If anything can be said about Indian Muslims, it is that they are quite capable of looking after themselves and do not need any outside agency or power to espouse their cause. This fact finds expression in a number of ways. Let us take the worst situation first. They do not leave a city, not to speak of the country, in the event of a communal riot. They stay there and fight back. It is a shame for us that we still have such conflicts. But it will be naive, indeed dishonest, for anyone either to suggest that these are a one-sided affair or to deny that India’s record in respect of its minorities is second to none in the world. That is precisely why the Indian Muslims do not look upon any other country as a possible refuge even in moments of difficulty. In the first few years of independence many of them regarded Pakistan as a kind of second home. But they stopped doing so over a period of time, especially since the rise of Bangladesh as a sovereign nation in 1971 which exploded the two-nation theory. Another point needs to be made, though it should be obvious to any worthwhile observer of the Indian scene. In the wake of partition, lakhs of middle class Muslims from all over the country, especially northern India, migrated to the newly created Pakistan. In the last two decades a new middle class has arisen among the Muslims as a result of the spread of modern education and expansion of economic activities, and it has begun to assert itself.
Today no Muslim in any political party feels handicapped on account of his religion. In their different ways Mr. AR Antulay and Mr. Akbar Ahmed illustrate the point. As Maharashtra’s chief minister, Mr. Antulay behaved as if he was a monarch accountable to no one. And Mr. Akbar Ahmed has had the audacity not only to defy Mrs. Gandhi from within the Congress (I) but also interfere in her family affairs. Then there is Mr. Shahabuddin in the Janata Party who never tires of advocating the cause of the Muslims whether in a specific case they are in the right or in the wrong. Most of the political leaders and journalists who are passionately advocating a policy of accommodation with Pakistan regardless of its search for a nuclear capability and acquisition of highly sophisticated arms from the United States are non-Muslims. Above all, mass conversion of Harijans to Islam in a number of places is a testimony to the fact that the Muslims are not a persecuted minority in India. People wanting to escape harassment do not join weak and persecuted minorities. Imagine anyone joining the Baha’is in Iran!
India has chosen the path of secularism because it is in conformity with its true nature and tradition. It has not done so to impress anyone. But it is entitled to expect others to take note of the reality and not deliberately distort it. Pakistan has wilfully misrepresented this country and some Muslim governments have fallen for its anti-India propaganda out of ignorance and misconceived zeal. Of late, Khomeini’s Iran has emerged as the self-appointed guardian of “true” Islam and unnecessarily tried to malign this country. This is a pity because New Delhi has been scrupulously neutral in the Iran-Iraq war and has done its best to maintain friendly ties with Teheran. As it happens, only a few regimes anywhere in the world are as ill-qualified to take up the cause of minorities as the present one in Iran. Its treatment of its minorities is among the worst in recent years, indeed decades.