A youthful Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, writing in his Urdu journal Al Hilal, had advised Muslims in 1913 not to join any political party—for Islam itself is the party of Allah and its name is Hizbullah. Down the centuries Muslims instead of joining the parties of others, he observed, had made them join its own. Ninety years down the line, the same spirit manifested itself through the words of the shahi imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid. The pontiff, Ahmed Bukhari, addressing the 27th general session of Jamait Ulema e-Hind (JUeH) at the Ramlila Ground on March 9, 2003, said: ‘‘Muslims need their own political party for political empowerment.’’ He said this in the presence of a few illustrious ‘‘secularists’’ who had come to the convention in the hope of Muslim votes. They included the Congress’s Arjun Singh, the Lok Janashakti’s Ram Vilas Paswan, the BSP’s Arif Mohammed Khan, and the novice Dalit leader Udit Raj of the Justice Party. All of them came under fire as Imam Bukhari Jr dismissed their ‘secular’ credentials as phony. In a feverish pitch, Bukhari accused the Congress of 1984 anti-Sikh riots and Shilanyas episode at Ayodhya (1989). It will not take us long to discover whether JUeH President Maulana Madani’s resolution of launching a Muslim party within three months becomes a reality or not. Provided it does, its success might be a dependent variable of several factors. It can become a peripheral phenomenon like Banatwala’s Muslim League, or wield influence disproportionate to electoral strength like the leftists, or it might take the country by blitz like Jinnah’s Muslim League. Ahmed Bukhari reportedly has been planning to float a new political party for the last few years, presumably since he took over the mantle from his father, Abdullah Bukhari, who had proudly called himself ‘‘an ISI agent’’. As a ‘‘true Muslim’’ he is honest of not being a ‘‘secularist’’. He had rationalised the Taliban’s demolition of Bamiyan Buddhas. With reference to the events in Gujarat, he had termed the Bombay serial blasts as a reaction to the post-Babri riots. This mettle is sadly lacking in the supine ‘‘secularists’’ who queue up the steps of Jama Masjid before every election to lick the imam’s boots. In the institution of Shahi Imam, the dividing line between politics and religion blurs, a la the Islamic Caliph. The pre-electoral custom of respective ‘‘secularist’’ parties to solicit Muslim votes through the imam is a sad paradox. Can a pontiff exhort his folks to vote for any particular political party en masse? How come this practice is resorted by the ‘‘secularists’’ who advocate a clinical separation between politics and religion? Is it not funny that beards, skullcaps and burqas become mascots of secularism? The idea of a Muslim political party doesn’t astonish me per se. Yet burdened with the collective memory of the subcontinental division, its prospects might appear catastrophic. Ironically, it is the natural outcome of the skewed version of secularism pursued in India. It has neither addressed the substantial problems of Muslims nor uncluttered their medievalist mindset. Gandhi introduced this conundrum of secularism in the Congress under the name of ‘‘Hindu-Muslim Unity’’. He zealously involved himself in the Khilafat Movement in 1919 to pressurise the British government to restore the institution of the Khilafat, abolished by Kemal Ataturk in far-off Turkey. Kemal Ataturk, a true secularist, had brought about the finest revolution in Islamic world by creating modern Turkey, arguably the sole surviving ‘‘secular’’ Muslim country. Hence was not Gandhi’s action of involving himself with Ali brothers, itself antithetical to secularism? But the Moplah Rebellion in Malabar in which a large number of Hindus were butchered, raped and maimed by a fanatic Muslim mob proved the futility of Gandhi’s endeavour. The end of the ill-conceived Khilafat Movement and the Non Co-operation Movement widened, like nothing else, the chasm between Hindus aspiring for Swaraj and Muslims seeking pan-Islamism like nothing else. Gandhi with his ‘‘secularism’’ could not attract more than four per cent of Muslims, an overwhelming majority of whom rallied round Jinnah with his single point agenda of partitioning India. So the ‘‘secularism’’ of the Congress, that was a euphemism for Muslim appeasement, could not satisfy the community enough. The majority of them spontaneously responded to Jinnah’s call for Pakistan. So need the ‘‘secularists’’ feel shocked if a Shahi Imam finds their ‘‘secularism’’ inadequate? Now what could be the factor that facilitates the formation of a Muslim political party? The answer is demography, geography and Islamic fervour. No Muslim believes the government census figures that their population share is merely 12 per cent in India. K.M. Yusuf, the former chief justice of Calcutta High Court and former chairman of the West Bengal Minority Commission, has put it around 25 per cent. Their presence is notably high in a northern border belt that starts from Bahraich district in Uttar Pradesh and moves through the Gonda, Basti, Gorakhpur and Deoria districts of that state to Bihar’s Champaran, Muzzaffarpur, Darbhanga, Saharsa, Purnea; West Bengal’s West Dinajpur, Maldah, Birbhum, and Murshidabad; and Assam’s Goalpara, Kamrup, Darrang, and Nagaon districts. That makes a lot of votes. Now since it is not Hindutva forces but Shahi Imam himself who had debunked ‘‘secularists’’ (including Sonia), they need to take a leaf out of that. Are we tottering on the verge of another communal showdown? Bukhari himself has pointed that the responsibility lies with the ‘‘secularists’’—and his words must be credible for the ‘‘secular’’ ilk. After all did they not create the Frankenstein of Shah Bano case in the first place? The writer is the convener of BJP’s think-tank and can be contacted at bpunj@email.com
