Thursday, May 22, 2008

The State, the Seminaries, and the People of India

By Badri Raina | May 20, 2008

I

Over the last month or so, India's most influential Islamic seminaries—Deoband, Bareilly, Lucknow, Hyderabad—have been holding well-attended public meetings/conferences with a single-point agenda.

Namely, to make it known that the so-called "jehad" being practiced by "terrorists" is "un-Islamic."

Whatever may be the particular skepticism employed variously to evaluate this development, these meetings and conferences clearly constitute not just bold interventions on behalf of sagacity but, crucially, a thought-out purpose to disempower indiscriminate violence and killing by denying it any religious sanction or justification.

One of its fall-outs must also be to rob right-wing Hindutva fascism of the enabling propaganda that "terrorism" has authorized theological approval. As well as, most importantly, to lend strength to moderate/liberal voices among muslims who routinely suffer the blight of being seen as the "other" of Islamic authority on the question.

And, interestingly, this Islamic disavowal comes while Hindutva forces continue to draw legitimacy for their brand of terrorism from the exploits of sundry gods and goddesses. Consider that the Bajrang Dal, to which the notorious killer, Babu Bajrangi, belongs, is named after Lord Ram's most devoted follower, Hanuman.

It needs to be recalled that the fascist snarl against madrasas had this covert agenda of maligning Islamic education as contributory to "jehad." All that despite the fact that no governmental or other agency has thus far brought any proof that madrasas have anywhere in India been complicit in the matter, although ample proof exists that the Shishu Mandirs and other such educational establishments run by the Hindutva forces under the tried and tested leadership of the RSS routinely spew and teach hatred against the Muslim community for having "oppressed Hindus" over eight long centuries, and being responsible for the partition of India in 1947.

A corollary yield of the intervention by the Seminarist leaderships must be to disoblige India's secular opportunists from engaging in what the Hindu right-wing calls "appeasement" of "terrorism" calculated to win the electoral approval of India's 150 million Muslims.

Continued . . .

About Badri Raina


Country: India
Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/badriraina

Born 26th feb.,1941 in Kashmir; Ph.D. Madison, Wisconsin,1976; Fulbright Scholar and Fulbright Fellow (1972 and 1984); Scholarly publication: Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth, Univ., of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 1986; Scholarly Articles on Literary Theory, Culture/Language, History, Educational Ideology, Politics of Development and individual English writers; Raina's Ghalib, Writers' Workshop, Calcutta, 1984--interpretive transliterations of the poet; English Teacher, Kirori Mal College, Delhi University (four decades); rtd., 2006; Contributions on politics/culture/ideology in all major dailies and journals in India; some fifty columns in ZNet;(2006-date) Activism in issues related to anti-communal/anti-fascist politics; anti-imperialist movements; women's issues; other left/democratic praxis.


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