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October     Last updated: October 14: 7:00 p.m.

Cabbages & Kings
V.P. Bhatia

The Enemy Within

"We created such a fine country for you, but you have made a mess of it." These are the purported words spoken by a retired Indian Muslim bureaucrat to a visiting Pakistani journalist, as reported by the same journalist in his column in a Pakistani paper a couple of weeks ago, without naming the Indian bureaucrat but making it abundantly clear who he is. This reminds me of another occasional comment from sundry Indian writers that whatever the Muslim intellectuals here may profess about their loyalty to India, inwardly they consider a strong Pakistan as a guarantee of their superior status and political clout in India. The less said about the non-intellectual or unsophisticated Mullahs and Maulanas the better, their main obsession being to motivate and organise Indian Muslims as a totally non-Indian entity, crusading for their separatist cultural identity at odds with anything even remotely smelling of Hindu-cultural tradition in a predominantly Hindu country where Hinduism is woven into the very texure of every regional culture, as a roving Indian author recently discovered.

But this Hindu omnipresence suffocates them, so that they let go no opportunity of asserting their extra-territorial, Pan-Islamic loyalties, proclaiming solidarity with for all militant or terrorist movements in any corner of the world. No wonder, when they feel Pakistan strong enough with its terrorist trump card now fortified its dubious nuclear prowess, they would let go no opportunity to proclaim its superiority over India, as a divinely ordained state, just as, apart from the 'Shahi Imam', the most popular' local Urdu weekly does on its multi-coloured front page time and again to frighten Indians. For instance, in the most head of its latest issue it flaunts the Paki nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadir Khan's threat to "wipe out Delhi and Bombay in just five minutes". And there in lies the secret of an ever-flowing stream of fulminations not only against their bugbear of Hindutva Parivar in Jinnah-type contemptuous language but also a denunciation of almost every secular party and leader of India especially the Congress for its betrayal over the Babri demolition and failure to check the so-called anti-Muslim riots and exploitation of the Muslim vote-bank in its decades of political supremacy without improving the lot of Muslims.

This belated awakening is of course another way of expressing dissatisfaction with everything Indian, after years of tactical silence. Even the regional parties, including the ultra secular SP, BSP and leftist ones are accused of failing to deliver the goods and harbouring communal bias on occasions like Mulayam Singh's denunciation of Pakistan, Kanshi Ram's description of Muslims as betrayers, Mayawati's rejection of Farooq's autonomy offensive and CPI(M), half-hearted drive against infiltrators. It is a strange case of the kettle of anti-Hindu fanatics calling the pseudo-secularist pot black. For, inwardly both know it well that theirs are opportunist, promiscuous marriages of convenience with divorces galore. This Muslims malaise is deeper indeed, both psychological and religious. It exposes itself wittingly or unwittingly from time to time—for instance, expression of suffocation at living in a land of Unbelievers and Polytheists (Kufr aur shirk) voiced by a local Urdu biweekly of Jamaat-e-Islami in its frontpage editorial notes recently. The BJP's coming to power with the support of even hitherto 'secular' regional parties is an added source of limitless heartburning for them.

For, refusing to merge in the political mainstream and cunningly using their vote-bank for creating instability by shifting support from one small party to another for the overall purpose of acquiring the position of King-makers, they now find themselves sidelined by BJP's skill to weave diverse regional elements into a harmonious whole, giving the lie to the oft-repeated charge that it believes in a steam-rolled uniformity. In this, their mental plight is the same as that of the pseudo-secularists, particularly self-opinionated mediamen, Though. "Kashmir belongs to Pakistan. Pakistan is the centre of Pan-Islamic hopes. Indian Muslims should openly say so," writes an Islamic paper of Delhi Thus while they were feeling badly let-down even by secularists and marginalised by dwindling representation in the Lok Sabha and State assemblies because of their negative tactics, they were complaining that the BJP does not care for them.

However, now when the new BJP President, Shri Bangaroo Laxman has thrown a bait to them and put their bona fides on test by acknowledging their vote-bank power and asking the BJP workers to reach out to every Muslim home to remove their fear of the BJP, they have started riding a high horse. As a result, with a few honourable exceptions, the arrogant Mullahs and Maulanas and self-serving political manipulators have puffed up and started laying down impossible conditions for any reconciliation with the nationalist mainstream. In short, bargaining from a morally high ground, they have started taking the BJP's goodwill gesture as an admission of defeat of its policies. Offensive and virulent as usual, a legacy of the pre-partition 'pistol-point' politics, aided and abetted by the British rulers they think it is the majority community and the Indian State on trial whereas actually they have to undergo a test of fire, in view of what they have done to this country in 1947, and again in Kashmir later. But this sense of Islamic superiority complex is in line with the general Muslims attitude since independence. When having earned an adious image as splitters of the country, they had switched support to the Congress to turn it into a semi-Muslim party under Jawaharlal Nehru to offset Hindu anger against the Congress for betraying its 1945 election pledges to defeat the Muslim League crusade for Pakistan at any cost.

Vast sections of Hindus were left to the mercies of wolfish Islamic hordes by Partition. However, the accession of Kashmir to India with Sheikh Abdullah's consent came as a godsend to refurbish Muslim image, so that their leaders were able to extract special constitutional rights for minorities under the illusion of change of Islamic heart. The ploy was exposed soon as the Sheikh set out to convert J&K into an independent Islamic state within months sowing seeds of open interference of Pakistan and insurgency. Which is but another manifestation of the endemic Islamic mentality of refusing to live with Kafirs, encouraged by selfish secular defensiveness and refusal to take the bull by the horns.

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Meanwhile, after Shahi Imam's 'fatwa' against India's claim on Kashmir, it would be interesting to cite a latest example of the hard-core anti-India ideology dissmeminated to the mass of Muslims, particularly to the Muslim youth under cover of religious education, making them grow up as aliens and strangers in their own country. Given here below is a typical example of a religio-political discourse published in a local pro-Jamaat-e-Islami magazine : "Have the Muslims of India sacrificed the concept of Pan-Islamic solidarity and brotherhood to the idol of false god of nationalism? Such questions arise in relation to the attitude of Muslim leadership, journalists, poets and intelligentsia of India to the question of relationship with Pakistan and Kashmir.

There is no national justification of calling the Kashmiri crusaders for independence as terrorists or to condemn Pakistan for everything. Some of them who do so are ignorant of facts, and suffering from fear-complex and dominated by un-Islamic sentiments of patriotic love of the country instead of commitment to basic Islamic conceptions. "To curse freedom-fighters of Kashmir or their supporter Pakistan, would not merely be an irresponsible act of the highest order. It is sheer surrender to the wretched idea of nationalism and treachery to Islam and Islamic people of the world. Nay, even a crime against humanity. "There is every political, historical and geographical justification of Kashmir's merger with Pakistan. The Maharaja and the Government of India are equal partners in this conspiracy to deprive the Muslims of Kashmir of their inherent right to join Islamic Pakistan, deprive them of their human rights and commit inhuman atrocities on them. "In this background any peace-loving and democratic-minded person would consider it a fight against slavery and in no way can their war for freedom be dubbed as terrorism. It is a Jehad pure and simple and those Muslim leaders who for fear or opportunistic reasons lack courage to say so are unworthy of leadership.

If this is not jehad, then the Ulemas struggle against the British was also an un-Islamic and illegitimatic war. "If we are not living here as hostages or tenants of India, and possess our own independent ideological and religious attitude, then we should clearly assert our relations and sentiments towards the whole of Muslim world including Pakistan and carryout our responsibilities towards that end. Every Muslim's basic view should be that every other Muslim is his brother. They have such a strong bond of religious and fraternal love and ties between them as cannot be broken for the sake of any false (un-Islamic) idea or temptation. It is the collective religious duty of all Muslims to forge a system of worldwide Islamic brotherhood in which everyone is bound by divine edicts to rule out any repression on them. "If we want to live in India as self-respecting Muslims and are equal partners in the polity of this country without sacrificing our basic religious tenants, then it is incumbent upon us as true Muslims to support the Kashmiri Muslims' struggle as per Islamic teachings, and express such a view openly. "Pakistan is the hope and centre of aspirations of all Muslim countries of the world. It is unfortunate that it is being handicapped by internal and external pressures of selfish people. India and all other anti-Islamic countries are one in such efforts to frustrate Pakistan.

But despite all these weaknesses including the selfishness of its own rulers, Pakistan is today considered the citadel of Islamic world. Its nuclear explosions had sent a wave of jubilation all over the Islamic world. All leading personalities of Islamic countries had hailed Pakistan's nuclear power as an asset for the entire Pan-Islamic community, because all Muslim countries have common interests. The question is : Can Indian Muslims feel differently from the rest of the Islamic world? "If we judge the Indo-Pakistan relations justly in the light of cold facts, and count justices of India since independence, then Pakistan cannot be dubbed as an aggressive, ferocious or terrorist country in any way, as is done in India time and again. The history of injustices started with the allotment of Gurdaspur district to India by the Boundary Commission chairman, Sir Cyril Radcliff at Mountbatten's behest, goaded in turn by Nehru. There were attempts to starve Pakistan. India's enmity against Pakistan culminated in its active role in the creation of Bangladesh. "Shimla agreement was got signed by Pakistan under pressure of defeat. Still, India did not stick to it and refused to resolve the Kashmir issue by bilateral talks. Now the campaign to dub Pakistan as a terrorist state is being extended to Islamic institutions in India as bastions of ISI and all Indian Muslims as ISI agents. Both the things are wrong. If Pakistan is interfering in any non-disputed area of India, then it is due to their national conflict." Abridged from the article "Kashmir and Indian Muslims" from Urdu magazine Afkar-e-Milli ('Islamic Ideas', Delhi, September 2000) by one of its editors, Adeel Akhtar)