Indian Muslims – throw away victimhood, please
Q. Muslim militants have been responsible for much of the violence that has plagued Mumbai in recent years. But these attacks seem to be of a different magnitude.
A. One of the untold stories of India is that the Muslim population has not shared in the boom the country has enjoyed over the last ten years. There is still a lot of institutional discrimination, and many remain persecuted. There’s enough alienation out there that there are locals who can be drawn in to plots. That tends to be a pattern, from Madrid to Casablanca to Bali—some hard-core jihadis who indoctrinate alienated locals they can seduce.
That was Fareed Zakaria, a highly successful American of Indian Muslim origin (emphasis mine, Newsweek link) I was disappointed by his answer. If you respond to a terror attack by offering discrimination excuses, you are an apologist. But that is all too common.
So, what “institutionalized discrimination”?
To the best of my knowledge, Indian Muslims are the recipients of subisidies and quotas from the state, though not as much as some other groups.
In the economic sector, even not counting the great successes of the Azim Premjis and the Shahrukh Khans, there does remain discrimination – there are two factors:
1. Lack of competitive markets in financial access, education etc. Government schools and banks will remain corrupt, and the teachers and officers there can always exercise their biases. Not so in an competitive industry. Even if it is financed by the government, but so long as the government does not run it – example, tax incentives for savings at all banks – private or public, and school vouchers – for free/inexpensive education at all schools – private or public.
2. The vicious cycle of competitive intolerance, victimhood, nostalgia of past greatness, and paranoia about other groups. (the latest example of paranoia being Mohib at Indianmuslims.in insinuating that Hindu groups are behind these large-scale attacks against high-value domestic and foreign targets)
The former can be corrected by the removal of UPA-type communal socialists who play on their insecurities; the latter – and the latter is just a matter of when, not if – will happen due to a younger, more educated and market-friendly generation. I remain cautiously optimistic about the younger generation.
Now, there is perceived indiscrimination, but in the private sector real discrimination can only last because of government interference.
So I ask again – Where is the real institutionalized discrimination? The answer is there is no institutionalized discrimination, at least on a national scale.
So the media and leading Muslim figures should encourage more personal responsibility amongst Muslims (Barack Obama did the same thing, at least in his rhetoric, when he told African-American men to give up victimhood and take up responsibility)
And instill in all our fellow Muslim brothers, the benefit of a scientific, English-based education for their sons and daughters (hopefully through government vouchers, for all low-income Indians)
They will be the more propserous for it, and the entire country will be the more peaceful.
Amen. Inshallah.
[...] finally, as Offstumped, Retributions and Swaraj have started doing, it is necessary to call out the motivated, mistaken or plainly wrong commentaries that have started pouring out into the [...]
Harsh Gupta:
No where did I insinuate that saffron brigade is behind these attacks. I even wrote it plainly when I updated the post. The circumstances around the death of Hemant Karkare are still unclear as are many of the details of the entire operation.
Please stop putting words in my mouth to support your hypothesis.
Mohib,
From your post:
“Head of Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) probing the Malegaon blasts was also killed in the attack. Sadhvi Pragya is one of the prime accused in Malegaon blasts amongst others. An unidentified person threatened to kill the ATS chief two days back on phone.”
I will leave it for the readers to decide whether you insinuated anything or not
I have deleted a few comments here.
Rational, even passionate, discussion is more than welcome.
But no name calling of entire communities.
Harsh:
I would appreciate if you allow me to publish this excerpt from my updated post and let the readers make their own judgment:
Thanks a lot.
Mohib,
Thanks for the clarification.
This is the political drama of power !
Terrorist were came to India through boat, entered in two 5 stars Hotels with arms which will last long for more than 40 hours, battling with police and thereafter NSG, so many important lives have been lost, whereas bloggers were sitting on the computers and start blaming on others without any sigle proof, like firing in the air.
When we will became responsible citizens ? we all including politicians, media and all wait to happened the things like that no precautionary measures were taken at the begining, when the tradegy ocurr, we came into action with words and straight come to the conclusions that these groups were behind attacks, when we waited until the tradegy ocurr, why can’t we wait untill the investigation is being completed, so that real culprits gets punishments.
Let the investigations may proceed and all the people involved including lapses in security of this country must be also punished, how the outsider entered in this country, how the armed men reached to thier targets without being properly checked.
Swaraj ur heading is most appropriate.
muslims, have to come out the feeling that they are different in any way. i do not think, any dept discriminates against them in any way. no applications are turned away for being muslim (how many of our presidents have been muslims). like the jews in early 1900s when they stayed in ghettos, did not mix very well with the population, today, muslims are increasingly resorting to similar methods. while the SC/ST are understood, that they have been repressed for ages, muslims were ruling the country for over 4 centuries. so they cannot claim their backwardness to repression. another reason for the indian muslims has been politicisation of the entire community by petty politicians, playing on their fears of suppression. today any community does not have the independence it would like to have due to the development of nation states based on multicultural system. the italians and the chinese in the US were treated with suspicion because of their maintaining a separate identity. i feel it is the same situation in india. muslims are treated with suspicion because of their maintaining a separate identity. today any community can eat what they want, live how they want, till they do not behave in a different way, creating a separate identity for themselves.
hence i feel it is very important for the muslims to get into the mainstream by shunning the madarsa, doing away with the mass beatings on muharram in public (it could be a symbolic thing in confines of the masjid, just as christians do not do this on good friday) etc. unless u make the effort others will remain apprehensive of the community.
Disclaimer: I am not an anti muslim. i have many muslim friends, and together we can joke on each others religion without feeling offended. this was just an attempt to scientifically analyse as to what could be the causes of the feeling of victimhood and a fair attempt to suggest solutions. the attempt is not to find faults or berate a religion, so please no fatwas against me.
if anyone feels bad the administrator can take it off the blog.
Time Magazine, the BBC and countless other international media outlets are entitled to portray the Muslim perspective of ‘historic loss with the arrival of the British East India company’ and post-independence ‘victimhood’ as they explain Islamist ‘rage’ in India. India upholds media freedom.
What they omit to do is to likewise give space to a more Hindu narrative that ‘Nehruvian secularism had strangled the Hindu identity in the public sphere’ with its emphasis on caste intended to disaggregate political Hinduism while simultaneously consolidating what had been until then disaggregated religious minority communities (Muslims included) in the public arena through measures such as education policy, language policy, affirmative action, legal reform, electoral vote banks, religious endowments etc. By contrast the Hindu discourse was in effect legislated out of the public space.
Muslim law in pre-independent India did not apply to all Muslims! For example, the Bohras, Memons, Khojas, Moplahs and even the Pukhtoons were not governed by Muslim personal law until 1950. It was on account of this reason of uneven applicability that both Pakistan and Bangladesh were able to jettison much of it in their respective countries while Nehruvian India was left upholding Shariah provisions on marriage and divorce. While Nehru consolidated Muslim law in contrast to his counterparts in Pakistan, he proceeded to expunge entire tracts of Hindu law in the name of social justice!
The wave of Islamist bomb attacks preceded the Gujarat riots in 2002. I refer to the Mumbai attacks in the 1990s, the Kandahar hijacking which freed the terrorists and consolidated the apparatus that in turn spawned the 9/11 attacks in New York, the attack on the parliament complex, the Coimbatore bomb blasts, the upsurge of violence in Kashmir in 1989 etc.
Islamist radicalism is not confined to India. It exists throughout the world. How then does one explain Islamist rage in a non-Indian context! What we saw in Mumbai was a coordinated set of attacks somewhat similar to attacks elsewhere in the world.The roots for such ‘rage’ clearly lie beyond India’s borders.
Perhaps 800 have died in the past 3 three years in India due to terrorist attacks. The intensity of the attacks have sharpened since the Manmohan Singh led UPA took over in 2004. Here is a ‘liberal’ Government open to Muslim concerns but his ‘liberalism’ has done little to reduce spate of attacks.
I also note the complete lack of media space to the wholesale eviction of Hindus in the Kashmir valley in 1989 (before Gujarat, mind you). One can likewise allude to the complete eviction of Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan in 1947 where they formed 20% of the population until then. Or to the precipitous decline of Hindus in East Bengal from 33% in 1901 to just 9.2% in 2001. Muslims in India have done better than Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Should one then talk of Hindu ‘victimhood’?
nice post!
I do not understand what dear Dharman wants to imply, is that that Pt.Nehru was baised in his policies in a direction contrary to his faith…i’ve seen bais in favour of oneself but this guy if true provides us with an unparalled act of selflessness in human history! Then ..To call the hideous acts of confused socalled followers of Islam as Islamic Terrorism shows lack of intellect and amazes me that such ideas still find their way into our discussions.
At the same time I completely agree with the notion that it is not only factually wrong for the Indian Muslim youth of today to brood about discrimination but also simply foolish. Such thinking would not only alienate them from mainstreem India and increse their devolopement deficit but also sow seeds for future terrorists.
On the issue of who carried out the attacks it is best to wait for the investigation results and simultaneously take strong action on the basis whatever concerte we can lay our hands upon. Now that RAW,FBI and MOSART have joined hands we can certainly hope reach a conclusion soon.
And the recent comment by Mr.Antulay is surely going to give many sleepless nights to the detectives. After listening to him followed by some amount of contemplation all i can do is add to the questions raised by him. An attack on Pakistan at this point of time when the assembly elections r round the corner will win the love of the voter hands down…the timing of the attacks is immaculate in this regard…with help from the internationl community or even without it…do we have another 9/11 on our hands ? Who did this? Who will be most benefited from this?
well… time …or another Zeitgeist will tell.
…..Just thinking