Byline by M.J. Akbar:A Dhaka Diary
Allah, worried about the fate of the faithful, called a conference of leaders of Muslim nations. The President of Iraq had only one question to ask: "When will I see peace and prosperity in my country?" Allah looked at him compassionately and said that would happen in about a hundred years. The Iraqi President began to weep, saying, "Alas, it will not happen while I am alive!" The President of Pakistan had the same question, but the answer was different. Pakistan, said Allah, would become peaceful and prosperous in about a hundred and fifty years. The President began to wail, "I will not be alive to see my country prosper". The President of Bangladesh was next. Troubled, despondent, beset by bandhs and the impossible deadlock to which no one had either a key or a clue, he asked when Bangladesh would become the dreamland of its founding fathers. This time, Allah began to cry.
The ability of the suave Dhakaiya to laugh at himself is only one of his endearing traits. No one needs to enumerate the political crisis caused by the inability of its two principal leaders, Sheikh Hasina and Begum Khaleda to cooperate. They hate each other with a passion that verges on the homicidal. If it were a personal matter, no one would bother. But their politics has shut the country down and led to a quasi-military regime. But nothing can defeat the spirit of the urban Bengali. Dhaka is not the capital of a rich country, but it is a capital with a rich heart.
The big debate in the city is: Has there been a sharp increase in the number of women wearing the hijab or the burqa? While there was always some incidence of both, Bangladeshi women have generally ignored the veil. On the face of it, to use a too-obvious phrase, the answer is no. Young women are as fashionably dressed as their circumstances will permit, and models pout sexily from hoardings. But friends insist that there has been a rise in the public appearance of the burqa, if not in upper strata Gulshan then certainly in other parts of the city. The familiar explanations are trotted out, from America to identity-assertion. But a thoughtful friend asks a lateral question. Could this also be because some conservative women, who never went out before, are beginning to do so now, and will only do so in a burqa? The implication is that this is a step forward, and the daughters of these women will eschew the veil altogether. We shall see. The rural areas are easier to understand. The veil in the village is a sign of affluence. Poor women have to work, and cannot afford the luxury of seclusion. The moment there is upward mobility, a woman flaunts her new status by covering up. But there is one reason over which there was no dispute: the impact of Saudi Arabia. By now, millions of Bangladeshis have worked in Saudi. Among the first gifts sent home by those employed there seem to be burqas for their wives, mothers and mothers-in-law.
How utterly enthralling to meet an unrepentant Stalinist. Badruddin Umar was an academic, and is now a political activist and author of the Communist persuasion. His father, a colleague of Husain Shaheed Suhrawardy, was a prominent leader of the Muslim League and later the Awami League. He has written learned books on the historic language movement of Bengal for the Oxford University Press, which is the reason for my visit and the proposed subject of our conversation. Beside a portrait of his father in the drawing room is a line drawing of Stalin. I point out that Stalin is not quite a politically correct figure these days. "I admire him," he responds without ambiguity. "They say he killed a few million people. If I had been in his place I might have had to kill a few more," he adds with a chuckle. Nothing personal; just historical necessity.
There has apparently been some interference in the historical inevitability of a revolution in Bangladesh, and one man credited with the interference is the Nobel Prize winner Dr Mohammad Yunus, managing director of Grameen Bank whose micro-credit schemes have brought him world fame. Badruddin Umar would prefer to describe it as infamy. He thinks micro-credit is worse than the usury of the old mahajans, a fraud on the poor heavily disguised with capitalist hype. He quotes Yunus as admitting he charges 20% interest. In September 1991, Yunus apparently said, "Of course we charge 20% interest. If anyone considers it high, well it is high. I don’t feel much embarrassed by that. After all, we don’t force anyone to borrow from us". As Umar archly added, the old village usurers did not force anyone to borrow from them either. Grameen Bank also collects over 80 million taka as a fee from its members. "What is the ultimate destination of this money and the interest derived on it?" Good question.
It remains to be noted that every single word of abuse from the classic Marxist dictionary — imperialism, reactionary, bourgeois et al — is included in the monograph published by Badruddin Umar.
Is a permanent traffic jam a sign of prosperity or despair? Both: there is a new prosperous class able to buy cars, and a government that is unable to provide the infrastructure. You cannot have traffic chaos without an urban middle class ready to spend good money on vehicles, although the city’s rickshaws can do a fairly competent job of snarling up all activity given half a chance. It has reached a point where the sensible stay in their part of the city. No one disputes traffic as an excuse for delay, which provides a lot of leeway to those who simply got up late. You can recognise the city only on the weekly holidays. The only solution that one could think of was to increase the weekly holidays to three, and give them on alternate days, with an additional twist. Half the city would get a holiday on one day, and the other half on the next. Only half the working population would work on any working day. Its productivity would probably double.
This has to be the most useless secret of all time. The British high commissioner to Bangladesh sent out an invitation for dinner for a select, elite group. Nothing unusual, for high commissioners dine often and well in the service of their nation. There was a curious lacuna though: the name of the guest in whose honour the dinner was being given was missing. Why? Security reasons. The guest of honour was the visiting British foreign secretary David Miliband. How did everyone know? Because the British foreign secretary’s face was in the morning’s papers, that’s how. There is something ludicrous about the current security paranoia. Did the securitywallahs at the British high commission seriously believe that one of their guests for dinner was an undercover terrorist who would leak delicate details of the prospective meal to a gang of unnamed terrorists in masks? I don’t know if anyone turned pale with fear after receiving the invitation, but I do know that a lot of people could not stop laughing.
Showing posts with label Bangladesh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bangladesh. Show all posts
Monday, February 11, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Friends and Masters
Byline by M J Akbar: Friends and Masters
Being an unrepentant optimist, let me begin with the good news. (Pessimism may be reasonable and even virtuous, but it is just too boring.) Pakistan’s trauma seems to have become a serial saga, with every episode raising the intensity of pain. But as a Pakistani friend visiting Delhi remarked, the events that culminated in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto were the first occasion when neither the Pak establishment nor the Pak street blamed India for any role in the tragedy.
At the root of the India-Pakistan problem is the Indian conviction that Pakistan will use any means, including war, to get Kashmir; and the Pakistani fear that India wants to destroy and subjugate their nation. There is sufficient evidence for the Indian conviction, the two wars of 1947-48 and 1965 and the present support to certain jihadi elements operating in the valley. Pakistanis see their evidence in the war of 1971, and the politics leading up to the creation of Bangladesh. They trace their angst to statements made by some prominent Congress leaders, including Jawaharlal Nehru, that it did not seem likely that Pakistan would survive. That was a misjudgment by Nehru: nation states, once formed, do not disband themselves voluntarily, although the creation of Bangladesh did confirm that the original idea of Pakistan had to be kneaded and reshaped. This fear has fed such suspicion that almost anything that goes wrong internally is instinctively attributed to the enemy. It may have needed an awful tragedy, but Pakistan has clearly begun to shed that fear.
This cannot be either instant or accidental. It takes time to peel skin from the psyche. It was the nuclear bomb that gave the Pakistani street the confidence that "bigger" India could no longer destroy "small" Pakistan. "Big" and "small" are notional facts. Britain could have fitted easily into Bengal but still ruled half the world. But the correlation between big and strong is so deeply ingrained that it is almost impossible to remove it from the subcontinent’s dialectic. When India and Pakistan went formally nuclear, the MAD doctrine was in place: war could only lead to Mutually Assured Destruction. Fear and anger, the two dominant attitudes, began to ebb.
Anger has not disappeared from Pakistan. It has turned direction. It is now primarily directed at the Army, which has usurped power too often, raised itself above accountability, and delivered neither inclusive politics nor good government.
At one level is the wrath of the liberal, symbolised by the lawyer but extending to other sections of the middle and upper middle class. It is angry at the complete abolition of values by the Army in pursuit of power. No one expects the Army to be a paragon of democratic virtues, but General-President Pervez Musharraf has assaulted institutions and robbed them of a powerful virtue, self-respect, in order to preserve himself in office. The judiciary has been castrated, and media bled. The democracy that he is advertising as his creation is a car with five wheels, in which he is the fifth, and biggest, wheel. Of course the coming elections in Pakistan will be free, although not quite fair; because the voters will be free to defeat anyone except him. He remains in power. An election is nothing if it cannot also be a popular judgment on the incumbent. But Musharraf’s term in office is outside the frame of this poll’s reference. Whoever wins, Musharraf cannot lose. Such is the logic of Army democracy.
A number of retired generals, not all of them hostile to Musharraf for personal reasons, have described him as the problem, and asked him to step down. There are indications that senior serving officers have recognised that what is at stake is the credibility of Pakistan’s most important institution, its Army. They have begun to withdraw Army officers from civilian space. Musharraf used to buy peace with his peers-in-uniform by shoving them into comfortable jobs as head of public sector companies, or quasi-government bodies. Generals were not only fighting wars on the Frontier, but also running cricket. This had nothing to do with patronage. It was that old sin of autocratic rule: back-scratching. Backs were scratched so often that the country got eczema.
There is another, stronger, reason for anger on the street, creating a problem with inflammable consequences. The Pakistani in the bylanes, bazaars and villages wants to know why Musharraf is fighting America’s war against fellow Muslims. An answer is essential in order to make this war legitimate in the eyes of the people. It is possible that the jawan in the Pakistan Army might be asking the same question as well, although discipline would prevent him from voicing it. Strange stories are seeping through from the battlefields where the Pak Army is engaged with the Taliban and its allies in Swat and the Frontier, leaving observers to wonder whether in some cases there is any engagement at all. The dry fact is that large parts of this region are outside government control, and Taliban presence has not only crossed into Rawalpindi and Islamabad, but also reached Lahore.
As a retired Pakistani diplomat remarked, a Nato defeat in Afghanistan would no longer mean the Talibanisation of Afghanistan alone. It could lead to a surge and victory for the Taliban in Pakistan.
There are danger signals popping up all over Delhi as well, if there was anyone capable of reading the message in flashing lights. India has launched a spy satellite for Israel, and is planning to send up two more. If these were media satellites, it would be explicable. But Israel uses its spy satellites as weapons against the Palestinian people. Someone is bound to raise the question: why is Delhi fighting Israel’s war against Palestinians? Silence will be treated as a guilty plea.
The reason is not complicated. George Bush created an international alliance after 9/11, but he has failed to convince even his allies that he is fighting a genuine war against terrorism. Most Muslims — make that over 90% — believe that he has started a war against Muslims rather than against terrorism. If they had any doubts before, they were removed after America’s wanton invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The consequences of Talibanisation in Pakistan are not limited to Pakistan. They will have a direct impact. We do not have to buy into dread scenarios being offered in gruesome books about a coup that brings a Taliban-general to power in Islamabad and threatens India, and the world, with the nuclear arsenal under his command. Such hyper-drama may be off the wall. But common sense suggests that Indian foreign policy should tread a far more careful path than Pakistan’s gung-ho generals did.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called Bush India’s best friend. He might want to ponder over the long-term implications of such friendship. Bush has another best friend. His name is Musharraf.
Tailpiece: The surprise name in the annual awards handed out by the Government of India to the worthy and the faithful was external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee. Governments do not generally hand out gongs to a Cabinet minister. As a retirement benefit, it was a few rungs lower than an alarm clock; but clearly Mukherjee is not in any mood to retire. What on earth was the Prime Minister trying to tell Mukherjee? "Sorry, I couldn’t make you Prime Minister, which I know you want to be, but I’ve got the job; I could not make you President of India because you were apparently too invaluable at a more junior level. So here, take this gong. You are now at least as good as Sachin Tendulkar, Asha Bhonsle and Ratan Tata."
Even more intriguing question: why did Pranab Mukherjee accept the award?
Being an unrepentant optimist, let me begin with the good news. (Pessimism may be reasonable and even virtuous, but it is just too boring.) Pakistan’s trauma seems to have become a serial saga, with every episode raising the intensity of pain. But as a Pakistani friend visiting Delhi remarked, the events that culminated in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto were the first occasion when neither the Pak establishment nor the Pak street blamed India for any role in the tragedy.
At the root of the India-Pakistan problem is the Indian conviction that Pakistan will use any means, including war, to get Kashmir; and the Pakistani fear that India wants to destroy and subjugate their nation. There is sufficient evidence for the Indian conviction, the two wars of 1947-48 and 1965 and the present support to certain jihadi elements operating in the valley. Pakistanis see their evidence in the war of 1971, and the politics leading up to the creation of Bangladesh. They trace their angst to statements made by some prominent Congress leaders, including Jawaharlal Nehru, that it did not seem likely that Pakistan would survive. That was a misjudgment by Nehru: nation states, once formed, do not disband themselves voluntarily, although the creation of Bangladesh did confirm that the original idea of Pakistan had to be kneaded and reshaped. This fear has fed such suspicion that almost anything that goes wrong internally is instinctively attributed to the enemy. It may have needed an awful tragedy, but Pakistan has clearly begun to shed that fear.
This cannot be either instant or accidental. It takes time to peel skin from the psyche. It was the nuclear bomb that gave the Pakistani street the confidence that "bigger" India could no longer destroy "small" Pakistan. "Big" and "small" are notional facts. Britain could have fitted easily into Bengal but still ruled half the world. But the correlation between big and strong is so deeply ingrained that it is almost impossible to remove it from the subcontinent’s dialectic. When India and Pakistan went formally nuclear, the MAD doctrine was in place: war could only lead to Mutually Assured Destruction. Fear and anger, the two dominant attitudes, began to ebb.
Anger has not disappeared from Pakistan. It has turned direction. It is now primarily directed at the Army, which has usurped power too often, raised itself above accountability, and delivered neither inclusive politics nor good government.
At one level is the wrath of the liberal, symbolised by the lawyer but extending to other sections of the middle and upper middle class. It is angry at the complete abolition of values by the Army in pursuit of power. No one expects the Army to be a paragon of democratic virtues, but General-President Pervez Musharraf has assaulted institutions and robbed them of a powerful virtue, self-respect, in order to preserve himself in office. The judiciary has been castrated, and media bled. The democracy that he is advertising as his creation is a car with five wheels, in which he is the fifth, and biggest, wheel. Of course the coming elections in Pakistan will be free, although not quite fair; because the voters will be free to defeat anyone except him. He remains in power. An election is nothing if it cannot also be a popular judgment on the incumbent. But Musharraf’s term in office is outside the frame of this poll’s reference. Whoever wins, Musharraf cannot lose. Such is the logic of Army democracy.
A number of retired generals, not all of them hostile to Musharraf for personal reasons, have described him as the problem, and asked him to step down. There are indications that senior serving officers have recognised that what is at stake is the credibility of Pakistan’s most important institution, its Army. They have begun to withdraw Army officers from civilian space. Musharraf used to buy peace with his peers-in-uniform by shoving them into comfortable jobs as head of public sector companies, or quasi-government bodies. Generals were not only fighting wars on the Frontier, but also running cricket. This had nothing to do with patronage. It was that old sin of autocratic rule: back-scratching. Backs were scratched so often that the country got eczema.
There is another, stronger, reason for anger on the street, creating a problem with inflammable consequences. The Pakistani in the bylanes, bazaars and villages wants to know why Musharraf is fighting America’s war against fellow Muslims. An answer is essential in order to make this war legitimate in the eyes of the people. It is possible that the jawan in the Pakistan Army might be asking the same question as well, although discipline would prevent him from voicing it. Strange stories are seeping through from the battlefields where the Pak Army is engaged with the Taliban and its allies in Swat and the Frontier, leaving observers to wonder whether in some cases there is any engagement at all. The dry fact is that large parts of this region are outside government control, and Taliban presence has not only crossed into Rawalpindi and Islamabad, but also reached Lahore.
As a retired Pakistani diplomat remarked, a Nato defeat in Afghanistan would no longer mean the Talibanisation of Afghanistan alone. It could lead to a surge and victory for the Taliban in Pakistan.
There are danger signals popping up all over Delhi as well, if there was anyone capable of reading the message in flashing lights. India has launched a spy satellite for Israel, and is planning to send up two more. If these were media satellites, it would be explicable. But Israel uses its spy satellites as weapons against the Palestinian people. Someone is bound to raise the question: why is Delhi fighting Israel’s war against Palestinians? Silence will be treated as a guilty plea.
The reason is not complicated. George Bush created an international alliance after 9/11, but he has failed to convince even his allies that he is fighting a genuine war against terrorism. Most Muslims — make that over 90% — believe that he has started a war against Muslims rather than against terrorism. If they had any doubts before, they were removed after America’s wanton invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The consequences of Talibanisation in Pakistan are not limited to Pakistan. They will have a direct impact. We do not have to buy into dread scenarios being offered in gruesome books about a coup that brings a Taliban-general to power in Islamabad and threatens India, and the world, with the nuclear arsenal under his command. Such hyper-drama may be off the wall. But common sense suggests that Indian foreign policy should tread a far more careful path than Pakistan’s gung-ho generals did.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called Bush India’s best friend. He might want to ponder over the long-term implications of such friendship. Bush has another best friend. His name is Musharraf.
Tailpiece: The surprise name in the annual awards handed out by the Government of India to the worthy and the faithful was external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee. Governments do not generally hand out gongs to a Cabinet minister. As a retirement benefit, it was a few rungs lower than an alarm clock; but clearly Mukherjee is not in any mood to retire. What on earth was the Prime Minister trying to tell Mukherjee? "Sorry, I couldn’t make you Prime Minister, which I know you want to be, but I’ve got the job; I could not make you President of India because you were apparently too invaluable at a more junior level. So here, take this gong. You are now at least as good as Sachin Tendulkar, Asha Bhonsle and Ratan Tata."
Even more intriguing question: why did Pranab Mukherjee accept the award?
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Calcutta Volcano
Byline by M.J. Akbar: Calcutta Volcano
A democracy does not eliminate alibis, but it certainly reduces them. There is a thin line between anger and violence, but that line is drawn very clearly in a free nation. Because democracy provides so much unique space for anger, it demands that its citizens do not cross that line.
Calcutta’s Muslims crossed that line on Wednesday, during their protests against the presence of Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen in Bengal, and the publication of an article about her that they considered unacceptable.
Indian Muslims have much to be angry about. Some reasons are genuine, but some continue to be byproducts of that siege mentality that crept into the consciousness of the community at the beginning of the 19th century and has not quite left two hundred years later. This perhaps is why Indian Muslims sometimes forget that they also have a great deal to celebrate in their country, not the least of them being that their identity has found a powerful place in Indian democracy.
Indian Muslims are the only Muslims in the world to have enjoyed more than five decades of uninterrupted, unconditional, adult franchise democracy. They remain marginalised economically, but the polity has empowered them vigorously. In large and decisive states like Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh they control the swing of the electoral pendulum. They constitute 27% of the population of Bengal, but I suspect that they add up to more than 30% of the vote since they vote in larger numbers, which is excellent. If there is any tendency to become smug, all they have to do is take a look to the right and left, towards fellow Muslims who created separate nations in the name of liberation, first from India (in 1947) and then from Pakistan (in 1971).
Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh have achieved independence, but they have not found the freedom that should have come with it. Their freedom has been patchy. They have been imprisoned not by foreigners but their own elites, and subjugated by their armed forces who have distorted patriotism to seize power and institutionalise dictatorship. Pakistani Muslims today thirst for a democracy that Indian Muslims take for granted.
This, and it is important to stress it, is not a special favour to Indian Muslims. They have as much right to liberty as any other Indian. Democracy does not belong to any faith. Equally, no particular faith is synonymous with democracy. Islam did not make Pakistan a natural democracy; nor did Hinduism turn Nepal into one. Buddhism has not ensured democracy in Burma; its generals bow and bow and still remain autocrats in uniform. India is unique because of the ideology that won it freedom from the British: a commitment to multi-cultural equality and a celebration of the unequivocal rights of individual and collective liberty. But that freedom is not a licence to hysteria. Crowds have the right to gather, people have the right to be heard, but they have no right to descend into a mob. The means of protest also determines the degree of its acceptability.
What bands of Muslims did in Calcutta was, therefore, unacceptable. It is curious that, for a variety of seemingly unrelated reasons, a city that has enjoyed peace for three decades under Marxist rule is beginning to rumble dangerously. How many volcanoes have begun to smoke in its alleys? How many explosions will erupt and how much lava will flow through its urban ranges? The anger of one community, Muslims, is only a part of the story.
The causes of Calcutta’s periodic outbursts are both visible and invisible. In the last instance there may have been festering fury against provocative remarks in a magazine article, and the presence of a writer. This is information at the news level. But an unknown, or barely-known, "minority" organisation cannot manufacture such a corrosive event unless it had succeeded in stoking the embers of many hidden fires. All you have to do is take a look at the inner city of Calcutta, by far the poorest part of the metropolis and populated almost entirely by Muslims. The young Muslims of Bengal, whether Bengali or Bihari, are feeling totally alienated from economic growth. Worse, no one has time to draw any kind of route map for their aspirations. It is as if because they have been permitted to survive and vote, they do not deserve anything more. They’ve got a life, why do they need a job?
The political class is either patronising, indifferent, exploitative or hostile. The code is not difficult: each one of those terms is applicable to one mainstream party or the other. The only adjective they could easily share is "exploitative". The BJP, which does not get the Muslim vote, is either indifferent or hostile. The Congress, Left and the "secular" regional forces treat Muslims as election fodder that can be mass-produced by an appeal to the mosque, or the manipulation of the mosque leadership. The political parties have no interest in encouraging genuine leadership capable of guiding the community’s young through their problem towards that degree of hope which is rising as the Indian economy surges forward. The Muslims play an infinitesimal part in this "economic miracle". The cynicism of the Congress is acute. The Planning Commission, which is part of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s area of interest, has just rejected a comprehensive sub-plan for Muslim welfare as part of the Eleventh Plan, while approving similar plans for Dalits and Adivasis. No reasons have been offered for this partisan decision. How should Muslims react? By falling at the feet of the government? Don’t wait for it; it won’t happen.
Why should the mainstream parties wring their hands in hypocritical despair when mavericks or fire-breathers occupy the space that they have left vacant? Older Muslims may be tired or resigned, but the young are angry and volatile. We have seen but a glimpse of this volatility in Calcutta or Nandigram. It is only the beginning of a process that could become a horror story.
How do we prevent a pool of anger from becoming a cesspool of violence?
The silliest diagnosis would be to treat it as merely a law and order problem. The Army marched through Calcutta’s streets last week; the last time it did so was in 1992, when a sudden spike of fear shook the city after the demolition of the Babri mosque. Fifteen years have passed between the two events. A child born on 6 December 1992 could easily have been a member of the mob in November 2007.
Is it only the child who is at fault?
1992 came and went; once calm returned, those in power confused it with peace. For fifteen years that child has watched India turning into someone else’s paradise on the flickering screen of a street corner television set. No one has sent him an entry ticket to that paradise. He has not even been allowed to smell the flavour of the gate. No one has shown him a future to which he could belong. He has been told, implicitly, to content himself with squalor while others on the same level as him have begun to take tentative steps towards new horizons. How long would it be before the temptation to slash and burn seized him?
India’s opportunity lies in democracy; India’s solutions lie in economic growth. It is dangerous to provide the first and deny the second.
A democracy does not eliminate alibis, but it certainly reduces them. There is a thin line between anger and violence, but that line is drawn very clearly in a free nation. Because democracy provides so much unique space for anger, it demands that its citizens do not cross that line.
Calcutta’s Muslims crossed that line on Wednesday, during their protests against the presence of Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen in Bengal, and the publication of an article about her that they considered unacceptable.
Indian Muslims have much to be angry about. Some reasons are genuine, but some continue to be byproducts of that siege mentality that crept into the consciousness of the community at the beginning of the 19th century and has not quite left two hundred years later. This perhaps is why Indian Muslims sometimes forget that they also have a great deal to celebrate in their country, not the least of them being that their identity has found a powerful place in Indian democracy.
Indian Muslims are the only Muslims in the world to have enjoyed more than five decades of uninterrupted, unconditional, adult franchise democracy. They remain marginalised economically, but the polity has empowered them vigorously. In large and decisive states like Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh they control the swing of the electoral pendulum. They constitute 27% of the population of Bengal, but I suspect that they add up to more than 30% of the vote since they vote in larger numbers, which is excellent. If there is any tendency to become smug, all they have to do is take a look to the right and left, towards fellow Muslims who created separate nations in the name of liberation, first from India (in 1947) and then from Pakistan (in 1971).
Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh have achieved independence, but they have not found the freedom that should have come with it. Their freedom has been patchy. They have been imprisoned not by foreigners but their own elites, and subjugated by their armed forces who have distorted patriotism to seize power and institutionalise dictatorship. Pakistani Muslims today thirst for a democracy that Indian Muslims take for granted.
This, and it is important to stress it, is not a special favour to Indian Muslims. They have as much right to liberty as any other Indian. Democracy does not belong to any faith. Equally, no particular faith is synonymous with democracy. Islam did not make Pakistan a natural democracy; nor did Hinduism turn Nepal into one. Buddhism has not ensured democracy in Burma; its generals bow and bow and still remain autocrats in uniform. India is unique because of the ideology that won it freedom from the British: a commitment to multi-cultural equality and a celebration of the unequivocal rights of individual and collective liberty. But that freedom is not a licence to hysteria. Crowds have the right to gather, people have the right to be heard, but they have no right to descend into a mob. The means of protest also determines the degree of its acceptability.
What bands of Muslims did in Calcutta was, therefore, unacceptable. It is curious that, for a variety of seemingly unrelated reasons, a city that has enjoyed peace for three decades under Marxist rule is beginning to rumble dangerously. How many volcanoes have begun to smoke in its alleys? How many explosions will erupt and how much lava will flow through its urban ranges? The anger of one community, Muslims, is only a part of the story.
The causes of Calcutta’s periodic outbursts are both visible and invisible. In the last instance there may have been festering fury against provocative remarks in a magazine article, and the presence of a writer. This is information at the news level. But an unknown, or barely-known, "minority" organisation cannot manufacture such a corrosive event unless it had succeeded in stoking the embers of many hidden fires. All you have to do is take a look at the inner city of Calcutta, by far the poorest part of the metropolis and populated almost entirely by Muslims. The young Muslims of Bengal, whether Bengali or Bihari, are feeling totally alienated from economic growth. Worse, no one has time to draw any kind of route map for their aspirations. It is as if because they have been permitted to survive and vote, they do not deserve anything more. They’ve got a life, why do they need a job?
The political class is either patronising, indifferent, exploitative or hostile. The code is not difficult: each one of those terms is applicable to one mainstream party or the other. The only adjective they could easily share is "exploitative". The BJP, which does not get the Muslim vote, is either indifferent or hostile. The Congress, Left and the "secular" regional forces treat Muslims as election fodder that can be mass-produced by an appeal to the mosque, or the manipulation of the mosque leadership. The political parties have no interest in encouraging genuine leadership capable of guiding the community’s young through their problem towards that degree of hope which is rising as the Indian economy surges forward. The Muslims play an infinitesimal part in this "economic miracle". The cynicism of the Congress is acute. The Planning Commission, which is part of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s area of interest, has just rejected a comprehensive sub-plan for Muslim welfare as part of the Eleventh Plan, while approving similar plans for Dalits and Adivasis. No reasons have been offered for this partisan decision. How should Muslims react? By falling at the feet of the government? Don’t wait for it; it won’t happen.
Why should the mainstream parties wring their hands in hypocritical despair when mavericks or fire-breathers occupy the space that they have left vacant? Older Muslims may be tired or resigned, but the young are angry and volatile. We have seen but a glimpse of this volatility in Calcutta or Nandigram. It is only the beginning of a process that could become a horror story.
How do we prevent a pool of anger from becoming a cesspool of violence?
The silliest diagnosis would be to treat it as merely a law and order problem. The Army marched through Calcutta’s streets last week; the last time it did so was in 1992, when a sudden spike of fear shook the city after the demolition of the Babri mosque. Fifteen years have passed between the two events. A child born on 6 December 1992 could easily have been a member of the mob in November 2007.
Is it only the child who is at fault?
1992 came and went; once calm returned, those in power confused it with peace. For fifteen years that child has watched India turning into someone else’s paradise on the flickering screen of a street corner television set. No one has sent him an entry ticket to that paradise. He has not even been allowed to smell the flavour of the gate. No one has shown him a future to which he could belong. He has been told, implicitly, to content himself with squalor while others on the same level as him have begun to take tentative steps towards new horizons. How long would it be before the temptation to slash and burn seized him?
India’s opportunity lies in democracy; India’s solutions lie in economic growth. It is dangerous to provide the first and deny the second.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)