Since December 2019, first China and then the entire world has been gripped by the Covid-19 crisis. After a nationwide lockdown was announced on March 24, 2020, India was able to keep the numbers of infected people quite low. But, suddenly an Islamic organisation, Tablighi Jamaat, burst onto the scene and contributed heavily in escalating the number of coronavirus patients. A rarely heard of group among non-Muslims was hiding thousands of Jamaatis at the Nizammudin Markaz in Delhi. Many non-Indian Jamaatis were also holed up in different mosques and madrasas apparently to execute some hidden agenda. They came to India on tourist visas but were actually involved in religious propagation.
Tablighi Jamaat, literally meaning the Proselytising Society, is an Islamic missionary movement that focuses on urging Muslims to return to practising their religion as it was practised during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad and particularly in matters of ritual, dress and personal behaviour. The organisation's activities are coordinated through centres and headquarters called Markaz. Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) is maintained from its international headquarters, the Nizamuddin Markaz, situated in south Delhi. They invite people to attend the Maghrib prayer at their mosques and urge the attendees to spend time in tabligh (proselytisation) for self-reformation and for the propagation of Islam. They perform their activities very secretively. According to investigating agencies, the Markaz has been receiving a huge amount of funds from the Gulf countries which is under deep scrutiny.
The Jamaat is considered a fundamentalist organisation whose dream is to create an Islamic world and for that purpose it is operating in around 180 countries. It is considered an extremist body and banned in many countries like Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhatan. Its involvement in terrorist activities in different countries has also been reported. Surprisingly such hardcore Islamic ideology is operating in secular India without any hindrance. This Tablighi Jamaat is most instrumental in spreading the coronavirus epidemic across the country and the behaviour of Jamaatis towards medical and police staff is most heart-wrenching. They are misbehaving, attacking and spitting over the saviours of their lives. This is one of the ugliest possible faces of any religion.
These exposed hidden activities of Tablighi Jamaat are alarming and raise many serious questions. Since the past many months, from violent CAA protests to the horrendous coronavirus carrying misadventurism of the Jamaat, it is clear that a group from a particular religion is misusing its rights in the name of religious freedom and religious propagation. They are openly and continuously challenging the sovereign state and democratically elected government. It is extremely necessary to identify the source of their strength to uproot the possible threat to the national integrity.
It is unfortunate that since independence, democracy is dancing to the false tune of secularism, and to prove it, I am bound to open the chapters from pre-independent India. Bharat, the oldest civilisation of the world, never discriminated against anyone on the basis of religion or ethnicity. In he last 700 years, Bharat was under the constant attack of invaders. The unique assimilatory characteristic of this land never allowed it to divide in the name of religion. But for the first time in 1947, India was divided on religious lines when Jinnah as the head of Muslim League declared that Muslims need a separate state as they cannot stay with Hindus in India.
It is not a hidden fact that Gandhi was not in agreement with the proposal of Cabinet Mission, 1946 to create a constituent assembly. He believed that the assembly was the creation of the British government. Unfortunately when the constituent assembly was drafting the Constitution, India was facing post-partition trauma of the ugliest communal riots. The absence of Muslim League in the constituent assembly was putting an invisible pressure on members to keep certain provisions for the portrayal of pro-minority face which were not required at all.
Propagation under right to freedom of religion (Article 25) and special protection to religious minorities (Article 30) are such pertinent provisions. Though the House rejected the idea of minority as a rule but then too in the final draft these provisions found space.
In 1947, the overall Hindu population in India was 85%, so in any way this right to propagation was useful only for religious minorities. This provision created smooth inroads for Christian missionaries and for the Islamic organisations like Tablighi Jamaat. Conversion is a big industry in India and in the last 20 years around two lakh crore rupees have been pumped up into India from foreign countries for religious conversions. This money is primarily used for luring poor Hindus to convert.
Subsequently, the most antagonistic action with the inclusive philosophy of this country was the insertion of term ‘secular’ through the 42nd constitutional amendment, during emergency by Indira Gandhi . Since then a new era of minority appeasement was started which subsequently became pivotal for Indian politics.
Post Babri Masjid demolition, to stop the political rise of the BJP, a strong pro-minority agenda was pushed in the name of secularism. With the 18% population, Muslims became the blue-eyed boy for every political party. To grab the consolidated vote bank of Muslims over divided Hindus, then ruling parties ignored the threat of religious conversion, mass Muslim influx in border areas, spreading Wahhabism, exponential growth of madrasas and deeply rooted Pakistan-sympathetic Islamic groups in different parts of the country. For further appeasement of minorities, the National Commission for Minorities (1992) and Ministry of Minority Affairs (2006) were established.
The object of both the bodies is to protect the rights of minorities but the bizarre thing is – till now they are not able to prescribe the criteria for ascertaining religious minorities. Jain, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, Parsis and Muslims are declared minority religions in India. So as per “no-definition rule”, any religion ranging between 0.6 to 18% of population is minority (as of now), without any reasoned ground or explanation. This lacuna is more notoriously used to divide Hindus. Their diversified religious beliefs were acknowledged as different religion. Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism that had a Hindu ancestry were deliberately alienated from Hinduism to give them separate minority status.
Our Constitution gives rights to religious minorities to establish and administer the educational institution of their choice. The Ministry of Minority affairs allocates Rs 5,000 crore funds to minority educational institutions whose largest chunk goes to madrasas. A madrasa is a place where ‘Deeni Talim’ or religious teachings are provided. India is the only secular country which has witnessed exponential growth in the number of madrasas from 1947 when they were 88 to tnow when they are around 10 lakhs. Many of them are infamously involved in indoctrinating to worship only Allah but not the motherland. It is unfortunate that a large number of these madrasas are state funded which is in violation of secular tenets. Recent abundance in cases of stone-pelting and hiding Tablighis in madrasas and mosques is self-explanatory of their activities.
In the same country where the Constitution says that the state shall not promote any religion over the other, Imams are receiving salaries from the exchequer of the state governments. Very recently Delhi government has decided to hike the salary of Imams. On the other hand state governments are taking over the temples and recklessly diverting donations of devotees to non-religious purposes. It is a clear discrimination by the states against Hindus.
So, in the guise of secularism, anti-Hindu, anti-India agenda is going on. At the behest of internal and external financial support, 'breaking India forces' are active. Intimidating Hindus and promoting minorities in the name of protection is a new kind of secularism which is utterly divisive and dangerous. Hinduism is not a religion, but the history, culture and philosophy of this nation. Stripping India of Hindu values and pushing fundamentalist religions in the name of secularism is suicidal for this nation. The history of Islamic terrorism, violent protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the recent Tablighi incident portend possible future threat.
We should learn lessons from the past. To eliminate the root cause of rising fundamentalists, Article 25 and Article 30 of the Constitution should be accordingly amended. These provisions, national integrity and secularism in true sense cannot co-exist.
(The author is Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law at Delhi University. Views expressed are personal.)
Comments
0 comment