I, India and Islam

04 January, 2009

MR ZARDARI, PLEASE LEAVE INDIAN MUSLIMS ALONE

Dear Mr Zardari

As-salam-u-alaikum

I wonder if you have come across an oft-quoted couplet by Ghalib: Baazeecha-e-itfal hai duniya mere aage, hota hai shab-o-roz tamasha mere aage [To me this world is but where children play, amusing games unfold ’fore me all night and day]! If you have, you will be better able to understand how Muslims in India view your and your government’s shenanigans today.

Dear Mr Zardari

As-salam-u-alaikum

Most nations are born out of hope. Pakistan, however, was born out of pessimism about the destiny of Muslims in India, and for more than 60 years, it has been at pains to justify its birth by fostering situations in which Indian Muslims will be persecuted as a minority. After all, what was the need for a separate Pakistan if Muslims in India are to be as happy and prosperous as anybody else! To answer that existential question, generations of Pakistani leaders have devoted themselves to fanning communal fires in this country, hoping to bring India’s social melting pot to a boil.

You and your predecessors have hoped to show Pakistanis how lucky they were to have a nation of their own, and to rub it into Muslims in India about the once-in-an-epoch opportunity they missed. But a look at where the two Muslim communities stand today makes it amply clear who missed what.

Pakistani Muslims cannot think up enough ways to maim and murder themselves. Shias and Sunnis bomb each other’s mosques on Friday afternoons and Punjabis persecute every ethnic minority to maintain their social, economic and political pre-eminence. The worst excesses are, of course, suffered by mohajirs – the same ‘lucky’ Indian Muslims who made it to the promised land. Despite decades of sucking up to rich nations, Pakistan is an economic disaster. Politically, even your best friends do not hesitate to call you a failed state.

The term ‘failed’ is quite apt, given that Pakistan is also failing to fulfill its raison d’etre of queering the pitch for Indian Muslims. No, I do not deny that we face discrimination in this country. But our lot is incomparably better than Pakistanis.

At no point in history has the contrast between Indian and Pakistani Muslims been more apparent. APJ Abdul Kalam, an Indian Muslim, is respected globally as a nuclear scientist and a statesman. But Pakistan’s answer to him, A.Q. Khan, is notorious as a smuggler of nuclear technology. Zaheer Khan, an Indian Muslim, is a fast bowler feared by the best batsmen worldwide, even as Shoaib Akhtar, a Pakistani Muslim, faces ban after ban for beating up team-mates, drug abuse and all sorts of charges.

Sania Mirza (her recent slump in form notwithstanding), Shah Rukh and Aamir Khan are Indian Muslim success stories in fields where you don’t even have anyone to offer in comparison. Of course, these individual comparisons cannot be generalised – but they nonetheless symbolise the difference in fortunes of the two communities.

These descendants of Ghalib have also wizened up to the tamasha that Pakistan comes up with to foment trouble for them – the latest being the November 26 attack on Mumbai. You must have read about how Indian Muslims have been protesting against Islamist terrorism – both before and after 26/11. Did you also read the rabid anti-Pakistan sentiments many Muslim protesters have voiced? Here is a sampling:

“I want to inform the government and give a message to the whole nation that all the (Pakistani) militant camps should be destroyed. Islam asks you to sacrifice your life for the country you live in,” said Aftab Ahmad Khan, a protester in Mumbai on December 27, during an anti-Pakistan demonstration brought out by Muslims.

“They [the Mumbai terroists] have committed a crime against humanity and people who kill innocent people cannot be buried, not in Indian soil at least. Let Pakistan take them back home,” said Maulana Zaheer Abbas Rizvi, a cleric from the All India Shia Personal Law Board, soon after the Mumbai attack.

Last year, we suffered a series of bombings across the country which killed hundreds of Indians – both Hindus and Muslims. Some Hindu fundamentalists were also reported to have “responded” to these “Islamic attacks” by triggering the Malegaon blasts in late September – killing some Muslims. The pressure on the country’s communal fabric was intense – and yet both Hindu and Muslim masses chose to stand together and no large scale riots broke out anywhere.

Indeed, a Gallup poll released in December said 40 per cent Indians believed communal relations will improve in coming years – against only 22 per cent who thought they would deteriorate. Perhaps more significantly, an equal percentage of both Muslims and Hindus said relations will get better. As many as 65 per cent Indians also said religious beliefs were not a source of trouble in their neighbourhood. Once again, the percentage was equal among both Muslims and Hindus.

But your biggest defeat of 2008 was at the hands of Muslims in Kashmir, whom terrorists sent by your country have killed in tens of thousands on the pretext of a struggle for their independence. Just months after the communal faultlines in the state appeared to have been entrenched deeper than ever, Kashmiris turned up in unprecedened numbers to vote in elections that showed their faith in democracy and their Indian identity – defying both gun-toting terrorists and the biting December cold.

And whom did they elect? Not a party that contested on the plank of restoring the pre-1953 status of the state and resolving the Kashmir issue, but one that is seen to be “pro-India” and raised local deveopmental concerns. Even the separatist leader Sajjad Lone was forced to admit the folly of boycotting the elections, and say that he might “reconsider” the next time.

Violence in the state is also at its lowest ebb in more than a decade, proving that Kashmiris have well and truly turned away from militancy and look forward to a peaceful future as citizens of India.

The religious terrorism that you bred to snatch Kashmir from India failed in its avowed purpose, but now seems to be recoiling upon you and guzzling your own land. We read with dismay about ‘liberated zones’ in your north-west, where the writ of the Taliban rules and women are not allowed to study in schools. We read with concern about the fall of the picturesque Swat Valley, just 150 km from Islamabad.

Indeed, you lost your wife to Islamist terrorism just a year ago. The Mumbai attack, if they were not plotted by your government, provided you an opportunity to crack down and root out the phenomenon that has become the bane of your own existence – not to mention ours. The whole of Pakistan wanted you to do that. But you chose to blow it.

There may still be chance. Mr 10 Per Cent can still make something of it by joining hands with India and translating 10 per cent of his money-making acumen into a sincere effort to knock out terrorism. No more tamashas.

But if you don’t, do remember it is not going to be of much help to you in either winning Kashmir or the hearts of Indian Muslims.

MR ZARDARI, PLEASE LEAVE INDIAN MUSLIMS ALONE

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