Qaum Or Country?

"The liberal Muslim", says media critic Iqbal Masud, "does reflect a contradiction. On the political front he may often vote for a communist—that is someone who denies the existence of religion—but as far as his cultural identity is concerned, he remains very strongly Muslim. His memory goes back to the Hijaz, to Persia. Ali Sadar Jafri, the poet, is a communist to the core, yet after the Bombay riots he wrote a poem in the great tradition of an Islamic lament, harking back to the battle of Karbala where the grandson of the Prophet was slain." A separate Muslim identity will remain a reality in India for some more years, Masud believes.

There are several aspects of the liberal Muslim predicament. There is the dichotomy between cultural identity and political affiliation, as Masud points out. There is a strong belief in Islam that is at once critical of the clergy. This is evident in the arguments of reformists like Maulana Wahiduddin Khan. Then there is an abiding need to believe in the secularism of the Indian nation-state. Yet there is growing disillusionment with "secular" regimes like the United Front dispensation, as voiced by younger activists like Communalism Combat editor Javed Anand.

There is a school of thought, of which Professor Hasan is a member, which believes that liberal Muslims should speak out in alliance with other minority groups and strongly articulate a minority viewpoint. Yet there are those like Syed Shaha-buddin who believe liberal Muslims are too enamoured of positions of power and are too easily co-opted to provide the fig-leafs of secularism that the system needs in order to appear progressive.

After all, merely appointing a Muslim president doesn’t alter the plight of millions denied employment because of their names. As Dr Zakir Hussain once said: "It is easier to be the president of India than it is to be a clerk in the Rashtrapati Bhavan." So should Muslims try to participate in the national mainstream and risk becoming ‘bad’ Muslims? Or should they work towards the upliftment of their own community and shun the sops held out by the not-so-secular state?

Common misconceptions heighten the liberal Muslim isolation. Prof Hasan questions the idea of a unified "Muslim" community, one predominantly driven by religious affiliations—"Besides being a follower of Islam by birth and training, a Muslim is a peasant or a landlord, teacher, litigant, lawyer, Shia, Sunni, Deobandi or Barelwi. " Thus, the notion of a monolithic community that will act in a given way under given conditions and will throw up a single ‘Muslim leader’ is a communal one. "Yet it suits people to perpetuate the Muslim stereotype. The liberal Muslim is of no importance to the state," Hasan says. The state looks for "sole spokesmen" of the community—it still believes in the myth of a Jinnah-type leader.

Columnist Saeed Naqvi argues that the very search for ‘A Liberal Muslim Leader’ is a communal search. "There is a revolutionary development in the Urdu press at the moment that simply hasn’t been noticed. A number of writers have written that Muslims should not vote for a Muslim but for a secular Hindu. This is because there is an awareness that the leader of a vote-bank will sell the Muslims short. The practice of appeasing the Muslims via the mullah has distorted the picture. The liberal Muslim has been yelled out. The identity that is rooted in Ghalib or the Kitab-e-Nauras, in Kathak, in Ustad Bismillah Khan and in Ustad Vilayat Khan has been subdued because of the operation of electoral politics."

Thus, a political system that relies on ‘votebanks’ has marginalised the voices of those who don’t have access to the voting public. Says veteran reformist Asghar Ali Engineer: "Because the mullah has the platform of the mosque and greater powers of manipulating people and because politicians in the quest for votes seek alliances with priests, democracy ends up working in favour of the conservative and reactionary voice rather than the liberal one." 

The liberal Muslim is, therefore, faced with a choice. Either he seeks to cultivate a constituency on the basis of Islam for political ends or he sticks by his liberalism and becomes politically marginal. Shahabuddin was a member of the Indian Foreign Service before his entry into politics made him an ardent champion of ‘Muslim’ causes. And Oxford-bred Salman Khursheed was considered as liberal as you can get before he took the hardline on his return to India and entry into Parliament. It is the mainstream system that creates the hardliners, rather than the other way round.

Shahabuddin, a former MP, says there is no conflict between an orthodox believer and a secularist administrator or politician. "Look, we live in a multi-religious society but at the same time we are trying to create a secular state. The problem is that the liberal Hindus and Muslims are trying to create a secular society and this is where the contradiction arises," he says. "In the process, a self-styled Muslim liberal faces an identity crisis—whether he is a Muslim at all—an identity which he often uses to promote himself."

In Shahabuddin’s view, a modern Muslim is a misnomer, a non-existent category, but certain individuals make a great show of their secularism because they want to take advantage of the secular order. "Liberal Muslims as a class parade their secularism, anti-Muslimness and sometimes even a non-Muslim wife, in order to go places." Columnist Arun Shourie argues that these are not liberals but apologists: "The basic texts of Islam are totalitarian and fanatical. Unless the liberal Muslim is prepared to exhume the texts themselves, there is no escape from them." 

Today, critics of liberalism are found in all communities. Says Rajmohan Gandhi, author of Understanding The Muslim Mind: "All over the world, communities are questioning the Enlightenment deification of ‘Reason’ as God. Hindus and Muslims are discovering their religious souls. The rigidly secularist, materialist approach has not brought satisfaction. There’s a genuine religious search among most communities." But do we have to forsake religion in order to coexist peacefully?

Maulana Wahiduddin, editor of the Urdu monthly Al-Risala, believes there is no need to style oneself as liberal in order to live in peace with Hindus. "As far as I’m concerned I am a ‘kattar Mussalman’ but I believe in the true Islam of love and harmony. Muslims haven’t understood that Hindus accept the many-ness of reality. Manohar Joshi said before the elections that he would build a ‘Hindu rashtra’ in Maharashtra but has it happened? Has the BJP had the guts to say that it brought down the Babri Masjid? No. We can be good Hindus and good Muslims and still accept each other. "

But in the Hindu community, according to Javed Anand of Communalism Combat, Muslims are still asked to prove and reprove their Indianness. "I feel I’m much more of a patriot than L.K. Advani or Bal Thackeray, but there are others who resent doubts about their patriotism." So, at the end of the day, is Prof Hasan a Muslim first and an Indian second? Is his first duty to his religion or to democratic free speech? 

"This is a false dichotomy," says Naqi. "Any community would object to such an insult as The Verses, not just Muslims." Says Masud: "The collective rights of a community are above the rights of an artist. All Muslims who want to be known as progressive and secular are the community’s worst enemies." Poet Javed Akhtar feels "reacting to communalism is futile, what’s important is to oppose it. Better still, liberalism should start at home. Whatever Prof Hasan said wasn’t offensive to even the staunchest believer. He’s the victim of an internal conspiracy. Vested interests are giving a communal colour to this power struggle." 

The Jamia incident may in the end be a political battle but Professor Mushirul Hasan is an Indian symbol of the soul-search among reformists and conseratives all over the Muslim world on how to live as a modern minority without sacrificing an ancient religion.