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HomeOpinionIndian Muslims and liberals are trapped in a toxic relationship

Indian Muslims and liberals are trapped in a toxic relationship

Muslims love Hindu liberals conditionally, and together they hate the microscopic Muslim liberals unconditionally.

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India’s Muslims and liberals are withering in each other’s embrace. The liberal discourse in India has come in for sharp criticism not only from the Right-wing but also the non-partisan centrists for being unprincipled in its tacit indulgence of minorityism, which might have widened the chasm between the majority and minority communities where the former is always a bully and the latter always has its back to the wall.

It has been often said that despite mouthing the platitude of mainstreaming the minority, liberals helped in institutionalising minorityism. It cocooned liberals in a paternalistic aura.

The situation was further exacerbated when the middle caste’s electoral assertion piggybacked on the Muslim vote. OBCs and minority politics were found cosying up in the bed of secularism. This was a marriage of convenience.

How did liberalism come to this when it had been the byword for everything progressive, humanistic, secular, democratic, reformative and transformative; and a default opposite of obscurantism, regression and totalitarianism? It is for these reasons that Indian Muslims’ relationship with so-called liberals has started yielding diminishing returns in politics today. Either liberalism gets a makeover, or the relationship is re-invented, or the Muslim community begins to invest in its own liberals.


Also read: New India has a solution to all its problems — Blame the Muslim


Different trajectories

But how could the ascendant Hindutva politics blame liberals of political opportunism and cultural deracination? It’s another surprise that these accusations also began to stick. To understand this, let’s trace its trajectory.

A dialectic tussle between the agents of change and the votaries of status quo is the hallmark of a living society. As the colonial impetus stirred India into a new life, the first generation of Hindus in modern education devoted themselves to religious and social reformation. This laid the foundation for a liberal nationalist politics in India.

The Muslim trajectory was different. They were latecomers to modern education which, again, had come at the cost of abandoning religious critique and social reform. A superficial modernity without its moral and intellectual values could be the right instrument for revivalism. The two politics, Hindu and Muslim, because of the different preparatory grounds they stood on, went in different directions. While one aimed at forming India into a nation and winning independence for it, the other wanted to make the Muslim community into a separate nation.

However, the intrinsic sincerity of the liberal political class and the exigency to put up a united front against colonialism made it accommodate the separatist tendencies in order to forge a composite territorial nationalism. This template endured for a century. It had some quaint tropes, which left no urge among Muslims to liberalise.


Also read: Not Kunal Kamra, the real test for Indian liberals is Sharjeel Imam


Century-old tropes

The first instance of mollycoddling was to sanitise the history of Muslim rule. In the history books, the testimony of contemporary chroniclers such as Ziauddin Barani, Abdul Malik Isami and Ferishta, etc. was ignored in order to paint an idyllic picture of cultural confluence. In a travesty of secularisation, acts of temple destruction, Jizya tax imposition, and forced conversion would be presented as inspired by political exigency, not religious fanaticism. It was as if desecration for political reasons would be less obnoxious. It gave a clean chit to the principle of statecraft that would permit such a sacrilege even if it were actually a pretext.

Although done with the good intention of not letting the bad blood of the past spill onto the present, a total whitewashing didn’t let the people develop the maturity to face up the past and recognise its wrongs. One is not answerable for what their real or adopted ancestors did, but they shape their own attitude towards the past. If one sees glories in the good of it, they would have to partake of its bad too.

The second trope was the romanticisation of Islam as an egalitarian religion and Muslims as a casteless society. Conversion to Islam was credited to the equality in Muslim society. The fact, however, was that people carried their caste into the new religion and remained at the same level as earlier. The Muslim ruling class adopted the caste system and placed itself at the apex. In fact, their emphasis on foreign lineage as a mark of superiority infused a fresh racial element into it.

Besides caste, gender issue was the main area of social reform in Hindu society. True, Muslims didn’t have a Sati system, but they had all other patriarchal discriminations. In fact, purdah among the Hindu upper class was an influence of Muslims.

It became conventional wisdom that Muslims didn’t need to introspect, reform or liberalise. And so, when independent India’s most ambitious social reform programme was undertaken, and Hindu Code Bills were introduced, the Muslim Personal Law was left untouched on the plea that the push for reform had to come from within the community. It never came, and instead became the basis of identitarian politics as was seen during the Shah Bano and triple talaq cases.


Also read: UP Police didn’t become anti-Muslim under Yogi. Look at secular Congress’ bloody past


Mere tactical allies

The sanitised history repeated itself first as a tragedy and next as a farce. The tragedy was the liberal argument in the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi case that there was no proof that the mosque in Ayodhya was built on a demolished temple. Its implication for such mosques as were clearly built on demolished temples was not weighed in. And, the farce was in the revisionist historiography of Partition, which invisibilised the fact that, in the end, it was the Muslim League that demanded Pakistan, and had it. Such historiography helped in reviving the same old pernicious narrative.

The dictum that minority communalism was a lesser evil was myopic inasmuch as it ignored its ability to inflame majoritarian. The paternalistic minorityism of liberals made them equivocate on burning issues. So, in one kind of bomb blast, terror had no religion; but in another, it did. The discourse of ‘hurt sentiment’ became normalised as demands to ban now a book and now a movie became the norm. The Right-wing learnt fast, and how.

In spite of all this, no organic relationship could develop between liberals and Muslims. Both treated each other as tactical allies rather than ideological kin. In the Muslim repertoire of grievances against the present dispensation, there is hardly one that has not been levelled against liberals since the late 19th century (Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s speech at Meerut, 16 March 1888 ). The Islam-in-danger rhetoric, paranoia of subjugation by Hindus, neglect of Urdu, under-representation in services, bias in the behaviour of state machinery, particularly that of police during riots, and myriad other complaints of discriminations are century-old tropes.


Also read: Indian Muslims must rewrite their victim mindset to be indispensable in India’s rise


Aatmanirbhar Musalman

Muslims love Hindu liberals conditionally, and together they hate the microscopic Muslim liberals unconditionally. Muslims love liberals because the latter don’t question their narratives, and liberals value Muslims because they are their only support left. In an India where two kinds of Hindus are debating how to engage with Muslims, the liberals represent them without questioning why Muslims are unable to represent themselves, and whether the 200-year-long liberal hegemony of public discourse has any responsibility for it.

There is no redemption for Muslims unless they develop their own liberal intelligentsia, and no comeback for liberals unless they become more scrupulous about their avowed principles. True, Muslims are not represented in all sectors of the national life in proportion to their population. It not only reflects their lag in modern education but also the lack of drive and initiative in their corporate life.

At about 20 crore, the Muslim population is so huge that even a minuscule percentage of its educated and affluent would be humongous enough to constitute the critical mass for a big social change. One reason why this has not happened is the community’s utter dependence on the liberal establishment for representing them. Muslims could represent themselves in the idiom of the modern nation state only if they had crafted their own discourse and coined their own vocabulary. It’s very much doable. An Aatmanirbhar Musalman could be the pride of an Aatmanirbhar Bharat.

Najmul Hoda is an IPS officer. Views are personal.

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105 COMMENTS

  1. Our JNU liberal historians removed all vesiges of hindu rule, Ahoms, Chalukyas, Cholas, Satvahanas, Pandya, Chandela, Gupta or Pallava empire, they only taught us Mughal history, prime example of whitewashing history. Nehru and his clan allowed minority muslins special rights like 4 wives etc, pray why was our country partitioned to have minority appeasement, Sonia maino brought various laws like RTE to bring down hindu owned schools while allowing minority schools to prosper, then to top it all Manmohan singh says Muslims have the forst rights of resources, shame to all these useless liberals which stoked appeasement now we need to suffer the BJP.

    • Savy: You bray:

      “.. Nehru and his clan allowed minority muslins special rights like 4 wives ..”

      So who allowed BJP MP Dilawar Khan a.k.a. Dharmendra to keep 2 wives?

      And how will the much ballyhooed Uniform Civil Code deal with the many Hindus who keep their “chinna veedus”* and polygamous tribals ?

      * Chinna Veedu literally means “small house” in Tamil. That is where successful, middle-aged men in Tamilnadu installed their mistresses or wife #2 . Although it beats me why the experience of getting beaten by wife # 1 is lost on our amorous hero and he sets himself up for beating from both wife #1 & wife # 2 !!!!1

  2. So happy that so many Muslims are speaking out against those who want to set the Muslims of India apart from other Indians.

  3. The hypothesis that Indian Muslims are withering under the embrace of liberals somehow seems to suggest that there will be a course correction when such an embrace vanishes. Alas, the last 6 years of BJP rule and Modi reign have destroyed any such notions – the constricting embrace of the liberals has now been replaced by the crushing suffocation of the saffronistas.

    Whilst the liberals – read Congress, Trinamool, BSP, Samjawadi Party, SMK and the left parties – have surely indulged in opportunistic secularism to shore up their own power bases, they did not indulge in rhetoric that questioned the democratic rights of Muslims in India. On the other hand, the BJP, the RSS and their proxies have not only indulged in opportunistic majoritarianism to shore up their own power bases but have also upped the ante, questioning the very right of Muslims to stay in India. Or for that matter to participate as equal citizens in the political and socio-economic fabric of the country. Thus, we have seen love jihad, Corona jihad and now even UPSC jihad ! The new term UPSC jihad comes from Sudarshan News editor Suresh Chavahanke, a BJP darling, Savarkar worshipper and Akhand Bharath enthusiast who is perturbed that Muslims cracking the UPSC exams have increased from a paltry 4% to a paltry 5% !

    What India needs is a proper democracy where all Indians are equal in the eye of the law and the State treats them fairly and protects them when needed. Secularism flows from that notion of equality – the State will treat all citizens equally and not discriminate between them because of their religious affiliations.

    Thus, when a marauding mob of RSS, Bajrang Dal and BJP thugs descends on Naroda Patiya during the Gujarat riots of 2002, led by none other than a doctor Mayaben Kodnani, then in a proper democracy, the State apparatus i.e. the police would have ensured that the mob was stopped and the targets of the mob’s ire be protected. That did not happen. Or as the police famously told Muslims who sought protection “We have no orders to protect you”.

    Or, when a pregnant Bilkis Bano is raped, her 3 year old child’s head is smashed, the womenfolk in her family are raped and all 14 members of her family are killed, one would have expected the State to have done its utmost to protect the survivor of this vicious manifestation of Hindutva and to help her obtain some level of support. But the State did not – after all the pogrom did have State sanction didn’t it ? Indeed, the State of Gujarat went out of its way to destroy evidence and thwart justice. It took 17 years and a Supreme Court verdict to deliver some semblance of justice to Ms Bano. Who incidentally, still lives in hiding.

    No Mr Najmul Hoda, the vast majority of Indians would be immensely content if the State were to merely uphold the simple democratic principle of equality in its treatment of citizens. The liberals paid lip service to that tenet of democracy; the BJP does not bother with such niceties. After all, the RSS, the ideological fount of the BJP is modelled on the Nazi and fascist movements of Europe of the 1930s isn’t it? And just as Hitler simply stripped Jews of their citizenship rights and had them sent to concentration camps, the BJP does have its detention camps for “termites” doesn’t it ?

    Not very democratic is it Mr Hoda?

    • You are fanatic Muslims, a wolf under ship’s clothing. There is Russian proverb

      A Wolf will sing like nightingale when trapped.

      This is what you guys are doing. Because your guardian angels, Nehru family, lost power suddenly you have started talking about human rights, harmony etc. How many Hindus have killed Muslims in Pakistan? India should treat Muslims like you in same humane way that Pakistanis have treated Hindus for last seventy years.

      india needs Muslims like Najmul Hoda,, Arif Mohammed Khan and other progresive Muslim but don’t need fanatic Muslims like Kili Jolsiyar.

      • Mr Harry: Thanks again for the response !

        I didn’t know that you are a certifying authority that issues some sort of a “conduct certificate” for Muslims. But do you also issue said certificates to atheists? Dalits? Parsis ? Sikhs? Tribals? If yes, please let me know how a Tribal fellow like me can get one !

        But going back to my comment. Your insipid response has utterly nothing to do with the issues I raise in my comment. You are merely ranting like your mentor Arnab Goswami, presumably under the influence of TASMAC products!

        Worse still, people like you seem to hold Pakistan in high regard. Why should Pakistan’s treatment of Hindus become a template for India’s treatment of its minorities Mr Harry ? Pakistan is a failed state and a major reason for its failure is religion. Or the notion that religion can bind people who are otherwise different in every regard. Do you want India to become a Hindu Pakistan Mr Harry ?

        Shame on you !

        • India was partitioned on HINDU- MUSLIM basis, not on Hindu- atheist, Hindu- Parsi basis. etc. Dalit, tribal are Hindus just like Shia, Sunni, Ismaili and Ahmedia are Muslims period. Just because some intolerant don’t accept that does not change facts.

          “Pakistan is a failed state ” for your information Pakistan consistently scored better than India in terms of Hunger index and acute hunger, until 2015 for sure, as per UN report.. I am not sure of latest report.

          • Mr Harry: Thanks for the prompt response.

            Like most other things you scribble about, you get your Partition history wrong too.

            The Partition of India carved out the Muslim majority provinces in the north west and the north east of erstwhile undivided India into a single country called Pakistan. And Pakistan, as you surely know, was itself split into 2 halves, a largely Punjabi & Urdu speaking West and a Bengali speaking East Pakistan. But nobody, not even Jinnah envisaged a population transfer of Muslims to Pakistan and non-Muslims to India.

            Indeed, tell me how your faulty, flawed logic would apply to Kashmir?

            With regard to Pakistan as a failed state, well, it is indeed what analysts call a “fragile state”. The Fund For Peace’s Fragile States Index ranks countries on the basis of their performance on indicators such as Cohesion, Economic, Political Factors and provides some comparable data on this front.

            Out of 178 countries surveyed in the Fragile States Index for 2020, Yemen ranks at # 1 i.e. the most fragile state in the world. Pakistan is ranked at # 25 whilst India is at # 68, way ahead of Pakistan. See ref: bit.ly/2Zdp5NA

            But what is interesting is that in 2014, India stood at 81. In other words, in over 5 years, India’s fragility has worsened. Factor that in your analysis before you indulge in more Modi bhakthi Mr Harry.

        • ” But nobody, not even Jinnah envisaged a population transfer of Muslims to Pakistan and non-Muslims to India.”

          Of course not. Jinnah did not want flood of Muslims coming to Pakistan. So he played duplicity . One hand Jinnah said “he wants a Pakistan, where a person is Pakistani first and Muslim, Hindu or Sikh later”. But he did nothing to prevent killings of Hindus & Sikh in Pakistan. Only way that carnage could have stopped was India to threaten Pakistan with dire consequence would have prevented this exodus. But with Nehru with his monkey like behavior, which also exhibited in dealing with China & Kashmir,, did nothing. Ultimately it was disaster for not only for non-Muslims in Pakistan, but Pakistan itself and Afghanistan.

          If Pakistan had 15% to 20% non-Muslims , at the time of partition it had 30% non-Muslim with Muslims in minority in cities Karachi, Hyderabad & Lahore, Pakistan would have been like India, but with Muslim majority.

        • Kili Jolsiyar, you did not answer about hunger index and acute hunger. What that means is poorest of poor are better off in Pakistan than India. So Pakistan is not failed state as you want us to believe. So minority treatment in India need to be compared.

    • This blog has nothing to do with BJP or Congress or some anecdotal incidents where muslim were brutalized. Communal incidents are not uncommon in India. What this blog has suggested that there is a need for introspection and there is a need for muslims to develop their own liberal intelligentia which could steer the community from the trap set by left liberals and conservative muslims/mullas.

      Brij

      • Mr Brij Kishore: Truly mindboggling that you suggest, like the author, that the Muslim victims of crimes such as lynchings and pogroms should “instrospect” ! The perpetrators though hardly get any reprimands from you. After all, as you make the sweeping statement:

        “Communal incidents are not uncommon in India”

        Of course, in your worldview, these horrific crimes targeting Muslims are “anecdotal incidents” that the family members of the victims should pooh-pooh. Again, you pin the blame, not on your thuggish gaurakshak buddies in the BJP who carry out these reprehensible acts of violence, but on left liberals, conservative Muslims and mullahs.

        Perhaps you could use your “theory of introspection” to explain why perfectly ordinary, utterly law-abiding Muslims like Mohammad Akhlaq, Junaid Khan, Pehlu Khan, Alimuddin Ansari and many others were brutally lynched by your Hindutva friends. And this being Modistan, you would surely agree with me that the police do not protect Muslim victims but shield the so-called Hindus who engage in violence. Indeed, to rub salt on the wounds, the police even file charges against the survivors and families of lynching victims. Thus, after Mohammad Akhlaq and his son were lynched, the police filed charges on the family for possessing beef ! What priorities !!

        The violence that the vile Savarkarian ideology of Hindutva inflicts reminds me of a quote from former US Senator ed Kennedy:

        “Violence is an admission that one’s ideas and goals cannot prevail on their own merits”

  4. Najmul Hoda an IPS is a jihadi in the eyes of orthodox Hindu but a liberal hindu will appreciate him.Hence an orthodox Muslim are close to liberal hindus to save your skin from Sudarshan TV channel.An Orthodox Muslim will pray for your thoughts and actions to synchronized to enable you to earn the reward in the Hereafter also though you are not repaying to your Ummah what your Creator has bestowed you in this world

  5. Excellent article by the author, it’s indeed true that Muslims love Hindu liberals but hypocritically hate/abuse their own Muslim liberals. It’s clear that Hindu(secular) liberals have a agenda to support radical regressive muslims in turn to get their support back,& then use this stuff to publicize themselves in international pseudo-secular media haven !!!!!

  6. I reckon there is a correction here – “A superficial modernity without its moral and intellectual values could be the right instrument for revivalism”

    It should be “could not be the right instrument”!

  7. Hits the nsil on the head. Falsification of history, pandering to the basest elements office Muslim clergy in dying away from reforming the Muslim personal law and denying a paltry alimony to a divorced Muslim women are all crimes liberals and their favourite politicians.

  8. Liberal label is conferred by the liberals club which admits new members. No formal test conducted and no standard used for evaluating liberal behaviour. Even hard core criminals are admited to liberals club. Today the liberals have become synonymous with crooks, cheats and anti-national. Their liberal credentials have been destroyed forever. Survival for fittest best fits the liberals slow and sure death.

  9. The full extent of the brutality of islamic rule over south asia must be acknowledged. Remember as a result of such a rule, almost 1/2 of world’s muslims now live in south asia and two islamic countries have been created out of India. The massacres, the ruin and plunder it brought on non-muslims of south asia must be recorded. It should be done for the same reasons that Germany fully acknowledges the brutality of Nazi rule over Jews. Because no individual or country can reform without acknowledging the sins. In India , if we did not acknowledge the sins and injustice of the past towards so called lower castes, could we reform ? So supremacist islam cannot reform unless it acknowledges or is forced to acknowledge its crimes.

  10. An excellent writeup ! The author has gone to the root cause of the problems facing the nation today . We need more and more people to come out speak the truth, rather than indulge in a camouflage and peddle a distorted narrative which is threatening to destroy the social fabric of India .
    The so called ‘liberals’ are more responsible for the present toxic environment in the country, rather than the religious fanatics. They need to understand that the fake narratives, fake history and fake secularism can go only so far.

    The fact remains that Hindus and Muslims are from the same stock, same blood- brothers and sisters of India. It was the invaders who came , killed , raped sold and converted people forcibly. They left a majority of people with no choice- either convert, run away(if you can) or die. It is obvious which option people would have chosen. Conversion to Islam is still no issue. Hinduism accepts all forms of worship to the only God. So, some people following a different way of offering their prayers to God does not matter. The root cause of Hindu Muslim conflict is the result of a sinister design of the Britishers to work on dividing this country, to keep it weak .

    Muslims were made to believe that they are a separate entity, and they can not live peacefully in a Hindu Majority country,. After having ruled this country for 700 years, they should not be ruled by Hindus. None of their leaders tried to tell them that they are originally Indians. It was not they who ruled the country ,but the invaders. They were mere subjects. Invaders came with a handful of people. Babar came with only 500 men, besides this artillery . Somehow, this narrative did not get proliferated instead the other toxic one did work, and the country got divided. Now, there are a lot people( Muslims) in Pakistan today, who wonder as to why the country was divided in 1947?

    If Ram Temple was destroyed by Babar’s henchmen, and a Babri mosque build over it, what was the fault of the Indian Muslims in that. At that point of time, they themselves were at the receiving end of tyranny. They lost their near and dear ones, their mothers sisters and daughters had to go through hell. They themselves were forcibly converted . How can they be made to carry this yoke of guilt of the Ram Temple demolition? But, these so-called liberals fish in troubled waters by instigating the Muslims that they should not give up their right on the Babri Masjid. Further, to rub salt into the wounds of the Hindus, they start a narrative that there was no proof of the existence of Lord Ram ! Thus adding fuel to the fire.

    The problem with the so called ‘liberals’ is that they continue with the policies of the Britishers. They overlook fundamentalists in Muslims and danger posed to the country because of that, at the same time a small utterance by a radical Hindu ( though not fit to be called a Hindu) is amplified beyond proportions. These pathogens in turn create antibodies in The Hindu psyche, and that is the reason that the environment in the country has become so toxic .

    It is time for genuine liberals to come forward to repair the damage caused by these agents of the Britishers !

  11. I am impressed with very clinical assessment by the author. Only such assessments can be called introspection and will lead to better tomorrow for nation and community.
    This article even throws on our face “governance by narrative building” off course here media is to blame here. But in true democracy, how narratives can suppress truth is big cause of worry.
    Such narratives are built all over let it be politics, economy, education etc.
    I am “shocked” to see such article on this portal. There is no doubt theprint is a platform for anti-national view and part of narrative building machinery than anything close to journalism.

  12. We indians are obssessed with english language. This long english artical uses too many sentances to say samething repeatedly. This is verbose at the best can be 5 marks non detailed essay writing for 9th standard CBSC student

    It took lot of pain for me to read this nig article. The author comes in circles and says same thing again and again

    The entire debate based on abrahamic history without giving true weight to what happened before. The author never questioned intension of two nation theory and its propagators. Secularism is only told to Hindus. iftar parties all are great secular. A totally religion based Hyderabad party is epitomy of secularism.

    Gone are those days when author can write anything and escape scrutiny. It is high time ee stop such kind of english vigilatism

    • The problem Mr. Pvs (and I’m sure it’s a Mr and not Ms) – is in your limited ability to concentrate and grasp written words. Not just your poor performance in schooling but also your social media trolling has a lot to do with your diminished brain size. Don’t blame the author, he’s written a fabulous piece.

  13. Just look at the vicious riots in NE Delhi and Bengaluru. Well planned, well equipped, well funded, brought in several thousands of thugs into riot area. Still you say muslims have their back to wall? With twenty crores plus population, are they really in minority?

  14. Najmul Hoda is obviously an outlier. And possibly, also a targeted man. He has raised the very issues that vast majority of Indians – Hindu if you may – have been raising.

    Will the Hindu Liberals – the useful idiots identified by the obdurate Islamists – wake up and smell coffee.

    It’s not majoritarianism but recognition of and respect for underlying cultural ethos of India that Hindu majority wants. And our so called liberals and communists have been demeaning, damaging these very underlying truths.

    • Mr Gordon Gekko: I don’t know whether you became the “useful idiot” of the BJP when you brayed:

      “.. underlying cultural ethos of India that Hindu majority wants ..”

      What exactly is this cultural ethos of India Mr Gekko ? In a country as diverse as India, religion is but one more way to slice and dice the electorate and the populace at large. And the BJP chooses religion. Or rather the fascist ideology called Hindutva, masquerading as Hinduism – something which people like you embrace enthusiastically.

      Fact is Mr Gekko, over the years, one has seen political parties and rabble-rousing organisations from across the political and religious spectrum defining identities based on some narrow criterion and excluding everyone else. For instance, your fellow traveller and Hitler admirer Bal Thackeray attacked the “kaala madraasi” as in his view, the “kaala madraasi” deprived the “marathi manoos” of his livelihood. Later on Bal Thackeray suggested that it was the Bihari “ek bihari, sau bimaari” that was a threat to the poor “marathi manoos”. And then “north Indian” and eventually Muslims came in the cross-hairs of this Marathi Führer.

      India, unlike many European countries, is far too heterogeneous to be capable of being united under the banner of Hinduism. Language, caste, class, colour, history, religion, religious sub-sects and so on differentiate one Hindu from another. Something Jinnah’s Islamic Pakistan experienced when they realised that Islam could not unify the Bengali and the Punjabi.

      You talk of the Hindu majority’s wants. Tell me Mr Gekko, would a Hindu Dalit who has suffered millenia of oppression under the weight of the caste system want the same thing as a presumably upper caste Hindu like you wants? Would the beef-eating Hindus of Kerala have the same wants as the fish-eating, but otherwise vegetarian Bengali Brahmins?

      Admittedly, secularism has been used in an opportunistic way by the Congress, DMK, BSP, Samajwadi Party, Trinamool and so on. And whilst I think that it is fully reprehensible, the way forward is not to use identity for electoral and opportunistic reasons as the BJP now does. Simply because, that fractures India’s identity as a nation. Religion, is the weakest of bonds to nurture a national identity in a place like India.

      But, then these subtleties get sacrificed at the altar of political expediency. As the

      ancient Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger said:

      “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful”

  15. Respect for Mr. Hoda.
    Its as if he has expressed in words my own thoughts on this sensitive issue.
    Unfortunately, he runs the danger of being targeted by the Islamic clerical class for his liberal/secular views. So do others who have a broadly liberal outlook and are genuine well wishers of the community.

  16. Excellent piece….this is the only way bridge between Muslims and Hindus, who unfortunately being forced to drift right or extreme right wing fundamentalism, can be bulit.

  17. This is a very thoughtful article which depicts the issue in an unbiased but hard hitting manner. (Author has refrained from calling the Hindu liberals as ‘sickular’!)
    This article should be read by every person from both minority and majority community. We have failed to develop our identity as Indians first and instead, we are split into many identities the most important of which has become whether one is from minority or majority community and then within majority community, based on caste. Further, what is more lamentable is attempt to create extra territorial allegiance in religious matters. The world is organized into nation states and any attempt at forming allegiance other than based on national interest, is bound to cause troubles. This has to be understood clearly by everyone and national interests, security and civil rights need to be protected under the Constitution. Politics in the must be informed by this premise.

    Author should re-write this article in a simple words (which can be understood by any person) and publish it in all Indian languages.

  18. This is a super article. We need less Rana Ayuubs and more Najmul Hodas for the Muslim community to achieve its true potential.

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