Islam is not at war with Hinduism; not in India nor with Taoism and Communism in China, for that matter. In both countries, members of the minority Muslim community feel they are persecuted, in varying degrees, by instruments and institutions of state as much as by their neighbours of the majority community. The Rohingyas of Myanmar now scattered all over south Asia fleeing army anger, are in the list of several other groups displaced from their homes by bigoted regimes and their armed forces.
Not many in India would know about the minority situation in China where the microscopic Uighur Muslim population, rooted essentially in one province, feels persecuted. The Indian government protests the persecution of Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan but does not take any interest in the violence against Uighurs. India has risked long term confrontation with Beijing in espousing the cause of the Buddhist people of Tibet. Though the now reviled Jawaharlal Nehru was the one to welcome a fleeing Dalai Lama and his court, this is one policy Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not reversed, again quite correctly.
As the British Broadcasting Corporation reports, China is facing growing criticism in the West over its persecution of the Uighurs, huge numbers of whom are allegedly being held in internment camps. The claims were made by rights groups, but China denies the allegations. At the same time, there’s growing evidence of oppressive surveillance against people living in Xinjiang. Up to ten lakh (one million) of them could be detained in the western Xinjiang region in camps. Any resemblance to camps being built in Assam to keep those deemed to be foreigners is coincidental.
This is not about the Uighurs, a culturally rich community and quite integral to the plurality of China where the overwhelming Han ethnic group really controls the cultural and political ecosphere. This is about India.
And it is being brought up because of the sounds one hears in various Christian quarters, ranging from Syrian groups of certain varieties to the most apolitical of Pentecostal leaders, that it may be more safe for “us” if we stopped worrying about Muslims, or for that matter, racking up issues that seem confrontational vis a vis the regime.
It is admitted that the community at large, and in Kerala, Mumbai and some other garrison towns elsewhere, allowed itself for the last 70 years or so to be identified with just the Congress. It was called the Congress vote bank, but thank God, not called its lapdog.
No study has been done by any government to find out the socio-economic situation of Christians in India. But even without it, the religious and social leadership likes to believe we are doing alright. Many even think we were better off than we would be if employment and seats in Parliament and such like were on a pro rata basis. At 2.3 per cent of the population, our representation would be equally insignificant. Perhaps it is wise to live in a fool’s paradise.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had ordered a prime ministerial committee under retired Delhi chief justice, the late Rajinder Sachar, to deep probe into the situation of the Muslims. The Sachar commission exploded the myth of the vote bank and the appeasement that government had allegedly done to keep the Muslims with it. That this latent Islamophobia was as much rooted in certain segments of the Confers as it was the mainstay of the Bharatiya Janata party’s ideological argument, is well known.
The lack of appeasement is even more than in the lack of employment and education. There is now RTI data on the number of Muslims in jails as undertrials, on the number of Muslims who were released by courts after a decade or more of incarceration because they had been falsely implicated. Many a young Muslim lost his youth in jail where he was tortured allegedly because he was a terrorist. The courts, when eventually the trial was over, found them not guilty.
Some, of course are guilty, of terrorism and murder, of abduction and rape and theft. As are their equivalents from the Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain and Muslim groups. A few Parsees are in jail on charges of terrorism. No community can be painted criminal for the faults of a few. It is true for very ethnic, religious ethnic group in India as it is for the Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Asians in the United States.
With every group at par in this democratic landscape, it will not do for singular groups, cultural or religious identities, to seek private peace with the regime, whether it is merely majoritarian or undemocratic, as would be so in some countries.
The health of democracies in an interconnected world demand some basic ground rules. No one can prosper unless everyone prospers, relatively if not equally. That would be true in the case of women relative to men, for instance, and for urban and rural communities, and the self-styled upper castes and what are deemed by them to be untouchables.
And no one will be safe unless everyone enjoys the guarantee of safety from the State. That is the essence of constitutional democracy.
Religious minorities too will be safe if all of them are safe vis-a-vis the state and the political structures of the majority religious community.
In translation, therefore, it will be good to remember even by the Islamophobic amongst us that no Christian will be safe unless every Muslim feels safe.
(John Dayal is an author, editor and activist, living in New Delhi)
