| Interview | |
| 01 Apr 2011, NewAgeIslam.Com |
| Muslim Leadership in Contemporary India | ||
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| Muslim Leadership in Contemporary India | |
Veteran journalist Seema Mustafa is editor of the Delhi-based Sunday Guardian. In this interview with Yoginder Sikand For NewAgeIslam.com, she talks about various issues related to Muslim leadership in contemporary India. Q: Muslim representation in elected bodies is far below what is warranted by the sheer size of the Indian Muslim community. Political parties generally, including those that style themselves as ‘secular’, are largely indifferent to Muslim concerns. In this context, many Muslims argue the need for a separate Muslim political party so as to get Muslim concerns heard. The Jamaat-e Islami Hind, for instance, is now rumoured to be considering floating such a party. What do you think of such moves? A: I think a Muslim political party floated by the Jamaat-e Islami is a bad idea. In the past, the Jamaat has been supporting candidates in different parts of the country, particularly in Muslim-dominated constituencies, without forming its own political party, and most of these candidates have miserably failed and have even lost their deposits. This is a clear indication that most Muslims reject the Jamaat’s ideology and its style of politics. Regardless of the claims of the Jamaat and other such conservative Muslim outfits that in Islam religion and politics are inseparable, I think the Indian Muslims have always distinguished between the two. This is why, till recently, until the oppression and targeting of Muslims began in a very systematic way, the biggest or tallest Muslim leaders in India have always been non-Muslims—people like Gandhi, Nehru, Mulayam Singh, Lalloo Prasad and V.P. Singh, and if a Muslim, fighting on a plank that sought to combine religion and politics, stood against any of them, few Muslims, if any, would vote for him. In other words, Muslims in India have always been pragmatic in their politics, and have clearly distinguished between religion and politics. This is why groups like the Jamaat have never been successful politically, in the electoral field, a lacuna that they have sought to fill in the wider social realm by opening conservative madrasas and popularizing conservative life-styles. But now things are changing. Earlier, there was a certain level of security, despite sporadic communal violence. Till 1992, when the Babri Masjid was destroyed, successive governments were somehow able to convince Muslims that communal violence, in which they are inevitably the worst sufferers, could be localized and controlled, although Muslims were often denied justice. Communal violence was limited to certain areas, and had not become a pervasive and widespread phenomenon. But the 1992 demolition, and then the Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom happened. These were major landmarks. They shook the Muslim psyche, and led to the realization that communal violence was no more localized, that anti-Muslim violence could happen or be instigated just about anywhere in India, and on a vast scale, and that governments not only could or would do nothing to stop it but also that they could play a leading role in fomenting it. The destruction of the Babri Masjid and the violence that followed led to a thorough disillusionment of the Muslims with the Congress for conspiring to have the mosque destroyed, for letting Muslims be killed in vast numbers, and for continuing to deny them justice. This led to a realization that injustice and anti-Muslim discrimination was not something sporadic and exceptional, but, rather, that it was systemic. That realization was further reinforced, first in 2001, with the destruction of the twin towers in New York, which led to a heightening of anti-Muslim prejudice in India, and then in 2002, with the massacre of more than 2500 hapless Muslims in Gujarat. All this further exacerbated Muslim insecurities—not just in Gujarat but all over India—in the face of a very aggressive BJP and a hopelessly plaint Congress. I think this is when some Muslims began talking about the need for a separate Muslim political party at the national level, seeing how even the Congress had betrayed them. Groups like the Jamaat tap into this mounting sense of insecurity, which is now, not limited just to working class Muslims living in the ghettos but crosses all classes. Even rich Muslims are not spared this fear that they, too, could be targeted in the name of countering ‘terrorism’. This has led to a heightened consciousness of being Muslim, on the one hand, and mounting fears of being terrorized on the basis of that very identity. In the name of countering terror, scores of Muslims, of all social classes, have been arbitrarily picked up by the police and subjected to brutal torture and long spells in jail, their lives and that of their families completely ruined. This has happened in states ruled by the Congress and the BJP. It is now very difficult for Muslims to get bank loans, to rent or buy houses in Hindu areas and so on—all across India, including even in the so-called ‘cosmopolitan’ cities. Even a Muslim CEO of an MNC might find it difficult to rent a house in his own name in a Hindu locality, so deeply-entrenched has anti-Muslim bias become. There is now this understanding that anti-Muslim discrimination is no longer limited just to the Muslim masses but affects other Muslims, too, even the richest. I think this tremendous insecurity that has been generated over the decades is precisely what groups like the Jamaat want to politically exploit, to seek to mislead them to believe that their future can be secured only if they support a Muslim or ‘Islamic’ political party of the sort it is thinking of floating. I fear that in this climate of pervasive Muslim insecurity, a not inconsiderable number of Muslims would possibly readily listen to such dangerous appeals. Q: Why would you consider such appeals as ‘dangerous’? A: I think a separate Muslim party is the worst thing that could happen even from the Muslim point of view, because of the Jamaat’s inherent conservatism and obscurantism, and its fundamental opposition to democracy, secularism, human rights, and peaceful coexistence between different religious communities, all of which are readily apparent in the copious literature of its ideological mentor and founder, Syed Abul Ala Maududi. You only have to see what the Jamaat-e Islami in Pakistan and Bangladesh, which share a common ideological vision as the Indian Jamaat, are doing—to women, to minorities and so on—to see the dangerous prospects and implications of the Jamaat in India establishing its own political party. The Jamaat thrives on fear and insecurity and whipping up people’s religious sentiments. Its ideology is bound to lend a boost to the forces of conservatism and even extremism. It does everything the RSS does—in fact, it is its mirror image. I covered numerous communal riots in north India in the 1980s, and noted that in most of these groups like the Jamaat were involved in stoking violence and in stressing and reinforcing communal polarization. And so, a political party floated by the likes of the Jamaat will only further exacerbate communal divisions and give a fillip to Hindutva forces, who would like nothing more than that sort of thing. I am wary of identity politics, which is what groups like the Jamaat, mirroring Hindutva groups, engage in. I believe that in order to highlight Muslim substantive concerns identity politics are not the way. Rather, we should be joining hands with secular formations for this purpose. Having said that, in the current context, today, the RSS has assumed far more sinister dimensions than these smaller, and far more marginalised, minority groupings. Q: But is it not possible that the Jamaat has changed over the years? Some claim that the Jamaat has now come round to accepting democracy and secularism. A: I think this is simply a tactic, a change of strategy, not a fundamental ideological change. There has been no change of heart whatsoever, no matter what may be claimed by some. For instance, some years ago, the Jamaat set up a Forum for Communal Harmony and began singing paeans to secularism, but I am convinced that this was all for show. It is sheer hypocrisy. Only the most naïve could think otherwise. If you speak to Jamaat members and leaders individually, at a personal level, they may come across as good, cultured Muslims, but if you speak to them about issues such as the relationship between Islam and politics, about gender issues and women’s status and rights, about the shariah or about the need for reforms in Muslim Personal Law, their views on all these basic questions remain as firm and fixed and uncompromising as Maududi’s. Until these change, how can one believe that their politics has changed? Q: So, if you argue that groups like the Jamaat should stay away from politics, what would you advise them to do in order that Muslim grievances can be more effectively articulated? A: I would suggest that groups like the Jamaat stay out of the political field and confine themselves to the religious field instead. Let them articulate, through non-political and non-party forums, and in the form of pressure groups, Muslim voices and concerns on substantive issues, of economic and educational deprivation. Let them take up the issue of Muslims being wrongly targeted on terror charges. And so on. My complaint is that even here they have done next to nothing in a concerted or organized way. Rather, much of what they have been and are doing is simply playing on, and only further reinforcing, the tremendous insecurities of the Muslims, insisting that they become more ‘religious’ (as they understand the term) because, as they put it, they are surrounded by ‘disbelievers’ all over. Rather than encouraging and enabling them to stress and demand their rights as Indian citizens, rights that the Constitution of India grants to them, they cynically use their insecurities to seek to push them in the direction of an order that is determined by their ideological understanding of Islam. I must say something here about the political parties, even those that call themselves ‘secular’, that routinely court the mullahs. They are bought before every elections so that they can help influence the Muslim votes. They cannot, but somehow these politicians like to drive around with a couple of maulvis in their vehicles. Neither do they provide justice for the minorities, and nor is their intention to address the minorities' substantive issues. Q: Given that the conservative maulvis seek to monopolise Muslim leadership as well as religious discourse and generally limit demands on the state to emotive or identity-related concerns, do you feel the need for middle-class Muslims to intervene and play a more assertive social and political role? That might help shift the terms of discourse about Muslims to more substantive concerns. But why, generally speaking, has the Muslim middle-class failed to play such a role, leaving it to the maulvis, besides professional Muslim politicians, to virtually monopolise? A: Yes, I agree. Especially in north India, where the bulk of the Muslim population is concentrated, you could justifiably say that the Muslim elite and the middle-class have failed completely in this regard. The Muslim elites are only interested in getting as much out of the establishment for themselves as they can—seats in Parliament, minister-ships, postings as ambassadors and members of various commissions and so on. They care nothing at all for the Muslim masses. They have absolutely no spirit of charity and social involvement. These are the so-called ‘Muslim voices’ that even so-called ‘secular’ parties project. All this fits in well with the Congress-style politics of patronage that has become an established tradition since 1947. But, that said, I don’t think we need a specifically Muslim leadership, or a Hindu leadership for that matter. What we do need are pressure groups that take up and articulate the concerns of marginalized and discriminated-against social groups. Q: In the face of what you identified as the pervasive sense of being under siege that afflicts large sections of even the Muslim elites, do you think their stance with regard to the concerns of the deprived Muslim masses has changed, perhaps for the better? A: I don’t see that happening. They are still doing virtually nothing for the Muslim poor. There is simply no sense of responsibility for the community, for its vast impoverished majority. All they are concerned about are themselves, their children, their families. I think there is another factor at work here for this indifference to the concerns of the Muslim masses—which is that many educated Muslims might fear that taking an interest in vocally articulating these concerns might easily lead to them being branded as ‘communal’ or worse. There is this fear that if they speak up or write against the oppression of agencies of the state or Hindutva forces, they could easily be picked up by the police on trumped-up charges, and so they remain silent. So, by and large, they are satisfied with being publicly Muslim in a very cultural sense—cooking pilao and savai on Eid for their Hindu friends and that sort of thing. But this ‘Muslim-ness’ does not go beyond this, or beyond personal piety, to getting involved in working for the empowerment of the Muslim masses, or taking a position publicly on Muslim issues and grievances. This suggests a strange schizophrenia—you stress your Muslim-ness in terms of paan, biryani, ghazals and sher-o-shairi but you refuse to take a position publicly on Muslim livelihood issues, on Muslims being targeted in the name of countering terrorism, on the judicial system and the bureaucracy failing to deliver, and so on. So, in answer to your question, I would say that while mounting anti-Muslim sentiments are forcing Muslim elites to realize the enormous difficulties that ‘ordinary’ Muslims face, it is not translating in any substantial way into practical action on their part to address these. Q: Numerous figures among the 19th and early 20th century Indian Muslim middle-class did play an important role in terms of promoting social reform, modern education and so on. If, as you argue, the north Indian Muslim middle-class of today is apathetic as far as all this is concerned, what would you attribute this to? A: I think this decline of social concern on the part of the middle-class in India is not something specific to the Muslim middle-class. It is part of a general trend, a result of a very different value system of today’s middle-class. Many middle-class Muslims were involved in the freedom struggle, and that inspired them with a progressive social consciousness. But today the Muslim elite is just looking at political parties like the Congress for continued patronage, without taking up the issues concerning the people as such. Another issue to consider in this regard is that the earlier middle classes were familiar with religious discourse and they could take a position on religious issues as well and counter the obscurantists. Today, this is not the case and, except for a Asghar Ali Engineer and a few others of his sort, the progressives are unable to counter the sometimes absurd claims made by those who insist on speaking for the Muslims. This is one reason why the maulvis continue to enjoy the clout that they do—there is simply no one to challenge them on the turf—of religious discourse—that they want to maintain their monopoly over. That is why I think it is important for Muslim social activists to engage with the realm of religious discourse and articulate progressive understandings on a range of issues so as to challenge the obscurantism of the mullahs. At the same time, I feel it is important for madrasa students to gain modern knowledge, for only in that way can we hope that they would be able to articulate more relevant understandings of Islam. There is another issue to consider here. In a situation where Muslims feel increasingly threatened, being hounded in the name of countering terrorism, it is hardly surprising that enthusiasm for badly-needed internal social reforms, such as promoting modern education, combating the obscurantism of the mullahs, or encouraging women’s empowerment, such as through reforming Muslim Personal Law, have taken a back-seat. Earlier, our appeals for reforming Muslim Personal Law to ensure gender justice, for instance, enjoyed considerable support among many Muslim women, but today, when faced with a pervasive feeling of Muslims being under threat, many of the very same women will tell us, ‘First rescue our Muslim boys from jail and only then talk of Muslim women’s rights. What’s the point of talking of gender rights when our children are in jail and when our husbands and fathers can be picked up from the streets for no reason at all?’ So, this insecurity and targeting of Muslims has given a massive push to Muslim conservative forces, making the task of internal social reform and encouraging internal democratization within Muslim society even more difficult. Q: To come back to an issue that we were earlier discussing, the demands that most Muslim organizations make vis-à-vis the state have tended to be identity-related, rather than substantive, such as in terms of Muslim economic and educational empowerment. Is this changing? A: What you have said is no doubt true, but I think things are changing, and increasingly these organisations are also raising these substantive issues. Even groups like the Jamaat-e Islami or the Jamiat-e Ulema-e Hind are taking up issues of Muslim educational backwardness and poverty and demanding that the state address these. However, the fact is that the state is simply not responsive to these very legitimate demands, for fear of Hindu reaction and hostility. See how it is dragging its feet on the recommendations of both the Sachar Committee Report and the Ranganath Mishra Commission Report. It has done precious little on the lines suggested by these teams that it had itself set up, only limiting itself to some sops, like appointing a token Minister to head a poorly-funded Ministry of Minority Affairs. Another indication of this indifference is the Minorities Commission, whose report has not been even tabled in Parliament for several years now. This Commission, which could have been vibrant, is now rendered quite useless. It’s all a big sham. In other words, my point is that even when Muslim organizations have started raising substantive Muslim concerns, the government continues to be completely indifferent or even hostile to these demands. Hypocritically, and simply to win Muslim votes, all it does is to set up some institutions supposedly for the minorities, but which only serve a small clique, and appoints some useless people to head them. Q: How do you see the ‘mainstream’ media’s projection of Muslims? Why is it almost always negative? If at all it talks of Muslims, it is almost always with regard to some radical Islamist outfit or some absurd fatwa, and in this way substantive Muslim concerns are ignored, is it not? A: The ‘mainstream’ media has definitely become status quoist, and has almost totally compromised with the establishment. It enjoys an incestuous relationship with the rich and the powerful. Not surprisingly, it is just not interested in Muslim substantive issues, or those of other marginalized sections, like Tribals, Dalits or, for that matter, the poor. Naturally, given what the media has become, it is also not surprising that it constantly reinforces certain negative stereotypical images of Muslims. This is something that has been worsened with the mounting influence of the American media on its Indian counterpart, where the negative global propaganda launched by the US has been accepted in its entirety by the Indian establishment. Q: In this regard, how would you respond to the suggestion, put forward by many Muslims, that Muslims must have their own media in order to highlight their issues? A: I think there is nothing wrong with Muslims, or any other group, launching papers or whatever, but provided their paradigm and the basis of their discourse is secular. If Muslims can do that, it’s fine, but, if you ask me, this normally does not happen for very soon such experiments tend to acquire a fundamentalist hue, subjected to a heavy dose of preachy religiosity that works to marginalize the substantive concerns of the community and the country at large. I am not in favour of any such Muslim media or any media ventures that are exclusivist, that promote identity politics, that question the basis of the state and the pillars of our polity such as democracy and secularism. Likewise, I am against any such exclusivist tendencies in other spheres too, such as separate Muslim or ‘Islamic’ schools that make it even more difficult for Muslims to function in a multi-religious society and that only further boost Muslim marginality and isolation and give a boost to forces hostile to Muslims. We need to realize that we are not living in a mono-religious country. We need to think of institutions and community ventures that will help bring Muslims together with other communities rather than further separate and ghettoize them. There is a strange unspoken conspiracy. The RSS, the Modis, and even governments here create conditions to ghettoise the Muslims, a situation which the regressive elements among Muslims happily feed on by playing on the Muslims' insecurities. A regular columnist for NewAgeIslam.com, Yoginder Sikand works with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion at the National Law School, Bangalore. URL: http://newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamInterview_1.aspx?ArticleID=4380
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11:11 PM
Moderate Islamist here
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