Closed communal mindset of secularists

If the disputed structure (Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid) of hundreds of
years ago could be converted into a living symbol for the Congress-led
UPA’s secularism, why can’t a census of less than a hundred years be
useful for the Doctrine of Dalitism?

Satiricus is deeply distressed to see that sometimes
even sterling secularists may have closed, communal minds. Look at what
a certain well-known columnist recently wrote—“The Darul Uloom in
Deoband is jehad central. It inspired the barbarous Taliban to practise
a version of Islam in which women could be stoned to death for learning
to read, and its religious ideology inspired Osama bin Laden to believe
that terrorism was some kind of grotesque holy war.”




The place “looked as if a bit of Saudi Arabia had broken off
and landed in Uttar Pradesh,” and the young men inside “only spoke
Arabic”. And this was the place, the otherwise very secular columnist
wailed, that the Congress Party’s ‘Crown Prince’ used as his launch-pad
for his election campaign in Uttar Pradesh. This is crass communal
calumny, and it has provoked secular Satiricus to again rise in defence
of righteous Rahulji. For starters, the comment quoted above is a
malicious distortion of a magnificent truth, for it makes it appear as
if the inspiration provided by Deoband to Taliban, Osama & Co. for
their ‘holy war’ was ‘grotesque’. This is grossly anti-secular and
would surely invite the rigours of an anti-blasphemy law when (not if)
India that is Bharat becomes India that is Dar-ul Islam via Darul
Uloom.




That Darul Uloom is devoutly developing such an ‘incredible
India’ need not be explained to any “active” Congress leader worth his
secular salt. Unfortunately, newspapering being an illiterate
profession, as Shaw said (and ignorant as well, as Shaw forgot to say),
Satiricus must point out that Darul Uloom’s admirable contribution to
the cause of ‘holy jehad’ has even been recognised in Pakistan, where
not long back a dozen Islamic scholars came together to write a whole
book learnedly explaining how the hardware of jehad was supported by
the ‘software’ manufactured in Deoband.




That a software so intensely Islamic must need be Arabic in
all ways goes without saying. So Satiricus says there is nothing
strange in the place looking like a precious piece of Saudi Arabia. For
instance, if the men manning the Darul can speak only Arabic what does
that show? It only shows the linguistic lengths to which Darul’s
devotion and dedication go even to the Quranic quintessence of Islam.
For Hadith No. 5751(Mishkat,Vol. 3) reports the Prophet as saying:
“Love the Arabs for three reasons—because (1) I am an Arab, (2) the
Holy Koran is in Arabic, and (3) the tongue of the dwellers of Paradise
shall also be Arabic.” Again, Ornaments XLIII, 1-4 says, “by the clear
book, behold, we have made it an Arabic Koran; haply you will
understand.” So it is quite clear to secular Satiricus that when the
Indian Muslims in Darul Uloom speak only Arabic without letting their
Islam be sullied by knowledge of any Indian language (let alone
communal Sankrit), they are just being more Arab than the Arabs.




Unfortunately and apparently the late Anwar Shaikh,
internationally reputed scholar of Islam as well as Arabic, was not as
sensible a secularist as Satiricus, for he wrote, when the Prophet says
the Koran has been delivered in Arabic so that “you” must understand
it, “the non-Arabs, especially the Indians, the Pakistanis, the
Bangladeshis who have lost all sense of national honour owing to a long
period of political humiliation, buttress their psychological
degradation by pretending that in this sense “you” means the Umma, that
is, the international community of Muslims. The stark truth is that
when this verse was “revealed” there was no Umma but the Arab Muslims.




Satiricus is sure Rahulji would reject this wretched effort on
the part of that exiled Pakistani to divide Arabs and Indians. At the
same time Satiricus is sadly aware that despite the determination of
Darul Uloom India is still short of a Dar-ul Islam, as can be seen from
the fact that Indian Hindus can still pray and worship their own gods
in their own temples and even at home. In this respect the Arabs have
recently provided Indians an admirable lead. For the other day the
Arabic newspaper Al Hayat reported that the Saudi Arab police recently
caught some Hindus conducting a prayer inside a home. The police
immediately stopped this abominable anti-Islamic activity and drove the
Hindus away. See? This signal step in the service of secularism is yet
to be taken in India.




But of course it is not seemly for Satiricus to be so overly
eager, no? He must trust the crown prince of the secular dynasty to
take active steps to correct the sorry situation. For what is an active
Congress leader for, if not for preventing the demolition of the
crumbling edifice of Indian secularism? So, it was very much in the
fitness of things that he put an Islamic skull cap on his head and
launched his party’s election campaign by declaring in so many words
that the Congress party is not secular, only the Nehru-Gandhi family
is. That being so, it is obviously for the family to actively fight the
secular battle on all fronts.




For instance, the irritant that is the Supreme Court needs to
be firmly handled. It may even need the Shah Bano type surgery. What
else can cure it of its childish churlishness in directing that the
quota bill for reservation for Dalit Muslim, Dalit Christians et al on
the basis of a census that is 75 years old cannot be a determining
factor. This is ridiculous. For if the disputed structure of hundreds
of years ago could be converted into a living symbol for the
Congress-led UPA’s secularism, why can’t a census of less than a
hundred years be useful for the Doctrine of Dalitism? The height (or
depth) of it all was that the Supreme Court cited a US case to caution
against quotas.




Oh, my! Globalisation against the grocer is okay, even
welcome, but do we secularists want globalisation of justice for
communalists posing as Hindus?




(The writer can be contacted at D-402, Veena Sargam,
Sector No. 11, Mahavir Nagar, Near Osho Hotel Dahanukar Wadi, Kandivali
(West), Mumbai-400 067.)