Cover Story: Indian Muslim churning within

“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so,” said American humourist and compulsive traveller Mark Twain years ago. He was not wrong. In some ways we are all hapless victims of stereotypes perpetuated by the powerful media and by Orwellian regimes that control what we see and what we understand. We live in the smug belief that what we are told is the only truth and nothing else. We forget what learned Jain sages found out many years ago when they propounded the philosophy of Syadvad or the “doctrine of maybe” where nothing was definitive.

In a world where television translates reality in simple intelligible forms to gullible viewers, there are no shades of grey. Everything is in black and white. Spin-doctored reality is treated as the only unvarnished truth. The relentless power of media is so compelling that it is used by influential vested interest to create red herrings as well as deepen entrenched stereotypes.

The casualties of aggressive display of the power of persuasion are many. Take for instance the image of Muslims all over the world. After the 9/11 killings in New York, Islam is being perceived as a religion that spawns terror in the world. Academic corroborations have been synthetically created to feed images of 'civilisational conflicts' and to surround and neuter Muslims in plural societies. Similarly, military initiatives have been undertaken by the US and western powers over the past few years to hammer Muslim societies into submission. There is no attempt to redress the grievances of Palestinians and how they have been ousted from their own land by the Israelis. Although lip-service and rhetoric is routinely manufactured by the US to find a solution to the 'Palestinian problem', but Washington, goaded by the influential Christian fundamentalists and hardliners in Tel Aviv, has repeatedly ensured that Israel continues to pursue its brazenly muscle-flexing policies, especially in the occupied territories.

India, where communal amity is in the best of times tenuous, has seen Indian police forces starting their own war against 'global terror' by often targeting young, innocent Muslims in cities like Hyderabad and Mumbai (and of course, Kashmir), whenever there is a bomb blast. The net outcome of such operations — sometimes reeking of blatant communal injustice — is that it is not only feeding stereotypes about Islam in the Hindu majority society, but also building a simmering rage among young, educated Muslims, who are being pushed into extremist ideologies by vested, 'fundamentalist' interests and groups.

To counter this growing impression in the country and abroad, the famous seminary in Deoband, Darul Uloom, that wields considerable influence among Muslims all over the world, categorically stated that there is no place of terror in Islam. This call, path-breaking in many ways, did not get the kind of coverage in the media — especially in the visual media — that it truly deserved. The call from Deoband also reveals the churning in the Muslim community; how the young are desperate to move on with their lives, mixing enlightenment with modernity, and refusing to succumb to stereotypes. The move to change the nikahnama (marriage contract) is another step initiated by some enterprising Muslim women. Sections of Indian Muslim women are seeking a redefinition of the patriarchal values which have stifled their voices, sense and sensibilities. They also want to carve out  a niche in a secular democracy.

Truth gets distorted when the ruling cliques decide to bend it to their advantage. We have seen it in the Iraq occupation.  A similar diatribe is currently on against Iran. Diabolical devices to obfuscate the trail behind the 'political assassinations of leaders have been seen in the past, from that of Anwar Sadat to Rajiv Gandhi. Indeed, the recent trip of Priyanka Gandhi to Vellore jail is an attempt of a sensitive individual to reclaim control over truth. In that sense, the essence of meaning is still an unfolding reality: not an absolute truth.