THE ISLAMIC PANDEMONIUM

The afternoon of August 11 in the financial capital of India witnessed total anarchy on the streets.
In the ensuing time the symbol of bravery and national pride- the amar jawan got itself
desecrated , a number of vehicles and public property were set ablaze and vandalized and two
lives were lost. It would be highly premature to acknowledge that these lives were innocent or
they were among the rioters, that rests on further investigations.
However the primary concern is what was the motive behind the violence, was it a spontaneous
outburst of a community unable to find a medium to express their anger or a well planned arson.
In our country basically, covering all the present political ideologies, there are mainly two schools
of thought claiming their truthfullness about the reasons for such incidence. One school thinks
that the plight of the minorities has gone unheard for a long time and that the state has not been
able to take care of them socially, economically and politically. This injustice and negligence has
given rise to a fundamentalist tendencies in them. On the contrary the other school suggests that
the minority problem of India and especially the problem of Muslim fundamentalism derives out
of the historic blunder of the partition of the country and Jinnahs two nation theory. The
proponents of this school believes in the idea of One Nation, One culture (Hindutva) .

Now let us examine both the thought processes individually. The supporters of the first school
sympethises aggressively with the plight of minorities in the country and esp. the muslims who
form a sizeable chunk of votes deciding the identity of the ruler in many parts and of course at the
national level. What is the basic flaw in their argument is that the perceived sense of injustice that
they propagate in the minds and hearts of the muslim community has mainly happened in their
regime as since independence of this country a large part of the rule period happens to be their.
Injustice itself needs to be defined here not microscopically but in a broader sense that legitimizes
the claims and aspirations of the minorities and other ethnic groups. Injustice is the long term
after effects of keeping a certain section of people marginalised from the mainstream of
development and hampering their socio-economic and political benefits. Say for e.g. the
depressed classes in India have for centuries suffered injustices at the hands of the so called
upper castes. And for the cause of such classes the one name among the greatest indian of all
time that comes to my mind is none other than Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar who relentlessly fought
for their upliftment fighting those great men also who claimed to be the champions of their
cause at a time when their popularity knew no bounds and he single handedly empowered a large
section of such oppressed classes with the tool of affirmatve action. Nevertheless discrimination
still continues against people of such classes but surely it has decreased a lot. However the
injustice as defined by the proponents of first school is highly confined and narrow. They
constantly seed this feeling in the minds of muslims, to be their saviours and that they are going to
suffer graver injustice in future if they did not vote for them. Thus manipulating the meaning of
justice itself. Had they been their rightfull sympathisers the problem of disadvantaged muslims
would not have found any place among the innumerable problems that the country presently
faces. All credits goes to the misgovernance and political mismanagements during their rule.

The other group asserts that India has been a land of single culture i.e. the hindutva and that
people living here must adhere to this ideology no matter to which religion they belong. this
thinking is rapidly finding its place in many educated and middle class indians who find the rule of
the other party - congress in this case-as highly corrupt, fragile, muslim leaning and which has
been dominated by a single family ever since independence thus giving a sense of evil monarchy.
While all the arguments regarding the congress party seems to be to an extent true if not entirely
correct. The basic flaw in the ideology of hindutva is that it is at its first place outrightly anti-
democratic. While they have been sympathetic to other religions viz. Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism
etc. they have been intensely vocal against Islam and Christianity for the simple reason that these
two religions outrightly rejected their idea of hindutva. Unlike Sikhism,buddhism and Jainism,
Islam and christianity have not been founded in this part of world and that their beliefs find a
minimal matching to the culture of this country. The basic reason behind their rejection is not that
they do not believe in the holiness of this motherland but these two religions like hinduism is a
world religion and thus cannot make themselves subservient to any particular line of cultural
nationalism hampering their teachings and beliefs. Due to the rising tide of islamic terror all over
the world, the behaviour of muslims in this country has come under the shadow of doubt and
suspicion and it is not surprising that the recent mumbai violence creates a mass hysteria among
Indian hindus. As how the government of this country is responsible for the injustices done to
Rohingyars muslims in Myanmar. The intense violence finds no basis on this argument and the
muslim youth who were indulged in such subversive acts had been brain washed by the mullahs
propagating radical islam and how many of them would be able to locate Myanmar on a school
atlas. The problem with Islam is not in their teachings and beliefs but in their manipulations by
some vested interests who find the path of violence and killings beneficial for their aspirations, be
it religious, political or financial. The problem lies somewhere else and that is in their interaction
between their individual thoughts and the teachings of their religion and the social reactions that
this interaction produces. Take for e.g even well prospered islamic countries(thanks to their oil
reserves) with a large size of educated majority and financially well off middle class, richer than
the large sections of people over the globe , are confined in the bondages of their religious tenets
and are adverse to the basic philosophy of liberty and equality, which women of those countries
only dream to achieve ever. The basic reason for such a dictatorial situation is the manipulative
and ill defined description of their religion by self proclaimed mullahs and clerics in the social life
of people. On the contrary , Turkey an erstwhile islamic kingdom and caliphate finds itself in
totally opposite situation where it is not only a prosperous country but equally enjoying the fruits
of liberty, freedom and equality, for a simple reason that they are a secular state and have
separated the affairs of the government from that of religion. Muslims all over the world are at
crossroads that whether they make religion their separate individual affairs and distinct from their
social interactions and possess the benefits of modern ethics of liberty, freedom and equality OR
blindly followings the propagandas and manipulations of radical islamic clerics claiming that their
religion is in some self perceived danger and they would have to raise some violent jehad to save
it. the latter way is conflictive, disastrous and finally suicidal for the whole humanity.
Thus neither the Mumbai violence was against any injustice nor it was a cultural conflict between
seemingly different identities. It was an abhorrent response of misguided people unable to
separate their personal identities from that of their religion which will end up in a vicious cycle of
action and reaction claiming lives of many innocents and destruction at unimaginable scales.






- Kumar Abhishek


(All views are personal to the writer and resemble none in totality. Copyright)