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SPEAKING
FREELY
Pakistan's debt to Indian Muslims
By Usama Khalidi
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click here if you
are interested in contributing.
Muslims
of India, rather than politicians speaking in their
name, are widely credited for the creation of Pakistan.
That may be a fine distinction, but there is no denying
that Indian Muslims have suffered enormously from the
India-Pakistan antagonism. If Pakistan settles its
quarrels with India now, it would be as much for the
benefit of its own people as, also, a way to make
restitution to Indian Muslims. As an Indian Muslim, I
have a moral right to demand of Pakistan that it resolve
its disputes with India, keeping in mind the welfare of
150 million Indian Muslims.
People of the
sub-continent, of course, had no vote on the country's
division in 1947 on the basis of religion. Mohammed Ali
Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, accepted the basis for
partition: Pakistan in the Muslim majority areas, and
those in the minority situation to remain where they
were. In speeches he made at Aligarh Muslim University,
he had the audacity to urge those Muslims staying behind
in India to help their brethren in the Muslim majority
areas achieve independence from the Hindus, even if they
themselves would not be so fortunate.
The
hardship faced by majority-area residents pales into
insignificance compared to hundreds of thousands of
lives lost during the lethal riots that accompanied mass
migrations in both directions as partition became a
reality. The family of the present Pakistani president,
General Pervez Musharraf, was just one of those moving
to the new Pakistan from India.
Aside from the
agony of divided families, Muslims of India have borne
the stigma of responsibility for the division of the
country in the eyes of their non-Muslim compatriots.
Fortunately, Jawaharlal Nehru, a determined
secularist and a product of India's Hindu-Muslim
composite culture, was at the helm in India for 17 years
after independence. He helped establish the foundations
of a forward looking, secular democracy. Although their
elite classes, as well as large numbers from among the
middle classes, had migrated to Pakistan, the Muslims of
India struggled to find their bearings and take their
place in Indian society.
The Nehruvian vision of
a multicultural and egalitarian India survived the
leader for almost two decades after his death in 1964,
when identity politics took precedence over economic
policy in the competitive electoral system. Security of
life and property never was assured for the Muslims -
recurrent and targeted anti-Muslim riots had killed many
thousands of people in several north Indian urban areas.
But after 1984, the avowedly anti-Muslim, Hindu
nationalist political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party,
came into prominence, and the killings of Muslims
increased. Discrimination in hiring practices, a problem
for all kinds of ethnic minorities in India, was
particularly vicious for Muslims. More and more of them
started to slide into abject poverty.
Compared
with their population of 13 percent, their numbers in
police forces, government and industry have never
exceeded 3 or 4 percent. Their poor performance was
usually explained in terms of the migration of their
elite and middle classes to Pakistan.
The Muslim
situation in India has always been affected by the level
of the long running hostility between India and
Pakistan. During the past decade, Pakistan is widely
believed in India to have used Indian Muslim underworld
figures to plant bombs in Bombay (now Mumbai) and
elsewhere as part of its policy to bleed India. That may
or may not be true, but what is beyond doubt is that
such terrorism provides justification for reckless
Indian politicians to create and play on the fears of
Indian voters. Such a ploy has usually worked in several
populous states where Hindu nationalists have
established their dominance. The 2002 carnage in
Gujarat, where 2,000 Muslims were killed and their
property looted, is the most glaring example of such
fascist tactics.
For most of the 20th century,
Muslims of India never could articulate their own
self-interest as a community, perhaps because they were
not a community with any shared traits other than their
religion. That left the field open to some leaders, such
as Jinnah, representing regional forces, to foist on the
entire population demands that could only benefit a few,
and harm others. In any case, Muslims are spread out
through most of India in concentrations of no more than
20 percent in any state, except Kashmir, where they
constitute a majority. In most regions, they speak the
same language as their neighbors and are culturally
integrated, more or less, with the majority community.
The problem areas are where economic competition has led
to social divisions exacerbated by politicians who play
identity politics to win votes.
It was a
function of their demographics that no Muslim leadership
could emerge to speak for all of the Muslims of India.
Nor do the Muslims have any national institutions of
their own to represent their case.
But things
have changed. A convention of Muslim leaders from across
the country, meeting in Delhi last September, declared
that they regard Kashmir as an indivisible part of
India. About 150 Muslims drawn from universities,
mosques, government and industry signed a consensus
statement affirming their support for Kashmir remaining
with India.
Pakistan cannot expect to gain from
negotiations what it could not wrest from India in three
of the four wars it has fought since 1947. Nor does
acquisition of nuclear weapons help its case. The
hopelessness of Pakistan's goals in the Kashmir dispute
is increasingly clear to Pakistani elite, as evidenced
by frequent articles in their newspapers calling for a
drastic change in their country's India-centered foreign
policy. The country's entire economic and political
structure - indeed, all of its post-independence history
- is underpinned by its fear and hatred of India. Unless
Pakistan makes a clean break from its past - as hinted
at during this week's South Asian Association for
Regional Cooperation summit in Islamabad - the future
will hold for it nothing but more of the same: poverty,
illiteracy, religious fanaticism and dependence on
foreign charity.
A long delayed settlement of
the Kashmir conflict would remove the most important
cause of distortion in the normal political economy of
the entire sub-continent that is home to a billion and a
half souls.
Usama Khalidi is an Indian
Muslim freelance writer based in Washington, DC.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click here if you
are interested in contributing.
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