Secular Harit Desh – Guest post by Sanjay

Thanks to Sanjay for woving this guest post around a recent column by M J Akbar that left me aghast.

*** “Secular Harit Desh” by Sanjay ***

MJ Akbar, the celebrity journalist, editor (Sunday and Telegraph), author, commentator and columnist has for some time now taken pains to present the Muslim liberal point of view.

He was editor of the very popular but now defunct Sunday magazine in the 1980s where one of his claims to fame was in pioneering incredibly cloying sycophantic pieces on Rajiv Gandhi  (Mani Shankar Aiyer was a notable contributor). He was subsequently recognized for his work by being given a Congress ticket to contest from Bihar resulting in his becoming a MP. He was also editor of Telegraph newspaper that dethroned The Statesman in Kolkata as the number one English language paper. He was also editor of Asian Age from where he was summarily asked to go.

He then surfaced with a web-site Covert (www.covert.co.in) and also www.mjakbar.com. He has written several books from India – The Siege Within to Blood Brothers via Shade of Swords. He appears to have fallen out with the Congress since and there were reports of his cosying up to the NDA in hopes of securing a ticket to Parliament from Bihar.

In his current avatar over the past several years, he’s positioned himself as a Muslim liberal.

His books are well-written and his columns are readable. But he suffers from the worrying aspect that plagues all Muslim liberals – the chronic inability to critically examine aspects of Islamic texts, interpretations by the Ulema and consequent behaviours of those inspired by them.

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His position is therefore that, at best, of an apologist. His book Shade of Swords on the history of Jihad is an example of this position. He’s written about rising Muslim population in Assam and how seats are being won there by Badruddin Ajmal and how important it is for Muslims to organize themselves to become part of the mainstream. A worthy objective no doubt!

The inability of Muslim intellectuals and liberals to take dispassionate, let alone strong critical positions where Islam and the Ulema are concerned is one big reason for the continuing hold of the Ulema over the Muslims, a vast majority of whom are poor and easily manipulated

His latest column published in the Sunday Times of India Nov 15th provides a look into this thinking. He shows his hand (see highlighted section below in the excerpt) in almost urging someone to stake claim to a state with a substantial Muslim population (perhaps becoming the 2nd Muslim majority state?). Of course, securing the support of visionary principled Jat leaders like Ajit Singh for creating his Harit Desh for achieving this will not be terribly hard!

Excerpt from Why some political parties lost the plot by  M J Akbar:

Defeat is the distance between a bedtime story and a wake-up call. The former starts with ‘Once upon a time…’ and lulls the voter to sleep. The second is an energiser that addresses a fresh dawn.

Three political parties have become victims of their own success: their narrative has run its course, and they have not been able to find a further chapter to their saga.

The BJP story is the simplest: the fairies have abandoned its fairy tale. It began as the party of refugees from Pakistan. The robust economic and social resettlement of the dispossessed, evident by the 70s, paradoxically, liberated them from the party which helped them. After the high-drama blip of the Emergency and Janata Party phase, the BJP reinvented itself as a champion of a psychological rather than an economic need.

The temple movement brought great rewards, culminating, albeit through a parabola enhanced by the charisma of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in six years of power at the Centre. But within this time, the Indian mood turned. Economic aspirations took primacy over psychological needs, particularly since the temple movement was made irrelevant by the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya. A functioning temple has come up on the site, a fact that seems to escape the attention of those writing the BJP manifesto, which keeps promising to build a temple.

…When socialism became passe, Mulayam Singh Yadav resurrected himself brilliantly as the anti-thesis of the BJP, blending it with a distinctive element of Lohia socialism, empowerment of the backward castes. However, when the thesis is faltering, the anti-thesis cannot be robust. That is the Samajwadi Party’s problem vis-a-vis the Muslim vote. As for the Backwards: Mandal has been milked dry. Mandal has delivered for those whose prayers were answered in 1990. A new generation of Backwards needs solutions for the 21st century.

The last time the Left had anything original to say was more than three decades ago; and it had remarkable staying power in Bengal. But Bengali Muslims, critical to any democratic algebra, are now tired of the Left’s soft secularism, a formula in which their lives were secure from communal violence but their livelihood was left to the wolves. The subalterns of Bengal, across the religious divide, have adopted an interesting strategy: they have become, to a great extent, a non-partisan opposition.

…The key to Mulayam Singh Yadav’s future will lie in his ability to unlock the next dimension of Muslim demands, and spearhead it. There is a transparent anger, leavened by confusion, among Muslims which is provoking a drift to the most familiar port, the Congress. But the Congress has nothing new to offer.

What the Muslims of UP are looking for, but have been unable to articulate, is a defined political space within which they can find food-and-faith security. Given the passions that such a demand could arouse, this quest might surface obliquely rather than directly. On the table is Ajit Singh’s dream of a Harit Desh in western UP. Such a state will have a substantive Muslim population, as well as a string of important Muslim educational institutions, from Aligarh to Deoband. It will become a natural socio-economic magnet for Muslims of the north. The idea is still in an embryonic stage. Whoever articulates it, will have rung a wake-up call.

*** Excerpt Ends ***

Read Part II here.