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Your Questions Answered

There is a perception that intolerance is on the rise in India. What do you say?

Intolerance is there in every society. It existed in the past, the only difference being that now, with modern means of communication, news about it spreads far and wide.

Tolerance, intolerance—these are part of every society. Human beings have freewill, and so there will sometimes be intolerance, there will sometimes be dissent, there will be differences. These things will always be there. Now, the key is how to handle them. The wise approach is that if someone says something that might hurt you, you should simply not react. Just ignore it. Why should you enter into a debate? If you do not react, if you simply keep quiet, the matter will die out on its own. But there’s so much violence happening in the world, in the country.

Millions of things are happening in the world, in the country, but the media is highlighting only that one incident of violence. It ignores everything else. And so, following the media, people also do not look at the million good, constructive things that are happening and get taken up by the one thing that the media highlights.

But don’t you think that intolerance has increased in India, if you compare the situation today with that of a few decades ago? Especially Muslims, since they are a minority in India, are affected more by intolerance, violence and by communal riots. How do you think communal violence can be stopped?

The solution is not through protests, issuing fiery statements or through taking out demonstrations. If you want to solve the problem of riots, you should understand why they happen in the first place. Generally, riots are a result of some very small issue. If you just ignore this issue and do not blow it out of proportion, it will not escalate into a riot.

I’ll give you an example. Once, a Muslim boy drank water from a handpump, with his mouth or hand touching the pump’s spout. Some Hindus told him not to do that. The Muslims protested against this, and it soon turned into a riot! Now, the same thing has happened with another Muslim, too. He was told not to drink like that, and he responded very differently. He simply said, “Okay, I’ll use a glass to drink”, and then of course no one got angry and the matter ended there. So, the lesson from this is: Do not exaggerate or get agitated about a small thing, because that could easily lead to a riot. Just ignore these issues and everything will be fine.

Let me cite another example. A temple and a mosque stood in the vicinity of each other. One day, Bhajans (religious hymns) were being broadcast through the temple’s loudspeaker. A group of Muslims went to the temple and demanded that they turn it off. The Hindus refused, and then the agitated Muslims destroyed the loudspeaker. And after this, matters escalated into a riot.

Now, this happened because these Muslims reacted angrily to a small thing. Why should they have got agitated like that? No one was stopping them from praying in the mosque. They could have continued doing just that, isn’t it? And then there would have been no riot.

So, the point is that avoiding getting agitated about petty issues and avoiding confrontation are the solution to communal riots.

On many occasions there seems to be a contradiction between what is said to be Shariah law and the law of the land. What do you feel about this?

In this regard, Islamic teachings are very clear. Some people may talk of enforcing Shariah in India, but this is totally irrelevant since India is a secular country. With regard to the Indian context, the Islamic position is that Muslims should focus on their faith, their worship, their character-building as per Islamic teachings but the law of the land must be in accordance with the country’s Constitution. That means that Muslims have to follow the country’s Constitution. Muslims should not raise the question of enforcing Shariah law in the country. It has no relevance. Shariah law may apply to countries where Muslims are a majority, but not in a country like India.

Many Indians suspect Indian Muslims of being pro-Pakistan. Do you think this is true?

This suspicion is unfounded. Soon after the Partition, many Indian Muslims migrated to Pakistan. But who migrates there now? No one! So, the Indian Muslims have joined their fate with India’s. If there are one or two people who think otherwise, you shouldn’t use that to form a general impression of the Indian Muslims as a whole.

In your experience what is the actual problem of Muslims?

The root of the problem is that while Muslims have religious education, they lack secular education. To understand this, you have to go back a bit in history. When the British came to India, many of the ulema stiffly opposed modern education. They thought that Western-style education was against Islam. On the other hand, Hindus enthusiastically embraced this sort of education. That is why the Indian Muslims are at least a hundred years behind their Hindu compatriots. That’s the basic reason for Muslim backwardness. It can’t be resolved unless Muslims go in for modern education in a big way. Without that, Muslims cannot change.