Jan. - March 2006 
Year 12    No.114

Editorial


 

Kashi tujhe salaam!

Since 9/11 and subsequent terrorist attacks elsewhere across the globe by mass murderers who kill in the name of Islam, Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis appears to be gaining new currency. If it was capitalism vs. communism earlier, it seems to be Islamists vs. Islamophobics now. In this new war, it is not just Bush’s bombs targeting entire countries vs. Jihadi bombs targeting innocent civilians. Some would say that the cartoon controversy, which hopefully by now has run out of steam, is also civilisational war through other means (‘Death by Drawing’, is how a new web site, www.cartoonbodycount.com, describes it). 

Some or all of the 12 cartoons of the prophet of Islam that were first published in a right wing Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in end September 2005, have since been republished by newspapers in over 50 countries and telecast all over the world. This unprecedented show of media solidarity, ostensibly in defence of the freedom of expression, is certainly an example of rank hypocrisy. As more than one article in this issue points out, there are any number of instances of the same media voluntarily exercising self-censorship or otherwise drawing a Laxman-rekha around their freedom to express.  

As other articles in this issue point out, the cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad as a woman-enslaver and a terrorist have less to do with the freedom of expression and much more to do with racism and growing Islamophobia in the West. In his response to the "outrageous" cartoons, former US president Bill Clinton issued a timely warning to the West which, having spent the last 50 years purging itself of "anti-Jewish prejudice", now seems to be easy prey to "anti-Islam prejudice".  

If the freedom to express means the right to write or draw, it also means the equal right of those who feel hurt or offended to take to the streets. But while no one denies Muslims their right to protest, locally or globally, questions must be asked of those who seem to think that provocative words or images are enough justification for them to react with violence or incitement to kill. How is this any different from Narendra Modi’s murderous "action-reaction" theory? Besides, don’t such inciters and perpetrators of violence reinforce the very image of their community and faith that the Danish cartoons portray? 

In India, certain Muslim outfits committed a huge tactical blunder, hitching their protest against the offending cartoons to the protest against President Bush, creating the impression, in the process, that only Muslims have a problem with US warmongering.  

Within days of the countrywide and overwhelmingly Muslim protest came the bomb blasts targeting innocent citizens at an ancient temple and at a railway station in Varanasi, the cultural heart of India. If the Danish cartoons hurt Muslim religious sentiments, the bombs, obviously aimed at Hindus, killed and maimed innocent people, many of them inside a Hindu place of worship. If the cartoons were a provocation, surely the bomb blasts on the eve of Holi festivities were provocation of an extreme kind? Taken together, the two incidents offer dramatically different examples of provocation and response.  

If the cartoon controversy sharply divided Muslims between the moderates and the extremists, Varanasi provided an extraordinary example of how Dr Veer Bhadra Mishra, the Hindu mahant of this 400 year old temple, nixed any efforts to reap vengeful benefit from this tragedy and sent out, instead, a message of deep restraint and calm. What followed from this were unique and healing images, and messages of Hindu-Muslim unity that effectively frustrated the designs of those hoping to precipitate a communal bloodbath.

Kashi, on the banks of the holy Ganga, the ancient Indian town synonymous with Hindu scriptures and religiosity, is also home to the best of the syncretic culture that has seeped into the consciousness of Indians. If Kashi’s Krishna Maharaj, maestro of tabla rhythm, is the proud guru of Zakir Hussain, Bismillah Khan, whose haunting shehnai melodies make every Indian proud, cannot perform without paying obeisance to the rituals and culture of this city. This is the lived syncretism of this part of the world that has made secularism, as we articulate it, and democracy, its ally, the natural option of governance. Within hours of the acts of terror at the temple town, led by the courageous mahant, the people of Kashi – burkha-clad women, Hindu traders, Muslim clerics, youth, doctors, academics – all chipped in to actively prevent one terror tragedy becoming the excuse for spiralling violence.

This month’s special issue of Communalism Combat, while offering extensive reportage and commentary on the cartoon controversy, pays tribute to the active intervention of citizens of Kashi, all of whom have offered hope and healing to those of us grappling for alternatives to hatred, terror and violence. Kashi tujhe salaam!

— Editors


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