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The Raging Guha-Mander Debate Deserves Wider Participation

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7 years ago

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The Raging Guha-Mander Debate Deserves Wider Participation

~By Saeed Naqvi

It does not surprise me that the continuing debate on the Op-Ed page of the Indian Express on the Muslim predicament skirts fundamental issues. The debate has been triggered by Ramchandra Guha disagreeing with Harsh Mander on the Muslim question.

Mander’s column, headlined “Sonia, Sadly”, expresses his hurt at Sonia Gandhi’s public expression of fear that the Congress was being perceived as a “Muslim Party”.

In the very first paragraph of his column, Guha plucks out a quote from Mander. “A Dalit leader tells Muslims who come to political meetings: By all means come in large number to our rallies. But don’t come with your skull caps and burkas.”

“Mander is dismayed at this gratuitous attempt to get Muslims to voluntarily withdraw from politics.”  But Guha disagrees with Mander’s interpretation of what the Dalit leader said. Guha is emphatic: “while the words may be harsh and direct, the spirit of the advice was forward looking”, i.e. don’t come in skull caps and burkas.

This, I suspect, is the crux of the matter. Guha is endorsing the new line enunciated by the Congress Party: Keep Muslims at arm’s length just in case the BJP spin doctors pick up this visual to polarize. Rahul Gandhi’s frenetic temple hopping, janeu et al, is in pursuit of this soft saffron.

Apoorvanand, Harbans Mukhia, Mukul Keshavan, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Suhas Palshikar, Irena Akbar, Khalid Ansari, Jawed Naqvi, why, even Mander himself, have all written sensitively, even knowledgably on the subject. But Guha is a class apart: Muslims must give up skull caps and, to balance matters, Hindus their trishuls. His desire to equalize permeates the article. Praveen Togadia and Yogi Adityanath are bad but Guha will have his little orgasm only if Asaduddin Owaisi and Ali Shah Geelani are mentioned in the same breath. Togadia wants Muslims to leave the country. “Occupy their homes” he once famously said in Gujarat. Without batting an eyelid, Yogi heard his cohorts ask for buried Muslim women to be dug out from their graves and raped. Show me a comparable quote from Owaisi or Geelani.

“Yeh ajeeb majra hai ki baroz e Eide qurbaan

Wohi zubah bhi kare hai wohi le sawab ulta”

(Look at the illogical system of the ceremony of sacrifice.

He who slaughters claims the reward for paradise.)

The tragedy is that Guha belongs to the category of people who, because of their celebrity status, imagine that eminence in one field qualifies them to claim proficiency in all the others. His inadequacy on the theme he has rushed into unprepared, derives from a common malaise: he is a creature of uninstitutionalized apartheid which means separate development.

It would be interesting to know if Guha has ever visited Muslim homes or the other way around when he was a child. Did he know Muslims in school or college whose friendship he still values? Even if he is able to blurt out a name or two the undeniable truth will be that he has grown up only with his ilk. He has no experience of Muslims. He is not alone in this category.

A sharp contrast attends my circumstance. I, along with my three brothers grew up only among Hindus. Apartheid therefore didn’t touch us. Since our informal education was continuous since birth, we knew fairly early that Al-Biruni wrote Tarikh al Hind after his extended stay beginning 1017. Moinuddin Chishti, Shahbaz Qalandar and a host of Sufis and Saint poets like Kabir from the 12th to 14th centuries were spreading Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, paving the way for Abdul Rahim Khan-I-Khana who ended up writing the only Sanskrit verses in praise of Lord Rama. In his brilliant Persian poetry in the 17th century, Chandrabhan Brahman felt secure enough to taunt and tease the Muslim clergy.

Yagana Changezi, a 20th century poet, questions a basic tenet: why must namaz be said in a foreign language? If all of this sounds like nostalgia, let me invite you to Lucknow for an evening of spiritual poetry on Ahl al-Bayt or the Prophet’s family. The poet, Sanjaya Mishra, was a favourite with my mother who died three years ago. She had special vegetarian meals prepared for him.

I have shed light on the tiniest strand in the vast expanse of Muslim liberal traditions. Since the 16th century these have been bound up inextricably with the waxing and waning of Urdu in which Hindus and Muslims equally participated. The first great writer of Urdu prose was Pandit Ratan Nath Sarshar.

How many liberals know that  there is not a single couplet in Urdu which praises the Mullah or endorses orthodoxy of any kind.

Did you know that most of the poetry on Krishna, Rama in the last century has been written by Muslims? I will only confuse the issue if I bring in Kazi Nazrul Islam, Salbeg, Bekal Utsahi or Nida Fazli.

It puzzles me why liberal intellectuals sometimes fall prey to a tendency that the politician has cultivated as a calculated habit: consider the Muslim only as a religious category. Why must Muslim achievements in poetry, music, architecture, systems of governance not be celebrated? Such an exercise would surely cast them in a liberal mould. Guha might then heave a sigh of relief.

A false quest for a liberal Muslim leader almost flows from the above approach. A liberal Muslim leader, I never tire of repeating, is a contradiction in terms. That is an illiberal quest. Are we never going to find a Hindu whom Muslims can trust and the other way around? That must be the only possible way ahead.

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Farmers leave protest site on Noida Expressway, police remove barricades

The farmers temporarily shifted their protest to Ambedkar Park but threatened to resume their march towards the national capital, if their demands were not met on time.

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5 hours ago

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December 2, 2024

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Farmers leave protest site on Noida Expressway, police remove barricades

Hundreds of farmers, who gathered for Delhi Chalo march over several demands agreed to vacate the protest site on Monday evening, allowing traffic movements along the Noida-Greater Noida expressway.

Reportedly, after a meeting with the Noida authorities, Bhartiya Kisan Parishad leader Sukhbir Khalifa, who is spearheading the protests, decided to give the Centre a week’s time to fulfill the farmers’ various demands, including a legislation on Minimum Support Prices (MSPs). The protestors temporarily shifted their protest to Ambedkar Park but threatened to resume their march towards the national capital, if their demands were not met on time.

Earlier on Monday, massive traffic snarls caused inconvenience to commuters crossing the Delhi-Noida border, as police set up multiple barricades to avert the farmers from Uttar Pradesh from marching towards the Parliament complex. 

After the farmers’ gathered near the Mahamaya flyover in Noida on Monday afternoon, some of them broke a few barricades and attempted to continue with their march. The protest is being supported by the Kisan Mazdoor Morcha (KMM), the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) and other farmer organisations.

Shivhari Meena, Joint CP Law and Order Noida, Shivhari Meena, told a news agency that the farmers had announced the Delhi Challo march today and they were continuously holding talks with them. She added that the farmers have told their demands to the officials and officials have given them an assurance. 

Additional Commissioner of Police, Eastern Range of Delhi Police,Sagar Singh Kalsi, had told a news agency that owing to farmers’ protest, they have made strong and robust arrangements at all major, minor borders in East Delhi.

Beside a legal guarantee on the MSP, the protesters are demanding farm loan waiver, pension for farmers and farm labourers, no hike in the electricity tariff, withdrawal of police cases and justice for the victims of the 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri violence, reinstatement of the Land Acquisition Act, 2013 and compensation to the families of the farmers who died during a previous agitation in 2020-21.

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Amid Chief Minister suspense, BJP appoints Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, former Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani as central observers for Maharashtra

The oath-taking ceremony for the new government is set for the evening of December 5 at Azad Maidan in Mumbai, with Prime Minister Modi in attendance.

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6 hours ago

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December 2, 2024

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Amid Chief Minister suspense, BJP appoints Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, former Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani as central observers for Maharashtra

The BJP on Monday appointed Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and former Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani as central observers for its legislature meeting in Maharashtra to select its leader. This comes amid ongoing suspense over Maharashtra’s next Chief Minister.

More than a week after the BJP-led NDA, also called Mahayuti, secured a landslide win in the Maharashtra assembly elections, the new government is yet to be sworn in. BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis is expected to be elected as the legislature party leader in a meeting scheduled for December 3. Reportedly, all BJP MLAs have been directed to be present in Mumbai for the event.

In the Assembly Elections, the Mahayuti alliance secured 230 out of 288 assembly seats, with the BJP winning 132 seats, Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena claiming 57, and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP taking 41 seats. The oath-taking ceremony for the new government is set for the evening of December 5 at Azad Maidan in Mumbai, with Prime Minister Modi in attendance.

Notably, the BJP is proceeding cautiously as the aspirations of its allies, especially the Shiv Sena, have risen following the massive election victory. Despite Eknath Shinde’s push for unity within the Mahayuti, some allied leaders have expressed differing views.

Former Union minister and BJP leader Raosaheb Danve said that if the undivided Shiv Sena and BJP had contested the elections together, they would have secured more seats. Shiv Sena MLA Gulabrao Patil also claimed that the Eknath Shinde-led party would have won 90-100 seats had Ajit Pawar’s NCP not been part of the alliance, provoking a strong response from the Ajit Pawar-led party.

The BJP legislature party meeting to elect the leader, who will be the party’s chief ministerial pick, is yet to be held even though Shiv Sena and NCP have elected Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar as their legislature party leaders, respectively. Meanwhile, a senior Mahayuti leader said the allies will jointly decide whether only the Chief Minister and deputy CMs will take oath on December 5 or ministers will also be sworn in.

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Eknath Shinde cancels meetings again, Ajit Pawar flies to Delhi to meet BJP leaders

The Shiv Sena leader did not return to his official residence, Varsha, and had been staying in his native village in Satara over the weekend.

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8 hours ago

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December 2, 2024

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Eknath Shinde cancels meetings again, Ajit Pawar flies to Delhi to meet BJP leaders

The conundrum over finalising the next Maharashtra Chief Minister continues after 10 days as caretaker Chief Minister Eknath Shinde cancelled his meetings today as he was unwell. Earlier on November 29, the Shiv Sena leader cancelled a crucial meeting of Mahayuti, and unexpectedly left for his village in Satara district. Meanwhile, NCP leader Ajit Pawar headed to Delhi to meet with top BJP leadership over government formation.

Reportedly, Eknath Shinde, who was supposed to attend a meeting of Mahayuti leaders to finalise the portfolio allocations, is down with a throat infection and fever. The Shiv Sena leader did not return to his official residence, Varsha, and had been staying in his native village in Satara over the weekend. The meeting is scheduled to be held on Tuesday.

The Mahayuti alliance, comprising the BJP, Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar-led NCP, swept the November 20 Maharashtra Assembly election, winning 230 of 288 seats, the results of which were declared on November 23. The BJP secured a massive 132 seats, while Shinde Sena and NCP’s Ajit Pawar faction got 57 and 41 seats, respectively. Reportedly, Ajit Pawar may discuss the Maharashtra government formation and portfolio allocations with the top BJP leadership in Delhi today.

In another major development, Eknath Shinde’s son and Shiv Sena MP Shrikant Shinde rejected reports of a demand for the Deputy Chief Minister post for him. Shrikant Shinde called the reports baseless rumours and said he was not in any race for any ministerial post in Maharashtra.

His clarification came after speculation arose that he would be considered for the Deputy Chief Minister’s post. Taking to X, Shrikant Shinde wrote that the swearing-in ceremony of the coalition government has been a bit delayed and currently there is a lot of discussion and rumours. He added that caretaker Chief Minister Eknath Shinde went to the village for two days and rested due to ill health, and so the rumours flourished. 

He continued that the news that he will be the Deputy Chief Minister has no truth in it and is baseless. The Shiv Sena MP mentioned that he got the chance to become a Cabinet minister after the NDA’s victory in the Lok Sabha elections and asserted he had no desire for a position in power.

He stated that after the Lok Sabha elections, he had a chance to become a minister in the central government. However, he thought about working for the party and refused the ministerial post even then. He added that he is not in the race for any ministerial position in the state.

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