Putting Responsibility Before Rights

Putting Responsibility Before Rights

1991 1 January 14 Putting Responsibility Before Rights (369) In a long article on Indian Muslims in the Illustrated Weekly of India, a Muslim leader once wrote of his meeting a delegation of Muslims from Himmat Nagar, a city in Gujarat. For the first time this Gandhian city had been rocked the previous year by communal violence. Twenty five shops were burnt down, but no life was lost. The leader of the delegation told him that hey had never had anything to do with politics, and had never harmed anyone, interrupting their observations, the Muslim leader pointed out that no minority could survive without entering into the campaign of political awakening and practical politics. Neither could it receive its rights without active participation in politics. Everything depended upon politics. He emphasized that if they remained away from politics, no one would pay any attention to giving them their rights. And if they associated themselves with one political party, even then they would not benefit as desired. Politics, he told them, was a game of hopes and risks. A party should fear losing their votes. A party should set store by their votes. Muslims enjoy such democratic rights. And that is all that they have got. Their future depends on when and how they use their democratic rights. (Illustrated Weekly of India, 9-15 January, 1983)

Muslims have been endeavouring to solve their problems at the political level for the last one hundred years. In the elections – so they imagine – they make a party win or lose. Yet all their communal problems are left unsolved. This being so, the leaders who say the same sort of thing as is expressed above are either so unwise as to be incapable of grasping life’s realities, or are very clever indeed in seeking to establish their leadership by means of cheap slogans.

The problem of Muslims does not relate to the use of their democratic rights: it relates rather to the fulfillment of their Islamic responsibilities. If Muslims have found themselves beset by problems, it is because of their neglecting their responsibilities as Ummah. If they are to find themselves a place of honour once again, it will only be if they set themselves in earnest to the fulfillment of their religious responsibilities.