TOI brings Islam into Kashmir imbraglio
By Ghulam Muhammad
As a gift of Indias 63rd Independence Day, Time of India has once again targeted Indian Muslims for their grave sin of adopting Islam as their religion.
TOI published an article on August 15, 2010 in its print edition, penned by TOIs own special hatchet-man, bearing a Muslim name, but sold out to his employers in churning out articles that do not reflect either the truth or the real aspirations of Indian Muslims, whom TOI had directly addressed its exhortation.
By selecting the headline: Geelani should re-read Islam, Mohammed Wajihuddin and TOI have challenged Indian Muslims in general to interpret Islam, as per the guidance of the Jain owners own agenda.
However, the Kashmir problem which is being discussed interwoven into the narrative, has nothing to do with Islam. It is a movement against the oppression of a government run by a hawkish oligarchy that is so drunk with the power of army, that it has no need to treat its supposedly own people as human beings. Can the modern media-linked world remain calm if 50 protestors are killed by security forces within a fortnight in any part of the world?
The name of democracy, freedom and secularism is repeatedly abused in legitimizing an obnoxiously oppressive regime on people that are not necessarily of the same colour, race, religion, social status and/ethnicity as the ruling elite.
To make Kashmir, an issue of Islam, Wajihuddin has blatantly sidetracked the grievances of Kashmiris as articulated at least in large part by Ahmed Shah Geelani, whose personal antecedent is only incidental as his word of peace that brought the stone-pelting youngsters from the streets of curfew-imposed Kashmiri towns and villages, to call off their street violence, has more to do with Geelanis steadfast opposition to New Delhi, which has for all practical purposes imposed an occupation army on the state.
By bringing in Islam, Wajihuddin and TOI are trying to sidetrack the whole issue of legitimate public protests against the brutal stranglehold of a web of so-called security regime, whose mind-set has been most pronouncedly for decades that of an occupied force holding on to a conquered people.
Wajihuddins line up of the 3 Islamic scholars to bolster his agenda against Islam, themselves have not been able to establish any linkages between the current political upheaval and Islam.
Maulana Wahiduddin Khans narration of an stray incidence has nothing to do with any Islamic content to his political views that with the so-called independence, if at all granted to Kashmir, Azad Kashmir will be a failed state. That verdict is a political judgment and has nothing to do with his Islamic scholarship.
The same is the case with Wajihuddins other favourite Islamic scholars, who are bringing in the subject of Islamic fundamentalism and extremism to legitimize the fundamentalism and extremism of the Indian security elements in Kashmir.
Sultan Shahin has an axe to grind against Islamic radicals and his vision is so blurred that he cannot see that the problem of Kashmir is not of the making of any Islamic fundamentalist; though they, the radicals may try to hijack it as such. It is a straight forward problem of governance of a people that do not see eye to eye with their distant rulers who have made their everyday lives fraught with fear and despair and that too for over half a century.
By trying to sideline the real problem from the real life miseries, and shift the focus to Islam and its radicals, TOI and Wajihuddin are in fact rendering a disservice to India itself.
Unless the rulers are made aware that the protests mounted by genuine victims of Indias heavily oppressive army presence in every nook of corner of their communities, is not emanating from Islam, all efforts if any by the ruling coterie at the helm of affair in New Delhi, will only buy time for a further later postponement of the real problems till outsiders intervene. If India is constitutionally secular, the basic logic of its solutions for Kashmir has to be on the lines of secular principles and not on the confrontational lines of Islam v/s Hindutva, as TOI would like to have it.
Wajihuddin holds that The demand for a separate or Pakistani Kashmir is based on a skewed, selective reading of Islam. He brings in Geelanis supposed ideological mentors, Jamaate Islams founder Maulana Abul Ala Maududi and Egyptian scholars Syed Qutub and Hasan al Banna before him who propagated the theory that Islam wanted Muslims to strive and establish an Islamic state. But the exclusivitism idealized by some Islamic scholar does not hide the fact that it is a basic human instinct. Did not Nehru, Patel and other Congress leaders, agreed to partition as they wanted the rest of India to be ruled exclusively by them --- the Brahmin ruling class? So why then merely demonise Muslim scholars. This is age-old and universal and almost human phenomenon. History is unfortunately replete with incidents where the need to go exclusive has been the real motivations to lead to both victories and disasters. Are US and Zionists not trying to impose their New World Order to achieve exclusive power to rule the world on their terms?
It is another matter that in India, Congress leaders did not succeed in achieving the exclusivity that they had planned by wholesale transfer of entire Muslim population to the other side. But short of that, have they not succeeded gaining effective and practical exclusivity by continuing to discriminate, de-legitimise and corrode Muslim citizenship in India. It started with Indias first President Rajendra Prasad passing a decree to exclude Muslim Dalits from any reservation equations, even if they were backward and Dalit. It started with Indias first home minister Sardar Patel issuing secret memo to all security agencies in the land to weed out Muslims. Why Wajihuddian and TOI does not raise its truth should prevail campaign against that Brahmin exclusivity instead of crying over Maududis call for Muslim state which is hardly relevant to India or Kashmir?
Wajihuddin has a point that the argument that the Muslim majority Kashmir must either go to Islamic Pakistan or become a separate, sovereign Islamic state defies the Valleys own history. That ethos is still thriving when Geelani wants Kashmiri Brahmins to come back in full peace, honour and brotherhood. In Kashmir, if the so-called fundamentalist Muslim like Geelani extends a welcome to Brahmins, he has peoples trust to see that happen in toto. Kashmir has been an island of communal harmony for ages, till outsiders spoiled the paradise. That outside influence has to be neutralized, in whatever shape or form, for Kashmir to turn again into a Paradise on earth.
Times of Indias separate agenda of demonizing Muslims and Islam keeps popping up, as the editors and owners seems to have built up a constituency that thrives on hate and division. Their communal management of public issues vital to the integrity and security, by bringing in extraneous divisive misinformation to their extensive readership of the nation, needs to be condemned and checked with appropriate actions by the government in the best interest of the country.
