Addressing the subject of Hindu-Muslim relations would be incomplete without touching on the conflict over the places of worship that began to escalate in India in 1992, and ended with the demolition of the Babri Mosque in the city of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, which resulted in bloodshed and threatened the nation's stability for months. In last week's instalment, I looked at the Hindu viewpoint of this conflict, and today I will address the issue from the Muslim perspective, based on information I heard from Muslim intellectuals during my visit to New Delhi some 18 years ago and some weeks before the destruction of the mosque. However, before dealing with this problem I want to tackle the roots of the crisis, which I think dates back to the 1930s and 40s, when the Indian people, led by Mahatma Gandhi, launched a campaign to rid the country of Britain's colonial presence and gain India's independence through acts of non-violent resistance that included a boycott of British goods. Still, before leaving the country, Britain played its old game of driving a wedge between the country's biggest sects by encouraging the Muslims of India to seek creation of a new independent country of their own. The creation of Pakistan resulted in the world's biggest mass transfer of people, as more than 12 million Hindu and Muslim refugees crossed the Indian-Pakistani borders, and was also accompanied by fighting that claimed around 200,000 lives. Since then, the two peoples, who originally shared one nation, have been living a state of enmity, with conflicts ranging from overt military conflict to border clashes to trading accusations of spying and terrorism, and even a nuclear arms race. This state of affairs negatively affected and continued to influence the lives of those Muslim Indians, who chose to remain in India and became a weak and marginalised minority in their own country, after having been full partners in the resistance effort to end British occupation. India is known for being a large, democratic and secular country that includes many religious sects, and whose people speak numerous languages and dialects. However, it has managed to blend all the nation's diversity into the “melting pot” of Hindu culture. Even the Muslims have been unable to escape this strategy and protect their Islamic identity. It is true that there are many Indian Muslims who have achieved celebrity status, and whose high-profile positions include that of the president, parliamentarians, journalists and even university professors. However, Indian Muslims have continued to lag behind economically and socially. The strategy of erasing Islamic culture and religion from India was revealed to me by a Muslim university professor that I interviewed in New Delhi some 18 years ago. One tool of this strategy is the refusal to officially recognise degrees from Islamic madrasas, the schools that offer education in the Urdu language widely spoken by the Indian Muslims, thus depriving graduates of these institutions of governmental jobs. Therefore, Indian Muslim parents have one of two choices: either to send their children to the madrasas, preserving their Islamic culture and religion while subjecting them to possible challenges in earning a living, or to send them to governmental schools, sacrificing their knowledge of Islamic religion and culture, but ensuring a more secure life for them. The professor also noted that over time this would lead to a decline in the number of Urdu language speakers, leading to a lack of access to the Islamic heritage written in Urdu. His opinions answered many of the questions that had risen in my mind after I visited the Jamia Masjid in Old Delhi and the Taj Mahal in Agra, when I detected that knowledge and practice of the fundamentals of Islam were weak among Indian Muslims. It was on a Friday that coincided with Al-Mawled Al-Nabawi, (the Prophet Mohamed's birthday), that I headed to the biggest mosque in India, the Jamia Masjid in Old Delhi, to attend the Friday prayer. There was a huge mass of men, women and children at the mosque and the surrounding areas, such as I have only seen in Saudi Arabia's Mecca and Medina, who had all come to celebrate the great occasion. However, to my shock, they were not following the right procedures that pertained to the recital of the Qur'an or the khutba (Friday sermon) and did not even have designated places for women to pray. Therefore, women's attendance at the mosque had no purpose other than to express their joy on the occasion of the Prophet's birthday, and to make a show of numbers to affirm their presence within society, as the government meant to show them as a small minority. Contrary to the official statistics of the Indian government, which put the number of the Muslim population at 120 million or 12 per cent in 1992, the Muslims affirmed that their numbers were much greater, forming no less than 20 per cent of the Indian population. The professor also said: “The proof of this is that none of the official census-takers ever knocked at my door to count me and my family, although I am a university professor and carry an ID card, as do my family members. So what about the many Muslim villagers who have no ID cards?” he wondered. Meanwhile, one Muslim journalist that I met shortly before my return to Cairo put all the blame on his fellow Muslims for their negligence of mosques, leaving them for animals to occupy and only remembering them if Hindu extremists called for their demolition to build a temple, as happened in Ayodhya. He told me that Babri Mosque was not the only mosque the Hindu sought to demolish, and that there were two other large mosques they claimed were built on the ruins of old temples for Shiva and Krishna and should be demolished. I personally witnessed such a case. I was with my colleagues visiting a large Hindu temple that had attracted my attention by its bright colours, and that I thought had been built only a few years earlier. I noticed three large domes, of a very dull colour because of an accumulation of dust, in the background of the temple. I asked about these domes and was told that they were part of an ancient mosque. When I asked permission to go into the mosque to visit and pray, my request was turned down with the excuse that it had been closed by the Indian authority for antiquities. I left wondering about the cause for the neglect of this ancient mosque, the lack of maintenance and not opening it for visit and prayer despite its being under the supervision of the official authority of antiquities. Apparently, this negligence was an alternative policy to the demolition strategy that would provoke the anger of Muslims in and outside India. This extremist Baharatiya Janta Party was behind the demolition of the Babri Mosque, and blocked the rights of Indian Muslims, especially the recognition of graduates of the Islamic madrasas, which they consider to be a political bribe offered by the National Congress Party to Muslims to guarantee their votes in any elections. The biggest problem facing Indian Muslims is the public doubt of their loyalty to their country in matters connected to their brothers in Pakistan. In the event of any terrorist assault on any target in India, the finger of accusation is immediately pointed at Indian Muslims, who some insist on seeing as agents for the government of Pakistan, a problem that has deepened with the unsolved Indian-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir. Thus,a it was not strange that I received a look of fear and astonishment from one Muslim youth who asked for my help in obtaining a scholarship to Egypt's Al-Azhar University to get his PhD in Islamic studies, when I asked him why he did not complete his higher education in Islamic studies in Pakistan. He was sure that merely applying to any university in Pakistan for study in this field would mean being listed amongst suspected terrorists. Since then I have wondered why Al-Azhar does not allocate a considerable number of the scholarships it offers to Muslim students worldwide to Indian Muslims, whose number exceeds the number of the entire Arab Muslim population, and who are deprived of the means to enhance their knowledge of Islamic teachings and history. I don't know if this state of affairs between Indian Muslims and their Hindu compatriots continues to be the same today, or if radical changes have taken place along with the development of the country's economy and its education systems. One hopes that India's Muslim population will not be excluded from the progress that has made India the fifth most powerful economy in the world. Dear readers are invited to contribute their comments, views and questions via the ordinary mail: 111-115 ramsis St., Cairo and the e-mail: ([email protected])
