Liberal Muslim writer turning communal

Javed Anand, co-editor of a journal called "Communalism Combat" alongwith his wife Teesta Setalvad, and general secretary of the outfit: Muslims for Secular Democracy, seems to be increasingly shedding his facade of secularism in favour of Muslim communalism. Otherwise, how is it that, of late, his press commentaries have greater stink of communal bigotry? With his parochial blinkers on, he is unable to distinguish "institutionalised discrimination". In his latest article in the Indian Express of February 28, he has chosen to ridicule Indian democracy as "the government of the majority, by the majority and for the majority" which he implicitly means the Hindu majority. In support of his reprehensible thesis, he approvingly quotes the Sachar Committee report for "abundant evidence of institutionalised discrimination against the country's Muslims".

Javed Anand has, clearly, neither the will nor the honesty to acknowledge how his minority community is fiercely wooed by most political parties for vote-bank considerations, almost to the extent of enjoying veto power against liberal policies. Hence, for example, liberal Muslim writers like Taslima Nasreen and Salman Rushdie are not allowed to visit Kolkata to participate in a literature festival, and, even the Jaipur Literature Festival, because of the Muslim opposition. Himself a writer, did Javed Anand condemn this zealotry of his co-religionists? One has not heard or read Anand condemning Pakistan for persecuting Hindu minority which is now reduced to a single digit percentage in contrast to the large Indian Muslim minority taking strides in demography as well as economic well-being. But, unfortunately, intellectuals like Javed and others have no time for such uncomfortable facts. Had the majority community been communally-minded, it would have forced Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India, to declare the post-partition India as a Hindu State on the lines of the theocracy of Pakistan-the Islamic republic. The tragedy of the break-up of the motherland, and the betrayal of the majority of Muslim brethren, supporting Jinnah's two-nation theory that Muslims and Hindus cannot live together, were sufficient grounds for the exchange of populations and the setting up two religious States. But, thanks to the broad-mindedness and generosity of the majority community, the communal/religious option was discarded.

But, instead, we got accusations of "institutionalised discriminations". In all fairness, why should the State favour one set of poor Indians-from a minority group, and deny others? Shouldn't the level of economic backwardness be the criterion for scholarships and not religion? Why should a poor student who happened to belong to the majority community be deprived of this govt help? Is this not discrimination disallowed in the Constitution? Javed Anand's support for Indian Express contributing editor Ashutosh Varshney's recent article displaying similar bias, was equally faulty. India has always been for diversity and not uniformity. Are Muslims being forced to abandon Muslim identity? Like Varshney, Narendra Modi is Javed's bete noire. He refuses to recognise that Gujarati Muslims voted for Modi in the recent elections in greater numbers-over 30%. As for 2002 riots, Javed never mentions the tragic sequence. Did the torching of the Sabarmati Express near Godhra, killing 58 pilgrims, men, women and children returning home from Ayodhya, not ignite the communal conflagration, the next day?     

Indian professor of US university misrepresents

At times, some Indians who leave the country for foreign shores for higher studies and a job afterwards, tend to develop dubious secular values while looking at India from a distant habitat. Their occasional visits to the mother country for a brief while, do not help them in deeper insight into the rapidly changing, evolving India. In some cases,  they become either more Indian than resident Indians or they take on their left-oriented, co-thinking compatriots' prejudices against the majority community. Mr Ashutosh Varshney, a Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and Social Sciences at Brown University of the US where he "directs the Indian Initiative at the Waston Institute, seems to belong to that tribe of Indians. Of late, he has been appointed as a contributing editor of the Indian Express.

Judging from his writings over a period of time even before his present status, Varshney seems to have imbibed the currently fashionable biases of a segment of Indian intellectuals against the socalled majority(Hindu) community's right wing that endear him to the socalled liberal, secular media. In his latest essay in the IE(February 13, 2013), captioned:"Why India must allow hyphens"-clearly American style-he has not only attacked Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his aspirations for national politics, he has criticised "Hindu nationalists" for seeking the European model of nationhood built on "uniformity" and not the US model of "integration of minorities via recognition of diversities". How can he forget that it is the Hindu majority-ruled India, even after the traumatic and tragic experience of the Partition on the basis of the separatist "two-nation theory" that Hindus and Muslims can't live together, gave the world the slogan of "unity in diversity"? While the minority Hindu community was persecuted and compelled to leave the newly-born theocratic, Islamic nation-Pakistan, a vast majority of Indian Muslims chose to stay back even though, in the pre-partition era, most of them had voted for Jinnah's vicious thesis; they multipled and flourished in their birthland. They became a favourite vote-bank of politicians, almost dictating terms.

Varshney talks about the White House celebrating Diwali but forgets about a large number of fast-breaking Iftar parties organised by major Indian politicians, including the Prime Minister, the BJP Leader of the Opposition and the BJP's Muslim MPs, during Ramazan, for their Muslim brethren. Being a Hindu himself, judging from his name, how can Varshney ignore the basic Hindu ethos of respect for all faiths-Sarva Dharam Sam Bhav? In fact, India is a classic example of a "salad bowl" or a flower garden and not "the melting pot" of the American variety. There is so much diversity even among Hindus themselves. The author's another sick remark related to Swami Vivekananda-and Modi's "three Bs":Beef, Biceps and Bhagwat Gita, his implication being that both favoured beef-eating to build biceps! It seemed a highly reprehensible and malicious lie.Can Varshney dare say "pork" for Muslims in the same vein?

Varshney's hints about Narendra Modi's hostility towards the Muslim minority are patently false and mischievous. He does not know how many Gujarati Muslims have appeared on TV shows lauding the Chief Minister's development policies. Does he know that 30% Muslims voted for the BJP in the recent elections as also the number of Muslims having been elected to local bodies on the BJP ticket? It is, indeed , astonishing that an academic of Varshney's standing, writing for an national daily, has such a closed mind!