FEBRUARY 11 The Tragedy of Muslims

At the cost of enormous sacrifices on the part of Indian Muslims, Pakistan came into being. Instead of decreasing, however, their problems only increased. This was because their lawyer Leader was blissfully unaware of the fact that the emergence of a strong Muslim state across the border after independence would necessarily be parallelled by the emergence of a strong Hindu state. It was this fatal miscalculation of the development of future events which brought Muslim expectations tumbling to the ground. Even then, incompetent Muslim leaders failed to learn their lesson from this tragic experiment, and continued to make mistakes of the same nature. A whole horde of Muslim leaders, led by Dr Abdul Jalil Faridi, came on the scene in the wake of 1965-66 general elections. By making fiery speeches, they succeeded in rallying Muslims under the banner of the “politics of agreement.” Muslims thronged to join this political campaign, and after entering into electoral agreements with opposition parties, they gave them their vote. In this way, the Congress was ousted. But when these newly elected governments were formed, Muslims found to their horror that they were even worse off than they had been under Congress rule. This entire edifice of hope—barely erected —soon collapsed. Similarly, when the Babari Mosque issue came into the limelight in 1986, Syed Shahabuddin conceived the far-fetched idea that it should be projected beyond its local significance and turned into an all-India issue. He thought that in this way the problem would be solved. Almost all of the religious and secular leaders extended their full support to Mr. Shahabuddin on this score. The entire country reverberated with public meetings and processions designed to achieve this goal. What happened, in fact, was that once the entire Muslim minority had been aroused over the Ayodhya issue, the entire Hindu majority became united in their repudiation of Muslim demands. In the ensuing confrontation, the scales were bound to tilt in favour of this overwhelming Hindu majority. Forcing their entry into the Babari mosque, they razed it to the ground. No Muslim leader dared enter Ayodhya to put a stop to the destruction, and if failing to emerge victorious, be martyred. The tragic incident of December 6 has pushed Muslims back into the deep dungeon of despondency. What is worse is that this time their feelings of frustration are accompanied by a deep sense of humiliation.