Save us from our friends
Mohd. zeyaul haque
Some Maulana Tauqir Raza of Bareilly announced in early June at the town’s Maulana Azad Inter College that “wherever the Vishwa Hindu Parishad distributes trishuls, we would also distribute them.” Raza was making the declaration as the president of an obscure organisation called Ittehad-e-Millat Council (IMC).
This exercise in grandiose grotesquery would make the very secular-minded Maulana Abul Kalam Azad turn in his grave. After all, this bird-brained declaration was made at a college named after Azad. This new farce has also alarmed Muslims in north India because of its obvious confrontationist pretensions.
As if to lend some credibility to his militant posturing, he is reported to have actually distributed 150 or so trishuls to his minions. Then he announced with aplomb, “Muslims have sent me 65,000 applications for such trishuls.” Fine, that.
Not to be left behind in this game of one-upmanship, the VHP and Bajrang Dal, old hands at such internecine feuding, jumped into the fray by announcing that they would be now distributing pharsas. That somehow completed the circle begun by Maulana Raza.
Common Muslims ask how does this new farce help, and who gains from the increased level of Hindu-Muslim animosity. The clear answer is nobody except the anti-Muslim organisations, which now would go and tell the liberal, centrist and leftist Hindus who have still not joined the Hate Muslim-Bait Islam campaign, “Look, had not we been telling you that those fellows (the Muslims) are preparing to attack you? Now you should know.”
Muslims would naturally ask whose agenda the Trishul Maulana is pushing. It is very likely that he is doing all this to help the anti-Muslim groups by helping them in counter-mobilisation. On the other hand, he will never be allowed to continue with his outlandish conduct. The UP police are already on the lookout for the people who received these tridents as well as those 65,000 who have “applied” to obtain these. The fact that police allow VHP to indulge in this provocative act does not mean that they would allow the same privilege to Maulana Raza also.
Even the VHP cannot do it openly in states ruled by the non-BJP parties. An interesting thought: Maulana Raza did not get any applications. He was only boasting and bragging. There is some reason for this thought, based on my personal experience.
In 1989, the VHP was conducting a brick-laying ceremony (shilanyas) for the proposed Ram temple in Ayodhya a few metres away from where the Babri Masjid still stood. A day before the programme the Babri Masjid Action Committee announced that they had brought a hifazati dasta (protection force) of 10,000 volunteers from Delhi. These fidayeen-type commandos were supposed to “intervene” in the shilanyas proceedings. Contrary to these boasts, the shilanyas went on peacefully before a large press corps, including foreign media. No fidayeen came.
After everything was over, a small group of Muslim journalists, including me, went over to Faizabad (it is the twin town of Ayodhya) to see some Babri Masjid Action Committee leaders. When asked about the fidayeen force, a leader from Delhi was visibly embarrassed. Then he regained his composure and replied, “we have them”. But, where? He groped for an answer. Nobody pressed the question.
Bravado
and bragging is an old habit with these fellows. In the 90s, when the Shiv Sena
metamorphosed from a specialist in Tamil-baiting gang into an anti-Muslim
outfit, the then imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid announced the formation of Adam
Sena ostensibly to resist the Shiv Sena. Some big anti-Muslim riots came after
that in Maliana, Hashimpura and other areas of UP, but Adam Sena was nowhere to
be found. One doubts whether there was any such organisation at all. One has
still to see even a single member of this imaginary organisation.
Historian Irfan Habib, who is no admirer of VHP-Bajrang Dal, is of the opinion that this totally avoidable bravado of our maulanas like the Trishul Maulana only helps the anti-Muslim groups.
There
are deeper, more bothersome, psychological dimensions of the kind of imitative
behaviour displayed by the Trishul Maulana. It was the great historian Arnold
Toynbee who was first to point out way back in the 50s that the Israelis had
been using the same brutal methods against Palestinians which the Nazis had used
against European Jews. Toynbee was so upset that he called Zionists the new
Nazis. He stood his ground under great Zionist pressure to retract.
Later
psychological researches have confirmed the theory that victims of extreme
persecution and repression learn to imitate the behaviour of their tormentors.
This imitation can sometimes be extremely dehumanising and found across the
entire victimised population. That also shows the last limit of persecution
beyond which either the victims will lose their senses and become irrationally
(and self-defeatingly) violent or become sullen and sulking.
This
can be seen in behaviour of American Blacks also. If a Black American gets angry
with another Black person, he or she is likely to shout, “You dirty Nigger!”
This is exactly the way their forefathers had been addressed by their White
lords for generations. The victims of slavery picked up this racial slur and
incorporated it into normal vocabulary, little realising the depth of
dehumanisation it takes them into.
What
the Trishul Maulana has done has disturbing implications. Is it possible to
allow the original Trishuldharis to continue their campaign to a point where
others too begin to imitate them?g
Mohd zeyaul haque is a New Delhi-based journalist.