Islamic India

[BanglaBhoot]

There is growing Islamophobia in India as the BJP’s systematic policy of hate, and terrorism, claimed in the name of Islam, converge. Meanwhile Muslims’ traditional ally, Congress, in power for four years, has done little to address their poverty and disadvantage. So how will they vote in this spring’s national elections?

By Wendy Kristianasen

A week after the Mumbai attacks, the Congress party, which heads the ruling coalition of India, surprised everyone by winning three out of five states, including New Delhi, in partial state elections. Congress seemed tired after four years in power and was reeling after Mumbai and the economic crisis. Yet it prised the important tourist state of Rajasthan from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), even though the BJP was certain it would pick up votes after Mumbai by stressing the government’s security failures. “The BJP put out full-page ads with the word ‘Terror’ in big bold letters with splashes of blood around it and ‘Vote BJP for security’,” said Javed Anand, a writer, activist and secular Muslim. “A lot of people were worried, including us. But the BJP’s hate tactics didn’t work; people voted for bread-and-butter issues.”

That also explained the success of the Dalit (outcast communities) Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which went from 5% in 2003 to 14% on 15 December in New Delhi. It was founded by the charismatic Kumari Mayawati, who became chief minister of Uttar Pradesh (population 170 million) in an unprecedented alliance between Dalits, upper-caste Hindus and Muslims.

No one knows if the results will be repeated in the general elections this spring. But at least, with the BJP blocked, the communal clash desired by the hardline Hindu right did not take place. However, Muslims are still worried. On 7 December, maulanas, muftis and ordinary Muslims held a silent rally in Mumbai to mourn the dead, express outrage at the “collapse of the entire system of governance, and denounce all organisations engaged in mass murder”: from al-Qaida, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, to local Indian groups. “Not in our name”, they said (1). They organised rallies in other Indian cities too – Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Indore, Hyderabad, Delhi. Muslim clerics refused to allow the bodies of nine terrorists killed in the attacks to be buried in their cemeteries, saying the men were not true Muslims.

The Mumbai attacks captured world attention by targeting western symbols – even though most of the 163 killed were Indian – but they were only the latest of the terrorist acts in recent years. In 2008 alone, explosions across the country killed 200 and injured thousands: in Assam, where there is a strong separatist movement, 64 died in October; before that came Delhi (19 dead), Malagaon (five dead) (2), Ahmedabad (49 dead), Bangalore (two dead) and Jaipur (63 dead). Accusations were made not against Pakistan (the usual suspect), but against the so-called Indian Mujahideen and SIMI, the now-banned Students Islamic Movement of India.

The media increased suspicion and fear, quoting leaks from police or intelligence and failing to verify facts or attribute sources. Muslims and the secular left-leaning intelligentsia expressed concern at claims of the many “masterminds”, the hundreds of Muslims being rounded up, reports of torture and confessions secured as evidence. They are especially perturbed that the main suspects are not the bearded graduates of madrasas, but young people with modern, secular educations. “We have no political consensus in India on vital issues such as terrorism,” said Obaid Siddiqui, professor of media studies at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia university and a Muslim. “And our politicians are dishonest. As a result there is a crisis of legitimacy.”
To counter Islamophobia

In an attempt to avert the worsening Islamophobia, the Darul Uloom religious seminary at Deoband issued a fatwa denouncing terrorism last February (3). Then it held a conference in Delhi at the end of May, at which representatives of all the main Muslim organisations signed up to the fatwa. The name “Deoband” inspires awe among Muslims and ranks next to Cairo’s al-Azhar in prestige. Most of India’s Muslims are Sunni and many of these follow the Deobandi school of thought. Deoband is an unremarkable town in Uttar Pradesh, six hours from Delhi, in rich agricultural land of grain and sugar cane. Women work the land, treading cane husks to use as fuel, and piling disks of cow dung along the roads on which oxen and wooden carts compete with expensive tractors. The high white domes of the seminary’s imposing marble mosque buildings tower above the daily bustle.

The Darul Uloom educates 3,500 students for the 13 years it takes each to graduate; 800 are chosen for admission each year from 10,000 applicants. There are no tuition fees. Adil Siddiqui, public relations director, showed me round the maze of buildings, including the open kitchens where grain was being ground into flour. “The local agricultural workers have a special attachment to us and donate grains for the boys.” The boys have rigorous Islamic studies, but also bookbinding, IT proficiency – there is much pride in the small room from which the Darul Uloom sends its fatwas to the world in English and Urdu – and other languages, including Arabic. Although the Koran is recited in Arabic, the explanations are in Urdu: “Urdu is our language of learning,” explained Zain ul Islam Qasmi, deputy to the grand mufti; “We have a strong attachment to it.” Their graduates spread the Darul Uloom’s influence throughout India through a vast network of schools, which they found and teach in.

Adil Siddiqui explained that the seminary had been maliciously linked with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban after 9/11. Yet the school is widely respected for its moderation and its long history; established in 1866, its founders were prominent in the 1857 rebellion against the British, and the seminary has always strongly supported India’s secular democracy.

On 2 November, the muftis took further action. Almost 6,000 boarded a “peace train” from Deoband to Hyderabad for a two-day conference to denounce terrorism. This event, the biggest in four years, was organised by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (JUH), which has 10 million members and is linked to Deoband. Another fatwa (based on that of the Darul Uloom), banning violence in the name of Islam, was ratified, and 100,000 gathered for the final evening. Maulana Mahmood Madani, leader of the JUH and an Upper House (Rajya Sabha) MP, spoke of “national integration as the background within which all debates and arguments on alienation should be conducted.” In Delhi, he had told me that he wanted the JUH to try harder to reach disaffected youth and spread the message that “terrorism can’t be jihad.”

The influence of the muftis is strong among the religious and the poor. But they do not reach the young and many feel that they have done little to promote reform: there is wide agreement among Muslims of the need to codify the Personal Law under which sharia regulates family matters (marriage, inheritance etc). They want greater rights for women (many secular groups are working hard for this), especially in divorce, which they would like to be negotiated through arbitration and not unilaterally decided by men.

Another group is also active, the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) (see “Who’s who in Muslim India”). Though the JIH has moderated its stance in recent years, mainstream Muslim leaders still regard any form of political Islam as a danger and exclude the JIH from their actions. So the group made its own declaration in October and sent two peace caravans across the country to help counter terrorism.
Muslims are poorer

The real danger is not extremism though, but poverty and disadvantage. This causes deep grievances among India’s 154 million Muslims – 13.4% of the population and the biggest minority within India (the world’s largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan). These grievances have been carefully documented in the government’s own Sachar Committee report (4). Yet almost none of its recommendations have been implemented, nor did Muslims expect them to be, even under a Congress-led government that uses Muslims as vote banks. The Sachar report states that Muslims have not “shared equally in the benefits” of India’s economic growth and are “seriously lagging behind in terms of most of the human development indicators.”

Poor Muslims are poorer than poor Hindus, approaching the poverty rate of the lowest Hindu castes and Dalits. That poverty was evident everywhere, not least in the Muslim slum of Golibar in the Santa Cruz East district of Mumbai, where people live in hovels with upper storeys that are accessed by ladders from narrow alleys beneath. But if people here are poor, there are tenants’ associations, makeshift clinics offering vaccinations (including against typhoid and hepatitis B) and even two hole-in-the-wall stands offering English lessons (“Separate sessions for ladies and gents”). People smiled in Golibar. A little further on in Mahim West around the Baba Makhdoom dargah (shrine), the poverty was more unremitting and its youth sullen. This Muslim area is not a slum but it was dirtier by far than Golibar.

The Sachar committee reported that Muslims are not just poorer but also less educated: 25% of 6- to 14-year-olds have either never gone to school or dropped out, their literacy rate is 59% (compared to 65% nationally), and they are only 4% of students at top universities. They also hold only 5% of government jobs. Muslims have traditionally been craftsmen, and Hindus traders, and some craft skills have been overtaken by mechanisation and globalisation. Many Muslims who have made it to the top have done so in ways that don’t require the best schooling, perhaps through sports, music or Bollywood — there are role models such as Sania Mirza, the tennis player who comes from a small village, or Yusuf Pathan, who played cricket for India and is the son of a mullah.

But even the top actress and housing rights activist, Shabana Azmi, encountered discrimination when she was denied the right to buy the house of her choice in Mumbai. Humera Ahmed, postmaster-general of Mumbai, a Muslim who is critical of her co-religionists, finds Hindus tolerant and Muslims exclusive “not just in their religion but in their whole way of life”. But she recognises that discrimination exists: “I couldn’t now move to the Hindu-owned housing cooperative that I’ve lived in for the last 25 years, even though my social status and cosmopolitan city allow me to live outside the community box.”

Shoma Chaudhury, a journalist in Delhi (and a Hindu), summed up the situation: “Our communities have always lived in ghettos. But in public life they lived together. The deal was that people traded together but lived separately, side by side. This is now under stress.”

Jamia Nagar is Delhi’s best-known Muslim neighbourhood and houses people of all classes. It grew from a village after the founding of the famous Jamia Millia university in the 1930s. Beside the beautiful bungalows (large colonial-style villas with gardens) and comfortable, gated apartment blocks, there is a maze of small back streets and alleys housing the poor and the very poor. Obaid Siddiqui lived in Jamia Nagar but this grew harder when he married an observant Sikh and the couple had a small daughter. So, in spite of a daily commute that can last two hours in the grinding traffic and heavy pollution, the family moved to a satellite town, where no one queries residents’ backgrounds or expects them to fit in. “You have a driver and you get used to commuting,” they said. Vaishali in Ghaziabad, just over the border into Uttar Pradesh, has Pizza Huts and MacDonalds and, at Diwali (the Indian New Year), was filled with shoppers, flower garlands, lights, music. (This Diwali was quieter than most, though, since many people had reconsidered shopping trips because of last year’s bomb attacks.) The Siddiquis’ apartment block is upmarket, secure behind private gates, with swimming pool and gym. Only two out of 75 families are Muslim.
A climate of fear

What led to the current malaise? Deep hatreds endure among the generation who lived through the trauma of Partition leading to independence in 1947, which involved the transfer of entire populations (5). Before that, from the 1920s, with the rise of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, later banned), the Hindu right had begun to spread its ideas of a Hindu rashtra (nation) whose glorious past had been disrupted by Mughal rule. From the 1980s, the BJP and its fascist-like allies spread their message of Hindu nationalism, and Muslims were targeted and marginalised. The Hindu diaspora in the United States and elsewhere generously funds the promotion of these aims.

Shoma Chaudhury said: “People see the rift between Hindus and Muslims as a civilisational faultline.” For a time, the founding fathers [Mahatma Gandhi and Jawarlal Nehru] contained it with their “noble rhetoric of democracy”. For the first 30-40 years after independence, there were “just bouts of trouble” (not least Gandhi’s own assassination on 30 January 1948 by a Hindu extremist). But in the 1980s the Hindu right “acquired a lustre, at the moment that Congress [then in power] was losing its own. Then came the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992 at Ayodhya: that really shook people, provoking violence across India (6). Then 10 years later, in 2002, the Gujarat riots (see ``Laboratory of hate´´). And the situation in Kashmir amplified fears: the BJP accused Muslims of siding with Pakistan. And India at large went along with this.”

The BJP’s rhetoric of “soft Hindutva” (a milder version of the core RSS message) is pervasive. “They have succeeded in creating a widespread climate of fear,” said Chaudhury. “And the trouble is middle-class Hindus and the chattering classes, we all talk – but we don’t go out and vote.” In India, the poor vote in numbers, while those higher up the social and economic ladder remain apathetic. The BJP plays on people’s fears and claims that Muslims pray to Mecca and look outside for political support; they have too many children; they have their own personal status law; they get funding for the Haj. The BJP adviser Sudhandra Kulkarni tried to distance his party from “certain on the Hindu right” who frighten even their own camp, but cannot forget the Mughals – “We distinguish between Muslim rulers in the past and ordinary Muslims who are almost all from India”. He means that they are really Hindus who only converted to Islam under pressure of the Mughal invasion in the 16th century (7).
Where people still co-exist

However, Islam came to India long before the Mughals. From the seventh century, Arab traders came to the Malabar coast (Kerala) and Islam took root peacefully, through trade and marriage, and grew largely as a Sufi movement. Pilgrimage places have shared saints and shrines – a part of India’s rich syncretic culture that still endures.

In Mehrauli to the south of Delhi, in the Hazrat Khwaja Qutabuddin Bakhtiyar dargah, I met an elderly middle-class Hindu, Dhasamuiv Verma, who has worshipped here for 26 years. He used to come every day; now, with a one-hour bus journey each way, he comes three or four times a week. He said some of the poor gathered at the dargah were “more or less” Muslim; some he couldn’t be sure of. It was a festival and the spotless whitewashed buildings were decked with garlands of yellow flowers. Outside the shrine a group of men in tall Sufi caps sat on the ground singing hypnotic qawalli (devotional music) accompanied by tabla and dholak. The air was filled with incense. On the way out, the mullah told me all the Mehrauli poor came here to be fed; he defused a fight between two men over the takings from guarding visitors’ shoes.

Dharavi is Mumbai’s largest slum, home to more than a million people. In narrow lanes with open sewers and mean hovels to either side, I discovered Muslims still living side by side with Hindus. In this self-contained “city” of alleys and workshops, people own, and work in, the same small manufacturing enterprises across religion, and so are interdependent.

In Kerala I also found Muslims and Hindus living side by side in backwaters inland from Cochin (Kochi) – rural families, their houses identified by wall paintings of a Hindu deity or a crescent moon and star. They still share social visits and mind each others’ children.

There are Christians too, some more affluent, with the odd fine villa among the tiny dwellings. Everyone has a garden where they grow spices for their own use – cinnamon, mace, allspice – as well as coffee, tapioca, lemon, pomela and small rice paddies. The men have jobs in the towns and return on motorbikes as the sun sets behind the coconut palms. Even the smallest dwellings of breezeblock and corrugated iron have electricity and mains water, and tiled roofs against the rain. Kerala is blessed by remittances sent home by those working in the Arab Gulf states, plus tourism, a high literacy rate and a progressive communist government.

Unlike other parts of India, there is a thriving Muslim middle class. Muslims are nearly 25% of Kerala’s population. Calicut (Kozikhode), Kerala’s third largest city with nearly half a million and the biggest Muslim population, has a super-modern shopping mall, fancy Gulf-style mosques, three Muslim newspapers, and well-run educational institutions. There are two Muslim political parties (the Muslim League and the left-of-centre Indian National League, which is in the current communist-led coalition). own nearly all the buildings in Calicut,” said E O Mirshad, a businessman: “two hotels, the shopping mall, and more to come. And nearly a hundred mosques, all funded with Gulf money. The Arabs have no poor to give their zekaat to, so they build mosques here.”

Could the good life be threatened? I saw pro-Hindu “saffron” marches, and a fear of Muslims has arrived. M T Kapur, a Christian taxi-driver who votes for Congress, thought Muslims are dangerous: “They try to convert Hindus, and recruit the criminal elements and turn them into jihadis.” For the first time in Kerala, there is concern over the charges of Muslims engaged in violence. In November, local Islamic organisations issued a joint communiqué condemning terrorism.

Muslims are now seeking to position themselves ahead of the coming national elections. If Congress has failed Muslims, should they forge more alliances with regional parties? There are regional Muslim parties in Kerala and Kashmir and a tiny one in Andhra Pradesh, in power in Hyderabad, its (40% Muslim) capital. In Uttar Pradesh Muslims are already allied to the Dalits’ BSP party. Will they go further? Meanwhile Anwar Hussain, from a village in Bihar, a devout Muslim, says: “I’ll vote for the BJP, why not? It’s a matter of who will do good for the village and build roads.”

Islamic India, by Wendy Kristianasen

 

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Who’s who in Muslim India

By Wendy Kristianasen

The three biggest Sunni movements are:

* Deobandis, named after the Darul Uloom religious seminary in Deoband, Uttar Pradesh (see main article). There are also many Deobandis in Pakistan and among emigrant communities.
* Barelvis, who take their name from the town of Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, home to the Islamic scholar Ahmed Raza Khan. The movement follows many Sufi practices and is considered deviant by other Sunnis. Though poorly organised, the Barelvis have many followers in India, Bangladesh and particularly Pakistan; they oppose reform.
* Jamaat Ahle Hadeeth, who are Salafists; unlike those in many other countries they are seen as the most progressive of the main Sunni movements.

There are also:

* Tablighi Jamaat. India is home to the world’s biggest Muslim evangelical movement, proselytising door-to-door among other Muslims. Its absence of structure has, in some countries, allowed in militants, creating suspicions of extremism.
* Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH), the Indian branch of the Islamist organisation founded by Abul Ala Maududi in Lahore in 1941. Although it has only 25,000 members it has considerable influence. Ex-JIH members founded the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and, in Kerala, the National Democratic Front (NDF), which is engaged in armed self-defence against Hindu rightwing groups, and its new umbrella group, Popular Front of India.

Among the minority Shia are:

* Ismailis, who follow the Aga Khan and form a progressive, prosperous community across the world.
* Dawoodi Bohras, who are a tightly knit community of about one million, mostly in India and Pakistan. Mainly traders (‘bohra’ means trade) they are often affluent and live apart from other Indian Muslims. Their lives are rigidly controlled by their amir, based in Mumbai.

Who’s who in Muslim India, by Wendy Kristianasen

 

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`Laboratory of hate´

By Wendy Kristianasen

The events of “Gujarat 2002”, in which up to 2,000 Muslims died (1), are widely known, but less is heard about those displaced. Gauhar Raza of the NGO Anhad says: “The Gujarat government… not only disbanded the relief camps but also adopted an active policy of discrimination towards the families that were displaced” (2). Sophia Khan, who founded the NGO Safar, told me that, just among women, more than 150,000 are still displaced.

Why Gujarat? It is mercantile, prosperous, with a history of immigration (Turks, Portuguese, Marathas) and emigration (Africa, the UK and beyond). Muslim invaders came in the early 11th century. From 1407, the Gujarat Sultanate (which broke free from rule by Delhi) synthesised Muslim and Hindu traditions in its architecture – the tomb and mosque complex of Dada Hari in Ahmedabad is an amazing mix of styles. Ahmedabad is the city of Mahatma Gandhi, the place where he started the Salt March in 1930, a protest walk through southern Gujarat to gather salt from the sea in defiance of the British monopoly.

But Gujarat remained inward-looking and parochial. Father Cedric Prakash, a Jesuit peace activist, thinks “Gandhi and the founding fathers prevented India from becoming a Hindu nation. And the [Hindu nationalist umbrella organisation] Sangh Parivar killed him. From then on they worked systematically to establish Hindutva in Gujarat, using the Dalits and Adivarsis [tribals]” – both were forced or bribed to take part in the 2002 carnage. There have been regular riots since the 1980s.

Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s largest city, with a population of four-and-a-half million, is booming: Narendra Modi, the chief minister, has attracted Tata Motors’ Nano car plant and the city is full of construction work. But behind the economic success lies a damaged society. The long-established living arrangements between Hindus and Muslims have been ruptured. The fear is that this is beginning to happen elsewhere in India.

The modern Pir Mohammed Shah hospital is run by the Iqraa foundation and funded entirely by private donations. It is in the Muslim area of Juhapura to the west of the city; this grew from 2002, as Muslims fled here to find safety in numbers, to become the largest ghetto, housing 350,000 and swallowing up the outlying village of Sarkhej. The hospital’s administrator, Imtiyaz Shaikh, said: “We started up in 2002 because people needed medical facilities here, locally, for security. It is free and open to poor patients of any religion.”

Iqbal Baig, 35, works for the secular NGO Samerth: “We started in 2002 with relief work and looked after women and children, then we moved into job training and education. Now we’re into reconciliation. We’re not 100% successful but we’re doing our level best. We’re doing it through pre-school groups for 3-6 year olds; through them we can engage with the families.”

Baig (a Muslim) pointed to the difference between Samerth and Iqraa: “Iqraa’s in a Muslim area, it’s a Muslim trust so, even if the hospital’s open to all, only Muslims go there.” Samerth is at the intersection of Juhapura and Vejalpur – a Hindu ghetto, Baig calls it. “In this narrow border area between the two, both Hindus and Muslims work, but Muslims can no longer live. We chose this point to work from to try and reduce the gap between Hindus and Muslims.” Then suddenly: “Gujarat is a laboratory of hate.”

Aadil Bagadia, 33, a property developer and civil engineer, lives in Paldi, which he calls a peaceful area. But in 2002 his aunt’s house was burned down, and another family building. “There were mobs looting and attacking with stones, sticks and swords.” He tells of the atrocities in Naroda to the east: “Even in wars, it’s not like this. And we were the people who chose to stay because we believed in India.”

Professor Abeed Shamsi, a retired English teacher and a Muslim, lives in Navrangpura, once a mixed district. “The Hindu building opposite is almost empty now; the Hindus are leaving and it’s become a totally Muslim area. What happened in 2002 is unprecedented. And it took place in broad daylight. But those [Muslims] who weren’t directly affected don’t want to talk about it. They’re the well-off ones. They’ve given money for hospitals, but ask them to a meeting to discuss all this and they won’t come. This apathy will lead to greater disasters.” He has harsh words for the muftis of Deoband (see main article). “They said nothing [about 2002]. It’s sheer insensitivity, because most of those affected were the poorest of the poor. As for the fundamentalists, they are helping the Hindu right with their Muslim identity phobia.” Professor Ganesh Devi, who works with minorities, agrees that only talking can help repair society. “Even the workplace has become segregated. Only in areas with populations of 50,000 or less, do you still find mixed habitation and social mixing. But if there’s an India-Pakistan cricket match on the TV, windows and doors are firmly shut. The tensions could erupt at any minute.”

In the bustling Old City of Ahmedabad, Hindus and Muslims still live and trade side by side. The winding, narrow allies thread through diverse clusters of homes (known as Pols) housing tightly knit groups (the Chippas, printers from Rajasthan; Nagori, blacksmiths; Mochivar, fish-sellers; Vagari, second-hand clothes sellers). There are Sunni Muslim areas, and ones for the Bohra (Shia) Muslims. But there are also mixed areas, tiny lanes where Muslims and Hindus still live side by side. And I saw a small shrine built into a wall, which both Muslims and Hindus revere. But the Hindu temple at Badra Fort was packed at 8am and the beating drums seemed full of menace. In 2002 Muslims were attacked in the Old City. They fought back, with bricks and stones torn from walls. They still live there. Juhapura seems too far away, out of reach. So they keep piles of stones by their doors and windows, just in case.

`Laboratory of hate´, by Wendy Kristianasen