Prime minister Theresa May could have easily ignored, without anyone noticing, the vengeful white Briton who drove his truck into a crowd of Muslim worshippers, mowing down a few and killing one. After all, England had not yet fully recovered from the terror carnage in Manchester and London inflicted by home-grown Muslims.

Jawed Naqvi

Ms May could have also feigned pain like Prime Minister Modi who equated the pogrom of Muslims in Gujarat to a puppy coming under the wheel of his car. But she preferred to call the white man a terrorist. A comment expected from Jeremy Corbyn came from May. That`s how democracies humble their leaders. Why does Indian democracy falter here? In Donald Trump`s America too, regardless of the viciousness his followers pursue against the nonwhites, there is still a robust system that works for more than a mere pretence of justice. The white man who killed a Sikh in the wake of 9/11 is rotting in prison.

On the other hand, at least two white Americans were wounded and at least one other was killed when they tried to save Hindus and Muslims from white hate-mongers in different episodes. Despite Europe being under siege from Muslim terrorists there is vocal and robust protection for the ordinary Muslims against racist vendetta.

People come out on the streets in the US and Europe at the hint of any perceived bias. Even in strife-battered and terror-stricken Pakistan (where terror groups are, ironically, allowed to walk openly with a swagger) human rights workers have laid down their lives. And af ter a church was bombed in Peshawar some years ago, Muslims (and others) ringed churches in major cities in a show of solidarity for the Christian community.

Last week`s Not In My Name protests across India against the widespread phenomenon of public lynching came as a whiff of fresh air. Such relief is rare and far between in the world`s largest democracy. Thelynching of Muslims, Dalits and Christians, we all know, could not happen without the encour-agement of the Hindutva establishment. And this was the theme of the spontaneous protests. They came like a cloudburst to a parched land.

There are individuals who have died for the cause in India. Who can forget the murder by Hindutva assassins of the Kalburgi-Pansare-Dhabolkar trio as they fought blind faith and superstition planted and nurtured by the rulers? Let us also put on record the mealy-mouthed disapproval Prime Minister Modi expressed against his cow vigilantes. How else could another man be brutally beaten to death within hours of his disapproval? One of Modi`s chief ministers says cow killersshould be hanged. Another says they should be packed of f to Pakistan. His cabinet has men who celebrated killers as nationalist icons. The reason is not f ar to seek. The world is crawling with the `us versus them` rogue groups. The difference is that groups like Boko Haram are dismantling what is otherwise the best in their civilisation, from outside the system. They are the non-state players, whereas Hindutva in India is well entrenched within the system. It is hollowing out India`s democracy with a surgeon`s ease. Similarity is inescapable here with the zealots who were infiltrated by Ziaul Haq into state institutions in Pakistan. And this has been happening for years, decades even.

Now that the so-called mainstream media in India has bared its Hindutva fangs (Trump complimented Modi on the `friendly` coverage he got at their Washington meeting) it is not difficult to perceive the cover-up that was imposed over the years. Thefact is, though seldom discussed in the newspapers or on TV channels, that the destruction of Babri Masjid took place years before the Afghan Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas. Somehow, the Ayodhya outrage is accepted as a nationalist exigency while the Bamiyan criminals were handed the terror tag.

The fact is that churches were burnt, nuns raped and an Australian missionary roasted alive with his two sons by a Hindutva mob in Orissa way before Boko Haram could spell `Christian`. Boko Haram, loosely meaning `foreign is sinful`, could learn from Hindutva`s institutionalised hatred of Christians, Muslims and communists, all three bereft of a common strategy to fight their tormentors.

Two Hindutva leaders have invited comparison with Boko Haram. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath claims the minarets of the fabled Taj Mahal represent not Indian ethos but an alien culture. Hitherto, he implied, politicians with an inferior sense of patriotism were giving replicas of the Taj Mahal to foreign dignitaries. Now the truer Indian spirit has spurred a new crop of leaders to gift copies of Hindu scriptures.

The ruling party`s nominee for India`s next president claimed something similar seven years ago.

`Islam and Christianity are alien to India,` Ram Nath Kovind had said when he was just appointed a BJP spokesperson. That`s what Boko Haram says about Nigerian Christians. That`s what the Nazis said of German Jews.

Mr Kovind had slammed the proposed inclusion of Muslim and Christian Dalits entitled for job reservation offered to the other Scheduled Castes.

Boko Haram has been carrying out what Hindutva calls ghar wapsi, forcing Christians to convert `back` to Islam their version of Islam `back` being Boko Haram`s interpretation of what came first, Islam or Christianity in the Nigerian timeline.

Anyone with an iota of integrity and faithful memory will see the methods as strikingly similar. Not In My Name partisans could learn from a Pakistani humorist, who told his countrymen: accepting something without reason cannot be weeded out with reason. The writer is Dawn`s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

The post Of Boko Haram and Hindutva appeared first on Inter Press Service.

THE cruel murder of an 84-year-old Catholic priest in France by two Muslim youths, who slit the fragile man’s throat during a morning mass he was conducting in his serene church, left me numb for days.

The terrifying effect of knives, daggers and trishuls somehow feels more horrific than suicide belts and car bombs that snuff out life with ease these days. Only recently, a masked British Muslim butchered a Western journalist and filmed it in a gory video for the Daesh.

Jawed Naqvi

The evil craft on display by the militant Islamic State group was honed or revived in Afghanistan by the Taliban. But others cheerfully embraced it, most enthusiastically the Hindutva mobs in India. We say terrorism has no religion, and there’s little to quarrel in that. Butchery with the intent to terrorise is common to Muslims and Hindus of the subcontinent just as it is or was with Jews and Christians elsewhere.

That Hindus and Muslims can out-kill and out-rape each other was well established in the 1947 Partition. That innocent Christians find themselves increasingly in the cross hairs of Muslim zealots in the Middle East is the dominant narrative as it should be. Yet right-wing Hindus have been lunging at Christian throats since India’s independence, and this is less widely acknowledged.

The global surge in Muslim-Christian feuds found traction after Osama bin Laden turned upon his mentors, a reckless alliance of Muslims, Christians and Jews. The current methods of Hindutva zealotry have borrowed elements from the Jewish Haganah, the Daesh’s interpretation of jihad, and Christian Crusades.

Father Jacques Hamel’s murder was the handiwork of a hateful fanatic. The virus afflicts Muslims in many parts of the world, not least in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Europe is, of course, the new theatre of their bigoted bloodletting. Should that take the focus away from the perpetual threat the Christian minorities face in India?

What is really disturbing is the fact that India’s serially pummelled Muslims are among the biggest offenders in not acknowledging the rough treatment meted out to their Christian cousins. Indian Muslim leaders wail, given half an opportunity, about their problems, and their sense of victimhood is pervasive. But rarely do we find any among them sharing the grief of others, leave alone the Christians.

This is par for the course with the largely upper-caste media, which revels in the Hindu-Muslim cockfight on TV screens but fights shy of accepting that the communal problem is more varied and complex. This could be partly because Hindutva attacks on Christians as distinct from attacks on Muslims would involve a discussion on caste — which is a deterrent to open debate. A large swathe of Indian Christians belongs to the lower rung Dalit and tribal communities.

The Hindutva hatred of Christians has old roots. An early founder of the ideology had thundered that “in this land Hindus have been the owners, Parsis and Jews the guests, and Muslims and Christians the dacoits”. The two have been bunged together repeatedly, the Muslims and Christians. They are the main targets, mostly for their religious identity but also subtly as caste groups.

Yet Muslims are so absorbed in their own victimhood that lending a shoulder to the brutalised Christians is not a tempting thought. (At another level Kashmiri Muslims seldom show empathy for the struggle of largely Christian Manipuris though Mani­puris often lend their voice to Kashmiri protests.)

Among the most vocal Indians who speak up and lead from the front when Muslims are under assault whether in Kashmir or elsewhere are India’s Christian preachers. I have seen the Christians being treated with scant respect in Pakistan way before the Salafist creed began to course through the nation’s arteries. One visit to Youhanabad near Lahore made me ill for days with the squalor the Christian community is made to endure.

In India, the missionaries and the church have managed to ensure that the Christian laity is better buffered against the humiliations they face in Pakistan and now in Bangladesh.

Yet who can take on the might of a powerful state and its nefarious alliances with religious fascism? The ceaseless attempts to undermine the church’s good work are occasionally reflected in the state’s collusion with the denial of visas to foreign Christian missionaries. Recently, even some American religious rights officials were refused entry by the current government.

I find it amazing that many young and old leaders in the Hindutva stable endorse the policy of targeting Christians though they were schooled in schools run by Christian missionaries, or treated at hospitals cared for by Catholic nuns. The Hindutva hatred possibly stems from two factors. One has to do with an ingrained inferiority complex. Hindutva cannot set up a school like the grand La Martienere College in Lucknow where teachers teach not just the biblical belief in the Creation but also offer the option to contemplate the scientific possibility that humans may have evolved from early apes.

The Hindutva model of narrow-apertured schools borrows from the Muslim madressah system, where Darwin and Ghalib are anathema.

The other factor in the perpetual hatred is the Christian appeal, through work like the one associated with Mother Teresa, which disrupts Hindutva’s own proselytising requirements.

Much of the Hindutva clamour for ghar wapasi reflects a desperate effort to somehow hijack someone else’s brood of homing pigeons in flight. With the state’s support for right-wing groups this is a patently unequal contest.

The assault on Indian Christians is a recurring affair. After an Australian missionary and his two young sons were set ablaze in their jeep in Orissa by Hindu zealots in 1999, the mob returned in 2008 to carry out horrific rapes and murders of Dalit Christians again in Orissa. The killers of a lovable priest in France will find amazing kindred spirits in India.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

The post Of victims and victimhood appeared first on Inter Press Service.

In the departure lounge near Gate No 308 at the Istanbul airport there’s a coffee shop, which has thrown a few chairs and tables near the exit to cater to its needy customers whose flights are delayed. It was here that I got an important glimpse the other day of how one can still frontally approach issues of religious sensitivities. The young Turkish waiter asked an old Arab man to place the order. The man said he was only waiting for his flight to be announced. “Not here, please. This is a coffee shop.” The Arab vacated the chair without fuss.

Next, the waiter turned to a well-heeled albeit younger man who could be from anywhere. Occupying a useful seat he was not generating a lira’s worth of business for the coffee kiosk. “I am fasting,” the man pleaded. “Please go and fast somewhere else. We are serving food to the hungry,” he was told politely. The man left without demur.

I believe this is how Kemal Ataturk would have liked his people to be. They should not flaunt their religion in public, and keep it preferably a private affair. Jinnah applauded Ataturk. Gandhi, on the other hand, as an advocate of the controversial Khilafat Movement, had little time for the Turkish hero’s secular politics.

In the Erdogan era, a marked deviation from the Ataturk vision of Islam seems to have crept in. The Turkish president was asked why he cut his last week’s trip to the United States short. He said he thought it would be “unnecessary” to stay until the burial ceremony of boxing legend Muhammad Ali after realising the event on June 10 would have “no religious aspect”.

A new vocabulary of orthodoxy is palpable today, which quickly mutates into extremism, and it is not limited to Muslims.

Even in the Erdogan era, however, there are limits to how far one can take the public display of religion. For example, travelling from Delhi on Turkish Airlines, I saw the bar nicely stocked with a range of drinks that would have pleased Ghalib. When I asked the plane’s chef on the Istanbul-Dakar sector why his bar was so completely depleted, the man smiled back. “We are a discreet airline. We are flying to a Muslim country.”

As far as Islam in Senegal goes it is the official religion. But try and find a woman in hijab in Dakar and you would not succeed though they will in all probability be scrupulously observing their Ramazan fast. With their beautifully assembled attire woven in a riot of colours, one can’t easily tell a Christian Senegalese from his Muslim counterpart. And yet both sides will be observing their faith with sincerity.

I drove to the Keur Moussa abbey on Sunday to listen to the fabled Gregorian chants its black African denizens sing for congregations every week. I remembered the late Muhammad Ali’s persistent questions to his mother at their Louisville church. Why were all the angels white, Ali would want to know. Well, he would have found both Mary and Jesus in their black African avatar at the Senegal abbey, an hour’s drive from Dakar. The angels hovering over them are black too. And the music, it is divine.

The situation in South Asia is fraught by comparison. Americans ‘skedule’ their appointments while the English ‘shedule’ them. The obvious reason for pronouncing schedule differently, the Americans will laugh, can be found in the different ‘shools’ the two attended. South Asia’s debate between Ramadan and Ramazan would reflect a similar unequal contest of receding and upwardly mobile cultures, had it not been usurped by its pervasive religious revivalism.

Given the mushrooming clusters of orthodox believers we face today, the chances are that those who prefer the Arabic Ramadan would be found to be the more assertive Muslims against the conventional lot who have stayed with Ramazan to describe the month of fasting. A new vocabulary of orthodoxy is palpable today, which readily mutates into extremism, and it is not limited to Muslims.

The syndrome exists among a growing number of north India’s Hindus, for example. They have migrated from the traditional and laid-back Jai Ramji ki as a social greeting over the years to Jai Shri Ram, the latter with pronounced religious and even militant underpinnings.

It is highly probable in my view that the mob that lynched Mohammed Akhlaq — whether he ate or did not eat beef — would respond to Jai Shri Ram rather than to Jai Ramji ki as a greeting. It is equally my instinct that the Pakistani policeman who assaulted an 80-year old Hindu man for eating outside his house in Sindh before sunset last week is a partisan of Ramadan over Ramazan. Check it out. My hunch derives from the pattern of vocabulary religious orthodoxy assumes.

Given my early exposure to Ramazan in Lucknow, it is difficult to accept that there is no music on the occasion today. Some of you will remember how in the mornings singers who would call out in unison to the fasting men and women, and their children for sehri, the last meal before sunrise.

On the other hand there was the legacy of Ghalib always offering his own insights with roots placed deep in realism: Iftaar-i-saum kii jise kuch dast gaah ho/ Us shakhs ko zaroor hai rozaa rakha kare/ Jis paas roza khol ke khaane ko kuch na ho/ Roza agar na khaaye to naachaar kya kare. (The one who has the means to break his fast/ that person should indeed keep the fast/ The one who has nothing to break his fast with/ What else can he do but to ‘eat the fast’).

In Delhi, there were poetry soirees during Ramazan where the congregation would conclude with the morning meal. Apparently, a couplet would lure the audiences: Mushaira bhi hai, sehri ka intezam bhi/ Daawat-i- aam hai, yaarane nuqtadan ke liye. (This mushaira will end with sehri. Friendly critics and commoners are welcome for both).

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi. jawednaqvi@gmail.com

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

The post Ramadan & Ramazan Schedule appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Sadiq Khan`s brilliant victory as London mayor is a feather in the cap of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, which the leftist leader is striving to lick into an agreeable shape. How is it of use to be reminded profusely that Khan is a Muslim or is of Pakistani extraction? Parochial exultations here will necessarily smack of hypocrisy and are disingenuous.

Celebrating the first ‘Muslim Lord Mayor of London’ runs the risk of surprising the disparate groups of open-hearted Londoners who chose Khan over his opponents` perverse recourse to religious innuendo. Does Khan`s victory indicate that racism is over in Britain? The answer is no. It will be a while and may require a nationwide change of heart. Khan`s election is a milestone in that direction.

In any case, the plain truth is that Sadiq Khan would not have survived in Pakistan, not as a Muslim, not as a non-Muslim. There was one Labour Party-like (or possibly better) hope in the country in the 1970s but its leaders compromised with right-wing Muslim zealots. And the zealots found a self-proclaimed Muslim despot to hang their former benefactor. That was that. The daughter tried to rekindle some hope for an open society but sadly ended up creating the Taliban. The liberal soufflé has not risen since in Pakistan. Where would Khan fit? Well, the news of his victory in London coincided with another cowardly murder of an open-minded Pakistani, the murder of Khurram Zaki. The slain human rights activist would have savoured the Labour-Corbyn-Khan win had he lived to rejoice.

Khan too was a respected rights activist before plunging into politics.

And here we can say that Zaki`s killers do seem to belong to the stock of self-proclaimed Muslims, the kind that can and do make life difficult for people like Khan. And by making it difficult for Khan, they make it equally uphill for Corbyn`s old Labour politics and its growing allies, Bernie Sanders among others.

Some will say since we supported Barack Obamaas the first black contender for the White House why not celebrate Khan as the first Muslim mayor of London. A simple answer would be: history. Obama`s election ushered a point of departure in American history. And then he was the most progressive hope doing the rounds at the time, more so after the dark years of Bush presidency. To use a counterfactual argument, however, would Colin Powell have clinched the support of black voters, or even Obama, for that matter, had he been a Republican candidate? The analogy is actually relevant in Khan`s case. In a parallel narrative on the London circuit, a suggestion is being circulated by some of his admirers, inappropriately in my view, that he won the election despite or perhaps because of policy differences with Corbyn.

Another view on offer, with Corbyn as the obvious target, is that Khan won because he reached out to Tory voters and businesses. The claim suggests that Labour under Corbyn doesn`t have what it would take to offer a strategy to win a wider range of support than he had inherited. Let`s hope this view is wrong for I do believe that Khan`s major winning asset if not the only one was the Labour Party in its new changing avatar. But let me return to the issue of parochial identities coming into play.

The reason why I might seem more sensitive than some others about narrow identities could be because of their overuse in India. India, we are told ad nauseam by fellow Indians, is secular as it has the Khan brothers as movie heroes, a Muslim vice president, a Catholic (is she?) leader of a national party and so on. People would helpfully add how beautiful Urdu sounds and also how their grandfathers spoke Persian. The fact is with all these facets of important symbolism, Indian society is hurtling towards increasing prejudice, a well-defined majoritarianism and state-sponsored violence.

Besides, how much longer are we going to be stuck in the Hindu pani and Muslim pani vacuity, the water pitchers thus labelled on railway platforms in pre-Partition India? Add to that an Ahmadi pitcher, a Jewish pitcher and a Christian pitcher in an imaginary mayoral fray. What would the original inhabitants of the city, the pagans, have to say about it? Are the Hindus in London or Tamilians for that matter going to jockey for their community member next to make the mark? If so to what avail? In any case, as the Guardian said in its assessment of Khan`s campaign, it has become standard practice for London politicians to proclaim the city`s ethnic diversity as its strength. On the other hand, there was appeal by Khan`s rivals to the city`s dark underbelly. For example, Zac Goldsmith attempted to woo Indian and Tamil Londoners ‘London’s Hindus,’ as the Mirror`s headline put it with tales of threats to their family jewels because Khan proposed to impose wealth tax.

We are told that in the run-up to the polls, Goldsmith, the Conservative candidate, escalated his drive to scare up votes in London`s suburbs.

Leaflets were sent to voters in Harrow and elsewhere with messages tailored to arouse hostility to Sadiq Khan.

One leaflet claimed that Khan `supported` Corbyn who `wanted to BAN [India`s] Prime Minister Modi from visiting the UK`. It added that Khan did not attend the vast welcome event held at Wembley stadium for Modi when he visited London last year.

The fact is that both Corbyn and Khan eventually did meet Modi. And that tempts me to wonder if the Labour tally would not be higher had the two not met the controversial leader as a matter of principle enshrined their liberal ideals.

The writer is Dawn`s correspondent in Delhi. jawednaqvi@gmail.com

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

The post Should Sadiq Khan`s Faith Matter? appeared first on Inter Press Service.