Whatever its immediate outcome, the trouble in Jamia Millia will continue to reverberate for a long time. It brings into focus issues which have a vital bearing on India’s future both as a society and a state. Five questions need to be looked at in this regard. These are Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, the reasons for the government of India’s decision to ban it, Prof Mushirul Hasan’s interview favouring lifting of the ban, his possible reasons for taking such a view, and his retraction of it.
As for The Satanic Verses, it is disingenuous to suggest that it is merely a work of fiction with no ulterior purpose or message. It is nothing of the kind. It is a deeply anti-Islamic tract in fictional form. No one who has read the book and knows anything about Islam, especially the Muslim veneration of the prophet, can come to any other conclusion.
Varied Opinions
There can be differences of opinion on Rushdie’s reasons for writing The Satanic Verses. It is, for instance, possible to argue that Rushdie wanted to shock fellow Muslims out of sterile dogmatism they have doubtless sunk into, or that he has imbibed the millennium-old Western view of the Prophet and Islam so thoroughly that it has become part of his unconscious self, or that he has, like some other well-known Indian writers, been anxious to ingratiate himself with his Western readers and patrons, or that he loathes Mohammad and his handiwork.
Rushdie’s motivations, calculations and compulsions are, however, a matter of secondary importance. The pertinent point, as convincingly established by Karen Armstrong in her book Muhammad: A Western Attempt To Understand Islam (Victor Gollancz, London), is that The Satanic Verses fits neatly into the Western stereotype of Mohammad and Islam. Incidentally, Armstrong’s work is valuable inasmuch as it gives us an idea of what has been written by leading Western detractors of Mohammad for a millennium.
For our present purpose, it is not necessary to discuss either the relationship between the reality of the Prophet and Islam and their representations by Western writers, or the reasons for their hostility. It will suffice for us to note that it is only natural that a work which promotes the popular Western view of Mohammad in a truly devastating fashion should cause the deepest offence to Muslims.
This brings us to the second issue whether the book should have been banned. We in The Times Of India then took the view that the government had been well advised to do so. None of us had till then read the book.
To be candid, we were guided by what may be called a depressingly pessimistic view of a substantial section of the Indian Muslim community based on past experience, as in the case of the desecration of the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem by a deranged individual in 1969 or of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s execution in Islamabad – events with which India had nothing to do.
We were convinced that some fanatics or politically motivated individuals and groups would seize this opportunity to whip up emotions, that a large number of Muslims would respond to their call ‘to defend Islam’ and that the country would be exposed to widespread violence and loss of lives and property.
I recall this with a view to making the point that Prof. Mushirul Hasan would not have favoured lifting of the ban on The Satanic Verses in a published interview however strong his commitment to freedom of expression if he had shared this pessimistic view. Alternatively, he might not have paid sufficient attention to the problem. Either way the result has been painful not only for him but also for liberals, Muslims and non-Muslims. This has truly been a case of an ivory tower intellectual divorced from the reality around him even in his own Jamia Millia campus.
Though there is no dearth of legal luminaries and others who stand for an unfettered right to free expression, the two issues – one’s view of a significant section of the Indian Muslim community and the exercise of the right of free expression in matters concerning Islam, especially the Prophet – are inter-connected. It makes little sense to speak of the right to freedom of expression in connection with The Satanic Verses unless one wants a confrontation with Muslims, or takes the view that the community will not fly off the handle as a result of the exercise of that right. The interview by Iqbal Masud, a well-known columnist, to the Sunday Observer (May 3) is pertinent in this regard.
Pandora’s Box
Masud has strongly rebuked Prof. Hasan for opening the ‘Pandora’s box’, recalled that people were killed and wounded in Bombay in the agitation against The Satanic Verses and said: “We want harmony and peace in India and I am prepared to pay any price.” The price being, of course, censorship and silence.
This linkage between the advocacy of free circulation of The Satanic Verses and assessment of the proclivities of a substantial section of the Muslim community does not figure adequately in our public discourse. The letter in The Times Of India by 65 academicians and artists in its issue of May 1/2 is only the latest example of the anxiety among this influential class to gloss over the connection.
This approach has, however, begun to run into trouble. It can no longer be as effective as it has been. The sharp rise in the popularity of the Bharatiya Janata Party is evidence enough that a new power reality, based on a different approach to the Hindu-Muslim problem, is emerging in the country. With 119 members in the Lok Sabha and nearly 22 per cent vote against the Congress party’s 35 in the poll in 1991, the BJP is already a factor to reckon with. Its appeal among the intelligentsia is likely to increase if the impression continues to grow that not only the government but also Muslim liberals are helpless in the face of fanatics and dogmatists in the Muslim community.
The expression of “sincere and profound regret” by Prof. Hasan over his “remarks published in a weekly magazine” cannot but reinforce this impression and revive memories of the government’s earlier decision to amend the Criminal Procedure Code just because the Supreme Court had used a provision in it to allow a pitiably small maintenance allowance from her former husband to old and nearly destitute Shah Bano. The mullahs had prevailed then and militant students may prevail now perhaps not without the backing of some of these very mullahs.
Liberal Retreat
In a sense, the retreat of Muslim liberals represented by Prof. Hasan now is even more significant. In the Shah Bano case, there was a possibility, however small, that it could serve as a precedent for courts to provide similar relief to similarly placed women, and therefore, of ‘encroachment’ on the Shariat-based Muslim Personal Law. In this case, there was no ‘danger’ of the government lifting the ban on The Satanic Verses. It could not possibly wish to take the risk of riots.
Students of Jamia Millia are not satisfied with the humiliation they have imposed on Prof. Hasan. They are insisting on his resignation as pro vice-chancellor. They may well secure it with the cooperation of individuals in positions of authority.
It has been said that the agitators constitute a small section of the student community in Jamia Millia and that they have been guided by considerations of union politics and elections. This is in keeping with the nature of the public discourse as the Indian elite conducts it.
They can no longer be sidetracked. And the reality, as once again spotlighted by the trouble in Jamia Millia, is that liberalism does not command too many customers among the more articulate Muslims, with the result that fanatics manage to carry the community with them. That must increase the respect of the rest of us for Muslim liberals. But that does not help resolve the problem.
Where then do we go from here? Back into our old familiar escapism or forward into confrontation with obscurantism. It is not a choice I for one would wish to make. And a third option is not on the horizon unless in our desperation we regard the deflation of Col Gaddafy in far away Libya as a harbinger of a new beginning in the world.
The Times of India, 7 May 1992