Wages Of Fanaticism Are Paid In Different Foreign Currencies
By Jawed Naqvi
17 April, 2007
The DawnTwo facets of the Lal Masjid standoff in Islamabad between the mullahs and the civil/military administration have a universal relevance. First a universal truth that fanatical obscurantism is bred and nurtured right across the world by powerful vested interests, including, often enough, the state. The second fact is that standoffs like the one looming over Lal Masjid almost always end violently but never wane completely, because obscurantism is a handy tool of social management that can't be surrendered for any other cause.
When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969, Muslim theologians in Lucknow described the event as a myth. For several years, many members of the Shia and Sunni communities in that city believed the religious view, and preferred to live in denial of Armstrong's amazing feat. The mullahs' argument was compelling. The moon was a celestial body associated with a major miracle in Islam. It was, therefore, not possible for a mere human to land on its surface.
Since the notion of secularism as practised in India is a mishmash of obscurantist bonhomie between different sects, it was in order that a certain Baba Sarandas, the sociable Hindu priest in Lucknow's neighbourhood of Nirala Nagar, lent full-throated support to the idea originally promoted by Maulana Tahir Jarwali etc. Fortunately there was no television in the country then to fan these foolish beliefs.
History is replete with examples of domineering obscurantism that cuts across religious boundaries. Galileo's ordeal is a classic example of the hold mediaeval Christianity had on Europe and beyond. It took the Pope 400 years to "pardon" Galileo for his assertion that contrary to biblical belief it was the earth that circled the sun, not the other way around. Yet, in the overall assessment of man's intellectual progress since mediaeval times we are still likely to find a Galileo prostate before the Pope not vice versa.
The mullahs of Lucknow or Deoband, or anywhere else, were, and still are, patronised by the political order of the day. That's why Rahul Gandhi put on a Muslim skull cap in the Deoband medrassah and declared that Babri masjid would not have been torn down had a Nehru-Gandhi scion been in power in 1992. Deoband provides votes to any bidder in a political quid pro quo. Since he was speaking in Deoband it was convenient for Rahul Gandhi to forget that it was his grandmother, Indira Gandhi, who when in power in June, 1984, had ordered a full-scale army assault on Sikhdom's holiest shrine in Amritsar. It was Rahul Gandhi's father who had fanned Hindutva communalism by overturning a court verdict on Muslim divorce practices to appease
their orthodoxy. He also signalled an open season on Babri Masjid by ordering its locks to be removed.There are reports that Gen Musharraf would be meeting his Corps Commanders this week to chalk out a strategy, among other issues, to assert the government's authority over Lal Masjid. He would do well to bear in mind two or three examples of violent standoffs that went horribly wrong. The most relevant is the Operation Blue Star, which the Indian army carried out against the Sikh shrine under Mrs Gandhi's orders. There is a marked similarity between the mullahs of Lal Masjid
and the Sikh extremists Mrs Gandhi had sought to flush out of the Golden Temple complex. The Indian prime minister had once patronised the extremist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale who she thought would be a foil to the Akali hold on Punjab politics. It was a typical Frankenstein-like situation, not unlike the patronage Muslim extremists have enjoyed with Pakistan's army for years. More than 400 civilians were killed. The army lost about 85. Worse, the battle didn't end there. It resulted in the assassination of Mrs Gandhi in October 1984. Enraged Hindu mobs lynched 3000 Sikhs in Delhi, Mumbai and elsewhere. A sad denouement to a political subterfuge.Much like the Sikh insurgency, the Chechen rebellion in Russia was also rooted in religious fervour, ethnicity and separatism. In Russia, in September 2004, the Beslan school hostage crisis began when the group of pro-Chechen armed rebels seized more than 1,200 school children and adults in the town of Beslan, in the Caucasus region of the Russian Federation.
On the third day of the standoff, gunfire broke out between the hostage-takers and Russian security forces. Some 344 civilians were killed, including 186 children, and hundreds more were wounded. Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev took responsibility for the hostage taking, which was led by his Ingush deputy Magomet Yevloyev.Many questions remain a matter of dispute, including how many militants were involved, whether weapons and ammunition had been hidden in the school prior to the siege, and whether some of the militants had escaped. Questions about the government's management of the crisis have also persisted, including the nature and content of negotiations
with the militants, the responsibility for the bloody outcome, and the use of heavy weapons.Some of these tragedies are rooted in an absurd history. Twenty-five children and scores of adults died as a result of the US government's assault on a Seventh-Day Adventist sect near Waco, Texas, in 1993. However, the real root of the problem was at least 150 years old. In the 1830s, a New England Baptist preacher, William Miller, computed from obscure prophecies in the Book of Daniel that Jesus would return to Earth between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844.
Miller began warning of the approaching apocalypse. By the 1840s, he had drawn nearly 100,000 followers. The Doomsday never came. Many Millerites lost their faith, but a hard core held firm. Some of them insisted that doomsday actually had occurred on Oct 22, but it was a preparatory event in heaven that would be followed soon by Jesus bursting forth onto Earth. This group formed the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The ill-fated Waco lot were an offshoot of this group.
The enabling atmosphere for obscurantist groups such as the Davidian sect in Waco -- those awaiting or working for the Doomsday – must inevitably become that much more alluring when the American president himself, and his cabinet members, begin to move around the White House with the mandatory Bible in hand.
By contrast even the much maligned Ayatollah Khomeini comes out as some kind of a liberal visionary.
Shrewdly enough, he put members of a secret group called Hojjatiyeh behind bars. The Hojjatiyeh were more or less an Iranian replica of the Branch Davidian sect. They too were working hard for the arrival of the Mahdi so that the day of reckoning would be hastened. To achieve this, the group had plotted to throw an incendiary device into the Soviet Union, so as to provoke a violent retribution. According to this scenario, the Americans would move in against the Soviet incursion into Iran. There would be a Third World War. The pious Hojjatiyeh would go to heaven, everyone else would be destined for hell.
The wages for fanaticism are truly paid in different foreign currencies. Gen Musharraf may be getting ready to choose his.
Click here to comment
on this article
Get CC HeadlinesOn your Desk Top