Sunday, December 15, 2002		Books

Balanced view of Hindu-Muslim relations
Asghar Ali Engineer

Communal Rage in Secular India
by Dr Rafiq Zakaria. Popular Prakashan, Mumbai. Pages: 248. Rs 350.

The worst-ever communal riots in independent India shook Gujarat earlier this year — PTI photo

THE Gujarat carnage in February-April this year has become a milestone in independent India. Many books dealing with the riots have come in the market. As far as I know Communal Rage in Secular India is the fifth book in row and many more will be published. The carnage was so earth shattering that it will remain the subject of research and writing for quite some time to come. Independent India had never seen such carnage, though many communal riots, small and big, took place during this period. Its intensity cannot be measured in terms of the number of people killed and properties destroyed, but by the rage with which people belonging to the minority community were killed and brutalised.

The BJP had promised a ‘riot-free’ India in its election manifesto of 1999 and its leaders said it was the Congress’ ‘pseudo-secularism’ which was responsible for these riots and if the BJP came to power there would be no riots as the BJP’s brand of secularism meant ‘justice for all and discrimination against none’. It is not as if no riots had taken place when the BJP was in power in states like U.P. When Kalyan Singh was chief minister, U.P. witnessed a major riot in Benaras in 1991 and when Rajnath Singh was chief minister Kanpur witnessed a major communal massacre.

Of course, all riots that took place earlier during the Congress or the BJP regimes pale in comparison to the Gujarat carnage. It is true that many major riots took place during the Congress rule but never was any Congress government as directly involved in rioting as the Narendra Modi Government was. He not only justified the massacre but his entire government machinery was involved in it.

Rafiq Zakaria, a former minister and writer, devotes the first four chapters to the Gujarat carnage. In these chapters, he mostly depends on secondary sources of information like newspapers and magazines. Despite this, all these chapters bring out the horror of what happened in Gujarat post-Godhra and how the Modi Government was, at best, criminally negligent and, at worst, directly involved.

In the chapter fifth he throws light on Hindu grievances. He takes stock of the failings of Muslim leadership, which gave rise to these grievances. In vote-bank politics there are multiple compulsions. Even secular politicians find it difficult to adhere to their secular commitments when Hindu or Muslim fundamentalists blatantly misuse religion to arouse religious sentiment, be it the Shah Bano case or the Ram Janmabhoomi issue.

Zakaria has discussed with frankness most of the sensitive issues pertaining to Hindu-Muslim relations in this chapter. He even approvingly quotes at length Prof. R.S. Misra, a former professor of comparative religion at Benaras Hindu University on various aspects of the complex relationship between the two principal communities of India. Zakaria is also very critical of Partition and of Jinnah’s role in bringing about Partition. Zakaria’s views are quite balanced and rational.

The chapter on "Historical Distortions" describes how history has been used by communal forces to create bitterness between Hindus and Muslims, a process which started under the British rule for dividing the two communities. It continues even today and the Sangh Parivar rode to power on the Ram Janambhoomi issue.

Zakaria points out using K. R. Malkani as a source (one does not know how reliable this is as Malkani is not a historian) that Mahmood of Ghazna was a convert from Afghan Savism to Islam. He says, "This master brigand was quite a secularist as his Indian coins were struck in Sanskrit and they bore the image of either Lakshmi or Siva’s Nandi." However, the chapter is quite short and cursory. He speeds through pages of history and points out some obvious distortions in the teaching of history.

He also deals with misconceptions about Islam in the next chapter and quotes extensively from the Koran to show that Islam is not what the jaundiced view of anti-Islam forces project it to be. This chapter can remove many misconceptions about Islam and as such is a useful contribution. He also tries to remove the misunderstanding that Muslims consider Hindus to be kafirs, He quotes from the introduction written by Dr Iqbal, a noted Urdu poet, on Gayatri Mantra. In this introduction Iqbal says, "to associate the Hindu religion with shirk (associating partners to God) is in my opinion not correct". And Iqbal is not the first among Indian Muslims to say that. Many Sufi saints have maintained that Hindus are essentially monotheists and that Ram and Krishna must have been Allah’ prophets as Allah had sent his prophets to all the nations. Mazhar Jani-Janan, a Sufi saint of 18th century was of this view.

The chapters on Shivaji and Vivekananda and on Sardar Patel are also useful and will go a long way in dispelling many misunderstandings. The last chapter discusses what Muslims should do. In this chapter the writer advises Muslims to reflect deeply on the present situation and to attempt reconciliation, as Sir Syed had advised the Muslims after the First War of Independence of 1857. It must be noted here that the Muslim leadership, post-Babri demolition, is not at its aggressive best. It has been considerably sobered down.

The book carries a forward by Noble Laureate Amartya Sen.