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April 16, 2016

India: Insularity of fatwas points to a larger problem (Sameer Arshad)

The Times of India

Insularity of fatwas points to a larger problem
April 16, 2016, 10:04 am IST Sameer Arshad in Gray Areas | India | TOI


Deoband’s Maulana Hussain Madani challenged Allama Iqbal when the poet-philosopher began pushing his idea of territorial nationalism in the 1930s. He held his own against the Cambridge University alumnus and arguably Urdu’s greatest poet of ‘sare jahan say acha Hindustan hamara’ fame in an informed debate on nationhood. Madani cited Islamic sources to argue for composite nationalism and united India while rejecting Iqbal’s idea.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah fleshed out the idea in the shape of Pakistan as he overshadowed people like Madani with his rise following Muslim League’s support for the British during the Second World War. It coincided with the imprisonment of Madani’s ally, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the bloodbath that made the partition for Pakistan’s creation inevitable. Along with mass killings and migrations, partition led to Muslim brain drain to Pakistan besides accelerating margination of Muslims left behind. And among the consequences of this marginalisation has been the decline in clerical quality that scholars like Madani and Abul Kalam Azad once represented.

The decline is reflected in the ill-advised fatwas churned out periodically with the one on ‘Bharat Mata Ki’ controversy being the latest. By issuing the fatwa, the Deoband seminary has again played into the hands of Hindutva elements, which would use it for their traditional vote-getting formula of whipping up anti-Muslim hysteria in an election season. The internalisation of Muslims as the other plays a part in getting disproportionate media attention to fatwas, which are just individual opinions. The attention follows a pattern of chronic Muslim stereotyping in the media. What the media ignores is that all fatwas end with ‘Allah knows best’ which underlines limitations of human interpretations of the scriptures and that different people can interpret the same differently.

But the larger issue remains clerical decline reflected in the fatwas’ insularity. This blinkeredness comes because the clerical knowledge is limited to the scriptures, which cannot be interpreted in the light of modern times without the basic knowledge of politics, history, economy etc. Had the clergy been more erudite, it would have left qualified people like Mrinal Pande to deal with Bharat Mata controversy. The clerics had no reason to wade into it and make lives of beleaguered Muslims more problematic. This while there is no dearth of people like Pande, who have effectively challenged Bharat Mata’s transformation into a militant goddess for long term goal of the Hindu state and immediate need to consolidate Hindu votes.

There is little hope of any improvement because of the limited talent pool available for clergy. As the seminal Sachar Committee report on Muslim marginalisation revealed, only four percent Muslim kids study at seminaries like Deoband to become clerics. These kids mostly come from poorest families and are often enrolled at madrassas as they take care of their free food, lodging and clothing. With the increasing marginalisation, encouraging ones children to become clerics is neither a financially viable job option nor does it ensure the same prestige payer leaders once enjoyed. In places like Kashmir, socially-dominant Syeds/Pirs once had a total monopoly over the clergy. Now there is rarely a prayer leader from this group as the preferred choices are secular and high paying jobs.

The insularity could be addressed with reforms perhaps on the lines of Egypt’s al-Azhar University founded in 970 AD. The basic teachings at the university relate to Islamic law, theology, and Arabic. But the university has tried to keep pace with the times. Some modern subjects were made obligatory as early as in the 19th century. Al-Azhar underwent considerable reforms with the introduction of medicine and engineering in the 1960s when women were admitted to the university first. It now has women teachers too. A lot of this has been achieved as a result of the government support that appears impossible in India under the present dispensation. Even if the current rulers encourage reform, it would be futile because of the trust deficit as a result of their inherent hostility toward Muslims.

Even secular politicians have lost touch with Muslim masses as a result of their otherisation and ghettoization for security reasons. This is another reason for the problem as it has made clerics in many cases vote contractors for parties like Congress. It gives clerics a position where they can easily resist calls for reform. If the recently-held ‘Sufi’ Forum is anything to go by, the BJP government appears to be following the same model. Hundreds of neo-Sufi clerics gathered at the event last month and ranted against ‘Wahhabism’ for four days without offering any solutions.

The neo-Sufis mullahs are gaining increasing traction as they have perfected the art of making the right noises. But they mirror the traditional ulema in their lack of scholarship. Most of them are associated with shrines, awash with easy money, because of their heredity invariably without any training in secular subjects or theology. Their lifestyles are a far cry from the traditional Sufis, who kept rulers at arm’s length and emerged as spiritual inheritors of the prophet in response to the seventh century Umayyad dynasty’s materialism. With invariably obsessive focus on official patronage, they remain aloof from the real Muslim issues. As such seeing them as a silver-lining, both in terms of enlightened scholarship or hold over masses, is a fallacy when none exists.