DR. S. AUSAF SAIED VASFI analyses the cool and calculated inaction on the part of the UPA government in its response to Justice Liberhan Commission of Inquiry Report, concludes that the government is merely hoodwinking the Muslim minority, and calls upon the Muslim leadership to realise its moral obligation today, right now.
By the time these lines appear in print, yet another excruciating anniversary of the well-planned demolition of the Babri Masjid, on December 6, 1992, would have, hopefully passed off, without any untoward incident.
The Indian Muslim leadership is of the concerted, unanimous view that taking the law into hands proves counterproductive and only adds to the beleaguered community’s multifarious problems. A legal battle is already on and may continue to remain so, simply because the government – the situation is such – perhaps does not like to afford a clear-cut, pro-justice verdict. That is plural Bharat’s mindboggling tragedy.
The Muslim minority has unflinching faith in God, the Almighty. It reposes unshakable trust in Judiciary, the Supreme Court, the highest palladium of justice. Muslims must observe patience and show forbearance. This is not the end of the day. If a purblind section of the present generation of our brethren, belonging to the majority community, refuses to see reason, their great and great-grand children may. It has happened umpteen times in world history. Recall the circumstances and the manner in which the Last Prophet (may Allah bless and greet him) had returned from Taif.
COINCIDENCE
This sad anniversary has almost coincided with the tabling of the Liberhan Commission of Inquiry Report in Parliament. This report, spread over 1000 pages, cost the national exchequer a cool Rs. 8 crore. The panel sought and got 48 extensions. But what Justice Liberhan has said was common knowledge since the “historic” destruction, 17 years ago at Ayodhya. The Mosque was brought down in Sunday sunlight, not twilight or light, brick by brick which took eight hours. Hundreds of media persons, armed with cameras, were there. Their CDs are available even today. It was not dynamites that felled the House of God. The crowbars and shovels did the job. During these hours, then Prime Minister and Home Minister remained vegetated. Muslim Parliamentarians except Mr. M.J. Akbar saw their future in ‘strategic silence’.
The most remarkable point of the Report is that it does not recommend punishment to the guilty. So, like a moral leper, does the Action Taken Report (ATR), prepared by the Manmohan Singh-led government, which finding itself isolated and on the defensive on the important issue, latter on promised filing of fresh FIRs after investigation by the police. Whom are you hoodwinking, Congressmen? The political commentators have already described the Action Taken Report as inaction taken report. Mr Justice Srikrishna has described it as an exercise in suppressio veri, if not suggestio falsi.
EYEWASH
Beyond any shred of doubt, the ATR is yet another attempt at eyewash in addition to the earlier whitewash. According to the popular perception, the powers-that-be, consciously or unconsciously want to institutionalise injustice. One cannot but painfully recall here Mc Master’s famous quote: “The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.”
We add: It cannot be done by the living-dead. What however the living-dead are forgetting is we live in a democracy. By 2011-12 four states are going to the hustings. The living-dead are bound to face the music at that crucial time.
CULPRITS DEFIANT
What is to be noted for the time being and, perhaps for ever, is that the culprit, the Saffron, far from being apologetic for what it did, is defiant and rebellious. None of the guilty feels slapped after the Report. Each and every person of the horde still aspires for a resplendent temple at the site of the Babri Masjid. Not only that, the various warring factions of the brotherhood are now rallying around the butt of ridicule Mr L.K. Advani, who was about to retire after the sustained pressure of the RSS, which too now finds no alternative to the firebrand, who in reaction to the Report, has said: “Though distressed by the demolition, I am proud of my association with the Ram Mandir movement.” Mr. Advani added: His life’s ambition is a “bhavya Ram mandir” or grand Ram temple at Ayodhya. Others of his ilk are also in battle dress. They, once again, want to play the temple card. Would they get the audience? Their common sense is on trial.
PILLARS WITH IMAGES
Here what has to be especially noted is that the word Hindutva understandably appears attractive to an average Hindu, even to a judge of the Supreme Court, who saw no sinister connotations in it but just a way of life. The Liberhan Report is however an indictment of the controversial dogma. Any arguments?
Justifying the case of the destruction of the mosque, another firebrand Ms Uma Bharti said during a TV chat last week that some mosques’ pillars with the images of Hindu gods and goddesses tell the story of the Muslim destruction of Hindu temples.
At this point we are inclined to feel that Ms Bharti has perhaps read the history written by short story or novel writers like P.N. Oak. The sooner this fallacious but pernicious thinking vanishes into thin air the better for multi-religious Bharat. We also feel that Muslim historians, in this regard, have failed to do justice to their job. It was not only professional but their moral duty also to undo the history which, in fact, is not history but a facade of a fertile imagination. What Ms. Bharti has said is pure falsehood.
With the strength of the entire confidence at our command, we assert such story tellers are wrong on facts, and fiction cannot be taken as fact. What happened during the 800-year Muslim rule over India is that as a result of Muslim sufis’ proselytisation and their human approach towards the downtrodden, hundreds of thousands of Hindus embraced Islam in the four nooks and corners of Bharat. In many cases the whole villages turned to Islam. This en bloc conversion made the Hindu temples redundant. The neo-converts, finding them unnecessary, transformed their former places of worship into mosques. That is why we find columns, having images of Hindu gods and goddesses on some pillars in mosques.
May we remind that this was the thesis of the first Home Minister of India, the late lamented Dr. Syed Mahmood.
ANOTHER ASPECT
Another important aspect of this thesis is that the acts of tyranny committed by Muslims against the Hindus were not the ones committed by those Muslims who had got Islam in legacy. It was the neo-converts who still remembered the institutionalised operation of the caste Hindus against the lower castes, who unfortunately retaliated against the oppressors after the conversion to Islam, which is, and was absolutely indefensible. Those who maliciously cast aspersions on the integrity of the Muslims of the yore, for destroying their temples, would do well to find a copy of this thesis and get enlightened on the subject. We insist upon it because ignorance does not behove the leaders of a great democracy as India is.
As far as the conscious, deliberate and well-planned inaction against the accused is concerned, let the sober Muslim leadership think in terms of widening the area of their concern. Let them think in terms of challenging the government inaction, in the garb of action, in a court of law. Let the Congress-led UPA dispensation justify legally and morally its paralysis of will and inertia.
Secondly, the brain behind this studied inertia and planned paralysis of will and cool and calculated inaction should be fully exposed by media before and during the State Assembly elections in 2011-12 in UP, Bihar, West Bengal and Kerala – the States which have the highest minority population in plural Bharat. The minority vote holds the key to the future of the Congress. Let Muslims realise their moral obligation today, right now. In UP alone they constitute more than 14 per cent. Let this aggrieved percentage speak up not only in UP but in other Muslim majority States also.