue to be a parasite on the rest of the body politic. There is only one way to stop Bihari deaths in Assam: Bihar must be reborn.
The writer is the Editor of The Asian Age.
November 21, 2003
The Biharis who never saw Bihar until last night
The Indian Express
Friday, November 21, 2003
The Biharis who never saw Bihar until last night
Railway jobs, what railway jobs? Victims ask as they hide in Tinsukia
SAMUDRA GUPTA KASHYAP
TINSUKIA, NOVEMBER 20: Twenty eight-year-old Mukti Yadav has never been to Bihar. He has only seen its outline on a map of India. And that was very long ago: he was a child then, studying in an Assamese-medium school. Home has always been Assam for Mukti, a Bihari.
But today he sits huddled in a corner of the Debipukhuri Hindi High School, one of the 300 Biharis on the run after mobs torched their homes, saying the Biharis were gobbling Assamese jobs.
There are many like Mukti who have no idea what this ruckus over railway jobs is all about. Nor do they have any place to go to: the school where they have sought shelter is a temporary relief camp, organised by some locals because the administration is yet to make up its mind whether these people should be provided relief material.
''Those who attacked our homes were not from our village. My friends from neighbouring villages came in the morning to help us,'' says Biswanath Yadav, another inmate at the camp. He's from Guinjan, close to Boroguri which has always been Mukti's home.
Tinsukia is Upper Assam's busiest town and has the largest concentration of Biharis in the region. Most work here as labour hands. Today, with curfew in place, this bustling town has a ghost-like appearance.
Trouble began on Tuesday after nearly 100 Biharis who, fearing for their lives after stray incidents of assault, collected in a temple. But they ended up clashing with the locals there.
Advocate Bhaskar Dutta blames the slack administration: ''Had they played a proactive role, this situation would have never arisen. The authorities failed to gauge the mood.'' Once violence broke out, police opened fire. And then rumour-mongers took over, fanning passions across Tinsukia and Dibrugarh.
Tinsukia was the nerve centre of plywood factories until 1996 when the Supreme Court ban on tree-felling came into effect. The last junction in the east on the railway map, its entire workforce came from Bihar.
''There must be some 50,000 Biharis here. If you were to include Dibrugarh, it would probably be 80,000,'' says Shew Sambhu Ojha. He should know. He has been the local MLA twice and a minister in the Congress government of Hiteswar Saikia from 1996-2001. Now a BJP leader, Ojha says most Biharis are ''local'' people.
''The second generation was born in Assam. They have forgotten their Bihar links. Many will not be able to trace their ancestral village in Bihar,'' says Ojha.
Sixty-year-old Budhiya Devi echoes Ojha. She says she has nowhere else to go. ''Ihe janam-maran ke rishta ho gail ba (we can identify ourselves only with this state).'' She was born in Sadiya, a town that slipped into the Brahmaputra during the great earthquake of 1950.
Curfew has helped bring the situation under control. Barring stray incidents last night, it's been peaceful. But the damage has been done: a generations-old bond is once again suspect.
Friday, November 21, 2003
The Biharis who never saw Bihar until last night
Railway jobs, what railway jobs? Victims ask as they hide in Tinsukia
SAMUDRA GUPTA KASHYAP
TINSUKIA, NOVEMBER 20: Twenty eight-year-old Mukti Yadav has never been to Bihar. He has only seen its outline on a map of India. And that was very long ago: he was a child then, studying in an Assamese-medium school. Home has always been Assam for Mukti, a Bihari.
But today he sits huddled in a corner of the Debipukhuri Hindi High School, one of the 300 Biharis on the run after mobs torched their homes, saying the Biharis were gobbling Assamese jobs.
There are many like Mukti who have no idea what this ruckus over railway jobs is all about. Nor do they have any place to go to: the school where they have sought shelter is a temporary relief camp, organised by some locals because the administration is yet to make up its mind whether these people should be provided relief material.
''Those who attacked our homes were not from our village. My friends from neighbouring villages came in the morning to help us,'' says Biswanath Yadav, another inmate at the camp. He's from Guinjan, close to Boroguri which has always been Mukti's home.
Tinsukia is Upper Assam's busiest town and has the largest concentration of Biharis in the region. Most work here as labour hands. Today, with curfew in place, this bustling town has a ghost-like appearance.
Trouble began on Tuesday after nearly 100 Biharis who, fearing for their lives after stray incidents of assault, collected in a temple. But they ended up clashing with the locals there.
Advocate Bhaskar Dutta blames the slack administration: ''Had they played a proactive role, this situation would have never arisen. The authorities failed to gauge the mood.'' Once violence broke out, police opened fire. And then rumour-mongers took over, fanning passions across Tinsukia and Dibrugarh.
Tinsukia was the nerve centre of plywood factories until 1996 when the Supreme Court ban on tree-felling came into effect. The last junction in the east on the railway map, its entire workforce came from Bihar.
''There must be some 50,000 Biharis here. If you were to include Dibrugarh, it would probably be 80,000,'' says Shew Sambhu Ojha. He should know. He has been the local MLA twice and a minister in the Congress government of Hiteswar Saikia from 1996-2001. Now a BJP leader, Ojha says most Biharis are ''local'' people.
''The second generation was born in Assam. They have forgotten their Bihar links. Many will not be able to trace their ancestral village in Bihar,'' says Ojha.
Sixty-year-old Budhiya Devi echoes Ojha. She says she has nowhere else to go. ''Ihe janam-maran ke rishta ho gail ba (we can identify ourselves only with this state).'' She was born in Sadiya, a town that slipped into the Brahmaputra during the great earthquake of 1950.
Curfew has helped bring the situation under control. Barring stray incidents last night, it's been peaceful. But the damage has been done: a generations-old bond is once again suspect.
Assam's Shame
The Hindu,
Nov 21, 2003
Opinion - Editorials
Assam's shame
THE KILLING OF close to 30 people in Assam in a wave of attacks over the last few days on the Hindi-speaking population of the State has once again exposed the worst face of regional and ethnic chauvinism in the North-East. The attacks, which began with Assamese students preventing Hindi-speakers from writing a selection examination for junior posts in the North-Eastern Frontier Railways (NFR), sparked off reprisals against north-easterners in Bihar, the State to which most Hindi-speakers in Assam trace their roots. This in turn became the excuse for the killings in northern Assam where a large number of Hindi-speaking people live. The Assam Government has been forced to seek the Army's assistance to bring the situation under control. The entire series of events, from the first incident to the last killing, is reprehensible and unacceptable to all who consider themselves part of a civilised society. It has to be condemned as such and a clear message sent out to the perpetrators that such actions cannot be tolerated. To her credit, the Bihar Chief Minister, Rabri Devi, took swift measures to clamp down on the incidents in her State. In Assam, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi's efforts were evidently inadequate: they failed to prevent the grisly killings.
The latest episode of anti-migrant wrath in Assam has provided the United Liberation Front of Assam a tailor-made opportunity to rear its ugly head again. Since the mid-1990s, the outfit has been languishing on the margins, pushed there by the Assamese because of its resort to terrorism, retributive killings and criminal extortion. Evidence of its unpopularity came when voters defied its call to boycott the 1999 Lok Sabha elections and turned out to vote in large numbers. Hundreds of its cadres have laid down arms, some of them saying they did not agree with the senseless violence it advocates. More recently, the group's call for a boycott of Hindi films evoked no response. In the present spate of violence gripping Assam, the State Government has named ULFA as the main instigator and the perpetrator of the killings. Clearly, the extremist organisation, which has been banned under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, sees in the situation a chance to make a comeback. In all this, the role of the All Assam Students' Union needs to be highlighted. The AASU, which led the agitation in Assam in the 1980s, recently demanded that the NF railway "should be restricted to the region" and it was the first to raise the "foreigner" bogey in the matter of the zonal railway recruitment examinations. In doing so, the student body may have had an eye on its own political fortunes but its strategy has dovetailed neatly with that of the ULFA.
Mr. Gogoi has blamed the troubles on the Central Government's failure to create adequate employment opportunities in Assam. That may be true, but it is only a part of the story and a lazy way out - good for deflecting criticism but bad in the long run because it plays into the hands of the extremists. It reinforces the view that while the mainstream political establishment in Assam may distance itself from groups like ULFA, it is not above using them for its own political gains. Assam needs to look inward for answers to this week's violence. The victims were those whose families had migrated from Bihar generations ago. It is time the so-called "indigenous Assamese" looked at them as an integral part of the State's ethnic mosaic instead of as "outsiders". In this time of crisis, it rests on Mr. Gogoi's shoulders to provide leadership. Above all, he must resist the temptation to fall into the more-Assamese-than-thou trap.
Nov 21, 2003
Opinion - Editorials
Assam's shame
THE KILLING OF close to 30 people in Assam in a wave of attacks over the last few days on the Hindi-speaking population of the State has once again exposed the worst face of regional and ethnic chauvinism in the North-East. The attacks, which began with Assamese students preventing Hindi-speakers from writing a selection examination for junior posts in the North-Eastern Frontier Railways (NFR), sparked off reprisals against north-easterners in Bihar, the State to which most Hindi-speakers in Assam trace their roots. This in turn became the excuse for the killings in northern Assam where a large number of Hindi-speaking people live. The Assam Government has been forced to seek the Army's assistance to bring the situation under control. The entire series of events, from the first incident to the last killing, is reprehensible and unacceptable to all who consider themselves part of a civilised society. It has to be condemned as such and a clear message sent out to the perpetrators that such actions cannot be tolerated. To her credit, the Bihar Chief Minister, Rabri Devi, took swift measures to clamp down on the incidents in her State. In Assam, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi's efforts were evidently inadequate: they failed to prevent the grisly killings.
The latest episode of anti-migrant wrath in Assam has provided the United Liberation Front of Assam a tailor-made opportunity to rear its ugly head again. Since the mid-1990s, the outfit has been languishing on the margins, pushed there by the Assamese because of its resort to terrorism, retributive killings and criminal extortion. Evidence of its unpopularity came when voters defied its call to boycott the 1999 Lok Sabha elections and turned out to vote in large numbers. Hundreds of its cadres have laid down arms, some of them saying they did not agree with the senseless violence it advocates. More recently, the group's call for a boycott of Hindi films evoked no response. In the present spate of violence gripping Assam, the State Government has named ULFA as the main instigator and the perpetrator of the killings. Clearly, the extremist organisation, which has been banned under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, sees in the situation a chance to make a comeback. In all this, the role of the All Assam Students' Union needs to be highlighted. The AASU, which led the agitation in Assam in the 1980s, recently demanded that the NF railway "should be restricted to the region" and it was the first to raise the "foreigner" bogey in the matter of the zonal railway recruitment examinations. In doing so, the student body may have had an eye on its own political fortunes but its strategy has dovetailed neatly with that of the ULFA.
Mr. Gogoi has blamed the troubles on the Central Government's failure to create adequate employment opportunities in Assam. That may be true, but it is only a part of the story and a lazy way out - good for deflecting criticism but bad in the long run because it plays into the hands of the extremists. It reinforces the view that while the mainstream political establishment in Assam may distance itself from groups like ULFA, it is not above using them for its own political gains. Assam needs to look inward for answers to this week's violence. The victims were those whose families had migrated from Bihar generations ago. It is time the so-called "indigenous Assamese" looked at them as an integral part of the State's ethnic mosaic instead of as "outsiders". In this time of crisis, it rests on Mr. Gogoi's shoulders to provide leadership. Above all, he must resist the temptation to fall into the more-Assamese-than-thou trap.
Assam's fear of the outsider is not a new phenomenon
The Indian Express
November 21, 2003
A dangerous Us and Them mindset
Assam's fear of the outsider is not a new phenomenon
SUDHANSHU RANJAN
The demand now being made by some of the more extreme elements in Assam, for 100 per cent reservations for the Assamese in Central government jobs in the state, is not new. However, it is not legally permissible.
It was to douse the fire of parochialism that the Parliament enacted the Public Employment (Requirement as to Residence) Act. Through it, all laws promulgated by states for giving priority to their citizens were declared null and void. If there cannot be any reservation for the state in the state services, how can there be a state quota for central jobs? The domicile provision attracts Articles 14, 16 and 19 of the Constitution.
Bihar is notorious for casteism but it has never been infected by the virus of regional chauvinism. After the Fazli Ali Commission's report created a storm the chief ministers of Bihar and Bengal offered to amalgamate their tates in order to check the "linguistic madness". But even in December 1947, when the Damodar Valley Corporation was being built, an interesting debate took place in the Bihar assembly. Members harped on the inescapable fact that a lot of land in Bihar would be submerged as a result of this project, while the benefits of flood protection and irrigation would go to Bengal. The then chief minister, S.K. Sinha, stood up and said, "It was only a few months back that we on August 15, 1947, made ourselves free and swore allegiance to India, to one India. None could realise that they would soon be forgotten that, if millions were benefitted in Bengal by flood protection works which did submerge a few villages in Bihar, those millions protected were as much Indians as those in Bihar who lost some land."
Assam's mindset was different possibly because of the high levels of migration the state had experienced. After the British annexed Assam, large population movements from the south have been a recurring phenomenon.
When the demand for partition was raised, it was suggested that Pakistan would comprise of the Muslim majority provinces in the west and Bang-e-Islam, comprising Assam and Bengal, in the east. Moinul Haque Chaudhury, M.A. Jinnah's private secretary, had told Jinnah that he would "present Assam to him on a silver platter". That, however, did not happen.
It was Bangladeshi migrations that fanned the All Assam Students Movement in the 1980s. But even before this, in '66-'67, there was a movement known as "Bengali Kheda", to drive out Bengalis. Now it is the turn of the Biharis. They, incidentally, constitute almost the entire workforce of Assam and it all began when the British imported Bihari labour for the tea gardens.
The situation in Assam today is extremely serious and does not portend well for either Assam or India. Both the Assam and Bihar governments, as indeed the Centre, must do all they can to defuse the situation immediately.
November 21, 2003
A dangerous Us and Them mindset
Assam's fear of the outsider is not a new phenomenon
SUDHANSHU RANJAN
The demand now being made by some of the more extreme elements in Assam, for 100 per cent reservations for the Assamese in Central government jobs in the state, is not new. However, it is not legally permissible.
It was to douse the fire of parochialism that the Parliament enacted the Public Employment (Requirement as to Residence) Act. Through it, all laws promulgated by states for giving priority to their citizens were declared null and void. If there cannot be any reservation for the state in the state services, how can there be a state quota for central jobs? The domicile provision attracts Articles 14, 16 and 19 of the Constitution.
Bihar is notorious for casteism but it has never been infected by the virus of regional chauvinism. After the Fazli Ali Commission's report created a storm the chief ministers of Bihar and Bengal offered to amalgamate their tates in order to check the "linguistic madness". But even in December 1947, when the Damodar Valley Corporation was being built, an interesting debate took place in the Bihar assembly. Members harped on the inescapable fact that a lot of land in Bihar would be submerged as a result of this project, while the benefits of flood protection and irrigation would go to Bengal. The then chief minister, S.K. Sinha, stood up and said, "It was only a few months back that we on August 15, 1947, made ourselves free and swore allegiance to India, to one India. None could realise that they would soon be forgotten that, if millions were benefitted in Bengal by flood protection works which did submerge a few villages in Bihar, those millions protected were as much Indians as those in Bihar who lost some land."
Assam's mindset was different possibly because of the high levels of migration the state had experienced. After the British annexed Assam, large population movements from the south have been a recurring phenomenon.
When the demand for partition was raised, it was suggested that Pakistan would comprise of the Muslim majority provinces in the west and Bang-e-Islam, comprising Assam and Bengal, in the east. Moinul Haque Chaudhury, M.A. Jinnah's private secretary, had told Jinnah that he would "present Assam to him on a silver platter". That, however, did not happen.
It was Bangladeshi migrations that fanned the All Assam Students Movement in the 1980s. But even before this, in '66-'67, there was a movement known as "Bengali Kheda", to drive out Bengalis. Now it is the turn of the Biharis. They, incidentally, constitute almost the entire workforce of Assam and it all began when the British imported Bihari labour for the tea gardens.
The situation in Assam today is extremely serious and does not portend well for either Assam or India. Both the Assam and Bihar governments, as indeed the Centre, must do all they can to defuse the situation immediately.
November 18, 2003
Bangladesh: Khoda Hafez versus Allah Hafez: A critical inquiry
The Daily Star [Dhaka]
November 18, 2003
Khoda Hafez versus Allah Hafez: A critical inquiry
Mahfuzur Rahman
On a trip from Dhaka to north Bangladesh during my recent visit to the country, I was struck by two phenomena. First, there was something unusual about some of the mileposts along the highway. In many places, as we headed for the Jamuna, they would often have a painted-over strip, a blank. The name of a particular destination has been systematically erased. You guessed right. The blank space, staring ever so briefly as you sped past it, once spelled out Bangabandhu Setu. The sign was gone, moved and painted over, almost certainly at state expense. How amazing, though, that a dumb, blank milepost could still speak volumes!
It is, however, a second phenomenon that I have chosen as the theme of the following paragraphs: many signboards, especially those at the boundaries of local administrative districts, that not so long ago wished Khoda Hafez to the exiting travellers, now say Allah Hafez instead. I, of course, never doubted the sincerity of those who put up the slogans invoking God's protection on roads infested with unsafe automobiles and marauding drivers. I am also sure the Supreme Being now being called upon, in fresh paint, to protect the lives of the users of those thoroughfares is the same One whose name used to be invoked on the old signs. Why then the change? Is there something of significance in the changeover, also made at considerable cost, from Khoda Hafez to Allah Hafez, just as there is meaning, albeit of a different nature, to the erased milepost sings? Or is this another exercise in triviality in which we as a nation seem to excel? I am not sure, but let us explore.
A great wave of Allah Hafez is sweeping Khoda Hafez not merely off roadside signs and hoardings but from its niches of every description. Say Khoda Hafez as a parting wish to a friend whom you may have met in the course of normal business of life, and you can now be sure to receive an Allah Hafez in return. My brother, cousins, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, almost one and all, reel off an Allah Hafez hot on the heel of my Khoda Hafez. If my departure after the meeting is somehow delayed by a few moments -- that is, after I have already said Khoda Hafez, and they Allah Hafez -- they are likely to take the opportunity to say Allah Hafez for a second time. This, I suspect, is to nullify my Khoda Hafez. But wait. There is more to come. A close relative of mine, fully grown though still a bit short of my advanced years, glared at me the other day and solemnly proclaimed: "to say Khoda Hafez is act of gunah". Five- year olds have returned my Khoda Hafez with a defiant Allah Hafez.
And, yes, television newscasters now end their news bulletin with Allah Hafez, invariably on the state-owned TV channel but also on other channels. So do radio broadcasters. Ministers in the present government of the country, as well as other political leaders, never fail to end their speeches with Allah Hafez. (This, by the way, does not mean my endorsement of Khoda Hafez either in the public domain.)
Inquisitive as ever, I asked all and sundry how did such a sweeping change come about. This was met, for the most part, with a shrug and a strange I-don't-know-but- this-is-the-proper-thing-to-do reply. A senior friend of mine told me that this was entirely a political matter. And he was not joking. Astonished, I asked for an elaboration. "Arey bhai", he proceeded to explain, "the Awami Leagers say Khoda Hafez; the BNP- wallas say Allah Hafez. Satisfied?"
Of course I was not satisfied with the answer, even though the politics of the situation did seem to ring a bell. But surely the matter cannot be entirely as trivial as that. I soon promised myself, as well as a few others, that I would go to the bottom of it all. I now proceed to redeem my pledge.
I believe even the most ardent exponent of Allah Hafez will concede that whether a Muslim says Allah or utter Khoda, he or she means one and the same Supreme Being. This concession is, in fact, not a matter of magnanimity on the part of the Allah Hafezites. It has the force of logic behind it: if by uttering Khoda Hafez one can lose his Faith, then all the countless millions who must have uttered it in the historical past would have to be considered non-Muslim. A dreadful thought indeed! My ancestors, bless their souls, many of them devout Muslims, were all attuned to Khoda Hafez. They certainly did not belong to aiyyam-e jahelia. There can be little doubt therefore that Muslims mean the same Supreme Being -- I shall be using the term quite often for the sake of neutrality between "Allah" and "Khoda" in the present context -- no matter what name is used for Him. There must therefore be some compelling reason for the rush to abandon Khoda Hafez in favour of Allah Hafez. What is it? To start with, is the latter expression more Islamic?
"Allah" is certainly the preeminent name of the Supreme Being to Muslims. But this may come as a surprise to many that the word Allah has pre-Islamic roots. Some defenders of Allah Hafez are cagey about the pre-Islamic roots of the word even though Allah's greatness certainly does not depend on considerations of etymology of words used to describe or address Him. There is some recognition in the Allah Hafez camp of the historic connection. Take the following sentences, for example: " The word "Allah" was not unknown to the Arabs before Muhammad (Sa) (13: 16, 29: 61-63 etc.) They also had knowledge that man was a servant of Allah: this is seen in the name Abd Allah." [Shankhipta Islami Biswakosh, Brief Islamic Encylopaedia, (in Bengali). Islamic Foundation Bangladesh. 1982. Vol. I. p.67. The translation is mine. The numbers in parentheses are those of Qur'ânic suras and verses, respectively.] The Biswakosh also acknowledges that, "According to some linguists the word Allah was derived by adding alif and laam to the word ilah."
This acknowledgement is almost grudging and apologetic. Note the expression "was not unknown", or "according to some linguists". There is also omission of the fact that the pre-Islamic name Abd Allah, quoted above, also happened to be the name of the father of the Prophet of Islam himself. The fact is, it is almost certain that the word "Allah" is of pre-Islamic origin, and was widely used by the Meccans before the advent of Islam. The following is from E.J. Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam [ E.J.Brill, New York, 1987, p.302]: "Before Islam. That the Arabs, before the time of Muhammed, accepted and worshipped, after a fashion, a supreme god called Allâh, -- "the Ilâh", or the god, if the form is of genuine Arabic origin; if of Aramaic, from Alâhâ, "the god" -- seems absolutely certain." The Meccan's concept of the Supreme Being was of course, very different from that in Islam. But the word used to denote Him was the same in both and we are here concerned with the word, and there is little disagreement that the two expressions "Allah" and "Khoda" refer to the same Being.
There are numerous references in the Qur'ân to the pagan's use of the word "Allah". The following examples should suffice [The translations are from Abdullah Yusuf Ali's well-known Qur'ânic Translation and Commentary. The 'Allah' in the original Arabic has been substituted here for 'God' used by Yusuf Ali].
"They [the pagans] swear their strongest Oaths by Allah..." [VI(An'âm): 109.].Or,
"If indeed thou ask them [the pagans] who has created the heavens and the earth...they will certainly reply, 'Allah'....". [ XXIX (Ankabut):61]. Or,
"And if indeed thou ask them who it is that sends down rain from the sky,....they will certainly reply, 'Allah'..." [XXIX(Ankabut):63].
Very similar are the references to 'Allah' in verses XXXIX: 25, XXXIX: 38, and XLIII: 87.
The importance given to 'Allah' in earlier societies was also reflected in a major historical document: the Treaty of Hudaybiya. As is well known, in drawing up the treaty document the Prophet of Islam had instructed the scribe to begin with " In the name of Allah, the Compassionate [Rahman], the Merciful [Rahim]. But Suhayl b. Amr, representing the Quraysh, objected to Rahman and Rahim and insisted that only "In the name of Allah" be written instead. This was agreed to. [ Ibn Ishaq, The life of Muhammad, Tr. A. Guillaume, Oxford University Press. 1967. P. 504.]
It should be evident by now that we are on track of a question of some importance: what is in a name? Let us pursue the matter a little further for more insight from the Qur'â
n itself. But let us also note in passing that Christian Arabs still use 'Allah' for their western co-religionist's 'God'. That does not make them any more Muslim than a Muslim's use of God makes him Christian.
The Qur'ân strongly suggests that whatever name one might give the Supreme Being, it is proper, so long as it is one of asma-al-husna, or 'the beautiful names' of His. Thus:
"The most beautiful names belong to God: so call on Him by them; but shun such men as use profanity in His names.... [VII( Al- A'raf): 180]. Again, " Say: 'Call upon God [Allah] or call upon Rahman: by whatever name ye call Him, (it is well): for to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names....'" [ XVII(Bani Isrâ-il): 110]
As one commentator explains: "Allah has not just two names ["Allah" and "Rahman"] but many more. By whatever name one calls Him, he is calling the same Being" [The Holy Qur'an al Karim. Bangla Translation and Brief Tafsir. Original: Hazrat Maulana Mufti Muhammad Shafi. Translation and edition: Maulana Muhiuddid Khan. The translation from Bengali is mine.] In his commentary on LIX: 24, in which the phrase "the beautiful names" again appears, the same commentator explains: "Allah has beautiful names. In the Holy Qur'ân there is no definite indication of the number of such names". Hadith is mentioned as the source of the ninety -nine names commonly associated with the Supreme Being. But the commentator emphasizes that there are other names of His and these are numbered in the hundreds.
It is useful to point out here that Rahman is not only one of the many "attributes" of Allah; there places in the Qur'ân where "Rahman" is used in lieu of "Allah". The verse XVII: 110, quoted above, ["call upon Allah or call upon Rahman..."] is an important case. But there are other instances. Thus, sura LV ( Rahman ) starts with the name "Rahman", not "Allah". Again, in LXVII (Mulk): 3 one finds: " No want of proportion wilt thou see in the creation of Rahman....". Here too "Rahman" has been used in lieu of "Allah".
Having thus established that it is entirely permissible to call the Supreme Being by any of His names,( "Allah", "Rahman", or any other name), so long as it is not profane, and especially if it is beautiful, let us turn to the name which is the bone of contention here. As everyone knows, "Khoda" is a Persian word (actually Khuda in Persian, and slightly modified to Khoda in Bangla), not Arabic. With its root khud or khod, it simply means self-existing.
It is important in the present context to remember how intertwined has the word "Khoda" been with Bengali Muslim culture. In terms of its usage in everyday life, it is at least as common as "Allah", perhaps more so. The folklore of Bengal is strewn with it. One finds numerous invocations of Khoda in the lyrics of the region. Many Islamic Nazrul songs, for example, invoke Khoda and these songs are part of our cultural heritage, as are many devotional folk songs. I have seen Nazrul lyrics that contain both "Khoda" and "Allah" in the same composition.
It must also be appropriate to recall here briefly how prominent a place the word "Khuda" occupied in the culture of the land of its origin, Persia. I found it difficult to resist the quote: "O Jami, the road of guidance to Khuda is naught but love". This is a line from the Diwans of the great mystic poet and scholar Jami . Mulla Nurud-Din Jami, it is important to note, was an orthodox Muslim and was not enamoured of pre-Islamic Persian culture. [See Edward G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia. Cambridge. 1976. (Original publication:1902). I have introduced "Khuda" from the Persian text, in place of Browne's translation in which "God" was used.] His piety did not prevent him from using "Khuda". Or, look at a line from Rumi, another great mystic poet: "That Khuda who on Creation's Primal Day / The first foundation of thy soul did lay/..." [ibid. Here too I have substituted "Khuda" from the Persian text for "God" in the translation by Browne.]
To go back to the question of propriety of the use of Khoda Hafez, the word "Khoda" is certainly not profane; it does not disparage the Supreme Being; it in fact compares rather well with other accepted names of His in Arabic; and the idea conveyed by the word finds powerful support from the Qur'ân itself. That the word is not profane or even disparaging should be obvious. It is also an unambiguously beautiful name.
For its lack of ambiguity, compare it with a couple of Arabic words often used to describe a particular attribute of the Supreme Being but which have other meanings as well. Take, for example, "Jabbar". Its dictionary meaning includes "a tyrant", "a giant", "someone pitiless". But when applied to the Supreme Being, it is taken to mean "the Most Powerful". Or note that one dictionary meaning of "Mutakabbar" is "haughty", but is not used in this sense when applied to the Supreme Being, or that "Quahhar" also literally means "haughty" but not when applied to Him. By contrast, there is no double meaning to the word "Khoda". It unambiguously means "self-existing".
Perhaps even more significantly, the meaning attached to "Khoda" is also exactly the same as that conveyed by a combination of attributes of the Supreme Being described in one of the most important suras of the Qur'an [Sura CXII (Ikhlas)] The translation of the phrase "Allah -as- samad: lum yaled wa lum yulud" is : "God, the Eternal, the Absolute; He begetteth not, nor is He begotten" [ Translation, Yusuf Ali]. "Samad" and "Wa lum yulud" convey a sense that is identical with the meaning of "Khoda". To top it, note that the word "Quyyum", used as an attribute of the Supreme Being also means, in Arabic, "self-existing", or "self-subsisting", which is identical with the sense conveyed by "Khoda".
It has often been argued that the name "Allah" encompasses all conceivable attributes of His. The Islami Bishwakosh, referred to above, insists: " The name "Allah" cannot be translated into any other language. Besides, the nouns and adjectives used by Allah in the Qur'ân to describe His own being, attributes, and actions, are all implicit in the name Allah". But this is merely an assertion and has no logical foundation to it. It flies in the face of the quotations from the Qur'ân given above, suggesting that Allah can be called by any name, including "Rahman", for example. Moreover, on a different plane, if indeed all His attributes were subsumed in "Allah", there would be no need for the name "Allah" to be followed by the host of other names, as in the popular invocation of the names of Allah, prescribed in the hadith. If "Allah" is all encompassing, then, by definition, the other names are superfluous, which is evidently not the case in the Islamic tradition.
Why, then, is the rush to jettison Khoda Hafez in favour of Allah Hafez? Could this be because the word "Khoda" is Persian, that is, non- Arabic or ´Ajami, the term strictly meaning "Persian", but sometimes taken to mean, generally derogatorily, all non-Arabs? One suspects that this is indeed the case, and if so, the detractors of Khoda Hafez are in considerable trouble.
The Qur'ân dwells, in a number of places, on the question of the revelation of its text in the Arabic language and explains why: so that people (Arabs) would understand it. Thus: [The Qur'â
n is] A Book, whereof the verses are explained in detail; -- a Qur'ân in Arabic, for people who understand;..." [XLI( Ha-Mim Sajda):3]. Similarly: "We have made it a Qur'â
n in Arabic, that you may be able to understand." [ XLIII(Zukhruf):3].
One could formulate a thesis, if only for the sake of argument that what is being suggested is that the Qur'ân is meant for speakers of Arabic alone. Those who would insist on saying only Allah Hafez in all circumstances, and never Khoda Hafez, simply because the former expression is Arabic while the latter is not, is in fact in danger of being too close for comfort to this thesis. On the other hand, to its proponents, as well to others, Islam is a universal religion, meant for all mankind. One cannot, at one and the same time, accept only what is Arabic and also see his religion as something universal, cutting across the huge number of linguistic barriers that separate the peoples of the world from one another. The Qur'ân itself can be quoted as having recognised this diversity: "If God had so willed, He would have made you a single people.." [V ( Mâida): 48 ]. The proponents of Allah Hafez, while offering little substantive reason for their uncompromising abhorrence of Khoda Hafez, are also blind to this diversity.
The above analysis is not to suggest that all those who switched to Allah Hafez, and wanted others to follow them, have done so for motives of piety alone or that they are a bunch of ignoramuses. There is little doubt that a substantial body of the proponents of the new orthodoxy has a political agenda of its own, though not in the trivial sense in which my interlocutor mentioned above used it. That agenda is one of "Islamisation" of the society in their image of the religion, and is all too evident today.
Still, this essay has primarily been a defence of reason. It is essential to inquire, to probe, to see for ourselves rather than see things the way the establishment, religious or lay, wants us to. While writing this piece I was reminded of the well-known fable of the man who, having been told that a falcon had just flown away with his ears, pursues the peregrine without bothering to find out if his two precious organs were really missing. Nothing is lost by the use of the word "Khoda", and no sin committed. To the inquiring mind, --one that refuses to pursue the proverbial falcon -- I say: Khoda Hafez! It is quite possible that by abandoning such pursuit he or she will have time for more productive ones.
Mahfuzur Rahman is a former UN official. He occasionally contributes to this paper.
November 18, 2003
Khoda Hafez versus Allah Hafez: A critical inquiry
Mahfuzur Rahman
On a trip from Dhaka to north Bangladesh during my recent visit to the country, I was struck by two phenomena. First, there was something unusual about some of the mileposts along the highway. In many places, as we headed for the Jamuna, they would often have a painted-over strip, a blank. The name of a particular destination has been systematically erased. You guessed right. The blank space, staring ever so briefly as you sped past it, once spelled out Bangabandhu Setu. The sign was gone, moved and painted over, almost certainly at state expense. How amazing, though, that a dumb, blank milepost could still speak volumes!
It is, however, a second phenomenon that I have chosen as the theme of the following paragraphs: many signboards, especially those at the boundaries of local administrative districts, that not so long ago wished Khoda Hafez to the exiting travellers, now say Allah Hafez instead. I, of course, never doubted the sincerity of those who put up the slogans invoking God's protection on roads infested with unsafe automobiles and marauding drivers. I am also sure the Supreme Being now being called upon, in fresh paint, to protect the lives of the users of those thoroughfares is the same One whose name used to be invoked on the old signs. Why then the change? Is there something of significance in the changeover, also made at considerable cost, from Khoda Hafez to Allah Hafez, just as there is meaning, albeit of a different nature, to the erased milepost sings? Or is this another exercise in triviality in which we as a nation seem to excel? I am not sure, but let us explore.
A great wave of Allah Hafez is sweeping Khoda Hafez not merely off roadside signs and hoardings but from its niches of every description. Say Khoda Hafez as a parting wish to a friend whom you may have met in the course of normal business of life, and you can now be sure to receive an Allah Hafez in return. My brother, cousins, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, almost one and all, reel off an Allah Hafez hot on the heel of my Khoda Hafez. If my departure after the meeting is somehow delayed by a few moments -- that is, after I have already said Khoda Hafez, and they Allah Hafez -- they are likely to take the opportunity to say Allah Hafez for a second time. This, I suspect, is to nullify my Khoda Hafez. But wait. There is more to come. A close relative of mine, fully grown though still a bit short of my advanced years, glared at me the other day and solemnly proclaimed: "to say Khoda Hafez is act of gunah". Five- year olds have returned my Khoda Hafez with a defiant Allah Hafez.
And, yes, television newscasters now end their news bulletin with Allah Hafez, invariably on the state-owned TV channel but also on other channels. So do radio broadcasters. Ministers in the present government of the country, as well as other political leaders, never fail to end their speeches with Allah Hafez. (This, by the way, does not mean my endorsement of Khoda Hafez either in the public domain.)
Inquisitive as ever, I asked all and sundry how did such a sweeping change come about. This was met, for the most part, with a shrug and a strange I-don't-know-but- this-is-the-proper-thing-to-do reply. A senior friend of mine told me that this was entirely a political matter. And he was not joking. Astonished, I asked for an elaboration. "Arey bhai", he proceeded to explain, "the Awami Leagers say Khoda Hafez; the BNP- wallas say Allah Hafez. Satisfied?"
Of course I was not satisfied with the answer, even though the politics of the situation did seem to ring a bell. But surely the matter cannot be entirely as trivial as that. I soon promised myself, as well as a few others, that I would go to the bottom of it all. I now proceed to redeem my pledge.
I believe even the most ardent exponent of Allah Hafez will concede that whether a Muslim says Allah or utter Khoda, he or she means one and the same Supreme Being. This concession is, in fact, not a matter of magnanimity on the part of the Allah Hafezites. It has the force of logic behind it: if by uttering Khoda Hafez one can lose his Faith, then all the countless millions who must have uttered it in the historical past would have to be considered non-Muslim. A dreadful thought indeed! My ancestors, bless their souls, many of them devout Muslims, were all attuned to Khoda Hafez. They certainly did not belong to aiyyam-e jahelia. There can be little doubt therefore that Muslims mean the same Supreme Being -- I shall be using the term quite often for the sake of neutrality between "Allah" and "Khoda" in the present context -- no matter what name is used for Him. There must therefore be some compelling reason for the rush to abandon Khoda Hafez in favour of Allah Hafez. What is it? To start with, is the latter expression more Islamic?
"Allah" is certainly the preeminent name of the Supreme Being to Muslims. But this may come as a surprise to many that the word Allah has pre-Islamic roots. Some defenders of Allah Hafez are cagey about the pre-Islamic roots of the word even though Allah's greatness certainly does not depend on considerations of etymology of words used to describe or address Him. There is some recognition in the Allah Hafez camp of the historic connection. Take the following sentences, for example: " The word "Allah" was not unknown to the Arabs before Muhammad (Sa) (13: 16, 29: 61-63 etc.) They also had knowledge that man was a servant of Allah: this is seen in the name Abd Allah." [Shankhipta Islami Biswakosh, Brief Islamic Encylopaedia, (in Bengali). Islamic Foundation Bangladesh. 1982. Vol. I. p.67. The translation is mine. The numbers in parentheses are those of Qur'ânic suras and verses, respectively.] The Biswakosh also acknowledges that, "According to some linguists the word Allah was derived by adding alif and laam to the word ilah."
This acknowledgement is almost grudging and apologetic. Note the expression "was not unknown", or "according to some linguists". There is also omission of the fact that the pre-Islamic name Abd Allah, quoted above, also happened to be the name of the father of the Prophet of Islam himself. The fact is, it is almost certain that the word "Allah" is of pre-Islamic origin, and was widely used by the Meccans before the advent of Islam. The following is from E.J. Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam [ E.J.Brill, New York, 1987, p.302]: "Before Islam. That the Arabs, before the time of Muhammed, accepted and worshipped, after a fashion, a supreme god called Allâh, -- "the Ilâh", or the god, if the form is of genuine Arabic origin; if of Aramaic, from Alâhâ, "the god" -- seems absolutely certain." The Meccan's concept of the Supreme Being was of course, very different from that in Islam. But the word used to denote Him was the same in both and we are here concerned with the word, and there is little disagreement that the two expressions "Allah" and "Khoda" refer to the same Being.
There are numerous references in the Qur'ân to the pagan's use of the word "Allah". The following examples should suffice [The translations are from Abdullah Yusuf Ali's well-known Qur'ânic Translation and Commentary. The 'Allah' in the original Arabic has been substituted here for 'God' used by Yusuf Ali].
"They [the pagans] swear their strongest Oaths by Allah..." [VI(An'âm): 109.].Or,
"If indeed thou ask them [the pagans] who has created the heavens and the earth...they will certainly reply, 'Allah'....". [ XXIX (Ankabut):61]. Or,
"And if indeed thou ask them who it is that sends down rain from the sky,....they will certainly reply, 'Allah'..." [XXIX(Ankabut):63].
Very similar are the references to 'Allah' in verses XXXIX: 25, XXXIX: 38, and XLIII: 87.
The importance given to 'Allah' in earlier societies was also reflected in a major historical document: the Treaty of Hudaybiya. As is well known, in drawing up the treaty document the Prophet of Islam had instructed the scribe to begin with " In the name of Allah, the Compassionate [Rahman], the Merciful [Rahim]. But Suhayl b. Amr, representing the Quraysh, objected to Rahman and Rahim and insisted that only "In the name of Allah" be written instead. This was agreed to. [ Ibn Ishaq, The life of Muhammad, Tr. A. Guillaume, Oxford University Press. 1967. P. 504.]
It should be evident by now that we are on track of a question of some importance: what is in a name? Let us pursue the matter a little further for more insight from the Qur'â
n itself. But let us also note in passing that Christian Arabs still use 'Allah' for their western co-religionist's 'God'. That does not make them any more Muslim than a Muslim's use of God makes him Christian.
The Qur'ân strongly suggests that whatever name one might give the Supreme Being, it is proper, so long as it is one of asma-al-husna, or 'the beautiful names' of His. Thus:
"The most beautiful names belong to God: so call on Him by them; but shun such men as use profanity in His names.... [VII( Al- A'raf): 180]. Again, " Say: 'Call upon God [Allah] or call upon Rahman: by whatever name ye call Him, (it is well): for to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names....'" [ XVII(Bani Isrâ-il): 110]
As one commentator explains: "Allah has not just two names ["Allah" and "Rahman"] but many more. By whatever name one calls Him, he is calling the same Being" [The Holy Qur'an al Karim. Bangla Translation and Brief Tafsir. Original: Hazrat Maulana Mufti Muhammad Shafi. Translation and edition: Maulana Muhiuddid Khan. The translation from Bengali is mine.] In his commentary on LIX: 24, in which the phrase "the beautiful names" again appears, the same commentator explains: "Allah has beautiful names. In the Holy Qur'ân there is no definite indication of the number of such names". Hadith is mentioned as the source of the ninety -nine names commonly associated with the Supreme Being. But the commentator emphasizes that there are other names of His and these are numbered in the hundreds.
It is useful to point out here that Rahman is not only one of the many "attributes" of Allah; there places in the Qur'ân where "Rahman" is used in lieu of "Allah". The verse XVII: 110, quoted above, ["call upon Allah or call upon Rahman..."] is an important case. But there are other instances. Thus, sura LV ( Rahman ) starts with the name "Rahman", not "Allah". Again, in LXVII (Mulk): 3 one finds: " No want of proportion wilt thou see in the creation of Rahman....". Here too "Rahman" has been used in lieu of "Allah".
Having thus established that it is entirely permissible to call the Supreme Being by any of His names,( "Allah", "Rahman", or any other name), so long as it is not profane, and especially if it is beautiful, let us turn to the name which is the bone of contention here. As everyone knows, "Khoda" is a Persian word (actually Khuda in Persian, and slightly modified to Khoda in Bangla), not Arabic. With its root khud or khod, it simply means self-existing.
It is important in the present context to remember how intertwined has the word "Khoda" been with Bengali Muslim culture. In terms of its usage in everyday life, it is at least as common as "Allah", perhaps more so. The folklore of Bengal is strewn with it. One finds numerous invocations of Khoda in the lyrics of the region. Many Islamic Nazrul songs, for example, invoke Khoda and these songs are part of our cultural heritage, as are many devotional folk songs. I have seen Nazrul lyrics that contain both "Khoda" and "Allah" in the same composition.
It must also be appropriate to recall here briefly how prominent a place the word "Khuda" occupied in the culture of the land of its origin, Persia. I found it difficult to resist the quote: "O Jami, the road of guidance to Khuda is naught but love". This is a line from the Diwans of the great mystic poet and scholar Jami . Mulla Nurud-Din Jami, it is important to note, was an orthodox Muslim and was not enamoured of pre-Islamic Persian culture. [See Edward G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia. Cambridge. 1976. (Original publication:1902). I have introduced "Khuda" from the Persian text, in place of Browne's translation in which "God" was used.] His piety did not prevent him from using "Khuda". Or, look at a line from Rumi, another great mystic poet: "That Khuda who on Creation's Primal Day / The first foundation of thy soul did lay/..." [ibid. Here too I have substituted "Khuda" from the Persian text for "God" in the translation by Browne.]
To go back to the question of propriety of the use of Khoda Hafez, the word "Khoda" is certainly not profane; it does not disparage the Supreme Being; it in fact compares rather well with other accepted names of His in Arabic; and the idea conveyed by the word finds powerful support from the Qur'ân itself. That the word is not profane or even disparaging should be obvious. It is also an unambiguously beautiful name.
For its lack of ambiguity, compare it with a couple of Arabic words often used to describe a particular attribute of the Supreme Being but which have other meanings as well. Take, for example, "Jabbar". Its dictionary meaning includes "a tyrant", "a giant", "someone pitiless". But when applied to the Supreme Being, it is taken to mean "the Most Powerful". Or note that one dictionary meaning of "Mutakabbar" is "haughty", but is not used in this sense when applied to the Supreme Being, or that "Quahhar" also literally means "haughty" but not when applied to Him. By contrast, there is no double meaning to the word "Khoda". It unambiguously means "self-existing".
Perhaps even more significantly, the meaning attached to "Khoda" is also exactly the same as that conveyed by a combination of attributes of the Supreme Being described in one of the most important suras of the Qur'an [Sura CXII (Ikhlas)] The translation of the phrase "Allah -as- samad: lum yaled wa lum yulud" is : "God, the Eternal, the Absolute; He begetteth not, nor is He begotten" [ Translation, Yusuf Ali]. "Samad" and "Wa lum yulud" convey a sense that is identical with the meaning of "Khoda". To top it, note that the word "Quyyum", used as an attribute of the Supreme Being also means, in Arabic, "self-existing", or "self-subsisting", which is identical with the sense conveyed by "Khoda".
It has often been argued that the name "Allah" encompasses all conceivable attributes of His. The Islami Bishwakosh, referred to above, insists: " The name "Allah" cannot be translated into any other language. Besides, the nouns and adjectives used by Allah in the Qur'ân to describe His own being, attributes, and actions, are all implicit in the name Allah". But this is merely an assertion and has no logical foundation to it. It flies in the face of the quotations from the Qur'ân given above, suggesting that Allah can be called by any name, including "Rahman", for example. Moreover, on a different plane, if indeed all His attributes were subsumed in "Allah", there would be no need for the name "Allah" to be followed by the host of other names, as in the popular invocation of the names of Allah, prescribed in the hadith. If "Allah" is all encompassing, then, by definition, the other names are superfluous, which is evidently not the case in the Islamic tradition.
Why, then, is the rush to jettison Khoda Hafez in favour of Allah Hafez? Could this be because the word "Khoda" is Persian, that is, non- Arabic or ´Ajami, the term strictly meaning "Persian", but sometimes taken to mean, generally derogatorily, all non-Arabs? One suspects that this is indeed the case, and if so, the detractors of Khoda Hafez are in considerable trouble.
The Qur'ân dwells, in a number of places, on the question of the revelation of its text in the Arabic language and explains why: so that people (Arabs) would understand it. Thus: [The Qur'â
n is] A Book, whereof the verses are explained in detail; -- a Qur'ân in Arabic, for people who understand;..." [XLI( Ha-Mim Sajda):3]. Similarly: "We have made it a Qur'â
n in Arabic, that you may be able to understand." [ XLIII(Zukhruf):3].
One could formulate a thesis, if only for the sake of argument that what is being suggested is that the Qur'ân is meant for speakers of Arabic alone. Those who would insist on saying only Allah Hafez in all circumstances, and never Khoda Hafez, simply because the former expression is Arabic while the latter is not, is in fact in danger of being too close for comfort to this thesis. On the other hand, to its proponents, as well to others, Islam is a universal religion, meant for all mankind. One cannot, at one and the same time, accept only what is Arabic and also see his religion as something universal, cutting across the huge number of linguistic barriers that separate the peoples of the world from one another. The Qur'ân itself can be quoted as having recognised this diversity: "If God had so willed, He would have made you a single people.." [V ( Mâida): 48 ]. The proponents of Allah Hafez, while offering little substantive reason for their uncompromising abhorrence of Khoda Hafez, are also blind to this diversity.
The above analysis is not to suggest that all those who switched to Allah Hafez, and wanted others to follow them, have done so for motives of piety alone or that they are a bunch of ignoramuses. There is little doubt that a substantial body of the proponents of the new orthodoxy has a political agenda of its own, though not in the trivial sense in which my interlocutor mentioned above used it. That agenda is one of "Islamisation" of the society in their image of the religion, and is all too evident today.
Still, this essay has primarily been a defence of reason. It is essential to inquire, to probe, to see for ourselves rather than see things the way the establishment, religious or lay, wants us to. While writing this piece I was reminded of the well-known fable of the man who, having been told that a falcon had just flown away with his ears, pursues the peregrine without bothering to find out if his two precious organs were really missing. Nothing is lost by the use of the word "Khoda", and no sin committed. To the inquiring mind, --one that refuses to pursue the proverbial falcon -- I say: Khoda Hafez! It is quite possible that by abandoning such pursuit he or she will have time for more productive ones.
Mahfuzur Rahman is a former UN official. He occasionally contributes to this paper.
Disc dirt on cleanser of ‘demon’ Kumar saheb’s role reversal
The Telegraph (Calucutta), November 18, 2003
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1031118/asp/nation/story_2584220.asp
Disc dirt on cleanser of ‘demon’ Kumar saheb’s role reversal
TAPAS CHAKRABORTY
Judeo addresses a news conference in Raipur on Sunday. (AFP)
Jashpurnagar (Chhattisgarh), Nov. 17: Tall, strapping and luxuriantly moustached, Kumar saheb has always boasted of being an “exorcist”, purging the souls of tribals of the “demon” of Christianity. Now, the exorcist looks in dire need of some exorcism himself.
“I am washing the sins of my forefathers. The tribals had gone astray because of my forefathers’ indifference to them. I will continue to do so till I am alive,” he would chant as he washed the feet of the tribals at his many re-conversion camps.
Dressed in army fatigue, he would use panchgap — a mix of cowdung, urine, milk, ghee and curd — for the “ablutions”, the washing of feet a symbolic “wiping away of the sin of Christianity from the soul”. In the background, Sanskrit scholars would chant shlokas as small fires raged in several pits dug in the ground.
Cleansing over, Kumar saheb would hand the Sitapur tribals — shivering in the early-morning winter chill — a nylon sari each to mark their return to Hinduism. Now, the saheb looks in need of a similar ritual to purge him of his many “sins”.
Caught on view CD last week allegedly accepting a bribe to grant a mining lease, the wheel has come full circle for the BJP’s Dilip Singh Judeo, former minister of state for forests and environment. “He would need more such materials to wash his image before the people,” said Satyanarayan Sinha, a Congress leader.
A seasoned hand at organising reconversion camps in Chhattisgarh, Judeo is believed to have organised and presided over hundreds of them between 1997 and 2001. At the Sitapur reconversion camp alone — the drive was nicknamed Operation Gharwapasi — over 2,000 tribals are reported to have returned to the Hindu fold.
The camps triggered much tension between Hindus and Christians in the state, but Judeo stuck with them because of backing from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. At the end of it, he found himself on the centre stage of Hindutva politics and with a central ministry berth in his pocket.
The mirror crack’d for Judeo a few days after he launched an anti-Christian campaign ahead of next month’s Assembly election in the state. “Tera jadoo dhal gaya (Your magic has waned),” Congress workers screamed at a rally against the tainted leader. But there was also much disbelief on the streets.
“Kumar saheb, a simple man of high vision, has been trapped in a vicious conspiracy,” said A.K. Vaidya, a worker of the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, a Sangh outfit for the benefit of tribals.
A scion of the Jashpurnagar royal family, Judeo is the uncle of the king, Raja Ranvijay Pratap Sinha. He was educated in a Christian school and college in Ranchi and first took on the Congress in Jashpurnagar after the privy purse of the royal families was stopped.
Articulate and anglicised, Judeo is a lover of good scotch and good food and is believed to be proud of his masculinity. “Log mere mardangi ka tareef karte hain,” he once said.
When he began to organise the Oraon tribals against Christianity, he would often dress like a tribal. “He would wear a dhoti and keep his body bare, hold a bow and arrow and move around the forest with the tribals to hold them in awe,” said Ramesh Vidarthi, a Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram cadre. That was how he got together a small group of tribals who owed allegiance exclusively to him.
When the Jashpurnagar royal family first began its Hindutva drive in the forties and the fifties, they set up schools and organisations like the Gayatri Sangh to “Sanskritise” the tribals. They built temples and schooled tribals about Hindu rituals. They also extended health care facilities to win over the tribals but could not match the might of the Christian missionaries.
In 1952, the RSS decided to set up the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram to lure tribals. The then king, Vijay Bhushan Sinha Judeo, first offered two rooms to start the ashram and later donated 150 acres to set up its head office. Slowly, the ashram grew from strength to strength and became a potent RSS platform against Christianity.
Deeply involved in conversion politics, Judeo always called himself a “small sepoy of Hindutva”. His anti-Christian rhetoric — he would coin slogans like “chop the hands of that convert” — often brought him into open confrontation with the missionaries.
BJP sources here said Judeo’s exit was not likely to hamper the party campaign. Nor is he likely to be missed much in the environment ministry. “All the decision-making authority rested with his senior, T.R. Baalu,” officials said.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1031118/asp/nation/story_2584220.asp
Disc dirt on cleanser of ‘demon’ Kumar saheb’s role reversal
TAPAS CHAKRABORTY
Judeo addresses a news conference in Raipur on Sunday. (AFP)
Jashpurnagar (Chhattisgarh), Nov. 17: Tall, strapping and luxuriantly moustached, Kumar saheb has always boasted of being an “exorcist”, purging the souls of tribals of the “demon” of Christianity. Now, the exorcist looks in dire need of some exorcism himself.
“I am washing the sins of my forefathers. The tribals had gone astray because of my forefathers’ indifference to them. I will continue to do so till I am alive,” he would chant as he washed the feet of the tribals at his many re-conversion camps.
Dressed in army fatigue, he would use panchgap — a mix of cowdung, urine, milk, ghee and curd — for the “ablutions”, the washing of feet a symbolic “wiping away of the sin of Christianity from the soul”. In the background, Sanskrit scholars would chant shlokas as small fires raged in several pits dug in the ground.
Cleansing over, Kumar saheb would hand the Sitapur tribals — shivering in the early-morning winter chill — a nylon sari each to mark their return to Hinduism. Now, the saheb looks in need of a similar ritual to purge him of his many “sins”.
Caught on view CD last week allegedly accepting a bribe to grant a mining lease, the wheel has come full circle for the BJP’s Dilip Singh Judeo, former minister of state for forests and environment. “He would need more such materials to wash his image before the people,” said Satyanarayan Sinha, a Congress leader.
A seasoned hand at organising reconversion camps in Chhattisgarh, Judeo is believed to have organised and presided over hundreds of them between 1997 and 2001. At the Sitapur reconversion camp alone — the drive was nicknamed Operation Gharwapasi — over 2,000 tribals are reported to have returned to the Hindu fold.
The camps triggered much tension between Hindus and Christians in the state, but Judeo stuck with them because of backing from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. At the end of it, he found himself on the centre stage of Hindutva politics and with a central ministry berth in his pocket.
The mirror crack’d for Judeo a few days after he launched an anti-Christian campaign ahead of next month’s Assembly election in the state. “Tera jadoo dhal gaya (Your magic has waned),” Congress workers screamed at a rally against the tainted leader. But there was also much disbelief on the streets.
“Kumar saheb, a simple man of high vision, has been trapped in a vicious conspiracy,” said A.K. Vaidya, a worker of the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, a Sangh outfit for the benefit of tribals.
A scion of the Jashpurnagar royal family, Judeo is the uncle of the king, Raja Ranvijay Pratap Sinha. He was educated in a Christian school and college in Ranchi and first took on the Congress in Jashpurnagar after the privy purse of the royal families was stopped.
Articulate and anglicised, Judeo is a lover of good scotch and good food and is believed to be proud of his masculinity. “Log mere mardangi ka tareef karte hain,” he once said.
When he began to organise the Oraon tribals against Christianity, he would often dress like a tribal. “He would wear a dhoti and keep his body bare, hold a bow and arrow and move around the forest with the tribals to hold them in awe,” said Ramesh Vidarthi, a Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram cadre. That was how he got together a small group of tribals who owed allegiance exclusively to him.
When the Jashpurnagar royal family first began its Hindutva drive in the forties and the fifties, they set up schools and organisations like the Gayatri Sangh to “Sanskritise” the tribals. They built temples and schooled tribals about Hindu rituals. They also extended health care facilities to win over the tribals but could not match the might of the Christian missionaries.
In 1952, the RSS decided to set up the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram to lure tribals. The then king, Vijay Bhushan Sinha Judeo, first offered two rooms to start the ashram and later donated 150 acres to set up its head office. Slowly, the ashram grew from strength to strength and became a potent RSS platform against Christianity.
Deeply involved in conversion politics, Judeo always called himself a “small sepoy of Hindutva”. His anti-Christian rhetoric — he would coin slogans like “chop the hands of that convert” — often brought him into open confrontation with the missionaries.
BJP sources here said Judeo’s exit was not likely to hamper the party campaign. Nor is he likely to be missed much in the environment ministry. “All the decision-making authority rested with his senior, T.R. Baalu,” officials said.
November 15, 2003
When the majority runs riot
The Daily Times (Lahore), 15 November 2003
When the majority runs riot
by Farish A Noor
Even if 99 per cent of the population of a country thinks that the earth is flat or that two plus two makes five, they remain wrong. There are times when the voice of the dissenting minority — always hated and suspected — is the only remaining check
“The future of Bharat (India) is set. Hindutva is here to stay. It is up to the Muslims whether they will be included in the new nationalistic spirit of Bharat. It is up to the government and the Muslim leadership whether they wish to increase Hindu furore or work with the Hindu leadership to show that Muslims and the government will consider Hindu sentiments. The era of one-way compromise of Hindus is over.”
The quote above comes from the official website of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and for those who have visited the site there is worse to come. Such bellicose sabre-rattling pyrotechnics is typical of the ideologues of the BJP led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Though the man claims to be a peace-loving poet and humanist at heart, the limits of his humanism stopped short while Muslims were being massacred and their homes burnt in the north Indian state of Gujarat not too long ago. The poet-leader was then busy launching his collection of poems, while the homes of Indian Muslims — who were, it must always be emphasised, Indian citizens — were being razed to the ground by other fellow citizens who happened to be Hindus, goaded on by their zealous leaders who speak the language of communalism and sectarianism, and preying on the collective fears of the Hindus — much of it invented and exaggerated.
The irony of it all is that the BJP’s sweeping demands for the Hindu-isation of Indian society and the erasure of its pluralist culture and history is being done through a discourse of democratic majoritarianism. This is the argument that simply because a community happens to be a majority in a country, then its voice must be heard — even if it means drowning out the voices of others — and its demands have to be met — even if it means negating the equally valid demands of others. The net result of this perverse abuse of democratic principles and mechanisms is the rule of the majority over the rest, leading, in many cases, to mob rule and the relentless persecution of minorities who are cast as the outsiders within.
But those of us who live in the Muslim world should be familiar with such rhetoric and tactics by now, for the Muslim world is not immune to such demagoguery either. How many times have we come across desperate Muslim leaders whose only claim to fame has been the cry ‘Islam in danger!’ and who have tried to rally support behind them with the appeal to defend Islam and to impose the will of Muslims on the rest of the body politic?
Indeed, one does not even have to attempt an in-depth analysis here: Even a cursory survey of the discursive strategies of the BJP and some of the more radical Islamist groups in Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia will show a similar pattern at work. In all these cases we see similar factors coming to the fore: generally unrepresentative and unpopular governments being challenged by radical groups from the margins who claim to have a miraculous solution to the ills that affect the nation as a whole.
More often than not a cultural analysis is offered to solve what is fundamentally a structural-economic problem: While countries like India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia may be affected by the adverse effects of globalisation, uneven development, breakdown of state and public institutions, the remedy offered by the communitarian zealots is as simple as it is false: Simply emphasise our cultural identity and use it to unite the nation as a whole.
In India, the Hindutva fascists have tried to gloss over the very real differentials of power, wealth and class that have divided Indian society by emphasising Hindu unity and cultural hegemony instead. In the Muslim world the tactic is the same though the remedy comes under a different brand: Muslim unity and hegemony is seen as the cure for the divisions in society, and all the problems will be solved when Muslim culture and values dominate all sectors of society, commerce, culture and politics.
At present in Malaysia the Pan-Malaysian Islamic party is attempting to push ahead with its brand of Hudud law, which its critics claim to be nothing more than a political gimmick to up the stakes in the Islamisation race and to impose its brand of Islam on the rest of the nation. The ideologues of the Islamic party claim that they have the right and the need to do so because Islam is the destiny of Malaysia and it is the will of the majority.
While it is true that Muslims make up nearly 60 per cent of the population of Malaysia today, the question remains: what about the rest of the country, 40 per cent of which happen to be made up of Christians, Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus and Sikhs? How are they to locate and establish their identity in this new monochromatic social order that the radical Islamists wish to construct? And what of the principles of the Malaysian constitution itself, which guarantees freedom of religion and pluralism for the nation?
In the end these questions will come to naught — whether in India or in Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, we can see that the fragile sinews of democratic culture are being strained to the limit by the demands of increasingly sectarian and communitarian groups, all in the name of democracy and the will of the majority.
But majoritarianism does have one major flaw, and that is that it does not guarantee the truth value of any claim. Being essentially normative in character, majoritarian demands may seem true in the spirit of the moment, but its epistemic value remains shifting and contestable. Even if 99 per cent of the population of a country thinks that the earth is flat or that two plus two makes five, they remain wrong. There are times when the voice of the dissenting minority — always hated and suspected, forever struggling to get itself heard — is the only remaining check, ensuring that the democratic culture of a nation remains healthy and intact. But the minorities are being stamped out now, as the demagogues and ideologues of populist politics push their way and the barricade of democracy is overrun.
Dr Farish A Noor is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist
When the majority runs riot
by Farish A Noor
Even if 99 per cent of the population of a country thinks that the earth is flat or that two plus two makes five, they remain wrong. There are times when the voice of the dissenting minority — always hated and suspected — is the only remaining check
“The future of Bharat (India) is set. Hindutva is here to stay. It is up to the Muslims whether they will be included in the new nationalistic spirit of Bharat. It is up to the government and the Muslim leadership whether they wish to increase Hindu furore or work with the Hindu leadership to show that Muslims and the government will consider Hindu sentiments. The era of one-way compromise of Hindus is over.”
The quote above comes from the official website of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and for those who have visited the site there is worse to come. Such bellicose sabre-rattling pyrotechnics is typical of the ideologues of the BJP led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Though the man claims to be a peace-loving poet and humanist at heart, the limits of his humanism stopped short while Muslims were being massacred and their homes burnt in the north Indian state of Gujarat not too long ago. The poet-leader was then busy launching his collection of poems, while the homes of Indian Muslims — who were, it must always be emphasised, Indian citizens — were being razed to the ground by other fellow citizens who happened to be Hindus, goaded on by their zealous leaders who speak the language of communalism and sectarianism, and preying on the collective fears of the Hindus — much of it invented and exaggerated.
The irony of it all is that the BJP’s sweeping demands for the Hindu-isation of Indian society and the erasure of its pluralist culture and history is being done through a discourse of democratic majoritarianism. This is the argument that simply because a community happens to be a majority in a country, then its voice must be heard — even if it means drowning out the voices of others — and its demands have to be met — even if it means negating the equally valid demands of others. The net result of this perverse abuse of democratic principles and mechanisms is the rule of the majority over the rest, leading, in many cases, to mob rule and the relentless persecution of minorities who are cast as the outsiders within.
But those of us who live in the Muslim world should be familiar with such rhetoric and tactics by now, for the Muslim world is not immune to such demagoguery either. How many times have we come across desperate Muslim leaders whose only claim to fame has been the cry ‘Islam in danger!’ and who have tried to rally support behind them with the appeal to defend Islam and to impose the will of Muslims on the rest of the body politic?
Indeed, one does not even have to attempt an in-depth analysis here: Even a cursory survey of the discursive strategies of the BJP and some of the more radical Islamist groups in Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia will show a similar pattern at work. In all these cases we see similar factors coming to the fore: generally unrepresentative and unpopular governments being challenged by radical groups from the margins who claim to have a miraculous solution to the ills that affect the nation as a whole.
More often than not a cultural analysis is offered to solve what is fundamentally a structural-economic problem: While countries like India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia may be affected by the adverse effects of globalisation, uneven development, breakdown of state and public institutions, the remedy offered by the communitarian zealots is as simple as it is false: Simply emphasise our cultural identity and use it to unite the nation as a whole.
In India, the Hindutva fascists have tried to gloss over the very real differentials of power, wealth and class that have divided Indian society by emphasising Hindu unity and cultural hegemony instead. In the Muslim world the tactic is the same though the remedy comes under a different brand: Muslim unity and hegemony is seen as the cure for the divisions in society, and all the problems will be solved when Muslim culture and values dominate all sectors of society, commerce, culture and politics.
At present in Malaysia the Pan-Malaysian Islamic party is attempting to push ahead with its brand of Hudud law, which its critics claim to be nothing more than a political gimmick to up the stakes in the Islamisation race and to impose its brand of Islam on the rest of the nation. The ideologues of the Islamic party claim that they have the right and the need to do so because Islam is the destiny of Malaysia and it is the will of the majority.
While it is true that Muslims make up nearly 60 per cent of the population of Malaysia today, the question remains: what about the rest of the country, 40 per cent of which happen to be made up of Christians, Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus and Sikhs? How are they to locate and establish their identity in this new monochromatic social order that the radical Islamists wish to construct? And what of the principles of the Malaysian constitution itself, which guarantees freedom of religion and pluralism for the nation?
In the end these questions will come to naught — whether in India or in Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, we can see that the fragile sinews of democratic culture are being strained to the limit by the demands of increasingly sectarian and communitarian groups, all in the name of democracy and the will of the majority.
But majoritarianism does have one major flaw, and that is that it does not guarantee the truth value of any claim. Being essentially normative in character, majoritarian demands may seem true in the spirit of the moment, but its epistemic value remains shifting and contestable. Even if 99 per cent of the population of a country thinks that the earth is flat or that two plus two makes five, they remain wrong. There are times when the voice of the dissenting minority — always hated and suspected, forever struggling to get itself heard — is the only remaining check, ensuring that the democratic culture of a nation remains healthy and intact. But the minorities are being stamped out now, as the demagogues and ideologues of populist politics push their way and the barricade of democracy is overrun.
Dr Farish A Noor is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist
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