The New Nation - Internet Edition

M Ghazali Khan

Senior Indian Congress leader and now newly appointed Minority Affairs Minister, Salman Khurshid, said that Indian Muslims have failed to show their presence both in the country and also outside it as well.

"US President, Barak Obama, had made no mention about Indian Muslims when he (after taking charge) had desired to speak to Muslims from other parts of the world. He mentioned Saudi Arabia, Palestine, and Africa and he even mentioned that 7 million Muslims are in America but he did not mention Indian Muslims. Why? Because, this is the truth," Khurshid said.

Addressing a gathering of newly elected Muslim MPs, Khurshid said, "He [Obama] understands India but he does not understand Muslims of India. Muslims of India have not only failed to show their presence in India but also to the outer world."

One would have expected Khurshid to give some solid reasons for this pathetic condition of Indian Muslims and accept some responsibility for this as he is one of those privileged Indian Muslims who have been in Parliament for more than 25 years.

And if these assertions by the Minister are the reflections of his renewed commitment to play his part in the upliftment of the community, we have to wait and see the steps taken by the new Government and Khurshid as Minority Affairs Minister to help the marginalised community to be recognised within and outside India.

However, at the grass root level Muslims do not have good opinion of Khurshid and his opposition to reservation for Muslims in Government jobs is already being seen with scepticism. Terming job reservations as, "double-edged-sword" Khurshid said that it could create, "envy, hostility and resistance". Instead the he advocated affirmative action as a tool to "inject an ability to compete" rather than make them "constant beneficiaries of additional help".

He also said that he had been instructed by Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, to take up programs directly and through various economic ministries for speedy development of minorities, particularly Muslims, who have been left out of the mainstream educational and economic activities in the last 62 years.

Despite being denied constitutional rights and in spite of being harassed and discriminated against not only by previous Congress governments since independence but also through detention and torture in police custody of their youths for alleged involvement in terrorism under Congress led UPA Government, and faced with a credible third option to defeat the extremist Hindu party BJP-led NDA and opportunist regional parties, Muslims have played a major role in bringing Congress back to power. Yet the number of Muslim MPs in the present parliament - 29 in the 543 member house is the lowest ever.

Muslim intellectuals, however, are of the view that it is the quality that matters and not the quantity. "I fail to understand what is the definition of representation in the minds of those who are weeping inconsolably over the fortune of Indian Muslims as the number of their MPs has come down to an unprecedented low," asks Dr Mustafa Sherwani, a legal expert and Chairman of All India Muslim Forum.

Rejecting this concept Dr Sherwani adds, "If the numerical strength is the parameter then I think, the great mafia dons like Mukhtar Ansari, Afzal Ansari, Ateeque Ahmed, Rizwan Zaheer and Akbar Ahmed Dumpy, if not defeated, must have added to the number of Muslim representatives and brought laurels to the name of the community."

The representation of Muslims in the new Council of Ministers has come down too from six in the previous Government to five; two cabinet ministers and three ministers of state. They include two Muslim cabinet ministers from Jammu and Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad and three ministers of states are Salman Khurshid, E Ahamed and Sultan Ahmed.

Farooq Abdullah is the former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and son of legendary Kashmiri leader Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah (November 5, 1905 -September 8, 1982) and Salman Khurshid is the grandson of first Muslim President of India Dr Zakir Hussain (February 8, 1897 - May 3, 1969).

One of the important elements in the new Parliament though is the election of two Deoband alumni: Maulana Badruddin Ajmal and Maulana Asrarul Haq Qasmi.

Maulana Asrarul Haq Qasmi is a prominent scholar and a known Urdu columnist, founder President of Delhi-based All India Talimi-Wa-Milli Foundation and has been actively involved in community work for several years.

Maulana Badruddin Ajmal is a perfume baron and a well known social worker. He is the founding President of United Democratic Front of Assam (AUDF), a political party representing oppressed and under-privileged minority groups in Assam.

One hopes the two Deoband alumni will keep up the traditions of their alma mater and follow the footsteps of the well known freedom fighter and Deoband alumni Maulana Hifzur Rahman Seoharwi who, as an elected MP from 1952 to 1962, fearlessly represented the Indian Muslims in the Parliament and had the guts to challenge the then Chief Minister of UP, Choudhry Charan Singh on the anti-Muslim riot in Meerut in 1961 and tell him, "Don't you dare teach me lessons in secularism."

(Source: Muslim News)