Mosque Ruling Angers India Muslims

Tight security in Ayodhya (Pic Courtesy: Reuters)

MUMBAI – A court ruling over the site of a demolished mosque that largely favored the majority Hindus has angered India’s Muslims, raising fears of a new bout of ethnic tension in the Asian country.

 “The judgment is inextricably confusing because it is not a straight two-to-one judgment,” Syed Shahabuddin, President of All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat (AIMMM), told OnIslam.net on Saturday, October 2.

 “There are in fact three judgments and they go on shifting their verdict on vital issues. Therefore essentially the judgment does not settle or resolve the issues.”

 A court in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh on Thursday ruled that the site of the Babri mosque to be divided between the Hindus and Muslims.

The 2-1 majority verdict gave Muslims one-third of the land, while two-thirds were given to two Hindu groups.

“The judgment is extra-legal based on myths and legends, ‘faith’ and superstitions, and not on the evidence on record,” said Shahabuddin.

“The judgment ignores the fact that the Supreme Court order of 1994 treated the disputed site as one entity and did not envisage any division,” he said.

Thousands of Indian Muslims rallied Friday after the weekly prayers to denounce the mosque verdict.

Despite the anger, the Muslim reaction was measured with no violent protests reported.

The 16th century-mosque was demolished by Hindu mobs in 1992.

More than 2,000 people were killed in ensuing ethnic violence between Hindus and Muslims over the mosque demolition.

Muslims want the ancient mosque to be rebuilt, while Hindus want the lands to build a temple.

Extra-legal

Muslim leaders and political analysts lamented that the verdict lacked legal grounds and largely favored the majority Hindus.

“First Hindus installed idols in Babri Masjid in 1949, and then they demolished the Masjid in 1992. What is the fault of Indian Muslims,” Dr. Rehan Ansari, a political commentator, told OnIslam.net.

“Nobody asked for the one-third share in the disputed site yet the court has ordered trifurcation of the land.”

Navaid Hamid, member of the National Integration Council, was also critical.

“I am crying for my future generations, what they would respond when they will be teased that they have demolished a temple and an Indian court proved that they were guilty,” he said.

“Indian Muslims need to seriously think of surrendering all rights in Ayodhya and announce that they would not accept any land of piece as given by court because they think that this country would be run on astha (belief) rather than judicial rationale.”

Muslim leaders warned that the ruling risks to fuel sectarian tension in the country, vowing to appeal against the verdict.

“It (verdict) will only mean a mini-Masjid and a mini-Temple next to each other giving rise to constant friction,” Shahabuddin said.

“The Muslim community is dissatisfied and shocked by the judgment and is determined to exercise its right of appeal to the Supreme Court with a view to reverse the judicial stand from the mythological to the legal.

“The Muslim community is ready to accept the final judicial verdict of the Supreme Court as it is committed to the Constitution and the rule of law. It does not see any scope for negotiations among the parties until the final judicial verdict establishes the rights and status of parties concerned,” he said.

Muslims make up 13 percent of India’s 1.1 billion population, while Hindus account for 80 percent.

OnIslam.net October 2, 2010 

Note: This story which I wrote for Egyptian website OnIslam.net has been badly edited thus omitting some of the positive comments by members of Muslim community. 

The Return of Holy Cow!

Saffron souls clash with police on July 22 in Malegaon

At what point did in Indian history cow become holy to Hindus? The question is obviously rhetorical but needs an honest deliberation. The cow has never been sacred to all Hindus. The view that cow is sacred is merely a sectional Hindu view. It has been a matter of inter-religious debate for decades but one thing is certain: cow slaughter and beef-eating are proven Hindu traditions. Beef used to be served as honour to guests in ancient India. Therefore, the cow became holy at a much later period as part of Hinduism reforms. In traditional or ancient Hinduism, cow has never been sacred.

The month of July can be rightly described as the month of holy cow! It has returned to haunt us in more than one way: Malegaon-Manmad-road cow row was just a flashpoint. The holy cow made a quiet entry from down South in Karnataka assembly. The controversial Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Prevention of Cattle Bill, 2010 was passed in the legislative council on July 15 amid protests by the opposition. If the bill becomes a law, it will affect eating habits of many communities, sportspersons, animals in the zoo etc.

The holy cow entered Maharashtra on July 21. We do not know the exact entry point but the holy cow did a road-show on the outskirts of Malegaon before landing in Mantrayla on July 22!

Why did the Opposition protest the passing of the bill in Karnataka assembly? Does the opposition consists of only Muslims?

The sacredness of cow is not a Hindu-Muslim question alone as it has been persistently made out in the media. Karnataka opposition was representing millions of Hindus who still eat beef. Dalits and tribals have always eaten beef as part of ancient Hinduism. A ban in would mean imposition on hundreds of millions of Dalits and tribals. Also, beef is eaten regularly in India’s North-East.

The “Malegaon cow slaughter”, as the mainstream media reported, never took place. Ignorance, as we say in journalism, is bliss. The phrase “Malegaon cow slaughter” is a misnomer. First, the incident did not take place in Malegaon town; eight cows were found dead on Malegaon-Manmad road. By highlighting the word ‘Malegaon’ with the cows, media is playing in the hands of communalists; they want to defame a peace-loving town which did not lose its cool after witnessing two deadly bomb blasts. Media must remember that Malegaon is not a slaughterhouse of all goodness! The word ‘Malegaon’ immediately creates a sensation. Anything sensational in media sells these days.

Second, there was no ‘slaughter’ of the cows; eight cows died because of suffocation and the post-mortem report confirms this. There was no trace of injury or cuts on the body. But not all are convinced. Miscreants belonging to Hindutva brigade are spreading a lie with the help of some pictures. Any sane man would know that body needs to be cut in order to perform autopsy. Veterinary surgeon performed autopsy of the cows. The pictures of cuts borne by the vet’s knife are being circulated over the internet. It is being claimed that cows were indeed ‘slaughtered’! (Hindu Jan Jagruti Samiti is one such website; it puts the number of “slaughtered cows” to 25!) These pictures serve as the propaganda weapon for the right-wing brigade which is consistently becoming violent. Some of the Muslims might interpret the cow incident as part of a “conspiracy” to cause riot. The cow incident does not seem to be part of any conspiracy as of now; it seems more like a co-incidental accident. But people of Malegaon may have reasonable doubts which may or may not be valid. After all, one such ‘conspiracy’ has already taken place in Malegaon in 1984. A Hindu deity was garlanded with a bone-necklace by an RSS activist in order to cause riot. Malegaon could have witnessed a massive riot because the temple of the deity stood next to a mosque. It was the genius of S. M. Mushrif, the then ASP of Malegaon, who unearthed the mystery of bone-necklace and prevented Malegaon from communal frenzy.

The right-wingers are in a mood for mischief. Kesari Chand Mehta, president of Gau-Raksha Samiti spit venom against Muslims on July 22 while presenting a memorandum to the local administration. Muslims must maintain the traditional chain of peace culminated in the aftermath of 2006 and 2008 blasts.

Interestingly, opposition survived the day of July 22 on a lie. A lie can breathe transient life in the lungs of an almost dead opposition but the life of a lie is shorter than a hyphen.

Mother cow, on whose horns universe survives according to Hindu worldview, must be angry over the lie. A slight movement of the horns will send Sena-BJP alliance into deep ravine of eternity.

The Sunday Inquilab, July 25, 2010

Master, Queen and Slave

When Queen met the 'Slave': Sonia Gandhi with L.K. Advani

Is the Congress only party which works on the basis of master-servant relationship? Sonia Maino Gandhi has challenged that assumption by breaking the sound of silence. All these years, her long and stoic silence was being considered as a sign of acquiescence. Sonia has proved that she is indeed the daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi, who dealt her opponents with an iron fist.

So, is Lal Krishna Advani, a slave of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), as Sonia Gandhi has termed at a poll rally in Margao? Anybody who is aware of India’s political history will bear witness that L.K. Advani has indeed been a ‘slave’ of the RSS. There is nothing new in this utterance but yet it will find a unique place in the political history. Sonia’s lips have given it Congress affiliation. The vacuum left behind by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru has finally found an echo in the voice of his grand daughter-in-law!

If Congress is a budiya (old lady) then RSS is by no means a gudiya (doll). Congress was born in 1885, an old political party indeed. RSS breathed life in 1925. If one applies Narendra Modi logic, RSS too will fall under the category of budiya! What more, this ‘budiya’ has given birth to ‘gudiyas’ legitimate as well as illegitimate. BJP, VHP and Bajrang Dal can claim to be legitimate while Abhinav Bharat, Ram Sene will be ‘branded’ as illegitimate although both have been begotten by RSS, the gudiya-in-chief of Sangh Parivar!

RSS was founded in September 1925 at Nagpur on Dussehra day by Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, a medical doctor. Hedgewar was a disciple of Balkrishna Moonje who had sent him to Calcutta in 1910 to pursue medical studies. His unofficial mission was to learn terrorist techniques from the Bengal secret societies. He joined Congress after returning to Nagpur, following in his mentor’s footsteps. Both the master and servant were “disenchanted” with the Congress soon.

In their book The Brotherhood in Saffron, Walter K. Anderson and Shridhar D. Damle record how Hedgewar began to lay intellectual foundations of RSS at a time of escalating Hind-Muslim animosity in Nagpur. They write,

“Hedgewar began to develop the intellectual foundations of the RSS. A major influence on his thinking was a handwritten manuscript Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s Hindutva, which advanced the thesis that the Hindus were a nation. The central propositions of Savarkar’s manuscript are that Hindus are the indigenous people of the continent and that they form a single national group.”

RSS was succeeded by Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar after the death of Hedgewar on June 21, 1940. RSS did grow under his leadership but yet remained on the margins of Indian politics. It was known as a militant Hindu group notorious for its role in communal riots.

An understanding was reached between Golwalkar and the Hindu Mahasabha leader S.P. Mookerjee which led to the formation of the political arm of RSS, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh on October 21, 1951. Jana Sangh merged into Janata Party in 1977. After the fall of the government in 1979, Jana Sangh broke away with Janata Party and renamed it as The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on April 5, 1980.

After the shameful defeat of BJP in 1984 general election, BJP was given a new lease of life by Rajiv Gandhi government when it opened the locks at the gates of Babri Masjid in February 1986. BJP adopted a resolution on Ayodhya on June 11, 1989 at Palampur which demanded that “the sentiments of the overwhelming majority in this country – the Hindus be respected and the site in dispute must be handed over to the Hindus and a mosque built at some other place.” The resolution did not specify what will happen to the Babri Masjid; it was demonstrated only on December 6, 1992.

Construction of the Ram Temple at Ayodhya is one of the first demands of a ‘cultural’ and ‘fascist’ RSS ‘budiya’. BJP is the 29-year old ‘gudiya’ of the same ‘budiya’!

RSS, as it claims, is apolitical cultural organisation but it has floated its political arm in the form of BJP! The BJP policy has always been dominated and influenced by RSS agenda. Immediately after Palampur resolution, L.K. Advani said, “I am sure it will translate into votes.” After the November 1989 election, he expressed satisfaction that the issue had contributed to the success of BJP. In 1991 election, Advani was confident that Ram Temple movement will influence voters. On June 18, 1991 he proudly said,

“Had I not played the Ram factor effectively, I would have definitely lost from the New Delhi constituency.”

And immediately after the demolition of the Babri Masjid and subsequent riots that followed, he wrote that if the Muslims were to identify themselves with the concept of Hindutva there would not be any reasons for riots to take place. In July 1992, he argued in Lok Sabha speaker’s chamber:

“You must recognise the fact that from two seats in Parliament in 1985 we have come to 117 seats in 1991. This has happened primarily because we took up this issue (Ayodhya).”

From 1999 to 2004, BJP had convened many meetings just to convince the RSS top brass their helplessness over Ram temple because numbers in parliament didn’t add up to pass legislation for the same. Anderson and Damle put it thus,

“It is questionable if the BJP could survive politically without the RSS cadre, and the cadre will not stay unless the leadership of the party stays firmly in the hands of the ‘brotherhood’.”

The Italian scholar Marzia Casolari has documented, on the basis of archival evidence, the RSS’s links with and admiration for Mussolini’s fascist regime.

Doesn’t this brief Advani pattern resemble that of a slave of the master? The sole job of a slave is to serve the interests of his master no matter how despicable and abominable the assigned job is. All through his life Advani has tried his best to please the RSS top brass.

Former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who once proudly said – the Sangh is my soul – had worked hard to woo Sanghis. On his visit to Nagpur on August 27, 2000, he had literally surrendered the post of prime minister to a swayamsevak. He had said,

“The post of (prime minister) may go tomorrow, but I will always remain a humble swayamsevak.”

Sonia Gandhi, the queen of Congress, has highlighted the BJP-RSS relationship though there are RSS-sympathisers within the Congress as revealed by RSS general secretary Ram Madhav recently.

Slavery was officially abolished in Britain in 1833 but it is still prevalent in Indian politics.

Sunday Inquilab, April 19, 2009