08-12-2007, 02:06 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Why MIM will go scotfree </b>
Pioneer.com
Swapan Dasgupta
Those familiar with Hyderabad will tell you that there are two faces of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), the Owaisi family-led organisation that exercises a stranglehold over the city's Muslim community. There is the acceptable face comprising a network of educational institutions and healthcare centres. The flip side is not so much in evidence on the main roads but surfaces in the by-lanes of the old city.<b> Here, a lingering nostalgia for the good old days of the Nizam - including the hero worship of the Razakar supremo Kasim Rizvi who left for Pakistan in 1948 - blends with an exclusivist and aggressive Islamism, loosely of the kind practised by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt</b>.Â
Sixty years ago, the Razakars fought a brutal and rearguard battle against Hyderabad being usurped by democracy. Sardar Vallabbhai Patel, who was not inclined to be indulgent towards trouble-makers just because they spoke poetic Urdu, sent the Army into Hyderabad State in 1948 and instructed the miserly Nizam to be content with a handsome privy purse. Hyderabad was integrated into the Indian Union and soon assumed the new Telugu identity of Andhra Pradesh.
<b>The remnants of the Razakar movement - those who didn't join the exodus to Pakistan - lay low till the 1960s and then slowly regrouped. The revanchists found an inspiring leader in Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi. He transformed the MIM from a fringe group to the status of a dominant one among the Muslims of Hyderabad</b>. The MIM has held the Hyderabad Lok Sabha seat since 1971 and controls five of its Assembly segments. <b>It has ruthlessly crushed any challenge from other Muslim organisations and converted the old city into a veritable no-go area for other political parties and even law enforcement agencies. </b>The Hyderabad police, by and large, is unable to enter MIM strongholds - a reason why many undesirables use the area as havens.
It is the existence of this bizarre Islamic state in the heart of the Andhra Pradesh capital that explains the defiant reaction of MIM legislators to the assault on Bangladeshi dissident Tasleema Nasreen last Thursday. The brazenness with which Akbaruddin Owaisi, the leader of MIM in the Assembly, declared that "it is legitimate to kill Tasleema Nasreen under Islamic law, but unfortunately we couldn't do it" reveals two things. First, to the MIM and the Owaisis, their version of Islamic law takes precedence over Indian laws. Second, the competitive extremism witnessed in Hyderabad is an indication that the State is confronted by the unique problem of the emotional secession of an entire ghetto from India.
These conclusions are not over-reactions. All over India, indulgent political parties fearful of offending minority sentiments have permitted Islamist ghettos where the writ of the State does not run. Initially, this belief was couched in tacit acceptance of the "one country, many systems" principle. However, of late, this has degenerated into accommodation of radical Islamism, including terrorism.
<b>It is, for example, one thing to shed tears for a Bollywood star whose family is linked to the Congress. However, the secularist demand for the exoneration of Sanjay Dutt (and one of the Memon brothers) is also coupled with the claim that the March 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai were, somehow, a legitimate reaction to the January 1993 riots.</b> Read with the courting of the Al-Ummah chief after he was (predictably) acquitted in the Coimbatore blasts case and the continuing Government inaction over the death sentence for convicted terrorist Afzal Guru, the alarming indication is that votebank politics is moving in a dangerous direction and now includes mollycoddling terrorists.
I don't believe any real action will be taken against the MIM activists who assaulted Tasleema. On the contrary, the furore over her alleged blasphemy is almost certain to result in either the cancellation or non-renewal of her tourist visa. The Razakars are on the verge of a famous victory which, ironically, will enhance their reputation as the real protectors of the faith.
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Pioneer.com
Swapan Dasgupta
Those familiar with Hyderabad will tell you that there are two faces of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), the Owaisi family-led organisation that exercises a stranglehold over the city's Muslim community. There is the acceptable face comprising a network of educational institutions and healthcare centres. The flip side is not so much in evidence on the main roads but surfaces in the by-lanes of the old city.<b> Here, a lingering nostalgia for the good old days of the Nizam - including the hero worship of the Razakar supremo Kasim Rizvi who left for Pakistan in 1948 - blends with an exclusivist and aggressive Islamism, loosely of the kind practised by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt</b>.Â
Sixty years ago, the Razakars fought a brutal and rearguard battle against Hyderabad being usurped by democracy. Sardar Vallabbhai Patel, who was not inclined to be indulgent towards trouble-makers just because they spoke poetic Urdu, sent the Army into Hyderabad State in 1948 and instructed the miserly Nizam to be content with a handsome privy purse. Hyderabad was integrated into the Indian Union and soon assumed the new Telugu identity of Andhra Pradesh.
<b>The remnants of the Razakar movement - those who didn't join the exodus to Pakistan - lay low till the 1960s and then slowly regrouped. The revanchists found an inspiring leader in Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi. He transformed the MIM from a fringe group to the status of a dominant one among the Muslims of Hyderabad</b>. The MIM has held the Hyderabad Lok Sabha seat since 1971 and controls five of its Assembly segments. <b>It has ruthlessly crushed any challenge from other Muslim organisations and converted the old city into a veritable no-go area for other political parties and even law enforcement agencies. </b>The Hyderabad police, by and large, is unable to enter MIM strongholds - a reason why many undesirables use the area as havens.
It is the existence of this bizarre Islamic state in the heart of the Andhra Pradesh capital that explains the defiant reaction of MIM legislators to the assault on Bangladeshi dissident Tasleema Nasreen last Thursday. The brazenness with which Akbaruddin Owaisi, the leader of MIM in the Assembly, declared that "it is legitimate to kill Tasleema Nasreen under Islamic law, but unfortunately we couldn't do it" reveals two things. First, to the MIM and the Owaisis, their version of Islamic law takes precedence over Indian laws. Second, the competitive extremism witnessed in Hyderabad is an indication that the State is confronted by the unique problem of the emotional secession of an entire ghetto from India.
These conclusions are not over-reactions. All over India, indulgent political parties fearful of offending minority sentiments have permitted Islamist ghettos where the writ of the State does not run. Initially, this belief was couched in tacit acceptance of the "one country, many systems" principle. However, of late, this has degenerated into accommodation of radical Islamism, including terrorism.
<b>It is, for example, one thing to shed tears for a Bollywood star whose family is linked to the Congress. However, the secularist demand for the exoneration of Sanjay Dutt (and one of the Memon brothers) is also coupled with the claim that the March 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai were, somehow, a legitimate reaction to the January 1993 riots.</b> Read with the courting of the Al-Ummah chief after he was (predictably) acquitted in the Coimbatore blasts case and the continuing Government inaction over the death sentence for convicted terrorist Afzal Guru, the alarming indication is that votebank politics is moving in a dangerous direction and now includes mollycoddling terrorists.
I don't believe any real action will be taken against the MIM activists who assaulted Tasleema. On the contrary, the furore over her alleged blasphemy is almost certain to result in either the cancellation or non-renewal of her tourist visa. The Razakars are on the verge of a famous victory which, ironically, will enhance their reputation as the real protectors of the faith.
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