Friday, May 30, 2008
COMMENTS POSTED ON ‘INDIAN MUSLIM’ BLOGSITE
COMMENTS POSTED ON ‘INDIAN MUSLIM’ BLOGSITE:
Saturday, May 31, 2008
There is serious flaw in not considering within proper context, Maulana Maududi's verdict on Muslims that remained back in India, after an 'Islamic state' is formed where their religion and their Islamic way of life was to be protected from the kind of discriminations that were the starting point of the demand for a separate state/province for Muslims.
MM was responding to a question, the notorious kind that journalists invariably ask, more for argument and less for information. MM's sarcastic line of argument should not be interpreted to mean that he 'advocates' or 'prefers' harsh treatment of Indian Muslims by their new 'Hindu' rulers. He possibly was encouraging them to appreciate the quality of religious and social life they will enjoy in the new Islamic state of Pakistan and at the same time scaring them of the dire consequences of remaining back in 'Hindu' India. He was all for Muslims to migrate in the best tradition of our beloved Prophet (PBUH).
At that stage, neither MM not Maulana Israr Ahmed, could have imagined that India, at least legally as per its constitution, would not become a Hindu religious state; even though in practice it already had become a Brahmin dominated state. Religious freedom to some extant was available to Indian Muslims in British rule too. But the thought of British handing effective power to highly communalised Brahmin rulers of independent India, was naturally nightmarish to practically all Muslims across the board, in terms of new religious/political changes in the country.
In the event, even though India is still highly communalised, its legal system, its constitutional safeguards to a large extent, give Indian Muslims a fair chance to rise up and even govern the country, if they can play the political game according to the new rules of the game. If a US or Israel can organise and manage a peaceful 'regime change' without firing a single shot; who has stopped the Muslims to get their due in their own land.
The problem with Muslims and especially with the Indian Muslim in the context of present discussion is that they just do not have what it takes to assume the role of the leader of the nation or nations. A shift of focus from the clamouring about immediate bread and butter issues to the higher level of resolve to help humanity at large could possibly bring in much better results. Islam at this juncture has so much positive to contribute to the world, that it will be a big mistake if we the Muslims should squander our energy and intellectual assets to fight internecine one-upmanship.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
www.ghulammuhammed.wordpress.com
Indian Muslims
Maulana Maududi’s Terrifying Vision for Indian Muslims
Posted: 30 May 2008 06:49 PM CDT
Maulana Maududi’s estranged disciple and Tanzeem-e-Islami chief Dr. Israr Ahmed appearing on the Jawabdeh program of GEO television in 2005 made some startling remarks about Indian Muslims. According to a published report of the program in the liberal Daily Times he reportedly said the following:
In an Islamic state non-Muslims would be second-class citizens. He said if India decided after that to declare all Muslims second-class citizens then that would be right too. He said Muslims had fought in India on the claim that they were a different nation. There was no harm if India considered its Muslims a separate nation.[1]
Dr. Israr Ahmed’s lack of concern for the protection of the rights of India’s Muslims is hardly surprising when looked through the prism of the views of his mentor Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi. Both were comfortable with a possible political scenario in India where the nation’s Muslims were reduced to second class citizens.
In the often cited Munir Commission report Maulana Maududi emphatically said in reply to a query that he will have no problem if Indian Muslims were treated on par with the Malechas or “untouchables.” He was asked the question, “If we have this form of Islamic government in Pakistan, will you permit the Hindus to base their constitution on the basis of their religion?” He reportedly replied, “I should have no objection even if the Muslims of India are treated in that form of Government as shudras and malishes and Manu’s laws are applied to them, depriving them of all share in the Government and the rights of a citizen. In fact, such a state of affairs already exists in India.”[2]
But the venerable Maulana later on denied making such a statement. In a letter to Dr. Nejatullah Siddiqi, he wrote:
There is a fair amount of distortion in things attributed to me in Munir Report. Actually, I did not say that Manu’s Dharma Shastra be introduced in India, and that I would concur with the treatment of Muslims as Mleccas and Shudras. In fact these were [Justice Muhammad] Munir Sahib’s own remarks which he attributed to me. His question was: “If you want an Islamic government, would you then agree if a Hindu government is formed in India, where Manu’s Dharma Shastra would be introduced.” What I had told him [Justice Munir] was that it is up to Hindus to decide what they wanted to do and what they did not want to do. They will not ask us what form of system they would establish. Our task is to work according to our belief and faith wherever we have the option. As to India , there the Hindus will do whatever they want to whether we agree with them or not.”
Despite the denial there are at least two other instances where the Maulana made known his contempt for Indian Muslims? A booklet titled Jamaat-e-Islami Ki Dawat contains a speech made by Maulana Maududi on May 10, 1947. In it he says:
It appears now certain that the country will be partitioned. One portion of India will be given to the Muslim majority and the other will be controlled by the non-Muslims. In the first part (Pakistan) we shall mobilize public opinion to base Pakistan’s constitution on the Islamic laws. In the other part we will be in a minority and you (Hindus) will be in a majority. We would request you to study the lives and teachings of Ramchandra, Krishnaji, Buddha, Guru Nanak and other sages. Please study the Vedas, Puranas, Shastras and other books. And if you cull out any divine guidance from these, we would request you to base your constitution on this guidance. We would request you to treat us exactly on the lines of the teachings of your religions. We would raise no objections. [3]
Further evidence of Maulana Maududi’s disdain for Indian Muslims is evident from his following answer to a question regarding the permissibility of a Pakistani male citizen marrying an Indian Muslim female:
Answer: As far as I know the Quran’s derivative is that there can be no relations of inheritance and marriage between the residents of Darul Islam and Darul Kufr…From now on there should be no marital relations between Indian and Pakistani Muslims.”[4]
This shows that the Maulana not only disregarded the plight of Indian Muslims but also considered them unequal to Pakistani Muslims.
It is the good fortune of Indian Muslims that the founding fathers and the present rulers of India did not heed the calls of Maulana Maududi or an Israr Ahmed. As it is the nation’s imperfect democracy has relegated the community to the most backward status. One can only imagine what would have been the scenario if a theocracy was imposed upon them.
[1] http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_4-10-2005_pg3_3
[2] Report of the Court of Inquiry …to Enquire into the Punjab Disturbances of 1953. (Lahore: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1954), p.228. Cited in Dr. Omar Khalidi’s ‘Between Muslim Nationalists and Nationalist Muslims: Mawdudi’s Thoughts on Indian Muslims. (New Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, 2004)
[3] Cited in S.E.Hasnain’s Indian Muslims: Challenges & Opportunities (Bombay: Lalvani Publishing House, 1968) pp.51-52.
[4] Mahnama Tarjumanul Quran, September 1951. Cited in Khalid Waheed Falahi’s Hindustan Mein Zaat Paat Aur Musalman. p. 357.
There Are No Role Models – Indian Muslim suffer from a lack of leadership
Friday, May 30, 2008
TO: The Editor, The Times of India, Mumbai
RE: Leader article: There Are No Role Models – Indian Muslim suffer from a lack of leadership
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-3084012,flstry-1.cms#write
MJ AKBAR has erred in trying to search for a flesh and bones leader of Indian Muslims when he writes that there are no role Models.
It is ironical that when Irshad Haqqani, one of senior Pakistani journalists is writing in Urdu and his article is published in URDU TIMES Mumbai on the same day TOI published Akbar’s article, describes how Israel’s doughty Prime Minister Golda Meir replied to a Washington Post interviewer, as to how she made up her mind to order huge amounts of guns, missiles and planes for 1973 war with her neighbours? He asked: Whether it was a spur of the moment decision or an old calculated strategy, as her entire cabinet was against it, citing heavy costs. Golda Meir said, I found my reasoning from the career of Prophet Mohammed, about whom I had studied in my comparative religious study classes in student days. When the Prophet died, his wife had to sell his shield to buy oil to light the lamp. Still he had nine swords hanging on the walls. History does not record his poverty. His triumphs are legend. Golda Meir reasoned that Israel’s history will not record how poor and destitute the Jews were during those early days. Only our triumph will be remembered and copied.
With a role model like the prophet, who had inspired even the present day Muslim’s worst enemies, how MJ Akbar seems to be complaining that Muslims have no role model?
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
www.ghulammuhammed.wordpress.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
LEADER ARTICLE: There Are No Role Models30 May 2008, 0034 hrs IST , M J Akbar
Bollywood is the clearest mirror of popular perceptions, reflecting part of the truth even as it shapes other parts.
Truth, after all, is a set of fragments, some contradictory, some complementary. When and how did the Indian Muslim become an indelible part of the Bollywood underworld.
The arc of decline from the misty world of Nawabs in Mere Mehboob to the sentimental glitz of goons in Maqbool is a trajectory of shifting role models among Muslim youth.
Villains change on screen as necessarily as they shift outside the cinema hall. The three stereotype villains of the Fifties all belonged to upper Hindu castes.
There was the violent, exploitative Thakur, whether in a classic like the Dilip Kumar-Vyjanthimala Madhumati or a potboiler like the Dharmendra-Jayalalitha Izzat.
The scheming Brahmin, Narada, was a constant of mythologicals. The Bania moneylender, epitomised in Mother India, was the worst, leering at women and extracting wealth out of famine.
These were not single-dimensional images: there was also the noble, patriotic, generous Thakur syndrome, for instance.
Perhaps the most powerful symbol of Sholay was the armless Thakur, turned impotent in the line of duty. Eventually, happy-go-lucky vagrants destroyed the evil Gabbar Singh.
By 1976 the saviour had become a variation of the emerging audience. As befits the new corporate age, crime became more professional and sophisticated, and space between smuggling, business and politics narrowed.
Gradually, the Muslim became the primary face among the foot soldiers of the underworld.
A role model must merge contemporary compulsions and aspirations. The model for young Muslims in the 1940s was obviously Jinnah.
They were oblivious of the traumatic potential of partition, and were charred by the killing hot winds of 1947 and the Fifties. Nehru, rather than Gandhi (who they had rejected), became the new model as he began, gently, to restore their self-confidence and nurture some degree of security.
But the security was partial, and Nehru did little to reverse the marginalisation of Muslims from the economy.
The Sixties were the decade of despair. Desperation discovered a strange role model: Haji Mastan. In the disturbed, distraught and fragmented mind of Muslim youth of the Sixties, no one else seemed to be giving Muslims any jobs.
Since they had no faith in the white economy, and the white economy seemed to have no faith in them, they turned to the black economy.
Haji Mastan was so impressed by the support he seemed to get from the community that he even started a political party. It did not work because crime does not work.
What was the alternative? The elite had disappeared on the auction blocks of Lucknow and Hyderabad (pace Mere Mehboob); the professional middle class of the north had migrated to Pakistan in large numbers.
Muslims felt deeply betrayed by Congress politicians, with their litany of double standards. The anger sharpened during the politics of Babri Masjid: the Congress was responsible for everything, from the opening of the locks in 1948 to laying the foundation stone of the temple in 1989 to indifference while the mosque was destroyed in 1992.
The BJP was the perceived enemy, of course, but the BJP could not be accused of betrayal, because it had never been trusted.
In this vacuum, the hysterical mullah, or his counterpart, became the role model of the Seventies and Eighties. There is little point in naming the prominent among them, for they turned irrelevant as quickly as they ascended.
The demolition of Babri in 1992, the riots that followed and the bomb blasts of Mumbai in 1993 were a historical watershed.
You cannot be disillusioned if you do not entertain illusions, so there was no rise in bitterness against the Congress; but there was sudden disillusionment with the Muslim purveyors of rabid rhetoric.
The role model split after Babri. The overwhelming sentiment is for a new Sir Sayyid Ahmad, founder of Aligarh Muslim University, who argued that salvation lay in both English and the English, the emblems of progress and success.
This is not a revival of the politics of separation; Indian Muslims know that they are the chief victims of partition.
This is a revival of the culture of modern education. I have argued at every public forum, and in my writing, that this thrust will not achieve its full potential until the girl child gets an equal place in the Indian Muslim’s quest for modernity. If gender bias is not eliminated, Indian Muslims cannot enter the 20th century, let alone the 21st. The good news is that girls are being educated in far greater numbers than ever before.
But there was another role model lurking in a corner of the consciousness, born out of the belief that those who started riots against Muslims were stopped only because of the 1993 blasts.
The anger of the victim justified terrorism. This is a minuscule section, but it exists and has merged its fantasies with the Osama bin Laden phenomenon.
This is the wart that could poison the future. It will not be eliminated by arbitrary repression; but it can disappear with the assimilation of the community into economic growth and educational opportunity.
Fifteen years after the watershed moment of 1992, Indian Muslims have reached another crossroads. The overwhelming majority will travel the road towards progress out of nothing more complicated than common sense.
But there is a regressive minority within this minority. It needs as never before the leadership of a modern Sir Sayyid. History has offered a role, but there is no one capable of being model.
(The writer is a journalist and author.)
TO: The Editor, The Times of India, Mumbai
RE: Leader article: There Are No Role Models – Indian Muslim suffer from a lack of leadership
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-3084012,flstry-1.cms#write
MJ AKBAR has erred in trying to search for a flesh and bones leader of Indian Muslims when he writes that there are no role Models.
It is ironical that when Irshad Haqqani, one of senior Pakistani journalists is writing in Urdu and his article is published in URDU TIMES Mumbai on the same day TOI published Akbar’s article, describes how Israel’s doughty Prime Minister Golda Meir replied to a Washington Post interviewer, as to how she made up her mind to order huge amounts of guns, missiles and planes for 1973 war with her neighbours? He asked: Whether it was a spur of the moment decision or an old calculated strategy, as her entire cabinet was against it, citing heavy costs. Golda Meir said, I found my reasoning from the career of Prophet Mohammed, about whom I had studied in my comparative religious study classes in student days. When the Prophet died, his wife had to sell his shield to buy oil to light the lamp. Still he had nine swords hanging on the walls. History does not record his poverty. His triumphs are legend. Golda Meir reasoned that Israel’s history will not record how poor and destitute the Jews were during those early days. Only our triumph will be remembered and copied.
With a role model like the prophet, who had inspired even the present day Muslim’s worst enemies, how MJ Akbar seems to be complaining that Muslims have no role model?
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
www.ghulammuhammed.wordpress.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
LEADER ARTICLE: There Are No Role Models30 May 2008, 0034 hrs IST , M J Akbar
Bollywood is the clearest mirror of popular perceptions, reflecting part of the truth even as it shapes other parts.
Truth, after all, is a set of fragments, some contradictory, some complementary. When and how did the Indian Muslim become an indelible part of the Bollywood underworld.
The arc of decline from the misty world of Nawabs in Mere Mehboob to the sentimental glitz of goons in Maqbool is a trajectory of shifting role models among Muslim youth.
Villains change on screen as necessarily as they shift outside the cinema hall. The three stereotype villains of the Fifties all belonged to upper Hindu castes.
There was the violent, exploitative Thakur, whether in a classic like the Dilip Kumar-Vyjanthimala Madhumati or a potboiler like the Dharmendra-Jayalalitha Izzat.
The scheming Brahmin, Narada, was a constant of mythologicals. The Bania moneylender, epitomised in Mother India, was the worst, leering at women and extracting wealth out of famine.
These were not single-dimensional images: there was also the noble, patriotic, generous Thakur syndrome, for instance.
Perhaps the most powerful symbol of Sholay was the armless Thakur, turned impotent in the line of duty. Eventually, happy-go-lucky vagrants destroyed the evil Gabbar Singh.
By 1976 the saviour had become a variation of the emerging audience. As befits the new corporate age, crime became more professional and sophisticated, and space between smuggling, business and politics narrowed.
Gradually, the Muslim became the primary face among the foot soldiers of the underworld.
A role model must merge contemporary compulsions and aspirations. The model for young Muslims in the 1940s was obviously Jinnah.
They were oblivious of the traumatic potential of partition, and were charred by the killing hot winds of 1947 and the Fifties. Nehru, rather than Gandhi (who they had rejected), became the new model as he began, gently, to restore their self-confidence and nurture some degree of security.
But the security was partial, and Nehru did little to reverse the marginalisation of Muslims from the economy.
The Sixties were the decade of despair. Desperation discovered a strange role model: Haji Mastan. In the disturbed, distraught and fragmented mind of Muslim youth of the Sixties, no one else seemed to be giving Muslims any jobs.
Since they had no faith in the white economy, and the white economy seemed to have no faith in them, they turned to the black economy.
Haji Mastan was so impressed by the support he seemed to get from the community that he even started a political party. It did not work because crime does not work.
What was the alternative? The elite had disappeared on the auction blocks of Lucknow and Hyderabad (pace Mere Mehboob); the professional middle class of the north had migrated to Pakistan in large numbers.
Muslims felt deeply betrayed by Congress politicians, with their litany of double standards. The anger sharpened during the politics of Babri Masjid: the Congress was responsible for everything, from the opening of the locks in 1948 to laying the foundation stone of the temple in 1989 to indifference while the mosque was destroyed in 1992.
The BJP was the perceived enemy, of course, but the BJP could not be accused of betrayal, because it had never been trusted.
In this vacuum, the hysterical mullah, or his counterpart, became the role model of the Seventies and Eighties. There is little point in naming the prominent among them, for they turned irrelevant as quickly as they ascended.
The demolition of Babri in 1992, the riots that followed and the bomb blasts of Mumbai in 1993 were a historical watershed.
You cannot be disillusioned if you do not entertain illusions, so there was no rise in bitterness against the Congress; but there was sudden disillusionment with the Muslim purveyors of rabid rhetoric.
The role model split after Babri. The overwhelming sentiment is for a new Sir Sayyid Ahmad, founder of Aligarh Muslim University, who argued that salvation lay in both English and the English, the emblems of progress and success.
This is not a revival of the politics of separation; Indian Muslims know that they are the chief victims of partition.
This is a revival of the culture of modern education. I have argued at every public forum, and in my writing, that this thrust will not achieve its full potential until the girl child gets an equal place in the Indian Muslim’s quest for modernity. If gender bias is not eliminated, Indian Muslims cannot enter the 20th century, let alone the 21st. The good news is that girls are being educated in far greater numbers than ever before.
But there was another role model lurking in a corner of the consciousness, born out of the belief that those who started riots against Muslims were stopped only because of the 1993 blasts.
The anger of the victim justified terrorism. This is a minuscule section, but it exists and has merged its fantasies with the Osama bin Laden phenomenon.
This is the wart that could poison the future. It will not be eliminated by arbitrary repression; but it can disappear with the assimilation of the community into economic growth and educational opportunity.
Fifteen years after the watershed moment of 1992, Indian Muslims have reached another crossroads. The overwhelming majority will travel the road towards progress out of nothing more complicated than common sense.
But there is a regressive minority within this minority. It needs as never before the leadership of a modern Sir Sayyid. History has offered a role, but there is no one capable of being model.
(The writer is a journalist and author.)
