RAFI AAMER, NJ

I didn't intend to respond to Mr. Ilyas' last email but when I saw that nobody has come forward to say anything about a particular bit in his email, I decided to respond myself. I will come to that bit a little later. First my thoughts on the other points raised by Mr. Ilyas in his latest email. The excerpts are highlighted.

"1st of all I don’t know why he thinks that having a different opinion is “non-conciliatory” it seems as if he finds it “ offensive” to speak your mind, which I admit can hurt a little sometime...."

When I wrote that the tone of analysis by Mr. Ilyas was not conciliatory, it didn't have anything to do with disagreement. I was pointing out something else. In the letter, Mr. Ilyas wrote, "the way forward or the start should be1st of all by openly admitting where we went wrong & that is for both the countries". After writing that we should admit where we went wrong, he went on to describe only where they went wrong. He didn't give a single example of where Muslim leadership went wrong in that particular letter. Consider again the following from his original letter

- "I think this can only be answered by our Hindu friends".

-  "Our Hindu friends owe us the answer".

- "....I hope they  come forward for the sake of the truth"

- "the responsibility is also far greater on the shoulders of our Indian brothers."

- "they also have the responsibility to come forward to 'patch up' the differences"

- "they should learn a lesson from a past 'super power- [and] stop trying to pile up Arms which is good for no one"

- "the claims by the Indian brothers of having a threat of any kind from Pakistan is not only laughable, it is also  humiliating * disgraceful to our Indian brothers"\

You see what I was saying? Our Hindu friends owe us the answers, they are responsible for certain things, they need to learn, they should stop doing such and such, their claim is laughable. Where did the "we" part go? 

"His objection to the word Hindu & not Indian makes no sense since this was the main reason for the division of this beautiful land know as India. It was purely for the fact that it was or had become a Hindu/ Muslim issue & the end product was India & Pakistan a result."

I can agree to the above statement with some reservations but doesn't Mr. Ilyas think that the bigger question is why it had become a Hindu/Muslim issue in the first place since these two religions had been living side by side for quite some time? The reason I objected to the word Hindu was that, as everyone knows, among the Congress leadership that Jinnah turned away from had a number of Muslims in it too and I am sure I don't have to provide their names.

"He is totally wrong in to thinking that the word Indian should have been used because for his knowledge, by Jinnah was JUST AS MUCH INDIAN AS ANYBODY ELSE. It is sad but a fact that his struggle was purely against a fundamental by the Hindus hidden in the cover of secularism. Now although Rafisahib blames Jinnah for causing damage to the cause of secularism, he admits that Nehru & Ghandiere also “ at it “...They were also equally responsible for ‘ moon main ram ram, baghal main churi ‘, which was of course a complete opposite of true secularism. Jinnah for his info, as he probably know was called ”the greatest ambassador of Hindu Muslim unity, so again the same question from me ...what the hell did go wrong? At what point did he decide to ask for separate homeland for the Muslims?"

"Baghal main chhuri, moon main ram ram" is Mr. Ilyas' addition. It wasn't what I actually implied. He has presented it as if I claimed that Gandhi and Nehru were being deceptive. I never said that. All I said was that they wanted India to be secular but they harmed the cause of secularism in their own way. In my opinion, they did that by being absolutists when it came to secularism. They refused to recognize that there was a visible friction between Hindus and Muslims of India and Muslims had concerns regarding their rights in an India with a permanent majority of Hindus. Congress' refusal to come to terms with this reality did not originate from deception, in my opinion, but their idealism. They went to such extremes in their absolutism that Gandhi famously told British colonialists to leave India to God or to anarchy. The anarchy did not have to be the necessary consequence of independence of India but the lack of vision of the leaderships of Congress and Muslim League took matters to such extremes that it had become a clear possibility. Jinnah on the other hand went to the other extreme. As far as I understand, Jinnah had genuine grievances with Congress leadership but genuine grievances do not give you a license to take whatever course you want to (that happens to be my main argument against Muslim terrorism too by the way). Jinnah, the ambassador of Muslim/Hindu unity, could still maintain that role from a different platform but he swung for the fences and presented two-nation theory which is  far from secularism. That is beside the fact that the two-nation theory itself is the among the weakest theories I have ever seen. Get a Muslim from Lahore, a Hindu from Delhi and another Muslim from Saudi Arabia together, let an outside observer observe their living habits for few days and then ask the observer to judge which two of those three belong to the same nation.

There is another thing that I would like to say before moving on to the next point. Its true that there was a Hindu revivalist movement in India but I think that Muslim historians have exaggerated its impact. To the best of my knowledge, Congress wasn't under the influence of revivalists. Yes, Nehru did, from time to time, consulted with Hindu Mahasabha folks but I haven't seen a shred of evidence pointing to the possibility that mainstream Congress leadership being under the revivalist influence. It would have been a bad political strategy for them because Congress always tried its best to portray itself as an all-inclusive party. Quite interestingly, Muslims, who were always suspicious of the motives behind revivalists' demands adopted the same tone and make up when they achieved a country of their own. Its too hard to distinguish between Hindu Mahasabha of 1935 from Pakistan Muslim League of 1947. For example, one of the major demands of Hindu Mahasabha was to make Devangri the national script of India thus imposing Hindi's superiority over Urdu. You see the same thing right after 1947 when Muslim League, on the cue by Mr. Jinnah, tried to impose Urdu on Bengalis.   

"Rafi Sahib seems to very resentful as to why he has to use Islamic terminology whenever he eats, burps or sneezes etc....well the answer is very simple, that is because he comes from a Muslim family background but at the same time he is quite free to say “ ram ram, bhagwan ka bhala so on “ that is if this is what he wants" 

Of course, I can say that. The question is, will I get away with that? In my early college days, I developed a habit to greet people the Indian way (holding your palms together) because I find it very humble. Mind you, I never said Namaste, Namaskar or anything else. I found out that some people were actually offended by that and people kept telling me that the Islamic (read Arabic) way of greeting is much better than that. A lot of people also told me that the humility of this greeting is just a facade because Hindus are by nature deceptive.  

.... but on a serious note, although he is a very unhappy about the mogul/ Mehmood Gaznawi times, but should we all not be thankful to Islam which was brought to this land of oppressed people which was very cleverly dividing a certain class of Hindus in to various casts so they could exploit  them as they wanted & when they wanted.

 There is not culture in the world without its flaws. The point I was trying to raise was that one can criticize the flaws of one's culture or society without disowning it. Its the disowning that I object to. I am not asking anyone to believe that the Indian culture was/is flawless. 

....I suggest that Rafi Sahib goes a bit deeper in to his “ Brahmagupta “ history....he will then realize that Muslim rulers were not that bad after all (If you really want to know ask any Sikh today, after the murder of Indira Ghandi.
 

I am always open to correct myself. If Mr. Ilyas can point me to resources that I can use to improve my knowledge about Muslim rulers of India, I promise to give them a look. Asking a Sikh what he/she thought about Muslim rulers would hardly be an objective source. Neither do I understand the connection.

Although its great that a country like India is secular which is fine...in fact the best system around this day, to rule a country, or any country, which has such a multi cultural/multi religious population.... but wait are they really secular?

Has their mentality changed at all...NO NO....? This again proves the point that Jinnah saw something which you & I can not see.... & you only have to look at the past 50+ years record of India...how far they have traveled the path of ”secularism’.... Not very far.... not even an inch...I’m sorry to say.... The most recent example is of course Gujrat riots...

The Gujrat riots, without any doubt, are a dark chapter and an indication that India has still some way to go but I fail to imagine how by the riots in Gujrat Mr. Ilyas has come to the conclusion that India hasn't traveled even an inch towards secularism. 

Speaking about Gujrat riots, since the state government was an accomplice, there were no immediate relief camps by the government. It would be unjust to ignore that mainstream Hindu Human Rights organizations were the ones that setup relief camps in Gujrat. It was them who pressurized the federal government to conduct inquiries into the incidents. Because of these organizations, a report came out recently exonerating Muslims of setting the train of Hindu pilgrims on fire. It was these organizations that are sponsoring inquiries against CM Moody and it was their communications with US Department of State that resulted in refusal of Mooody's visa. Last month, I had the honor of listening to a Hindu gentlemen who is on the forefront of this judicial struggle. When asked if he was advised by people to let bygones be bygones since some time had passed, he said that his answer to such advice is always, "we'll stop asking for the justice when the justice is delivered". On the same note, let me ask Mr. Ilyas how many Muslim organizations in Pakistan are working towards getting the minorities of Pakistan their rights? How many Muslim organizations in Pakistan have ever demanded judicial inquiries against the persecution of Ahmedis? If the answer is none, wouldn't it be fare to conclude that Indian society is a little, if not a lot, farther down the road towards secularism than Pakistan? I mean, we know what a society looks like if it hasn't moved an inch towards secularism. It looks like Pakistan. Does India look like Pakistan in that regard? Does Indian constitution say something like, "A person shall not be qualified for election as President unless he is a Muslim" or "Whereas sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to Allah Almighty alone and the authority which He has delegated to the State of Pakistan, through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him in a sacred trust"? 

do not forget Jinnah was also a politician and sometime in politic you do have to“ invent certain (where you know that your cause is just) slogans” which will help you in your cause, but once that is achieved then a true leader will adjust his manifesto accordingly...hence the speech by Mohammed Ali Jinnah to the National Assembly, on the 11th August 1948.

I am sure Mr. Ilyas meant 1947. The point strengthens my view that Jinnah is over-rated. How can you mobilize the masses saying one thing and when you achieve what you wanted, take a u-turn and expect the masses to follow you blindly? A mediocre political science student would tell you that you are fooling yourself with such a strategy. Mr. Ilyas is admitting that Mr. Jinnah did not have the foresight that Maulana Maududi had who gave a description of what kind of a country Muslim League's Pakistan would be in his pre-partition book "Musalmaan aur mojooda siasi kashmakash". It was as if Maududi went into the future, saw how the future Pakistan looked like and came back to write the book (sadly though, that book is one book by Maududi that is now disowned by Jamaat Islami for obvious political reasons). Is it too hard to understand that when you are promising people a "laboratory of Islamic laws" and then on the eve of the inauguration of that laboratory, try to deliver something absolutely opposite, it won't work? I wish Jinnah had took some time off from his feudal coterie and consulted Maududi on this.

"one thing has always fascinated me, although it is a crude way of putting it…The Hindus like to do things in“ wholesale”. In other words even when they kill, they kill in thousands..."

The above phrase is what prompted me to respond to the letter by Mr. Ilyas. Sometime back, at some gathering in Toronto, a Jewish speaker made an assertion that Muslims generally were supportive of terrorism. Some of our friends at FOTH, justifiably, registered their disgust on that statement. Yet no one came forward to protest the sad, unfortunate and unsubstantiated characterization in the above phrase. Is it because since we are not Hindus, they are fare game at FOTH?

Regards,

Rafi Aamer