Pakistan contribution to Indian Muslim

In India, across the Indian Muslim community it is widely accepted now that the partition of India was the biggest blunder that happened. Instead of safeguarding the interests of the Indian Muslims it reduced the ones who continued to live in India to a position of significantly reduced significance. It impacted the most those who needed the biggest safeguards, the poorest of the poor. A significant portion of the educated cream of the Indian Muslim community migrated to Pakistan; some say they chickened out when the push came to shove. Most of the remaining Muslims in India were poor who would be just fighting to make their two ends meet.

The first silver lining in this was that India was formed as a secular and democratic state. The constitution of India recognized that every citizen will be absolutely equal in his rights and will be free to profess, practice and propagate his religion. The goals were set in the clearest way and the struggle was to achieve the goal and not about the goal itself. It has often been a struggle for the Indian Muslims no doubt but the question has not been the constitution but it has been about upholding the spirit of the constitution. The same Nehru who is often held responsible in Pakistan for the inflexibility fought to uphold the secular fabric of India.

The second is the demographics of the country. India is a unique country, one of its kind. It is like Western Europe put together in a single country. That is true whether you compare it in size, population, languages, cultures, cuisines, dress, habits and many other things. This fact itself makes it a land of huge diversity and contradictions unlike any other place in the world. This structure itself demands that people of different backgrounds have different needs in their daily lives. The result of that is the number of players that have emerged in the Indian political structure.

The identities are not Hindu and Muslim so much as the Muslim League would have thought or the BJP wants.

The result of this diversity has been that even after unleashing its whole might and propaganda machinery through RSS its political offshoot the BJP, at its zenith, could never get more than 25% of the votes. It is only in Gujarat that the worst fears of the Muslims have come true. Other than many of the leaders of BJP no political party questions the Muslims about their existential and cultural position. Many political parties acted as ‘messiah’ of the Muslims and paid just lip service yet perhaps no other party other than the exception of BJP pursued harming the interests of the Muslims.

The worst thing that can happen to the Indian Muslims is adding fuel to the propaganda machinery of the right wing. While Indian Muslims have their own weaknesses and moles that are responsible for this but the focus here is only on Pakistan’s contribution.

Firstly, by opposing India being a member of the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC). In 1969, when OIC was formed and India lobbied to be included as it had the third largest Muslim population in the world Pakistan successfully lobbied against it. Pakistan looked at its strategic self-interests and not anything about safeguarding the Indian Muslims otherwise it was a significant move on the part of India to have made that move to be included in the organization as an Islamic country! If Gabon with just 10% Muslims (150,000 Muslim citizens) can be a member, it is a mockery that India with 150 million Muslims and till very recently having the second largest Muslim population on the planet is denied that status. If India was denied significant position vis a vis Muslim countries there was little incentive for her to put the strong feet of her Muslim cultural identity forward and sustain it.

Secondly, the most contentious issue of the way we look at history. The propaganda machinery of the Indian right wing does a great job in picking up all the opinions, lies and rumors against Muslim rulers and paint a picture that the presence of Muslims in India has been the biggest damage and tragedy to the Indian civilization. Whereas invaders like Ghauri and Ghaznavi are understandably condemned even the Mughals who lived in India as their own home are termed as foreigners. While Indian Muslims look at the past as a syncretic culture of great tolerance the Pakistani reading of history is music to the ears of the right wing in India. When Pakistan builds its missile programme it names these weapons as Ghauri, Ghaznavi and Babur as instruments to attack India

This just reiterates the point to every Indian listening to them and reinforcing the deep rooted prejudices.

It matters little to both the sides on this reading of history – of Hindus pitted against Muslims in the medieval ages - that Babur defeated a Muslim Ibrahim Lodhi at Delhi’s throne, Ghauri defeated Prithvi Raj’s army which was led by a Muslim and Ghaznavi had one of his top generals who was a Hindu named Tilak. It also matters little in this reading of history that when Akbar and Maharana Pratap fought at Haldighati then Akbar’s army was led by a Hindu Raja Man Singh and Maharana Pratap’s army was led by a Muslim Hakim Khan Suri. It also matters little in this reading that the Sikh Guru Arjan Dev who was executed by Aurangzeb had the foundation stone of Golden Temple laid by Mian Mir a sufi saint and had included so many sufi songs in the Sikh holy book Guru Granth Sahib. Or that Shivaji who fought with Aurangzeb had a Pathan unit and one of his most trusted aides was Didi Ibrahim, a Muslim and that Aurangzeb sent Raja Jaisingh, a Hindu to fight him. Or that when Babur defeated Rana Sanga at Panipat the latter’s army had around 50,000 Muslim soldiers.

Thirdly, it is the treatment in Pakistan to its minorities. The fuel to the Sangh Parivar is that while the Muslim percentage in India has marginally increased since partition that of Hindus in Pakistan has significantly reduced and they are widely discriminated against at all levels. They say that if Hindu discrimination is so deep in Pakistan then why should Muslims of India claim anything better?

I don’t know about what the social context was in which partition happened but I now know for sure that the leaders who pursued it were shortsighted. Pakistan formed as an ‘Islamic’ country refused to acknowledge the rights of Bangla Muslims and the country split within 25 years. In its sixty years of existence it has been under military rule for a significant portion. The independent presence of judiciary is so impacted that its most famous Prime Ministers are either barred from entering their own country or hanged. A couple of weeks back Dina Wadia (daughter of Jinnah) wanted to spend her last days in Jinnah House in Bombay and not at any place in Pakistan. If today 13% Muslims can impact the political scene in India then definitely about 35% could have never been taken for a ride.

But today let us have bygones be bygones. India needs a strong Pakistan; not as an enemy but as a friendly neighbour. A neighbour that works with India in creating a South Asian super zone similar to the Euro Zone, by looking in the syncretic past and not by picking up twisted irritants from the past. The solution is not by putting Pakistan in contrast to India in everything particularly in identity but in drawing inspiration from the mutual past. Having multi billion dollar budgets to safeguard the borders in countries where still hundreds of millions of its citizens earn less than dollar a day is no way justifiable. Working on projects of recreating national boundaries will not solve anything as we have seen. But peace and respect among the largest ethnic population on the face of the earth can create wonders. It will make life easier for India’s Muslims too as the propaganda machinery of the Sangh Parivar will have lesser fuel to add to the fire.