RSS workers take part in the daily morning drill in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Reuters
For all its cultivated hate and endless plotting against the long demonized, inflated enemy, Hindutva knows it cannot eliminate a 200-million strong community. Perhaps, sooner or later, as Bandukwala believes, the Right will come to its senses and accept the existence of Muslims whose roots in India are as old as the history of Islam itself. There is no doubt interesting times await India’s beleaguered Muslims. And all their qualities of ingenuity, perseverance and sabr would be put to severest of tests
AIJAZ ZAKA SYED | Clarion India
Dr Juzar Bandukwala is an erudite former professor and rights activist based in Baroda, Gujarat. He earned his PhD in nuclear physics from United States and had been teaching there when he was persuaded by a nun to go home and serve his own people and country. Ignoring his wife’s protests, he tore his green card and returned to India. He taught at Baroda University until his retirement some years ago.
A fighter all his life, Bandukwala was excommunicated by his affluent Bohra Muslim community for his calls for reforms and refusal to be a blind follower of Syedna, the spiritual leader. He has been fighting for human rights and humanitarian causes, often taking on the state and the growing Hindutva specter. Like other Gujarat Muslims, he paid a huge price when catastrophe struck the state in the summer of 2002. His home was totally destroyed in the mob attack, with his young daughter barely managing to escape.
The soft spoken professor, however, retained his humanity, dedicating himself to serve riot victims like himself. His has been a voice of reason and sanity when people all around him have been losing theirs.
While confronting the reign of terror in Gujarat and the ideology of hate that spawned it, Bandukwala offered the much needed healing touch and leadership to the community. His Zidini Ilma Trust offers education to hundreds of poor Muslim girls and boys.
I have known Prof Bandukwala for some years now, and have often benefited from his insights shared on some online groups.
A frequent contributor to Indian Express, he has been a vocal critic of Modi and has regularly voiced concern over the disturbing trajectory that India has followed over the past few years.
In his latest piece (I forgive, I hope, Indian Express, May 27) though, Bandukwala strikes a conciliatory note arguing that Muslims and RSS cannot go on hating each other.
Pointing out that the RSS and its political front, BJP, have emerged as “the central force” of Indian politics, the former scientist argues: “The BJP has evolved from the thoughts of its leading lights, KB Hedgewar, MS Golwalkar and VD Savarkar. Deeply influenced by Mussolini and later Hitler, events of the pre-Partition period had a profound impact on them. They found sustenance in the hatred of Muslims. Today the BJP has become the central force in Indian politics. Can it afford the luxury of hating such a large population?”
While the rest of the Islamic world, he goes on, with the exception of Malaysia and Indonesia, is in great turmoil thanks to raging sectarian conflicts, extremism and wars, India Muslims are the only source of hope and solace: “Indian Muslims have the culture, the religion and the history to guide the Islamic world out of its free fall. It needs just one thing. The Sangh Parivar must move away from Muslim hate. Then and then alone, the Indian renaissance would save the Islamic world.”
He concludes by calling for a new beginning between Hindutva and Muslims: “The only way out is to refresh the mystical links that bind. It’s not an impossible task. But it requires that both Muslims and the RSS move away from any negative feelings for the other. As a Gujarati Muslim who paid a heavy price in 2002, I forgive those who caused so much harm to me and my community. My only daughter was married to a Gujarati Hindu, with my consent, in the immediate aftermath of 2002. Today it’s impossible for me to hate a Gujarati Hindu. Can the RSS do the same? It would change the face of our beloved India.”
Bandukwala’s optimism is touching, if a bit naive. While respecting his noble sentiment, I doubt if his outreach to Hindutva would find any takers. After all, he is not the first Muslim to reach out to the RSS.
Jamaat-e-Islami leaders were inspired by similar optimism after sharing prison cells with RSS men during the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1974. Many of them swore that RSS men were moved by the message of Islam and had had a change of heart when they shared some Islamic literature with them.
Many other Muslim leaders and scholars, including Maulana Abulhasan Ali Nadvi, have since reached out to the Parivar earnestly hoping for some sort of peaceful co-existence, if not total amity.
Yet the RSS has persisted in its single-minded devotion to the cause of hating Islam and Muslims. What happened in Gujarat in 2002 and in thousands of such riots before and after had been part of that century-old mission.
Nothing personal, as an overseas Hindutva friend of mine keeps saying. It’s just that the RSS and its numerous avatars and fronts including the BJP simply cannot help hating Muslims. It has been its raison d’etere – the sole purpose of existence. A leopard cannot change its spots. The RSS would cease to exist if it stopped demonizing Muslims and questioning their existence.
These endless battles over the imagined love jihad apparently waged by Muslims, desecration of the holy cow and other causes being perpetually imagined and invented by the Hindutva are only an excuse to keep that greater cause of keeping the Parivar together and perpetually enraged against the hated Other.
As for their quarry, they do not have the luxury of choosing between hating or “loving RSS”. A helpless flock of lambs is given no options when surrounded by a pack of hungry wolves.
And I said so in my quick note to Bandukwala. Here is what he had to say: “The RSS turned to Muslim hate as fascism requires a hate object. Such hate can help an opposition party win elections but this will never work with a ruling party. Vajpayee realized this fact. It disturbs the social peace to an extent where governance becomes difficult, not to mention the international ramifications of such a policy. Modi tried to tide over this fact in Gujarat, using big corporates and the Gujarati diaspora. But as Prime Minister, this will not work.”
He went on to point out that given the size and complexity of the country, no government can afford to target 200 million of its citizens.
“The Muslim interest lies in constantly holding the mirror to the RSS. To stay in power, they will have to eventually and gradually reduce their Muslim hate–in stages. That will help our community.”
I hope the don is right. For all its cultivated hate and endless plotting against the long demonized, inflated enemy, Hindutva knows it cannot eliminate a 200-million strong community. As Muslims had been wiped out from Spain after ruling it for more than 600 years.
Perhaps, sooner or later, as Bandukwala believes, the Right will come to its senses and accept the existence of Muslims whose roots in India are as old as the history of Islam itself.
There is no doubt interesting times await India’s beleaguered Muslims. And all their qualities of ingenuity, perseverance and sabr (patience, in the words of Quran) would be put to severest of tests.
Whatever the future has in store, they cannot afford to give up hope nor give in in the face of adversity. Mercifully, the majority of Indians remain reasonable and peace-loving people and believe in the idea of a secular and inclusive India. Indian Muslims must reach out to this sane majority. This is no time to hide or wallow in self-pity.
Aijaz Zaka Syed is a gulf based writer. Email: [email protected]
