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| The Hindu Phenomenon |
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RETREAT AND RAGE |
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| Finally,
with the disintegration of the Soviet state, Islam is the only
important collectivist ideology to survive in the twentieth century.
In no Muslim country can the philosophy of liberalism be said to be
in the ascendant. In fact, if anything, the hold of the collectivist
approach has increased in recent years. That is what Islamic
fundamentalism represents.
That reality inevitably impinges on Indian Muslims, including the intelligentsia. There is, however, a difference in the Indian Muslim situation as it obtained before partition and as it obtains now. Advocacy of jihad (holy war), for example, is out of the question in India in view of the correlation of forces. Muslim leaders, such as they are, cannot now invoke the concept of ijma (consensus) as their predecessors could and did before 1947. No organization or individual can claim to embody such a consensus as the Muslim League and Jinnah could. In addition, the present Muslim leaders cannot in today's India, pour ridicule on the politics of numbers as men like Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan could. To put it differently, even the most adventurist and irrational Muslim cannot question the legitimacy of the political order based on th Constitution, which, in turn, rests on the right of the individual. Many of them are, in reality, opposed to individualism and therefore liberalism and secularism; all three are products of one large revolution. But they cannot bring this apposition into the open since these assure for the community participation in the political process and enable it to preserve and even strengthen its identify. In plain terms, Muslims have no option but to accept the status quo, and, by and large, they do. The concepts of democracy and secularism can, in theory, threaten to disrupt the community by encouraging individualism and challenge to ijma. In reality, they do not. The liberal challenge from both within and without remains and is likely to remain feeble for the foreseeable future. The secularism-pseudo-secularism debate has been and remains a non-Muslim, indeed, essentially, an intra-Hindu affair; so does the desirability or otherwise of a common civil code. The Muslim community ha drawn a great china Wall around itself which cannot be easily breached.
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