When people see none less than their ‘highest representatives’ shamed and exposed, it is no surprise that all else fades into insignificance. So it happened that the Tehelka expose stalled proceedings in Parliament and dominated the telecasts of all news channels as much as the print media. Forced to talk to the  people, the Prime Minister in his address to the nation promised a thorough cleansing. Should we take the PM’s sound-bytes seriously?

 It is a sad commentary on the state of the only opposition party with a national reach that even when served on a platter, it is unable to grab the offering. Be it the results of the panchayat elections in the state of Gujarat that swung in it’s favour simply because there is no alternative, the widespread public dissatisfaction due to the BJP government’s gross mishandling of a natural disaster like the recent earthquake, or the tremors caused by the Tehelka tapes — nothing really moves the Congress. Hence, after the first rumblings of dissent, politically at least the storm seems to have blown over. Tehelka now faces questions about its methods and motives and the source of its money, but nothing can take away from its extraordinary investigative achievement. 

The Tehelka tapes relegated other issues that had dominated news before the scam to the background. With the storm abating at least for now, its time to return to those concerns. Our cover story this month explores the whole issue of the Haj subsidy, an issue that has been an integral part of Hindutva’s “Muslim appeasement” argument and which resurfaced last month. 

It is apparent from our investigation that a large majority of Muslims agree with the reported view of the ulema in Saudi Arabia that a haj performed with government subsidy may be un-Islamic. More importantly, our investigation revealed that the haj subsidy in fact is hardly necessary, which throws the very rationale of subsidy into serious question. Meanwhile, the larger issue of a secular state financing religious activities appears a little more complex and we leave this open for wider debate.

The Taliban in Afghanistan chose to respond to the sanctions imposed on it by the United Nations (see Campaign, CC, February 2001) with the desecration of the centuries’ old Bamiyan Buddhas. The barbaric misdeed has been widely condemned by Afghani intellectuals, ulema, Islamic scholars, intellectuals and ordinary Muslims from virtually the entire Islamic world, including India. Included among the wide-ranging reports and opinions that we carry on the subject in this issue, are also reminders to our readers that the US and its notorious CIA are the original founders and supporters of the Taliban. 

Questions are also being why the West which has been rightly shocked and outraged at the “cultural genocide” in Afghanistan remained silent about the fact that apart from the colossal human suffering, during the war in Bosnia 1,200 libraries, mosques and historical buildings were destroyed by Serbian forces. No condemnation was forthcoming then either by the UN or the UNESCO. Other UNESCO-protected sites, including emperor Akbar’s imperial city of Fatehpur-Sikri, are being excavated under the sway of Hindutva’s hawks. So far, the UNESCO has issued no appeal or statement.

We are once again witnesses to the tit for tat tendency that acts of religious intolerance and communal violence seem to drive some sections of our people to. Kanpur, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune and Bhiwandi simmered and flared up in response to news about the burning of a copy of the Quran in Delhi (allegedly by Bajrang Dal activists who have since been arrested) in ‘retaliation’ to the destruction of the Buddhas in Afghanistan. Even while the national press reportedly held back the news in the interest of peace, a photograph of the incident was circulated on the internet. The violence that followed the Students Islamic Movement of India’s distribution of highly provocative pamphlets and posters and ‘retaliatory’ attacks on temples took 20 lives in Kanpur in UP. In some places, the police acted swiftly to contain the situation but the real question pertains to the absence of long-term measures. Why do the authorities permit the regular poisoning of public sphere through hate speech and venom, be it by the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna or SIMI? Why are the protectors of the law not equally concerned about nipping violence in the bud, when seeds are being sown insidiously in the mind?