Thursday, July 17, 2008
A MESSAGE TO INDIAN MUSLIMS: DIVIDE AND RULE
Thursday, July 17, 2008
A MESSAGE TO INDIAN MUSLIMS: DIVIDE AND RULE
The political turmoil rocking India around the debate on Indo-US civilian nuclear deal, 123 and Hyde Act and the very survival of current coalition government, has suddenly brought out the actual or presumed role of Indian Muslims in general and Muslim voters in particular, in view of the imminent Parliamentary elections, as the main bone of contention between secular and supposedly non-secular forces.
Reviews after reviews, lining up of Muslim voices, editorials and daily bytes on TV channels, does through up a dilemma for Indian Muslims, if this is for the real. However, the national debate around the participation of Muslims as tilting the balance on one side or other, is the result of changing times and the acute polarization within the non-Muslim majority that had publicly marginalized and thrown the 150 million Muslims of India to the dust bin of Indian history and is now forced to court the Muslims as it is apparent they do have a major role to play both, by their verdict on any extension of relations with the US and Israel and by their mass voting potential, as and when the next Parliamentary Elections are held, on their appointed time or even at an earlier date, if Congress and its motley allies, purchased through horse trading, loses its majority in the trust vote in Lok Sabha.
US and Israeli aggression against 'Muslims' supported by widely propaganda in Jewish controlled western media and American leadership, demonizing as the very incarnation of the devil, had ensured that Indian Muslims like all fair-minded world communities, have developed a hatred for the US foreign policies in general and the Bush regime in particular.
In Indian context, Indian Muslims have to decide if they respond with that deep ingrained hatred of the US and Israel, or be lured by the goodies promised by the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal. It is a common human trait that hatred works more intensely than love or greed. For those, who are hell bent wasting their time and energy in convincing Indian Muslims, that Indo-US deal is in the interest of the country, are oblivious of the fact that for the community to even consider any interaction with the US and Israel, that hatred had to first be addressed. As it is, Muslims who have been reduced to the bottom of the economic barrel, and go with the poorest of the poor in the country, are convinced that all the so-called progress of the new liberalization and investment driven economic boom, will hardly benefit them. On the contrary they all, the Muslims and others from the poor level of economy, have been hit tremendously hard by the ever increasing inflation, most disproportionately affecting their survival existence.
Muslims have observed how their lowly properties in Nandigram had been expropriated by the CPIM government of West Bengal, without any fair returns to them in any successful venture on their expropriated properties, now being handed over in SEZ to foreign and local industrialists. While real estate prices are skyrocketing, Muslims in Nandigram and Singhur SEZ had been unceremoniously deprived in the share of windfall profits accruing to their expropriated holdings.
Though it must be said, that it was a Marxist politburo member, MK Pandhe, who was the first to warn Samajwadi Party, about the risk of SP losing Muslim vote, if its opportunistically joins Congress in a Muslim hated strategic relationship with the US, that will perpetually bind the nation to a colonized existence. However, other realists soon caught up to the potential of Muslim votes deserting the much celebrated 'secular' coalition of political parties that is so disdainful of their most deeply felt hatred against the Muslim demonisers in the US and Israel.
Congress has now hit back on the ganging up of CPIM, the supposedly secular and BJP, the communal Hindutva extremists in one opposition group, apparently joining hands to pull down Congress led UPA coalition government. Muslims should not be hoodwinked by this Congress ploy. As Prakash Karat of CPIM has amply clarified how Congress has been in cahoots with the BJP in pulling down various 'secular' governments in the past --- that of Charan Singh, V.P. Singh, Dev Gowda and I. K. Gujral, why should it cry wolf, when the shoe is now on the other foot. In fact, non-Hindutva group is voting not in favour of Hindutva, but against the pseudo-secularist Congress, that had always sold Muslims short.
A new role for Muslims as citizens and as voters is being thrust upon them, and it is an opportunity for them to divide their tormentors and assume a leadership role, at least in giving true nationalist direction to India's future where the Brahminical conspiracies will be exposed, where all victimized communities will get justice, where the robber barons are forced to abide by the laws of the land and shun corruption and pay back to the nation their ill-gotten wealth, where foreign forces are never allowed to subjugate India once again to be able to suck the blood of the poor and shed the blood of our Jawans.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
http://www.ghulammuhammed.wordpress.com/
Labels: Lok Sabha elections, Muslim vote bank, Muslims form 15% of India's population, political empowerment strategies for Indian Muslims, Stakes for Indian Muslims in Indo-US civilian nuclear deal
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
A LETTER TO THE EDITOR:
BJP SPEAKS WITH FORKED TONGUE
Sunday, it is Rajnath Singh with his call for old Hindutva baggage of discarded slogans of 370, common civil code, and the whole litany of their pet planks. Monday, it is L. K. Advani, with his more sugary, but equally transparent slogans of opening up to minorities and the suppressed castes. It is hard for the diehards to understand that they cannot fool all the people all the time.
There is no doubt that Sangh Parivar’s deep commitment to its outdated communal ideological formations have kept the party from disintegration. However, it is equally true that Indian people have shown it again and again that they by instinct and temperament are not as fundamentalists as the Brahminical hate-mongers would like them to be. BJP did win spectacular results through its well-tuned its violence-led campaigns, of Babri and post Godhra Gujarat. However, it got them as many admirers as detractors around the country, if not more. Hindutva’s core appeal is restricted to a core group. It cannot be translated to become the national obsession that could get BJP its cherished majority to rule India, without any coalition partners. India has changed so dramatically over the last 2 decades at least, that no single party can win a majority until unless it possibly organises a full scale war with one of its neighbours and reaps an concocted patriotic vote across all differences of castes, religions, regions and group loyalties. BJP was poised for such a scenario when it allowed terrorists to move into Parliament premises and stage their attack. Vajpayee had full information of that intended attack and he had publicly announced the danger, at Sharad Pawar’s birthday bash at Mumbai’s Race Course grounds, a day earlier to the parliament attack. With such advance knowledge, it is easy to guess, why the terrorists were not stopped at the very gates. However, it would appear that even for waging a war against one’s enemy in these times, for whatever motive one can imagine, countries like India need the support of other powers, unless they are moving in on behalf of such powers. That goes to prove that violence, be that Babri, Gujarat, or full fledge wars, all are temporary devices to win electoral victories. Such nature of violence cannot be perpetrated as a permanent tool to create wave of mass indignation and win votes.
BJP will have to junk its communal baggage, cleanse its warped hate ideology, and win the hearts and minds of people by concentrating on bread and butter issues. All hate propaganda against Muslims should be openly condemned. BJP should concentrate on good governance, corruption free administration, equal opportunity to all, and positive upliftment of those suffering from benign or malign neglect, by the past governments of all hues and restore a sense of respect and dignity to all Indian citizens without any discrimination whatsoever.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
www.ghulammuhammed.wordpress.com
Labels: Babri Masjid demolition, Bharatiya Jananta Party, BJP, Gujarat genocidal riots, Hate ideology, Lok Sabha elections
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Muslims should think and vote regional - By Ghulam Muhammed
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Muslims should think and vote regional
By Ghulam Muhammed
Karnataka election victory of BJP has started a media frenzy to predict the imminent doom of Indian National Congress. All sorts of calculations are projected to nail the point that Congress is sure to lose the next Lok Sabha elections and BJP and its allies will form the next government at the center.
The whole scenario points to regionalization of Indian politics. The national stature of Indian National Congress has been declining since the demolition of Babri Masjid and the Muslim voters’ rejection of Congress as their true friend and ally, in confrontation with Hindutva and RSS forces. Like Congress, Indian Muslims too had an all India presence and this factor had immensely benefited Congress to maintain its national presence and relevance. With each election after the imposition of PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh team on Congress and the nation, the all India presence is being challenged not by BJP as clear alternative, but more regional parties. States have realized that Congress and/or any other National party, is seriously handicapped in being responsive to the genuine needs of one or other state, while it has to look to other states clamouring for similar sops. The resulting deadlock, or indefinite postponement of vital decisions so crucial to individual states, damages the credibility or bona fide of the national party.
When a Raj Thackeray comes out with sons of the soil demand, mere platitude about national integrity would not suffice. The rat race in on! Some states have already got cozy niche in Central government, while others are waiting their turn as the next change of coalition equation.
Under such circumstance, Indian Muslims too should think regional. They should identify themselves with local strong groups, rather than the political parties with national ambitions, especially those with Brahminical leadership --- like Congress, BJP or CPM.
The current TMM campaign to get old Nawab Masjid in Vellore Fort, open for prayers, shows how Congress being a national party, had to play divisive communal politics of the worst kind when ASI under central jurisdiction, finds it convenient to allow a temple and a church to be handed over to their respective group while refusing the same yardstick of justice for Muslims. The injustice is so glaring that Congress leadership just cannot defend its communal policy with any degree of reasonable excuses. This is a case of high crime of communal discrimination against Muslims. However, Congress worry is not confined to only Tamil Nadu. It is apprehensive that if it gives in now to the just Muslim demands in Tamil Nadu, there would become precedent all over India. Being a national party it cannot afford to lose its bigger constituency of Hindu communalists, while ‘appeasing’ the Muslims in Tamil Nadu. It is time, therefore, for Muslims to relieve the Congress of this onerous duty to be just and appear to appease the Muslims, and shift their votes to regional parties, with whom they can be in a better position to bargain. Let Muslims and Congress not be emotional about such a parting of the way; as it is in the best of the nation, that the straitjacket of pseudo-secularism that Congress is wearing, should no longer force it to deny justice and fair-play to the Muslims.
Muslims however, should be very very vigilant that they keep out of the dragnet of Brahmin formations. Each and every political grouping, if dominated by the high-caste, like even BSP should be summarily rejected. Muslims should only cooperate with OBC and Dalits and SC/ST, to the complete exclusion of the criminal gang of exploiters, that will not relinquish their stranglehold on levers of power and pelf, unless they are clearly, publicly identifies and ostracized, just as they themselves ostracized the Dalits and the Malechas.
Muslim organisations, like Jamiatul Ulama, Jamaat e Islami, Mushawarat, Milli Council together with regional Muslim organisations should openly go regional. The Delhi based Muslim organisations should be humble enough to cooperate and even accept the leadership of regional Muslim organisations, especially from South and East. They should together come out with their favorites in each state, right from the very beginning of the campaigns that are now in full swing.
The first order of priority is not to think that Congress is our only saviour. All Brahmins think alike. If Congress has its Babri, BJP has its Gujarat, CPM has its Nandigram. All such crimes should be punished at the ballot box and better take care of the ballot box rigging too.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
http://www.ghulammuhammed.wordpress.com/
Labels: ballot box rigging, BJP, Dalits, Hindus, India, India's regional political parties, Indian Muslims, Indian National Congress, Islam, Lok Sabha elections, Muslims, OBC
