Contesting Mushrif's thesis — "Other side of Modi Muslims should know"

http://www.milligazette.com/news/12328-contesting-mushrif-s-other-side-of-modi-thesis-indian-Muslims

The Milli Gazette Online

Published Online: May 07, 2015

Mr. Mushrif is right (www.milligazette.com/news/12196-the-other-side-of-modi-muslims-should-know), but unfortunately only partially so. We wish that he were entirely right. That would have helped dispel any reservations over Prime Minister, Mr. Modi. However, Mr. Modi has himself made it difficult to go along fully with Mr. Mushrif. Nevertheless, we could give Mr. Mushrif and Mr. Modi the benefit of doubt, but to ‘bail him out and allow him to breathe freely,’ as Mr. Mushrif would have it, would be naive. Only a call to generosity of spirit can help Mr. Modi past the barriers he has himself assiduously, demonstratively and self-interestedly built. After all, his party built a vote bank of the majority by using the minority as a ‘bogey’.

Mr. Mushrif’s well-argued and well-intentioned thesis is that a political reading of Mr. Modi in his decade and a half sway over Gujarat and a year in New Delhi suggests that he has put a distance between himself and the extremists within the Sangh Parivar.

Mr. Mushrif’s thesis brings to fore the pleasant possibility that Mr. Modi being his own man, and not a creation or puppet of the Sangh, would not necessarily follow the dictates of the Sangh’s ideology, Hindutva. There is, therefore, scope for interfacing with, if not influencing, the Modi agenda. The agenda itself is much wider than ethno-religious triumphalism, but encompassing economy-based rise of India as a political, economic and military power at the global stage.

Mr. Mushrif’s view is very persuasive and, as a credible anti-Hindutva figure, his espousing it indicates that it needs to be reckoned with seriously. If, indeed, India is on an upward trajectory under Mr. Modi’s leadership, it would be very foolish indeed for India’s Muslims not to be on the bandwagon and get left out yet again. Giving Mr. Modi a chance is the subtext. There can be no argument with that. If he succeeds, the gainers must include Muslims.

The question is: Should we put our eggs into his basket?

The Mushrif thesis is contrary to the popular view that the Sangh is his support base and he is their champion. He is, therefore, providing the conditions for implementation of the Hindutva agenda. Many actions of his government – not repeated here for the sake of brevity and knowledge that these would be familiar to the readers of this journal – suggest as much. In fact, his government is but a year old and there is much negative ground that it can yet traverse over the next decade it intends to stay in power at a minimum.

In this more critical view of Mr. Modi, he is in a period of consolidation and can afford not to antagonize the minority any further. His government’s periodic reminder to all of the patriotism of India’s Muslims is a case to point. This belated recognition of objective reality can only be considered remarkable in the highly prejudiced view of Hindutvavadis. This means that it is a political ploy to seemingly retract claws so as to lull those observing the moves of the government into a false sense of complacency.

There are strategic reasons for the Muslim policy of the government. It would not like to have a disaffected minority in addition to the problems that can easily be foreseen ahead. The churning thrown up by the land bill, changes in labour laws, the legal regime surrounding conversions and beef eating etc. are indicators that there are emerging constituencies that are less enamoured of Mr. Modi’s economic and social agenda than his electoral victory implied. Even if Mr. Modi is not held hostage by extremist Hindutva forces, but is instead hostage to the agenda of large corporates, India will not have as untroubled an ascent as Mr. Mushrif might imagine. Anticipating this, Mr. Modi is into preemption mode, building bridges with otherwise suspicious constituencies such as Muslims.

There is also another angle from which the Mushrif thesis needs to be approached. There is an incipient cult phenomenon Mr. Modi is building himself up. He has personalized governance by centralizing government power in his office and indeed in his person. So much so that no government mention of India’s relief operation in Nepal is without reference to the leadership provided by Mr. Modi. While this may be political, intended to set him apart from his predecessor, the somnolent Dr. Manmohan Singh, and the opposition leader in absentia, Rahul Gandhi, it is more likely that Mr. Modi is subverting parliamentary democracy by projecting a presidential image. Mr. Modi has snatched the TINA factor from the Congress.

Mr. Mushrif alludes to the extensive travel schedule of the prime minister, his anti-terrorism international stance and regional outreach to underscore his secular credentials. Firstly, the foreign tours amounting to about 50 days in the year also undergird the personality cult thesis since these are at the cost of the institutional strength of the foreign ministry. Secondly, the international anti-terror stance of the government is not new. His recognition of Indian Muslims as out of international terror ambit is only acknowledgement of facts. Also, India in this will continue to be influenced by its partners, US and Israel. Already evident of Israeli pug marks is India raising an original point in a UN debate contesting the credibility of international organisations based on religious affinity, perhaps alluding to the OIC, as UN partners in international peace and security! Thirdly, the regional outreach is a chimera, with Mr. Nawaz Sharif lamenting that his initiatives have not been reciprocated by India.

Mr. Mushrif argues that there is an extremist portion within the RSS with which Mr. Modi is in an internal battle. He also seems to suggest that there is a schism within the IB, with the extremist side anti Modi.

Mr. Mushrif is guilty of using the extremist RSS portion as a bogey to argue that Mr. Modi, being the better of the two, should be given a second chance. His IB related argument has an internal contradiction. Though he suggests that the extremists within IB have been anti Modi and yet their actions, in particular black operations depicting Muslims as terror perpetrators, have provided the conditions that help the political ascent of Mr. Modi.

Mr. Mushrif, while making an otherwise plausible case for engaging with the government, resorts to avoidable contortions that put paid to the ‘absolutely secular agenda’ Mr. Mushrif credits Mr. Modi with.

The good news from Mr. Mushrif is that many of the initiatives of Mr. Modi appear to distance him from the Parivar and are in the interests of Muslims. After all there can be no arguing against madrasa modernization. These must be profited from and Mr. Modi incentivized to persist down this path by positive engagement by Muslims at all levels with the government he heads. By no means does this mean that Mr. Modi be conceded political or ideological ground. His ascent to and from a regional power base to New Delhi shows him as a consummate political actor. His Muslim outreach is, therefore, at best strategic. Consequently, the response to Mr. Modi cannot be dictated by the heart. Sure, allow Mr. Modi ‘development’, but await the lead of India’s ‘have nots’, that include its Muslims, have on this by end decade.

Even so it must not be forgotten that once Mr. Modi is beyond the reach of impunity of his office, he and the likes of Mr. Shah and Vanzara, require answering for the events of 2002 and subsequently in Gujarat. His ‘change of heart’ since is not self-evident from the ongoing hounding of the likes of Ms. Setalvad. It would be unfortunate for Indian democracy if Padma Vibhushan Advaniji’s getting away for 1990, 1992 and 2002 end up as an indelible precedent against the rule of law.

Responding to Chetan Bhagat

What is a moderate Indian Muslim to do? @Chetan_Bhagat

Published Online: Dec 29, 2014

UA-58538765-1

http://www.milligazette.com/news/11503-what-is-a-moderate-india-muslim-to-do-chetan_bhagat

Proclaiming “It’s not moderate Muslims’ fault”, in an uncharacteristically generous moment pop-pundit of Hindutva, Chetan Bhagat, lets moderate Muslims off the hook, even as he sets the stage characteristically for reviling their religion alongside. To quote him in full flow: “religion (Islam) gets associated with terror, hate, intolerance and violence. Even though people from other religions don’t say it, you (Muslims) can feel their prejudice towards you. With every incident, your religion gets more tainted.”

With a typical sleight of hand, that somehow always escapes his presumably loyal following of his column “The underage optimist” in a national daily, he absolves the “moderate Muslim,” resignedly sighing: “What is a moderate Muslim to do?”

Before answering the question, let’s first turn the question round and ask Mr. Bhagat, in the context of what is happening in India under the champion he has been cheer leader for, “What is a moderate Hindu to do?”

Your religion, Mr. Bhagat, is increasingly in danger of being hijacked by extremists. Absent intervention by the Mr. Bhagat’s champion, can it be taken that this takeover of Hinduism by a narrow, right-wing philosophy has government imprimatur? The assault on minorities is the obvious part of what is happening.

What is actually happening is the subversion of Hinduism from the inside. Its tolerance and broad philosophical streams within are being slowly and surely contaminated.

What is a moderate Hindu to do? Is he to keep up his political support for Mr. Modi who is presiding over all this in the hope that economic dividend will sweep such social costs under the carpet? Or is he to speak up, stand up and be counted, before his religion is distorted? While Mr. Bhagat believing people associate “terror, hate, intolerance and violence” with Islam, thinking people will never ascribe distortion resulting from cultural nationalism to Hinduism, one of the humanity’s great succours. They will place the blame where it rightly belongs, at politics door. 

Mr. Bhagat will be well advised to use his prolific pen introspectively to sermonise for the moderate Hindu, who has handed over power to Mr. Modi, to rethink timely. It is not only Hinduism at stake; it is over time the nation. The relatively greater power that moderate Hindus have to preserve Hinduism - in contrast to the moderate Muslim’s ability to preserve Islam from extremism within and Islamophobia without - implies that they can do much more and should do so. Should the silent majority of moderate Hindus remain silent, leaving the defence of their faith to a minority of active, courageous, secular-minded Hindus alone? Can these stalwart guardians of Hinduism match the government-backed politico-cultural formations running rampage across India? Mr. Bhagat, do answer: “What is the moderate Hindu to do?”

Leaving Mr. Bhagat with a taste of his own medicine, it is worth dissecting his answer. He believes that moderate Muslims cannot reclaim their faith. It requires the “UN and NATO” and “an organisation equivalent to the UN for all the world’s religions, backed by world leaders.” Since the NATO is part of the problem, Mr. Bhagat’s referring to it as a knight in shining armour reveals his lack of political sense, easily attributable to his IIT-IIM, and therefore technical as against political, background. As for the UN, it is indeed doing all it can. Since a “UN of world religions” makes little sense – perhaps his allusion to inter-faith dialogue – we shall let it pass here.

Clearly, then Mr. Bhagat has no answer to his question: “what can be done?” Which brings one back full circle to the beginning: to the aim behind his article.

It is apparent that it is Mr. Bhagat’s smoke-screen to cover what is happening in India by alighting on what happened in Pakistan, and then typically riding off on his favourite hobby horse, minority-bashing.

But then, since he has raised the question of significance for readers of this journal, the answer bears an attempt on two levels: one is internal to India in relation to the onslaught on Hinduism and India, and the second, external, in relation to the problem that defies Mr. Bhagat.

Internally, India’s moderate Muslim majority has to stay engaged with moderate Hindus, strengthening them strategically against their rabid counterparts. The first ones to take a hit will be this, vocal secular Hindu minority. Once they are silenced, Hinduism would be up for grabs with the secular Hindu majority bought off with the economic sops that they voted Mr. Modi into power for. Since Muslims will be next in the queue, the majoritarian nationalists will rely on provocations to gain an excuse to tamp down the minority to second class citizenship.

Moderate Muslims have their task cut out. They are to in the interim emerge as the leadership of Muslims so as to prevent such an outcome over the middle term. They are to work in tandem with the secular Hindu vocal minority in arousing the secular Hindu silent majority to deploy its vote, this time to overthrow the pretender who has taken over their faith and country in their name.  

Externally, Mr. Bhagat’s reliance on the NATO as an answer suggests that moderate Muslims need to dispel the argument for a “military solution,” an oxymoron if ever there was one.

The heinous act in Peshawar that set Mr. Bhagat off on his article was not without a context. Part of the context has been persistence of colonialism in the form of external interference and military presence in Muslim lands in general and in the region in particular.

Clearly, while there is every call for the terrorists who planned and perpetrated this crime, and such likes crimes in the region including in India, need to be administered their just deserts, other measures than military ones need highlighting and pursuing alongside. Ending the militarised environment in such lands is the answer. Take for instance the AfPak region. This crime originated partially in lack of the peace surge accompanying Mr. Obama’s military surge. If the former had kept pace in terms of developmental and educational efforts in the “ungoverned space” between Pakistan and Afghanistan, such crimes would have been prevented. To wit, firstly, moderate Muslims world-wide have to fight this notion that terrorism has only a military solution. Secondly, moderate Muslims in India need to weigh-in against cultural nationalism-inspired strategic and intelligence pro-activism on India’s part. 

And finally, back to Mr. Bhagat’s platitudinous comparison, “that Hindu radical groups don’t have as much power as Muslim radical groups do around the world at present.” Unlike Muslim radical groups that are pursued and hunted by respective states across Muslim lands, Hindu radicals instead have the power of a nuclear armed state being placed at their disposal by its very government! They have fulfilled the epitome of Tzun Tsu’s art of war: taken over the government of a nuclear power and without a fight, democratically empowered by the secular, but silent, Hindu majority, sadly bought off by the mere promise of “acche din”!

The unfolding gameplan of majoritarian extremists

http://www.milligazette.com/news/4126-the-unfolding-gameplan-of-majoritarian-extremists-india

Special Reports

 

It is not the success of the majoritarian extremists as much as the government's weakness that is keeping this costly charade going.

By Firdaus Ahmed, The Milli Gazette

Published Online: Oct 01, 2012

Print Issue: 1-15 September 2012

The cat is out of the bag. The gameplan of extremists subscribing to cultural nationalism, Hindutva, is so simple, as to make them appear simple minded. Alternatively, they think others are simple minded; else they could not have been so transparently deceptive.

The game plan is one of deception. This has been well known among those watching them over the past half a decade at least. In the run up to the last elections, when they suffered under the delusion of regaining power, they conducted a bombing campaign against metros - Delhi, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai etc.

The tell-tale signs they left behind were stark - if only the blind will take a look. Take the inexplicable recovery of bombs in Surat for instance. Their more brazen use of disguise and Chaplinesque efforts at terror elsewhere are too well-known to recount. The case of raising the Pakistani flag in Hubli is a mild example. Their strategy was to make it look to the gullible media as though this was handiwork of the Indian Mujahedeen, IM. The organization was itself a useful invention to serve their ends.

This did not help them in winning the elections, but it did throw many off their scent. They succeeded to the extent of manufacturing a constituency that believes that terrorism perpetrated by Muslim extremists is a graver threat. Using this as a spring board, they have started off their campaign for New Delhi 2014. Their latest series of actions, bespeaks of a similar, if more ambitious, gameplan.

They took advantage of the social media-induced collective reaction by the minority to the happenings in Assam. While the doctored images of atrocities from the east have been spread by sources of equally extreme persuasion in Pakistan, as claimed by the Union home secretary, there is ambiguity surrounding the origin of threat messages to north-easterners. It is taken by default as originating from Muslim sources. However, that these could well have their dubious parentage cannot be discounted.

The advantages that accrue for them are legion. They get to paint the minority, already on the defensive, into a corner. They manage to give an ethnic conflict an all-India communal colour, thereby heightening the perception of threat of the Muslim “Other” that they have so studiously manufactured over the past decade. They can keep the government on the backfoot, one that is already under pressure on multiple fronts including the political fight with the opposition baying against crony capitalism.

How have they exposed themselves? Firstly, the RSS was too sprightly in cashing in on the SMS episode. They were all over TV screens on railway platforms out to defend the North Eastern citizens fleeing the southern capital where the BJP rules. Secondly, the bomb blasts that fizzled out in Pune are another give away. As the Pune police let on, these were the handiwork of mischief makers. Surely, this was a sign of exultation on the departure of the Union home minister. Third, the infiltration by agents provocateurs of the mass solidarity gathering in Azad Maidan on 11 August in the hope that police over-reaction would lead to a bloodbath, can be spotted in their belatedly ruing the police’s uncharacteristic but praiseworthy professional handling of the situation. Lastly, the “encounter” deaths in Batla House earlier and the custodial murder of Qateel Siddiqui, have helped clean up their tracks. The case on the bomb blasts can safely be closed in public memory with the “perpetrators” eliminated.

The government is surely not oblivious. It is, however, too much on the ropes to be able to launch a counter-attack. The ruling party does not have the political resources for turning back the tide of deception-induced, media-fanned suspicion of the minority. It also cannot take the extremists head on since it would damage India’s diplomatic position that Pakistan is at the root of all of India’s ills. Therefore, it is not the success of the majoritarian extremists as much as the government’s weakness that is keeping this costly charade going.

If the government is not going to do its job and the Hindutva-inspired extremists are going to keep up their momentum, there is little for those targeted to do than to keep their fingers pointed at the culprits. This is an effort to such an end. Doing so is necessary lest 7 Race Course Road be usurped and the “idea of India” subverted come 2014. There is no question of going silently into gas chambers.

But, more consequentially, the Qur'anic injunction of excel all in good works makes more sense, since the mud that they sling will then simply not stick.

 

The author blogs at subcontinentalmusings.blogspot.in

This article appeared in The Milli Gazette print issue of 1-15 September 2012 on page no. 6