By Valson Thampu
The Uttar Pradesh government is following its election promises, as it should. Whether or not the voters of UP rooted for Yogi Adityanath, they did endorse the agendas now being pursued by his government. Yogi says that he is building the UP of Modi’s dreams. We wish him and the people of UP good luck.
Accepting the people’s verdict is basic to democracy. The debate about the problematic of a majority verdict is merely academic in scope for the time being. A time could come, though, when it would assume decisive significance. But that time is not yet in UP.
Muslims, on the one hand, and votaries of secularism, on the other, need to reckon the fact that the irresponsibility and political ad hoc-ism of the opposition parties are as much to blame for the present situation in UP as the angularities of Hindutva ideology. What do you do, when you have parties that have no sense of ground realities and fool themselves into believing that they are poised for a landslide when, in fact, the earth is shifting from under their feet?
Even damning these purblind parties, post mortem, will not alleviate the anguish and bewilderment of the Muslim community in UP, the largest in any state in the country. Arguably, difficult days are ahead for them. That for many reasons.
First, and foremost is the lamentable under-development of the community; especially its educational backwardness. The Muslim leadership in this state has much to answer for; for all that they have done over the decades is to thrive on this very backwardness. The disempowerment of the community was assumed by its self-centred leadership as a convenient precondition for herding its members together like cattle.
The people were pegged on an illusion of solidarity and political relevance. No attention was paid to the fact that the political grammar of UP was changing and that the sort of clout and protection the community could have expected in contexts of precarious coalition-ism, could not any longer be take for granted. Yet it was. And that, for an inexcusably long period of time, despite the clear and menacing writings on the wall.
If a sizable chunk of the Muslim community is dependent, directly or indirectly, on the meat industry it is wholly because of the educational disempowerment of Muslims. Is there a good enough reason or excuse for this? I am afraid, none whatsoever.
It is high time that the Muslims reckoned the complementary roles that the forces of Hindutva and their own leaders have played in keeping them in crippling self-enchantment. The ordinary Muslim today has no friend or well-wisher. He carries the burden of the anti-Muslim resentment fanned by the leaders he trusted implicitly and unwisely.
For anyone to continue to insist even for a moment that the educational and economic empowerment of the Muslim community is a smaller priority as compared to protecting obscurantist practices like polygamy and triple talaq, is to be a wolf-in-sheep’s clothing in respect of the community.
The Muslim community today stands at the crossroads as never before. The familiar world has passed away far too quickly. The rank and file find themselves beset with challenges for which they are simply not ready.
But all is not lost. The Jews faced a worse crisis in their history since the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans in 70 AD. They were scattered on the face of the earth. They lived suspected and persecuted in most places under the sun. But they learned to cope with it.
As the irony of history would have it, the Muslims of India can learn much from the history of Jews, who are, after all, their cousins through Abraham and his son Ishmael. Historically Jews and Muslims are brothers. That’s the only reason they spite and fight each other so hard!
To the cruelties of fate, the callousness of their historical predicament, and the hostilities of their host societies, the Jews responded by developing their core strengths to the utter most. What they lost in political and economic power they made up with their brain power. Jews became the brain power of Europe and, soon, of North America.
They learned the most empowering lesson of history: development is the only viable response to oppression and persecution. There is something that is mightier and more durable than the concentration camps: the indomitable spirit of man.
But the spirit of man is nothing by itself. It becomes the supreme power in the world by being in sync with the Spirit of the Almighty. History, after all, is a domain, as Hegel says, of the Spirit growing gradually into its fullness. History is the domain of God’s self-revelation. Who knew this better than the Jews? Any wonder they prevailed?
Muslims have done a disservice to themselves by seeing politics as their ultimate refuge. What they need, most urgently at the present time, is a spiritual renaissance. They need to dig deeper into their spiritual tradition. Islam is a great and scintillating tradition. Regrettably, over the last several centuries the world has seen mostly its sword power.
The time is now come for its spirit-power to be manifest. The dogmatic faith that Muslims have in physical power has been their undoing. It didn’t even a small margin for a counter-intuition to develop. There is no exemption to the principle that Jesus affirmed in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Put down the sword. He who takes the sword shall fall by it.”
This is as applicable to all other religious communities as it is to Muslims. This is why I have serious difficulties in accepting Europe and North America as Christian. Both regions have been breeding grounds for too long for violence and mass-murder. The Hindus of this country deserve to be congratulated on guarding the buffer zone between Hinduism and Hindutva. It was in this respect that Hinduism preserved its robustness at a time when Muslims lost their way.
But the sun of that spiritual discernment seems now to be setting… The clamour for semiticizing Hinduism, heard with great stridency some thirty years ago, has nearly overpowered the cosmic benediction, “Om Shanti….”
It is my prayer that, as the implications of UP saffronizing itself becomes increasingly and menacing clear to the Muslims and other minority communities in UP, they would have the wisdom to read its message aright. Rather than letting the short-term twists and turns of politics demoralize them, Muslim should show the greatness of their faith by turning adversity into the wind under their wings.
That they can do only if they seek to attain a spirituality that transcends Mosques and Mandirs and embraces the heroic obedience to the Will of God as the bottom-line discipline of being Muslim. They should not surrender their reason and common sense to the political wheeler dealers who commanded trust in the name of religion but did not bother to prove themselves trustworthy.
From here on, the wind of destiny can only blow harder. This could do at least one wholesome service: separate the chaff from the grain. History is calling men and women of faith to sow grain, instead of chaff. To do anything less is to work for a famine in the land and to invite death by starvation.
(Valson Thampu is former principal of St Stephen’s College, Delhi)