NEW DELHI, 11 April 2004 — 1927 is chiefly remembered today for black-flag demonstrations by the Congress against a commission led by a lawyer, Sir John Simon, which had come to India in the process of reviewing the controversial Government of India Act of 1919 which, among other things, gave separate representation to all three kinds of Christians (Indian, Anglo-Indian and European) and established the principle of “diarchy”, or division of power between communities. But it was a year of much excitement on various fronts. FICCI opened with 27 chambers of commerce and industry, forged by giants like G.D. Birla, Purshottamdas Thakurdas, Dinshaw Petit, Kasturbhai Lalbhai, M.C.T. Muttiah Chettiar. Commercial radio went on the air on July 23 through the Indian Broadcasting Company’s Bombay service (typical of media, it folded up in 1930). One Indian, a Bengali naturally, Sharat Roy, reached the Arctic. Another, a South Indian naturally, Y. Subba Row discovered phosphocreatine at Harvard. (Don’t ask me what it means.) Madan Theatres became the first cinema chain with 85 halls and an American, Katherine Mayo, published Mother India which Gandhi famously dismissed as a drain inspector’s report. In December, the three memorable patriots, Ashfaqullah, Ram Prasad Bismil and Rajendra Lahiri were hanged for their part in the Kakori conspiracy case.
One of the most significant events that year was the introduction, on Feb. 1, of the Child Marriages Restraint Bill in the Legislative Assembly by Rai Sahib Haridas Sarda. It sought to prohibit the marriage of girls below 12 and boys below 15. Social legislation was in the air: women were enfranchised in the Central Provinces, and given the right to stand for elections in Punjab, Bombay, Madras and Assam. There was a predictable avalanche of protest from fundamentalists of all hues. The traditional Muslim leadership was in the forefront. Their call was familiar: Islam was in danger! A fatwa was signed by 74 leading ulema and 72,725 Muslims signed 707 petitions against the bill. But there was one Muslim leader in the assembly who was not going to be bullied by this extreme. His name was Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Defending the Sarda Bill in the House, Jinnah said:
“I cannot believe that there can be a divine sanction for such evil practices as are prevailing, and that we should, for a single minute, give our sanction to the continuance of these evil practices any longer. How can there be such a divine sanction to this cruel, horrible, disgraceful, inhuman practice that is prevailing in India?”
He understood the power of orthodoxy, and appreciated that they might have their reasons for what they were doing. But, matching their passion with his own, he asked: “But are we going to be dragged down by this section for whom we have respect, whose feelings we appreciate, whose sentiments we regard; are we to be dragged down and are we to be prevented in the march of progress? In the name of humanity, I ask you.”
More, and this is important:
“And if we are going to allow ourselves to be influenced by the public opinion that can be created in the name of religion, when we know that religion has nothing whatsoever to do with the matter — I think we must have the courage to say: ‘No, we are not going to be frightened by that’”.
Jinnah may have become a secessionist by 1947, but he was never a fundamentalist. What he said some 75 years ago required conviction and courage, and remains relevant. Reform in a sense is as constant as form: changing mores will always attempt to alter jealously and zealously guarded tradition. Indian Muslims faced such a conflict in the second half of the 1980s when a Supreme Court judgment giving relief to an ageing woman from Bhopal, Shah Bano, became the line behind which conservative forces within the Muslim community took a stand. They argued that the Supreme Court of India, and by extension Parliament, had no right to interfere in any personal law of the Muslims.
This stand of the Indian conservatives had no particular religious merit. The law moves with the spirit of the time and the Qur’an always reinforces the quality of mercy in its verses. Fundamentalists who provoke passions with the cry that Islam is in danger when legislation is conceived to help women are not pro-Qur’an; they are merely anti-women. This is all the more reprehensible since Islam ended practices like the killing of the girl child and attempted to eliminate the enormous injustices done to women at the time when the Qur’an was revealed. Fundamentalists are a dangerous law unto themselves. The Shah Bano case was a touchstone; and arguably the decline of the Congress began with the mistake made when the Supreme Court ruling was reversed under pressure from the fundamentalists, who used exactly the same tactics as had been used at the time of the Sarda Bill. The man who spoke up for reform in the Shah Bano controversy was a star on the treasury benches when Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister: Arif Mohammad Khan. A voluble advocate on the fundamentalist side was Syed Shahabuddin.
More than fifteen years after that decisive moment, Arif Khan has been driven away from the Congress and the fundamentalist Shahabuddin welcomed into it.
This is curious for at least two reasons. First, although Mrs. Sonia Gandhi was not directly involved in politics, she did have a view on the Shah Bano case, and she was convinced that her husband was making a mistake by submitting to fundamentalists. Perhaps the answer is that she was an individual then and a politician now.
The irony is that compromise with extremists is poor politics as well. One of the slow but sure changes taking place in Indian politics is the maturing of the Muslim mood. The sense of helplessness in the 1950s turned into severe insecurity as riots intensified in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Gujarat has not become what it has overnight: For more than a decade till the end of the 80s Ahmedabad was the scene of a daily hemorrhage of communal blood while Congress chief ministers looked helplessly away. Little has been more savage than the Bhagalpur riots that erupted in the last days of Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure; or more pernicious than the manner in which Moradabad and Meerut was handled by Congress governments in UP. This insecurity was multiplied in the inflammatory wars let loose by fundamentalists in the Shah Bano controversy, and then answered by their counterparts in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. The destruction of the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya in 1992 and the subsequent riots constituted the nadir.
But that tragedy became a wake-up call against the dangers of political religiosity. Change is slow and therefore imperceptible except to those who are changing, or to a sympathetic and acute outsider. Politicians who deposit their political fortunes in vote banks are neither sympathetic nor acute. But there was startling evidence of this change only recently, when Muslims in Uttar Pradesh laughed away a typical vote-bank tactic from Mulayam Singh Yadav, who offered them a break from work to say their prayers. (Some extreme provincial governments in Pakistan have made such breaks official so that no believer has the excuse not to pray.) A decade ago such a gesture might have been welcomed; today, clerics lead the way in laughing it off.
The one thing that I can say with certainty about the Muslim vote in the coming election is that there is an almost compulsive desire to reject any party that treats Muslims with patronizing promises. The days when the Indian Muslim vote could be collected with beads and mirrors by the heroic conquistador are over. They have understood the power of democracy, and are enjoying it. Their vote will split, coolly, unemotionally, and go to the claimant with the best exchange rate. It will vary not only from state to state, but also from region to region within a state. In Andhra Pradesh for instance, the Muslims of Telangana could happily vote for separatists while Muslims of the coastal belt punch their machines for Chandrababu Naidu. In Uttar Pradesh, they will weigh the merits of candidates as much as parties, with their vote being split in four directions. Mulayam Singh Yadav is still likely to get the maximum share, but he is not getting exclusive rights. A substantial section of Lucknow’s Muslims will vote for Atal Behari Vajpayee. The Muslims of Akbarpur will vote by and large for Mayawati. A similar percentage of Muslims in Amethi will vote for Rahul Gandhi.
Since 1952, the past — partition, or riots, or Ayodhya — has shaped the Muslim vote, for understandable reasons. This is the first time that a substantial number of Muslims will vote for the future.
That is not change; that is sea-change.
