THE REALITY MIRROR
Bikash Sarmah
Much has been debated in the country, following the Delhi blasts of September 13, as to whether the country’s Muslims are being deliberately targeted by the police and intelligence agencies in their frantic bid to solve terror riddles. There is an impression that Muslims have really become victims of a game they do not have control over, that theirs being followers of Islam in secular India has a cumbrousness about it. There is an impression that the secular Indian state has failed its Muslim subjects, secluding them further, almost by choice because the terror tag on the bearded comes in handy, when they ought to have found the most accommodating embrace of understanding and solidarity going by what the pluralist Indian tradition epitomizes.
If that is the case, as the Muslim ghettoization theory asserts, it is the Muslims themselves who need to introspect: 1) why secularism, both as principle and practice, has been allowed to be hijacked for ostensibly Muslim causes but why the community should still find itself at the lowest rung of socio-economic ladder as bared by the Sachar Committee report; 2) why the Muslims have failed to reject that variety of secularism despite the fraud on them that goes in the name of secularism; 3) why the jehad critique of Muslim intelligentsia is still not as forceful as the one, both articulate and analytical, leading to the many theories of Muslim sense of alienation despite secular principles; 4) what is the extent of hold of the liberal Muslim class on the community’s radicalized segment and whether the two groups, liberal and fanatical, are permanently divorced with more from the community given naturally to radicalization, given the lack of initiatives from the liberal class to arrest the trend and their resignation to the reality; and, most importantly, 5) whether the country’s Muslims would accept that jehad, as the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and its offshoot, the Indian Mujahideen (IM), have declared against India, is becoming increasingly indigenous — and thus a potent addition to the one exported by Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is time Indian Muslims pondered, and ponder they must; it is their hour of reckoning as to what has gone so wrong within their folds despite the idea called India.
Now that Azamgarh district, in Uttar Pradesh, has
earned the notoriety of producing terrorists — all
20 members of the terror module suspected to be behind the Delhi blasts hail from the district — it is incumbent on Indian Muslims to acknowledge the making of indigenous jehad in India. In fact it should have been acknowledged long ago when SIMI was born. There are many who will say this is the time for Indian Muslims to face the truth, to realize that a section of the community has gone terroristic, all by choice — because most of the terrorists are educated and know well what they are doing. However, Indian Muslims should have realized that fact of life right when SIMI had set out to turn India into a caliphate.
The SIMI constitution rejects India as a secular democratic nation-state and vows to convert it into an Islamic state — mind you, that was before Al-Qaeda happened. And the founder ideologues of SIMI were not any export item from Pakistan or Bangladesh. They were Indians, at least formally, though not in their attitude. And what was SIMI’s theory if not jehadi terrorism? What other name would you give to the theory that seeks to establish Islamic theocracy by force or coercion or mass slaughter of ‘non-believers’? That was SIMI; now it is only more confident about its objective. And was SIMI a result of injustices against Muslims in India? Not at all. The birth of SIMI did not follow any genocide of Muslims, nor was it a culmination of any substantive narrative of Muslim angst, poverty and backwardness in independent India. Let us put it straight: SIMI was the choice of a few Indian Muslims. So why this hullabaloo that jehad against India has turned indigenous only recently? It is a flagrant lie, for which the media, wedded eternally to political correctness in the matter of secularism just as the pseudo-secularist is, too is responsible to a large extent.
SIMI has long played a psychological game, the modern addition to which is its virulent and savage offshoot IM. When lies are iterated as part of a grand but concocted socio-economic narrative, they tend to shape into truth. SIMI’s has been exactly that attempt; the lies pertain to Muslims being unsafe and victimized for them being a minority community in a predominantly Hindu India. SIMI has thus sold its theory that unless Indian Muslims assert themselves or outsource that right to assertion to SIMI-like outfits which will of course be free to choose the path of violence against ‘non-believers’, the Muslim community cannot survive in India with dignity.
This brings us to a ‘secularly’ disturbing question: Has there been a subdued feeling of sympathy among Indian Muslims, barring a small and inconsequential enlightened section, for SIMI-like causes? And has that tendency been too politically correct and expedient, because one would neither decry SIMI-like agendas nor back them? Has that ambivalence been a choice for a huge majority of Indian Muslims because the Indian version of secularism would anyway come to their defence? These are questions that Muslims in India should raise and introspect on, led by their intelligentsia. There is scope for such deliberation in the secular democratic republic of India, and the answers to the questions will add to the anti-terror discourse of the time. And no one should feel uncomfortable because we must collectively confront the truth, whatsoever, and negotiate its dilemmas.
Having said that, we must revisit the Muslim psyche
in relation to the truth of an increasing number
of educated Indian Muslims having turned avowedly jehadi in recent times. Poverty is not driving these educated youth to jehad, nor any ghettoization and discrimination. Again, let us rather put it straight: these educated jehadis do not need any indoctrination; they are rather self-doctrinated, and it is their bloody choice. A madrassa-educated youth may be indoctrinated, but not the one who has had the privilege of modern education and who has spent his formative years among the liberal lot unintroduced to religious dogmatism. So when these youth form terror modules and conspire to bomb our cities, and when they are arrested or killed in encounters (called ‘fake encounters’ by ‘secularists’ when it comes to eliminating terrorists who follow Islam), how would the Muslims in general react?
It is there for all to see. They have reacted with disbelief, as the Muslim residents of Azamgarh are symbolic of — as those of Jamia Nagar in south Delhi too where two terrorists were killed by the Delhi police in an encounter on September 19. They seem to telling ‘Hindu India’ that since the terrorists who have been apprehended and who have admitted to them being active members of terror modules and to having planted bombs, or who have been eliminated, are Muslim, the entire Muslim community in the country will now come under the scanner and the community will be looked down upon and further alienated, which in turn will feed jehad tendencies among the youth.
Is the logic sound? Not at all. But where is the liberal, enlightened Muslim to raise the point?
Truth hurts — that is the nature of truth, its characteristic feature, much like the truth that hurts when a liberal, enlightened Hindu sees about him a criminal band of Hindu fanatics out to undo the very quintessence of Hinduism, which is not a doctrinal faith but a great spiritual enterprise of the soul. Let the truth be spoken then, in relation to Islam in India too: that yes, there is a trend of jehad radicalization under the weight of fallacies and pressure of choice. And if it hurts, let it be. That will rescue Indian secularism. That will strengthen the country’s counter-terrorism grid.
source: sentinel assam editorial 26.09.08
Bikash Sarmah
Much has been debated in the country, following the Delhi blasts of September 13, as to whether the country’s Muslims are being deliberately targeted by the police and intelligence agencies in their frantic bid to solve terror riddles. There is an impression that Muslims have really become victims of a game they do not have control over, that theirs being followers of Islam in secular India has a cumbrousness about it. There is an impression that the secular Indian state has failed its Muslim subjects, secluding them further, almost by choice because the terror tag on the bearded comes in handy, when they ought to have found the most accommodating embrace of understanding and solidarity going by what the pluralist Indian tradition epitomizes.
If that is the case, as the Muslim ghettoization theory asserts, it is the Muslims themselves who need to introspect: 1) why secularism, both as principle and practice, has been allowed to be hijacked for ostensibly Muslim causes but why the community should still find itself at the lowest rung of socio-economic ladder as bared by the Sachar Committee report; 2) why the Muslims have failed to reject that variety of secularism despite the fraud on them that goes in the name of secularism; 3) why the jehad critique of Muslim intelligentsia is still not as forceful as the one, both articulate and analytical, leading to the many theories of Muslim sense of alienation despite secular principles; 4) what is the extent of hold of the liberal Muslim class on the community’s radicalized segment and whether the two groups, liberal and fanatical, are permanently divorced with more from the community given naturally to radicalization, given the lack of initiatives from the liberal class to arrest the trend and their resignation to the reality; and, most importantly, 5) whether the country’s Muslims would accept that jehad, as the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and its offshoot, the Indian Mujahideen (IM), have declared against India, is becoming increasingly indigenous — and thus a potent addition to the one exported by Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is time Indian Muslims pondered, and ponder they must; it is their hour of reckoning as to what has gone so wrong within their folds despite the idea called India.
Now that Azamgarh district, in Uttar Pradesh, has
earned the notoriety of producing terrorists — all
20 members of the terror module suspected to be behind the Delhi blasts hail from the district — it is incumbent on Indian Muslims to acknowledge the making of indigenous jehad in India. In fact it should have been acknowledged long ago when SIMI was born. There are many who will say this is the time for Indian Muslims to face the truth, to realize that a section of the community has gone terroristic, all by choice — because most of the terrorists are educated and know well what they are doing. However, Indian Muslims should have realized that fact of life right when SIMI had set out to turn India into a caliphate.
The SIMI constitution rejects India as a secular democratic nation-state and vows to convert it into an Islamic state — mind you, that was before Al-Qaeda happened. And the founder ideologues of SIMI were not any export item from Pakistan or Bangladesh. They were Indians, at least formally, though not in their attitude. And what was SIMI’s theory if not jehadi terrorism? What other name would you give to the theory that seeks to establish Islamic theocracy by force or coercion or mass slaughter of ‘non-believers’? That was SIMI; now it is only more confident about its objective. And was SIMI a result of injustices against Muslims in India? Not at all. The birth of SIMI did not follow any genocide of Muslims, nor was it a culmination of any substantive narrative of Muslim angst, poverty and backwardness in independent India. Let us put it straight: SIMI was the choice of a few Indian Muslims. So why this hullabaloo that jehad against India has turned indigenous only recently? It is a flagrant lie, for which the media, wedded eternally to political correctness in the matter of secularism just as the pseudo-secularist is, too is responsible to a large extent.
SIMI has long played a psychological game, the modern addition to which is its virulent and savage offshoot IM. When lies are iterated as part of a grand but concocted socio-economic narrative, they tend to shape into truth. SIMI’s has been exactly that attempt; the lies pertain to Muslims being unsafe and victimized for them being a minority community in a predominantly Hindu India. SIMI has thus sold its theory that unless Indian Muslims assert themselves or outsource that right to assertion to SIMI-like outfits which will of course be free to choose the path of violence against ‘non-believers’, the Muslim community cannot survive in India with dignity.
This brings us to a ‘secularly’ disturbing question: Has there been a subdued feeling of sympathy among Indian Muslims, barring a small and inconsequential enlightened section, for SIMI-like causes? And has that tendency been too politically correct and expedient, because one would neither decry SIMI-like agendas nor back them? Has that ambivalence been a choice for a huge majority of Indian Muslims because the Indian version of secularism would anyway come to their defence? These are questions that Muslims in India should raise and introspect on, led by their intelligentsia. There is scope for such deliberation in the secular democratic republic of India, and the answers to the questions will add to the anti-terror discourse of the time. And no one should feel uncomfortable because we must collectively confront the truth, whatsoever, and negotiate its dilemmas.
Having said that, we must revisit the Muslim psyche
in relation to the truth of an increasing number
of educated Indian Muslims having turned avowedly jehadi in recent times. Poverty is not driving these educated youth to jehad, nor any ghettoization and discrimination. Again, let us rather put it straight: these educated jehadis do not need any indoctrination; they are rather self-doctrinated, and it is their bloody choice. A madrassa-educated youth may be indoctrinated, but not the one who has had the privilege of modern education and who has spent his formative years among the liberal lot unintroduced to religious dogmatism. So when these youth form terror modules and conspire to bomb our cities, and when they are arrested or killed in encounters (called ‘fake encounters’ by ‘secularists’ when it comes to eliminating terrorists who follow Islam), how would the Muslims in general react?
It is there for all to see. They have reacted with disbelief, as the Muslim residents of Azamgarh are symbolic of — as those of Jamia Nagar in south Delhi too where two terrorists were killed by the Delhi police in an encounter on September 19. They seem to telling ‘Hindu India’ that since the terrorists who have been apprehended and who have admitted to them being active members of terror modules and to having planted bombs, or who have been eliminated, are Muslim, the entire Muslim community in the country will now come under the scanner and the community will be looked down upon and further alienated, which in turn will feed jehad tendencies among the youth.
Is the logic sound? Not at all. But where is the liberal, enlightened Muslim to raise the point?
Truth hurts — that is the nature of truth, its characteristic feature, much like the truth that hurts when a liberal, enlightened Hindu sees about him a criminal band of Hindu fanatics out to undo the very quintessence of Hinduism, which is not a doctrinal faith but a great spiritual enterprise of the soul. Let the truth be spoken then, in relation to Islam in India too: that yes, there is a trend of jehad radicalization under the weight of fallacies and pressure of choice. And if it hurts, let it be. That will rescue Indian secularism. That will strengthen the country’s counter-terrorism grid.
source: sentinel assam editorial 26.09.08
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