Over the top

By Amit Julka

Art: Varun

Soon after the attacks in Norway, my Facebook page was filled with updates condemning the Western Media’s surprising double standards in describing Anders Breivik a ‘madman’/’attacker’ and reserving special accolades like ‘terrorist’ for Muslims alone (Please see Stephen Colbert’s hilarious take on youtube!). However, as noble as the intentions of these people were, some of them got too carried away in their tit-for-tat approach and tried to brand Anders Breivik as a ‘Christian fundamentalist’. Anders Breivik was many things; a right wing terrorist, racist, and a cold blooded killer. But the term ‘Christian fundamentalist’ would be a sum lesser than its parts. One describes someone as a Christian/Hindu/Islamic fundamentalist not on the basis of his religious background, but motivations.

A Christian fundamentalist is one whose world view is shaped by literalist interpretations of the Bible and other Christian texts. In Breivik’s manifesto, one sees considerable evidence of a white-supremacist-christian agenda. It is a curious mix of many different ideologies. At the beginning, he shows a very conservative bent of mind by mourning over the loss of traditional European values and the emergence of phenomena like homosexuality and promiscuity as a direct consequence of immigration. However, later on he shows concern over the loss of liberal western values in face of shariatisation of Europe. In fact, his view over homosexuality and the ‘feminisation of men’ coincides with what any conservative Christian priest or Muslim cleric would tell you. Ironically, his own vision for Europe closely mirrors the ‘Euro-Arab’ that he is afraid of.

However, instead of basing these arguments in a religious framework, he places them in a socio-cultural context. In fact, whilst claiming to be a religious Christian, he writes:

“As for the Church and science, it is essential that science takes an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings. Europe has always been the cradle of science and it must always continue to be that way.

Regarding my personal relationship with God, I guess I’m not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic. However, I am a supporter of a monocultural Christian Europe.”

Debate, not Dismiss

Many on the liberal-left (not hyphenated in the strict sense) side have condemned Breivik’s manifesto, and rightly so. However, whilst we should condemn his writings, it would be foolhardy to ignore them so dismissively. A sizeable population in Europe now believes in such propaganda, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the manifesto now acquires a cult status amongst underground networks and future ‘Breiviks’. The manifesto symbolizes the underlying tensions in European society over issues of immigration and assimilation, and it calls for introspection from both sides. Right in the beginning, Breivik highlights on the culture of ‘political correctness’.

This is a complaint being voiced by many people not just in Europe, but also in America and India where people think that Islam is being treated with kid gloves. Ironically, the left, which was the traditional bastion of secularists and atheists, has now become more restrained in its approach as it juggles between championing the rights of minorities and its core ideology. In absence of constructive criticism from the left, the right has been able to capture public attention by indulging in shrill propaganda based campaigns. It is a bit like the right wingers stealing the left’s thunder.

Thus the reason why the likes of Breivik are gaining support is that we dismiss their talk as ludicrous, instead of countering their arguments in a proper manner. To a frustrated man on the street, Breivik’s manifesto will come across as coherent, logical and provide him with all the (wrong) answers. How many manifestos have we come up with to refute his arguments?

Right now, Europe’s far right elements and Islamic neo-fundamentalists are engaged in a vicious feedback loop, the results of which would be devastating for everyone. The longer we stay silent, the longer we shall suffer.

By Amit Julka

Photo: foreignpolicy.com

Years ago, when I was staying in Kolkata, I used to enjoy having long conversations with my driver Khan. I was learning Urdu at that time, and Khan would often help me out on this regard. As time passed, the nature of our conversations went beyond the confines of Urdu, and we would talk about politics, religion and everything else under the sun. One day, as our discussion veered towards India’s Muslim community and all of a sudden, Khan’s expression became more serious, and he said “Problem yeh hai ke hum musalmaan apne bacchon ko padhaate nahin, sirf khilaate rehte hain” (The problem is that we focus not on educating our children, but on feeding them).

It was quite heartening to see that here was this average Javed, hardly educated himself, but who seemed to possess more common sense than the community’s self appointed leaders. And Khan is not the only enlightened soul out there. About a year ago, I met an auto-rickshaw driver Waseem who told me how he wanted his daughters to pursue graduation, in spite of family pressure to do otherwise. It is common practice amongst many to point to the success of Khans in Bollywood and Sania Mirza in tennis to prove India’s success in accommodating its minorities. Their achievements notwithstanding, I think it is the average Muslim on the street, like Wasim and Khan who will prove to be the catalysts for change in India’s Muslim community.

Tired of BJP’s propaganda, and Congress’s hollow proclamations of secularism, it is reassuring that India’s Muslims have finally begun to take matters into their own hands. For instance, in Bihar, organisations such as Bihar Anjuman have decided to take matters into their own hands by spurring the community onto a path of constructive action. On its homepage , it urges community to take responsibility into their own hands and strive to use their talents to the fullest. Another such initiative is the Rahmani 30, an institute set up to train poor but talented Muslim students for the prestigious IIT JEE (the entrance examination for securing admission to India’s premier engineering institutes, the IITs). A brainchild of Maulana Wali Rahmani and Abhyanand, a senior police officer in Bihar, it is one of the many subterranean changes which are taking place in the community.

However, much needs to be done, and there is still a long way to go. As pointed out by the Sachar report, India’s Muslims, and especially those belonging to the Indo Gangetic plain still face a variety of obstacles, which hampers their integration with the country’s mainstream. To give a small example, there is no state-sponsored Urdu medium school in Uttar Pradesh, a province home to about 40 million Urdu-speaking Muslims. Not only is this a gross injustice, but it is also against the Constitution. Although much hue and cry is raised about the issue of reservation, it is much easier, and certainly less controversial to make small incremental changes which can go a long way in ensuring that the community feels that it too has a stake, and a role to play in building the country’s future.

All said and done, it still baffles me that how we can ignore a community 170 million strong, larger than most nations. Surely, the ground is ripe for a million more Rahmani 30s and Anjumans. After all, the canvas that is India can’t be painted without all its constituent colours; Saffron, Blue, White and Green.

By Nadia Jajja

Pakistan has lost its ability to differentiate between right and wrong, all in the name of religion.

Late Shahbaz Bhatti

In January, shortly after Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer’s assassination, the 20-something Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, son of President Asif Ali Zardari, delivered what could’ve been a persuasive speech if only given by a senior leader of the ruling party in Pakistan:

“To the Christian and other minority communities in Pakistan, we will defend you,” he said at the memorial for Salmaan Taseer. “Those who wish to harm you for a crime you did not commit will have to go through me first… The assassination of Shaheed Salmaan Taseer is not about liberals versus conservatives or moderate versus radical Islam. It is about right and wrong.”

Here was an attempt by an unknown speechwriter to look beyond the usual categorizations, to not focus on the much trampled contexts of religion and liberalism. But as with all things in Pakistan that set off on the wrong foot to end only worse, minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti was assassinated two months later.

This March’s incident underscored more than just a loss of a life, the Taliban’s ability to strike or Bilawal’s statements ringing hollow. It affirmed how for the general populace, the concept of morality and religiosity, rather than religion per se, has become tangible and their ability to discern right from wrong has diminished further.

Take a look at how the various players have reacted: the decision makers’ response was muted as they do not desire to take any conflicting position, even if it’s evil clad in the veil of religiosity. On the other hand, the so-called liberals were stunned, angered and dismayed in turns, but the fact is their emotions have not and will not bring about a change. For the most part, they are preaching the converted.

In the middle and sizeable somewhere, the general public did not have a reaction to this. Primarily because many did not find fault with the rationale behind the killing; how could a man from a minority group head a committee doing anything with Muslim issues? It’s not religious intolerance on their part. For the last 60 years or so, they have been so numbed that what they deem right and wrong is based solely on religion than on informed decisions. Not that there is anything wrong with it, for centuries religion has been the guide to morality, but here in Pakistan, it’s the level of religiosity that is (mis)guiding morality. No longer is it about praying five times a day or keeping your thoughts pure, but is rather about killing an innocent man just to show that you are willing to take a life in God’s name, even if it’s not ordained by him.

Hence, the debate today should not be how to bridge conservatism/radicalism with liberalism, or radical Islam with secularism, it has to centre on how to dissociate evil from the shroud of religiosity, and make the common man understand the differences between right and wrong.

For Pakistan to survive as a nation state, there has to be a schism between religiosity and morality. It has to be aware that morality has its own distinct identity.

*Photo: abuzznews.com

As I had mentioned in yesterday’s post, I was eagerly awaiting this evening’s live broadcast of the Intelligence Squared debate on Pakistan. You would be forgiven if you’re not especially enamoured of such events because they have become something of a dreary staple in Western policy circles. People who had never heard of Pakistan before confidently make policy pronouncements on “Af-Pak”, Swat, the “tribal areas” and rattle off a gaggle of Muslim names all in a misplaced effort to garner some form of intellectual capital.

Although this particular panel discussion suffered from some of those traits it was sufficiently stimulating for the most part. I was particularly impressed with Dr. Farzana Shaikh’s deposition. Dr Shaikh, a fellow with the Asia Programme at Chatham House put forth a thesis that seeks to view Pakistani affairs from the old-fashioned prism of Indo-Pak relations and Pakistan’s testy relationship with its founding faith. Her basic contention was that the Pakistani quagmire is a direct result of the attempt to gain strategic parity with India. There were audible gasps of discomfort from (presumably) the Pakistani members of the audience as Shaikh implied that it is time that Pakistan abandons this attempt. A gentleman in the Q&A session afterwards even questioned her “representativeness” as she wrote in English and worked for a Western organisation. Evidently, the irony of speaking in the English language escaped him.

Shaikh then, if I may be permitted the usage of the term falls in the camp of the old school pragmatic secularists who wish to see Pakistan emerge as a developed member of international civil society. I would argue that the time for this Jinnahesque political project has passed and a radical re-imagination is required to foster a new and more sustainable political order on the Subcontinent for the benefit of all the populations involved.

One panelist whose speech I was eager to hear before the debate began was William Dalrymple. Dalrymple’s deposition convinced me that although he might have talents as a travel writer and as a chronicler of Mughal history he has serious deficiencies as an analyst of politics. His speech was a collection of clichés that seemed to have been gleaned from the pulp fiction that passes for political opinion in some newspapers. His basic aim seemed to be to reassure the audience that Pakistan hasn’t lagged behind India to the extent that the Western press made it out to be even attesting to the superiority of Pakistani roads and the high penetration of mobile phones. While no doubt true, it didn’t add much insight to the proceedings.

All in all though, it was a stimulating affair. I even had the opportunity to pose a question to Farzana Shaikh via Twitter that went something like this:

Re-integration with India is a utopian notion but is it not the most rational course forward?

This question simply aimed to take Dr Shaikh’s line of thought one step further. If Pakistan is to be a secular state in the classical Western sense as she envisions it then what is the rationale for its existence as a separate Islamic Republic? This of course draws attention to that rather large gorilla in the room that everybody would rather leave alone – the botched Partition of India.

Shaikh dismissed the proposition but to do so is understandable. Talking of Indo-Pak reunification or indulging in revisionist historical scholarship is to commit professional and political suicide as Mr Jaswant Singh, her fellow panellist knows well. He was quick to offer a palatable and politically correct response when the moderator posed my question to him.

Singh is infamous for his book on Jinnah that sought to emancipate the Quaid-e-Azam’s legacy and establish his secular credentials. However, Singh, now a full-time public intellectual free from the exigencies of Indian party politics seems unwilling to embrace the logical corollary of his thesis – If Partition was a bad idea to begin with, why shirk from advocating its reversal now?

- Vijay Vikram

This is a follow-up to my earlier post. I wanted to see what kind of news about Nepal were covered, mainly by the BBC. I have gathered some quick Google results (Google web search and Google news search) for a set of different search queries about Nepal. The queries were made on the 4th Dec 2009, 11:49 (Nepal time). Though this is not an exhaustive research, and the results don’t produce anything even close to ‘conclusive,’ I hope it can give some hints, and justify my reasons in the earlier post.

‘nepal’+'gadhimai’ returned 931 pages from bbc.co.uk on google web search

“nepal”+”karnali” returned 25 pages from bbc.co.uk on google web search

Google Web:

• “nepal”+”christian”+”conversion” : 42 (bbc.co.uk) picture
• “nepal”+”christian”+”death” : 286 (bbc.co.uk) picture
• “nepal”+”road accident” : 50 (bbc.co.uk) 50 picture
• “nepal”+”karnali” : 25 (bbc.co.uk) picture
• “nepal”+”karnali”+”food” : 4 (bbc.co.uk) picture
• “nepal”+”gadhimai” : 931 (bbc.co.uk) picture
• “nepal” : 31,300 (bbc.co.uk) picture

”nepal”+”christian”+”death” returned 1740 results on google news search

“nepal”+”christian”+”convert” returned 194 results on google news search

Google News:

• “nepal”+”karnali” : 1040 (all) picture
• “nepal”+”hinduism” : 1700 (all) picture
• “nepal”+”christian”+”death” : 1740 (all) picture
• “nepal”+”christian”+”convert” : 194 (all) picture
• “nepal”+”karnali” : 135 (BBC) picture
• “nepal”+”hinduism” : 29 (BBC) picture
• “nepal”+”christian”+”death” : 7 (BBC) picture
• “nepal”+”christian”+”convert” : 2 (BBC) picture
• “nepal”+”christian” : 72 (BBC) picture
• “nepal”+”tibet” : 508 (BBC) picture

I leave it for you to decide what is the defining characteristic of Christianity in Nepal: death or conversion? The figures speak for themselves on what kind of coverage did Gadhimai receive and what really are the pressing issues of Nepal.

Thanks for your comments