|
FIFTH
COLUMN
Weigh
Your Words
The
BJP must be careful before it talks about changing its policy vis-a-vis
the Muslims
By
Tavleen
Singh
 The
BJP's first Dalit president says in his first major speech that he would
like to see his party examine why Muslims dislike the BJP. He urges his
party to stop ignoring the Muslims simply because they do not vote for
it. "We have somehow taken it for granted that our party will not
receive any significant support from them. This preconceived approach
has not helped our party either. We cannot afford to allow this situation
to continue. If we do so, we shall be hurting our own future prospects
and the Muslims will continue to be used as vote banks by our adversaries."
 It
should have warmed every secularist heart in India that our main "Hindu
fundamentalist" party was showing signs of change. So it is interesting
that Bangaru Laxman's words seem to have had the opposite effect. Secular
editors sneered, secular cartoonists lampooned BJP leaders and secular
politicians huffed and puffed. How dare you, was, oddly enough, the general
reaction. Puzzling? Not when you remember that secular political parties
have long used the RSS, thereby the BJP, as a bogeyman to frighten Muslim
voters into "secular" arms. Not when you remember that the Congress
has told us for 50 years that secularism was something Jawaharlal Nehru
invented.
In all fairness,
he did invent his own version of the secular idea. It was affirmative
action of the most generous kind. In the name of Nehruvian secularism
we have allowed Muslims their own personal law without asking why they
should not also have Shariat punishments; hands snipped off for thievery,
stoning to death for adultery, etc. But Indian Muslims were choosy about
the Islamic law they wanted and we indulged them. The net effect was only
to make it possible for Muslim men to have more than one wife and impossible
for divorced Muslim women to get alimony.
We spend
taxpayers' money to send Muslims on Haj without extending similar privileges
to Hindu pilgrims travelling, for instance, to Manasarovar. We have even
banned books they disapproved of, banned Salman Rushdie from coming to
India because they detested him. But, most dangerously, we have closed
our eyes to what has been going on in Muslim educational institutions.
SACROSANCT
SECULARISM: It is common knowledge that the nature of Islam changed
in the Kashmir Valley mainly because of the spread of madarsas, and that
a new breed of Islamic militant was "educated" in these madarsas
just as it happened with the Taliban in Peshawar. But so sacrosanct is
secularism in India that we are now allowing the same thing to happen
in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and even distant Tamil Nadu.
So when Laxman
talks about understanding Muslim fears, we can only pray the BJP is not
going to adopt Nehruvian secularism. If only because it has not helped
the Muslims, who remain mostly poor and illiterate, and it has not helped
the Hindus who resent being forced to negate their own civilisation and
culture in the name of secularism.
In the process
of making the Muslims feel at home we have allowed our historians to lie
blatantly about Muslim rule in India. To anyone who doubts this I recommend
a book called Arise O India by French journalist Francois Gautier.
Gautier points
out that eminent Indian historians like Romila Thapar have helped perpetuate
a negation of what really happened under Muslim rule. So, of Aurangzeb
she writes, "Aurangzeb's supposed intolerance is little more than
a hostile legend based on isolated acts such as the erection of a mosque
on a temple site in Benares." The truth, Gautier says, is Aurangzeb,
according to his own court records, ordered the destruction of all Hindu
temples because as a good Muslim he considered these places of worship
pagan.
Hindus and
Muslims know Islam is the very antithesis of Hinduism but our political
leaders have perpetrated the lie that all religions are the same. In a
largely illiterate country this causes confusion and inevitably tension
and violence. If we confront the differences but ensure Muslims have the
same rights in India as Hindus, we will begin to start solving the problem.
Laxman needs
to think carefully about what he would like to change. He certainly needs
to dissociate his party from organisations like the Bajrang Dal and to
work towards giving more Muslims BJP tickets at election time. But he
needs to stay as far away from Congress-type secularism as possible.
He needs
to remember it has become such a distorted thing that during the Kargil
war the Congress had more to say against our own Government than against
Pakistan's intrusion. Equally inexplicable was the Congress demand for
a judicial inquiry into the recent massacre of Hindu pilgrims in Kashmir.
Does the Congress believe, as Pakistan does, that it was Indian soldiers
and not Muslim militants who were responsible?
Top
|
Is
the market right in backing cartelisation by cement companies, asks India
Today Associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar in Au ContrAiyar 