[Reader-list] Aatish Taseer: Hindu-Muslim tensions will rise further

[Naeem Mohaiemen]

>From The Sunday Times
November 30, 2008
Growing rift threatens to tear India apart
Hindu-Muslim tensions will rise further
Aatish Taseer

Barely a couple of weeks ago my stepsister, Shalaka, got married at
the Taj hotel in Mumbai. Last Wednesday night my stepfather, Ajit,
called to pay the bill. When he arrived home 10 minutes later he
realised he had left his mobile phone charger behind, so he called
Mandira, the Taj banquet manager.

"I can't speak now, sir," she said. "We're under attack."

Ajit lives in a building next door to Mumbai's other big hotel, the
Oberoi. Within a few moments, he heard gunshots from there too.

In the 48 hours that followed, his neighbourhood was sealed off and
his building came under attack. In the windows of the Oberoi he saw
deserted rooms, half-drawn curtains, fires, brown smoke and gunmen
moving from floor to floor.

By Friday, he knew that three chefs who had worked at his daughter's
wedding and the family of the Taj's general manager were dead. Friends
of his sisters had also been killed. As terrorist attacks went — and
Mumbai has known several in the past few years — it didn't come much
closer to home than this.

My stepfather's reaction came in the form of a text message the next
day. It read: "Pardon Afzal [Muhammad Afzal, accused of attacking the
Indian parliament in 2001], hang Sadhvi [a woman accused of
participating in the only act of Hindu terrorism in a Muslim
neighbourhood], Ban the Bajrang Dal [a Hindu extremist organisation],
talk to Simi [a Muslim student organisation of which the Indian
mujaheddin, responsible for a string of attacks in Indian cities, is
said to be a part], restrict the Amarnath pilgrimage [a Hindu
pilgrimage that led to upheavals in the Kashmir valley last summer]
fund the Haj. Wow! Truly, my India is great! Fwd 2all Hindus."

This message, steeped in irony, read like a roll call of the issues
and violence that have divided Hindu and Muslim India over the past
year. Almost a call to arms, it contained the great, twofold rage that
has grown in Hindu India: the feeling that Islamic terrorism seeks to
destroy the vigorous "new India" and the suspicion that the state is
either unable or unwilling to defend itself — for cynical reasons,
such as shoring up the Muslim vote for the government.

The attacks on Mumbai — a city that, in its prosperity, its hybridity
and openness to the world, stands as a symbol of the new and energised
India — confirmed to many what they had long feared.

Within hours of the attacks, groups gathered in the streets of Mumbai,
chanting "Bharat Mata ki Jai" (Victory to Mother India) and singing
"Vande Mataram" (Bow to you Mother), a patriotic song that Muslims had
objected to as the choice for the national anthem because it implied
obeisance to gods other than Allah.

Many British commentators have asked in surprise why India is being
targeted. There is no confusion among Indians themselves. When the
terrorists say on their websites that they seek to break up India and
reclaim it for Islam, they speak a language many Hindu Indians
understand. And India has proved to be the softest of soft targets.

More than 4,000 Indians have died in terrorist attacks — the country
is the second biggest victim of terror after Iraq and virtually every
one of its big cities has faced a terrorist attack. Yet the government
has no centralised terrorist database, its intelligence is abysmal and
there is little evidence that the state knows who it is fighting.

In dragging its feet, the Indian state does nobody a greater
disservice than Indian Muslims. When there are no real suspects,
arrests or trials, everyone becomes a suspect. Already an underclass,
with low literacy rates, low incomes and poor representation in
government jobs, Indian Muslims are increasingly alienated. There is
also great pressure on them.

Nobody wants to listen to genuine grievances about poverty, illiteracy
and unemployment in the face of a real threat to the country. Many
Hindus want Muslims to come clean on the issue of the jihad and to
make clear whose side they're on.

Far from responding positively to this pressure, some Indian Muslims
are simply beginning to see their grievances as part of a global
conflict between Muslim and non-Muslim.

India's position in this is unique. It has the largest Muslim minority
population in the world (13.4% of the population, or about 150m) but
unlike Muslims in western Europe, they are not immigrants.

They have been part of India for centuries.

This is why all Indians — Muslims and Hindu alike — know that the
deepening divide threatens the country's existence.

Many years ago, a divide like this re-energised the Hindu nationalist
BJP. Today who knows who it might throw up? The hour of men like
Narendra Modi, who oversaw a pogrom of Indian Muslims in Gujarat in
2002, might have come at last.

Aatish Taseer is the author of Stranger to History: A Son's Journey
through Islamic Lands, to be published in March by Canongate.