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Democracy and Indian Muslims

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the self-confessed leader of the banned outfit

Lashkar-e-Taiba, may think that Pakistan is the best Islamic nation for the

Bollywood star, Shahrukh Khan to move to, but it is India that is arguably the

best Muslim country today. Muslims in India enjoy complete political and

religious liberty, a free legislative environment to undertake economic and

educational initiatives, a vibrant television media and cinema that teach

liberal coexistence, and access to a vast number of universities and institutes

of modern education. There is absolutely no Muslim country that offers such a

vast array of freedoms to its people.

India is able to offer these freedoms to its citizens because it is a successful

democracy. It was good for India to lose the 1857 war; if the British had lost,

Indians would have continued to be governed by kings and nawabs, and

under sharia courts that existed during the Mughal era. At the time of

independence, the British left behind a justice system that was blind to

religious and caste inequities in Indian society, an inclusive democracy that

guaranteed equal rights and religious and political freedoms for all; English

language that opened doorway to enlightenment and scientific education;

and a civil service that treated everyone as Indians rather than Muslims,

Hindus or Christians. Muslims in India enjoy these freedoms because India is

a thriving democracy, unlike Pakistan that chose a discriminatory

constitution, barring its own citizens from holding top positions such as the

president of Pakistan because they are Hindus or Christians. Over the past

half century, hundreds of millions of Dalits and women have found political

empowerment and social freedoms in Indian democracy.

Religion cannot be a good model of governance for modern times because it

fails to imagine situations in which non-Muslim citizens could be trusted to

govern a Muslim country. Conversely, democracies trust their citizens

irrespective of their faith. In a democracy like India, any citizen could

compete to be the elected ruler. As democracy matures, India has appointed

its Muslim citizens to top positions, currently Hamid Ansari as vice president,

Salman Khurshid as foreign minister, Justice Altamas Kabir as Chief Justice,

and Syed Asif Ibrahim as the chief of the Intelligence Bureau. It is also true

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Pakistan. Like any country, India has its own share of extremist Hindus as well

as Islamic and naxalite militants, but the courts are taking care of them.

Indian democracy is a model for all Islamic countries. It is the only country

where Muslims have experienced democracy solidly for more than half a

century; the other countries where Muslims have had some democratic

experience are Indonesia and Turkey but their experiences have been limited

to just a few decades. Democracies trust their citizens and are accountable to

them. Democracies also bring freedom and economic prosperity for their

people. In his book, Development as Freedom, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen

demonstrated that famines have occurred only in countries governed under

authoritarianism while freedom available to people in democracies has

ensured economic welfare of their entire populations. Indian democracy has a

large Muslim population, about the same as in Pakistan. As democracy

matures and economy prospers, Muslims in India are beginning to benefitfrom a sea of economic and educational opportunities opening before them.

Islamic and authoritarian countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and North

Korea do not trust their own people. Islamic terrorists, jihadists like Hafiz

Saeed and other Taliban-like Islamists think of defending their religions and

ideologies rather than the interests and welfare of their people. It is due to

such thinking that 180 million people of Pakistan are today literally buried

under the weight of a failed education system, a rapidly collapsing Pakistani

economy that is forcing business leaders to move their money to countriessuch Sri Lanka, lawlessness that makes common Pakistanis insecure in their

own homes and a future that fails to offer hope. The Inter-Services

Intelligence, a friend of Saeed that imagines itself as the ideological guardian

of the Islamic state of Pakistan, could do a favour by trusting the Pakistani

people and letting them decide their own course of life and governance.

The writer is a former BBC Urdu Service journalist, is Director of South Asia

Studies Project at the Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington DC.

Don't look for flaws as you go through life, and even when you find them

It is wise to be somewhat kind , and look for the virtues behind them.