07-15-2007, 02:30 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Smell the coffee</b>
Pioneer.com
Udayan Namboodiri
Saturday Special focusses on the plight of the middle-class, educated Indian Muslim, who, following the revelations about Al Qaeda's links with certain doctors and engineers of the community, would hitherto be victims of far more prejudice and type-casting than ever before. But what about those sectors of the Indian polity that contributed to this by demonising America and linking the Indian Muslims' collective psyche to that of the Iraqis and Palestinians?
The busting of the "Bangalore Club" - what else can you call a collective of educated, upwardly-mobile youth pursuing a common objective - threatens to mark a new beginning in inter-community relationships in India's cities. Henceforth, it won't just do to wish away acts of bombing and mass-killing as results of confused rage by the ill-educated, madarsa-going types. The news of the involvement of Bangalore boys Kafeel and Sabeel Ahmed and their cousin Mohammed Haneef in the Glasgow airport bombing as executors of an Al Qaeda plot could lead to mass type-casting of Muslims, the fold-back of social drawbridges and, eventually, the re-engineering of idioms of political correctness. In sum, more ghettoisation.
The biggest tragedy, however, would go unnoticed. And that is - the people responsible for the predicament, most of them non-Muslims, would get away. For, let us not pretend that the Bangalore Club could emerge without there being a collusion between the Left-liberal establishment and a formless, deceptive entity called the "moderate Indian Muslim". Since 2001, the Left-liberals have given political legitimacy to Jihad Inc. and its auxiliaries in India by ceaselessly producing "root cause" theories. They raised enough din over Gujarat and Babri Masjid to distract people from observing the process of formation of 'secular' alliances between overtly Brahmin parties like the Congress and CPI(M) and ISI front organisations. The "moderate Muslims", a motley group of performing artists and unionised university teachers, acted as the PR arm of this sinister movement. They Urdu-ised the rhetoric generated in the secular olfactory - Iraq, Bush, Gujarat, etc - and pushed the middle-class Indian Muslim farther and farther away from the mainstream. Much to the profit of the 'secularists'.
Other sectors of the media may feign surprise at the development. But The Pioneer can't help feeling a little vindicated. For years now, this paper has tirelessly worked to explode the myth that the madarsas are the only terrorist factories. Education has nothing to do with a person taking to extreme ideologies. The partition movement, and all its associated horrors, was scripted in university common rooms, not in tanneries. In recent years, highly educated, even technically accomplished, Indians have been won over to Al Qaeda's cause. In this very column last August, our Kochi resident editor, Arun Lakshman, had revealed that many of the people behind ISI-backed National Democratic Front (NDF) - a quainter name for a fundamentalist outfit is hard to find - and Jamaat-e-Islami are your everyday, English-articulate Malayali gentlemen. Take this: P Koya, one of the founders of the NDF, retired as English literature professor from the Government Arts College in Kozhikode. Another, called EM Abdurahiman, was a librarian with Cochin University.
There are examples from all over India. In Jammu & Kashmir, the Dukhtaran-e-Millat's emergence of a feminine, quasi-jihad organisation surprised the world. It actually has educated women in its ranks who feel no embarrassment in calling the Taliban a harbinger of women's emancipation. Then, you have the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), reading whose original mission statement one wonders if it isn't a chip off the old block - the much-respected-these-days Aligarh Muslim University. Banned in 2001, SIMI has been growing from strength to strength. In 2005, SIMI allegedly struck twice in a single month. On July 5, its operatives staged an attack on the temple complex in Ayodhya, and, on July 28, played a role in the bombing of the Shramjeevi Express that killed 12 passengers. Following the October 2005 Delhi blasts, the Union Home Ministry claimed that Islami Inquilabi Mahaz, or the Islamic Revolutionary Front, a hitherto unknown outfit that claimed responsibility, was associated with SIMI. The outfit was also behind the Ahmedabad railway station blast of February 19, 2006, and the twin blasts in Varanasi on March 7 that year, which killed 18 people.
It took an epistle from London to wake Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from his stupor. But, displaying classical lack of proportion in the distribution of his sympathies, his heart went out for the mother of the medic held in Australia. As a toady media establishment raised an alarm in the background over British conspiracies and a gloomy future for Indians (emphasis mine) marked by racial profiling and associated discrimination (a possibility thankfully squashed by Lord Megnad Desai, writer Farrukh Dhondy and others), the Government did its utmost to misrepresent the case before the world at large. By mid-week, however, the evidence was too overwhelming to continue with the charade.
While the Indian Muslim would bear the brunt of the backlash, which would come both from the West and his own immediate environment, let's for a minute wonder about the cynical politics of secularism that lies at the root of this.<b> What should be done with the CPI(M), an apparently respectable, mainstream Indian political party, which mid-wifed the birth of so many fundamentalist organisations, including the NDF and Jamaat-e-Islami in Kerala? Did not State Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan make it his first duty to rush to Chennai after winning last year's election to secure the release of Abdul Nasser Madani, the prime accused in the Coimbatore blast? What about the Congress, which has brought a despicable outfit like the IUML to South Block? Can it deny its tacit support to illegal madarsas in West Bengal's Murshidabad district - home base to three of its MPs? And, did or did not Madani campaign for the CPI(M) in the 1996 election?</b>
It is time fingers were pointed at the right quarters. The hour has come for the Indian Muslim to stand up and say: "I won't be used any more".
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Pioneer.com
Udayan Namboodiri
Saturday Special focusses on the plight of the middle-class, educated Indian Muslim, who, following the revelations about Al Qaeda's links with certain doctors and engineers of the community, would hitherto be victims of far more prejudice and type-casting than ever before. But what about those sectors of the Indian polity that contributed to this by demonising America and linking the Indian Muslims' collective psyche to that of the Iraqis and Palestinians?
The busting of the "Bangalore Club" - what else can you call a collective of educated, upwardly-mobile youth pursuing a common objective - threatens to mark a new beginning in inter-community relationships in India's cities. Henceforth, it won't just do to wish away acts of bombing and mass-killing as results of confused rage by the ill-educated, madarsa-going types. The news of the involvement of Bangalore boys Kafeel and Sabeel Ahmed and their cousin Mohammed Haneef in the Glasgow airport bombing as executors of an Al Qaeda plot could lead to mass type-casting of Muslims, the fold-back of social drawbridges and, eventually, the re-engineering of idioms of political correctness. In sum, more ghettoisation.
The biggest tragedy, however, would go unnoticed. And that is - the people responsible for the predicament, most of them non-Muslims, would get away. For, let us not pretend that the Bangalore Club could emerge without there being a collusion between the Left-liberal establishment and a formless, deceptive entity called the "moderate Indian Muslim". Since 2001, the Left-liberals have given political legitimacy to Jihad Inc. and its auxiliaries in India by ceaselessly producing "root cause" theories. They raised enough din over Gujarat and Babri Masjid to distract people from observing the process of formation of 'secular' alliances between overtly Brahmin parties like the Congress and CPI(M) and ISI front organisations. The "moderate Muslims", a motley group of performing artists and unionised university teachers, acted as the PR arm of this sinister movement. They Urdu-ised the rhetoric generated in the secular olfactory - Iraq, Bush, Gujarat, etc - and pushed the middle-class Indian Muslim farther and farther away from the mainstream. Much to the profit of the 'secularists'.
Other sectors of the media may feign surprise at the development. But The Pioneer can't help feeling a little vindicated. For years now, this paper has tirelessly worked to explode the myth that the madarsas are the only terrorist factories. Education has nothing to do with a person taking to extreme ideologies. The partition movement, and all its associated horrors, was scripted in university common rooms, not in tanneries. In recent years, highly educated, even technically accomplished, Indians have been won over to Al Qaeda's cause. In this very column last August, our Kochi resident editor, Arun Lakshman, had revealed that many of the people behind ISI-backed National Democratic Front (NDF) - a quainter name for a fundamentalist outfit is hard to find - and Jamaat-e-Islami are your everyday, English-articulate Malayali gentlemen. Take this: P Koya, one of the founders of the NDF, retired as English literature professor from the Government Arts College in Kozhikode. Another, called EM Abdurahiman, was a librarian with Cochin University.
There are examples from all over India. In Jammu & Kashmir, the Dukhtaran-e-Millat's emergence of a feminine, quasi-jihad organisation surprised the world. It actually has educated women in its ranks who feel no embarrassment in calling the Taliban a harbinger of women's emancipation. Then, you have the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), reading whose original mission statement one wonders if it isn't a chip off the old block - the much-respected-these-days Aligarh Muslim University. Banned in 2001, SIMI has been growing from strength to strength. In 2005, SIMI allegedly struck twice in a single month. On July 5, its operatives staged an attack on the temple complex in Ayodhya, and, on July 28, played a role in the bombing of the Shramjeevi Express that killed 12 passengers. Following the October 2005 Delhi blasts, the Union Home Ministry claimed that Islami Inquilabi Mahaz, or the Islamic Revolutionary Front, a hitherto unknown outfit that claimed responsibility, was associated with SIMI. The outfit was also behind the Ahmedabad railway station blast of February 19, 2006, and the twin blasts in Varanasi on March 7 that year, which killed 18 people.
It took an epistle from London to wake Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from his stupor. But, displaying classical lack of proportion in the distribution of his sympathies, his heart went out for the mother of the medic held in Australia. As a toady media establishment raised an alarm in the background over British conspiracies and a gloomy future for Indians (emphasis mine) marked by racial profiling and associated discrimination (a possibility thankfully squashed by Lord Megnad Desai, writer Farrukh Dhondy and others), the Government did its utmost to misrepresent the case before the world at large. By mid-week, however, the evidence was too overwhelming to continue with the charade.
While the Indian Muslim would bear the brunt of the backlash, which would come both from the West and his own immediate environment, let's for a minute wonder about the cynical politics of secularism that lies at the root of this.<b> What should be done with the CPI(M), an apparently respectable, mainstream Indian political party, which mid-wifed the birth of so many fundamentalist organisations, including the NDF and Jamaat-e-Islami in Kerala? Did not State Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan make it his first duty to rush to Chennai after winning last year's election to secure the release of Abdul Nasser Madani, the prime accused in the Coimbatore blast? What about the Congress, which has brought a despicable outfit like the IUML to South Block? Can it deny its tacit support to illegal madarsas in West Bengal's Murshidabad district - home base to three of its MPs? And, did or did not Madani campaign for the CPI(M) in the 1996 election?</b>
It is time fingers were pointed at the right quarters. The hour has come for the Indian Muslim to stand up and say: "I won't be used any more".
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->