Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | Discussion ''India Legal'', 24 April, 2015
Q: What is your response to judgments in recent years passed by the Indian judiciary in cases of communal violence?
A: Many people think that the judiciary put a firm end to communal violence. I don’t agree. Communal violence owes essentially to social intolerance. And no amount of laws or legal action can put an end to intolerance unless people learn to be tolerant. For this, you need to educate people, to make them realise the importance of tolerance and acceptance of others, the importance of peaceful living. This is the duty of social, rather than legal, activists.
I think the judiciary has only a limited role in bringing about social reform. Unless people are ready to change their mentalities, including on issues related to inter-community relations, there’s little that mere legal change can do. For this purpose, I think education—including awareness-raising—is vital. By education, I mean both formal and non-formal education.
Q: Do you think Muslims feel insecure in India? What place do they have in Indian society today? Have they received their due?
A: At present, the Indian Muslims are not able to play any positive role. They certainly can do so, but not at present.
Why, you might want to know?
This is because almost all Muslim leaders have misled the Muslim community. They have made them believe that they face discrimination. This is completely wrong. There is no discrimination.
It is true that Muslims are backward compared to other communities, but the cause for this is not discrimination, as Muslims claim. Rather, they are backward because they are backward in education. They are paying the price for their educational backwardness. Yet, almost all Muslim leaders keep claiming that Muslims are backward because they are discriminated against by others. This is completely wrong.
Given all this, if Muslims are to play a positive role, they must first inculcate positive thinking. If they remain obsessed with their claim of discrimination and with their negative thinking, they certainly can’t play any positive role at all.
Q: Some years ago, the Government of India had appointed a committee—the Sachar Committee—to investigate the conditions of India’s Muslims. The Committee pointed out this fact of Muslim educational backwardness. Who do you think is responsible for this?
A: As I just mentioned, Muslim backwardness is not because of discrimination by others, but because of the Muslims’ educational backwardness. And Muslims themselves are to entirely blame for this. Muslim clerics or ulema have issued fatwas claiming that modern education is un-Islamic. This is the reason for Muslim backwardness. The Sachar Committee did not know this real reason for Muslim backwardness. The real reason is that Muslims, under the influence of the ulema, believe that education is only religious education. In line with theulema’s fatwas, they still believe that modern education is not education, and that only religious education is education.
So, first of all, you will have to make Muslims aware that modern, education is very important, and that it is not un-Islamic. They need to realise that this is a vital necessity for themselves, that it is the need of the hour.
People talk so much about the Sachar Committee and its recommendations for improving the conditions of Indian Muslims. But I say to Muslims, “No such committee can change your future. It is simply impossible. No Sachar Committee, no law, no political manifesto can change your destiny. It is you who are the master of your own destiny.”
Q: But are there enough educational and employment opportunities available today for the Indian Muslims?
A: Yes, there are opportunities. There are many opportunities for jobs. But Muslims simply aren’t qualified for them. To get a job, you need to face competition, but Muslims fail to qualify in such competition because they are educationally backward. And the blame for their educational backwardness goes to the Muslim ulema.
Q: There are institutions, like the Aligarh Muslim University and the Jamia Millia Islamia, that are doing a very good job in promoting education among the Indian Muslims. What do you say?
A: No, I don’t agree with this statement. Institutions like the Jamia Millia Islamia and the Aligarh Muslim University are obsessed with the wrong notion that Muslims need favours. Favours, you must know, are not good for anyone. They are like poison. It is challenges that help individuals and communities to develop, not favours.
Q: In the context of the communal situation, what apprehensions do the Indian Muslims have for their future, for their safety and well-being?
A: This is a very important question. The fact is that Muslims simply don’t know what democratic politics is. They are completely unaware of this. In a democracy, you can’t function with the logic that this party is pro-Muslim and that party is anti-Muslim. But Muslims are obsessed with this sort of thinking. All the Muslims have developed this sort of mindset. And so, in every election what they do is just negative voting. Their only intention is to defeat this or that party. This is not positive thinking. This is not democratic culture.
Muslims simply don’t know what democratic culture is.
In democracy, there is no permanent friend or foe. You have to look at what the national interest is. You have to recognize that your interests lie in the greater national interest. But Muslims think in terms of the interests of their own community. This is wrong. They must learn to think in terms of the national interest.
Q: In this context, what suggestions do you have for promoting greater inter-community harmony in India?
A: I have a two-point formula for Muslims. One is, that they must go in, and at the mass level, for education. By ‘education’ I mean secular education. This is really immensely important.
Secondly, they must abandon community-based thinking. They must think in terms of the nation, in terms of the good of the nation as a whole, rather than of just themselves and their own narrow interests.
So, the simple, two-point formula for the Indian Muslims is: secular education and national thinking. If they don’t follow this formula, they have no future at all.
It is absolutely imperative that the Indian Muslims abandon the sort of thinking that has characterized them right from Partition to the present day—all this talk of ‘Muslim empowerment’ and ‘Muslim interests’, this ‘pro-Muslim’ thinking. We need pro-India thinking. Indian Muslims need to realise that in India’s development lies their own development. They need to realise that they won’t get anything positive at all from ‘pro-Muslim’ development. This is obvious to anyone. For the last 50 years, Muslims have been demanding ‘Muslim empowerment’, but nothing at all has been achieved through this approach.
To repeat, Muslims have to recognize that their progress lies in the progress of the country as a whole, that they can’t think of progressing separately from the rest of the country, that if they isolate themselves from the rest of India and do not bother about it, they certainly cannot develop. This is a democracy, not a kingship. This kind of separatist or communal mentality may have been possible in the age of monarchy, but definitely not in a democracy.
Q: It seems that Muslims the world over today face deep fears, and this has an enormous impact on their thinking. For instance, the tussle between the West and Muslims. How do you account for this?
A: You might know that all over the world, everywhere, Muslims are backward—not just in India, but in America, Europe and other places. This is due to their separatist thinking. Muslims are obsessed with this separatist thinking. They believe that they have to maintain and constantly stress their separate cultural identity. But cultural identity is nothing in Islam. In Islam, it is ideology that matters, it is your personal character that matters, not the community’s culture.
Yet, all over the world, Muslims are obsessed with their cultural identity. Due to this, they are backward in every country, so much so that even in many Arab countries, top jobs are held by non-Muslims and many of the big businesses are owned by them.
This obsession of Muslims with maintaining and reinforcing their separate cultural identity is ‘pro-Muslim’ thinking. It is not Islamic thinking. It is communal thinking, which Muslims wrongly imagine is Islamic. All over the world, Muslims think that their communal thinking is Islamic thinking, while actually it is not Islamic at all.
Islam is a scheme of life, and now we are living in an age of democracy. In this age, communal thinking is taboo. This age is a completely different age, an age where everything has changed. But Muslims are still living in the past. Their thinking is anachronistic. They have failed to realise that we are living in a new age. If you analyse the books written by modern-day Muslims, whether in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, English or any other language, you’ll discover that they are all the same—they are all written in the language of the past. Some Muslims might get a certificate and a degree and land up with a job with it, but even their thinking is just the same. In their minds, they are still living in the past.
Q: What advice do you give Muslim youth who come to meet you?
A: 99% of the Muslim youth are living with the same past-oriented pattern of thinking. As I said, under compulsion they might get a certificate and take up some job, but their way of thinking hasn’t changed. That is a major problem, this way of thinking.
Q: What do you say about political parties who exploit this sort of situation?
A: This world is a world of competition, and so there will always be various types of challenges. Hence, it’s no use complaining. According to the Creation Plan of God, every person is free. Freedom has been given to us by our Creator. And if human beings are free, it’s but natural that there will be challenges, that there will be competition. Challenges and competition cannot be eliminated, try what you may. People will try to get ahead of you, including in politics. Why complain or protest? It’s a basic fact of life in this world that you need to recognize. You need to prove yourself capable of not letting anyone dictate your life, to exploit you, to provoke you, even though people will try to do just that. You will repeatedly face challenges and competition from others. The right approach is to face them, to compete with them, not to complain about them.
Complaining and protesting are useless. When you complain and protest, what you are doing is directed against God, who gave freedom to human beings. Everyone has been given this freedom by God, and that means that everyone can also misuse this freedom. So, it’s pointless complaining about it if and when it happens.
People will do what they want to, and you should do what you think is right. Some people say many things about me, but I don’t get provoked. That’s how you have to manage your responses to the challenges that life throws up at every corner.
Q: How is your message being disseminated across India? The issues seem so immense and the need for wisely addressing them so vital.
A: Many Muslims think that India is a ‘problem country’, but I tell Muslims that India is a country of many opportunities for them. With God’s grace, many Muslims have begun to change their thinking. Our literature and the activities of the Centre for Peace and Spirituality are playing a major role in this regard.
I tell Muslims that for development, two things are very necessary. One is peace. The other is freedom. In Muslim countries, you have peace but no freedom, or freedom but no peace, or no freedom and no peace. But in India Muslims enjoy both peace and freedom. And so, this country really has so many opportunities for everyone, Muslims included.
I keep saying this to Muslims, and that, with God’s grace, is having a very positive impact on people’s perceptions and thinking. We work in a low-profile way, and so it’s not much talked-about in the media. But there has certainly been a very positive impact on many people’s thinking. Through our literature and outreach work, many people have been helped out of negative thinking and have begun to think positively.
Our mission is not confined to Muslims alone. We don’t make any distinction between people of different faith backgrounds. I say the same things to Muslims as I do to Hindus and others.
The fact is that almost everyone, no matter what their religious or other background, is today living in negative thinking—protesting against this, demonstrating against that, criticizing and blaming others, and so on. They complain about their families, their jobs, their bosses, political leaders, the weather, the food—about every single thing! We try to tell people—no matter what her or his religious background—that negative thinking, complaints and protests won’t get them anything at all. People who join the mission of our Centre for Peace and Spirituality witness a 360 degree change in their lives, moving from negative to positive thinking. This is true nation-building, this is helping to nurture positive-thinking people!
Let me cite a beautiful anecdote. Some years ago, I was in Switzerland. There, I met with a Hindu woman. She was complaining about the Swiss. I said to her, ‘Many Hindus worship the cow. But you haven’t adopted the cow-culture. I have adopted this culture.’
The woman was, quite naturally, intrigued by what I was saying and asked me to elaborate. As a Muslim, of course, I worship God alone. But when I say I have adopted the ‘cow culture’, what I mean is that I have learnt to convert negativity into positivity, challenges into opportunities to grow, to progress, just as a cow converts the grass, twigs and leaves it eats into nourishing milk.
The lady was very moved by the analogy.
I keep telling people that if you have even a little complaint in your heart, if you have even a speck of negative thinking, you must try to get rid of it at once. It is a great obstacle in the development of your personality. I keep stressing that when we complain against others, we pay the price for it ourselves. Those whom we complain about don’t pay the price. Instead, it’s we who do. And so, you must stop complaining about anything and everything, right away, and on a unilateral basis, without expecting or waiting for others to change or to reciprocate.