Passive voices: a penetrating study of Muslims in India

This is a study in depth of the post-Partition status of
Muslims in India who constitute the subcontinent's principal
minority and numbers well over sixty million.
For the best part of the past twenty-six years, the Indian
Muslims have wandered shepherdless and almost friendless-
misunderstood at home and misrepresented abroad.
Four events in recent years combined in unpredictable
conspiracy to draw world attention to their problems and their
helplessness; the fire at Al Aqsa Mosque, the Ahmedabad riots,
the Rabat Summit, and the visit of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan
to India. None of these events had any pre-determined objec-
tive, insofar as India was concerned, and yet each one, follow-
ing the other in close sequence, served to focus world attention
on the anti-minority communalism rampant in an allegedly
secular India.
When Michael Rohan set fire in Jerusalem to the much
venerated Al Aqsa Mosque to prepare a site for rebuilding
Solomon's Temple, he did not realise that the fire he lit might
start fires of different sorts in different parts of the world.
Because of Al Aqsa the wrath of the best part of the
Muslim world was aroused, as was also the indignation of
hundreds of thousands of Muslims in various parts of India.
The latter were perhaps the more expressive in the cities of
Bombay, Calcutta and Ahmedabad.
Then came the great Islamic Summit at Rabat, the first in
many years, to which came rulers and Heads of State and
others from many Islamic countries. When no invitation came
to India, the Government of India was not slow to claim
Indian representation at the Islamic Meet on the grounds of
her concern with India's sixty million Muslims and of her
having the third largest Muslim population in the world. The
Summit met in Rabat and promptly decided to invite represen-
tatives of the Muslims in India, although India was not by
any means an Islamic country, nor had an Islamic Head of
State.
By then other events had and were taking place.
Ahmedabad, arson, murder, and carnage had become common
place events. According to most accounts, though there had
been several communal outbursts in India ever since the parti-
tion of the country, none like what was being witnessed at
Ahmedabad had ever happened before. Property worth crores
of rupees had been reduced to ashes, thousands lay dead in the
streets and elsewhere, and Mahatma Gandhi's Sabarmati
Ashram had been attacked. More than thirty thousand Muslims
had been rendered homeless and thousands were in refugee
camps and the Army had been called in to restore order.
By the time the Rabat Summit had met Al Aqsa had
been repaired. Understandably Ahmedabad was not far from
the minds of those attending the Summit.
On receipt of the invitation an official delegation appointed
by the Government went to Rabat from India, but consisted
only of three Muslims and five non-Muslims, officials drawn
from the Secretariat, and the Sikh Ambassador to Morocco.
With all its defects, the Indian delegation would have been
welcomed, nevertheless, but for a thoughtless declaration from
Delhi that any enquiries at Rabat about Ahmedabad and the
number of Muslims dead would be regarded as interference in a
matter of India's internal affairs, with which the Summit was
not concerned. The rest of the story is too well known to
require repetition. The doors of Rabat closed and the official
delegation had to find its way home from Rabat.