Why is Everyone Playing Games with Muslims

Kaleem Kawaja

Sixty years after independence one of the ongoing tragedies of the

Muslims of India is that some of their own leaders, activists and
intellegentsia are continuing to play games with them. It is well
known that in today's Indian Muslim community the record of
building institutions, spreading education, developing socioeconomic
programs to help the impoverished community climb out of its
backwardness is very dismal.

Typically quite a few of today's Muslim clerics are more politicians

and less Islamic scholars. These clerics use the Islamic jargon and
knowledge to impress the less educated Muslims and gain following
among them; then they negotiate with politicians for positions of
economic advantage to benefit their own families. They blame the
govt for the bad situation of Muslims to gain popularity in the
community. They beseech ministers who can dish out
chairmanships of commissions and commiittees, to garner those
positions that should be given to Muslims. But it is rare to find some
of them being involved in building educational or socioeconomic
projects or NGOs for the community by mobilizing the same
community.

Now turn to those among the Muslim intellegentsia who claim to be

activists. Their propensity too is not so much in doing social
development work as in building political forums. Pick up any
Muslim community newspaper or magazine or join a Indian Muslim
discussion e-mail forum and you see the same motivation behind
many of the events organized by the activists and leaders. Most of
them too are seen blaming the government for not doing anything
to help the Muslims.
Now it is true that successive governments have not done enough to
help build institutions for the poor Muslims. But if we look back at
the last sixty years what we see is that with their strategies these
activists/leaders were at best successful in getting pre-election
promises of help for the Muslims from the politicians. In sixty long
years the proportion of promises that were translated into reality is
miniscule. So the success ratio of these Muslim leaders who said
the path for relief for the community is to do more and more
advocacy with the govt, is very dismal. Because the politicians have
developed clever strategies to manipulate the Muslim
leaders/activists/ clerics. They dish out a few plum positions to
these leaders and their relatives, after which the activists start
praising the bread crumbs thrown by the government at the Muslims
as big help to the community.

Go to Muslim community's colleges/universiti es and what you hear

many student leaders say is that being politically astute is more
helpful in gaining economic success than putting more emphasis on
academics. Watch that some Muslim organizations that claim they
are building schools organize glittering public events studed with
politicians where they spend a good bit of their revenues on those
extravaganzas and media publicity.

Go to the various e-mail discussion forums of Indian Muslims and

you will see that barely 10% of the discussion is on building
educational or socioeconomic institutions, the remainder time being
spent in demonstrating political skills in analyses of current affairs,
and splitting hairs on the elements of Islam. On those forums you
will find lofty wordsmithy (laffazi) producing idealistic visions and
grand interpretations of ideal human behaviour. Excuse me! Are we
vying with each other to become keyboard martyers who are shy of
the real world? Why is it that these Muslim intellegentsia folks are
so interested in the political machinations in India, and creating lofty
on-paper visions, none of which are ever implemented, but have so
little interest in programs or NGOs that can actually uplift the
community? Why this obsession with mastering political analysis
and towards what end?

Ofcourse all three sides of the Muslim equation, the clerics, the
activists, the non-Muslim politicians blame each other in public
discourses while exaggerating their own contributions and their self-
rightedness.

It appears that everyone, the cleric- politicians, the political-

activists, the intellegentsia- activists and the ruling politicians have
developed a pretty cute game. All of them gain positions of power
and economic benefits while most of the Muslim masses remain
trapped in slums, illiteracy and backwardness. Recently, I was
flabbergasted to hear one political activist say that instead of the
Muslims putting their resources into building educational
instituitions they should plough it into building political forums and
doing advocacy with the government to build more institutions. He
never mentioned the dismal success record of this strategy in the
last sixty years.

Already so many Muslim political forums and groups exist in India,

each vying to get space in the handful of Muslim community
newspapers. The national media gives them scant attention. So how
will adding a few more forums that will duplicate the work of the
current several dozen forums help? Why not the newly enthusiastic
activists work through the existing forums to pressurize the govt?
Becuse the more political forums Muslims have the easier it is for
the ruling politicians to manipulate them, playing the divide and rule
policy, Unless one motivation of the activists trying to form new
forums is to fight for a piece of the largese that the politicians are
presently dividing among the current Muslim political forums or
attention in the media.

Now why is it that neither the clerics nor the political activists ever
bother to mobilize their own community and some non-Muslim
individuals to build some institutions that could uplift the
impoverished Muslims? Why is it that number of decent size Muslim
NGOs in India is so small and their accomplishments so dismal?
Why are these activists not helping the NGOs, and instead are
helping organize more and more public rallies most of the time?
Recently well known Indian columnist Saba Naqvi wrote an insightful
piece describing this coterie of Muslims as India's new Sarkari
Mussalmans who claim to be working for the deprived Muslims,
while after sixty years about 55% of Muslims continue to live below
poverty line and are the majority residents of slums in most cities in
India.

Yes, political activism has am important role in doing advocacy with

the government. But should that occupy 90% of the attention of the
clerics, activists and the intellegentsia? Should we not review 60
years of the Muslim community's strategies of dealing with the govt
and decide what works and what does not work? Why are so many
Muslim activists obsessed with being considered smart political
leaders or political analysts?