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Saffron is back too soon
Any insecurity among Muslims must be addressed on priority
By Kuldip Nayar
The RSS must restrain itself and keep away from political activities. |
Sharad
Pawar, former Agriculture Minister, who was also the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, is justified in his remark that after the BJP's victory, communalism is beginning to be visible all over. And this is only in the first fortnight of Modi's government. It is yet to run the full course of its five-year term. What has happened in Pune, the most liberal city in Maharashtra, indicates the forces which have run amuck. An extremist Hindu group killed Mohsin Sheikh, a 28-year-old IT manager, following the posting of derogatory photographs of Shivaji and Bal Thackeray, founder of the extremist Shiv Sena. Mohsin was a suspect, with no evidence and proof. True, the BJP condemned the murder. But this was an ideal opportunity for the Prime Minister to assure the insecure Muslims that his government would see to it that the perpetrators were brought to book quickly. Even when specifically requested for a word of sympathy for the victims' families, Modi kept quiet. This attitude should not come as a surprise. As the Gujarat Chief Minister, when the riots broke out in 2002, claiming the lives of over 200 Muslims, (killed with the alleged complicity of the administration, including the police), he never expressed regret. In fact, Modi threw at the face of criticism a clean chit he got from a magistrate court. Till today he has not apologised. His regret at the murder in Pune would have gone a long way to assuage the feelings of Muslims and strengthen the idea of an India based on the concept of pluralism. When Modi broke down during the election campaign while hailing the pro-Hindu BJP outfit as his mother, I thought it was an emotional outburst. And I felt assured when he said after becoming the Prime Minister that he would take along with him all the 125 crore Indians on the path to development. But as the party unfolds its programme, I find that its pronouncements are only a camouflage for its divisive approach that the RSS formulates. Modi projects an image of an unbiased person while the BJP-cum-RSS takes steps to dilute pluralism. The RSS is already posting its trusted men as members of different commissions or at key positions. The youth from the cadres are being recruited for lower assignments. Since bureaucracy tilts in the direction to which the wind blows, the BJP and RSS are finding no resistance in implementing their agenda. In any case, the RSS should not play politics when it claims to be a cultural organisation. I am reminded of the ban imposed on it on January 30, 1948, after Nathu Ram Godse, an RSS man, assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. In 1949, negotiations in response to the appeals from the RSS to lift the ban led to an agreement between then Home Minister Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel and the RSS, in which the latter gave an undertaking that "RSS will not engage in political activity" and that "RSS will engage only in cultural activities." But Patel, not satisfied with the RSS undertaking, demanded that it incorporate the promise not to engage in political activities in its (Sangh's) constitution, to seal the agreement and to freeze the RSS permanently from political activities. Subsequent to that the government lifted the ban on the organisation. However, in a shocking betrayal, the RSS led by its sarsanghchalak chief, Mohan Bhagwat, indulged in aggressive political activity from June 2013 in efforts to foist Modi, formerly a RSS pracharak, to the post of the Prime Minister. The result is before you. Still the Muslim community, roughly 15 to 16 crore, should feel assured that it has nothing to fear because India follows the Constitution which guarantees to every citizen equality before the law. There are courts, the media and liberal voices which are on the side of the Muslims if the community becomes a target. This was seen when the Babri Masjid was demolished and the Gujarat anti-Muslim riots took place. Those who have asked for the abrogation Article 370 giving a special status to J&K are the same elements which are mostly anti-Muslim. Article 370 is as old as the Constitution. But since J&K is a Muslim-majority state, they have found the atmosphere during the Modi regime conducive to challenge the state's status. They do not know the history; nor are they interested in finding out the facts. When the British paramountcy lapsed in August 1947, the choice before roughly 560 princely states was either to integrate with India or go with the newly constituted Pakistan, taking into consideration the religion of the majority of subjects. The ruler could stay independent if he so desired. J&K's ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, belatedly joined the Indian Union even though the state's majority population was Muslim. My reading is that Kashmir would have gone to Pakistan if it had been patient. But Pakistan first sent tribal and then regular forces to annex the state. The maharaja signed the instrument of accession in favour of India to get its forces to stop the murders. He transferred only three subjects -defence, foreign affairs and communications - to India. The state retained other subjects and the Article is the codification of that understanding. If the Union of India wants more subjects, it is for J&K to decide because it joined the union on that condition. The union cannot have more subjects without the state's consent. Therefore, the RSS which has propelled the demand for the abolition of Article 370 is acting illegally. In fact, things have now come to such a pass that the settlement has to have the consent of three parties - India, Pakistan and the people of the state. If a referendum were to be held today, the Valley would vote for an independent state. Jammu, with the majority of Hindus, would like to integrate with India and Ladakh, with the Buddhists' majority, would want to have the status of a union territory directly under New Delhi. All these considerations have made the problem intractable. The irrelevance of borders is the only way out.
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MIDDLE |
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Saved by chance
Subhash C. Sharma
 I
can't say whether it was sheer chance or divine mercy. But here it goes. Having fallen foul of my boss, I had been transferred to a far flung, non-existent outstation in the Chuhar valley of Mandi, in Himachal Pradesh, as punishment. Time loomed large here as there was hardly any work to do. Life moved on a slow trot and quite often became hard and wearisome. Winters seemed the bleakest as sun sank behind the high mountain ridges soon after noon plunging the sleepy village into grey, gloomy coldness. I looked forward to the weekends when I could return home and be amongst the family and friends. After a week's stay practically cut off from humanity, it felt heavenly to breathe in my own town's familiar air and be a part of its sights and sounds. The bus service from this place of posting to my town was woefully poor. A couple of morning buses left early and I had to catch the one and only late afternoon private bus failing which no other means of transport could be availed. And having to spend the weekend too in this God-forsaken place, ensconced in the small rented room, and wait for the next one, seemed unthinkable and cruel. On one particular Saturday, a well-known acquaintance of mine came fly-visiting in his official vehicle. As he was to leave, he proffered a suggestion: “Since I will be passing through your town, why don't you come along? I will drop you there.” The invite was tempting but knowing that my boss was always on the lookout to catch me on the wrong foot, I hesitated since I had been strictly 'ordered' to leave station only after the office hours — work, or no work. But my acquaintance's insistence and my own temptation conspired to win me over. After the narrow, serpentine, partly kutcha link road we were soon on the national highway, headed towards my town. A little while later, the driver swerved the jeep to one side and braked. My friend got out for some fresh air. However for some inexplicable reason I opted to stay put in the jeep. Meanwhile, the driver lifted the bonnet to inspect something. The bonnet now lay over the windshield obscuring my front view. In the process of lifting the bonnet, I had noticed a car with a red beacon coming from the far end. It slowed a little near our vehicle and went past. When I turned around to read the number, I froze. It was my boss's car and I could see the receding figure of his burly self, perched in the back seat. A shudder of fear passed through me before I could recover my normal state. What a strange coincidence it was. Had I gotten out, surely I would have been spotted. A few angry questions and some rude admonishment would have followed, as was his wont, and finally a second suspension order (I had already been successfully through the first) would have been the inevitable consequence. At least so I thought. Further, the lifting of the bonnet was timed to perfection. If done seconds before or seconds after the boss's car went past, I am sure my boss's hawk eye would have caught me sitting inside the vehicle, bringing me trouble. I thanked my stars but kept wondering whether it was sheer coincidence or a direct hand of Providence acting as my saviour. But a narrow escape it sure was.
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OPED
— World |
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Panic spreads as Baghdad prepares for battle
Patrick Cockburn
Volunteers ready to fight against Sunni militants gathered in Basra. — AFP photos |
Iraq
is breaking up, with Shia and ethnic minorities fleeing massacres as a general Sunni revolt, led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) sweeps through northern Iraq. The Isis assault is still gaining victories, capturing the Shia Turkoman town of Tal Afar west of Mosul after heavy fighting against one of the Iraqi army’s more effective units. Iraq could soon see sectarian slaughter similar to that which took place at the time of the Partition of India in 1947. Pictures and evidence from eye-witnesses confirm that Isis massacred some 1,700 Shia captives, many of them air force cadets, at the air force academy outside Tikrit, which proves that Isis intends to cleanse its new conquests of Shia. Sunni cadets were told to go home. If the battle moves to Baghdad, then the Shia majority in the capital might see the Sunni enclaves, particularly those in west Baghdad, such as Amiriya and Khadra, as weak points in their defences, and drive out the inhabitants.
What escalated the
divide
Two major developments have triggered the escalation of tension between Sunni and Shia in recent years. The first was the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 when the rule of the pro-Western Shah was overthrown and replaced with a Shia theocracy with Ayatollah Khomeini at the head.
The Iranians and the Sunni aristocrats who led Saudi Arabia have been fighting a proxy war in the Middle East ever since.
Today in Iran, though Christian churches are tolerated, the million Sunnis in Tehran have no mosque of their own. There are no Sunnis in top government. Ordinary Sunnis are unemployed. The situation in Saudi Arabia is the reverse, with Shia on the receiving end.
The invasion of Iraq instigated by George Bush and Tony Blair in 2003 was the second big factor in the deterioration of
Sunni-Shia relations. Saddam Hussein led a Sunni elite which governed Iraq’s Shia majority with a reign of state terror. The US had backed Saddam in Iraq’s war with Iran throughout the 1980s, in which half a million troops died. |
In a misguided effort to sustain the morale of people in the capital, the government closed down the internet at 9 am. It had already closed YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The excuse is that Isis uses them to communicate, but this is extremely unlikely since Isis has a more professional communications system of its own. Since there is little confidence in the news on government-run television stations, or provided by official spokesmen, the internet shutdown is creating a vacuum of information filled by frightening rumours that are difficult to check. The result is an atmosphere of growing panic in Baghdad with volunteers from the Shia militias being trucked to Samarra, north of the capital, to stop the Isis advance. The cost of a bullet for an AK47 assault rifle has tripled to 3,000 Iraqi dinars, or about $2. Kalashnikovs are almost impossible to buy from arms dealers though pistols can still be obtained at three times the price of a week ago. In the Shia holy city of Kerbala, south-east of Baghdad, the governor has asked volunteers to bring their own weapons to recruitment centres. Rumours swirl through Baghdad. There was a report yesterday morning that the whole of Anbar, the giant Sunni province, which normally has a population of 1.5 million, had fallen. But a call to a friend in its capital Ramadi revealed that fighting is still going on. A former minister told me that Isis, unable to take Samarra, had switched its assault to Baquba in Diyala province, one of the gateways to Baghdad, but a resident denied there was fighting. It was a different story in Tal Afar, supposedly defended by 1,000 Kurdish peshmerga but they were either overwhelmed or forced to retreat. There are reports the commander of the Iraqi army division fighting there had been captured. The Turkoman Shia inhabitants have fled to Kurdish-held zones and the town is largely deserted. A source in Mosul said yesterday that the Iraqi air force had carried out bombing raids there, and electricity supplies had been cut. What is not in doubt is that the Sunni revolt, in which Isis fighters act as shock troops, is still gathering strength though there has been no serious attack on the capital. If it does begin, Isis will be faced by hundreds of thousands of Shia militia and, if it makes progress, by Iranian military forces probably in the shape of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Iraqi media has been reporting that two Iranian divisions are already in Iraq, but as of Monday afternoon I had not met anybody who had seen them. With regular Iraqi army commanders discredited or distrusted, Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds force of the IRGC is in Baghdad and is reported to have taken over planning and strategy. Iraqi officials say the Iranians plan to secure the road north to Samarra, a mostly Sunni city, but with a revered Shia shrine, and then use that as a rallying point for forces to re-take Tikrit and Mosul. An important factor is how far President Masoud Barzani, head of the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, who has just made historic gains for his people by taking over Kirkuk and other territories in dispute with Baghdad, will want to join a government counter-attack. The extent to which the entire 350,000 strong Iraqi army forces are demoralised is also unclear. Officers returning from Mosul say that their senior commanders fled or told them not to resist. Asked about the cause of defeat, one recently retired Iraqi general said: “Corruption! Corruption! Corruption!” He said it started when the Americans told the Iraqi army to outsource food and other supplies in about 2005. A battalion commander was paid for a unit of 600 soldiers, but had only 200 men under arms and pocketed the difference which meant enormous profits. The army became a money-making machine for senior officers and often an extortion racket for ordinary soldiers who manned the checkpoints. On top of this, well-trained Sunni officers were side-lined. “Iraq did not really have a national army,” the general concluded.
— The Independent
Shia-Sunni schism
The rift between the two great Islamic denominations runs like a tectonic fault-line along what is known as the Shia Crescent, starting in Lebanon in the north and curving through Syria and Iraq to the Gulf and to Iran and further east. The division between Sunni and Shia Muslims is the oldest in the Middle East — and yet it is one which seems increasingly to be shaping the destiny of this troubled region. There are around one and a half billion Muslims in the world. Of these, somewhere between 10 and 20 per cent — estimates vary considerably — are Shia. In most countries these Shia are minorities in a Sunni homeland. But in Iraq, Iran, Bahrain and Azerbaijan they outnumber their co-religionists. What makes Syria different is that there a Sunni majority is ruled by a Shia minority. That situation is the mirror opposite of Iraq under Saddam, where a Sunni strongman lorded it over a Shia majority — until the invasion of Iraq, when elections put the Shia in charge. The rift between the two biggest Muslim factions goes right back to the beginning — and a row over who should succeed the Prophet Mohamed as leader of the emerging Islamic community when he died in the early 7th century. In the last 10 years of his life the Prophet united the entire Arabian peninsula. Around 1,00,000 people had submitted to the rule of the Prophet and of Allah. The majority of his followers thought his closest associate, Abu Bakr, should take over. They became the Sunnis. But a minority thought the Prophet’s closest relative, his son-in-law and nephew Ali, should succeed. Shia is an abbreviation of Shiat Ali “the party of Ali”. Intrigues and violence followed. Eventually Ali was killed, as was his son Hussein, and persecution and martyrdom became ingrained in the Shia psyche. As the years passed rift hardened into schism. The seeds of civil war had been sown. The two sides agreed on the Quran but had different views on hadith, the traditions recorded by the Prophet’s followers about what he had said and done in his life. Diverging traditions of ritual, law and practice soon emerged. A clerical hierarchy, topped by imams and ayatollahs, became crucial in Shi'ism. By contrast, Sunni Muslims felt no need of intermediaries in their relationship with God. The Sunnis depended on the state. Some mystical Sufi movements created a bridge between Sunni and Shia but hardline Sunnis regard the Shia practice of venerating saints and visiting shrines as heretical — which is why Sunni extremists bomb Shias on pilgrimage in places like Karbala in Iraq today. From time to time, however, violence has flared in which the Shia, in the main, have been brutally and even genocidally persecuted. Over the years the division has been exploited by outsiders. British colonialists in Iraq in the 1920s used an elite of Sunni army officers to suppress a Shia rebellion, paving the way for Saddam’s Sunni minority rule, in which Shia clerics were regularly executed. The legacy has been that most of the 6,000 killings over the past year in Baghdad are Sunni on Shia and vice-versa. — The Independent
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