Two Blasts Rock Jama Masjid In Old Delhi

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The moving spirit behind the meeting was Imam Ahmad Bukhari of Delhi’s Jama Masjid, closely supported by Maulana Asad Madni, one-time head of the famed Darul Uloom of Deoband, the leading Muslim seminary of the subcontinent.</b>

The Deoband Darul Uloom has been a nursery of traditional Muslim clerics and the fountainhead of a large number of conservative madrassahs functioning in the subcontinent. Earlier, Maulana Asad Madni was strongly supportive of the nationalist policies of the Congress led by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and later his daughter, Mrs Indira Gandhi. However, he distanced himself from Mrs Gandhi following the forced family planning strategy of her son, Sanjay Gandhi, and his attempt to clear a part of old Delhi of its Muslim slums by use of force.

This marked the beginning of the Indian Muslims’ estrangement from the Congress. <b>Maulana Asad Madni, then head of the Deoband seminary, withdrew his support to Mrs Gandhi’s government. Imam Bukhari’s father, Imam Abdullah Bukhari, even prevented municipal services being extended to the environs of Jama Masjid while the Congress was in power.</b> This inevitably resulted in a certain amount of confusion and uncertainty in the politics of Indian Muslims. A large number of them began to identify themselves with the leadership of what the conservative Hindus regarded as lower-caste Hindu leaders such as Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh.

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Incidentally, Congress president Sonia Gandhi boycotted the function marking the hanging of Savarkar’s portrait in the parliament. According to India Today she did this apparently under the influence the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and “a group of Delhi historians.” The historians had “dubbed” the hanging of Savarkar’s portrait as “a disgrace” and described the deceased Hindu leader as “anti-national.”

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