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Any Questions?
At
a time when the dumbed down media is rushing to fit every happening,
every community, every event into a stereotype, and Muslims all over
the world are being seared by this approach, we bring you this
brilliant piece by one of the most perceptive of Indian journalists.
As Sikhs, we too have suffered first hand from this mentality
of slotting communities. “I know what it feels like to be called a
Sikh terrorist,” bemoaned India’s Prime Minister recently. We even
know what it feels like to know that innocents were killed because
their corpses were needed to trade off the identities of others and
get bravery rewards. A few years down the line, dictionaries in India
will define an encounter as something ‘fake’.
%20of%20Merc%20with%20bomb.jpg) Is the world under siege by Muslims or are Muslims under siege by
the world?
Now that the last hope of liberals, Indian Muslims, seem to have
joined this world in Glasgow, or perhaps the world has reached their
doorstep through Australia, the question has shifted yet further
from an answer. Are we in that dark penumbra of history when the
only response to a question is more questions?
Let me unburden myself of the one at the top of my mind. Which of
the two is more self-defeating — the bruised breast of a
self-flagellating Indian liberal who moans that all certainty has
collapsed ever since Kafeel Ahmed drove a flaming Jeep Cherokee into
Glasgow airport, or the crude fist of the zealot who gloats that you
can put the Muslim anywhere but you cannot change his fundamental
fanatic character? On consideration, the first is the bigger problem
if only because nothing better could be expected from the second.
Both positions are based on the same fallacy. They lay the sins of a
few upon the head of the community.
Must all Indian Muslims be punished with collective guilt because a
Kafeel or a Shakeel, provoked by memories and images that could
easily range from Babri to Basra, has chosen to vent his rage
through unacceptable violence upon innocents? Do we blame Hinduism
or Hindus for the malevolence of those who killed and terrorised
Muslims in Gujarat five years ago? We do not, and must not. Is there
any reason why Muslims converge so easily into a category? A related
question: how Indian is the Indian who has left India? Think about
the nuances before jumping into that dangerous pit called a
conclusion.
Those of us who live in India, and have worked through the snide
insults of the Sixties, the jeers of the Seventies, the doubts of
the Eighties, the despair of the Nineties to arrive at the rising
confidence of this decade have a right to some marginal satisfaction
at our nation’s achievement. We have no right to be smug, though, as
long as half a billion Indians go to sleep hungry, perhaps even
famished. Our social fabric has strengthened, but is still
vulnerable to wear and tear. The immediate future is going to be as
difficult as the past, as the guns of Naxalites constantly remind
us. But there is a question: is India of the 21st century
only as strong as its weakest link?
If that is true then there is something untenable about the
structure of success.
Cause and effect are such troublesome concepts. Which comes first?
That is only the beginning of another round of questions. Cause and
effect mutate, then interlink and spawn bastard progeny. In Iraq,
George Bush has trapped America in the coils of linkages that have
now escaped the limitations of logic.
Five years ago, there was only one terrorist in Iraq: Saddam
Hussein. He terrorised his people, perhaps the worst form of
terrorism. There was one reason for anger five years ago. Who can
count how many reasons jostle for attention in a young person’s mind
after four years of war, mayhem and occupation? Four million Iraqis
have been displaced; the demographic equivalent in India would be
more than 200 million uprooted. That is the scale of the human
disaster. No one has an accurate count of the Iraqi dead. Bush
spends a quarter million dollars a minute on just the war in Iraq.
Read that again, it isn’t a mistake: a quarter million dollars every
minute. That bill doesn’t include the costs in Afghanistan. Even the
British appetite for Bush has ebbed, with a Cabinet minister saying
that British policy will not be joined at the hip to Washington.
British casualties are now approaching the rate suffered in the
Second World War. And only 22% of Iraqis support the presence of
Anglo-American troops.
Whatever the cause, such are the effects. As Paul Wood, defence
correspondent
for British television’s Today programme, said on Friday, "Who wants
to be the last man to die for a lost cause?"
A newspaper is life distilled into still life. If the siege we
mentioned is global, then perhaps a good checkpoint is a global
newspaper through which we might ponder the mysteries of cause and
effect.
The top of the front page of the 12 July edition is a moving
photograph of a woman, her head bowed beyond sight, her tears hidden
in the cusp of an anguished hand, sobbing on the coffin of a lost
son or husband, one of the over 8,000 Muslims massacred by Serbs in
Srebrenica twelve years ago, during the ethnic cleansing that began
on 11 July 1995. They have just identified a fresh lot of 465
victims. Where is one of the principal leaders of this genocide, a
mass murderer called General Ratko Mladic? If you want to chat with
him, down at the nearest cafe. If you are the European Union or
America, then he becomes invisible. He cannot be found.
Below this picture is the story of Lal Masjid, a citadel of
paranoia, xenophobia and terrorism masquerading as a mosque and
madrasa. There are no Christians or Serbs in this battle in
Pakistan, which has taken at least a hundred lives. This is a war
between different attitudes to faith. And this is proof that
terrorism is a fire that can also burn the hand of those who feed
it.
To the left of this picture is a story about Wolfgang Schauble,
Germany’s top security official, a heavyweight in Angela Merkel’s
Cabinet. He is demanding the detention of potential terrorists in
Germany and the extermination (death, in simpler language) of their
leaders outside Germany. Schauble, but naturally, will determine the
definitions of "potential" and "leaders". He will not send anyone to
exterminate General Ratko Mladic. He is on the lookout for Lebanese
Muslims.
Turn the page. A suicide bomber kills 10,wounds 35 at a military
camp in Algeria. Turkey complains about American arms in the
possession of Kurdish secessionists. In Britain, four young Muslims,
in their 20s, who "very nearly" succeeded in another outrage on the
London Tube two years ago, are sentenced to forty years’
imprisonment at the very minimum. What will Iraq be like when they
emerge from jail in 2045? Which passions will remain unspent four
decades later?
Is the world under siege? Are Muslims under siege? If you know the
answer, go collect your Nobel Prize for Peace, or at least an
invitation to a seminar in Europe. To me, six of one looks
suspiciously like half a dozen of the other.
(Courtesy The Asian Age)
18 July, 2007
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