Frontline
April 1999
Editorial

Turning friends into strangers

Popular wisdom has it that a known devil is better than an unknown one is. We also know from lived experience that most human beings are far more comfortable with other human beings whom they are familiar with than those who are strangers. Given this basic fact of life, the task before those who, for reasons of politics or faith, pursue the divisive ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’ agenda is clear: Between groups of people
who have lived together for generations, even centuries, underplay that which they share in common, highlight differences, even create them where none exist. That is why disputes over places of worship and shrines of saints and pirs revered equally by Muslims and Hindus for long — Dada Hayat/Dattatreya in Baba Budhangiri Hills in Karnataka, Haji Malang/Machindranath in Maharashtra, Lal Khan Saheb/Lal Das in Rajasthan — are instances of controversies that have been deliberately raked up by proponents of Hindutva.

What the saffron brigade is up to is well known. What is not as clearly recognised is the fact that for entirely different reasons and through an entirely different strategy, a section among Muslims in India pursues a similar agenda: deny our shared past, question and if possible eradicate the spontaneously evolved socio– or religio–cultural practices of generations that have gone into the making of India’s composite culture. The highly puritanical and orthodox, Tablighi Jamaat, is one such Muslim body. Founded in the mid–30s, the organisation had very little following among Muslims until the late ’80s. But the extreme communalisation of Indian society by the votaries of Hindutva has provided very fertile soil for the mushrooming of this insular ideology since the early ’90s.

The saffron brigade wants to capture and convert the dargah of Haji Malang into an exclusive temple of Machindranath. If they were to succeed, it would mean the end of Muslim visits to the place. For its part, a body like the Tablighi Jamaat believes that Muslims in any case must stop visiting dargahs, asking for boons and celebrating urs because these are ‘un-Islamic, Hindu’ practices. If the Jamaat were to succeed in converting Muslims to their point of view, then again, Muslims will stop visiting dargahs such as that of Haji Malang. Thus, the success of the saffron or the Tablighi project would produce an identical result: the end of an existing space for regular social intercourse between Hindus and Muslims.

Our cover story this month examines in detail the Dada Hayat vs. Dattatreya controversy recently raked up by votaries of Hindutva in Karnataka. An accompanying story unravels the strategy adopted by the Tablighi Jamaat in the Konkan region in Maharashtra to create a divide among people who for generations have jointly engaged in religio–cultural activities which have acted as social cement.

For long Indonesia, home to the largest concentration of Muslims in any single country in the world, was considered a living example of Islamic broad–mindedness. Members of the saffron camp in India have often said there would be no Hindu–Muslim problem in India if, like the followers of Islam in Indonesia, India’s Muslims acknowledge and affirm their ties with the Mahabharat and the Ramayana. But the severe economic crisis in Indonesia in the Past few years appears to have triggered the surfacing of intense religious and ethnic conflicts. The special report this month takes note of this disturbing development.

Islamic scholar and Bohra reformist, Asghar Ali Engineer, is now 60–years–old. For nearly 38 years now, Engineer has with a rare single–mindedness waged a consistent battle for communal amity and against the tyranny of the head–priest of his own Bohra sect — Syedna Burhanuddin. Engineer has been active long before many of today’s activists, including the editors of this journal, awakened to the enormity of the communal menace. He has visited one riot–torn city after another, interviewed victims, made investigations and prepared valuable records on the country’s communal conflagrations. And for daring to demand reform among Bohras he has been beaten, bruised and ostracised in an extremely inhuman manner. It speaks poorly of the political and religious leadership among Muslims in India that, overtly or covertly, they are all on the Syedna’s side, not Engineer’s. Our tribute to the fighter against tyranny and for inter–religious fraternity.

— EDITORS


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