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There are different yardsticks in our country to judge people depending upon their religious affiliations and political clout.
There can be no denying the fact that in the guise of fighting a “war against terrorism,” investigating agencies across the world, under the imprimatur of their respective governments, have demonised and vilified entire Muslim communities to the extent of questioning their loyalty to their countries. That India is no exception to this selective targeting can be proved from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent advice to the Police: “Police and security agencies have to take care not to cast doubts on the patriotism of Muslims or any other community”. Addressing the concluding session of a conference on “Terrorism: Causes and Remedies”, organised by Muslim clerics and religious leaders at Parliament House Annexe on August 21, 2006, Dr. Singh acknowledged the fact that only Muslims were picked up for interrogation by the Maharashtra Police in the case relating to the July 11, Mumbai train blasts. He said, “I have spoken to the Maharashtra Chief Minister. The incident at Nanded is also under investigation. It is wrong to cast doubts only on the Muslim community during investiga-tions.” (Source: The Hindu, Aug 22, 2006).
This brings us to the question: Why are Muslims victimized across the globe? In his best-selling book “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim”, anthropologist, and Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University, Mahmood Mamdani, says that the attack on Islam is the result of the “politicizing of a single term: culture” because, “unlike the culture studied by anthropologists - face-to-face, intimate, local, and lived – the talk of culture is highly politicized and comes in large geo-packages”. As proof, Mamdani points out that “Culture Talk after 9/11, for example, qualified and explained the practice of “terrorism” as “Islamic”. “Islamic terrorism” is thus offered as both description and explanation of the events of 9/11.” “It is no longer the market (capitalism), nor the state (democracy), but culture (mode-rnity) that is said to be the dividing line between those in favour of a peaceful, civic existence and those inclined to terror. It is said that our world is divided between those who are modern and those who are pre-modern.”
Mamdani’s analysis, praised by Noam Chomsky as “a valuable contribution to the understan-ding of some of the most important developments of the contemporary era”, clearly proves that the Western concept of Islamophobia is the direct result of the hatred of Muslims indoctrinated in the minds of the Christians over centuries. Why else would the Christian West gang up to decimate entire nations for the wrongs of a few? Certainly the whole of Iraq or Afghanistan was not responsible for attacks against the U.S. Unfortunately for the Muslims, there seems to be no way out of this victimization except to educate their Christian brethren concentrated in the western hemisphere about their folly and remind them of the common roots of our faiths in the subservience of the one God who sent both Jesus, (Pbuh) the Christ and Muhammad (Pbuh), the Prophet.
Surprisingly, even in the Indian context, we find a similar racist reasoning in the behaviour of the Hindutva ideologues towards the Muslims, who are seen as aliens having no right to live in this country except as non entities as intolerantly pronounced by Golwalkar. He said that Muslims must adopt the Hindu culture and language and “they must cease to be foreigners or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment, not even citizen’s right” ( We or Our Nationhood Defined, Nagpur, 1938, p.52). The same sentiments were echoed by Dr. Hedgewar who offered a “solution” to the Muslims if they desired a peaceful existence in this country. Inviting them to almost convert to Hinduism he says, “Let the Muslims look upon Ram as their hero and the communal problems will be over.” (Organizer, June 20, 1971).
Minorities, particularly the Muslims, are equal citizens of this country and therefore, any attack on them, physical or through communally slanted reports in the media, should be construed as an attack on India, and immediate steps should be taken to protect them.
American journalist Laura Dawn Lewis, in her article, “What is Fascism”, while warning that “this may surprise most educated people”, says that “the most notable characteristic of a fascist country is the separation and persecution or denial of equality to a specific segment of the population based upon superficial qualities or belief systems.” She further elaborates; “simply stated, a fascist government always has one class of citizens that is considered superior (good) to another (bad) based upon race, creed or origin. It is possible to be both a republic and a fascist state. The preferred class lives in a republic while the oppressed class lives in a fascist state.”
The Hindu Right, on the basis of the two-nation theory, did not intend to accommodate the Muslims in India. It becomes obvious that all atrocities against the Muslims are a result of this intolerant mindset. As Khushwant Singh points out, “The non- Muslim has always had it deeply embedded in his mind that Muslims are bigots, fanatics and treacherous. We were brought up on tales of heroism of Prithviraj Chauhan, Maharana Pratap, Guru Gobind Singh and Chhatrapati Shivaji. All our heroes were non-Muslims who had fought Muslims… Jinnah did not have to invent the two-nation theory; it was there for anyone who had eyes to see.” (The End of India, Penguin Books,2003, pp 116-117).
Unfortunately this attitude prevails even today. All acts of terrorism perpetrated by Muslim outfits as part of their political agenda, are given a religious colour and are always referred to as “Islamist terrorism” by the media as if to suggest that Islam preaches violence. Hindu outfits that commit similar acts are termed as “ULFA militants”, Shiv Sena activists” or “LTTE Tigers”. They are never called “terrorists” no matter how much terror they instill in the minds of the innocent people.
When Human Rights activists want the death penalty of Afzal Guru commuted to life imprisonment, slogans of nationalism are invoked and they are asked to consider the sentiments of the families of the victims. It is conveniently forgotten that in August last year, India, through the then Foreign Minister Natwar Singh, officially requested the Pakistani government to review the death penalty of Sarabjit Singh who has been accused of triggering bomb blasts in that country. Incidentally, the Pakistani Supreme Court upheld his death sentence and he is hopefully awaiting Presidential pardon.
The question here is not of seeking mercy for terrorists. It cannot be denied that if the highest court of a country convicts any terrorist, he certainly deserves the ultimate punishment. But the question here is of attitudes. There are different yardsticks in our country to judge people depending upon their religious affiliations and political clout. For example, the perpetrators of the 1993 Bombay blasts are being brought to book one by one, but the Srikrishna Commission Report on the Bombay riots is still freezing in the cold storage. In his article, “A welter of evidence”, Praveen Swami wrote : “ Some of the most damning evidence of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray’s role in the Mumbai riots of 1992-1993 is tucked away between pages 172 and 176 of Volume II of the Report of the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry.” (Frontline, August 5- 18, 2000).
The UPA government must not forget that the minorities, particularly the Muslims, are equal citizens of this country and therefore, any attack on them, physical or through communally slanted reports in the media, should be construed as an attack on India, and immediate steps should be taken to protect them. And, just as the perpetrators of the Mumbai blasts and the attack on Parliament House are being tried and punished, the terrorists behind the Gujarat massacre and all other riots in which thousands of innocent Muslims lost their lives should be brought to justice.
(The writer is a Peace Activist and Executive Committee Member, Harmony India and can be reached at a.faizur.rahman @gmail.com. Blog address: truth-for-thought.blogspot.com)
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