#PAKISTAN – A FRIEND OR FOE OF INDIAN #MUSLIMS?

The larger point I must make is that this historic fixation with Pakistan has cost Indian Muslims [and perhaps also, for that reason, indirectly Pak Muslims!] dearly.

We somehow began to consider Pak as the repository of Islam, forgetting that in almost every respect India has far greater representation of Islam: Sufis, seminaries, history, legacy, and a fair degree of success in co-existence.

[Indeed, Hindus must regard Pak holy or sacred or important because of ancient, Aryan artifacts and folklore!]

Pak is not holy, doesn’t give a damn to Indian Muslims’ dilemma, has not set a good example in administration and statecraft. It failed in the fair treatment of its minorities, its constitutional promise at its birth, in governance and rule of law, in the eradication of poverty, disease, and corruption, in empowering women, promoting scholarship, science, and technology, modernization of Islam, empowerment of Muslims.

Pak has not even been fair to the Kashmiri Muslims. [And if the public sentiment were more conducive, and India were to agree to a plebscite I’m sure Pak would back off.]

So, what makes Pak important for us? I will be blunt. Pak provides a kind of vicarious sense of security. Right? If it ever did, it was a long, long time ago. When it was somewhat powerful. When it had sufficiently large number of Hindus. When it had some international stature. Right now, the fractured nation needs you and me to provide it with crutches and heal its wounds.

In fact, Indian Muslims have had to pay through their blood for their affinity to Pak on myriad occasions. It was more often a collar of slavery around our neck than a necklace of pride.

Wasn’t this a terribly wrong fixation? Wasn’t this love gone mad, affinity thoroughly misplaced?

Consider why shouldn’t Muslims of India be proud of Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Tunisia, Turkey, Egypt? If Muslimness is the sole criteria, each of these is a more worthy example by most measures. Indeed, watch out for Bangladesh and discover surprising pleasures.

Not for nothing, two major Muslim nations in the SAARC distanced themselves from Pak, almost giving it a public snub. Afghanistan deems it virtually an enemy. Iran is ill at ease. BD, of course, is bete noire. So who is a friend of Pak? Saudi Arabia! Pray, tell, is that a blessing or a curse?

Pak may blame super powers for Taliban. But who is to blame for JeM, LeT, JD, or any of those other dozens of organized harbingers of death and destruction? Ask the children of Peshawar, if they ever will forgive these demons of uncontrollable hate?

And, by any stretch of the imagination, have its terrorism, its external policy, its nukes, its sectarianism did any good to Islam, its Muslims or us?