Some Muslim MPs led by Syed Shahabuddin are playing with fire. It is not yet too late for them to give up the dangerous course they have taken. But it may soon be. To begin with, the MPs in question should recognise and accept that they do not hold their present position by virtue of being Muslims. They have been elected by an electorate which in most cases happens to be predominantly non-Muslim. This is a fundamental issue on which there can be no compromise. For to tamper with it is to undermine the very basis on which the country’s secular order and integrity rest. It was, therefore, wrong in principle for 45 Muslim MPs belonging to different parties to have got together last week to write to the Prime Minister on the issue of the security and well-being of the Muslim community. Apparently the genuinely secular-minded among them allowed themselves to be persuaded by others whose secular credentials are open to question. Even tactically the move was wholly misconceived. Its initiators should have brought in non-Muslim MPs, if not other prominent public figures, to ensure that the issues arising out of recent communal riots were seen in a proper perspective. It is difficult to say whether this is the main consideration which prompted Mrs. Gandhi not to accede to the MPs’ request for a meeting with her or whether she was otherwise too preoccupied. But if the Prime Minister refused to meet the Muslim MPs because she recognised the dangerous implication of their joint move, her action deserves to be strongly commended. It will be a sad day for Indian secularism and democracy when the Muslims alone speak up for their co-religionists.
It speaks for the strength of the communal virus in our body politic that we should raise such questions as whether the Hindus or the Muslims started a riot and whether the former or the latter community suffered heavier casualties and loss of property. It is a shameful legacy of the past. An Indian killed is an Indian killed regardless of whether he is a Hindu or a Muslim or a member of any other community and his death must be a matter of concern for every Indian. This may appear to be unrealistic idealism. It may be. But no other approach can possibly produce communal harmony. As it happens, a lot of Indians do think in those terms. How else can we have so many Muslims in Parliament under the present joint electorate system? This is just one example. Any number of others can be cited. This is not to suggest that the Muslims do not face certain problems as Muslims. It will be dishonest to deny that they do. But it will be equally dishonest to deny that considerable progress has been made towards the goal of assuring a fair deal to them as to other minorities in the country. Syed Shahabuddin would perhaps contest this proposition. Else he and his band of Muslim MPs would not have addressed their appeal mainly to Muslim ministers. They have, it is true, also appealed to other “secular-minded” ministers to assert themselves or to resign. They may or may not have done so for the sake of form. But implicit in their formulation is the unacceptable proposition that most ministers in Mrs. Gandhi’s government are not secular-minded.
The MPs have not directly accused the Prime Minister herself of being communal. We should perhaps be grateful to them for this small mercy. But they have condemned the entire government over which she presides and charged it with being “insensitive to the sorrows and sufferings of the Muslim community, blind to the brutalities and atrocities committed by the state agencies and unconcerned about the partisan, unjust and communal approach of its functionaries”. The sweeping tone of the condemnation is noteworthy; it makes no distinction between good state functionaries, probably the vast majority, and the bad ones. The highly intemperate nature of the language is, however, a relatively small point which can be overlooked. What cannot be overlooked is the spirit behind it and the deliberate attempt to poison the minds of the Muslims by convincing them that they cannot look up to Mrs. Gandhi, her government, the state apparatus and other fellow citizens belonging to other communities to protect them against the gangsters and the miscreants. It cannot be anybody’s case that the administration is above reproach or that a section of the Hindus are not chauvinistic and narrow-minded. But a sweeping condemnation cannot help solve the first problem and a ban on certain organisations named by the Muslim MPs in the letter to the Prime Minister the second.