Sunday,
July 06, 2014
India,
Muslims and Khilafat
With the coming to power of Modi
with a very comfortable majority at the center, India could be on the threshold
of a new era with the Idea of India taking a distinct turn towards a rightist
Hindutva ideological formulation.
In the comity of nations India will
appear to be charting a new course that has yet to unfold the full flavor of
its supposedly cherished ideals and aspirations deeply drawn from its distant
past of continuous experimentation with spiritual and temporal affairs.
However, the most visibly obvious
challenge that its Hindutva ideology faces is its undeniable confrontation with
Islam and Muslims that has robbed it of any originality that the world could
look forward to.
Unlike Nehru, who had drawn a silk
curtain around India and isolated the nation to give it a breathing space and
develop the fundamentals of its new independent social and economic status
while keeping it non-aligned in world affairs; Modi's government is finding
itself in the very vortex of conflicting pulls of forces that is not offering
any respite to pause and develop its own course of short term and longer term
priorities.
The worst part is that its top
leadership is very rapidly getting out of touch with its rank and file who were
brought up on their own emotional priorities that do not gel with the
challenges faced by the new government.
From the Hindutva ideology, honed
for over a century now, take out its hatred of Muslims, their history in India,
and there potential to dominate any plural society with their distinct and well–established
religious and social profile, and the entire edifice of Hindutva collapses.
The big challenge therefore for the
new Hindutva government is how to go out in the open world with its anti-Muslim
baggage.
Of course, it has support of the
West and Israelis who are more or less committed to accommodate the new India
on the highest tables of the world affairs. However, India cannot afford to be
independent as well as dependent on the West for its survival as a proud and
confident nation.
To compound the trials and
tribulations, it is now faced with international challenges that directly pitch
it against the same adversary that it has supposed to have licked to be able to
come to power.
From Afghanistan, Pakistan and now
Iraq, Modi's anti-Muslim reputation is creating more open adversaries than
friends that a new government would love to cultivate.
For merely under 50
nurses held up in the newly occupied areas of Iraq, by ‘Islamic State’ or ISIS,
India went through an agonizing fortnight, reliving the old Kandahar hijack
saga, with media virtually loading its news with war hysteria language. In
future, how we will deal with millions in the Gulf, if things go wrong with the
monarchies of the peninsula. The new diehards are openly critical of India’s
role against its Muslim minority. They would not need any signal one way or
another to make a pretext of holding India to ransom for acts of commission and
omission.
Afghanistan will be another headache
in not distant future. If Indian leaders feel that the Western alliance and
Israel will stand by it in any untoward happening in the region, it must be realized
that their own problems with the Muslim hotheads are not yet under control, to
be able to come to aid of India. Instead, they would like to drag India in
their own imbroglio, whether India is willing or not.
With such unsavory climes engulfing
the future of the area, the new announcement of a new Caliph, for whatever it
is worth, will not be something India can possibly ignore.
With map making, being the cursor of
threats, the entire Indian subcontinent being mapped as ‘Khurasan’ of the
historical reference, is very unsettling and would require Modi government to
deeply review its future course in dealing with both propaganda as well as
symbolic disruptions that may leave India helpless and at the mercy of others
that will not always forgo demanding their pound of flesh.
The swiftness, with which ISIS had
spread out and captured territory in Iraq, cannot be so easy as it appears to
be. Somebody is playing double game. And those masters of double game can
always be there to attend to India, if that fits their national interest.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
