The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Eminent Indian Journalist Mubashar Jawed Akbar yesterday urged the South Asian nations to shun communal attitude and make the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) more functional.

The founder and editor-in-chief of The Asian Age, a daily multi-edition Indian newspaper with a global perspective, yesterday delivered a keynote speech at a talk on 'Meaning of Minority in Politics' at the conference room of Bangladesh Enterprise Institute (BEI) in the city.

BEI president Farooq Sobhan chaired the discussion attended by a host of renowned intellectuals and prominent citizens including Prof Rehman Sobhan, Prof Ajay Roy, Mahfuz Anam, Hasanul Hoqe Inu, Col Faruqe Khan and Rabindranath Trivedi.

MJ Akbar said SAARC is an outsome of common sense. Common economic destination should be the solution to all debates on religious or ethnic minority in SAARC.

He also made a proposition that India and Pakistan cannot be permanent enemies and hoped that the next generation would rise above the hostility.

Commenting on the opposition of Biharies and Jamaat-e-Islami in the Liberation War of Bangladesh he said, Beharies did it psychologically. But the men of Jamaat were the real betrayers, for they despise Bengalis.

He said the issue of minority is a matter of perception. It is imbedded in the mindset of some people in South Asia.

However, Rabindranath Tribvedi, a former bureaucrat of Bangladesh Government, contradicted this opinion of M J Akbar. He said, the reality of India and Pakistan is not the same. "Minority is not a matter of perception in Bangladesh. Indian politics did not make its constitution communal. But the politics in Bangladesh did it. Politics pushed the citizens other than Muslim to be minority here.

Criticising the fight of a section to protect Islam M J Akbar said, "Muslims can be endangered but Islam cannot be endangered," he said

Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh have achieved independence, but they have not found the freedom that should have come with it. Their freedom has been patchy. They have been imprisoned not by foreigners but their own elites, and subjugated by their armed forces who have distorted patriotism to seize power and institutionalise dictatorship, he added.

M J Akbar said, Islam did not make Pakistan a natural democracy; nor did Hinduism turn Nepal into one. Buddhism has not ensured democracy in Burma; its generals bow their head while greeting and still remain autocrats in uniform.

He said Indian Muslims are the only Muslims in the world to have enjoyed more than five decades of uninterrupted, unconditional, adult franchise democracy. They remain marginalised economically, but the polity has empowered them vigorously. In large and decisive states like Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh they control the swing of the electoral pendulum.

India is unique because of the ideology that won it freedom from the British: a commitment to multi-cultural equality and a celebration of the unequivocal rights of individual and collective liberty.