Muslim middle class must lead

THE MASSACRE OF 132 SCHOOL children in Peshawar, the daylight murder of 12 Charlie Hebdo satirical journalists in Paris and the open, uninterrupted and continuous atrocities inflicted upon women and children by Boko Haram in Nigeria and in Iraq by ISIS militants claiming to be warriors of Islam, has brought this ancient theology ” once renowned for its egalitarianism and promotion of the arts, sciences and refined civil discourse ” into global disrepute. A great disservice is being done to the estimated billion law-abiding Muslims by rabid preachers promoting militant Islam. With a clutch of despotic princes and quasi-literate prelates hell-bent on preventing modern, liberal interpretations of Islam and the Quran, the silence of the Muslim intelligentsia and educated middle class around the world is widely being interpreted as tacit approval. This is particularly true of educated Muslims in India who have permitted clerics and vote-bank-driven politicians to speak for the country™s 150 million-strong Muslim community, which has arguably the most prolonged experience of democratic adult franchise and governance than of any Muslim community worldwide. In this context it™s pertinent to note that leaders of the community who led India and Pakistan to independence ” Jinnah, Maulana Azad, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, among others ” were highly educated individuals with an enlightened nation-building outlook and genuine interest in the progress and development of their community, beggared by the divide-and-rule politics of the British colonial administration. Therefore, it™s a mystery why in post-independence India the educated Muslim middle class has allowed leadership of this community with a long history of culture, learning and entrepreneurship, to pass into the hands of orthodox imams and self-serving politicians who have little interest in negotiating a mutually beneficial modus vivendi with fellow citizens of all communities and religious persuasions. Quite clearly, religious intolerance is absurd and at odds with new global realities in which cooperation across sectarian, political and ideological fault-lines is the only alternative to perpetual low-intensity civil strife. As India™s shameful periodic communal riots have proven, religious minorities cutting across all classes suffer disproportionate loss of lives, property and business at the hands of majoritarian fundamentalists and bigots. In the circumstances, India™s substantial Muslim intelligentsia and refined middle class have no option but to assume responsibility and provide intelligent leadership to the Muslim masses to avail the protection of the Constitution and the law and enable them to enjoy the full benefits of the officially secular and socio-economically egalitarian Indian state. Admittedly, given that Wahabi radicals have a stranglehold on the community, this is a dangerous undertaking. But the well-being of the community and survival of its educated middle class depends on it. Indian scientists need to look ahead RISIBLE ASSERTIONS ABOUT THE fantastic achievements of unheralded scientists of ancient India overshadowed the deliberations of the 102nd Indian Science Congress held in Mumbai on January 3-7. Unsubstantiated claims about airplanes and inter-planetary travel in the Vedic (1,750 BCE-500 BCE) period, and proof of plastic surgery being practiced in the…