Expostulation and Reply: Civilization and Dialogue

There are moments when the mind is teased by passing thoughts and prepares to respond. William Wordsworth, Iqbal and now Aayan Hirshi Ali have all resorted to this. In her criticism of Islam Ali dramatizes her thesis in the form of an imaginary conversation between the owl and the ostrich, the former sees everything in stark nakedness and the latter hides from facing harsh reality thinking that it would pass away. However a better form of dialogue is what Tariq Ramadan refers in his interview on BBC today Sunday December 30, 2007 as the Islamic tradition of having knowledge and respect while dealing with your interlocutor.

Much vaunted concept of radical Islam buoys up in discussion these days like the one carried in a national daily on December 28 and 29, 2007. As it prizes the mind, from the recess comes the argument that the teaching and practical life of the prophet does not justify the epithet. Clubbing Islam with any other religion is also not correct. So the binary justification that the “twain meet” is unnecessary, some followers of Islam, but not Islam itself, are radical, but they are few although vocal. Mahatma Gandhi and Lokmanya Tilak derived a different interpretation from their holy book is their individual personal choice and cannot be ascribed to all the people practicing Hinduism. Moreover, talking of India today, culprits of heinous crimes cannot be punished either by the rules of Gita or Mahabharta or the sharia. We have a constitution and our own penal laws which are different from theological injunctions like the biblical and Judaic an eye for an eye or taking a thorn out by another thorn or an iron needle, for that matter. The laws of India must be viewed equably in dealing with people irrespective of their religion.


However, the politicizing of judiciary and the criminalizing of politics is a complex reality of contemporary India and a cause of concern. No one group can appropriate the laws or amend and modify or apply them in order to settle score for the past or present deeds of “the other”. That is what the Chief Justice of India K.G.Balakrishnan was referring when he came down heavily against the “communalisation and politicisation “ of anti terrorist laws when he addressed the conference in New Delhi organized by the Intelligence Bureau on December 22, 2007. “The fact that several states have suggested that they will enact new laws similar to Pota raises serious human rights concern.” The intention behind framing or enforcing such laws is not so much to punish the guilty but to trample the human rights of all the members of the group from which some criminals come and who happen to be in minority. If this naked truth is unpleasant it is there behind the back of the mind of those who are calling for ever stricter laws to deal with terror. They also do not fight shy of the fact that terror of one hue poses as much threat to our nation as the terror of another hue. Given their penchant for “kantakenaiva kantakam” death would have come much earlier to Dr Haneef because he would be deemed deceitful even before the trial gets under way, nay, why trial at all? To this kind of propensity of mind the Vanzaras and Vazes are ever available zealously waiting to carry out what they view as deshbhakti, patriotism. Khwaja Yunus has to wear the cross, let him wear. What does it matter?

“Complex” reality of present India is different from India 1857 On the day of Bakrid August 1, 1857 the commissioner of Amritsar was in Delhi on a special duty. To suppress the ‘mutiny’ the British waited for the Sikh regiment to arrive before they started slaughtering the Bengali Muslim soldiers who were kept in prison there. They had hanged so many of the rebel soldiers that they were tired of dispatching them quickly. They moved them to the open fields and locked them because of which many died out of fear and asphyxiation. Then the slaughter began and the commission boasted as the Muslims were slaughtering animals in the city his men were doing the same to the Muslims. This is also taking out a thorn with another. But in the civilized perspective of today that was as reprehensible any other. But then the leap from then to today covers more civilizing processes the world has gone through and hence no justification for discriminating between the saintly criminal and the other who is deceitful. A criminal is a criminal.

People of different religions have been facing hardship of getting livelihood and administrative justice down the centuries and it is difficult to place a tectonic shift at a particular time. Past 200 years in India saw British rule for most of the time, only in the last 60 years we have had our own laws modeled on the British. Only in 1892-93 one thousand people were killed in disturbances. If the British tried to vitiate the harmonious co existence of the people for their end they did not gain much. However, the stupor in the Indian mosaic society of different communities was such that Swami Vivekanand was dismayed by the ugliness and sickness of Indian society as a whole. He wanted to take the ball and kick it and play and be healthy and clean. Vedantic mind of Hindus was store house of wisdom and strong physique of Muslims because of the dietary habit of the Muslims. The great Swami was not narrow minded but a large soul who saw bright future for our country if the two important groups along with other groups could unite for the motherland and make it healthy. That is what he meant when he wrote it in a letter.

Calling Judaism, Christianity and Islam as exclusivist just because each says that what it preaches is the only truth need not be taken to mean that it says every other religion is false. Respect other religions as you respect your own is a dictate of Islam and practiced by no other than the prophet himself. The noun ‘vice’ used as countable with ‘a’ means ‘a particular kind of evil’. We must be more discerning in using it. Religion has come to mankind to fight evil.