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Indian Muslims, we are told, are a "bewildered, angry and hurt" lot. "They can't understand the sharp reactions to the largescale protests they took part in during the past weeks," a report in a weekly news magazine says.
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The magazine goes on to quote sociologist Imtiaz Ahmed: "There are clear double standards here. On the one hand, you keep telling Muslims to come into the mainstream. When they believe they have a stake in the country and the right to protest, then why are you upset?"
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The question, in a sense, explains why Muslims, or at least those to whom the magazine refers to in its report, are "bewildered, angry and hurt". What it does not elaborate on, however, are the reasons behind the "sharp reactions".
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Mobilising tens of thousands of Muslims, most of them from madarsas that preach the pre-eminence of Islam and the unique right of the ummah to disregard the sensitivities of others, as the Jamait-e-Ulema-e-Hind did in Delhi on the eve of US President George Bush's visit, does not reflect any desire whatsoever to "come into the mainstream".
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Nor does the mobilising of Islamists who believe that the cartoonists whose caricatures of Prophet Mohammad were published in the little-known Danish daily Jyllands-Posten should be murdered for committing "blasphemy" amount to Muslims declaring their intention to "come into the mainstream".
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If raucous and riotous assertion of support for pan-Islamist causes - the war in Iraq, the cartoon controversy - are to be interpreted as Muslims coming into the mainstream of Indian public life, then we might as well give up all pretensions to being a secular society and accept the socio-political hegemony of a tyrannical minority.
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The "sharp reactions" were as much against the mass mobilisation of Islamists across the country on issues that have no bearing at all on India's national interests as against the loathsome manner in which Muslim rage manifested itself.
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In Hyderabad, after burning the Danish national flag that was earlier used as a foot mat by believers entering the city's main mosque for Friday's noon prayer, Muslims protesting against the Jyllands-Posten cartoons went on a rampage, beating up Hindu shopkeepers and looting their shops.
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A fortnight later, Muslims in Lucknow did a repeat performance. The only difference was that while in Hyderabad there was no loss of lives, in Lucknow innocent persons, including a 14-year-old Hindu boy, were killed. In Hyderabad, the Islamists' ran amok to register their protest against the Danish cartoonists; in Lucknow they rioted to register their disapproval of Mr George Bush's visit.
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In between, we were witness to the Uttar Pradesh Minister for Minority Welfare, Haji Yaqoob Qureshi, addressing a mammoth gathering of Islamists in Meerut where he declared a bounty of Rs 51 crore for any believer who kills the Danish cartoonists. Those who are given to thumping the Constitution of India have remained remarkably silent after this call for murder by a Minister who holds office by virtue of the fact that he has sworn to abide by the Constitution.
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We were also witness to Islamists chanting slogans in praise of Osama bin Laden, heaping abuse on the US, calling for the death of Americans and waving banners eulogising jihad and jihadis - in Delhi, Mumbai, Meerut, Lucknow, Hyderabad and numerous other cities and towns.
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Mainstream India was understandably staggered, stunned and shocked by this outpouring of hate. The last time we witnessed such rage was when Muslims took to the streets to protest against the Supreme Court's judgement favouring Shah Bano, an indigent Muslim woman thrown out of her marital home, in 1985, and the violent endorsement of Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie for daring to pen The Satanic Verses in 1988.
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If memories of Islamist rage and hate had dulled during the intervening years after Syed Shahabuddin's outrageous call to Muslims to boycott Republic Day celebrations, they have surfaced following the ummah's recent public belligerent demonstration of allegiance to causes and issues that lie beyond the boundaries of India.
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What has also alarmed mainstream India is the ease with which such mobilisation can be done. It is not a very calming site, the gathering of tens of thousands of Islamists united by a common enemy: Anybody who dares defy their perverse worldview.
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Imtiaz Ahmed senses "clear double standards" in this response. But there are no double standards - the only standard against which popular repudiation of Islamist rage can be measured is that of revulsion generated by the manifestation of Muslim rage on issues for which mainstream India does not care a toss.
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There is also the other aspect, that of the sudden upsurge of minorityism, which has come to define the UPA Government's policies. From education to quotas, disbursement of development funds to meek acceptance of fatwa (remember Gudiya and Imrana?) that are antipodean to the law of the land, from sneakily conducting a Muslim headcount of the armed forces to mollycoddling minority educational institutions, and, from repealing the Prevention of Terrorism Act to subverting the Supreme Court's verdict against the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, the Congress and its allies in the UPA and the Left are perceived as bending over backwards to appease the Islamists and cravenly succumbing to their basest demands.
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Yes, there were terror attacks when the BJP-led NDA Government was in power, and some of them were astonishingly daring. There was an assault on the Jammu & Kashmir legislature, terrorists struck Parliament House complex, jihadis assaulted Akshardham Temple.
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But there was tough retaliatory action, too. Even the most cursory glance through the anti-terrorism record of the NDA regime will show that there was a certain resolve of the Government of India to fight this scourge. That resolve, tragically, has been severely diluted by the UPA regime.
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It is, therefore, not surprising that the rash of terror attacks that have taken place after the return of the Congress and its cheerleaders to power should have been carried out by jihadis among us; they may have been inspired by foreign role models and Pakistani masters, but they were born in India.
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The impact of the UPA Government's shameless pandering to fanaticism disguised as minority assertion is there for all to see. If the fidayeen attack on the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya last July and the subsequent serial bombings in Delhi on the eve of Diwali were fierce expressions of incipient Islamism, the bombings at Sankat Mochan Temple and the railway station in Varanasi on the eve of Holi, preceded by the public demonstrations of jihadi might, mark the coming of age of that which all of India must unanimously deplore - homegrown militant Islam.
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| Mainstream India should be worried. Very, very worried. |
--
Kanchan Gupta
Associate Editor,
The Pioneer,
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