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Journey from Deoband — exacting but rewarding statecraft

Last week, two elderly gentlemen dropped in at The Hindu office in New Delhi as part of what they said was an effort to help members of the media get a correct picture of Islam. They were pleased to present two tracts, Towards Understanding Islam and An introduction to understand the Quran. The gentlemen from the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind regretted that the media continued to report and comment rather negatively on Islam and Indian Muslims; even The Hindu, they felt, had of late become prone to using expressions such as “Islamic terrorism.”

Then, early this week took place the anti-terrorism convention organised by the Darul Uloom Deoband. It was dubbed a conference attended by all major clerics, although this claim was somewhat incomplete as Shia representation was almost negligible. Nonetheless, the conference passed a resolution, noting “Islam sternly condemns all kinds of oppression, violence and terrorism.” It was felt that similar gatherings should be organised across the country to make “joint and constant efforts” to “denounce terrorism.”

The anti-terror resolution has been widely noted and welcomed, in India and abroad. In the American-compiled post-9/11 bluebook of good and bad guys, Deoband is often cited by some as “the centre of the South Asian Islamism” and by others as the theological cradle of jihadis. That the Darul Uloom Deoband should now feel the need to take the lead in meeting head on the misperceptions is in itself a healthy democratic initiative. It is now expected that the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, the most respected forum of Muslim leadership in India, will soon endorse the Deoband stand.

Will one resolution be enough to dissolve the Hindu suspicions and allay Muslim apprehensions that trouble the matrix of the majority-minority equation? Certainly not. And the sober and responsible Muslim religious leaders will be making a mistake in assuming that those who benefit from deepening anti-minority sentiments will pack up their hate shop just because a resolution has been passed. It can only be a beginning. The leadership has to ensure that the Muslim community does not allow itself to be lured by its presumed well-wishers or provoked by its baiters away from the eminently sensible course chosen on February 25.

Along with all other stakeholders in a secular order, the Muslim leaders cannot wish away the success the communal forces have had in manufacturing a linkage among Islam, Pakistan, Muslims and terror. This presumed linkage is one of the many unhelpful dividends from the United States’ so-called war on terror. It has seeped into our collective mind. Only recently did Narendra Modi demonstrate how easy it is to crank up visceral suspicions.

Societies, nations and communities often find themselves getting sucked, much against their wish, into external quarrels, disputes and arguments. Muslims — as also other communities — have no immunity from instigation from outside on their attention, affections, fears and resources. And even before 9/11 began making consuming demands on India and its internal cohesion, the Muslim community had found itself taking a call on what was happening in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Deoband resolution is perhaps the most explicit statement to suggest that there is no contradiction between global sympathies and national loyalties. The February 25 formulation appeals “to all Muslims to continue, as they always did in the past, their loyalty towards the dear motherland and love and respect towards humanity.” More significantly, the Deoband clerics appear to be alive to the violent militant making a possible claim on the co-religionists. At their congregation this week, the clerics alerted the community to “fully understand the present alarming situation, the gravity and intensity of the time, and feel the pulse of the present world so that they might not be employed as tools of evil by anti-Islamic or anti-national forces.”

The congregation also voiced its concern at what it perceived was a pattern of harassment of Muslims in the name of fighting terror. This is a fair and legitimate expectation. Harassment on account of religion should be matter of concern not just to the minority community but to all those who believe in civil liberties and human rights.

Yet it needs to be recognised that India no longer has the luxury of pretending that terror does not find takers here. The Mumbai train bomb blasts in 2006 robbed us of this pretence. Terror vendors are no longer confined to Jammu and Kashmir. They are now able to find support, shelter, finances and weapons in the “mainland.” The terrorist will have to be dealt with sternly, and it is possible that there will be occasional excesses, incompetence, and perhaps partiality on the part of the policeman. The police heavy-handedness is an all-India, all-community story. As a rule-of-law-based political system, we have to continuously strive to finesse our instruments and sensitise our security personnel to secure us against the terrorist without creating resentment and alienation. We need to recognise that the fight against terror cannot be won without generating trust and fairness in the governing process.

The problem the Muslims face is mostly political. It boils down to the Muslim vote. Like other minorities the Muslims were deemed, to begin with, part of the Congress coalition. The party’s rivals portrayed this as politics of vote bank and accused it of practising “appeasement.” On the other hand, the Congress strategists believe that the bulk of the community never voted for the party after the 1971 Bangladesh war.

Whatever the voting pattern, for over two decades now the Bharatiya Janata Party and other Hindutva forces have found it electorally expedient to mobilise and consolidate the majority community on an anti-minority plank. And though the Hindutva project ceased to find traction once the Babri Masjid was desecrated, the Muslims’ affection, vote and leaders got badly divided and scattered; this division accelerated the process of political fragmentation — and aggravated the minorities’ problems.

Simply put, the Muslim voter and citizen now needs to be rescued from the “secular” politician. It is because of the deeds and misdeeds of this “secular” politician that suspicions and resentments get continuously manufactured against the Muslims. It is also the “secular” politician who prevents the community from making a distinction between a habitual criminal and a law-abiding citizen among its ranks. And, it is the “secular” politician who often slows down the policeman from going after the jihadi-terrorist. Above all, it is the “secular” benefactor who keeps the community trapped in its madrasa-centric, backward-looking traditionalism, and prevents the young Muslim from joining the march of the changing India.

The Deoband Declaration could mark the beginning of a reaffirmation of the fundamentals of our secular order. Our mindsets would need to be reworked on two counts. First, the polity needs to generate the sufficient moral courage and intellectual rigour to reassert that our republican compact involves a fair deal for the minorities. Those who are in the business of presiding over the Indian state — or have a desire to preside over it one day — owe it to themselves to make this a real and vibrant commitment, not because it would fetch votes but because we have a constitutional obligation to produce a just and fair political order. Without an honourable and equal place for the minorities, there will be neither justness nor civic peace. Nor national prosperity or national security.

Secondly, the Muslim community will need to move away from the victimhood refrain. It has to disengage from those theologians and politicians who harp on historic wrongs and imaginary insults. The experience of the last two decades should have by now made the community wise up on how to use its civic and political rights in its own interests, how to integrate with the mainstream of the political process, and how to demand a share in national prosperity.

The journey from Deoband would be long, exacting but also exhilarating and rewarding.

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