|
The genesis of the problems for
Indian Muslims can be traced back to the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.
When Mangal Pandey, a Hindu soldier in the sepoy regiment of the
East India Company, attacked his British Lieutenant, it started
the Mutiny. One week later, Pandey was hanged, but it led to a sub
continental revolt that was known as the First War of
Independence. In order to establish control over their dominions
the British colonists exacted swift retribution against the
mutineers.
During this period, Bahadur Shah
Zaffar, the Mughal King in Delhi, held nominal power. Since the
Mughal King was a Muslim, the British wreaked vengeance upon the
Mughals and it was the Muslims who later bore the brunt of their
rage.
In the aftermath of the Mutiny, the
final vestiges of the Mughal Empire were dismantled. The last
Mughal Emperor was exiled to Rangoon, Burma and died there in
1862. As a consequence, nearly a thousand years of Muslim rule and
political supremacy on the Indian subcontinent came to an end (Dalrymple,
2007). Due to the British onslaught, the entire Muslim society
collapsed. Besides attacking them physically, the British also
attacked them in the social, cultural, economic, and educational
spheres. Persian, the lingua franca of the Mughal court was
abolished and replaced by English as the official language. This
decision had catastrophic consequences for Muslims.
During a short span of fifty years,
Muslim society went from 100 percent literacy to a mere 20 percent
literacy rate. According to one estimate, from 1858 to 1878, only
1.8 percent of the graduates from Calcutta University were Muslims
(Waterfield, 1875). The British also blocked educated Muslims from
working for the government in administrative jobs. For the British
the Indian Muslim, post Mutiny, became an almost subhuman creature
and was classified, without embarrassment, in the most crude and
racist terms. In the Imperial literature they came to be
classified along with the other despised and subjugated characters
such as the Irish Catholics and the ‘wandering Jew.’ It has been
this discrimination, first by the British and then by radical
Hindus (with Muslims being blamed for partition) that has led
Muslims into retreat from the mainstream of Indian society (Baker,
2008).
Major Paradigms
During this traumatic period two
competing paradigms emerged seeking to defend and regain Muslim
ascendancy. The innovative and secular Westernizers sought to
promote Muslim culture, but relegated religion to the mosque. On
the other hand, the retreatist group diagnosed the problems of the
Muslims as being occasioned due to their straying from the
teachings of the Quran. This group sought to return to the purity
of the Sunna and wanted to model society on the life of Prophet
Muhammad (pbuh). The secular Westernizers sought to emulate the
modernity of their new rulers. They sought to advance the
interests of Muslims through the pursuit of Western Science. This
led to two different models each having its own paradigms and
discursive traditions: Deoband and Aligarh.
In 1866 the Darul Uloom School in Deoband was set up. Its
curriculum was scrupulously modeled on the teachings of the 18th
century Islamic scholar – Mullah Nizamuddin Sehlavi. It followed a
regimented system of classrooms, curriculum, texts, and exams. The
medium of instruction was in Urdu, Persian and Arabic. In contrast
to Deoband, Syed Ahmad Khan established the Anglo-Mohammedan
Oriental College, Aligarh, in 1877. According to Khan, the
reluctance of Indian Muslims to embrace modernity had led to their
downfall. Religion was decoupled from education and he attempted
to emulate the culture of the colonial masters. The medium of
instruction was English in order to help students get civil
service jobs. This Oxford of the East taught students the latest
advances in science, medicine, and Western philosophy. However,
its critics have charged that the main purpose of this enterprise
seems to have been to churn out obedient Muslim Babus for the
British Raj (Singh, 2009).
This difference in religious doctrine – conformity to Western
ideals or a retreat to the origins – between these two schools
gradually culminated in two opposing ideologies. During the 19th
and early 20th centuries, these paradigmatic differences were
ignored and were not significant. Muslims, at both these
institutions teamed up with India’s Hindus, in order to throw off
the yolk of colonial rule. In the present context, this doctrinal
difference has led to a grave crisis due to the absence of a
shared common goal.
After the First World War, Muhammad Iqbal, the renowned Muslim
philosopher-poet delineated the Islamic zeitgeist while examining
the position of the Muslim minority in independent India. He
proposed the idea of Pakistan – an independent state for the
Muslim-majority provinces in northwestern India. Non-violent
resistance to British rule by Mahatma Gandhi led to partition and
eventually independence in 1947. The subcontinent was divided into
India and Pakistan. Iqbal’s model shows much greater promise in
the present context. He cautioned Muslims from blindly aping the
West in a wholesale fashion. Muslims were cautioned to become
modern but be very selective when adopting Western culture, since
Muslims had their own normative standards.
New Context of Islam
In the post 9/11 era research
examining the structure of Islamic movements exhibits attempts to
strengthen and spread Islam by transcending political boundaries.
According to Bowen (2004), in a transnational context, Islamic
religious practice exhibits three basic trends: a demographic
movement of populations; the growth of transnational Islamic
institutions and, Islamic reference and discourse crossing
political boundaries. Though the demographic movements do not
result in revivalist or reformist movements, the latter two trends
lead to a transnational communication of ideas and practices that
promote transnational socio-religious movements. Some scholars (Nafi,
2004) argue that globalization is the prime engine for
transnational social and religious movements. This has led to the
phenomenon of “transnationalism,” which connotes socio-religious
ties and interconnections that link people or institutions through
a continuous exchange of people, ideas, and material, irrespective
of the existence of national borders. This phenomenon of
“movements-sans-frontiers” highlights the global interactions that
occur during the course of discourse and is not necessarily
centralized, but could be highly decentralized with an emphasis on
the local socio-political environment (Roul, 2009).
In India, Islam exhibits a bewildering diversity of communities
and no statistical data can be framed to determine their location
and assess the multiple streams of thought existing within them (Hasan,
2008). Indian Muslims have mainly stayed away from Islamic
violence and radical influences. However, the perceived
marginalization and insecurity within the Muslim community may
lead to greater radicalization. Most of the Islamic movements that
arose from India are localized. However, some have spread across
the world through immigration, pilgrimage to Mecca, missionary
activities and the spread of the Indian Diaspora. The sources of
the main revivalist and reformist movements can be traced to the
19th century India. With the passage of time these movements have
transcended from their political boundaries of the subcontinent
and morphed into piestic or coercive movements at home and abroad.
The main feature that drives India’s transnational Islamic
movements is the establishment of an imaginary Ummah, through
proselytization or coercion. As opposed to other countries where
transnational Islamic movements are very intense, only a small
fraction of India’s Muslims are becoming radical. A majority of
Indian Muslims have shunned terrorism. However, in light of the
persistent communal riots and anti-Muslim pogroms, Indian Muslims
are gradually becoming more radicalized. There is now a greater
awareness and concern for the plight of Muslims in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, and Chechnya. Much of this discourse
can be gleaned from Indian Blogs and Social Networking sites.
Major Topics of Controversy
In India, Islam is regarded as the
other. It was mercilessly purged by the British, but was and has
been disparaged by the radical Hindus who have now appropriated
that racist mantle. Muslims were suspected of being fifth
columnists by the majority Hindus, and also marginalized by
society. Muslims tend to be discriminated against in all spheres
of life in India. With respect to public health, Muslims tend to
be more likely to have poorer, shorter, and less healthy lives
than Hindus. They also are excluded from the better paying jobs
that are available to the majority community. There is also a deep
sense of injustice felt by Muslims regarding the issue of Kashmir,
recurrent communal riots, and perceptions of persecution by
India’s the criminal justice system (Guha, 2007).
Kashmir
Kashmir was a Muslim majority state
and its status was left undecided at the time of partition. It is
an issue that has caused three wars between India and Pakistan. It
now symbolizes the deep feelings of injustice felt by Indian
Muslims who feel that their government is indifferent to their
claims for self-determination. The basis of this claim is a U.N.
Resolution of 1948 that promised a plebiscite in order to
determine the wishes of the Kashmiri people. This situation has
now snowballed into brutal military suppression by the Indian
Government, and retaliatory protests and terrorist attacks by
Kashmiris.
Riots
There are also some genuine feelings
of persecution felt by Muslims with respect to the anti-Muslim
riots that have gradually increased in frequency and brutality.
According to Brass (2004) there is evidence to suggest that
opportunistic politicians, seeking to consolidate their vote
banks, deliberately engineer these riots. This in turn has led to
an institutionalized riot system that has become more brutal,
violent, and deadly. Muslims are alarmed at the reluctance on the
part of the Government of India to protect their lives, safety,
religious centers, and property. The razing of the Babri mosque in
1992 by radical Hindu fanatics and the inability/inaction on the
part of the Government of India to prevent this outrage is a
blemish on the record of its secular credentials. It is a severe
blow to the efforts of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru who
took great pains to ensure the rights and well being of the Muslim
minority and has left deep scars on the Muslim psyche. There is a
growing feeling among the Muslim community that their government
is itself complicit in some of the most brutal riots that have
been provoked and instigated by right wing Hindu outfits such as
the RSS and its franchisees (Abhinav Bharat, Bajrang Dal, Hindu
Jagruti Samiti, Shiv Sena, Hindu Jagran Samiti, etc). During the
1990s there was a militant form of communalism that was employed
by the radical Hindu parties to gain power (Guha, 2007). The
Gujarat riots of 2002 saw the merciless and brutal slaughter of
more than 2000 innocent Muslims. The police machinery totally
failed to do its job and called into question the professionalism
of the police forces and the criminal justice system. The case of
Gujarat suggests that the lynching and killings of Muslims was
pre-planned and systematically executed at the highest levels of
the state government.
Criminal Justice System
The police forces, which still
operate on the colonial law and order model of 1861, are ill
equipped to handle the current demands. Most of the modern
policing forces around the world are now geared towards more
democratic models of policing. The prisons and jails also have a
disparate number of Muslims within their confines. Our criminal
justice system is still stuck in the colonial era. In fact, some
of the current practices echo the disturbing policies of the
segregated pre-civil rights era in the United States.
Investigations by police still employ brutal methods of torture
and custodial confessions. Now there is also increasing recourse
to the illegal method of Narco-analysis which has been applied to
provide quick solutions in terrorism cases.
Inspite of the findings of the various official commissions of
inquiry – Madan Commission, Liberhan Commission, Srikrishna
Commission, and the Sachar Committee Report – very little has
changed for the Muslim community.
This has led to a reaction from the Muslim community that takes
various forms of terrorist acts at the majority community and the
symbols of government. There are some open wounds that still are
simmering such as the demolition of the Babri Masjid, and the
Malegaon false flag operations (in 2006 and 2008) that were
carried out by Abhinav Bharat – a franchisee of the RSS. There is
a belief that Islam is the force that, if properly understood, can
solve the subcontinent’s problems. If the deep sense of injustice
felt by Muslims is addressed it could lead to a solution to many
of the radical acts of terrorism in the subcontinent.
The Muslim religion should not be stigmatized or demonized. Islam
should be de-linked from all negative labels/stereotypes and there
should be credible and effective political and civic institutions
that Muslims can be confident of. If these remedies are not
implemented, it could lead to increasing cycles of violence. One
model that could be explored is the experience of the African
American minority in the United States. The Government of India
should take urgent measures to desegregate the de facto
segregation of Muslim and Hindu communities that has been going on
for the last two decades. There should be more schools that have a
mixed body of students. Muslim students should be encouraged to
join these schools. There should be more robust
institutions/organizations that deal with the civil rights
violations of Muslims.
The Government of India should encourage Muslims to be part of the
law and order apparatus and administrative machinery, instead of
being one of its biggest and most miserable clients. There needs
to be a thorough re-imaging of the perceptive lens. Are we Indians
who happen to be Muslims, or are we scapegoats who can be
demonized, ostracized, and discriminated against on the purely
ascriptive criteria of religion? The time/space referents of
modern India have taken on new dimensions. The current policies
being advocated are likely to backfire and are impractical for a
globalized world.
As modern Indians we ought to carefully parse the dog whistles
from our politicians and journalists that are a sad substitute for
national discourse. We should be proud of our multicultural and
multi-religious heritage. We are at the crossroads now – Do we
chose the path of Gandhi or should we continue along the viciously
destructive path of Godse’s saffron-clad children? One of these
will lead to Jim Crowe apartheid; the other is an alternative that
is more in tune with the Indian national character – one of
toleration, love and deep spiritualism, which will also result in
better global citizens.
The author
Dr. Farrukh Behzad
Hakeem is Associate Professor at Shaw University, Raleigh, North
Carolina.
Bibliography:
Baker, Aryn
(2008) India’s Muslims in Crisis. Time. Accessed on 11/17/2010
URL: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1862650,00.html.
Bowen. John R. (2004) Beyond Migration. Islam as a Transnational
Public Space. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 30, no. 5
(2004): 879-894.
Brass, Paul (2004) Development of an Institutionalized Riot System
in Meerut City, 1961 to 1982. Economic and Political Weekly.
Dalrymple, William (2007) The Last Mughal. New Delhi: Penguin
Books.
Guha, Ramchandra (2007) India After Gandhi. New York: Harper
Collins.
Hasan, Mushirul (2008) Religion, Society and Politics During the
Nehruvian era: Profiling India’s Muslim Communities. Third Frame:
Literature, Culture, and Society 1, no. 1 (2008) 95.
Nafi, Bashir M. (2004) The Rise of Islamic Reformist Thought and
its Challenge to Traditional Islam, in Islamic thought in the
Twentieth Century, eds. Suha Taji Farouki and Bashir M. Nafi.
London: I. B. Taurius.
Roul, Animesh (2009) Transnational Islam in India: Movements,
Networks, and Conflict Dynamics. National Bureau of Asian
Research.
Singh, Jaswant (2009) Jinnah. New Delhi: Rupa Co.
Waterfield, Henry (1875) Memorandum on the Census of British India
1871-72. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode.
|
Comments
|
Quick links