Caste And Communalism: Can RSS Change With Muslims Meeting Bhagwat?

 Caste And Communalism: Can RSS Change With Muslims Meeting Bhagwat?

                                                                                  Saeed Naqvi

Bhaurao Deoras: Why should Muslims have any connection with Babar? He came from Central Asia?

Question: Even your forefathers came from Central Asia – Aryans came from Central Asia?

Deoras: There is some controversy about that. It is now being contradicted. There are so many books contradicting this.

Question: You mean Aryans did not come from anywhere?

Deoras: No we have not.

Question: So they just happened here, they simply sprouted here?

Deoras: yes. The term Aryans and Adivasis (irritated) what is all this. Britishers have created this…………. (full interview)

This is a randomly lifted fraction of a two hour long interview with Bhaurao Deoras, RSS ideologue. The interview took place in the organization’s headquarters, Keshav Kunj, Jhandewalan, in the winter of 1990. Since his elder brother, Balasaheb Deoras, the RSS Chief, was ailing, Bhaurao was the RSS’s most important voice.

Between this landmark conversation with the highest echelons of the RSS and the more recent meeting of five senior Muslim professionals with RSS Sarsanghchalak, Mohan Bhagwat, exactly 32 years have passed. These three decades define the spurt in communalism and casteism to this day.

Circumstances in 1990 were different. A series of communal riots had erupted in Aligarh, Moradabad, Ahmedabad and elsewhere after V.P. Singh, Prime Minister for a short spell, announced the implementation of the Mandal Commission report granting 27 percent reservations in government jobs for Other Backward Castes (OBCs). This would increase the reservation quota for Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs to 50 percent.

The upper castes were on fire, quite literally. I remember how the attempted self immolation by Rajiv Goswami, a Delhi University student, at the AIIMS intersection accelerated the anti Mandal movement. This inevitably pitted the upper castes against lower castes. This division had been a social reality for hundreds of years. What was new after Mandal, was the aggressive use of caste in electoral politics. Massive employment of caste to wrest political power in, say, UP (which has historically been in the grip of Govind Bhallabh Pant, Kamalapati Tripathi, Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, Bindeshwari Dube, Narain Dutt Tewari) invited a massive backlash.

At this juncture, Muslims, traditionally a Congress vote bank, began to feel uncomfortable with the Congress. There was a reason for this discomfort. Bruised by the JP moment and its subsequent ouster from Delhi by the Janata Party, the Congress began to change – it began to acquire a soft shade of saffron. Indira Gandhi fought the 1983 Jammu elections on an anti minority plank even though the minority in her focus were Sikhs agitating for a Punjabi Suba.

After her assassination in 1984, the unprecedented three-fourth majority with which Rajiv Gandhi was returned to power was not interpreted as a sympathy vote. Instead it was seen as “Hindu consolidation” against minority appeasement. How was this any different from the “consolidation” sought by the BJP?

Rajiv Gandhi first “appeased” Muslims by upturning the Shah Bano judgement and banning Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. The Hindu Right was up in arms. Gandhi rushed to announce Ram Rajya from Ayodhya, opened the locks of the Ram temple located in the Babari Majid. While permitting the brick laying ceremony for the Ram temple, Gandhi and his cohorts fell back on deception. They allowed “shilanyas” on land the Allahabad High Court had declared as disputed. They told Muslims a brazen lie that the High Court’s advice had not been violated.

Within minutes of the trickery, the VHP announced at a press conference that they had prevailed on Gandhi: Shilanyas had been done on exactly the land they demanded. This was the episode which caused Muslims to leave the Congress in droves. On December 6, 1992, when Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao slept through the day while the Babari Masjid was demolished, the Muslim exodus from the Congress was complete.

Between Mandal in 1989 and the Masjid in 1992, the Muslim ran helter skelter not knowing where to pitch his tent. In his panic he was lured by caste leaders like Mualyam Singh Yadav and Mayawati who, the Muslim learnt to his chagrin, worked to advance Yadav and Dalit interests only. (I am focusing on UP only to keep the narrative simple.) Since Partition, the Muslim felt secure in the Congress lap. But other than the odium of being “appeased”, he got what the Sachar Commission report revealed in 2005. On every development index he had fallen below the lowest rungs of the Hindu caste.

By turning to caste leaders, the Muslim for the first time intervened in what was essentially an intra Hindu tussle between the Savarnas and the Avarnas. Indeed by siding with the Avarnas or the lower castes the Muslim had for the first time tried to invert the caste pyramid, an affront not to be easily forgotten.

The RSS-BJP combine was going to take no chances. Hindu consolidation was the only way to ward off the threat permanently. This was possible by sprinkling saffron in the air – Love Jehad, beef lynchings, loudspeakers on mosques, ghar wapsi, high profile arrests of Muslims for alleged terrorism and suchlike issues kept the temperature communally charged. But that is not enough for mobilization on a scale which would win, say, 2024 elections. Communalism has to be tied to nationalism for nationwide mobilization. This would require Kashmir on a boil and conflictual relations with Pakistan. The theory is that the election results of 2019 may not have been possible without Balakot.

This is the perspective against which the RSS chief has opened his doors to a handful of Muslim professionals.

The earlier interview with Bhaurao Deoras was arranged by K.R. Malkani who reached out to me after reading my op-ed piece in the Indian Express after the 1982 Moradabad riots. The series of 30 short films on Composite culture affected progressives and the Hindu right equally. My book, Reflections of an Indian Muslim, which carried some of this, was released by Nikhil Chakravarty, a communist. Murli Manohar Joshi, RSS, was the Chief Guest.

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In the Aftermath of Moradabad Riots

In the Aftermath of Moradabad Riots

From Saeed Naqvi's book: “Reflections of an Indian Muslim” 1993

Whenever events like Moradabad take place some of my friends turn to me with sympathy which generally leaves me cold because I guess I am a minority in my own community for reasons more than one.

My credentials as a good Muslim are quite as suspect as Ghalib’s were. “I am a half Muslim”, he said when, in the course of a litigation, a magistrate asked him to declare his religion. “I drink but I do not eat pork”.

However, my children generally describe themselves as Muslims while filling up school admission forms, although I wonder why such questions should ever be asked. Before you hastily trace my attitude to my anglicized education let me dispel the notion straightaway. Yes, I did have my schooling in an Anglo-Indian institution of sorts in Lucknow, but the home in which I grew up was a  deeply religious one even though the likes of the Imam currently in the news would not have been allowed within miles of it.

My grandfather, like Dryden, always maintained that “Priests of all religious are the same”, but some he respected, even befriended for their scholarship and conversation. I remember sitting through many a theological discourse, with Maulana Nsair-ul-Millat holding court; among the participants was one Mr Gurtu, a Kashmiri Pandit.

A moulvi of little distinction was hired ostensibly to brush up my arithmetic but actually to put me through my first paces in ‘namaz’(prayer). His efforts at proselytization were supplemented by my mother’s; she augmented our meager library with biographies of the prophets and the great Imams.

I believe the moulvi left in some disgust because he complained that there was too much music in our house, which, he found distasteful even on Id day. Id was never Id without Babu Mahavir Prasad Srivastava. We changed into our new clothes and waited at the doorstep for Babuji. He would walk across the street from where we lived, clad in a black ‘achkan’ and Gandhi cap, meet my father, settle down to large helpings of ‘seewai’ (sweet noodles prepared traditionally on Id day) and then hand those days when two rupees a week was good pocket money. On Raksha Bandhan my mother would send out ‘rakhis’ to my father’s many friends.

There was a quaint little mosque in the compound of the house in our village, Mustafabad, near Rae Bareli. Since we visited the village only during school holidays, marriages, deaths and births, it was not difficult to maintain  a certain discipline and be seen in the mosque, at reasonable frequency, often only to please grandfather. He expressed his pleasure either by making additions to our paltry pocket money or taking us out on shikar, inspite of his old age. My grandfather was equally pleased when we agreed to accompany him to his friends on Holi or Diwali, the two festivals we continue to participate in to this day.

A very strong ingredient in our total make up was a tidy combination of Urbane Urdu culture and the more folksy Avadhi and Brijbhasha. I learnt very early in life and I am being persuaded ti unlearn since –that Urdu represented the flowering of a composite culture. My grandfather would fly into a rage at the cancard that it was a language of the Muslims. Why, the greatest Urdu prose writer was Pandit Ratan Nath Sarshar and one of the greatest Urdu poets was Raghupati Sahai Firaq.

We were groomed into believing that Islam was the most, dynamic of religions but we found it equally easy to accept that it was Islam’s interaction with a grater civilization that resulted in Dara Shikoh, Rahim, Kabir, Amir Khusro, Raskhan, Nazir Akbarabadi, Ghalib, and Anis. Nowhere in the Muslim world is there a monument, like the Taj or Fatehpur Sikri.

 

Folks these days are ignorant of the 18th century poet Nazir Akbarabadi’s poem “kya kya likhoon main Krishna Kanhaiya Ka baal pan” (How should I write about the beautiful childhood of Lord Krishna) or Mohsin Kakorvi’s “Samte Kashi se chala janibe Mathura badal” “jab talak Brij mein Kanhaiya hai yeh Khulne ka nahin” (The clouds are moving ecstatically from Kashi to Mathura and the sky will remain covered with the beautiful clouds as long as there is Krishna in Brij). Is there anyone around willing to believe that these lines were written by a Muslim poet to celebrate the birthday of Prophet Mohammad?

In the region I was raised in, ‘Sohar’ was a song sung during a  woman’s confinement. My mother’s favourite sohar was “Allah Mian, hamre bhaiya ka diyo Nandlal” (Oh my Allah, give my brother a son like Lord Krishna).

You might wonder, as a good friend of mine does, what all this nostalgia has to do with “contemporary realities”.

Well, I guess I am no pandit but I do know a bit about “contemporary realities”. I know how partition ruptured the fabric, bits of which I still keep with me. I also know about the status reversal experienced by the Muslims in independent India, particularly with the decline of the feudal order. It was the self-confident Muslim feudal elite which found it easy to extend patronage to the beautiful aspects of Hindu culture: after all, Krishna Leela was preserved in its entirely in the Kathak style evolved in the Muslim courts.

With the decay of the feudal order, the lower middle class, always bigoted in every society, gained some upward mobility. It is upon this class that parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami feed and which forms the central nervous system of the sort of fundamentalism current in Paksitan or Iran. I also know of a certain pan-Islamic sentiment among the Muslims and I guess that Mr Deoras does not like it. I also remember having read reports  on the socio-economic basis of the riots, a communal Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) and so on. All this and more I have been aware of for quite some time.

It must, therefore, be a considerable intellectual failure on my part that in spite of all this I am unable to disengage myself  from the folks who moulded me in my formative years. The credo they lived by is no longer part of the contemporary ethos.

Call it private grief, call it indifference, or both, but I find it, increasingly difficult to have a ready made response to Moradabad, Jamshedpur or Aligarh. And when friends turn to me with sympathy when such madness erupts, I feel a sort of numbness and have a strange feeling that they are addressing the wrong person.

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Dara Shikoh is Our Hero; Let Ram be Yours

Dara Shikoh is Our Hero; Let Ram be Yours

From Saeed Naqvi's book: “Reflections of an Indian Muslim” 1993

The entrance to Keshav Kunj, the four-storeyed office of the RSS in New Delhi, is past the most congested streets of Karol Bagh facing the Jhandewalan temple. It was on the first floor living room of this building where I met Mr Bhaurao Deoras, 75.

Mr Deoras joined the RSS soon after it was founded in 1925. Though H.S. Hedgewar was the spirit behind the founding of the organisation, it was M.S. Golwalkar who built the RSS as a nation-wide organisation of lathi-weilding, aggressive Hindus. His book ‘Bunch of Thoughts’ drew inspiration from Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

The RSS claims to have more than 18 lakh cadres and 37 front organisations, spread all over the country. Mr Balasaheb Deoras, the elder brother of Bhaurao Deoras, is the Sarsanghchalak of the pyramidical organizational structure.

Since Mr Balasaheb Deoras had been ailing for the past few months, Bhaurao emerged as the next important RSS leader who was primarily responsible for coordinating the RSS’s relations with the BJP and other political parties.

The two-hour-long interview was conducted in English and Hindi. The transcript has been edited for purposes of space, but what is being published is a verbatim record of the conversation of Mr Deoras is a man of strong opinions, even prejudices, but the lasting impression was of a powerful man whose mind is made up but who needs to acquaint himself with other points of view. And, he was aware of this need.

Naqvi: The communal riots on an unprecedented scale have broken out in various parts of the country. What role can the RSS play to control the situation? Is the situation out of control?

Deoras: Who are the people behind these communal riots? I am afraid that some political parties are playing a role. What I think is this. Mr V.P. Singh expected Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav to go with him. But ultimately Mr. Yadav went with Chandrashekhar. So, may be those who belong to the Janata Dal at present. Also Mr V.P. Singh has close contacts with the Imam. So there must be some political thinking behind this All of a sudden these riots have erupted. We have news that the Muslim pockets are having arms collecting arms and all that. I think the whole thing seems to have some plan and, ofcourse we shall have to meet this.

Naqvi: Well, the popular perception is that this is the BJP and RSS plan to enlarge the Hindu constituency.

Deoras: I do not think that there should be any misconception about the BJP. They do not have any such big cadre or any preparation like that. So many people are being arrested in Aligarh and Hyderabad. No RSS member or Swayam Sevaks have been arrested on this account. If RSS people had a hand or the BJP would have hatched this plot, I think a lot of them would have been arrested. I think people pay some money to the goonda elements and manage. But there is a reaction among the Hindus. If it goes on and on, then the Hindus begin to react. Until now, Muslims have been appeased because they have got a block-vote. Now, the Hindus are  reacting against this appeasement. No appeasement, but justice to all.

Naqvi: What would have happened to the mosque?

Deoras: No Muslim goes to say his namaz there. All things which are around the mosque are all connected with Hindu sentiments.

Naqvi: Do you believe that because of the communal tension the Hindu mass is getting consolidated on the Ayodhya platform and in favour of the BJP?

Deoras: That is an important factor.

Naqvi: In other words, the benefits of the communal tension are going to the BJP? And he who benefits must have a hand in communal tension.

Deoras: I think Advaniji, by his Rath Yatra and the speeches he has given throughout the country, not a word in his lectures he has spoken that is anti-Muslim stance.

Naqvi: But look at the slogans going on in Aligarh, in Hyderabad. You are aware of the poison of Ms Uma Bharati’s tapes. You know the kind of poison that is being spread is dividing the hearts and minds of the people. Are you going to sit back or avert another partition in the minds of the people?

Deoras: What about the speech Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav gave. I do not know about the Muslim leaders. The Babri Masjid Action Committee must have their tapes. They may be speaking. I do not know what is going on their minds.

Naqvi: Do the slogans contained in Ms Uma Bharati’s tapes offend you?

Deoras: I do not like it.

Naqvi: Therefore, you should stand up and condemn the provocative slogans.

Deoras: I do not like the meanings behind the slogans. At present, just as no Muslim will like to make a statement, I will also not like to either.

Naqvi: You are circumventing my question, Sir? Are you willing to issue a statement condemning the communal riots and condemn provocative slogans?

Deoras: Both Hindus and Muslims should condemn together. Muslims had come here. It was I who arranged the meeting of Mr Javed Habib and some other people with the VHP. And the first meeting took place and they decided to meet again so that there should be understanding.

Naqvi: To change the subject do you endorse the two-nation theory on the basis of which Pakistan was found?

Deoras: We never accepted it.

Naqvi: So it follows that you will not accept that Hindus and Muslims as two separate nations.

Deoras: We do not accept. It is one nation. From Kanyakumari to the Himalayas it is one nation.

Naqvi: You have not given up the agenda of  Akhand Bharat?

Deoras: We have not given up. If the time comes we shall do it. We shall ask the Muslims in Pakistan what have you gained? Muslims who went there from Bihar and UP – are they happy?

Naqvi: If you do not accept the two-nation theory then it follows that you accept the proposition that Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christians in India should all live together and prosper together. Since you are allergic to the term secular let us find another term-India’s composite culture.

Deoras: One culture – why do you say composite culture.

Naqvi: If you do not like the word “composite” also then as an adjustment I am willing to delete it. I said composite because various streams have contributed to Indian culture.

Deoras: Say Bharatiya culture.

Naqvi: OK, Bhartiya culture, Indian culture. There is a contradiction between your Akhand Bharat perspective and the Hindu Rashtra. Is there not a contradiction? Akhand Bharat is all embracing from Kanyakumari to the Himalayas, but Hindu Rashtra further sub-divides what we are left with.

Deoras: Nation and state are two different concepts. States have equal rights, equal citizenship – that is the concept of state. This nation is not created by British or anything. It is there from a long time, from Rama from Krishna, thousands of years ago. The whole country had that concept of Rama, the concept of Krishna, the concept of Mahabharata etc. Anywhere you will find the same thing. That is the binding thing. Culture was the binding factor throughout the country. There may be some different kings, different rulers in the last 1000 years or something like that the foreigners came and all that.

Naqvi: You have glided past a very important detail. Did we become independent after 200 years of British rule or have we become free after 1000 years of foreign rule?

Deoras: I do not think that in many parts in our country Muslims really think that they were the rulers. There have been some Afghans, Turks and all those who came and invaded the country.  They came and ruled the country.

Naqvi: They came and settled here.

Deoras: But they came and ruled and changed many of our people. Those who were Hindus-you may say down-trodden something like that-they changed their faith and they became Muslims. If they go back seven generations behind probably they may say that they belong to this caste-they were Rajputs, they were this and that. So, they themselves know that they are Hindus and only in the last two or three generations they have become Muslims. But somehow, may be Britishers fortified this feeling. Muslims living in this country at present feel that they were the rulers of this land. Why should they have any connection with Babar. He came from Central Asia.

Naqvi: Even your forefathers came from Central Asia-Aryans came from Central Asia?

Deoras: There is some controversy in this. That is now being contradicted. There are so many books contradicting this.

Naqvi: You mean Aryans did not come from anywhere?

Deoras: No we have not.

Naqvi: So they just happened here, they simply sprouted here?

Deoras: Yes. The term Aryans and Adivasis, what is all this. Britishers have created this. Arya means not a caste, Arya means noble. There are enough books with documents that we are the original people who have been living here. Aryan theory, Dravidian theory are all devised to break the Hindus.

Naqvi: Sir, if all the communities live and prosper together in India, then we constitute a threat to the basis of Pakistan. The success of Indian secularism is a threat to Pakistan which carne into being on the assumption that we can’t live together. Do you agree?

Deoras: I think Pakistan will go.

Naqvi: Let us go step by step (question is repeated)

Deoras: Bharat is alright. But as the things are going in Pakistan, they have defeated Ms. Benazir Bhutto. They are helping Khalistan elements in Punjab, the JKLF or whatever elements in Kashmir and all that. Unless this sort of government' at the top goes in Pakistan, I think no change is possible at present. This will have to be changed.

Naqvi: How do we change that?

Deoras: The Hindu leadership should come. I do not know what will happen in Bangladesh. Leadership may change. I think during this Ershad regime, I have got the latest report that 1100 temples have been destroyed. Hindus have come in Bengal. There are still Bengali Hindus.

I do not know when the elections are going to be held. Some Hindus in Bangladesh may fight elections. Very few of them will come. But suppose change comes in Bengal, tension will not be there and I think they can live in harmony. Then there is this poverty and other problems, and they may say that there is no use of remaining separate let us join together. And if that happens then I think the atmosphere may change. Sindhi people in Pakistan, and those who have gone from UP and Bihar. What have they gained? They are not liked there. So, if these movements gather strength and let us again work for one Bharat.

Naqvi: Sir, that is only possible if you and I live in harmony. But if we clash in Aligarh, Ahmedabad, Ayodhya then we are not a magnet. We are not attractive enough for them to imitate us. We are not setting the right example. On the contrary...

Deoras: Foreign powers are trying to create divisions and Muslims in major parts are playing into their hands. There has to be reform in Muslim society in India.

Naqvi: What about the Hindu society?

Deoras: There are regular movements of social reforms going on in Hindu society. But in the Muslim community, I do not find any movement. If somebody starts they are not liked by the community. They are being controlled by Mullahs.

Naqvi: Indian Muslims have a minority complex. Therefore, reform is even more difficult. The most backward Muslims in the world reside in India and by keeping them under pressure you are contributing to their backwardness.

Deoras: Who is keeping them backward?

Naqvi: We have got them involved in non-issues. You and I have all got them involved in Babri Masjid; they are involved in the Shah Bano case; they are supposed to be objecting to our relations with Israel. None of these are bread and butter issues. And you say they have been pampered. What have they got with all this so-called pampering.

Deoras: Due to the minority complex you allow them to do anything?

Naqvi: What is the advantage Muslims have derived since Independence. Look at their economic conditions, look at the job quotas. OK, they got the Muslim Women’s Bill, but has one Muslim woman gained in real terms?

Deoras: They get minority rights; special rights in the Constitution.

Naqvi: Please answer my question. What have the Muslims gained?

Deoras: To appease Muslims, they have got a Minority Commission.

Naqvi: This is precisely what I am saying. These are hollow, insubstantial gifts. An impression has been created by all governments that there is something special going for the Muslims. But in essence they have got nothing, no jobs, no education, no businesses.

Deoras: There is no difference between Hindus and Muslims as regards poverty. As for the question of jobs, if you are capable for that post you will get it. There should be no distinction. Now the government comes out with Mandal Commission and it has created so many divisions in the country itself.

Naqvi: Do you think the whole Ayodhya agitation has been able to cement some of the divisions in the Hindu society that have been created by the Mandal Commission.

Deoras: A little bit definitely. Ram is not the God only for forward castes. He is the God for the entire community.

Naqvi: We have not spoken of Kashmir. How can we hope to keep Kashmir if a perception is created all over the world that we treat our Muslims shabbily?

Deoras: Do you think the Kashmiri Hindus who have become migrants in Jammu can go back?

Naqvi: May be not, at this point. Again that Pakistan factor comes into play, Pakistani support for those elements who are creating the trouble. We have to handle the Pakistani factor by love and respect for each other in this country. Germanys were united because East Germans saw that life on the other side is better. Similarly, people in Bangladesh and Pakistan should say that life on the other side is better (many Pakistanis used to say this privately a few years ago). Now I feel embarrassed. I used to show off to my Pakistani friends-look at our composite culture, our freedom, our democracy. But look at the mess now. And you must take your share of the blame, Sir.

Deoras: There is no difference between Hindus and Muslims as regards poverty. Communalism is not the only factor. There are a lot of tensions among the Hindus also. We can work together to see that everybody, whether Muslim or Hindu, gets bread two times a day.

Naqvi: By your logic you are coming around to my view. Bring down the communal temperature, generate love and caring, not hatred. They are making bombs in every Mohalla, neighbourhood. This is what we are reducing our country to-a cottage industry of illicit arms.

Deoras: They are selling it. This is business.

Naqvi: Unless you give a call, this will only go on.

Deoras: Let us, you and I together, give the call to the country.

Naqvi: It is fine with me. Let’s shake hands on that. But please convince your rank and file that it is in Pakistan’s interest that Hindus and Muslims fight each other in this country. This is my entire thesis. During my visit to Aligarh I saw two bombs were dropped in a mosque and two similar type of bombs were dropped in a Hindu locality.

Deoras: Some Muslims must have dropped it.

Naqvi: I like the abruptness with which you have come to this conclusion. OK, but who are these Muslims?

Deoras: When something happens in Pakistan why should there be a reaction here. When Bhutto was hanged-(it has got nothing to do with us). There were demonstrations in Kashmir and trouble in all other places.

Naqvi: What has that got to do with Babar. You yourself agree that Pakistan was unnatural. Then you expect Indian Muslims and for that matter even Hindus to have an unnatural hatred towards Pakistanis.

Deoras: We need a great national reconciliation on the basis of understanding, good humour. All the Muslims who are getting elected to parliament and the assemblies belong to the fundamentalist variety. This is the problem.

Naqvi: Not all leaders, but yes, there is the problem of Muslim leadership. There is no doubt about it.

Deoras: Why don’t you try and create that leadership. Just like you. Why don’t you be a leader.

Naqvi: Zahid e Tang nazar ne mujhe kafir jaana: Aur Kafir yeh samajhta hai Mussalman hum main (The Kafir thinks I am a Muslim and the Mullah thinks I am a Kafir)

Deoras: (Laughs heartily) I have close contacts with the BJP. I do not know the exact figure but for kar sewa a number of Muslims have joined. What I am trying to say is we are ready to take Muslims with us. They can join the BJP.

Naqvi: You have also betrayed the same old attitude, the same complaint. Indian Muslims identity with Babar and Indonesian Muslims identify with Ram.

Deoras: It is important that Muslims identify with Ram as an Indian symbol.

Naqvi: I throw a challenge to you about this Ram and Babar comparison. I recite numerous couplets written by Muslim poets in praise of Ram and in praise of Krishna. I throw a challenge to you. You show me one line in praise of Babar written by a Muslim poet. If you show me one couplet I will change my faith. This Babar business is a canard. There are any number of Muslim rulers, poets, philosophers who contemplated Hinduism with great admiration, its philosophy, its aesthetic range. Someone like Dara Shikoh. Now Hindus must accept him as a hero. I am asking you. Is Dara Shikoh acceptable to you?

Deoras: He is a hero. But the Muslim community did not permit him to live.

Naqvi: I am taking you on record that Dara Shikoh is your model for a good Muslim and a model Indian.

Deoras: I have not read his whole life. But it is true. He was a fine gentleman. He translated the Upanishads. But remember he was not allowed to rule this land. The establishment was against him.

Naqvi: What is your last word for national reconciliation?

Deoras: At present, Ram mandir should be allowed to be built. We accept Dara Shikoh as an Indian hero; you accept Ram as part of our common cultural heritage.

Naqvi: Who can dispute that Rama is part of our cultural heritage. Our poets have written about him.

Deoras: Let the temple be built first. I will be the first person who will say let us forget the past.

Naqvi: Sir, if I get you right, what you are saying is that if the Ram mandir is allowed to be built then you will come out openly and say that let bygones be bygones. All the structures, monuments will remain intact exactly as they were in 1947 or 1950.

Deoras: I am ready to say once the construction of the Ram Temple takes place-It will take a long time-it will be one of the biggest temples. I know the demand of VHP is three sites-Mathura and Kashi Vishwanath.

Naqvi: You will prevail upon them to give up claim on the other two?

Deoras: I cannot say they will accept. But I will try. Let this Ram temple be built first and start national reconciliation. Let us not go to the government. Let us sit together and solve the problem.

Naqvi: For that you have to issue a whip to your cadres. Let there be peace.

Deoras: I promise you, we do not like what is going on.

Naqvi: You condemn the violence?

Deoras: Yes. of course. These riots create a bad image throughout the world. I do not like it. I want every Muslim to live here in peace. He has got equal rights. But just because he is a Muslim he should not demand something separate from others. Civil rights and other things, everything is common. They should mentally prepare for this. No special status. No minority preferences. They do not have one language. Urdu is not a Muslim language. It is a common language for so many people.

Naqvi: Do you think Urdu should be taught at school and encouraged in everyway?

Deoras: Of course. If people want they should be able to learn it. We are not saying all these cultural things should be thrown out.

Naqvi: Do you share the vision of a confederation covering Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka-without prejudice to their sovereignty.

Deoras: This is an excellent political concept. Just like Europe. Have something in common, build common bridges, common bridges with Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Naqvi: This can happen only when there is peace in our country.

Deoras: Unless there is peace nothing can happen. Peace is the fundamental condition for solving all the problems of the country.

Naqvi: So you will use your influence asking your cadres to maintain peace?

Deoras: Yes, but you have to speak to Muslim society also.

Naqvi: Sir, you are also using Ram Janmbhoomi for political purposes.

Deoras: Everything will be alright. Let this temple be built. Let Muslims help us build it.

Naqvi: But the condition is peaceful settlement so that this temple to Ram is also a temple to peace.

Deoras: Peace should be there. It is important for Muslims to maintain peace. They rush to the government and political leaders. They have to live with Hindus, particularly the younger generation. They have to make some sentimental adjustment.

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“Jai Shri Ram”: Leicester Police Ineffective Because It Couldn’t Understand Slogan?

“Jai Shri Ram”: Leicester Police Ineffective Because It Couldn’t Understand Slogan?

                                                                                   Saeed Naqvi

“The police here don’t understand Hindi” said my Indian interlocutor on the line from Leicester. “Jai Shri Ram means nothing to them.” That, precisely, is what the anti Muslim marchers were chanting. Apparently, Muslims were doing similar things to agitate the Hindus. The police were overstretched because several units had been moved to London for duty during the Royal funeral.

The export of sub continental communalism into Britain, in driblets so far, has now matured sufficiently to make a spectacle.

No Hindu-Muslim conflict was exported to Britain when I first acquainted myself with such issues during my brief spell at The Sunday Times. It had not been exported because it did not exist. Yes, a huge migrant problem had erupted after Conservative MP, Enoch Powell made his famous “rivers of blood” speech in 1968. “I see the Tiber foaming with blood.”

The kind of conflict I was baptized into was more racial than religious when Bruce Page, senior editor at The Sunday Times told me curtly, “Harry Evans suggests you might have that extra insight into Wolverhampton, Enoch Powell’s constituency in the West Midlands.” Harry Evans short, slight, sparrow of a man, was one of the great editors on Fleet Street.

Upon reaching Wolverhampton, I was confronted with a puzzle. Why had I, a novice in the office, been singled out for this assignment after Enoch set race relations ablaze?

I was puzzled because there was no Indo-Pak or South Asian angle to the story. The street on which Enoch Powell lived was 100 percent occupied by West Indians. The mandatory butcher shop, neighbourhood pub, launderette were all run by blacks. In lonesome splendor, was Enoch Powell’s house?

The earliest migrants from the sub continent yielded amusing stories. The Evening Standard would carry the story about three Pakistan’s arrested at Dover. The next morning’s The Times carried a correction. The three arrested were Indians. What had happened was this: three Sikhs, held at Dover for illegal entry had declared themselves, “Pakistanis”. Later, a correction was published in The Times because documents established them as Indians, a nationality they sought to protect from negative publicity.

This tiny bit of deception, totally bereft of malice, could work only because Englishmen in the 60s had only the haziest notions of a new country called Pakistan. The first contours of the existence of the new country registered on a disturbed English brow when Fazal Mahmood, with 12 wickets, won the Oval test in 1954. Then came the cooks from Sylhet, then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, jumping ships and opening “Indian” restaurants.” At one stage 90 percent of Indian restaurants in London were owned by Sylhetis.

While Balbir Singh and Diljit Singh concealed their nationality for their quaint reason, Muslims from Mirpur Khas were irked by being taken for Indians. They were therefore extra aggressive in asserting their Pakistaniness.

Indians began to emerge in two profiles, that of a hearty pub companion and other, mostly non Punjabis, of being docile and diligent. There was no hostility within groups or even across the boundaries of the two nations. My friend Vinod Mehta, who was to become a famous editor in India, had during his “advertising” days in England, shared a most cheerful house in Surrey with Javed Butt and Mahfouz Rehman from Mirpur and Sylhet respectively.

Oddly, Hindu-Muslim cultural differences surfaced first as Indian and Pakistani variations. A sensitive issue was the Pakistani’s search for halal meat. However sacred the quest, it was an invasion of a very English neighbourhood institution – the butcher’s shop, where women dropped in for crucial purchase, ofcourse, but also general chit-chat about neighbours on whom the butcher, with signature blood marks on the apron, was an encyclopedia.

Even though the Sikhs and their Punjabi brethren sometimes used the front lawn for their clothes line, they made up for this offence in other ways: they preserved family values admired (then) by the English. Indian immigrants always turned up with their families. Mirpuris, on the other hand claimed to have families and children who had been left behind. This disrupted the English gender equilibrium in peculiar ways.

Upto the 60s and 70s, young Indians travelling to the UK were handed a tract by the British High Commission, one of the clauses of which was a gem I shall never forget:

“While in London, you may be invited for tea by a single woman, in her apartment. This must not be taken for license.”

For the much married bachelors from Mirpur, the social mingling across sexes was an opening to something in total contravention of the tract from the High Com. Licentiousness was all.

I was sent to Rochdale to guage social tensions on account of something akin to Love Jihad that the Mirpuris were embarked on. The tragi-comic image from the visit was of three or four young women in a row, shoulder to shoulder, pushing prams. The progeny in the prams had been sired by Mirpuris who had vamoosed, gone without trace. “Look what they gave us” said the angriest of them. “The pram.”

Over a period, the Mirpuris accumulated so much ill will that when race relations deteriorated the expression which defined the racial divide was “Paki bashing”. Expression like Hindu bashing never leapt up in the heat of the moment.

The Indian government began to take sides on issues concerning Hindus only after Atal Behari Vajpayee appointed NRI Bhishm Agnihotri as Special Adviser to the Indian Ambassador in Washington DC on NRI issues. The Indian Diaspora which has turned up for Modi events in such large numbers – Howdy Modi in Houston – owes its origin to days when the BJP had virtually posted its own ambassador in Washington.

The presumption that the British government will sympathize with marchers in Leicester, cocking a snook at Muslims, probably has its origins in post 9/11 global Islamophobia which provided a huge cover for our very own Hindutva when Modi assumed Chief Ministership of Gujarat and Tony Blair ruled Britain.

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When Nehru Courted Criticism By Attending Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation

When Nehru Courted Criticism By Attending Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

It is possible that 200 years of colonial experience has conditioned us to be that much more receptive to the aura of British Royalty. But the British experience may not be the only reason for our being so ensnared. Our much longer experience with the feudal order may have something to do with it – Kings, Maharajas, Maharanis, Rajas, Nawabs who, for two centuries, paid respect to the Queen’s ancestors. The Queen, in other words, supercedes a hierarchy we have been in the thrall of for as long as we can look back in time.

In the sheer rush of things, an Indian uniqueness is often lost sight of. We are the only people held in a vice-like grip of a triple hierarchy – the feudal elite, Macaulay’s elite and the caste elite. In some cases two of the above get amalgamated. The first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru combined both, part Macaulay’s elite as well as being a Kashmiri Pandit.

Schooling at Harrow and Cambridge did impart to Nehru a touch of being a Brown Sahib, his Aryan skin tone and khadi cap notwithstanding.

Bringing this narrative closer to Queen Elizabeth II, Nehru courted criticism at home by attending the Queen’s coronation in 1953. Not only did he attend the coronation, he waxed eloquent about it in his very first televised press conference on BBC, dressed nattily in a three piece suit. He was much taken up by the “spectacle and the pageantry”, but what impressed him most were the “orderly London crowds” who made no fuss about the “inclement weather”.

It would be interesting whether or not Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend King Charles III’s coronation in 2023. He is a much evolved man from the days he donned a pin striped suit, his full name intricately fabricated on the stripes.

His media managers will be salivating on the spectacular backdrop and just imagine – on the eve of the 2024 General Elections. Should Modi attend, he will surely be briefed that the new king is passionate about inter-faith dialogue. He has an honorary PhD from Al Azhar University.

Reverting to Nehru, well, he must have evolved almost unrecognizably through various phases – post Harrow, Cambridge and the national movement. The extended conversation I had with Mrs. Vijaylakshmi Pandit in Dehradun when she lived with her daughter, Nayantara Saigal, gave me insights about a Nehru who is difficult to reconcile with the khadi clad leader of the national movement, seated reverentially by the side of Mahatma Gandhi. “Bhai (Nehru) was cross with father because he had hired an English governess for me” said Vijayalakshmi Pandit. “You see, the British aristocracy those days gave residence only to French governesses.”

Was this after Harrow in 1907 or after Trinity College Cambridge in 1910? Here was the Raj in full force, transforming India’s future Prime Minister into a cultural mimic of Britain’s highest strata. The author of the Discovery of India and Glimpses of World History, clearly wrenched himself from the more debilitating influences. Some attitudes persisted. For instance, when Doon School was established on the model of Eton, Nehru’s two grandsons Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi were sent to the school on Nehru’s recommendation.

Even though Benjamin Disraeli, described 1857 as a “national uprising”, Nehru preferred to go along with a more sanitized version put out by the colonial administration: it was a revolt of the landed class. A revised look at 1857 confirms the view I have long held: the common Hindu-Muslim conflict with the British had the potential of forging a secularism of common purpose, something we have never attempted.

During Nehru’s first press conference in London mentioned above, Kingsley Martin, editor of the New Statesman, asked him a searching question: “After what the British did to you, there is no resentment against Britain. How do you explain this?” In other words there was no combat in the national movement, only some jousting?

There is disinterest among the Indian ruling class in pursuing this line of thinking to its logical conclusion. It is a big subject to be taken up later.

A revealing book I have perused recently is Pramod Kapoor’s diligent investigation of the Naval Mutiny of 1946 which was the trigger for the Cabinet Mission to be rushed to Delhi. The idea was to transfer power as quickly as possible either to a United or a Partitioned India. This acceleration to independence was conditioned by a singular British fear: the leadership of the Congress and the Muslim League which the British were comfortable with may be losing ground to communists and other leftist groups. The political leadership of the Naval Mutiny which had spread like fire to all the ports and naval facilities in British India, consisted of S.A. Dange, later Secretary General of the CPI and Aruna Asaf Ali, on the leftist fringe of the Congress. This variety of politician was anathema to Gandhi and Sardar Patel who, for this reason, were even more opposed to the mutineers than the British were.

The most memorable encounter with the aftermath of the Raj, was in the Madras Club where the first Indian, a Mister Kothari was allowed entry only in 1963 and where Deepawali was celebrated annually as Guy Fawkes Day until 1982.

The story of Prince Charles’ historic lunch at the Madras Club may be useful for Royalty watchers.

An announcement that the Prince would join club members was followed by a stern notice that all members would be required to wear suits for the occasion, a tough call in Madras’ muggy summers. It was a painful sight watching member’s drenched with sweat which had formed maps of perspiration on the collars. The excitement was electric when the Prince’s cavalcade rolled in. Then the shock at the sight of the Prince alighting from his car dressed in a safari suit, in total violation of club rules that day. The committee went into a huddle on their feet like a rugby scrum and took a timely decision. The dress code for the day stood cancelled.

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The Afghan Riddle, Wrapped In A Mystery Inside An Enigma

The Afghan Riddle, Wrapped In A Mystery Inside An Enigma

                                                                                    Saeed Naqvi

The spate of terrorist acts in the Taleban controlled Afghanistan, the latest one on the Russian embassy, begin to make sense in terms of the image that has stayed with me eversince I visited the most Anglaise of hill stations in the South-Ootacamund.

Part of the copycat culture colonialism left behind in Ooty was the annual “Hunt” except that horsemen and hundreds of hounds chased not a fox but a jackal. When the “Royal” society for the Prevention of Cruelty to animals banned the sport, the Brown Sahibs had no option. They too had to bring down the curtain on the sport.

A pity, I could not watch the hunt but, I said, I would like to see the pedigree hounds which dog lovers would exchange the world for. Without much fuss we were escorted to some well appointed kennels where the canines appeared to be most content.

This is when an idea began to gestate in my mind. Hounds trained for the annual hunt can be parked in Kennel once their utility as hunters is over. What do states do with redundant human material trained to slaughter, dismember, decapitate, plant bombs in mosques and blow themselves up for advance booking with the Houris in paradise?

Once the annual hunt was outlawed, hounds could be kept in kennels, sterilized or given away to bonafide dog lovers. What does one do with redundant, thoroughbred terrorists? You can’t shoot them, because the ones who escape the firing squad will sing like canaries. If this spare Jihadi talent is left to its own devices, it will find employment in places which are not on the list of locations to be destabilized. Once the Mujahideen had helped push the Soviets out of Afghanistan, the Americans packed up their bags and left. Like water finds outlets through crevices in the ground, the Mujahideen, found their way to Kashmir, Egypt, Algeria and heaven knows where else en route. When the matter of expanding Muslim terrorism spilling out of the Afghan Jihad was reported to Zbigniew Brezezinski, he shrugged his shoulder: “We wanted to defeat the Soviet Union and not worry about come stirred up Muslims.”

Quite imperceptibly, the “stirred up Muslims” mutated into “assets”, to be transferred from place to place, remote controlled. The transferability of terrorists as an asset became most transparent after they had done useful destructive service in Syria.

American authorship of the Syrian operation was available in the US newspapers as well as Congressional hearings. There were early reports of the Obama administration preparing for something akin to the colour revolution in Syria. This entailed a deployment of technology which would neutralize official methods of suppressing news. The West does nothing without wearing the garb of high morality. So, promote “shadow” internet and mobile phone systems which “dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by shutting down communications network.” We have all of this on the authority of the New York Times. James Glanz and John Markoff of the NYT describe an operation on the fifth floor of L street, Washington DC, where “a group of young entrepreneurs, looking like a garage band, are assembling deceptively innocent looking hardware into a prototype “internet-in-a-suitcase”, to be applied against the Syrian regime.”

The ground has to be prepared for “Liberation Technology”. Just when the US ambassador to Damascus, Stephen Ford and his French counterpart, Eric Chevalier, were visiting Homs, Huma and Darra to meet clusters of anti-regime protesters, I was in President Assad palace with a former Indian Ambassador to Syria. We were meeting Buthaina Shabaan, Assad’s most elegant adviser known to my ambassador friend from the years of his posting.

I asked Shabaan something that puzzled me. “Is it common in your country to have Ambassador’s mingle with insurgents?” She straightened herself, and looked me in the eye. “It just shows how penetrated we are.”

Ed Peck, a former US ambassador to some Middle Eastern countries who happened to be independently in Syria, wrote us a letter”

“I have been dismayed by the accolades and support given to Ambassador Ford, our man in – and now out of Syria, for stepping well out of the traditional and appropriate role of a diplomat and actively encouraging the revolt/insurrection/sectarian strife/outside meddling”.

A few years later Abu Bakr al Baghdadi puts out a video from Mosul’s main mosque on July 4, 2014, declaring the formation of an Islamic Caliphate. In August 2014, Obama gives a significant interview to Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Asked why he did not order air strikes against ISIS just when it reared its head in June-July 2014, Obama makes an admission:

Airstrikes on Baghdadi in July, “Would have taken the pressure off Nouri al Maliki” Iraq’s stubbornly anti American Shia Prime Minister. In other words, the rapid march of the ISIS from Mosul to the outskirts of Baghdad was “facilitated” to keep the pressure on Maliki. In September 2014, Maliki was shown the door. Moral: terrorists can be assets in circumstances.

Friedman becomes more brazen once Trump is in the saddle: he writes that Trump must give up the pretense of fighting the IS – because that is neither the US’s nor Israel’s national interest. “Trump should let ISIS be Assad’s, Iran’s, Hezbollah’s and Russia’s headache.”

Russians, Iranians, Chinese have all been talking about militants from Syria having been flown to Afghanistan. A new US friendly government has been brought into being in Pakistan which, by most accounts, facilitated a drone to fly through its air space to kill Al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri in the centre of Kabul. Taleban say they do not know. Surely there is a body somewhere?

Meanwhile about 70 Afghan envoys are working for Afghanistan but not for the Taleban. Who is paying their salaries? The Times London reports that the US did not take even UK into confidence on the secret annexures to the Doha Accord with the Taleban. It is all very mysterious.

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Rise And Fall Of Gorbachev: My Two And A Half Interviews

Rise And Fall Of Gorbachev: My Two And A Half Interviews

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

For 31 years since his fall Gorbachev must have suffered in silence the rank betrayal by his western interlocutors on what they promised him when he was in power. “I can now see clearly” he told me “They were working according to a plan.” After US senate ratified eastward expansion of NATO, the West’s plans became clear to him. My interview with him after his fall is available on YouTube.

The careers of Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-91) and Rajiv Gandhi (1984-85 to 91) were coterminous. Almost on cue, I had resigned from the Indian Express in 1984 to set up World Report with a vision I had nurtured for a decade: Indian journalists must see the world with their own eyes. Gandhi’s visit to Moscow in May 1985, his first outing, enabled me to make my first switch from print to TV. Doordarshan was the only channel until 1994 when private channels burst upon the scene to accommodate the advertising which rode on Manmohan Singh’s reforms.

What to me promised to be an assignment of a lifetime, generated a murmuring campaign among the 50 and odd colleagues who were travelling with the Prime Minister. “Why should one journalist get the scoop?” They grumbled. Foreign Secretary Romesh Bhandari, his mouth full of paan parag, didn’t know how to cope. A press conference had been firmly ruled out by the Soviet system, Gorbachev’s incantation of Glasnost or openness, notwithstanding.

Drop the interview, then. That had bigger obstacles attending it. The two systems working on Gandhi’s visit were involved in the interview too.

The PMO, G. Parthasarathy Sr. as the super purohit of the visit, the foreign office, DD, RAW, Ambassador Nurul Hasan in Moscow and their counterparts in the Soviet system had all met me and sought a broad questionnaire.

Finally, Bhandari came forward with a compromise formula: I will do the interview but the rest of the media delegation will select a representative to sit in on my interview. Approval was obtained from the very highest in the Kremlin. The Press delegation broke up into clusters, little consultative groups addressing the impossible task of identifying a leader. N. Ram of the Hindu cut the Gordian Knot: the spectacular Rusi Karajia of the Blitz would, by representing the media, suitably end my monopoly on what was to be the first ever interview in the Kremlin Palace.

Adjacent to the hall where the summiteers would meet, a small area was enclosed with ropes, rather like a boxing ring except that this was on flat ground. Four chairs were placed inside the ring – two for Gorbachev and his interpreter and two for Rusi and me. The rest of the press corps would have a ring-side view.

All eyes were riveted on the door through which Gorbachev would walk towards us and take his seat in the ring. During these suspenseful minutes, Rusi was collecting slips of paper from the scribes. These were questions they wanted Rusi to ask.

Just then the door opened. Andrei Gromyko, foreign minister since the Khrushchev era, walked in, stood near the door, took a good hard look at the arrangements and went back.

Next entered Romesh Bhandari waving his hands like he were bringing tidings of joy.

“Sorry friends, there will be no interview. A brief press meet would gave out wrong signals.”

Later I found out what had happened. After seeing the media bandobast, Gromyko took Gorbachev aside, along with a handful of officials including Bhandari. Gromyko had shrewdly sized up the situation. Romesh Bhandari’s choreography would lend itself to a melee. Journalists, outside the ring would be asking questions out of turn. The new young leader of the CPSU was not going to be exposed to such assured chaos.

“What though the field be lost, all is not lost”, said I to myself, quoting Satan. This was to pull myself out of my deep disappointment. Soon enough Gorbachev’s return visit to New Delhi was announced in December 1986. I was in Moscow again.

T.N. Kaul took charge of the interview on this occasion and insisted that not one or two but four representatives of the official media would sit in with me. I had had enough. This was my mood when I walked into the library attached to the Vladirminsky hall. Every syllable of each question to be asked had been cleared by Kaul and his team and, possibly, by the Central Committee on the other side. At one, narrow end of a long table, big enough for a catwalk, sat Gorbachev. I sat at the corner of the long side, nearest to him. To my left were the official media. On the other side of the table opposite me, were three severe looking Russian officials, glaring at me like suspicious invigilators. Against the wall opposite me sat Veena Sikri, the Indian press secretary, grinning from ear to ear even as I broke all rules as you will see presently.

“Sergeyevich, I was told we would meet in the library, but there are no books here”, I said.

“Books are in the adjacent room – many books.”

“Do you find the time to read?”

“Yes, Yes” emphatically, “I have a habit of reading.”

“Name a writer you would recommend”

“Chinghiz Aitmatov” he said without batting an eyelid.

Then I opened my cards.

“Your bureaucracy and mine have cleared a set of question. If I restrict myself to these sanitized questions, millions in India who are eager to see you, will switch their TVs off. May I therefore ask you questions on what I think are important issues?”

“Da, da, da” (Yes, yes, yes) he emphasized several times.

To everybody’s astonishment, the conversation, billed for 30 minutes, lasted 90 minutes, completely outside parameters set by the two bureaucracies. Gorbachev looked very much the glasnost man, rejoicing in coming out of the old strait jacket. But as subsequent years proved he was clearly out of touch with the nation he had set out to transform. In dealing with Americans, he was naïve.

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