Balbir Punj
Normally such bombast would have been ignored as the rantings of an extremist, for such madcaps are there in every community and sometimes even in language or caste groups. But this outburst has a peculiar ring to it and those who have a stake in preserving the plural and secular character of our polity cannot afford to ignore it on three counts.
The perpetrator is not an individual. He is a politician, on whose party’s support the state Government in Andhra Pradesh survived till recently and enjoys a substantial backing of his community. Second, the crowd, running into thousands, endorsed his hate speech, through repeated applause and slogan shouting.
Conspiracy of Silence
Third, what was the response of the establishment , self proclaimed ‘secularists’ and media to this open challenge to Indian pluralistic ethos ,insult to Hindu icons, a brazen call for violence and civil war ? In the true tradition of modern Indian ‘secularists ‘, the media and the political class entered into a conspiracy of silence. Like Gandhiji’s proverbial monkeys , the ‘secularists’ in India hear or see no evil, provided the evil doer is a non Hindu.So their mouths were shut tight.
For over a week, none reacted . Only on January 2 , 2013, a national English news channel decided to break the deafening silence on the issue and carried a story and ran a discussion program. A few other channels did a poor follow-up , made a half hearted effort and reported a diluted version of the anti- national speech.The zest and verve, common on TV channels on much less controversial subjects , were completely missing in the reporting of such an important event.
For the Andhra Pradesh Government , like the ‘secular’ parties in the country , nothing wrong had happened and a public call for a civil war was no offense under the Indian Penal Code. It was only after a citizen moved the Court, the state government was forced by a judicial order to register cases against Owaisi. Meanwhile the accused had flown to London for ‘treatment ‘ and at the time of writing was last seen on the social media , clubbing and partying there.
MIM’s Record
Akbaruddin belongs to All India Majlis-e Ittihadul Muslimeen (MIM) and heads the seven-member strong group of his party in Andhra Pradesh Assembly. He is the son of late Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi and the younger brother of Asaduddin Owaisi, a sitting Lok Sabha member.
In this sordid case, the ‘secularists’ were indeed true to their record of treating Islamic fundamentalism synonymous with ‘secularism ‘ , so was Owaisi . In his hour long tirade , he lived upto the history and traditions of his party . MIM has roots going back to the days of Nizam and had lent support for the campaign seeking creation of Pakistan.
MIM was instrumental in raising an 1.50 lakh strong army of Razakars against newly independent India (1947-48) and the Hindus living in the then princely state of Hyderabad. After the merger of Hyderabad state into the Indian Union, MIM remained banned between 1948 and 1957. MIM, under the Owaisi family continues to pursue its pre-independence divisive, communal and sectarian agenda .It’s usual targets are India , Hindus and icons of human rights and reformers within the Islamic society.
In 2007 , Akbaruddin threatened to carry out the fatwa to kill Salman Rushdie and behead well known author Taslima Nasreen, if they ever visited Hyderabad.In 2010 he said that he would have killed P V Narasimha Rao with his own hands had he not died.He has frequently spoken in public disparaging Hindus and Hindu Gods. And in carrying it’s communal programs, MIM and the Owaisi clan have the overt and covert support of ‘secular’ parties, particularly of Congress. Till two months back, the Congress Government in Andhra Pradesh was enjoying MIM support.
The Community Support
What Akbaruddin has said is not an empty threat . While he exhorts his followers to take path of confrontation against the country of their birth, the thundering applause he gets also underline the ugly reality that he is merely mouthing what the crowd wants to hear. The leader and his followers are mirror images of each other.Taslima Nasreen was hounded out of Hyderabad by a violent Muslim crowd and has since been living virtually in hiding. A recent Muslim rally in Mumbai had run amok and had vandalized the icon of Indian valor and sacrifice, Amar Jawan Jyoti.
The latest Owaisi episode is not an isolated instance of Islamic fundamentalism because extremist Islam has raised its head in many parts of this country and in states like Kerala where Muslims are in high proportion (26 per cent) it has succeeded in imposing its will; even enabling what is described as mandates of Sharia law are being imposed by stealth and force on co-religionists. But for local support within the community , organizations like IM, would not have succeeded in conducting serial bombings in several cities in this country.
It is not Owaisi alone who has time and again harped on Islam. Last October a secretive organization even threatened to hold a demonstration in Delhi to change the Constitution and impose Islamic one in the country. There are others who say that in majority Muslim nations it is Islamic law that must prevail. Demand for a rigid adherence to Islamic law in personal matters that prevails now has been followed up by demands for Islamic financial institutions, for instance.
Many political outfits compete among themselves to support such illiberal demands partly because of the numbers clout the community already enjoys in as many as 125 districts out of some 600. In Kerala this numbers game has enabled the community to gain a commanding position in the coalition government in the state and openly flaunt it so much so this has alarmed the two major Hindu organizations to unite and resist the communal agenda of the Muslim League. In Assam and West Bengal the clout is strengthening the conservative no-change agenda.
Latent Desire
The Owaisi statement is thus an expression of a latent desire of a section of the community that is very much under the influence of extremism unlike other communities where extremism finds no encouragement. The underlining of Muslims being 25 crores in India has to be considered in the context of illegal infiltration of Pakistanis and Bangladeshi Muslims into the country, the latter on a large scale.
This is fully documented and obviously there is considerable planning behind it. Districts after districts like Kishangunj in Bihar and several ones in West Bengal have graduated to Muslim majority which could not have happened by the mere growth of the local Muslim population though that too is a factor.
In fact, a significant section of Muslims the world over, easily gets carried when battle cry “Islam is in danger “ is raised , particularly by the Muslim clergy. The violence takes place frequently over any real or imaginary insult to Muslims or their beliefs. In many of the Islamic countries, even carrying a holy text of another religion than that of Islam is an offence; and conversion outside Islam invites death.
Egypt Experience
What happened recently in Egypt is a testimony to the violent and virulent face of Muslim majority. Ignoring the broad concensual support to the Arab Spring there, once the dictator had been removed, extremism has reared its head.The newly elected President Morsi till about two months back was projecting himself as a moderate Muslim but look at how he got his power consolidated and with extremist backing imposed a constitution that denies any equality of treatment to the largest minority in the country, the Coptic Christians?
In our own Muslim majority state of J&K, the cream of Hindu society there, the Pandits, who have contributed so much in professions, administration, literature and are the torch bearers of the original culture of Kashmir have been driven out and no tears have been shed for them in the so called secular outfits including political parties like the Congress or National Conference.
The chief minister of J&K among others is opposing carrying out of the death sentence awarded by the judiciary at all levels to the conspirator of the Parliament attack on 2001, just because he is a Muslim. Owaisi himself mentioned how the protests by his community leaders had driven out Bangladeshi author Tasleema out of Hyderabad and Kolkata even though she is recognized as a fearless literary figure by the world.
The Demographic Invasion
Our so-called secularists have sought to divert attention from the political clout the community is seeking to gain from the surge in numbers. The Prime Minister appointed committee headed by ex judge has itself said that by end of 21 st century Muslim population will reach 28 per cent the country’s projected population. Wikipedia reveals that “ world Muslim population will grow twice as fast as non-Muslims in 20 years.”
It also lists the reluctance of the community to adopt family planning as one of the causes of this growth; another is the widespread practice of multiple marriages. It projects that by 2030 Muslims will make up a quarter of world population. The Indian demographics has the following growth rates for the community: 1951- 9.91 %, 2001- 13.43 per cent; 2010- 18.9 %. The web encyclopedia also says quoting authoritative sources that “Muslim population growth rate is higher by more than 10 per cent of the total growth compared to that of Hindus.”
Such growth in any community need not normally be a matter of concern given that the Indian Constitution is liberal and guarantees all fundamental freedoms. But read in the context of growth of hold of conservative interpretation of Islam, particularly the Wahabi one .
With enormous money being poured out from countries like Saudi Arabia to promote conservative madrasa education alone among the Muslims, the attempts to isolate the community from all integrating cultural expressions including such Indianness as lighting of brass lamps, classical music, while promoting of hero worship of the Muslim emperors and conquerors whom history condemns as committing maximum atrocities on the subjects of other communities, insistence on no change at all in personal laws, the demographic data can ring alarm bells for liberal democratic India. The ‘secularists ‘ in India have been working as a ‘B’ team of rabid Muslim communalism for long.
The History
The shameful saga started in 1920s, with Gandhiji extending support to the infamous Khilafat movement. The left parties who claim to be champions of ‘secularism’, provided all the intellectual arguments which the Muslim communalists needed to justify their demand for a theocratic Pakistan, a country only of the ‘PURE’, with no room for infidels (read Hindus and Sikhs ).No wonder Hindus and Sikhs in 1947 who constituted over 20 per cent population of the present day Pakistan and over 30 per cent of Bangladesh, have been reduced to one percent and eight per cent respectively.
When the Supreme Court delivered the Shah Bano judgement, it was a blow for reforms in Muslim society. But the ‘secular’ pack did not stand by the liberal sections of the Muslim society and instead strengthened the fundamentalists by upturning the judgement. Competitive communalism to pander to vote bank politics has motivated the ‘secular’ parties to extend open support even to those accused of terror attacks. A special session of Kerala assembly was summoned to pass an unanimous resolution seeking the release of Abdul Nasser Madani, at that time an accused in Coimbatore bomb blast case (February 14, 1998) which had claimed 58 innocent lives.
The mindset
As mentioned earlier, MIM is a part of the divisive mindset that resulted in the vivisection of India and creation of Pakistan. The British nurtured it for their imperial ends.The ‘secularists ‘ have taken over from where the British left , to nurse their vote bank politics. The establishment in Pakistan , wired by the mindset responsible for the violent birth of its nation, forced the Hindus and Sikhs to convert to Islam or flee and also trained and exported terror groups to India.
That very terror machine is giving sleepless nights to Pakistani establishment and has emerged as a major threat to it’s very existence. Ajmal Kasab, a member of the terror team responsible for 26/11 in Mumbai was also a product of that deadly mindset. Persons like Akbaruddin Owaisi help in creating that very suicidal mindset. Owaisis and Madanis are successful in their enterprise of hate, thanks to the helping hand extended by our ‘secular’ pack.
Kasab paid for his crime with his life. What about the likes of Akbaruddin Owaisi and several others who share the mindset with Kasab and his handlers in Pakistan? And what about those who feed and water the poisonous weed of fundamentalism and terror in the name of ‘secularism’? And what do you think of the future of a society that lets all this pass ,either because of ignorance or indifference or both, without a challenge?
(The writer can be contacted at punjbalbir@gmail.com)
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