The Dalit Voice (Aug. 16-31 1991) has two articles of Iqbal Ahmed Sherif and DV by the correspondent, making certain scathing remarks on us and demanding a reply thereto.
As a matter of principle, we welcome every constructive criticism. However, we want to clear the misunderstandings.
Indian Muslims constitute a religious and cultural minority, which fact has been established by history and recognized by the Indian Constitution. If the DV thinks otherwise and wants us to believe that all the SC/ST/BCs (65%) are NOT Hindus, these communities then ought to come forward and declare the true nature of their religion (or irreligion) and culture.
They must get the Constitution amended suitably as the census reports put them under Hindus.
If the RSS or others categories them as Hindus they only declare the inevitable.
Burmese terrorists: Merely because a large section of the Hindus is under a state of perpetual oppression and suppression it cannot be claimed that it does no more belong to the religion and culture of the oppressors. Extending the logic further, if a small section of, say Burmese terrorists oppresses a very large section of its own population, it cannot be fair to say that those being oppressed are NOT Burmese, unless and until they all migrate to a new country forsaking their motherland and get themselves naturalized as citizens of any other neighboring country! Il during and after the Emergency the Jamat men came closer to the RSS, it was courtesy late Indira Gandhi who got them all put behind the bars for 19 long months. They not only became friends in distress but also got familiarized with each other. If the authors had faced similar bitter experience, they would never have developed this grudge.
Sheriff’s approach: Iqbal Ahmed Sherif has complimented the Jamaat as an Islamic organization. Unwittingly though in the same breath, he tries to draw a wedge between Islam and Muslims. His line of demarcation between Islam and Muslims is quite incomprehensible. A Muslim is one who professes Islam. Sherif is himself one among such persons. Every conceivable effort in the cause of Islam is but in favor of Muslims. The Jamat is aware of the limited resources at its command. It, therefore, concentrates its energies towards the propagation of Islam and making Muslims the true representatives of Islam. There is no denying the fact that the fair namn of Islam gets distorted on account of the misdeeds of its protagonists. If we call upon our co-religionists to abide by the Islamic injunctions in every walk of life, it cannot be blamed that we are proud of Islam and ashamed of Muslims. The Jamat workers are very much Muslims and we deem every believing person a Muslim.
We differ in toto with Sherif’s approach of considering the morals of one community with those of the other communities. This self-complacency leads us too nowhere. Muslims have a set of their own values of life and they have to judge themselves in the light of these values, not in any manner, with a degenerating value system of life if they want to retain their true identity! Urdu schools: Yes, we have not taken upon ourselves every task concerning the Muslim community. We do recognize and appreciate the fact that several Muslim organizations – religious, cultural social and political – are doing yeomen services and we do also admit that the multifaceted problems of the Ummah (Muslim community) require our collective and joint efforts.
For this simple reason, we do not like to identify ourselves with every socio-cultural and political task of the Muslims or in the least, to monopolism in these fields. If Sherif calls it our weakness, we do admit of it! We never claim to be the sole representatives of Muslims.
He is perhaps not aware of the Jamat’s policy and programmed. We would wish him and the like of him to go through it once. He appears to be also not aware of the services of the Jamat in the field of education and spread of literacy besides teaching Urdu. There are over 1,000 educational institutions including 100 exclusively for girls-spread over the length and breadth of the country. These are run with the active cooperation and support of the Jamat workers. There are 179-night schools for men and 26 for women. The Jamat is associated with several organizations working for the educational upliftment of Muslims, the U.P. Deni Taleemi Council in particular.
Jamat loves all languages: The burden of writing books of Islam in various regional languages is not an unwholesome one in the Jamat perception. All the spoken languages of the country-even of the world are Allah’s languages and discarding a language to the exclusion of another is nothing but discrimination between God’s languages. Yes, the Urdu language does contain a rich treasure of Islami knowledge and information. So does the Arabic and Persian. But we cannot make every human being learn any of these three languages and study Islam. Prophets were sent to various communities of the world with the divine guidance in the language of that particular community according to the Quran.
Hebrew is our language. So is Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam etc. The Jamat feels it its bounden duty to carry the message of Islam to every citizen of the world in his own language and hence its efforts to begin with, to render the Quran, Hadith, Seerat and other Islamic literature into the major languages of India. This is meant not only for Muslims but for all the Indian citizens.
Lack of knowledge on Dalits: If the Jama’s lacks any setup to study. document and support SC/ST/BC problems etc. it is not because that it underestimates its importance and significance. The only reason behind is its inability to diversify the limited resources at its disposal and the simultaneous availability of these facts and figures from other agencies – governmental and non- governmental.
Sherif stoops to the level of labelling the Jamat wisdom to worse than that of the dog’s without realizing that the dog is wise enough not to bite the inhuman object viz. the stone or the stick but to attack the human beings. In his blind comparison, we regret to note, Sherif has depicted the Dalits, B.Cs. etc. as mere soul-less objects like stones! We apportion the blame between the instigators and the instigated, in varying degrees though, for the simple reason that both are endowed with the faculties of reason and discrimination.
Domination of UP Muslims: Jamat invites persons of all lines to express their views in open since it believes in mobilizing public opinion through education and persuasion. We are not so short-sighted as to discard those who hold an opposing opinion on certain issues. Again, in areas where opinions concur, we do not hesitate to enlist the cooperations of those opposed to our thinking in certain fields. Justice Krishna layer is one among such eminent personalities. We do not hesitate to invite even Vajpayee or even Babasaheb Deloras, if the situation so warrant. We are not apologetic in this regard nor do we fear of getting diluted in the process. Instead of making generalized wild charges, better if Sherif reduces himself own to the specifics.
Sherif’s charge of the domination of the UP men over the affairs of the Jamat reflects upon his total ignorance of facts. And let it be known, even if they were to be all from one region, this was not a matter to be ashamed of since the base of the Jamat is solely piety and none else.
