[Reader-list] India:A miracle?

[Dr. Reyhan Chaudhuri]

This article had something interesting to perpend.. However some may have
problems with the title..Many would personally hesitate to use such
glam-glossed words like ‘Miracle’. Miracles are supposed to be magic wands
that with a swish make all the past detritus disappear. This would not seem
so in multiple terms to many..
I should also mention that this piece by Mr Friedman was probably written
pre-James Lyndoh’s visit to Gujarat. Or else I am sure he would have
included that as another democratic phenomenon, i.e : the presence of a free
working demo /constitutional Election Commission not answerable to the
government..
Yrs. Sincerely,
R,Chaudhuri.

                                 INDIA: A MIRACLE WITH A MESSAGE :
                               BY Thomas L.Friedman / The NewYork Times.
Bangalore: The more time you spend in India the more you realize that this
teeming, multiethnic, mutlireligious, multilingual country is one of the
world’s Great wonders-a miracle with a message. And the message is that
democracy matters.
This truth hits you from every corner. Consider Bangalore , where the
traffic is now congested by all the young Indain techies, many from the
lower- middle classes, who have gotten jobs, apartments-and motor
scooters-by providing the brain power for the world’s biggest corporations.
  While the software designs of these Indian techies may be rocket science,
what made Bangalore what it is today is something very simple:50 years of
Indian democracy and secular education, and 15 years of economic
liberalization, produced all this positive energy.
 Just across the border in Pakistan-where people have the same basic blood,
brains and civilisational heritage as here-50 years of failed democracy,
military coups and imposed religiosity have produced 30,000
madrasas -Islamic schools , which have replace a collapsed public school
system and churn out the Quran and hostility toward non-Muslims.
No, India is not paradise .Just last February the Hindu nationalist BJP
government in the state of  Gujarat stirred up a pogrom by Hindus against
Muslims that left 600 Muslims, and dozens of Hindus ,dead.
It was a shameful incident and in a country with 150million Muslims-India
has the largest Muslim minority in the world-it was explosive. And do you
know what happened?
Nothing happened.
The rioting didn’t spread anywhere. One reason is the long history of Indian
Muslims and Hindus living together in villages and towns, sharing communal
institutions and mixing their cultures and faiths. But the larger reason is
democracy. The free Indian Press quickly exposed how the local Hindu
government had encouraged the riots for electoral purposes, and the national
BJP had to distance itself from Gujarat because it rules with a coalition,
many of whose members rely on Muslim votes to get re-elected. Democracy in
India forces anyone who wants to succeed nationally to appeal across ethnic
lines.
Even when Gujarat was burning practically the whole of India was at
peace-that is the normal pattern here,” said Syed Shahabuddin, editor of
Muslim India, a monthly magazine, and a former Indian diplomat. “ India is a
democracy and more than that, India is a secular democracy, at least in
principle, and it does maintain a certain level of aspiration and hope for
Msuslims. If there were no democracy in India, there would be no anarchy,
because so many different people are aspiring for their share of the cake.”
It is precisely because of the “constitutional framework here,” added
Mr.Shahabuddin, that Indian Muslims don’t have to resort to terrorism as a
minority:” You can always ask for economic and political justice here.”
 It is for all these reasons that the US is wrong not to press for
democritisation in the Arab and Muslim Worlds. Is it an accident that India
has the largest Muslim minority in the world, with plenty of economic
grievances, yet not a single Indian Muslim was found in Al Qaeda? Is it an
accident that the two times India and Pakistan fought full-scale wars, 1965
and 1971, were when Pakistan had military rulers? Is it an accident that
when Pakistan had free elections, the Islamists have never won more than 6%
of the vote ?
 Is it an accident that the richest man in India is an Indian Muslim
software entrepreneur, while the richest man in Pakistan ,I will guess, is
from one of the 50 feudal families who have dominated  that country since it
’s Independence ? Is it an accident that the only place in the Muslim world
where women felt empowered enough to demand equal prayer rights in mosque
was in the Indian city of Hyderabad? No, all of these were products of
democracy. If Islam is ever to undergo a reformation, as Christianity and
Judaism did, it’s only going to happen in a Muslim democracy.
 People, say Islam is angry religion. I disagree. It’s just that a lot of
Muslims are angry, because they live under repressive regimes, with no rule
of law, where women are not empowered and youth have no voice in their
future. What is a religion but a mirror on your life?