Manju Gupta
Riots and Wrongs, RNP Singh, Carried, Pp 364, Rs 500.00
COMMUNAL violence in India’s history, particularly in the post-Independence era of a constitutional secular democracy, has been showing a declining trend. None can however, deny that India’s minorities have lived in comparative safety and honour and have extraordinary achievements to their credit, particularly when their accomplishments are compared with the quality of life and security of minorities in other countries in the region.
However, one cannot forget that modern India was born in the midst of a bloody orgy of communal violence and the psyche of an entire generation, if not an entire nation, is scarred by menaces of past slaughters and atrocities. Despite the lip service paid to the concept of ‘secularism’, opportunistic exploitation of the communal platform has been a characteristic of politics for parties virtually across the ideological spectrum, leading to polarisation and ghettoism of communities in large areas of the country, particularly among the uneducated poor. These elements have been exacerbated by India’s history of conflict with Pakistan and the latter’s continuous and intense subversive activity on Indian soil.
The author says the main reason behind communal problems in India is the dilemma posed before the major section of Muslims and that is to choose between the secular democratic way and the hard-line tenets of Islam, which declare that Allah is the only God, Mohammed is the only leader, Quran is the only constitution and jehad is the only path. The author says that the Hindus, despite extending their hands to the Muslims, have not received a friendly gesture from the latter. During the 1857 War of Independence against the British, and in 1918-21, though Mahatma Gandhi espoused the religious cause of the Muslim brothers and the Hindus offered to join the Khilafat movement, the Moplah Muslims turned the movement into a Hindu-Muslim communal riot.
The author is of the view that the Muslims, whether in minority or majority, remain in conflict with others on one cause or another. “They never remain agreeable to join the national mainstream and with the non-Muslim majority and continue demanding separate laws, separate institutions, separate lands and separate identity…their usual behaviour is to launch jehad against non-believers.”
He says that Islam claims to have ushered in peace among the warring Arab tribes, “but Islam’s own record says of nothing but wars much fiercer than those the Arabs fought first among themselves. Soon the near and distant neighbours from all sides were targeted, who were compelled to bow to Islam’s supremacy.”
The Muslim society is divided into two tight compartments, namely the momins and kafirs where the former were exhorted to unite into a militant ‘millat’ completely armed while settlements and caravans of the kafir were attacked many times.
The author then talks of various ethnic conflicts and wars in Bosnia and Kosova, between Albanians and Greeks, Turks and Greeks, Muslim Turks and Greeks, Turkey and Armenia, Algeria and Armenia, etc. Analysiis of the Islamic ideology reveals that the paramount driving force for Islamic confrontation is the desire for dominance embodied in the concept of hukumat-e-ilahi and Nizam-e-Mustafa driven forward by jehad aimed at promoting Muslim brotherhood (ummah). “In the eyes of Islam, secular democracies including India are Dar-ul-Harb (abode of war) and kafir and are its prime targets. Islamic fundamentals openly declare that fighting jehad against India is an Islamic duty of the Muslim world and Kashmir issue cannot be solved by any means other than jehad.”
Distrust and mistrust continue due to Muslims’ non-compromising behaviour and the author advises that a feeling of mutual trust has to be inculcated in both the Hindus and Muslims by studying what separates the two and what can be done to maintain harmony. This can be possible “only when the radical package of Muslim brotherhood tenets of Dar-ul-Harb, Dar-ul-Islam, jehad, Islamisation of the world are kept aside in the interest of the community and the nation.”
(Carried, Post Box No. 7312, Sriniwaspur, New Delhi-110 065, www.carried.co.in)
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