Indian Muslims in the Twenty First Century
It is not for the dawn of the twenty-first century only that we are thinking. We want an idea concerning a good early part of it. It has become fashionable to set the first maker at 2020. We put the next one on year 2050.
There will be Muslims and there will be India as a single political entity. I do not entertain the possibility of the country disintegrating into smaller states. And, of course, much power will pass to supra national agencies like the UN. The days of the nineteenth century nation state are over.
I hope the futility of war and the impossibility of making any durable gains through war will have made it possible for countries to reduce the waste of their precious resources on armament and weapons development, especially on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. This will be especially significant for India which could then devote some of these resources to poverty alleviation.
Human society in the twenty-first century is going to be more competitive. The role of the state in taking care of its people will decrease and those who need care will have to do more and more for themselves, individually and collectively. For countries like India, which have a variety of ethnic, linguistic and religious groups, this will mean that every group will have to mobilise its own resources to preserve its culture, etc. that will need resources.
The state will no longer have resources to dole out. So only those with enough to spare will have the ability to establish and run educational institutions of their choice, etc. People in a group may have all the resources but may not have commitment to their identity and culture, no vision of what they would like to become and how such a group will sure disintegrate. That is to say it will not survive as a community. What about a community which has commitment and vision but no resources? How can it protect its interests without educational institutions, political organizations, social clubs and other paraphernalia of modern community life?
This has to be done at every level, from the village with its panchayat, to the city with its corporation, state with its legislative assembly to the national level with its parliament. All this requires resources, which come from individual wealth owners and income earners. Muslim community needs individuals with money to spare so that the community can do all that is needed to preserve its identity, promote its culture and safeguard its interests.
Mobilizing the necessary resources in money and manpower to face the challenges of a largely liberal, privatized and globalized Indian economy and society in the twenty first century will test the ingenuity of Indian Muslim intellectuals in the coming days. The important thing is to realize that the only way to success is through competition. The more productive you are, the more competitive advantage you have.
Hindutva:
As the twentieth century comes to an end, the greatest threat to Muslim identity and culture comes from the recent rise of Hindutva symbolized by the BJP’s (Bharatiya Janata Party) brief stint with power in New Delhi. Hindutva does not recognize cultural diversity. For it, there is only one identity in Hindustan, the Hindu. Those living in India must cherish this identity and subsume other affiliations and aspirations underneath it.
This stance, explicitly rejected by the framers of the Constitution of India, is anathema to Muslims. But what can they do about it? That is the big question they carry over to the next century. Can they convince the protagonists of Hindutva that it is bad for its sponsors and bad for India as it is bad for Muslims? If this is a possible agenda. How are they going to do it?
Shall they resign themselves to the inevitability of Hindutva prevailing over secularism and over left and centrist forces and adjust their own stance to Himdutva rule? If so, what does it imply? Do they think the battle is political, Hindutva being only a handy slogan for mobilizing people and making a bid for power? In that case, the challenge can be faced by forging an alliance with secular forces including the centrists as well as the leftists. With prognosis goes a strategy. But one must take a long view. The issue is not related to a general election or two. It is India’s destiny that is at stake.
Hindutva has no future because it is in violation of one of the basic tenets of humanity in the twenty-first century – social equality, a philosophy of life, that discriminates between men on the basis of characteristics beyond an individual’s control and thus violates essential human dignity, can no longer be acceptable to men and women. Hindutva is incapable of discarding the superiority of the Brahmin and all that goes with it, in a world in which knowledge alone is regarded an acceptable basis for superiority.
Muslim Response to Hindutva:
Muslims will be ill-advised to wait it out till the wave of aggressive Hindutva passes over. They must act to prevent its rise, as the devastation it would otherwise effect, may be too much for them to bear.
Whatever the prognosis, Muslims in India cannot and should not go it alone insofar as facing / preventing Hindutva is concerned. They can adopt a three-pronged approach in which two of the actions involved have to be shared with other Indians. The first programme, to be launched by Muslims alone, especially by the religious organizations like Jamaate-Islami, should focus on introducing Islam and removing the misunderstandings about Islam and Muslims.
The second should be a political strategy directed at defeating the Hindutva party, the BJP, at the polls and preventing them from reaching the seats of power at local, state and national level. The third is a socio-economic campaign serving the masses through literacy drives, cleanliness drives, economic uplift and self employment programmes, etc. This, to be effected in cooperation with other Indians, especially Hindus, should be so designed as to wean away those sections of the Hindu society (e.g., the youth) who have been attracted by the social services and fitness-oriented programmes of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.)
As I noted above, the narrow chauvinism of Hindutva runs counter to the current wave of globalization and knowledge-based competition. That is the fresh air, which will kill the germs which breed only in murky stagnant waters. All we have to do is to accelerate that process. Let Muslims of India spearhead the process of adopting universal humanistic stances on all issues, rejecting narrow nationalistic stances; let the choice be forced on every Indian, whether he or she would rather belong to a cosmopolitan community of nations, sharing all, but what is naturally tied to geography, or would they insist on an identity that is fully defined in local terms.
Economic Uplift:
Entrepreneurship is innovation, leadership, taking bold and courageous initiatives. It presumes hope, self-confidence and trust. Pessimism, fatalism, siege mentality, a pervading sense of being persecuted, are its arch enemies. Only some scattered groups among Muslims in India bear these entrepreneurial qualities, which are either set or originated in family or community traditions. Neither the madrasa nor the college and school have anything to offer in this connection. There is a need to project the role models we have, so the younger generation of Indian Muslims emulate them.
We must wean away our youth from the ghetto and the street and show them the way to gainful self-employment and how to acquire skills that make them employable by others. The energies of social workers should be focused more and more on making the future generation of Muslims less dependent on publicly-funded educational and health facilities or the public sector for a job. They should be able to earn enough to be able to buy the educational and hservices they need. They should be equipped with the knowledge and skill which is going to have a wide market in the largely private, but, booming economy of India in the years to come.
Is it the old egg and chicken question? How can one earn without education and good health, and where from to pay for the healthcare and education they need? Let the Muslim activist, philanthropic institutions and social service groups break the vicious circle by stepping in. There are various ways of helping the needy without increasing his dependence or making him dole addict. Once again there is a need to learn from the successful anti-poverty and self-help programmes in South East Asia as well as in our own country in the south.
Will the Muslim activists in India, especially those with religious inspiration, e.g., Jamaat-e-Islami, Tableeghi Jamaat, Ahl-e-Hadith and Barelvi group ever learn the primacy of economic strength for the survival and progress of Muslims and Islam in India? Will they readjust their focus from exhortations and warnings and ordainments to helping people on to their feet and putting them on the road to self-respect and hope?
I have no sure answers, but we must try. It is very difficult to imagine an uplifted Muslim community in India without change in the approach of their religious mentors. The more crucial thing is to make them realize that modern society, after the industrial revolution, superimposed by the communication and information revolution, is so different from the one reflected in most of their intellectual heritage, that they must think afresh.
Islamic scholars as well as activists should call upon Muslims to work hard for economic betterment for the sake of their religion. They should tell Muslims they have to make enough money to have something to spare for jihad in its board sense of mobilizing all energies for the cause of Allah.
Spirituality in Islam is not to suppress material quest but to give it the right direction. Having recognised the need for economic betterment, religious leaders and activists have to look back at their educational institutions and see what they can contribute towards this policy objective. Their sermons also need include this theme.
Economics in recent days has been overtaken by revolution in the science of management - the discovery that it is material resources, land, labour and capital that matter, but also the way you manage their use. The way people deal with people has more to do with productivity than the way they deal with things, machines and the like. These recent lessons need to be learnt by us not only in managing business but also in managing the madrasa and the waqf.
What kind of Education?
Education now seems to be on top of every group working for the uplift of Indian Muslims. The important question, however, is what kind of education and what are the priorities for allocating the scarce resources of the millat for its children.
Two facts should determine the answer of the above. Firstly, the overwhelming majority of Muslims in India are illiterate and very poor. Secondly, in future, most jobs will be in the private sector, where skill and potential productivity will decide who gets which job, our educational priorities must reflect these realities. Most of our efforts and resources should be directed towards educating the poorest of the poor and the illiterate.
Next comes skill generating programmes, which can enable people to get a job or launch their own small business. The primary school and the vocational /technical institute must come before universities, colleges and other costly affairs. People should be reserved for the institutions serving people without means.
Muslims have nothing to fear from free enquiry or seeking after knowledge. What is true is by definition compatible with their religion, what is false cannot stand for long, given free enquiry and experimentation
Testing Shariah’s compatibility is an aid no doubt, but past experience shows it is not as simple a job as it appear, and many who dare do so may not be really qualified for the job. Patience, perseverance and an open mind are, in the long run, better guarantees of accumulating new shariah compatible truths and of protecting ourselves from falsehood. It is not going to help, if we reject every thing new at the very impression of its incongruence with what we understand to be the Shariah. This latter strategy, far from succeeding in protecting the faithful from falsehood, ends up missing out on new knowledge and discrediting Shariah itself. This mistake must not be repeated.
Admittedly an open minded approach to knowledge and arriving at new truths would open the door for differences of opinion and diversity in policies. Eventually sounder opinions will weed out the rootless ones and efficacy will select the policy that stays. Meanwhile, we shall need tolerance and respect for the dissenting – qualities in very short supply in the recent past.
Is Education and Economic Uplift All that We Need?
The Quest for Balance: I do not think economic uplift, hundred percent literacy and knowledge imparting education – targets possible to achieve by year 2020 – are all that we need. These we need to enter the race, not to win it. The race in the twenty first century is for a balanced approach to life. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have raised standards of living to levels that could not be imagined at the beginning of this period. But mankind, in the quest for this unprecedented material prosperity, missed out on something without which it feels neither content not secure. It was not without reason that family values and morality were the most discussed subjects during the recent presidential election of the most prosperous nation on earth, the United States of America.
Mankind has, lost its balance, and the quest for balance between the material and spiritual-moral is going to dominate the coming century, both at the intellectual as well as at the policy level. India will be no exception. Have we, Indian Muslims, something to contribute? Yes, I think, but not before we have solved the problems discussed above. The poor and the illiterate cannot teach balanced living to Indians. A prosperous, educated, well behaved Muslim community can be a force working for sanity, stability and balanced living in the India of the future.
Globalisation and all that:
In the international arena, this quest for balance may lead, instead of ‘clash of civilization’ to dialogue, compromises, and cooperation between civilizations. Trade has generally, if not always, brought diverse people into peaceful productive contact. With falling barriers to international trade and satellite channels bringing cultures and image from four corners of the globe into common man’s living rooms, there is no reason why familiarity may breed animosity. It could well be the other way round. A ‘clash’ if it does take place, would more likely be provoked by the hegemonistic attitude of erstwhile super powers, who fail to reconcile themselves to the new rules of the game.
Anyway, India is not visualised as the theatre for such a clash between civilizations even by those who envision it. Rather, India is seen as likely partisan against the Judaeo-Christian-Western civilization. Indian Muslims should have no problem in handling such a situation (which I consider to be far-effected). Nehru extolled the Indian genius for compromise and accommodation. Though not strong enough to avert the partitioning of India, it does have enough resilience to boost secular trends in the face of the rising tide of Hindutva.
Secularism with its special meaning in India (which cannot and should not be equated with the meaning it acquired a couple of centuries ago in Europe), democracy as enshrined in the Constitution of India, and globalisation, which is inevitably being adopted by entire humanity in the wake of the revolution in information and communication, vaimprove the chance of Indian Muslims performing as indicated above: A model of Islamic living amongst what for the time being is an overwhelmingly non-Muslim majority.
Such also is the situation of Muslims in the world at large. I invite Muslim intellectuals, especially those outside India, to pay to this parallel the attention it deserves. They may be missing out on something important by not doing so.
Look East Too:
I see increasing interaction between India and the East and, in its wake, greater attention of Muslims to the East. The softer, lighter religiosity of the East (not necessarily less genuine in its spirituality or morality) would serve as a needed antidote to some of the harsher overtones of the recent Islamic movements (which mostly drew inspiration from an entirely different environment). That would be better suited to India, if and when sanity is restored as the Hindutva wave ebbs out and the friendly climate of the Gangetic plain once again reasserts its eternal impulse of tolerance and accommodation.
Conclusion:
I wish to conclude what I started with. Indian Muslims in the twenty- first century will be to a large extent what they work for being, what they really want to be. They have a right to high aspirations. They can even be optimistic. But they need take concrete steps for eradication of poverty, removal of illiteracy, moral orientation and economic uplift. The road may be long and difficult, but one step at a time, which every Muslim in India takes and not only a few activists, can one day make a difference.
Work, earn, learn, save, invest in your future by raising healthier, more educated and better behaved children and help your brothers and sisters do the same. That is the agenda for the individual, every individual. For social organizations, the message is to focus, for the time being, on the poorest and the weakest. Attend more to primary education, adult literacy, cleaner neighborhoods, teaching basic hygiene to every one and providing all with the means for elementary health care.
Religious movements should please note that doing all this is not materialism, it is not dunya. Rather, it is building the necessary infrastructure for deen. The physical requirements for morally good life are no less important than morality itself. That is where we start, saying: “Our Lord bestow upon us in the world that which is good and good in the life hereafter and guard us from punishment with Fire”. (2