In no article by any Indian writer on new possibilities (or dangers) in Indo-US relations in the wake of the end of the cold war has there been the vaguest reference to the common compulsion to try and contain Muslim revivalism. Though this is rather disquieting, it is not particularly surprising.
For one thing, it is not easy to make a shift from the psychology and vocabulary of the cold war, and of populism and pseudo-nationalism that have passed for socialism and non-alignment. For another, the concept of secularism has been so defined in our country as to exclude recognition of the fact that Muslim revivalism accounts largely not only for partition in 1947 but also for Pakistan’s subsequent hostility, support for it among other Muslim countries and the current insurgency in Kashmir.
As it happens, there is not much awareness of the history of Muslim revivalism in India, dating back to Syed Ahmed Sirhindi, who raised the banner of revolt against Akbar in the 16th century and was subsequently patronised by Jehangir. Incidentally, Aurangzeb was one consequence of the politics of Sirhindi. Since then the story has gone on in one form or another. After Aurangzeb came Shah Wali-Allah. He laid the foundation of a revivalist movement proper. It is doubtful that any other people have had such a long experience of living with revivalism.
On the US side, there has been no public exposition on the calculations and motivations behind the friendly gestures Washington has made towards this country in recent months, beginning with the statement that UN Security Council resolutions of the late forties are no longer relevant to a solution of the Kashmir dispute and ending, for the time being, with the proposal to establish a measure of cooperation between the Indian and American armies.
American policy-makers are, however, not sleep walkers. They must have thought the implications of their moves. Indeed, the very fact that they have paid attention to India amidst the administration’s obsessive preoccupation with West Asia, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union shows that they know what they are doing. But that does not tell us what US calculations in fact are.
Independently, however, of the calculations in Washington and New Delhi, two points are incontrovertible. First, Muslim revivalism will need to be rolled back if there is to be any kind of order in the world. Secondly, India will have to play a significant role in that effort. Indeed, it cannot begin on a significant scale anywhere else. In Algeria and Tunisia, for instance, only a holding operation is possible. History is casting India in a role similar to that West Germany has played in the struggle against Soviet communism and expansionism.
Muslim revivalism, it needs to be emphasised, is a war on Muslim societies just as Communism has been an assault on the Russian people. On the one hand, it seeks to obliterate their old traditions and histories in the name of an ‘ideal’ Islam. That ‘ideal’ Islam in reality is abstracted from all that roots Muslims in their lands and pasts; even in theory it harks back as idealised version of early Islam, that is before the rise of Islamic civilization.
On the other hand, it blocks accommodation on the part of Muslims with the spirit and demands of modern times with emphasis on plurality, free inquiry and flow of ideas and therefore their progress.
Iran helps illustrate one important facet of Muslim revivalism. Ayatollah Khomeini led a revolt against the tyranny imposed by the Shah only to preside over a regime which was far more tyrannical and destructive of the wellbeing of the Iranian people. In the process he also provoked a war with Iraq and kept it going for over eight years at enormous cost to his country in terms of both men and material.
Muslims in wholly Muslim and in predominantly Muslim countries are caught in a trap from which no escape is in sight. They are ruled by cruel, ruthless, often clannish, corrupt and cynical men who have not allowed democratic movements to arise and grow. So, as in Iran under the Shah, resistance can be organised only in mosques and with the help of obscurantist ulema. And this exposes them to the risk of a more thorough tyranny.
Malaysia is not a predominantly Muslim country. The Chinese and Indian immigrants account for almost one-half of its population. Clearly only a democratic system of government which allows the immigrants a share in power can help avoid the risk of a civil war in that country. So it cannot legitimately be treated as an exception to the general rule. Malaysia is a case by itself.
Pakistan cannot qualify to be so regarded either for a different reason. Democracy there is still new and fragile. Indeed, it is well known that President Ishaq Khan as a representative of the bureaucracy and General Asif Janjua as Chief of Army Staff are far more powerful than Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. They can send him packing whenever they so decide.
This leaves Turkey as the only functioning democracy in a wholly Muslim land. But though the Turks have been struggling with reforms for over a century, the army leadership has had to intervene and take over thrice since 1945 in order to contain the forces of revivalism. These forces remain powerful and can stage a comeback.
Some Western writers argue (see, for instance, Brian Breedham’s article in the International Herald Tribune of September 17) that Turkey can serve as an example for Arabs and must therefore be enabled to succeed. There is certainly some merit in this proposition. But it is rooted in Eurocentrism. The battle for the rolling back of Muslim revivalism has to begin outside the Muslim world and in a country which is at once a democracy and possesses a sizeable Muslim minority. India alone is such a country.
Escapism has characterised and continues to characterise most discussions on Indian Islam. But that cannot possibly alter the reality. Two points deserve to be emphasised. First, Indian Islam is not and cannot be wholly autonomous. It has been and remains an important part of the international ummah. Indeed, Indian Muslim theologians and thinkers have played a significant role in promoting revivalism. Khilafat is only the best known example of this role. To draw attention to this indisputable fact is not to cast doubt on the patriotism of Indian Muslims but to point out that the problem has to be approached differently from the way it has been by Indian policy-makers and thinkers.
Secondly, while partition could divide the land, it could not divide the hearts, especially in this age of quick and easy communication and mass mobilisation. In plain terms, the Islam of united India could not possibly get divided into a distinct Indian Islam and Pakistani Islam on August 14/15,1947.
The fires of hatred that the Muslim League’s campaign for partition and the fact of partition had ignited had, of course, to be put down and kept down in independent India, regardless of what happened in Pakistan. To that extent the Nehruvian approach has been legitimate and justified.
But beyond that has loomed another challenge. The leadership of independent India had to ensure that this country was militarily so much stronger than Pakistan that the latter would not dare disturb its peace and that it was so much more attractive in economic terms than Pakistan that the people there would be drawn towards it. The Indian leadership has clearly failed to meet this double challenge. The Indian economy has not been a magnet for Pakistan and since the early eighties, Islamabad has felt free to promote terrorism and secessionism in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir.
As a product of the Gandhian and the larger Hindu ethos, Nehru accepted a ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir in 1948 when the military advantage clearly lay with India. As a product of a vague pro-Sovietism and leftism, Nehru spurned President Truman’s hand of friendship in 1949 and President Eisenhower’s offer of ‘proportionate’ military aid in 1954 when Washington had concluded a mutual security pact with Pakistan.
To Nehru’s credit, it must be conceded that he was alive to the importance of economic development. But he chose the wrong route to that goal. Centralised planning has proved an unmitigated disaster all over the world. India turned down the West not only in the military-political realm but also in that of the economy. Again, the result is there for anyone to see.
Since independence, India has given precedence to ideology over prosperity. Only in recent months have we witnessed a movement away from ideology and towards pursuit of wealth. But even now, in psychological terms, India remains hostile to private initiative, wealth, success and excellence. The roots of this hostility lie deep in our history and cannot easily be dug up, exposed and disposed of.
Our popular cinema speaks of that hostility even more eloquently than the rhetoric of socialists and their Mandalite progeny who, if anything, constitute a graver threat than their forebears. A successful man in our films is invariably a wicked man and the hero invariably a poor man.
So the battle ahead is going to be tough and bitter. And, it has to be admitted, it is not a battle Indians can win themselves. It is only the proximity of bankruptcy that has obliged the government to abandon the old self-defeating approach to economic growth and seek investment and not just aid from the West and Japan. That underlines the need for the West and Japan to do all they can to see to it that the period of painful transition is short and success quick and impressive. The danger of India lapsing back into its old ways is by no means over.
India with its own over 100 million Muslims and with another 200 million in the immediate neighbourhood in Pakistan and Bangladesh will determine the outcome of the battle against revivalism, and not Turkey. The stake of the West in its success should be obvious.
Sunday Mail, 29 September 1991