Muslims in India Remain a Confused Lot as Spectre of Genocide Looms

Date:

If the community wants to fight the battle against Muslim genocide it has no option other than to forge unity among the Muslims first.

Syed Ali Mujtaba

Muslim community in India is at the crossroads. They are facing numerous challenges, primary among them being Hindutva fascism that is hurtling to exterminate the entire Muslim community. Even an impending Muslim genocide forecast by many global human rights organisations and individuals failed to stir the community from the deep slumber they are in. They grew so lazy that it never occurred to them to evolve a meaningful strategy to meet the challenges thrust on them.

It goes without saying that the community is facing Hindutva wrath on a day-to-day basis. Members of the community are being demonised with derogatory and malicious labels like outcasts, antinational, traitors, etc. who allegedly inflicted pain on the Hindu community in the past. The rightwing Hindutva forces want this pain to be avenged through Muslim genocide. Though false, narrative is such a pull that it embraced a large section of the Hindu community into its fold. They all have sunk their mutual differences and even internal contradictions and got clamber on the anti-Muslim platform.

In contrast, the Muslim community is totally confused, clueless about how to give a collective respond to the challenge faced by the community. Though attempts are being made by some leaders of the community to whether the storm, criticism galore against any such effort instead of consensus. Hence, obituary of any such effort is written before its conception.

Prominent among the suggestions made in this direction is that Muslims should form “a non-political, non-religious” organisation that will work through “rational” and “logical” methods to respond to the challenges posed to the community. This idea is shot down by asking how floating a “non-political” organisation can help in fighting a political battle. Hence, the idea is summarily rejected with a pronouncement that such a body can never achieve the desired objectives of the community.

Another suggestion is that the Muslim community should form an ‘interest group’ or an ‘advocacy group’ and try to negotiate with the political parties to solve their problems. Again, such an idea is countered with a question as to how a Muslim interest group can negotiate with the political parties which have already started following a ‘soft Hindutva’ approach. They rightly argue that the so-called secular parties have no interest in taking up Muslim cause. This is seen in their not giving tickets to Muslim candidates to contest elections. Such parties do not even want Muslim leadership to emerge within their fold to take up the Muslim cause. So, the idea of the Muslim community forming a pressure group is shot down with the pronouncement that there is no secular party left in the country.

Yet another suggestion is that the Muslim community should have its own political party and get united under its banner. This idea is also shot down on the premise that any such political party will be detrimental to the interests of the community. Instead of helping the Muslim cause, it will unite the forces inimical to their cause and thereby further marginalise the community.

Another question raised about the idea is how such a political party could be managed without huge resources. How such huge finances required for sustaining a political party can be mobilised from a community that has no financial base? So, the idea of forming a Muslim political party is also shot down.

The end result is that there is no meeting point on the kind of body, political or apolitical, that Muslims should form to resist the challenges faced by the community. In the end, what emerges is there is no possibility of unity in the community due to the inherent contradictions within the community.

However, whenever a larger problem affecting the Muslim community surfaces, the issues of social discrimination within the community crop up.  The discussion invariably shifts to the plight of the Pasmanda Muslims or sectarian differences and the entire discussion on Muslim unity gets hijacked. There is no one to understand how come raking up Pasmanda Muslim issue will stop the genocide of the entire community. Will such a dreadful event spare the Pasmanda Muslims?

Another factor that comes in the way of Muslim unity is differences on the question of leadership of the community. The two factions of Jamiat and the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind are the three major representative Muslim religious groups. Besides, there are dozens of Muslim political paties and an unaccounted number of Muslim organisations to serve the Muslim cause. However, there is no agreement among them on who will lead the community. Each entity claims to be “the sole spokesperson of the Muslims”.  All fight over sectarian differences yet want to capture key posts within the organisations.

Leaders from various Muslim organisations vie with each other to establish their control over the entire community. Here again, the role of Pasmanda Muslim comes into play. They put forward the argument that Muslim leadership remains in the hands of its elite and that the downtrodden section has little role to play in choosing Muslim leadership.  There is little realisation that such fissures are deliberately exposed to disunite the Muslims and put spokes to in their progress.

The Gujarat riots are a perfect example of where Ehsan Jaffri, the Muslim elite was brutalised along with the Pasmanda Muslims. In the Muslim genocide of 2002, there was no discrimination between Pasmanda Muslims and the Muslim elite. So, those who raise such issues certainly are oblivious of the fact that they are in a way playing into the hands of their enemy and creating a stumbling block on the way to Muslim unity.

Since the community is a divided house, any attempt to forge Muslim unity is bound to remain a mirage. No one would like to take Muslims seriously as they know a united Muslim response or resistance can never take shape.

There is no denying the fact that the Muslim community is divided from within. Whenever attempts at Muslim unity are made, infighting within the community crops up and the whole effort to have a combined resistance to fight the current challenges is dashed to the ground.
The community knows that there are serious differences within the community, but there is no consensus as to how to overcome them. Even in the deep crisis that the community faces today, none are ready to bury their differences and come together for safeguarding the community’s interests.

Even the scare of Muslim genocide doesn’t seem to move the community to find a common platform to fight their common enemy.  As a result, the core issues go into the background and what emerged are the differences, disagreements, scoring some brownie points, and relishing in shooting down the idea of Muslim unity.

This is a serious problem facing the community which is blocking any united resistance to the forces of Muslim oppression. If the situation persists, the foremost thing Muslims should do is to form a concrete action plan on how to resolve the differences within the community and only after that make attempts to foster national unity within the community.

What is seen in the meetings organised for Muslim unity is the discussion is not at all held on the failures of the community. They do not make any attempt to deal with the issues within the community, which is the foremost obstacle to Muslim unity. As a result, there is no unanimity within the community and no one knows how to cobble the inner diversity within the community to stitch up Muslim unity.

Nonetheless, if the community wants to fight the battle against Muslim genocide it has no option other than to forge unity among the Muslims first. This is very important because only through united efforts any resistance can be put up against the common threat.

So, moving forward in a situation like this is a Herculean task? The only way is to recognise the diverse elements in the community and call its leaders for a discussion and put forward questions about how they may like to address the challenges faced by the community. A realisation should dawn on the diverse elements that they cannot swim alone and the only option for them is to unite, else they can sink individually in the holy waters of India.  
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Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba2007@gmail.com. The views expressed here are author’s personal.

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