Many Muslims have been surprised and even hurt at the article written by Vir Sanghvi in the Counterpoint column of Hindustan Times on Sunday, which is without doubt the most read column of any editor in India. The reason is obvious. Had it been written by any other person it would not have mattered that much but Vir Sanghvi is one of the best editors, an erudite and highly respected journalist. Like many others he also puts the onus on Muslims for not condemning fundamentalism of Muslims. Here is an emotional response that comes straight from the heart.
Muslims don’t remain silent and do condemn but our voices don’t reach you. The Delhi-centric (Delhi/Haryana/Punjab) papers never carry these stories. In small cities all over Northen India Muslims protest and raise voice, but who takes notice! (See the photo up there, not a single a paper published such pictures: Here there are footwear in hands of Muslims and the banner reads: Desh Drohi MF Husain ).
Muslims lack PR skills and the only story that sells is reported by journalists. The fact that story concerns madarsas, so-called fundamentalism, underworld etc. Who cares about reporting the genuine stories and the day-to-day issues of Muslims.
Did Sanghvi’s paper publish the story of protest rally in Bhatkal, Bhopal and Lucknow where Muslims also held the placards about MF Husain as well. Do they have knowledge of All India Muslim Tehwar Committee and National Secularism Front that organised protests but not a single paper reported them. We still remember the Karvaan-e-Azadi a few years back that passed through the entire nation and none noticed it. The mutts/maths are never a subject of story but madarsas are.
You set the agenda and you write about it. Muslims are absolutely on the borderline and a majority of Muslims barely manages bread everyday. But other than ghettoes, stories about biryani and the lack of liberals coming out, you don’t care write about that. You write about all sorts of appeasements, take issues like Muslim ‘census’ in army that Muslims never demanded. You take the issue of Gudia and then her child and you decide all. See Muslim blogs all over the blogosphere where MF Husian has been condemned, fundamentalism is condemned but does big journo, who goes to big hotels has an iota of time to surf that or interact with ordinary Muslims? Even the ‘kalma’ of Muslims was published wrong in the Big story in the Sunday Hindustan Times. Muslims felt hurt but did they complain? Do you ever see what readers’ letters in columns of Urdu papers like Rashtriya Sahara (Urdu) and Qaumi Awaz Delhi say about fundamentalism of either side.
All leadership Muslims forsake long back to Hindus, either to Mulayam Singh, Lalu, Atal Bihari or anyone but for Muslims. But you never bother to check and pronounce your judgement easily that Muslims don’t condemn. They do, but their voice will never reach your ears. You have your own 2-4 intellectuals representing Muslims like Javed Akhtar and your papers hardly print the letters written to editors on the subjects by Muslims. That’s a fact, whether you agree or not.
Is there any person remotely vicious like Togadia but you give voice to him…..you publish him, any Muslim fundamentalist in India? What Vinay Katiyar said recently, we silently bore. Said nothing. Did you condemn it. I am sure you are not even aware of that. You don’t report that. You report AMU where a girl’s issue becomes national issue.Are there men remotely vicious to what Togadia, Modi, Giriraj Kishore etc among Muslims? What Modi said about Muslim women, you did not even report that.
It was an affront to all women but you chose to ignore that. Muslims are silentlybearing all barbs. You remain magnanimous to sometime look at them and pass a judgement. Indian Muslims have no guilt or complex to be forced to come out and beat their chests for the fault of one, MF Husain. We don’t kill our daughters in the womb, Muslims have the best sex ratio in India and that proves we are poor but progressive.
The Maulanas give the bytes and fall in trap of a journalist who wants a scoop. On an issue like Imrana he asks for view, the maulana refuses but then the reproter persists and asks a hypothetical question and forces him to ask what would happen in such circumstances, the maulana answers and the story is ready.
The maulana is approachable and speaks so he gets this treatment:He is misquoted, misrepresented and blamed. Look what happened on Sania’s dress and the virginity controversies. Across the India hungry electronic media reporters in every city go for any maulana who is approachable if only one says that it is wrong or un-Islamic, the entire community is blamed as fundamentalist and backwards.
This state has failed to stop the Togadias from hurting us, poisoning the liberal Hindus and giving us so many wounds in the heart that we don’t want to deal with anyone. And tell me why a state with 3.5 crore Muslims that is Uttar Pradesh can’t open a Urdu medium school in the state. Just because a law prevents that. You know this? Our language was killed, we said nothing. Everday we are condemned, maligned, seen with suspicion, section of media even hates us and you expect us to come out and ‘prove’ our liberal ways. What a joke!
PS: What we do now when so many are blind? Will someone send this photo to the journalists and papers who say Muslims never raise voice?
Adnan
Ironically when Naxalites kill by dozens nobody in the country calls it terrorism or associates it with their religion or whatever ideology it is. 55 killed in Chhattisgarh don’t make the news but one suspect if he is a Muslim and is even arrested just on suspicion by police or rather framed for any blast or attack, raises eyebrows.
The situation in Chhattisgarh is worse than any Indian state and almost it is looking like a Maoist state run within the country but does anybody care. If you bother to read Click
Hi Adnan
Like you said that some muslims were killed in chattishgarh and no body noticed. I understand that its wrong. But when you raise the point of one muslim person being a terrorist suspect it defines what i said ealier in my response— That due to the enormous number of extremists out in other countries eg afghanistan, pakistan, Turkey.. Every other innocent muslim is looked down upon. That’s the only reason and its very natrual to do so. I’m not saying its right but it comes natural when most wars being fought around the world are so called islamic wars by extremists. Do you ever wonder why terrorist attacks on Kashmir are never blamed on buddhists or the 9/11 attacks? Beause just the idea of having a buddhist monk walking around with a AK-47 or flying a plane into WTC is laughable.
Because even if a certain muslim person is innocnet of any crime it suddenly becomes very easy to blame the attacks on him due to the condition and continous unrest in the Muslim world. ITS VERY WRONG. I aknowledge that fact.
But only the exteremists are to be blamed.
Islam must declare Jihad against the extremists instead of declaring it against other nations who due to no fault of their own consider the lack of action of peafull muslims as them being a part of the Jihad against the non-muslims.
THE FIGHT TO GAIN RESPECT IN THE WORLD NOW MUST COME FROM WITHIN THE MUSLIM POPULATIONS AGAINST EXTREMEISTS. It is the only way to truly get Islam the respect it deserves back.
Adnan
Your article is well written. Muslims have grievances but that needs to be handled better.
Do not give values to any leadership who blames one community or another, we must look into issues that affects us day to to day, that includes security of each individual whether hindu / Muslim or any religion.
Saftey security and prosperity is what we need to work upon. All religions have issues, but every religion the reformer and leaders need to come out and take responsibility of misdeed of their co-religionist and handle the situation.
The naxalites are godless people ,believing in Communism unlike
the muslim terrorist who blow themselves up in the name of Allah.
How can you Adnan miss this??
It is heartening to see this free dialogue, and it fills me with joy that our country provides us the freedom to think and talk like this, regardless of who we are or what we believe in. This is the essence of India. The Muslims have some problems with the Hindus. The Hindus have some problems with the Muslims. The Christians have some problems with the Hindus, and vice versa. The South Indians have problems with the North Indians, about the imposition of Hindi as a national language.
Lets talk about them. Lets have more such blogs – not from the point of view of my community against another, but – how the hell do we solve this?
The problems for most of India and the communities are created by politicians and leaders on either side, who benefit from this division. We need to get educated, learn, and the new wave of educated and wise Muslims and Hindus that we see today need to take up leadership roles going forward. You and I need to not vote on community issues, or quotas. This division kills all of us, and we need to realize it. There is no better way of realizing it than articles such as these, and the healthy discussion (for the most part) that follows.
Bravo.
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I think the whole point of the article was not whether muslims protest against mf hussain or terrorsm (may be that was an additional point, but).. what sanghvi wanted to convey was the lack of freedom given to Atheists, and how they are always suppressed and terrorised.. and this goes for all religions.. how many of us have the guts to question/criticise out own religion (we do it liberally for others religions).. i think the time has come to have forums where we can (constructively) criticise OUR OWN religions.. for eg- a hindu community where they discuss debate shortcomings of their own religion.. and this blog can start debating amongst indian muslims, what they like and dont like about islam etc..