The Hindu - 31 January 2013
A new martyr
has arisen on the horizon, going by the unlikely name of Owaisi.
Intellectuals of all shades — except the Hindutva brand — are protesting
the “victimization” of the Owaisi brothers as “Muslim leaders.” Their
father, “Sultan” Salahuddin Owaisi, a veteran instigator of communal
riots, must be chuckling in his grave, wherein he was interred with full
State honours by the ruling Congress, just as another rabble-rouser was
given a similar send-off recently.
The parallels between Bal Thackeray and the Owaisi brothers are many.
Akbaruddin Owaisi’s speech has echoes of the Sena chief’s rants: the
same denigration of the other community, the same call to arms cloaked
in religious terminology, the same self-projection as the saviour of the
community, even the same vulgarity. Charged Shiv Sainiks used to react
in the same way as the all-male Muslim audience did at Nirmal.
But the differences are significant. Bal Thackeray insulted Muslims
all the time; indeed, the word he used to refer to them was itself
derogatory. But on record, Thackeray never insulted the Prophet.
However, throughout his speech, Owaisi abuses Hindu deities and beliefs.
Second, while Thackeray targeted the ruling Congress in the State and
Centre, Akbaruddin targets “Hindustan,” not once, but again and again.
“Ai Hindustan,” he warns, don’t trifle with “us.” Does Akbaruddin Owaisi
consider “us,” i.e., himself and his community, a part of Hindustan,
you wonder. In keeping with this attitude is his threat that if driven
away, he and his community would take with them all “their” treasures —
the Taj Mahal and other Mughal monuments. What is all this if not
spreading feelings of separateness from the country in a specific
community? When Thackeray accused Muslims of disloyalty, we wanted him
prosecuted under Sec 153 A — promoting enmity between communities. When
Owaisi spreads feelings of hatred against the country among his
community, what should he be charged with?
There is a third difference. Unlike Thackeray’s phoney cry of “Hindus
in danger,” the litany of injustices against Muslims recited by
Akbaruddin is all true. Which is why, had he berated the ruling party in
the worst terms possible, it would have been perfectly understandable.
But he wouldn’t have been an Owaisi had he done that. Listen to what his
brother said opposing the Women’s Reservation Bill in Parliament in
2010. Were it passed, he threatened, “the Lok Sabha will turn into a
Hindu Lok Sabha.” This outlook — of looking at all issues not only
through the prism of a communal identity, but one which is distinct from
the rest of India — permeates the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM).
Just a fortnight ago, addressing Muslim students, the party secretary
termed the installation of Gandhiji’s statue in the Andhra Pradesh State
Assembly as an attempt at “changing history” because the building was
constructed by “Nizam Sarkar.”
Vendetta politics
Apart from the rich gains of communal politics, the Owaisis would
rather target Hindus and Hindustan than the Congress because the mother
of all secular parties has always patronised it, like it has the Shiv
Sena. Its reluctance to prosecute the younger Owaisi for his speech was a
reminder of its reluctance to prosecute any Thackeray. The arrest
earlier this month of Asaduddin Owaisi, his elder brother, for an
offence committed in 2005, was obviously a fallout of his withdrawal of
support to the Congress in his State. When Maharashtra’s then Deputy
Home Minister Chhagan Bhujbal arrested Bal Thackeray in 2001 for his
writings during the 1992-93 riots, it was the Sena-Bharatiya Janata
Party alone that complained about an eight-year-old case being dug up.
Some secular activists now crying foul over Asaduddin’s arrest had
hailed Bhujbal then, even though Thackeray’s arrest was as much vendetta
politics as this Owaisi arrest .
This 2005 case is not the only one in which the MIM MP has been
charged under Sec 153 A. Between 2005 and 2008, four cases were
registered against the MIM president not only for promoting enmity
between Hindus and Muslims, but also for rioting with deadly weapons,
deliberately insulting religious feelings, and defiling a place of
worship with intent to insult a religion. In none of these did
prosecution proceed, thanks to a benevolent Congress administration.
This is the man the secular Congress allied with. This is the man a
section of secular activists is out to defend.
Be it the Shiv Sena, Bhindranwale, or the Owaisis, the Congress has
encouraged rabble-rousers of all communities, and acted against them
only when forced to. The divisive poison spewed by all has been more or
less of the same intensity, but Hindu demagogues have been protected
oftener than their counterparts from other communities have. So, should
the latter also be awarded the same impunity? The internet, that took
Akbaruddin Owaisi’s utterances to the world, can be similarly used to
book Raj Thackeray, Togadia and MP Adityanath. If police stations and
courts are flooded with complaints, some action will have to be taken.
Let’s not forget that it was a magistrate relying on police records
who convicted Sena leader Madhukar Sarpotdar, the first politician in
Maharashtra to be convicted under Sec 153 A, 16 years after his offence.
(Jyoti Punwani is a Mumbai-based journalist and writer).
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