7 - 13 March 2002
Issue No.576
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 7 - 13 March 2002 Issue No.576 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Out of the rubble
As India recovers from a spate of religious massacres, Gamal Nkrumah talks to Indian officials, who say that the situation can still be salvaged
February ended on a particularly grim note in India. The country's secular establishment has been at a loss to explain the barbarity of the violence which gripped the western state of Gujarat last week. The country's apologists, however, are still arguing that Indian democracy is not yet in danger.
Espousing the ugliest brand of religious bigotry and jingoistic xenophobia -- especially as far as Pakistan is concerned -- Hindu chauvinists have embarked on a murderous terror campaign against Indian Muslims that threatens to rip South Asia apart if not quickly contained.
A trainload of Hindu zealots returning from the disputed Babri mosque site in Ayodhya on 28 February was massacred by a Muslim mob, triggering a rash of religious massacres not experienced for many years in South Asia. The unfortunate incident put India's traditionally warm relations with Arab and Muslim nations to the test, as editorials resoundingly condemned the backlash.
In the aftermath of the Gujarat riots, Hindu fundamentalists are using the train incident as a pretext for retaliation -- literally a licence to kill and bully Muslims into submission. The Indian army was dispatched to quell the violence and maintain public order in the worst-affected areas of Gujarat.
Amongst Indian officials, a crisis of confidence has ensued. The bastion of democracy in Asia is under tremendous pressure to prove its mettle.
In the wake of the riots, which have left at least 500 dead, the militant Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) declared its intention to go ahead and build a Hindu temple on the rubble of the historic Babri mosque, demolished by Hindu hard-liners in 1992, signalling more trouble and carnage ahead.
Ominously, some Indian officials -- especially militant members of parliament representing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party -- could barely suppress their sympathy with the vengeful sentiments of fundamentalist Hindus. India's hardline Interior Minister L K Advani, whose parliamentary constituency is Gujarat's commercial capital Ahmedabad, stressed the need to track down members of the suspected Islamist group which carried out the train massacre. Pessimists predict that the worst scenarios have yet to unfold.
In an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, India's Ambassador to Egypt Satnam Jit Singh dismissed such speculation as hogwash. "It is only the extremist fringe of various communities that is responsible for stoking communal hatred and trouble," he argued.
"The survival of any pluralistic society such as India's can be ensured only by eschewing extremism and religious fanaticism. The sectarian strife in Gujarat once again establishes how important it is to follow secular policies at both governmental and social levels."
If there are any lessons to be drawn from the entire sordid episode, it is that "politicising any religion always has a very high cost in terms of economic progress and social stability," Singh told the Weekly.
The ambassador then allocated some of the blame across the border, warning against the influx of militant anti-secularist ideas and ideologically- motivated infiltrators from Pakistan.
"The increasing intolerance by Hindu extremist elements towards the Muslim community is also a reaction to the policy of compulsive hostility and the sponsorship of terrorism followed by Pakistan towards India," he claimed.
Worried Indian authorities are stepping up efforts to contain the tense situation by blocking access to the disputed Babri mosque site, Singh said.
Indeed, security has been tightened all over India of late. The country is still reeling from 13 December's attack on the Indian parliament building in New Delhi and January's bombing of the US Consulate in Calcutta.
"There are external forces that neither believe in nor practice secularism. India's democratic secularism is anathema to them and its success is perceived as their own failure. These forces are determined to do their best to weaken Indian secularism and give it a bad name. Fomenting communal tensions in India and keeping the country locked up in civilian turmoil has become all the more important for such forces, since the global focus on terrorism has made their task of destabilising the country by sponsoring terrorism difficult," Singh said.
Indian officials, secure in the knowledge that the US is supporting them, say Pakistan-based groups had a hand in the New Delhi and Calcutta attacks, and that Pakistan created militant groups (such as the Taliban) to serve its interests in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
Delhi now fears such groups are being deployed in India to incite communal violence. Singh stressed that part of the reason that Gujarat was communally sensitive was its geographical contiguity with Pakistan. "External forces and their domestic [adjutants] exploit socio-economic tensions and dissatisfaction, arising out of competing demands for limited economic opportunities, to instigate the people and ignite the atmosphere," Singh said, in a thinly-veiled reference to Pakistan and its alleged local Indian protégés.
India, with an estimated 150 million Muslims, has the second largest Muslim community in the world after Indonesia. Establishment members of India's Muslim community -- frequently dismissed as government lackeys by more militant members of the community -- are now distancing themselves from the so-called "jihadi mafia" and carefully avoiding being embroiled in political controversy. They say they are Indian and they are Muslim, and they see no contradiction between the two.
"Women and children died in the train attack. It was sad. We have little in common with the Muslims who carried out the massacre," Nejma Heptulla, Deputy Chairwoman of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament, told the Weekly. "Islam doesn't sanction such terror," she continued. "It triggered a brutal backlash. Feelings are running high at the moment and the situation is explosive.
"The terrible divide is there to stay for some time," she added. "Such hatred cannot subside quickly. It takes a long time to build mutual trust and confidence, and unfortunately it does not take much to break the confidence -- a few such violent incidents are sufficient to stoke the fires of hatred and revenge.
"We [Indian Muslims] must not be easily provoked. We must not play into the hands of extremists -- both Muslim and Hindu."
Heptulla, a veteran Muslim politician from the opposition Congress Party, said that restraint and patience were necessary preconditions for healing the wounds still fresh in people's minds. "It is easy to spark a fire, but it is difficult to extinguish it. My country is passing through a very difficult phase. The fabric of society is extremely fragile, and the healing process will take time."
Over the past few months, India has dispatched officials to Arab countries to "explain its position" and reaffirm old ties. Heptulla has recently returned from what she described as a "successful tour" of three Arab countries -- Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
The Gujarat riots coincide with a visit to Cairo by a high-level delegation from the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for talks with the Arab League. New Delhi is sensitive about Arab media commentators drawing parallels between violence against Indian Muslims in India and the Israeli crackdown on the Palestinian intifada.
The delegation met Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, Mostafa El-Fiki, chairman of the foreign relations committee of the People's Assembly, and senior Egyptian foreign ministry officials. Members of the visiting delegation declared their support for the recommendations of the Mitchell report and the Tenet Plan. New Delhi endorses an independent Palestinian state, in accordance with United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338.
"There is no strategic cooperation between India and Israel. There cannot be. Our perspectives are entirely different," Singh said.
"Our support for the fulfilment of Palestinian national aspirations is a key element of our foreign policy. There is no cooperation on the ground between India and Israel to fight terrorism. Occasionally, however, we have had dialogue on the subject at the conceptual level. We have a similar dialogue on the subject with countries like the US, the UK, France and Canada. We have also been discussing this subject in bilateral consultations with a number of Arab countries, including Egypt.
"Pakistan and Israel are the only two states in the world founded on, and justified by, religion," he added. "They have far more in common than first meets the eye."
The Vice Chancellor of Delhi's Jamia Milia Islamia University, Professor Sayed Shahid Mahdi, has appealed for national unity and communal harmony. "We, India's Muslims, live under a secular Constitution which best guarantees our rights, well-being and survival as a minority," Professor Mahdi told the Weekly. "A majority of India's Muslims abhor religious militancy and violence."
He noted that Muslims in India have attained some of the highest political and socio-economic positions in the land. India's richest man, the hi-tech mogul Azim Pramji, is a Muslim, Mahdi said. He also cited Zakir Hussein, who was the vice chancellor of the Jamia Milia Islamia University for 27 years and went on to become the president of India.
The delegation's visit came as concern mounts in the Arab world about India's alleged opportunistic attempts to use the US-led war against terrorism to clamp down on Kashmiri separatists and its own Muslim minorities. Arab media analysis has drawn parallels between Israeli atrocities against Palestinians and the allegedly brutal suppression of Kashmir's separatist movement by India.
"Comparing Kashmir with Palestine is the biggest disservice to the Palestinian cause," claimed Ambassador Singh. "As pointed out by none other than President Hosni Mubarak himself, there is no parallel between Kashmir and Palestine," he said.
"It is surprising that there are opinion-makers in Egypt who wish to continue supporting terrorist elements by making such statements, even when Egypt itself, like India, has suffered from terrorism for so long," he added.
Addressing those sympathetic to Kashmir's secessionist movement, Singh remarked, "Unlike Palestinians, whose land is occupied by Israel, and many of them have been expelled from their homes, most Kashmiris are living in the land of their forefathers. They have full opportunities to use their language, to promote their culture, to practise their religion and to run their own administrative and economic affairs."
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page