Why are Muslim achievements and liberal traditions not celebrated? (Comment)
By Saeed Naqvi
It does not surprise me that the continuing debate on the Op-Ed page of the Indian Express on the Muslim predicament skirts fundamental issues. The debate has been triggered by Ramachandra Guha disagreeing with Harsh Mander on the Muslim question.
Mander's column, headlined "Sonia, Sadly", expresses his hurt at Sonia Gandhi's public expression of fear that the Congress was being perceived as a "Muslim Party".
In the very first paragraph of his column, Guha plucks out a quote from Mander. "A Dalit leader tells Muslims who come to political meetings: By all means come in large number to our rallies. But don't come with your skull caps and burkas."
"Mander is dismayed at this gratuitous attempt to get Muslims to voluntarily withdraw from politics." But Guha disagrees with Mander's interpretation of what the Dalit leader said. Guha is emphatic: "While the words may be harsh and direct, the spirit of the advice was forward-looking", i.e. don't come in skull caps and burkas.
This, I suspect, is the crux of the matter. Guha is endorsing the new line enunciated by the Congress Party: Keep Muslims at arm's length just in case the BJP spin doctors pick up this visual to polarise. Rahul Gandhi's frenetic temple-hopping, janeu et al, is in pursuit of this soft saffron.
Apoorvanand, Harbans Mukhia, Mukul Keshavan, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Suhas Palshikar, Irena Akbar, Khalid Ansari, Jawed Naqvi, why, even Mander himself, have all written sensitively, even knowledgeably on the subject. But Guha is a class apart: Muslims must give up skull caps and, to balance matters, Hindus their trishuls. His desire to equalise permeates the article.
Praveen Togadia and Yogi Adityanath are bad, but Guha will be happy only if Asaduddin Owaisi and Ali Shah Geelani are mentioned in the same breath. Togadia wants Muslims to leave the country. "Occupy their homes," he once famously said in Gujarat. Without batting an eyelid, Yogi heard his cohorts ask for buried Muslim women to be dug out from their graves and raped. Show me a comparable quote from Owaisi or Geelani.
"Yeh ajeeb majra hai ki baroz e Eide qurbaan
Wohi zubah bhi kare hai wohi le sawab ulta"
(Look at the illogical system of the ceremony of sacrifice.
He who slaughters claims the reward for paradise.)
The tragedy is that Guha belongs to the category of people who, because of their celebrity status, imagine that eminence in one field qualifies them to claim proficiency in all the others. His inadequacy on the theme he has rushed into unprepared, derives from a common malaise: He is a creature of uninstitutionalised apartheid which means separate development.
It would be interesting to know if Guha has ever visited Muslim homes or the other way around when he was a child. Did he know Muslims in school or college whose friendship he still values? Even if he is able to blurt out a name or two, the undeniable truth will be that he has grown up only with his ilk. He has no experience of Muslims. He is not alone in this category.
A sharp contrast attends my circumstance. I, along with my three brothers, grew up only among Hindus. Apartheid therefore didn't touch us. Since our informal education was continuous since birth, we knew fairly early that Al-Biruni wrote Tarikh al Hind after his extended stay beginning 1017. Moinuddin Chishti, Shahbaz Qalandar and a host of Sufis and saint-poets like Kabir from the 12th to 14th centuries were spreading "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam", paving the way for Abdul Rahim Khan-I-Khana who ended up writing the only Sanskrit verses in praise of Lord Rama. In his brilliant Persian poetry in the 17th century, Chandrabhan Brahman felt secure enough to taunt and tease the Muslim clergy.
Yagana Changezi, a 20th century poet, questions a basic tenet: Why must namaz be said in a foreign language? If all of this sounds like nostalgia, let me invite you to Lucknow for an evening of spiritual poetry on Ahl al-Bayt or the Prophet's family. The poet, Sanjaya Mishra, was a favourite with my mother who died three years ago. She had special vegetarian meals prepared for him.
I have shed light on the tiniest strand in the vast expanse of Muslim liberal traditions. Since the 16th century these have been bound up inextricably with the waxing and waning of Urdu in which Hindus and Muslims equally participated. The first great writer of Urdu prose was Pandit Ratan Nath Sarshar.
How many liberals know that there is not a single couplet in Urdu which praises the mullah or endorses orthodoxy of any kind?
Did you know that most of the poetry on Krishna, Ram in the last century has been written by Muslims? I will only confuse the issue if I bring in Kazi Nazrul Islam, Salbeg, Bekal Utsahi or Nida Fazli.
It puzzles me why liberal intellectuals sometimes fall prey to a tendency that the politician has cultivated as a calculated habit: Consider the Muslim only as a religious category. Why must Muslim achievements in poetry, music, architecture, systems of governance not be celebrated? Such an exercise would surely cast them in a liberal mould. Guha might then heave a sigh of relief.
A false quest for a liberal Muslim leader almost flows from the above approach. A liberal Muslim leader, I never tire of repeating, is a contradiction in terms. That is an illiberal quest. Are we never going to find a Hindu whom Muslims can trust and the other way around?
That must be the only possible way ahead.
(A senior commentator on political and diplomatic affairs, Saeed Naqvi can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com. The views expressed are personal.)
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Fact Check: Beware of fake Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan website’s claim to offer job opportunities
Claim: sarvashikshaabhiyan.com website is related to the Government of India and offers job opportunities.
Fact: The website is not an authentic one, it is duping the job aspirants of their money.
Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan is a school education scheme in India that aims to improve the quality of education and ensure universal access to school. The scheme not only provides support for the implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 but has also been aligned with the recommendations of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
It encompasses a comprehensive approach to school education, including initiatives like universal access to schooling, foundational literacy and numeracy, gender equity, inclusive education, quality improvement, teacher training, vocational education, sports and physical education, digital initiatives, and support for children with special needs, effectively combining the previously separate schemes of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), and Teacher Education (TE) under one umbrella; essentially covering the entire spectrum of schooling from pre-primary to class 12. The Central Government recruits teachers and other staff under this Scheme for various posts across the country.
A website named sarvashikshaabhiyan is in circulation with several job recruitment links posted here. The website claims to offer employment opportunities to aspiring candidates. Job opportunities for primary school teachers, lab technicians, chaprasis, etc. can be seen on the website.
Here is the screenshot of the website home page.
Here is the archive link to the website pages.
Fact Check:
The website makes a False claim. It is not a genuine website and is not related to the Government of India’s Samagra Shiksha Abhiyaan scheme. The home page of the website does not show the Government of India’s logo and is very static in nature.
When we clicked on one of the recruitment ads posted on this website, we could see that it mentions that total job vacancies are 98,305, which is a very large number. The qualification needed for teachers is 10th, 12th or above.
When clicked on apply now, the website gathers all the details of the applicant including the phone number and email id, etc. At the end of the process, we can see a QR code for the payment of the application fee which is Rs 950.
Even though the UPI ID shown on this screenshot is sarvashiksha123@abcdicici, the user name on the bank states ‘Deepak Kumar’, not the name of any government department or scheme.
We also found that PIB fact check in its post, declared that this website is fake and is not associated with Government of India.
Beware!⚠️#Fake website 'https://t.co/A8nJO6T8Si' is posing as the official website of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan & offering fake job opportunities#PIBFactCheck
— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) December 19, 2024
▶️This website is not associated with GOI
▶️Official website: https://t.co/pCjN1ZGIMW
Read: https://t.co/Pi56ELk7hn pic.twitter.com/ptvKhIsVS1
PIB also published a clarification on its website stating – It has come to the notice of the Ministry of Education that in order to dupe innocent applicants several websites have been created with the name similar to the schemes. (like www.sarvashiksha.online,
These websites offer employment opportunities to aspiring candidates and misguide the job aspirants through the layout of the website, content, and presentation in a manner similar to the original website and ask for money from the respondents for the applications. While these websites have come to the notice of the Department of School Education and Literacy, there may be more such other websites/social media accounts promising jobs and demanding money for the recruitment process.
The general public is, hereby, advised to avoid applying for job opportunities on such websites and to ensure that the websites are authorized by visiting the official website of the concerned Department/personal inquiry/telephone call/e-mail to safeguard their own interest. Any person applying on these websites will be doing so at his own risk & cost and shall be responsible for the consequences thereof.’ This clarification was published in March 2022. But the website has resurfaced again and is duping the aspiring candidates in the name of recruitment opportunities.
Hence, the website https://www.
(This story was originally published by telugupost, and republished by english.varthabharati.in as part of the Shakti Collective)
