11-17 March issue of Radiance is peppered with more than one dirge as well as an expression of disgust over the demise, in the Budget, of the hopes based on assurances of fair, even preferential, treatment of Muslims, given by none other than the Prime Minister of the Republic ever since the contents of the Sachar Committee Report were first leaked and then tabled in Parliament.
Observers will not fail to notice that this Budget has also revealed the weakness of the government’s approach inasmuch as it has offered little to the poor both in the countryside as well as in the urban ghettos. At the cost of sounding an incorrigible pessimist, this scribe humbly reminds the readers of Radiance that he has written repeatedly in these very columns that the Congress will not do what it says it will.
Our leaders now owe it to the Indian Muslim Community (IMC) to decide that in future, they will restrain themselves from “innocent delusion” based on assurances they might yet receive from the Congress. In fact, wisdom dictates that they refrain from seeking any assurances from it, leaving it to prove its credentials by actions, rather than words, at its own initiative.
The IMC must now urge such of its leaders as are God-fearing as well as sagacious, that they must come together to form a political party led by themselves, keeping its doors open for constructive Non-Muslims. This party should lead the IMC to jump into the turbulent waters of the Indian socio-political sea and save all, particularly the poor and the wretched, from drowning by helping them to reach ashore using the “secular” principles of Islam as their oars as well as their beacons for the establishment of a righteous and just society in India.
And this is the most important part of the strategy: this party must persuade the IMC to leave the solution of its own problems to God Almighty doing whatever it can, of course, through its own “internal” resources!
Chaudhari Fariduddin Safat,
Kuwait