Indian Islam needs to be de-Arabised, de-radicalised

The Big Lens

It has been a tradition in the RSS to hold meetings with leaders of various religious, political and socio-cultural organisations. The circumstances were different during the time of the founder of the RSS, Dr Hedgewar. Its second Sarsanghchalak, M S Golwalkar ‘Guruji’ had regular meetings with leaders from different walks of life. The present leadership has continued that tradition.

Attempts to link the RSS chief’s meeting with Muslim leaders and the Union Home Ministry’s country-wide midnight arrests of activists of the radical Islamic outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) are nothing but calculated mischief to defeat the efforts of all stakeholders. The Union Home Ministry will surely come out with details on more shenanigans of this outfit which has been one the many that create a wedge between different sects within the Muslim community as well as between the minority and majority communities.

The PFI and affiliated outfits were banned by the government on September 28 following the arrest of its top leaders. According to government sources, the PFI’s top leaders were closely associated with SIMI, which was itself banned due to its anti-national activities. The PFI is also believed to have established links with the Jamaat-ul-Mujahiddeen of Bangladesh. The Jamaat is known to have been a close collaborator of the Pakistani army in 1971 and later nurturing ISI’s sleeper cells. Its role in attempts to derail democracy in Bangladesh is no secret. The PFI could also have developed links with radical outfits in some other countries in Asia, especially South Asia.

The radicalisation of Islam in India in particular and South Asia in general has been a cause of grave concern for not only the RSS and other nationalist organisations but even successive governments. Taking advantage of socially contentious issues, economic backwardness and fallaciously drummed-up identity crises, these radical outfits work on the agenda of creating a wedge between communities.

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Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the PFI is its furthering of the agenda of “Arabisation” of Islam in India. There may no doubt be conflicting and different views about the advent and spread of Islam in India in particular and Asia in general. The spread of Islam in India has three main aspects -- forceful conversions, the Sufi traditions, and the political Islam propagated and nurtured by the British Raj to further its objective of “divide and rule”. The British also used the Hindu-Muslim divide as a veil to implement their strategic objective of denying Indian Ocean access to the then Soviet Union. Unfortunately, what the Soviet Union could not achieve, China has managed through a highly radicalised Pakistan.

The tragic Partition sowed the seeds of a permanent Hindu-Muslim divide and alienated a large section of the Muslim community from mainstream economic, political and educational programmes in Independent India. The minority-majority syndrome turned into vote-bank politics supported by crass appeasement policies. One former Prime Minister said the minorities must be able to share equitably the “fruits of development”, for which his government would devise innovative development programmes which “should have the first claim on resources.”

The British sowed the seeds of a social division that Independent India has not been able to bridge till now. Ironically, the US took off from where the British left, after creating a “strong Islamic State” in the region and fanned the fires of Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, which led to the establishment of an Islamic Republic in Tehran. This fuelled a dangerous race to use radical Islam to achieve political ends and regime change. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan gave the US the opportunity to sponsor the worst form of jihadi Islam in Afghanistan. Less said the better about the creation of the Taliban and jihadi outfits by the warring parties of the Cold War. The Arab countries saw an opportunity in the situation and poured petro-dollars into supporting their version of “Arabised Islam” in a region which had a rich tradition of tolerance and respect among faiths.

Easy and unrestricted flow of foreign money and political patronage and support in return for votes encouraged the formation of radical outfits in India which distanced the ordinary Muslim from the local roots while also failing to fully foist an alternative “Arab” identity.

It is in this background that the efforts to veer Indian Islam towards the core of Indianisation and to totally “de-Arabise” it are being seriously undertaken. Many institutions and individuals have contributed to this process of Indianisation and continue to do so.

The recent meeting between the RSS chief and the group of Muslim community members is one such step. And it should be seen as just that.

(Seshadri Chari reads between the lines on big national and international developments from his vantage point in the BJP and the RSS)