By Justice Markandey Katju
A Muslim Indian lady whom I know asked me recently why atrocities are being committed on Indian Muslims e.g. they are lynched, beaten up for not saying Jai Shri Ram, their houses bulldozed, and they are often not allowed to do qurbani ( sacrifice of an animal ) on Bakrid, etc
I replied that Muslims are themselves partly to blame for this, and now they must suffer the consequences. I explained :
The sorry plight of India's Muslims began with the Partition of India in 1947 on the basis of the bogus two-nation theory ( that Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations ), and the creation of Pakistan as an Islamic state. A large section of educated Indian Muslims at that time supported Partition ( the poor and uneducated Muslims cannot be blamed as they had no time for this, being busy earning their daily bread ).
For instance, Jinnah, the main proponent of the two-nation theory, often went to the Aligarh Muslim University, where he was hailed, feted, and adulated by the students there ( his portrait still hangs on a wall in a hall in AMU ). Maulana Azad, who strongly opposed Partition, was almost killed by AMU students when his train from Delhi to Calcutta stopped at the Aligarh railway station.
No doubt the Partition of India was a British swindle, whose object was to keep Hindus and Muslims fighting each other, so that united India may remain backward and weak, and not emerge as a modern industrial giant, and thus not become a big rival to Western industries, as China has become today ( for which it has all the potential )..
But why did not the Indian Muslims see through this British ploy and ruse? Partition of India in 1947, on the basis of the bogus two nation theory, was the main cause of the plight of Indian Muslims thereafter, even till today, and unless and until it is annulled and India is reunited under a secular government atrocities and oppression of Indian Muslims will continue. If one part of India ( Pakistan ) became an Islamic state, it logically followed that the other part would sooner or later de facto become a Hindu state ( even if dejure it continues as a secular state ), where Muslims would become second-rate citizens and are oppressed.
After Independence, the Congress party, which came to power and remained in power for several decades, pursued the policy of Muslim appeasement ( to get Muslim votes ). Indian Muslims should have strongly opposed this, and should have refused to become the vote banks in the pockets of the so-called 'secular' parties, but they acquiesced to this ploy.
For instance, when the Indian Supreme Court gave the progressive and humanitarian Shahbano judgment in 1985 ( that a Muslim husband must give maintenance to his divorced wife ), the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi got it annulled by Parliament, for fear of losing Muslim votes.
At that time, all Indian Muslims should have supported the verdict of the Supreme Court. But instead, following the lead of their reactionary clerics, they overwhelmingly condemned it, saying it was against the sharia ( a rare exception was Arif Mohammed Khan ). I remember seeing on TV a young Muslim woman at that time shouting '' Once there is a divorce, the husband becomes haraam to us. So how can we take any money from him? That stupid woman never thought what that divorced woman, who was financially dependent on her husband, and her children would eat. All she thought of was the sharia.
Take another instance. In 2011, the then West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced a grant of Rs 2500 pm to every imam in a mosque in West Bengal and Rs 1500 pm to every muezzin. This was obviously to appease Bengali Muslims and get their votes, and they should have seen through this wile and artifice, and strongly condemned it. But some applauded it, while many remained silent.
Take a third example. When Kashmiri Pandits were killed and hounded out of the Kashmir valley in the 1990s, where their ancestors had lived for centuries, Indian Muslims should have strongly condemned this outrageous enormity. But their mouths were locked. I remember that at the time I went to the house of a Muslim friend in Allahabad, and told him that I raise my voice in protest whenever any atrocity is committed on Muslims, so he too should protest against the atrocities on Kashmiri Pandits. He asked me what he could do? I said that he should write a letter to the editor of a local newspaper, and I would get it published, but he refused.
Secularism has to be a two-way traffic; it cannot be a one-way traffic. One cannot say that atrocities on Muslims is bad, but atrocities on Hindus is quite okay
I have often criticised the feudal and reactionary practices of Hindus e.g. the caste system, treating Dalits as inferiors, and regarding the cow as Gomata.
But when I did the same for Muslims, e.g. by criticising sharia, burqa and maulanas, and asking Muslims to get modernised if they wanted to prosper as the great Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal did for Turkey ), I was often abused and ridiculed by Muslims who called me communal, a secret BJP agent, and seeking a Rajya Sabha seat or Governorship.
It is time now for Indian Muslims to introspect and seriously think of the above, if they really wish to improve their situation.
(Justice Katju is a retired Judge of the Supreme Court of India and a former Chairman of the Press Council of India. These are his personal views.)
