The Meaning Of Begum Aneesa - (The Tribune, Chandigarh, 04/05/2003)

-- By Dasu Krishnamoorty

Polarised Ahmedabad has returned a Muslim woman as its mayor! Aneesa Begum Nafeesa Ali is the first Muslim woman in the country to be elected mayor, an event greeted by the media with a silence of the grave. It certainly is an embarrassment to them because it demolishes their theory of polarisation. The Begum's victory is neither a victory for the Congress nor a defeat for the BJP. It is the victory of the silent majority who shuns secular/communal politics and who is wedded to 'India Above All' proposition.

A simple truth that the Indian media never popularised is that anywhere in the world minorities prosper only in conditions of an accommodating majority. In the last fifty-five years of free India, that status has never received a setback. The communal clashes prove, if any, the vote bank politics of secular/communal parties. Most of the Congress councilors who voted in the Begum's favour belong to the majority community. If the Congress contends that this would not have happened if the BJP were in a majority in Ahmedabad municipal council, it will have to explain how Abdul Kalam became the President of the Republic.

Those who contest the accommodating spirit of the majority community may contend that it is the party whip that ensured the election of a Muslim. Agreed. But who returned the Congress to power in the first five decades of Independence? The minorities? Has any minority party ever named a non-minority candidate for election? It is common sense that no party can come to power in the country without the ready support of the majority. The people who empowered the Congress are the same who elected the BJP as the largest party four years ago.

Mohammed Kaif, Shahrukh Khan, Bismillah Khan, Parveen Sultana, Naushad Ali, Azim Premji etc. Who are they? They are all household names associated with success. They are the darlings of the people because they rose above the majority-minority divide that the country's Constitution has thrust upon them. They are a success because the bulk of the majority community does not see them belonging to any particular faith. Their rise shows that it is far more desirable for the minorities to join the great mass of Indians and taste success than demand constitutional doles on the basis of faith. Begum Aneesa Ali's election is a reminder of this eternal truth.

Men and women from other minorities too joined the gallery of greats by rejecting the constitutional apartheid and made a name for themselves. The Sikhs and Jains are the leading lights of the Indian industry. Separatism among Christians is a recent trend and a pseudo-event because it is an artificially created reality. The Begum had no chance if the majority-minority mathematics had come into play. The discomfiture of the liberal parties and the minority leaders is the greater because the Begum's election once again proved that the minorities are not only safe but enjoy the goodwill of the majority.

Despite the Constitution, a majority of the people in the country refuse to allow religion to play any role in their public life. I do not see any sanctity attached to religion to be the basis for classifying the population of a country. Society is already fractured on the basis of gender, economic status, literacy, caste etc. The Constitution has simply added another category to this list. The urgent need is to look for an adhesive that can bond all the different communities in the country on non-religious lines. Is it possible to regard a poor man as poor man and not as a Muslim or Hindu?

The recognition of the minority concept in the Constitution has encouraged political peddlers of religion to inject acrimony into its interpretation despite clear judgements of the Supreme Court. Arriving at an acceptable definition of minority is impossible because there are minorities within the majority community and within the minority communities themselves. Do you create special enclaves for the Brahmins, for the Shias, for the Catholics, for the Namdharis etc.? There is a need to end this suicidal drive to split the society ad infinitum and to avoid bloodshed and, God forbid, treason on that account. What kind of a secular society is it that rests on religious foundations? Worse, the liberal media are behind them, emotionally segregating them from the mainstream.

The thesis of the media that the minorities are under siege is totally unconvincing because the minorities enjoy the unconditional support of the major newspapers whose owners, publishers and editors belong to the majority community. After all the subversion of the democratic concept that the majority will prevail in a democracy, has the plight of Muslims improved? Have the Muslim parties done any good to the Muslims except raising walls between them and the majority community? Why do the media not ask themselves these questions? Have Muslims ever considered the status of minorities in Islamic countries and compared theirs in India to it?

Both Ayodhya and Babri Masjid are non-issues. The VHP and the Muslim parties must share the blame, though the inventor of this tradition is the Congress itself. Surprisingly, the media too joined their ranks following the demolition of the Babri Masjid since when they began to take sides. Nearly every article appearing in the mainstream media, including editorials, exhorts the minorities not to join the mainstream but continue with their apartheid existence.

A careful reading of the media texts yields the message that the minorities can do no wrong. They argue that a country has no right to stop a dangerous influx of people because they are a minority community in this country. It does not matter that they are a majority in their own country. According to a political analyst, they are economic refugees. A man who is shortlisted for the Booker Prize but never gets it fondly calls the Kashmiri militants as secular terrorists.

I am critical of the media because they do not address the secular problems of the minorities but their untenable demands in the name of religion. Take conversions. There is no objection to voluntary conversion, one not induced by illusory promises. The kind of conversions that took place in Meenakshipuram is not acceptable to a civilised society. Nor are the conversions in the tribal belt tenable because they are not based on informed consent. Conversion of the Kamala Das kind alone is genuine and legitimate born out of awareness.

There is reason to worry about number politics. According to a survey of demographic changes in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the percentage of the Hindus (including the Buddhists, the Jains and the Sikhs labeled as Indian religionists by the authors) will come down in the second half of this century. It has already dropped from 78 per cent to 67 per cent in a century. In the north, both the percentage of and the area occupied by the Indian religionists dropped by an alarming four per cent. In the border districts of India, their share suffered a seven per cent drop, and in Kerala it is 12 per cent. In the northeast, according to the authors, the fall is drastic.

These developments ought not to cause apprehension but for the secessionist and terrorist movements based on religion in the north and Northeast The entire Islamic world provides a taste of what would happen to the minorities living there. What happened to minorities in Pakistan, which was a part of us not long ago, and in Bangladesh which India liberated from Pakistani misrule? Which Christian or Muslim state has a non-Christian or non-Muslim head of state?

The election of Begum Nafeesa once again proves that the minorities enjoy the goodwill of the majority community, thank God, in spite of the liberal media and more liberal political parties. The minorities must remember that their underclass nature is not related to religion but economic status. A great bulk of the majority community too is as underprivileged as the minorities are. This has nothing to do with religion. No political party is a friend of the minorities. It is the saner sections of the majority community that have preserved the demographic and cultural profile of the minorities and not the media or political parties.