By New Age Islam Edit
Desk
21 November
2020
• Pakistan: Where Fact And Fiction Come
Together
By Rakesh Sood
• Is Urdu A ‘Pakistani’ Language? No. Here’s
Why I Chose To Learn It
By Anwesha Sengupta
• Did
Indira Gandhi Help Shape ‘Anti-Pakistan’ Narrative?
By Farzana Versey
• Dilemma Of Secular Liberals
By Julio Ribeiro
• The BJP Does Not Want Owaisi, The BJP Does
Not Need Owaisi
By Shivam Vij
• Bangladeshi Cricketer Shakib Says Sorry: Will
It ‘Help’ Extremism?
By Saif Hasnat
-----
Pakistan: Where Fact And Fiction Come Together
By Rakesh Sood
Nov 20,
2020
Lt General (retd) Asad Durrani, who headed Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the early 1990s, is no stranger to controversy. Two years ago, along with AS Dulat, chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in late 1990s, he co-authored The Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and The Illusion of Peace. The slim volume, based on their conversations on the Track II circuit (he describes this as a circus), covered India-Pakistan relations, Kashmir and cross-border terrorism, and got him into trouble in Pakistan. The ISI hauled him over the coals, a court of enquiry suspended his pension and other retirement benefits and he was barred from leaving the country. He has since been pursuing lawsuits to get his entitlements restored.
He has
authored a novel, Honour Among Spies that describes the travails of a Pakistani
Lt General Osama Barakzai (Zirak branch of the Durrani tribe) who gets into
trouble with his parent organisation (Guards) ostensibly for co-authoring a
book with Indian ex-spy chief Randhir Singh. However, as he plays cat and mouse
with his interrogators and engages in verbal duelling with colleagues from the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and MI6, Osama finds other plausible reasons
for his troubles, pointing the spotlight at the establishment (a popular
euphemism for the Army and ISI). Despite the disclaimer that “though inspired
by some real events, this is a work of fiction”, such a book would be explosive
at any time in Pakistan. But appearing as the domestic political scene heats up
for Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan, Durrani may find that he has more than a bestseller on his
hands.
Fiction: Osama Barakzai was appointed to head
the Intelligence outfit in the Guards by the Chief Akram Moghul in 1990. Both
came under a cloud in a case filed by Admiral Khan for using Yousaf Haseeb, a
banker, for channelling slush funds to Naveen Shaikh to dislodge the incumbent
woman PM. Part of the money is unaccounted for and Barakzai points the finger
at Moghul who feels vengeful. The case lingers on through Pakistan’s courts and
the current tribal chief, Jabbar Jatt, shares a sub-tribal loyalty with Moghul.
He had been appointed by Naveen Shaikh (in power from 2013-17) but since
switched loyalties to Khurshid Kadri.
Another thread
in Barakzai’s ruminations leads to the female terrorist mastermind, Uzma bint
Laden, who was living incognito in Jacobabad and killed in 2011 in a daring
raid by United States (US) Navy Seals. Barakzai, who had long retired, and,
after a couple of diplomatic assignments, is now active on the conference
circuit and a sought-after commentator on TV channels, suggests on BBC about
the possibility of complicity between the Guards and the US agency. The story
passes as it absolves the Guards (under then Chief Raja Rasalu) of incompetence
that they were unable to detect the incoming raid. The problem resurfaces as US
investigative journalist Simon Hirsh uncovers a Pakistani mole, Baqar Bhatti,
who had walked into the US embassy to inform them about the fugitive,
indicating collusion.
Adding to
this mix is the tricky relationship with India with the Narendra Modi
government’s assertive policy of surgical strikes after Uri, the air strike at
Balakot after the Pulwama attack and conversations between Barakzai and Randhir
Singh to keep alive the hopes of the composite dialogue initiated by former
Indian PM KL Gujjar and pursued by the opening up of Sardarpur shrine.
Fact: Lt Gen Durrani was DG (MI) and Gen Mirza Aslam Beg
appointed him DG(ISI) in 1990. Both were interrogated in the case filed in 1996
by late Air Marshal Asghar Khan, accusing the Army of funding Nawaz Sharif in
the 1990 elections against Benazir Bhutto through Younis Habib, CEO of Mehran
Bank. General Beg and current chief General Qamar Bajwa both belong to 16
Baloch regiment.
Durrani has
been critical of General Pervez Musharraf’s role in the Kargil war (described
as the Pir Panjal pass fiasco where Gen Gulrez Shahrukh keeps PM Naveen Shaikh
in the dark). In 2011, Durrani told BBC that the Pakistani authorities probably
knew about Osama bin Laden hiding in Abbottabad but would have preferred to be
blamed for incompetence rather than complicity. Seymour Hersh’s disclosures in
2015 confirmed this, pointing at Gen Ashfaq Kayani and identifying the Pakistani
informant as Brig Usman Khalid, subsequently resettled in the US.
Enough
parallels to whet any conspiracy theorist’s appetite.
A strange
reality: Nawaz Sharif may have begun his political career with the blessings of
the establishment but differences grew after Kargil and Musharraf’s coup in 1999. After returning to
power in 2013, Sharif pressed treason charges against Musharraf. The Army was
unhappy, Panamagate took its toll and Sharif was ousted in 2017, jailed, and
has been in exile for a year. He has mounted a no-holds-barred attack on the
selected PM Imran Khan and the selectors, General Bajwa and the ISI chief Lt
Gen Faiz Hameed, holding them responsible for his ouster.
An
Opposition front of 11 parties, combining Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) under
Bilawal Bhutto and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) under Maryam Sharif, led by
veteran Maulana Fazlur Rehman who was close to the Army but currently unhappy,
has begun a series of protest rallies last month culminating in Islamabad next
month. It is a re-run of the process that ousted Sharif in 2017 with Imran Khan
and the Maulana in the lead, with the tacit backing of the establishment.
Last year,
Bajwa managed a three-year extension from Imran Khan, causing rumblings within
the army. Into this mix comes a thinly-disguised novel calling out those
manipulating democratic politics and hinting at internal differences within the
establishment.
Only time
will tell if Barakzai will reappear in a sequel — Honour Restored.
-----
Rakesh Sood is a former diplomat and currently
distinguished fellow, Observer Research Foundation
The views expressed are personal
https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/pakistan-where-fact-and-fiction-come-together/story-aTjnDopqymiFZjbcEleVVK.html
----
Is Urdu A ‘Pakistani’ Language? No. Here’s Why
I Chose To Learn It
By Anwesha Sengupta
19 Nov 2020
I had
wanted to learn Urdu since I was a teenager. There were no political or
‘practical’ reason behind this desire. I found Urdu incredibly romantic.
Gulzar, AR Rahman and Shah Rukh Khan were to be blamed for my romantic
associations with the language. The day Shah Rukh Khan described his dream
woman as someone who speaks like Urdu (Jiske Zuban Urdu ki Tara), my teenage
heart associated the language with love. Almost two decades later, when I
discovered Fawad Khan, the desire to speak his tongue came back.
The
opportunity to learn Urdu came during the COVID lockdown. Association SNAP – a
Kolkata-based NGO working for students and youth belonging to minority
communities – begun an online course to teach basic Urdu. I enrolled.
The
decision raised curiosity among some friends and family members: “Is it true
that Urdu is written in the wrong direction,” asked someone innocently; “Are
you the only Hindu in the class,” was the most common question that I faced. A
well-meaning relative even warned me: “Be cautious, do not tell too many
people. They may think of you as anti-national.”
Some did
ask “whether I needed to learn Urdu for some professional reasons”. Couple of
years ago, I had tried, unsuccessfully though, to learn Spanish. That attempt
had generated no curiosity. Learning a European language was seen as a ‘good
career move’, Spanish was chic. Learning Urdu, on the other hand, was deemed
unusual: written from right to left, the language of Musalmans, with ‘no job
prospect’. In every sense, it seemed the opposite of French, German or Spanish.
How does
one explain such perceptions about Urdu? Why is it treated as an alien language
in India, where, according to the Census of 2011, it is the mother tongue of
5.07 crore people? The answer perhaps lies in the chequered past of the
language.
As
Christopher King explains, in the second half of 19th Century, Hindi written in
Nagri script and Urdu written in Urdu script became symbols of Hinduism and Islam
in Oudh and the Northwestern Provinces. Initiatives were taken by the Nagari
Pracharani Sabha of Banaras and Hindi Sahitya Sammelan of Allahabad to purge
Arabic and Persian words from Hindi and replace them with Sanskrit.
In poems,
tracts, plays, Hindi was imagined as the mother language, sometime as a mother
goddess. Urdu, in this imagination, was the vulgar ‘other’, the erotic language
of courtesans. Sometimes, Urdu was accused of being ‘effeminate’, sometimes it
was seen particularly unsuitable for women. Urdu was also seen to be too close
to the foreign Persian, and hence inadequate in expressing Bharatiya
sensibilities.
Urdu
received regular flak from Bharatendu Harishchandra to Arya Samaj educators to
poet Mahadevi Verma. Such associations between language and communal
consciousness became more widespread in the 20th century. Partition further
marginalised Urdu in India. Urdu became associated with Pakistan, where it was
declared the national language much to the agony of Bengali Muslims of its
eastern wing. While the Bangla-Urdu conflict shaped the politics of East
Pakistan in the decades after its creation, India witnessed the strengthening
of Hindi at the expense of Urdu.
Urdu
departments were opened in universities and colleges; the National Council for
the Promotion of Urdu was set up. But funds were paltry and that too they were
often misused. In a 1999 essay, published in the Economic and Political Weekly,
Syed Shahabuddin tersely wrote: “[the National Council] is meant not to promote
Urdu but to put the Urduwallah's conscience to sleep.”
The
mainstreaming of Hindutva politics in the first two decades of the twenty-first
century has further ‘otherised’ Urdu. In Rajasthan, for instance, the previous
BJP government merged Urdu medium schools and Hindi medium schools, stopped the
recruitment of Urdu teachers, removed Ismat Chughtai from Class VIII text book
and made question papers in Urdu unavailable.
In Uttar
Pradesh, several members of the legislative assembly were stopped from taking
oaths in Urdu. Several other examples are there to illustrate this point. This
historical and the contemporary contexts perhaps explain, though not justify,
the reactions of my relatives and friends to my learning Urdu.
In my
class, however, I am not an exceptional presence. Seven of my classmates are
Hindu by birth, and only one is a Muslim. Except one, we are all Bengalis. Five
of us are women, and there are four men. It is, but, a remarkably heterogeneous
group if we take age into consideration. The youngest of the lot is Bibhabori,
a Class Six student. She just read a book on the magnificent Humayun’s Tomb.
But it had a few Urdu words that she could not read. To solve this pressing
problem, her parents enrolled her in this course.
Sukti
Sircar, one of the senior members of the group, also has a definite reason for
learning the language. She is learning Urdu to keep her mind active.
It was
partly her children’s idea, she says: “My son and daughter have told me that
learning a new language, engaging in Sudoku, taking up new activities help
delay the onset of Alzheimer’s”.
Remaining
mentally agile is Sukti’s priority, who has retired recently after working at a
bank for almost forty years. But why Urdu and not any other language, I asked
her one day. She told me that Urdu fascinates her as it is written from right
to left. Urdu also belongs to her familiar universe because of the popular
Bollywood songs. But learning the language in a systematic way will help Sukti
comprehend the lyrics better. An avid reader herself, Sukti hopes to read Urdu
fiction in the original after the completion of the course.
Why Many
Chose To Learn Urdu Over Other Languages
While her
other retired friends have taken up new hobbies like gardening, embroidering, and
painting, she has decided to give Urdu a shot. Her son, a heritage consultant
by profession, has also enrolled with her. Two of my fellow classmates are
learning the language because their academic research involves reading Urdu
sources. Rakesh, another classmate of mine, is a poet and a translator. He is
well versed in Urdu literature that is written in Devnagari script. Learning
Nastaliq script, he believes, will help him explore the treasures of the
language further. For Srijanee, who has a master’s degree in English
literature, the lockdown provided the much-needed time to learn a new language.
Urdu was
the preferred choice for her because of her interest in postcolonial South
Asian literature. Most of my classmates also have said that they find the Nastaliq
script beautiful and they are aware of its rich literary tradition.
Urdu in its
spoken form is comprehensible to almost all of them, but they want to read and
write it as well.
The script
is generally seen as a difficult one and there have been suggestions from some
of the Indian Urdu experts to promote the writing of the language in Roman or
Nagari. But Urdu without Nastaliq will probably lose its shine to a group like
this.
The
instructor, Dr Noushad Momin, also thinks that Urdu in Roman will be detrimental
for the language. He, however, often tell us that there is a resistance from a
group of Urduwallas in India towards the modernisation of the writing of the
language. “In Pakistan, they do not put so much emphasis on joining the letters
and that makes it easier for the new learners. In India there are people who
are not ready to take that step,” he said one day when we were struggling to
understand the joining rules.
Normalisation
Of Urdu By A Few Brings Hope
Some of my
classmates did face bizarre questions from their families and friends about
their decisions to learn Urdu. Sukti and her son, for example, had to explain
their decision to some surprised relatives.One of their acquaintances thought
Urdu to be a Pakistani language, no longer used in India as such. The
mother-son duo has been largely successful in clearing their doubts and
misconceptions. One classmate of mine is yet to tell his family. Others’
families are mostly indifferent; but in some cases they are encouraging.
My
classmates themselves do not see learning Urdu as an overtly political act.
While they appreciate the visual beauty of it, they do not exoticize the
language. To them this is a choice informed by several other considerations.
Last year,
Firoze Khan, a Sanskrit scholar, was appointed as an assistant professor in the
Sanskrit Vidya Dharma Department of Banaras Hindu University. Akhil Bharatiya
Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students’ wing of RSS, organised a massive
protest against this appointment. A Muslim, they said, was ineligible to teach
in a department which combines the study of Hindu religion and Sanskrit
language. A colleague of Khan was harassed because he condemned ABVP’s
position. But a month-long protest forced the Sanskrit scholar to resign and
join the arts faculty of the university to teach the language. In a world of
shrinking diversity and reductive understanding of faith, Sukti, Bibhabori,
Srijanee, Rakesh and others’ “normalisation” of learning Urdu brings hope.
References
Gupta,
Charu. ‘The Icon of Mother in Late Colonial North India: 'Bharat Mata', 'Matri
Bhasha' and 'Gau Mata'’, Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), 36:45, 2001, pp.
4291-4299.
King,
Christopher. ‘The Hindi-Urdu Controversy of the North-Western Provinces and
Oudh and Communal Consciousness’, Journal of South Asian Literature, 13: ¼,
1977-78, pp 111-120.
Shahabuddin,
Syed. ‘Urdu and its Future in India’, EPW, 34:10/11, 1999, p.566.
Haque,
Shahzaman. ‘India’s War on Urdu’, The Diplomat, July 15, 2019.
----
Anwesha Sengupta teaches history at the
Institute of Development Studies Kolkata. This is an opinion piece and the
views expressed are the author’s own.
The New Age Islam neither endorses nor is
responsible for them.
https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/urdu-language-islamic-culture-muslims-misconceptions-communal-bias-hindi-domination-hindutva#read-more
-----
Did Indira Gandhi Help Shape ‘Anti-Pakistan’
Narrative?
By Farzana Versey
19 Nov 2020
She
encouraged coteries without seeming to court anyone. She took away the privy
purses, but kept the princes. She spoke about rationality, but a hedonistic
sadhu was a close confidante. She spoke about ‘social democracy’ but blatantly
gave a fillip to the license permit raj.
When Indira
Gandhi was voted as the woman of the millennium by a BBC online poll in 1999,
leaving Mother Teresa and Madame Curie behind, the general opinion was that
India was the flavour of the season. And, like the Miss Worlds facilitating a
consumerist market, it seemed like a politically-correct move to prop up an
Indian.
Did Indira
Gandhi deserve such an honour that declared her the most important woman in a
thousand years?
103 years
ago to the day, Indira Gandhi was born (19 November 1917). And 36 years ago, on
31 October, when Indira Gandhi was shot dead, we were stunned and genuinely
sad. She seemed imperishable.
She had
mastered the art of playing both ‘victim’ and ‘rescuer’ – post-Emergency, after
her son Sanjay’s death, even after death as her spirit hovered around when her
politically-disinclined son was pulled out to save India.
As I look
back at the three major unfortunate events she was responsible for, we can see
how her actions shaped post-Partition politics and that continue to echo today
in more insidious forms.
Indira
Gandhi thrived on strife. This is how she came to support the Mukti Bahini in
what was then East Pakistan.
A
little-known aspect of that time remains a blip. In a 13-day war, 54 of our men
in uniform went missing. In 1971, we were too elated as cries of ‘Jai Bangla’
rent the air. In that charged atmosphere when 93,000 Pakistani prisoners were
handed over, India ‘forgot’ to ask for our men in exchange. The prime minister
apparently had no time for it.
Back in
1992, I had met some of the families. They had produced evidence before
successive governments – letters, notes from emissaries. But nothing came of
it. These families were waiting for news, good or bad, for closure.
In her book
‘The Bhutto Trial and Execution’, BBC correspondent Victoria Schofield
mentioned how Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto could not sleep. Every night he heard cries
wafting towards his cell from the other side of the barracks. One of his
lawyers made enquiries and was told by the jail authorities that they were
Indian prisoners held after the 1971 war. As she wrote, “When the time came to
exchange POWs, the Indian government did not accept these lunatics as they
could not recount their place of origin. And thus, they were retained at Kot
Lakhpat.” Bhutto was hanged to death in 1979, eight years after the war.
In July
2019, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan admitted in the
Lok Sabha that 83 Indian Prisoners of War (PoW) were taken into custody during
Indo-Pak wars, including the 54 soldiers and officers who were either missing
or killed in action during the 1971 Indo-Pak War. No conclusive search has been
undertaken.
Politicians
use the armed forces, and when victory is declared the dead, missing soldiers
are either forgotten or manipulated to score points within the country.
Atal Bihari
Vajpayee may or may not have called Indira Gandhi a ‘Durga avatar’, but that is
what she was perceived as in the public imagination. It is no wonder that the
western media thought of her as the ‘empress of India’; she had learned well
the divide and rule policy, a legacy that Indian politicians continue to pay
respects to by their actions.
It is her
role in the creation of Bangladesh that brings to the fore India’s ambitions of
being the region’s ‘bully’, if not a superpower. It also set up a concrete
anti-Pakistan narrative.
For one who
rode the human rights horse in another country, Indira Gandhi had scant respect
for it at home. On the midnight of 25 June 1975, without consulting her Cabinet
or even the law minister, Mrs Gandhi declared a nationwide emergency. Her
‘rubber-stamp’ President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed invoked Article 352 to suspend
democracy.
The sheer
insecurity, and pettiness, that prompted it was a group of young leaders
questioning her violation of the electoral laws. Those who had called for
‘Sampoorna Kranti’ were arrested.
Like all
frightened people, Mrs Gandhi ‘camouflaged’ her theories – about others trying
to plot against her government and stall its functioning – beneath a cloak of
self-righteousness, declaring that democracy was not more important than the
nation. It is the sort of statement our rightwing ‘nationalists’ would love.
She could
not even tolerate a peaceful resistance movement. Jayaprakash Narayan wrote to
her several times from prison, and an open letter in February 1976 in the ‘Far
Eastern Economic Review’. The Indian press was muzzled.
His words
were stinging: “You have accused the Opposition of trying to lower the prestige
and position of the country’s Prime Minister. But in reality, the boot is on
the other leg. No one has done more to lower the position and prestige of that
great office than yourself. Can you ever think of the Prime Minister of a
democratic country who cannot even vote in his Parliament because he has been
found guilty of corrupt electoral practices?”
Indians are
attracted to tragedy queens and kings, their flaws forgotten the moment they
are seen as suffering for the acts they made others suffer for.
The
Congress published a book, ‘Congress and the Making of the Indian Nation’,
that, in LK Advani’s words, was “a ridiculous attempt to make Sanjay Gandhi a
scapegoat for all the misdeeds the country had to suffer during the Emergency.”
Advani’s observations, of course, were rooted in his own understanding of what
constitutes democracy, for he referred to Sanjay’s deeds as “worthwhile causes such
as slum-clearance, anti-dowry measures, and literacy”.
Nevertheless,
it was clear that Mrs Gandhi had not muddied her own hands.
Indira
Gandhi’s ‘Reluctance’ To Engage With Minority Aspirations
If Sanjay
Gandhi was the ‘scapegoat’ of the Emergency, then Rajiv Gandhi became the
‘scapegoat’ of the anti-Sikh killings following Indira Gandhi’s assassination.
At worst, he could be accused of extreme insensitivity at the time.
It was
Indira Gandhi who had given orders in June 1984 for the Army to attack the Golden
Temple and 40 other gurdwaras in Punjab.
For one who
had actively participated in Mukti Bahini’s separatism in Pakistan, Indira
Gandhi was not even ready to engage with minority aspirations.
At least
2733 Sikhs were killed over three days, as supporters of the Congress party
went on a rampage. Sikhs had suffered a great deal during the partition of the
country. In 1984 they were uprooted again, and this time the enemy was at home.
An official
apology came only in 2005, when Dr Manmohan Singh said: “I have no hesitation
in apologising not only to the Sikh community but the whole Indian nation
because what took place in 1984 is the negation of the concept of nationhood
and what is enshrined in our Constitution.”
Anti-Minority
Sentiments Have Only Worsened Since Indira Gandhi Era
Expansionism
dreams, anti-minority-ism, and scant respect for the right to dissent against
political crimes have peaked and are far worse now, and I don’t see any leader
today utter words such as these: “Even if I died in the service of the nation,
I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood... will contribute to the growth
of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic.”
I’ll quote
Ghalib here:
“Rag-E-Sang
Se Tapakta Woh Lahu Ki Fir Na Thamta
Jise Gham
Samajh Rahe Ho, Ye Agar Sharaar Hota”.
(The blood
that drips from the veins of stone will not cease / What you think of as grief
should have been a spark.)
-----
Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based writer. She
tweets at @farzana_versey. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are
the author’s own.
The New Age Islam neither endorses nor is
responsible for them.)
https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/indira-gandhi-era-emergency-clampdown-on-democracy-anti-sikh-pogrom-minority-rights-anti-pakistan-narrative#read-more
------
Dilemma Of Secular Liberals
By Julio Ribeiro
Nov 20,
2020
A Muslim
lad from Dehradun wrote to me: “Mr Julio F Ribeiro, may Allah’s peace be upon
you. Yesterday, I saw a video in which a class teacher in France assigned the
class to make a caricature of Prophet Mohammed (Saw). A Muslim student,
wondering what to do in such a circumstance, finally wrote Mohammed on the
notebook. Prophet Mohammed (Saw) lies in our hearts and Muslim ummah loves
Prophet Mohammed (Saw). They also love Jesus, Moses, David, Isaac, Ismail,
Abraham and Noah. They are ordained to respect deities of Hindu as per
directions of the Quran. Other relations are meaningless if that eternal bond
with Mohammed is disregarded by anyone in any way. A Muslim cannot bear that
assault. Why Europe and especially Denmark and France think that they can go on
insulting Prophet Mohammed (Saw) like they insult Prophet Jesus and others in
the name of freedom of speech? Why a pitch is being created to demonise a
loving Muslim ummah?
I hope you
will be writing against the injustice meted out to Muslim ummah in the name of
freedom of expression.”
I replied:
“Does the Quran say that the depiction of the Prophet is not to be made and,
further, if anyone does it, he or she should be killed? I would like to see
this line in the Holy Book (with English translation as I do not know Arabic).
This is essential if one has to write on the subject.”
The young
man’s feelings reflect those of his co-religionists across the globe! I am
willing to respect such feelings if those who harbour them also respect the
Quranic injunctions not to kill. Secular liberals cannot take sides and condone
injustice meted out by one side only.
When cattle
traders, butchers and beef eaters are lynched or young students and old women
are hauled up under draconian laws like the UAPA for protesting against
discriminatory laws like the CAA and NRC, secular liberals take up cudgels for
the victims. But if extremist Muslims take to terror because they are too weak
to take on the might of the State or, like in France, choose to behead a
teacher for showing cartoons from a magazine that pictured the Prophet, the
same secular liberals are squarely against these extremists.
The French
President condemned the killings of his compatriots. It would have been
unacceptable if he had failed to do so. Our PM Modi was the first world leader
to condemn the killing of the Paris teacher by Muslim hotheads. But in India,
we keep waiting for our popular PM to react when Muslims are lynched!
Well, it
was good and wise of Modiji to convey his support to Macron at that moment of French
national grief. Secular liberals in our own country would have appreciated his
gesture even more if he had been consistent with his rejection of terrorism by
also condemning lynchings in BJP-ruled states from where alone they have been
reported. Secular liberals, like me, roundly condemn all extremists of any
persuasion. Fundamentalism, whether Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Sikh, is
anathema to them.
Secular
liberals were overjoyed when Javed Anand, husband of that intrepid warrior
Teesta Setalvad, and his group of Muslims for a Secular Democracy came out
boldly on the side of the French President and against their French
co-religionists responsible for the barbaric act of beheading. Imagine our
disappointment when the very next day, hordes of Muslims came out on the
streets of Mumbai and other cities of India to voice their anger against the
French President for stating what the world already knew — that the French
national ethos is irreverence towards religion as such and not to Islam, in
particular. Instances of rejection of firmly held Christian beliefs like the
Virgin Birth or the Chastity of Christ were shown in films like The Da Vinci
Code, which were released in French cinema halls without any violent reactions.
So, the
French are even-handed about their attitude to religion, any religion,
including the one which the majority of worshippers in their country profess
and follow. But followers of Islam, who, subsequent to the demise of colonial
rule, account for a substantial percentage of the population of France, are
very touchy about their Prophet.
Zakia
Soman, one of the best known Muslim women fighting the mullahs in the ‘triple
talaq’ matter, has also come out openly against her co-religionists responsible
for the barbarism in France. She will be ‘persona non grata’ with the majority
of Indian Muslims! Yet, she has spoken out in a newspaper column. I salute her.
There are
many obscurantist practices that my fellow humans who follow Islam need to
ponder and discard. Their marriage and divorce laws, the place of women in
their scheme of daily living, should be principal points of debate and
discussion. The reversal of the Shah Bano judgment by the Congress government
of Rajiv Gandhi shocked the conscience of even those sympathetic to Muslims in
India. It spelt the eclipse of Congress rule and the rise of the BJP.
There is
another decision of the mullahs that shocked me even more. An Indian soldier
was captured by the Pakistanis in the war of 1965 or 1971. He was a Muslim.
Since his whereabouts could not be established for more than seven years, his
wife remarried. She had a son from that marriage and was happy. Suddenly, the
soldier was freed by his captors and returned home. The mullahs ordered the
woman to cohabit with the soldier, abandoning her happy marriage! She was not
even consulted. No attention was paid to the child who had not been accepted by
the soldier.
I am
willing and even eager to take up issues for my Muslim brothers and sisters
when they are unjustly targeted and I do that often. But certainly not when
practices that are uncivilised are defended as Quranic precepts. How can any
Supreme Being condemn women to ‘slave’ status in their own home and in their
own community? How can a Supreme Being sanction murder? My secular liberalism
just cannot accept such inequality and injustice!
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/dilemma-of-secular-liberals-173105
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The BJP Does Not Want Owaisi, The BJP Does Not
Need Owaisi
By Shivam Vij
20
November, 2020
The
Bharatiya Janata Party will do anything it needs to win elections, we are often
told.
Yet, there
is one thing the BJP does not do, particularly the BJP of Narendra Modi and
Amit Shah. It rarely ever gives tickets to Muslims. That costs it a few
Muslim-dominated seats. If the BJP’s single-minded purpose was to win seats, it
would happily give tickets to Muslims.
By giving
some representation to Muslims in their ticket distribution, the BJP could,
perhaps, have won state elections in Rajasthan, Delhi, Karnataka, and Madhya
Pradesh. You can find Muslims who are all too willing to engage with the BJP at
a time when the party has a monopoly over winning elections. Like most
communities, Muslims don’t mind being on the right side of power.
It is the
BJP that does not respond to Muslim aspirations, because there are things the
BJP values more than winning elections, such as ideology. In its post-2014
phase, it has been clearer than ever that the BJP’s ideological purpose is to
marginalise Muslims to the point of making them invisible. The Muslim must shut
up and stay at home. The Muslim must not be MLA, MP, minister or leader.
Muslims must not speak or be heard.
What was
such a big deal about blocking traffic on a road or two over the
anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests that it caused riots in Delhi? Was
the blocking of a road in east Delhi that nobody was really noticing that big a
problem for commuters? That is how unacceptable the Muslim political voice is
to the BJP.
The BJP
doesn’t want Owaisi
It is
facetious to say that the BJP wants Asaduddin Owaisi around in politics. The
BJP doesn’t want the Muslim beard or cap. My understanding is that it doesn’t
want a Muslim standing up in Parliament — because why should Muslims be present
in Parliament of a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ in the first place?
For the
first time in the history of Bihar politics, the treasury benches do not have a
single Muslim MLA. The BJP did not give a single ticket to a community that is
nearly 17 per cent of Bihar’s population — every sixth citizen. It is the only
party that seeks to actively exclude an entire community from the corridors of
power. Do you think they enjoy the sight of five MLAs from the All-India
Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) in the assembly?
The five
seats won by the AIMIM have led to the usual hand-wringing about how Owaisi’s
rise is just what the BJP wants. The BJP wants Muslims to vote for a Muslim
party just as it wants Hindus to vote for a Hindu party. This is a misreading
of the BJP’s agenda. The BJP-RSS have gone out of their way to make secular
parties apologetic about seeking Muslim votes. This has been done to silence
the voice of the Muslim community in Indian politics and public life. If Indian
Muslims now get a voice through Owaisi and the AIMIM, no, that doesn’t serve
the BJP’s purpose.
The BJP would
rather that Muslims don’t have a vote at all— which is what might be eventually
achieved by the ‘chronology’ laws of NPR-NRC-CAA, which could strip many
Muslims of citizenship. One look at the attempts in Assam to repeat the
National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise again and again, flogging a dead
horse until it comes alive, shows you how the BJP wants to reduce the number of
Muslim voters from the electoral rolls. That’s how the absence of Muslim
representation from not just the treasury benches but even the opposition
benches might be achieved.
The BJP
doesn’t need Owaisi
The BJP
does not need Owaisi for polarisation because the BJP has anyway maxed the
polarisation game. All that fake news against Muslims — like the Palghar
lynching of sadhus immediately blamed on Muslims even though there was no
communal angle whatsoever — doesn’t need Owaisi. If anything, Owaisi’s nuanced
assertion of constitutional nationalism comes in the way of the BJP leaders and
supporters’ efforts to portray the Muslim as the Hindu-hating, Pakistan-loving,
cow-slaughtering devil.
The larger
misreading here is that the Hindu voter votes only on account of religion. If
religious identity was enough, Prime Minister Modi wouldn’t need to sell
‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ or whatever the latest hollow slogan is. The sort of voter
who would vote for the BJP because they are repulsed by Owaisi’s face will
anyway vote for the BJP. Owaisi’s presence or absence isn’t going to affect the
Hindutva-minded voter’s affinity for the BJP.
Who needs
Owaisi?
If anyone
needs Owaisi, it is the Indian Muslim. The Indian Muslims who are being
deprived of a voice in public discourse because the ‘secular’ parties who claim
to uphold their interests have also gone silent. In fact, they’re going beyond
silence to active collaboration with Hindu fundamentalism, if you see the
recent actions of Priyanka Gandhi, Kamal Nath, and Arvind Kejriwal.
At such a
time, Owaisi is a force for good in Indian politics. He’s not going to become
chief minister or prime minister and he knows it. What he will achieve is the
creation of some competition for Muslim votes, which will force the ‘secular’
parties to acknowledge that, yes, India has Muslims and they must be treated
with the same dignity by all political parties as any other voter.
-----
By Shivam Vij is contributing editor to
ThePrint. Views are personal.
https://theprint.in/opinion/bjp-does-not-want-owaisi-the-bjp-does-not-need-owaisi/548615/
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Bangladeshi Cricketer Shakib Says Sorry: Will
It ‘Help’ Extremism?
By Saif Hasnat
21 Nov 2020
Bangladeshi
cricketer Shakib Al Hasan found himself in hot water after his recent
participation in a puja ceremony in Kolkata, India. Shakib, the best-ever
cricketer that Bangladesh has ever produced, along with scoring ample runs and
taking many wickets on the field, he also always seems to be very good at
courting controversy. But this time around, he fell prey to growing radicalism
and intolerance in Bangladesh.
Shakib went
to Kolkata for a short visit on 12 November. He attended a Diwali Opening
Ceremony as an ‘Honourable Chief Guest’ and came back on 13 November.
This mere
24-hour-visit created unprecedented chaos on social media which was inundated
with the news — Shakib had inaugurated a puja in Kolkata despite being a
Muslim.
Hundreds of
people started criticising Shakib for doing so. Some declared that Shakib was
no more a Muslim. Some started changing Shakib’s name to ‘Sri Sri Shakib’
saying that he was now a Hindu. At one point, a man in his thirties from
Sylhet, a city in eastern Bangladesh, streamed a live video on his social media
profile with a machete in his hand and announced he would cut off Shakib’s head
even if he needed to come to Dhaka having walked a hundred kilometres.
Shakib went
completely silent after returning from Kolkata. But receiving a death threat
made him speak up. On 16 November, he appeared on his YouTube channel and
issued an apology for a ‘mistake’ he had never made. He claimed to be a ‘proud
Muslim’, and surprisingly, denied what he had done in Kolkata.
Right after
that, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) had to appoint an armed guard to
ensure his safety in his own country, where thousands of people chant his name
in the stadiums.
This
incident is a fresh example of growing radicalism and intolerance in
Bangladesh, which is putting the founding principles of Bangladesh — democracy,
nationalism, secularism and socialism — in a deep crisis.
In the last
two decades, Bangladesh has seen many incidents of extremists killing
rationalists like writers, bloggers and targeting other minorities. There have
also been some fresh incidents of this nature which have taken place over the
last two months.
On 29
October, a man was killed and his body was set on fire at Lalmonirhat district,
situated at the northern border of Bangladesh, upon a false accusation of
desecrating the Holy Quran. The police investigation revealed that the
deceased, Shahidunnabi Jewel, was a practising Muslim. On 1 October, a video
went viral on social media, which showed a mob attack on a few Hindu households
at Muradnagar in Cumilla district. And on the eve of this year's Durga Puja,
the biggest religious festival for Bangladeshi Hindus, there were reports of
vandalising of Hindu idols in temples. So, the death threat of Shakib came as
another incident of growing intolerance in Bangladesh.
A ‘Wrong’
Message Sent To The World
“I’m a
proud Muslim, and I can’t inaugurate Puja,” Shakib said while seeking for an
apology to the people who “might have been hurt for his doings”.
Shakib
claimed that he “went to Kolkata to join a programme”, and that was not a Puja.
He says: “I went to a programme on the invitation from Paresh da (Paresh Paul
is an MLA in West Bengal), and people were performing Puja nearby. I needed to
pass by that Puja because many roads were shut off due to the crowd. And, when
I was passing, Paresh da requested to light a diya. I did that. Some people
also came and took photos — that’s it. I didn’t inaugurate Puja, and I didn’t
go there for that.”
But, an
invitation card came to the fore which contains Shakib’s name as the
‘Honourable Chief Guest’ for the ‘Diwali opening ceremony’. But one understands
that Shakib felt the need to issue a public apology due to fear of extremists.
A Missed
Diplomatic Opportunity For India & Bangladesh
While
Bangladesh and India’s governments always talk about strengthening social and
cultural harmony, Shakib could have been an appropriate ambassador for this
cause. It was his ideal chance to do so, but his apology and denying what he really
did – after receiving death threats – has ruined this diplomatic opportunity.
A
Dhaka-based journalist said, preferring anonymity:
“I don’t
know what prompted Shakib to go there. Did he get a good amount of money to be
presented there? I don’t find anything wrong even if he did so. I also don’t
see anything wrong if Shakib inaugurates a Hindu ceremony. In Bangladesh, we
often see Muslim politicians participate in Hindu festivals. If there is no
problem, why do some people get hurt by Shakib’s participation in such
programmes?”
“Intolerance
is growing in Bangladesh. From now on, Muslims will think twice before
participating in a Hindu ceremony in the country. While a celebrity like Shakib
had to apologise for attending a Puja, what can happen for the random Muslims?
Shakib’s apology sent a wrong message to society. The authorities should take
stern action to tackle this challenge,” he added.
----
Saif Hasnat is a Dhaka-based journalist. This
is an opinion piece. The views expressed are the author’s own.
The New Age Islam neither endorses nor is
responsible for them.
https://www.thequint.com/news/india/dialogue-noam-chomsky-vijay-prashad-mumbai-tata-lit-fest-internationalism-extinction-cancelled#read-more
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