By Mehboob Hussain Azad (Journalist & Social Activist)       

ARE MUSLIMS MARGINALIZED.....................?

This debate keeps propping up especially during elections and in the context of anti-Muslim violence occurring frequently in our country. Soon after the bloody partition and after independence in 1947 a vast majority Muslims left for Pakistan but the rest decided to stay on in the country despite massive bloodshed, killings and violence. In the heat of what was known as the partition riots, not to migrate to Pakistan was a conscious yet difficult decision for the individuals and families. Those who remained in India faced the onslaught of communal violence and by threat of it. It was not that communalism was absent among the Muslims of the country. In fact it survived, with both the Hindus and Muslim communal feelings on each other. Yet by and large, Muslim choose to ally with “Secular force” , however, despite their discrimination, social stagnation and educational, political marginalization cumulatively resulted in growing economic backwardness of the Muslims in the entire country. In the name of helping Muslims, many so-called secular parties have repeatedly exploited them, compromised with the most reactionary elements of the community at the same time as right—wrong Hindu groups have wrongly accused Muslim of being “appeased” by them. It was better for them that they realized that they would neither support nor sympathize any one and thus stood untidily. In reality the ordinary Muslims was left to their fate and the few development schemes devised for uplifting the community designed but not implement was thrown at them. It was made more difficult by the fact that a large section of the north Indian middle class had migrated to Pakistan in the wake of partition, leaving behind their assets, lands and homes. Now, let us start with the question on most of your minds: terrorism. I am sure most of you will agree that there has been a spurt in Islamic militancy, particularly in the last 15 years. Now, I am not sure if you noticed, but that violence carried out in the name of religion has less to do with its stated reason and more to do with power. Most terrorists have been dismal failures in expressing their cause, but US support of totalitarian regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc, overthrow of democracy in Iran, Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories, and other such political reasons have fuelled the upsurge in terrorism; tragically, its leaders use the ambiguous category of religion as a means of luring followers.

My explanation is not a defense of terrorist methods; in fact, the version of Islamic society these monsters envision -- beheading, capital punishment, stoning, extreme gender discrimination -- is abhorrent to many Muslims and goes against the most basic Islamic tenet of social justice (remember zakaat?). All but the radicals would agree that terrorists, whatever religion they claim to fight for, are enemies of society that should be resisted and defeated. just be wary of primitive social profiling based on ungrounded suppositions. Muslims have fought Muslims from the earliest days of Islam just as much as they have fought non-Muslims. To this day, you see inter-sect as well as inter-faith conflict involving Islam, clearly indicating that religion is not necessarily the motivating factor in everything we do. To some, religion is important and to others, less so; yet to assume it is our only identity, even our prime identity, is about as sensible as assuming that someone buying a Tata Nano is expressing his or her solidarity with Narendra Modi because the factory is in Gujarat. To turn this around a bit, let us ask you -- are you Hindu, Tamil, or Indian? Can you be all? Can you be motivated by just one of those in certain tasks, two of those in others, and all three in yet others? I suspect you can, so why do I have to choose between being Muslim, Tamilian, and Indian?

Then comes the issue of the crude stereotypes -- if you see all Muslims as Osama bin Laden or Hafiz Saeed, then by the same logic, are all Catholics like Tomás de Torquemada, Protestants like Anders Breivik, Jews like the first-century Kanaim or Yigal Amir, and Sikhs like Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale? Are all Hindus traitors like B K Sinha or Madhuri Gupta and assassins like Madan Lal Dhingra or Nathuram Godse? Or perhaps you think A P J Kalam, Altamas Kabir, Idris Hasan Latif, Shahabuddin Yaqoob Quraishi, and Asif Ibrahim are also terrorists? You can harbour such essentialist thoughts, but do not be surprised if we treat you as quacks. Please don't misunderstand me -- there are indeed many problems with the Muslim community, and you are absolutely right that no one is taking on the fanatics out of fear. Yet to see this as a purely Muslim problem again misses the texture of the issue. For example, honour killings are not uncommon in Islam; yet they are not unheard of among Hindus either, particularly in the case of inter-caste or inter-faith relations. While the anti-religious lobby brigade like to find fault with religion itself, the fact is that it is a cultural problem, and there have been cases of honour killings even among atheistic families due to their cultural influence. Similarly, with female genital mutilation, it is an abhorrent custom that has tried to creep into religion but remains largely restricted to Africa more than to all Muslim lands and communities.

Divide the country at every pretext. Hammer into the minorities and the backwards why they need special treatment, how they are being suppressed, how they are being victimized and why they need protection from the majority. Blame the majority for being a majority. Denigrate its culture. Destroy its history. Throttle its sense of pride. Deride its festivals. Perpetrate intellectual confusion. Fill it with the plague of guilt. Do whatever it takes to crush its spirit completely. Isn’t it win-win situation? Keep the majority in doldrums and intellectual confusion and keep the minorities in a permanent state of insecurity. Nobody remains to put up a resistance. Within this you-scratch-my-back-and-I-scratch-yours system, your political masters are happy, you are happy. More public insecurity means more consolidation for your political masters. More consolidation means greater political power. Greater political power means, well, power to do whatever you want to do. You get plum postings. You easily get grants. Massive funding is available for your NGOs without even one question asked. Your kids get admission in elite schools. You can get treatment in the best of hospitals. You enjoy foreign trips. You get to broker mega deals. You control the strings of millions of lives. Sometimes, even for writing a single Congress-friendly article you can get a bungalow in a posh locality. You can get published in “prestigious” magazines and newspapers even if you can’t write a single paragraph without mistakes. You can stop books from being published. You can easily get your own books published.  You get to give talks at international conferences, mostly at exotic locations, all-expense paid. You get to hobnob with the Who’s Who of the society. You don’t have to worry about electricity. You don’t have to worry about water. Neither heat bothers you nor cold because you live and move in AC environment. Travel is automatically taken care of. Accommodation is something you never need to worry about. Your previous generation lived in the lap of luxury like this. Even the previous generation of the previous generation. And now you are reaping the fruits of all the trees your parents and grandparents planted. This is an ecosystem that has evolved over more than 60 years so naturally your multiple generations have contributed.