Indian Muslims on shaky ground

Julio Ribeiro

I am an ardent admirer of Harsh Mander, a former IAS officer who resigned in 2002 in protest against the Gujarat government’s failure to do its Raj Dharma of curbing the massacre of innocent Muslims. I do not have the courage Harsh has. I never had that level of courage. He recently informed his myriad admirers that his new article was on the subject of “the political demonisation, erasure and abandonment of Indian Muslims in recent elections”. He aptly called it “the crisis of not-belonging”.

No community that keeps women backward can advance in today’s highly competitive world.

An incident that occurred on polling day in Uttar Pradesh last month caught my attention. An educated Muslim girl arrived at a polling booth along with her sister. The officials on duty went through the voter list and informed the girls that their names were not on it.

The girl who reported this incident had earlier gone to the centre concerned for checking the voter list. Her name and that of her sister were there. She demanded a re-check, which the officials did. Their names were on the list. The girls voted, as was their right and their duty. They were educated girls, confident of their own capabilities.

On emerging from the polling station, she found groups of burqa-clad women who had been told that they could not vote as their names were not on the list. They were not smart like our girl to call their bluff. The BJP knew that minority votes would go against them. It was rumoured that it used different means to ensure victory. Yet, in BJP-ruled UP, it failed.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) should have acted on the courageous girl’s complaint and investigated such electoral misdemeanours. The ECI wields sole authority over officials of any government department on election duty. It should have identified the culprits and put them on the mat. It should also have published details of the action taken against them.

I agree with Harsh that Indian Muslims are on shaky ground after the BJP-led NDA government assumed office. The BJP’s propaganda team may deny this so that the party’s back is covered and the Western powers with whom we now seem to be aligned think kindly of our government. But there is much that the community itself can do to change its own image. Indian Muslims are not the target of only the Modi-Shah government but also the victims of its own narrow-minded religious establishment.

It is really sad to see that innumerable Muslim women are kept deliberately backward and treated as possessions in India. I am talking specifically of uneducated women in families living in penury. I have many Muslim friends, but they belong to the privileged, well-heeled category who will think like I do and approach life as I would.

Presently, I am watching a Turkish serial called Black Money Love. Women in that Islamic country are totally liberated following the reforms introduced by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. In India, the community needs to start internal reforms. First and foremost, it should ensure that all its women become literate. It should also ensure that they are well educated and able to think for themselves. Kerala has achieved 100 per cent literacy. It has thereby succeeded in controlling the reproduction rate.

The BJP’s main accusation against the Congress was, and still is, that the community was pampered by the party for votes. In what aspects of their life were Muslims pampered? It was only the religious dispensation that was pampered, ensuring that obscurantist practices were perpetuated. The Shah Bano judgment overturned by an ill-advised Prime Minister spelt the end of Congress primacy in India. It shocked the conscience of citizens like me, who nurtured no biases.

Poor Muslims, both men and women, remain as helpless and deprived today as they were then. Strong leaders should emerge in the community to challenge the fatwas of the mullahs. Like the mullah who ordered the wife of a soldier missing in action for seven years — who re-married and became a mother in his absence — to return to her previous husband when the Pakistanis released him from captivity. The woman was not consulted! She was a mere possession.

All obscurantist practices like keeping women in subjugation and forcing them to wear monk’s clothing with only slits for the eyes should go. No community that keeps women backward can advance in today’s highly competitive world.

The Mohalla Committees set up in my city, Mumbai, helped to bring Hindus and Muslims in the city’s slums together after the riots of 1992-93. I had returned from my four-year stint in Romania. Satish Sahney, a forward-thinking IPS officer, was the Police Commissioner. Without his help, the movement would not have gone beyond the first stage. The people’s representative who had asked for my involvement in the venture was Sushobha Barve of the Moral Re-Armament, with which Rajmohan Gandhi has been associated. The three of us combined to ensure that the implementation of the project went as planned. Muslims, who had become disenchanted with their lot, regained their zest for life.

When Atal Bihari Vajpayee became the Prime Minister, he wanted me to accept the governorship of Jammu & Kashmir. I met him at his residence in New Delhi and explained the details of the work I was doing to ensure peace and harmony in the city of my birth. I had to repeat the details to Farooq Abdullah during the two phone calls he made to me from London. The most difficult customer, though, was not the PM or the Chief Minister of J&K but the then father figure in the police hierarchy, KF Rustamji, who had settled in his wife’s family flat in Mumbai after his retirement from the BSF. The PM had entrusted Rustamji with the job of convincing me to accept his offer. It was a difficult task to say ‘no’ to him, but Mrs Rustamji came to my rescue. She understood that the concept of communal peace in our (hers and mine) city took precedence.

I mentioned this to the Mohalla Committee workers when they belatedly celebrated my 95th birthday a few days ago. They were thrilled that their mentor had put the work they were doing on a higher pedestal than what governors were expected to do. During Vajpayee’s tenure, governors were not tasked with bringing down Opposition-ruled governments. It was an honour to be asked. But the smiles on the faces of slum-dwellers were a more compelling attraction.

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.

#Gujarat