|
|
Being Muslim in India Today: Some Reflections
By Yoginder Sikand
The Milli Gazette Online
8 September 2006
Communal prejudices, already deeply-rooted in the minds of most Indians, have
been further reinforced owing to a series of events and developments in recent
years, both at home and abroad. These prejudices are almost universal in India,
and the state has never seriously sought to counter them except by pious
proclamations of 'Hindu-Muslim Unity', 'Respect for All Religions' and so on.
Being thus left largely unchallenged, these prejudices, actively promoted by
various right-wing, conservative and traditionalist religious groups, have
succeeded in preventing the emergence of a truly secular society.
Anti-Muslim prejudice and what is now called 'Islamophobia' are not a new
phenomena, but these have received a tremendous boost in recent years. The
attacks of 9/11, the blasts in Benaras, Delhi and Mumbai and the continuing
conflict in Kashmir have further fuelled the flames of hatred and prejudice
against Muslims among many Hindus, so much so that the claim that Islam preaches
terrorism, hatred for other religions and their adherents, misogyny, disloyalty
to states where Muslims are not a majority or the ruling community and so on,
actively propagated by Hindutva forces, has become an integral part of the
social 'common sense' of a vast number of non-Muslim Indians. This has been
facilitated by ever-expanding media networks, few of which are controlled by
Muslims, and many of which have clear Hindutva affiliations. The US-led 'war on
terror' is only further exacerbating this, with Hindutva forces and large
sections of the Hindu-owned Indian media lending support to what many Muslims
see is an all-out war directed against Islam and Muslims in general.
The recent series of violent attacks have been used to tar all Muslims with the
same brush, as essentially terrorists or potential terrorists. In the case of
some of these attacks the actual perpetrators remain unknown but they are
somehow automatically assumed by the non-Muslim media to have been the handiwork
of Muslims. In the case of certain violent attacks where certain Muslims were
indeed responsible, the underlying causes for growing resentment among Muslims,
a host of economic and political factors, are ignored, and Islam itself comes to
be projected as the underlying reason. Thus, for instance, supposing the recent
Mumbai blasts were indeed the handiwork of a group of Muslims (a claim made by
the media but not as yet fully ascertained), the fact that the slaughter of some
three thousand innocent Muslims in Gujarat in a state-organised pogrom might
have something to do with the anger that motivated the perpetrators has been
totally ignored. Rather, most newspapers claim, it is simply the _expression of
an uncontrollable and blind rage, of irrepressible intolerance and hatred of
non-Muslims that, they argue, Islam allegedly preaches. No such attribution to
Hinduism was made, of course, when Hindu mobs embarked on that bloody slaughter
of Muslims in Gujarat or in the case of innumerable cases of such violence prior
to the Gujarat genocide, in which the principal victims were Muslims. Likewise,
the killings of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Afghans, Koreans, Vietnamese
and so on by American forces has never been attributed by the media to
Christianity. One wonders why Muslims must be singled out as an exception in
this regard.
What of the rich contributions of Muslims to the country's composite culture? In
large measure, this is now given mere lip-sympathy to, being 'mummified' and
confined to museums and mushairas, and presented as a sort of exotic add-on to
what is presented as 'Indian culture', which is defined in essentially
Brahminical Hindu terms. But if Hindutva leaders were to have their way, even
this ritual recognition would cease, and the cultural contributions of the
Indian Muslims would either be destroyed or else appropriated and presented as
actually 'Hindu', in the same way as, for instance, the Dravidian gods, Buddha,
Kabir and Nanak later came to be heralded as 'Hindu' in order to negate their
challenge to the Brahminical system. A classic case of Hindutva denial of the
Muslim contribution to India's culture relates to the Taj Mahal, with Hindutva
ideologues now insisting that it was actually 'Tejo Mahalya', a supposedly
Rajput Hindu palace, and that Delhi's famed Mughal Red Fort was, in fact, the
Hindu 'Lal Kot'.
The most effective means to dissolve communal prejudices is through close
personal interaction between people of different communities, in the course of
which people begin to discover their common humanity, transcending narrow
religious barriers. Although such interaction does take place between many
Hindus and Muslims, in some communally-mixed workplaces and schools, scope for
this is contracting. Muslims are being forced, through compulsion, fear, the
need for security, poverty and mounting anti-Muslim prejudice, to move into
their own neglected and squalid ghettos, obviously much to the satisfaction of
communal forces, both Hindu and Muslim, who thrive on such geographical, in
addition to religious, separation.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have a vital role to play in bringing
together people of different communities to work on issues of common concern,
such as economic and educational development and empowerment, and in the
process, promoting inter-community interaction and countering communal
stereotypes. One would have thought that in the face of growing anti-Muslim
feelings in the country NGOs would have taken up this issue with the seriousness
that it deserves. This, however, has not happened on a significant scale, for
several reasons. In north India especially, Muslims have few such organizations
and most of them work for Muslims alone. Further, most Muslim NGOs are religious
charities devoted to Islamic education. This is both a result as well as a cause
of the influence of the ulama, who, given the miniscule Muslim middle class, are
able to present themselves as authoritative spokesmen of the entire Muslim
community. And, given the insular sort of training that they receive, the ulama
and the NGOs that they run are not best equipped to promote better relations
with others. On the other hand, relatively few non-Muslim NGOs work with Muslims
as a community, Muslims typically not being seen by these groups as a
marginalized group in the same way as as Dalits or Adiviasis are, although the
living conditions of most Muslims are almost as pathetic as theirs. The work of
many of the few non-Muslim NGOs that are engaged with Muslims as a community is
often limited simply to promoting communal harmony, ignoring, unconsciously or
otherwise, the crucial issue of Muslim economic and educational empowerment, the
lack of which is responsible, in part, for sustaining the authority of
conservative religious groups among sections of the Muslim community, which, in
turn, further strengthens negative stereotypes about Muslims.
The implications for mounting anti-Muslim sentiments for India as a whole, and
not just for Muslims alone, are frightening, to say the least. Conservative
'upper' caste Hindu forces are actively fanning these prejudices among
marginalized 'lower' castes so as to use them as foot-soldiers in organized
anti-Muslim pogroms. Consequently, these marginalized castes are being subtly
co-opted, their attention being turned from their real oppressors onto the
imaginary and carefully constructed 'menacing other' in the form of Muslims. The
dangerous consequences that this has for the struggles of Dalit, Adivasis and
Other Backward Castes for their rights and empowerment are enormous. As the
'Muslim question' comes to dominate media discourses, the continued oppression
of the 'low' castes, the social and economic mounting inequalities in the
country, the ruling classes' nexus with imperialist forces and so on, are all
being deliberately displaced from public consciousness. And as anti-Muslim
hatred is being so actively fanned at the same time as India is being sold to
Western multinational corporations, Hindutva forces, who never tire of
proclaiming themselves as super-patriots, appear least concerned about the
prospects of civil war and continuous bloodshed that their actions are designed
to promote.
That said, the general Muslim response to mounting Islamophobia has met with
little success. Muslims are now forced on the defensive and somehow feel forced
to prove their patriotism. Islam does not preach terrorism, Muslim leaders now
tirelessly argue, but since Muslim organizations have few links with the
non-Muslim media, and because large sections of this media have no interest in
countering negative stereotypes about Muslims, these claims generally fall on
deaf ears. The Urdu media, where these voices are mainly articulated, is read
almost entirely by Muslims alone, and so non-Muslims are left unaware of Muslims
seeking to clear Muslims of charges of 'terrorism'. Muslim organisations lack a
proper media policy, being run almost entirely by conservative ulama, whose
knowledge of the complexities of the real world, including the media, is
limited, to say the least. The ulama's insistence that Muslims, by definition,
cannot be terrorists because the Quran lays down that to take the life of an
innocent is like slaying the whole of humanity has few non-Muslim takers, for
non-Muslims have plenty of groups to point to, in South Asia and elsewhere, who
define themselves as 'Islamic' and who seek to justify their actions in the name
of Islam. Middle class Muslims, who might have played the role of countering
anti-Islamic media discourses more effectively because of their different
cultural capital, are, by and large, silent, content with their quest for
material comfort, having little or no organic links with the community at
large.
For the general masses of the Muslims, mostly of 'low' caste background, mired
in desperate poverty and illiteracy, the mounting wave of Islamophobia,
occasioned, in part, by the actions of self-styled champions of Islam, has meant
even less hope for their myriad social and economic problems to be addressed.
The media insists that Muslims themselves are responsible for their plight and
that the main cause of their 'backwardness' is not, as the case really is, the
macro-structures of heavily unequal distribution of and access to resources and
assets, further skewed by economic 'liberalisation' and 'globalisation'.
Instead, it is argued, the fundamental causes of Muslim 'backwardness' are what
are labeled as 'medieval madrasas' 'obscurantist mullahs' and radical Islamists.
Hence, it is asserted, Muslim 'backwardness' does not require active state
intervention, but, instead, can be 'cured' only if the ulama and their madrasas
are 'reformed' and if Muslims take on the Islamists. In this way, both the cause
of and the solution to Muslim 'backwardness' are sought by the media to be
firmly located internally, within the Muslim community, as if state policies,
international factors and anti-Muslim discrimination have nothing to do with
this. This argument, tagged on to the growing indifference to the
marginalisation of the Muslim masses promoted by mounting anti-Muslim propaganda
in India and in the West, has made it increasingly difficult for Indian Muslims
to press their claims on the state for economic, educational and political
empowerment.
To add to this is the fact that as anti-Muslim feelings grow, conservative
Muslim religious forces, too, receive a shot in the arm as a reaction,
presenting themselves as saviours of Islam and representatives of all Muslims.
And so the vicious circle of competing brands of religious conservatism and
fundamentalism feeding on each other gets continually reinforced.
* The author works with the Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Jamia Millia
Islamia, New Delhi. He moderates an online discussion group called "South Asian
Leftists Dialoguing With Religion" (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saldwr/)
http://www.milligazette.com/dailyupdate/2006/20060908_Muslim_india_reality_reflections.htm
|
