Two sides of one coin

The globalisation of Jihad, sponsored by America, was too strong and unstable to lay itself down and go to sleep after victory in Afghanistan. It scrounged the world for existing and potential wars, enthused by the departure of Moscow not only from Kabul but also from a string of Muslim nations in Central Asia colonised by the Tsars in the 19th century. The Jihadis were enthused by a sense of heady invincibility. They thought India would be a walkover. Hostilities opened in the Kashmir valley at precisely the moment that they ceased in nearby Afghanistan. Fifteen years later, they have discovered that the Indian Army is a shade tougher than the Soviet one, but that is a story that has been reported daily in print and television.

The second agenda has received less attention. America did not have the eyes, or the interest, to recognise it when it started under the cover of the conflict against the Soviet Union. Saudi money began to finance a wide range of madrasas, front organisations and revivalist movements that looked beyond Afghanistan towards the armies of the future. The foot soldiers of the 21st century were created from the children of the final decades of the 20th with Saudi money, local collusion and international indifference. Money flowed into madrasas in Kashmir as well as elsewhere in India, and organisations like Tablighi Jamaat (a revivalist sect that seeks to "purify" Indian Muslims from "Hindu" influences) became hyperactive. New groups like SIMI (Students' Islamic Movement of India) emerged.

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It is important to stress that the madrasa, in India or elsewhere, is not inherently evil or malevolent. As has been said before and deserves to be reiterated, the madrasa movement is the world's largest benevolent NGO, providing shelter, clothes, food and education to the most deprived and neglected Muslims. But there lies the paradox; in its humanitarian mission also lies the problem. Hundreds of thousands of children who owe their lives, and perhaps their future livelihood as well, are uniquely vulnerable to the theological-political idealism of the second agenda. They are perfect potential suicide missionaries.

However, no idea catches fire unless the ground is parched. India's modern history is also a history of continual communal conflict between Hindus and Muslims. It has led to the creation of Pakistan in 1947, internal strife within India and a permanent war-situation between nuclear neighbours. Nor has the exercise of democracy in India been an unrelieved virtue. The politics of communalism has created a growing divide between angry-suspicious Hindus and angry-aggrieved Muslims. The death of innocents has traumatised both communities, and politicians goose-step across the chasm in search of votes.

Muslims have been doubly betrayed, for the Congress Party, once their natural ally, has manipulated them as viciously as their natural opponents maltreated them. From the early Seventies, the Congress slowly began to hand over the leadership of the Muslims to a growing cabal of fundamentalist and hysterical fire-breathers, while marginalising nationalist leaders who could have ensured a rational and secular direction to Muslim politics. It was a short-cut ride to vote banks that has been repaid by a bitter long-term dividend. Today, the rational voice has been minimalised; obscurantists have become the self-styled voice of the community. In the process, legitimate minority demands have been replaced by divisive rhetoric over non-issues. These leaders have wooed hotheads among the young by preaching that violence is the only solution to despair. In that sermon lie the roots of the Mumbai blasts.

The Bollywood movie with the Burhanuddin look-alike has, unlike so many other recent hate-spewing films, a positive message. It argues that Indian Muslims are loyal to India and that you can fall in love with a Pakistani without becoming a traitor. It is a message that has waited a long while to arrive. The box office will tell us, soon, whether such a theme still has resonance in bomb-scarred Mumbai.

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Kozhikode: It takes a while to realise that every waiter in Kozhikode is not on first name terms with the beleaguered secretary general of the United Nations. When he mentions Kofi, he is only offering you coffee. A brew by any other name doth smell as sweet. The coffee is splendid, but then so is everything else touched by nature in Malabar.

I am staying at the Kadavu Resorts. Below the spacious verandah a river slips through with varying degrees of laziness during the day, muddy with the silt from the wet hills on either side. Ahead and above, the hills teem with fruit and foliage: not high enough to be mountains, not low enough to remain crags. The undulating bed of earth is periodically covered by changing sheets of rain. The sky is perforated like a mammoth sprinkler: each time the weather turns too hot or sultry, nature switches on a fine, sharp shower that restores the magic of Malabar.

The history of the region is known, if not always well-known. The local royals, the Zamorins, fought back the disciplined cruelty of colonising Europe. Vasco da Gama, Albuquerque and their successors came with their guns and demands, and while other Rajas along the coast compromised, the Zamorins fought before they wilted. They were not resisting trade; they were resisting domination. How could they deny trade, for trade was the sustenance of this seaport.

The demographics of Malabar has been shaped by trade, for the Muslims owe their genesis to the Arab traders who shipped the spices of Kerala to the great markets of central and western Asia and thence to Venice and beyond into Europe. Hinduism, Islam and Christianity now live alongside with maximum self-assertion and minimum friction. The assertion is visible in dress, manners, food and practice of faith. But while no one in our country can be so lucky as to live without the tremors generated by subterranean social rumble, the tensions that once cascaded into the Moplah violence have eased. Why?

The answer lies in the thousands of children walking, tripping to and from schools created by all three communities.

An hour's drive out of Kozhikode takes you to yet another unassuming town of a very urban state. We are in the Muslim-majority district of Malappuram. This small town has one remarkable feature. Set against a hill are a series of buildings, including one still under construction. In 1965, some half a dozen successful men decided that it was time for them to give something back to their community. They set up the Muslim Educational Society. In four decades, the schools and colleges of the MES have become the pride of Kerala. The curriculum is sophisticated, the range of disciplines extraordinary, and the campus has an easy, unrestrictive atmosphere. Admission is sought anxiously. Since it is a minority institution, 50 per cent of the seats are reserved for Muslims, and the large number of Muslim girls who are using education to discover a new future is a particularly exciting aspect of the campus. Each year the ghetto of ignorance is destroyed a little more.

But the key lies in the other 50 per cent of the seats, for which Hindus and Christians bid and fill. And you see how the stereotyped image of Indian Muslims is destroyed by such schools and colleges. Now, when a fellow Malayali thinks of Malayali Muslims, he does not see only a mosque and a beard; he also sees science, medicine, engineering and the liberal arts. In so many parts of the North, a Muslim denotes a mosque, a madrasa and perhaps the butcher shop. Muslims in the South -- not just in Kerala -- are doing themselves a service by their commitment to education, but they are also destroying the notions that help breed misunderstanding and perhaps bigotry. In the example of the South lies the future of the Muslims of the North. In the West, social leaders like Dr Rafiq Zakaria have set up similar educational movements, but the North remains sadly comparatively barren. A morning spent with the teachers, principals and administrators of the MES indicated just how different the mood of the community was. It led me to an assertion that was not universally liked, but one which the community yet needs to ponder over: the Muslims of Malabar have liberated themselves from the "minority" trap. They are equal, and proudly so. The "minority" trap does not mean that you stop being a minority, or that the vital opportunities extended by the Indian Constitution to minorities need to be finished. It is only this opportunity which has enabled the minorities to stop feeling like second-class citizens. India has begun to arrive, today in small, hidden corners; by tomorrow's generation, across the broad plains as well.

MJ Akbar is Chief Editor of the Asian Age.