Muslim
Reactions To Mumbai Blasts
By Yoginder Sikand
25 July, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Although
the recent bomb blasts in Mumbai have been widely condemned by numerous
Indian Muslim organizations and leaders, their voices have gone unheard
in large sections of the Indian media or else have received only passing
mention. While the identity of the perpetrators of the blasts is still
to be confirmed, scores of Muslims in different parts of the country
have been arrested by the police. Muslim and human rights organizations
claim that many of these people are innocent and have nothing whatsoever
to do with militancy. Always on the prowl for any excuse to hound Muslims,
the Hindutva lobby has seized the opportunity created by the blasts
to castigate the entire Muslim community.
Muslims from a wide cross-section
of society I have been interacting with in Delhi in recent days are
visibly upset about the way in which the Mumbai blasts have been used
to tarnish the image of the community. They argue that, in the absence
of firm evidence, it would be unfair to blame Muslims for the blasts.
They insist that before coming any conclusion as to identity of the
perpetrators the government must institute an impartial inquiry. While
they admit that the possibility that blasts could indeed have been the
handiwork of some Muslims or a radical Islamist group, they argue that
the culprits the could equally possibly have been a non-Muslim outfit,
who might have engineered the blasts to trigger of anti-Muslim sentiments
so as to win public support for an anti-Muslim vendetta.
Heena, a college student,
tells me, 'Yes, a self-styled Islamist group may have orchestrated the
blasts. Or, perhaps, relatives of some Muslims massacred recently in
the state-sponsored pogroms in Gujarat, in order to seek revenge. Who
knows? But the blasts could just as easily have been carried out by
some Hindutva, Zionist or Western group or some such anti-Muslim agency
in order to blame Muslims and give them a bad name. Till such time as
the identity of the culprits is confirmed, we should desist from passing
judgment'.
'Islam condemns the killing
of innocent people', says Wali, a shopkeeper in Matia Mahal, 'but even
if the blasts were engineered by some Muslims, why should the entire
Muslim community be condemned for it?'. Wali speaks of how the Mumbai
blasts, coming close on the heels of similar blasts in Varanasi and
Delhi, have only further entrenched deeply-held anti-Muslim prejudices
among many Hindus. 'If the blasts were orchestrated by some anti-Muslim
group to give Muslims a bad name, they've succeeded in their mission',
he says. 'But', he hastens to add, 'if some radical self-proclaimed
Islamist group or the Pakistani ISI was responsible, they've done the
greatest possible disservice, not just to India as a whole, but also
to the Indian Muslims themselves, who now feel even more threatened
and insecure than before'.
'The blasts are totally unwarranted
and no religion can sanction it, no matter who has done it, whether
Muslims or Hindus or someone else', says Hussain, a shopkeeper in Dariya
Ganj. 'But', he also asks, 'why is it that when three thousand or more
Muslims were recently killed in a state-sponsored pogrom in Gujarat,
the Hindutva lobby and the wider Hindu society did not express similar
outrage? Why is it that Modi, who orchestrated the pogroms, is still
sitting comfortably in his chair?' 'Why', he wants to know, 'are Hindutva
goons, who indulged in such an orgy of bloodshed in Gujarat and elsewhere,
not condemned as terrorists? Why are they instead projected as patriots?
Why have those Hindus responsible for the massacre of thousands of Sikhs
in 1984 and the murder of I don't know how many Dalits not been brought
to justice?'.
Hussain reminds me of the
literally several thousand cases of communal riots, anti-Muslim pogroms
and police killings of Muslims that have happened in India since 1947.
'Not a single person involved in these heinous crimes has been hanged',
he claims. 'Jamshedpur, Mordabad, Bhiwandi, Nellie, Aligarh, Hyderabad,
Gujarat-the list is endless, and the number of innocents, mostly Muslims,
killed runs into tens of thousands', he says in despair. 'Yet, they
have not got justice and the state has done nothing at all to rope in
Hindutva terrorists'. He tells me about the brutal slaying of some fifty
innocent Muslim youths by the Provincial Armed Constabulary in 1987
in the notorious Hashimpura massacre. No punishment was taken against
the accused, and, instead, some of them were promoted.
Several Muslims I have met
in recent days relate that, particularly after the Mumbai blasts, tell
me that they feel a heightened sense of insecurity when they venture
outside Muslim localities, mostly squalid ghettoes in which they have
been condemned to live. Wasim, a madrasa student in Zakir Nagar, says
that when he travels in a bus he usually gets strange looks from passengers,
who recognize him as a Muslim from his beard and skull-cap. Arjimand,
a sales executive, relates that he recently sought to rent a house in
an 'upper' caste Hindu locality, because his wife insisted that they
should move from the Muslim ghetto of Batla House. 'When the landlord
found out that we were Muslims, he flatly refused to let out his flat
to us, telling us bluntly that he did not want Muslim tenants'.
Many Muslims I have recently
met relate some such anecdotes. They point out that such cases of prejudice
against Muslims are not new, but they also claim that they have mounted
in recent years, thanks to incidents like the Mumbai blasts.
In the wake of the blasts,
several Muslim organizations all over the country have organized meetings
to condemn them, to argue that Islam does not allow such heinous deeds
and to demand that the government constitute an impartial investigation
into the blasts. They have appealed to Muslims to struggle for their
Constitutional rights as citizens of India through democratic means.
They have denounced both Hindu and Muslim militancy and have suggested
that Muslims join hands with people of other faiths to promote genuine
secularism and democracy. The general response of the Muslims I have
been meeting to the blasts seems to be that both Hindu as well as Muslim
militancy pose a grave danger to the Indian Muslim community, in addition
to the country as a whole and South Asia more widely. At the same time,
they insist that the state address the very serious issue of widespread
Muslim poverty, illiteracy and unemployment, a result, in part, of the
neglect by and apathy of the state towards Muslim concerns and discrimination
at the hands of the 'upper' caste Hindu-dominated wider society. Growing
anti-Islamophobia, occasioned by incidents such as the Mumbai blasts,
will make their case for social justice for Muslims even less acceptable
to the state and many Hindus, they fear.
As Ayesha, a housewife in
Old Delhi, tells me, 'We Indian Muslims have to live and die here. This
is our country. Hindu and Muslim militant and groups have their own
nefarious agendas, seeking to hold ordinary Hindus and Muslims to ransom
by setting them against each other. If the Indian state and society
at large are serious about preventing attacks such as in Mumbai recently,
all forms of terrorism in the guise of religion, Hindu as well as Muslim,
need to be effectively countered with equal vigour'. 'At the same time',
she adds, 'sustained peace can only be based on justice, and if we are
genuinely concerned about peace, a simple law-and-order approach alone
will not do. The state has to be also serious about addressing the continued
denial of justice to marginalized communities, be it Dalits or Adivasis
or Muslims, as well as their lack of access to resources, education
and representation'.