Arun Shourie

"Then we have our seedy Leftists busy abusing each other. And finally we have the liberals - busy rearranging furniture on the deck of theTitanic, nay busy holding seminars about rearranging furniture on the deck of the Titanic."

"To rely on these fellows to save us from the impending fascist avalanche is to rely on superannuated buffaloes to see us across a minefield."

"Thus silence retards reform. If large numbers were writing and talking about the communalism of these leaders, for instance, the reformers within these communities would not be as isolated, indeed as beleaguered as they are today. Worst of all not speaking the whole truth becomes a habit. Concealing one’s convictions, glossing over the evidence, deception, become almost an ingredient of public discourse."

"And yet I find in the majority judgement a fatal innocence... The judgement quotes the proclamations from the Rig, Yajur and Atharva Vedas - about all human beings being one, about their being the children of the same Mother-Earth, about the yearnings that all of use be friends. But it does not note that less than a mile from its building volumes upon volumes of fatwas are being sold and distributed which exhort Muslims never to trust Kafirs, never to allow them into their confidence; which tell them that their first duty and allegiance is to their religion and not to sundry laws... It is not Gandhiji who needs to be convinced that Ishwar and Allah ar one. It is not Guru Gobind Singh who needs to be convinced that mandir and masjid, Puran and Quran are one. The ones who need to be convinced that they are one - say, the ulema, or the Shahi Iman... - have it as an article of faith that they are not one."

"The forfeiture is exactly the sort of thing which has landed us where we are : where intellectual inquiry is shut out ; where our tradition are not examined and reassessed and where as a consequence there is no dialogue."

"They rely on intimidation, It is exactly by tactics of this kind that an earlier book of Mr. Swarup - Understanding Islam Through Hadis - was put out of circulation... November 27, 1990, under the influence of the same intimidation the Delhi Administration declared that, contrary to what it had itself twice decreed, the book was not only objectionable, was deliberately and malicious so!.... Our response should be three fold. First, whenever an attempt such as this from quarters such as Mr. Shahabuddin is made to stifle free speech, to kill even scholarly inquiry, we must go out of our way and immediately obtain the book.... Secondly, whenever the intimidators prevail and such a book actually comes to be banned large numbers should take to reprinting it, photocopying it, to circulating it, and discussing its contents. The third thing is more necessary, and in the long run will be the complete answer to the intimidators. As long as scholars like Mr. Swarup are few, intimidators can bully weak governments into shutting them one by one. But what will they do if 1,000, scholars are to do work of the same order? This is the way to deal with intimidators. Let 1,000 scholars carry on work Mr. Swarup has pioneered."

"For fifty years this bunch has been suppressing facts and inventing lies. How concerned they are about that objective of the ICHR -- to promote objective and rational research into events of our past. How does this square with the guidelines issued by their West Bengal Government in 1989…"Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned"? But their wholesale fabrications of the destruction of Buddhist vihars, about the non-existent "Aryan invasion" -- to question these is to be communal, chauvinist! It is this which has been the major crime of these "historians". But these are not just partisan "historians". They are nepotists of the worst kind... they are ones who have used State patronage to help each other in many, many ways... Not only are these "historians" partisan, not only are they nepotists, they are ones who have used State patronage to help each other in many, many ways… As a result, the books and pamphlets of these fellows are available in all regional languages, but the works of even Lokmanya Tilak are not available except in Marathi!"

"All the facts ... were well known fifty years ago. With the passing of the generation that fought for Independence, with the total abandonment of looking up the record, most of all with the rise of casteist politics, they have been erased from public awareness. And that erasure has led to the predictable result: schizophrenia. To start with, those trading in Ambedkar's name and their apologists have sought to downplay the struggle for Independence: the freedom it brought is not "real", they insist. Exactly as that other group did which teamed up with the British at that crucial hour, 1942 -- the Communists. Indeed,... to justify Ambedkar's conduct his followers insist that British Rule was better... But the facts lurk in the closet. Lest they spill out and tarnish the icon they need for their politics, lest their politics be shown up for what it is -- a trade in the name of the dispossessed -- these followers of Ambedkar enforce their brand of history through verbal terrorism, and actual assault."

"The most telling illustration has been provided by the silence over the new archaeological findings. .... When the findings of the excavations which had been conducted over a decade ago became public, and these left little doubt about the fact that there had indeed been a temple at the site, archaeology itself was denounced. Papers made themselves available for tarnishing one of the most respected archaeologists in the world - the former Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India who had led those excavations. ... The lesson is plain: should such double-standards continue, Hindu opinion will become even less amenable to the minatory admonitions of our editorialists than it has already become."

"Clearly, what our newsmen call 'hard-liners' have been vindicated."

"As the State has been successfully bent by Sikh and Muslim communalists over the last decade, double-standards, I would say in some cases duplicity have been the hallmark of the media's treatment of events and issues."

"Every single Muslim historian of medieval India lists temples which the rulers he is writing about has destroyed and the mosques he has built instead. (429)"

"A case in which the English version of a major book by a renowned Muslim scholar, the fourth Rector of one of the greatest centres of Islamic learning in India, listing some of the mosques, including the Babri Masjid, which were built on the sites and foundations of temples, using their stones and structures, is found to have the tell-tale passages censored out; The book is said to have become difficult to get;... Evasion, concealment, have become a national habit. And they have terrible consequences... It was a long, discursive book, I learnt, which began with descriptions of the geography, flora and fauna, languages, people and the regions of India. These were written for the Arabic speaking peoples, the book having been written in Arabic. ... A curious fact hit me in the face. Many of the persons who one would have normally expected to be knowledgeable about such publications were suddenly reluctant to recall this book. I was told, in fact, that copies of the book had been removed, for instance from the Aligarh Muslim University Library. Some even suggested that a determined effort had been made three or four years ago to get back each and every copy of this book. ....Such being the eminence of the author, such being the greatness of the work, why is it not the cynosure of the fundamentalists’’ eyes? The answer is in the chapter “Hindustan ki Masjidein”, “The Mosques of Hindustan”. ... Each reference to each of these mosques having been constructed on the sites of temples with, as in the case of the mosque at Benaras, the stones of the very temple which was demolished for that very purpose have been censored out of the English version of the book! Each one of the passages on each one of the seven mosques! No accident that. .... why would anyone have thought it necessary to remove these passages from the English version-that is the version which was more likely to be read by persons other than the faithful? Why would anyone bowdlerise the book of a major scholar in this way?..."

"Their real significance- and I dare say that they are but the smallest, most innocuous example that one can think of on the mosque-temple business-lies in the evasion and concealment they have spurred. I have it on good authority that the passages have been known for long, and well known to those who have been stoking the Babri Masjid issue. That is the significant thing; they have known them, and their impulse has been to conceal and bury rather than to ascertain the truth....The fate of Maulana Abdul Hai’s passages-and I do, not know whether the Urdu version itself was not a conveniently sanitised version of the original Arabic volume-illustrates the cynical manner in which those who stoke the passions of religion to further their politics are going about the matter. Those who proceed by such cynical calculations sow havoc for all of us, for Muslims, for Hindus, for all. Those who remain silent in the face of such cynicism, such calculations help them sow the havoc. Will we shed our evasions and concealments? Will we at last learn to speak and face the whole truth?"

"Upon going through the text the reader will notice how completely contrary to the facts are the cliches which are bandied about in public discourse in India, and which as a consequence so many have by now internalised.... (x)"

"A moment's reflection will show that India's case is not at par with the ones we have been considering. For those instances are of the most recent times - those nations were "imagined", those traditions were "invented" just a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago. By contrast India has been seen as one and its people have had a common way of life for thousands of years. It is not just that its history is that old.... It is a continuous history. (9)"

"Not an enforced amnesia but an unsparing memory - that is what will build a nation."

"Every sentence a lie. ... And have you ever heard the BBC refer to Nawaz Sharif as a "fundamentalist," a "fanatic"? But what would it have called Advani if he had made a statement of that kind with "Hindu" substituted for "Muslims"?"

"I hope the reader will not just read through the examples but will also ask why it is that such material is not placed before our students. After all it is not difficult to come by, and, as the reader will agree after going through it, it has the most direct bearing on our denationalization. Yet, even though he may have considerable interest in our current problems, even though he may have been following closely the public discourse on such problems, in all probability the reader would not have come across the material. Why is this so?"

"But there is an even more potent cause for the near total erasure of such material from our public discourse and our instruction. And that is the form of “secularism” which we have practised these forty-five years: a “secularism” in which double-standards have been the norm, one in which everything that may remove the dross by which our national identity has been covered has become anathema."

"The Catholic Bishops Conference of India is the hightest body engaged in attempts to coordinate the work of different Catholic churches in India and to engage in dialogue with other religions. ... To celebrate the 50th anniversary... the CBCI convened a meeting in January 1994.... And it was an important gathering: it was only the second time in fifty years and the first time in twenty five years that such a comprehensive review was being undertaken... The organizers were so kind as to ask me to give the Hindu perception of the work of Christian missionaries in India."

"And on the basis of criteria of this kind tribals were hacked off from Hindu society. One has but to read the descriptions of Animism which were relied upon to notice that they could well be describing a variety of Hindus."

"The organisers had invited Arun Shourie to give the Hindu assessment of the work of missionaries in India. Arun Shourie addressed the Archbishops, Bishops and others on 5 January 1994. ... The organisers asked Arun Shourie to write a paper based on his talk.... As the controversy snowballed... [they] invited several senior churchmen to discuss Missionaries in India on a public platform with Arun Shourie."

"A dialogue for serving its third purpose could be held only in January 1994 when Arun Shourie, the noted journalist and scholar, was invited by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) to present a “Hindu assessment” of missionary work in India. But unfortunately for-the managers of this “dialogue”, it went out of hand and misfired. Ever since, the giant Christian establishment in India has been smarting with the hurt which Arun Shourie has caused. The uproar he has raised can be compared only with the uproar which had followed the publication of K. M. Panikkars’ Asia and Western Dominance in 1953. Missiology has been mobilizing its arsenal of apologetics and polemics in order to control the damage that has been done to Christian claims and pretensions... The CBCI was celebrating the 50th anniversary of its foundation, and holding a Seminar at Ishvani Kendra, a Catholic seminary in Pune. Almost all the Catholic big-wigs in India were present when Arun Shourie gave his talk on 5 January 1994... By the time the paper was fully elaborated, it had acquired the size of a book. Arun Shourie published it in early May 1994 under the title, Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas. ... Meanwhile, Arun Shourie had written several articles on the subject in his syndicated column which appears in more than a score of newspapers published in several languages all over the country. The articles evoked a lively discussion in the Maharashtra Herald of Pune."

"The Christian missionary orchestra in India after independence has continued to rise from one crescendo to another with the applause of the Nehruvian establishment manned by a brood of self-alienated Hindus spawned by missionary-macaulayite education. The only rift in the lute has been K.M. Panikkar’s Asia and Western Dominance published in 1953, the Report of the Christian Missionary Activities Committee Madhya Pradesh published in 1956, Om Prakash Tyagi’s Bill on Freedom of Religion introduced in the Lok Sabha in 1978, Arun Shourie’s Missionaries in India published in 1994 and the Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Bill introduced in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly by Mangal Prabhat Lodha, M.L.A. on 20 December 1996."

"In the bookshops in the Muslim areas of our cities—for instance in the bookshops around the Jama Masjid in Delhi— the collections of fatwas fill shelves after shelves. They are put together with great care, the sort of care one associates with sacred literature. The pages are well laid out. The calligraphy is often a work of art. The volumes are beautifully bound— ever so often with gilded embossing on the covers."

"In a word, fatwas are the shariah in action."

"For all these reasons one would expect a host of studies on fatwas. But then one would reckon without our intellectuals. It is yet more proof of the fact that our intellectuals have seceded from our country; that there is hardly a study in either English or Urdu on the fatwas."

"First, our scholars have not spared time for this vital material for the same reason on account of which they have not spared time for other things vital to our existence as a country. Most of the intellectual work in India consists in writing footnotes to work being done in the West—this has been so in the case of Marxist intellectuals even more than it is in the case of the others. And when our intellectuals are not engaged in writing these footnotes, they are busy following the fashion of the day in Western circles, busy ‘applying’, as the phrase goes, to Indian material the notion or ‘thesis’ which has become fashionable in the West. In a word, our scholarly work is derivative. So the first reason there has been no substantial study of the fatwas in India is that they have not yet caught the eye of the West."

"“We should, in particular the Muslim liberal should speak the whole truth about the condition of Muslim society—for instance about the plight of women within it. And not flinch from tracing it back to its roots—the text, the laws, the ways of thinking. We should document the social practice of the Ulema [Muslim religious leaders] and of the fundamentalist politicians.…We should document what the Ulema etc. have been saying and decreeing on religious issues themselves.…We must, in particular the Muslim liberal must, take the consistently secular position on every matter—that is the only way to confront the fundamentalists, it is the surest way to bring home the alternative viewpoint to the community.…Fatwas and the rest which impinge upon the civil rights of a person are manifestly a criminal infringement of law; we should show them up as such; and join others in demanding that anyone who seeks to trample upon the rights of others by using…fatwas should be brought to book under the law. Similarly, we must expose, and work to thwart concessions by our opportunist politicians which are meant to appease, and will in the end strengthen the grip of these reactionary elements.…But it is not going to be enough to counter the Ulema, and their networks, or to show up their syllabi. As we have seen, what they proclaim, and regurgitate, and enforce is what the Koran and Hadith prescribe. Therefore, to really break the vice, liberals, and liberal Muslims in particular must examine and exhume the millenarian claims of Islam: the claims that there is only one truth, that it has been finally revealed to only one man, that it is enshrined in only one Book, that that Book is very difficult to comprehend, that the select few alone know its inner meaning, that therefore it is everyone's duty to heed them just as it is the duty of the select to make sure that everyone heeds them. In a word, the basic texts themselves have to be opened to examination.” (quoted in Bostom, A. G. (2015). Sharia versus freedom: The legacy of Islamic totalitarianism.)"

"The volumes of fatwas devote pages and pages to an even more exotic subject—namely, what the believer should do with an animal which has been used for intercourse. ‘What is the hukum about the animal with which a man has had sexual intercourse—what is the hukum about the animal and the man?’, asks the querist, and after due deliberation the ulema of this great ‘centre of Islamic learning’ issue a fatwa. The other matters which call forth fatwas are just as earth-shaking. ‘Is a pregnant goat which has been used for intercourse halal or haram? Has one to wait for her to deliver or should she be killed and buried without waiting?’ ‘Zaid has had intercourse with a goat. What is the law in respect of her? Can we eat her flesh or drink her milk? And what is the law for him who has had the intercourse?’ ‘What is the punishment for having intercourse with a minor child or a goat?’ ‘Zaid decided to have intercourse with an animal which is halal such as a cow or a goat. He approached the animal and inserted his male member into its vagina. But there was no ejaculation. Should Zaid or other Muslims regard as halal the meat or milk of that animal? Has Zaid to do penance for this offence?’ ‘Zaid had intercourse with a cow, and then sold it. How should that money be spent? Can it be used for sadqah? And what is the punishment fo Zaid?’ ‘What is the punishment for one who has intercourse with a mare? What should be done with that mare?’ A fatwa on one and each of these matters. And the answers are not always predictable, often they turn on subtle differences. It is enough for the believer who has had intercourse with an animal to do taubah, decree these men of learning, but in the usual case the animal must be killed and burnt. In the usual case, that is, its meat should not be eaten. However, to take one instance, ‘If there is no ejaculation (inside the animal) its meat and milk are halal, without question,’ rule the ulema of Dar al-Ulum, Deoband. ‘But if there is ejaculation, it is better to kill the animal and bury its flesh. No one should eat it, though it is not haram to eat it.’ [...] Finally, while others may be a bit squeamish in discussing such questions, and a little surprised at encountering them in ‘religious’ books, the ulema have no qualms about discussing such matters and laying down the law on them as much as on any other matter. They regard it as one of their functions to do so. The point is set at rest by Maulana Mufti Abdur Rahim Qadri. It transpires that a maulvi, styling himself as Hazrat Shaykh al-Islam Maulana Maulvi, published two pamphlets attacking the Hanafite jurists for holding that intercourse with an animal does not vitiate a fast, even if ejaculation takes place. He cited the great authorities of Hanafite law—Shami and the Durr-ul-Mukhtar—as having decreed this. He also chided the learned ulema for filling religious books with discussions of such topics. The writings of the maulvi were referred to Mufti Abdur Rahim Qadri for opinion. The Mufti’s elucidation takes up ten printed pages of the Fatawa-i-Rahimiyyah. On the substance of the question, the decision turns on whether the ejaculation took place upon intromission into the animal—in which case the fast is rendered void—or it took place by the man merely touching the animal’s genitals with his hands or kissing it, without using his sexual organ—in which case the fast is not vitiated. The Mufti cites authorities to nail the distinction, and he argues that the maulvi who had made the charge against the Hanafite jurists had misrepresented their rulings on the matter."

"Next comes the Urdu press. It has been one of the most potent allies of, in some ways the instrument of the ulema, as we saw in reviewing the campaigns against Dr Zakir Hussain and Maulana Azad. We saw the same role and the same potency in the campaigns in 1992 against Mushirul Hasan, pro-vice-chancellor of Jamia Millia in Delhi, and Abid Reza Bedar, director of the Khuda Bakhsh Library in Patna. A shrill tone, wholesale distortions, creating echoes upon echoes of their allegations, fomenting an extreme insecurity and then presenting everything as an assault on Islam—these are its hallmarks. And they invariably end up being deployed to fortify the world view which the ulema want the community to retain."

"And then there is the effect of patronage. Funds from Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Iraq, or other ‘Islamic’ sources go to the ulema, to elements and organizations controlled by or beholden to them. The funds are almost never channelled to liberals. The Indian state is of course worse. As the ulema control the community, it is to the ulema, and to those who speak their language that the state genuflects. As the state has got weaker, the ulema have been able to press their campaigns with greater and greater ease. And in turn they have been able to fortify their hold over the community by demonstrating that it is to them that the state bends—on Shah Bano for instance; that it dare not step in their way: look at the audacity of their current campaign to set up a parallel structure of courts—the shariah courts—outside the legal system of the country."

"The liberal who happens to be a Hindu is so apologetic, he has internalized sham secularism so much, he is in any case so innocent of the texts—of Islam, of Hinduism, of our laws and our Constitution—and he has internalized double standards to such an extent that he has made silence on all matters Islamic, indeed toeing the fundamentalists’ line proof of secularism. The ‘secularists’ of the English press are a ready example. They will refer to Ali Mian as ‘the moderate, universally respected Muslim leader’, without bothering to read anything he has written. They will refer to sundry muftis and maulwis as ‘Muslim divines’. They will shut their eyes tight to what organizations like the All India Muslim Personal Law Board or the All India Milli Council are doing; and will jump in to shout and scream should any agency of the state take a step to uncover their activities. Worst of all, they will, by a Pavlovian reflex, weigh in on the same side as the ulema on issues, and insist that anyone who opposes that side is ‘communal’, ‘fascist’, ‘revanchist’. The effect of such shouting is not limited to poisoning the air of discourse. Weak rulers are swayed by that air. And so public policy bends to the ulema. The latter are thus twice strengthened."

"When we study the discourses of the Buddha or what Gandhiji has to say on, say, fasting, the content is all about looking within, about self-purification. But even when they deal with purely religious subjects the fatwas are all about the form to which the believer must adhere. They resemble instructions a drill sergeant gives to cadets for a parade."

"While our leaders and the Supreme Court keep chanting, ‘All religions are one’; while they keep recalling the Vedic pronouncement, ‘Truth is one, only the sages call it by different names’; while they keep recalling Ashoka’s rock edict, ‘One who reveres one’s own religion and disparages that of another, due to devotion to one’s own religion and to glorify it over all others, does injure one’s own religion certainly’, the ulema proclaim the very opposite set of values, the truly Islamic values to be fair to the ulema. Thus we have Maulana Ahmad Riza Khan descend as an avalanche on persons who countenance processions in which books like the Gita and Quran are carried with equal respect; he declares that for a Muslim to even say, ‘Hindus should live by the Vedas, Muslims should live by the Quran,’ is kufr; a temple is the abode of Satans, he says, a Muslim is forbidden from going into it; to describe the Holy Quran as being like the Veda is kufr; to say that Hindus should live by the Veda is to ask people to follow kufr, and to ask people to follow kufr is kufr..."

"The fatwas reflect this belief in double standards. The differential attitude to conversion and apostasy illustrates this vividly. Islam regards it as a right and duty to convert persons from other religions. The ulema vehemently insist on it....Exactly the same position holds in regard to doing something or refraining from doing something out of regard for the other person’s religious sentiments.....An even more vivid instance is the stance in regard to the continuation of religious practices. It is the right and duty of a Muslim to carry on his religious rituals. ...Under no circumstances can the Islamic ruler give permission to kafirs to continue their religious rites, declares the Fatawa-i-Rizvia, and asks: shall he permit them to practise their kufr and thereby himself become a kafir?...It adds that there are several Hadis to the effect that no non-Muslim should remain in the Arab island...So, no non-Muslim shall be allowed to stay in the Arab island, but if a Bangladeshi who has entered India illegally is asked to leave, that is an assault on Islam!...Similarly, even today in no Islamic state can teachers in a school impart religious education of their faith to non-Muslim children...No restriction can be tolerated on teaching of the Quran and on religious instruction, declares Kifayatullah. ...And yet if we were to go by secularist discourse there is no religion which has abolished distinctions as Islam has, there is no religion which treats all equally as Islam does!"

"In the face of all this those who continue to assert, ‘Shariah has safeguarded the rights of women like no other system of law has,’ do so only because of their confidence that no one but them has read the texts of shariah."

"And yet we must believe, on pain of being communal, that no system of law has guaranteed as many rights to women as shariah, that no religion is as solicitous of them as Islam. ... The argument can fool no one but the determined apologist."

"That is not just the shariah as enforced by the fatwas. As our governments have not acted upon the directive of the Constitution to enact a Uniform Civil Code, that is the law of secular India enforced by our courts!"

"It is not the occasion but the ulema’s assessment of women per se which is of interest, for it pervades the fatwas through and through. ‘For the Quran says,’ declare the ulema of Deoband settling a matter to which we shall soon turn, ‘the husband is the master.’ .... And among these kafirs there are gradations, Maulana Ahmad Riza Khan declares: one hard kind of basic kufr is Christianity; worse than it is Magianism; worse than that is idolatry; worse than that is Wahabiyat; and worse than all these and more wicked is Deobandiyat..."

"And so on indefinitely. The effect of all this will be obvious: when you take a problem to them, the ulema can facilitate your way or thwart it by invoking one authority rather than the other. Simultaneously they, joined this time by the apologist, will insist that we, in particular the non-Muslims, must never cease to believe that the shariah is a clear and definite code, that it is a divinely ordained, and therefore an eternal and unchanging code!"

"Two features would by now be obvious: (1) far from being a clear and definite code, the shariah is ambiguous; (2) it is ambiguous on the entire spectrum of issues. Two operational consequences follow: (1) this ambiguity is one of the bases for the unrivalled power of the ulema; (2) the ulema therefore sabotage every effort to codify the shariah as zealously as they fight back every effort to replace it by a modern code common to all."

"That is why Maulana Ahmad Riza Khan is only being true to the Faith when, as we saw at the beginning of the chapter, he says that the glory of Islam consists in having science bend to it, not in its bending to science. What holds for science holds a fortiori for mere historical ‘facts’—of whether there have been a hundred Caliphs or twelve."

"The earth is stationary. The sun revolves around it. The stars are stationary, hung as lamps by Allah to guide travellers, and to stone the Devil. To believe anything contrary to all this is to betray The Faith. Men are the masters. Each may keep up to four wives at a time and as many concubines ‘as the right hand holds’. The wives are fields which the husband may or may not ‘irrigate’ as he will. The husband can bind them to obeying his merest whim on pain of being divorced. If he is still not satisfied, he can throw them out with one word. Upon being thrown out they are to be entitled to bare sustenance—but only for three months, and nothing at all beyond that. To see any inequity in this, to demand anything more for the women is to question the wisdom of Allah, it is to strike at Islam. To urinate while standing, to fail to do istinja in the prescribed way, to fail to believe that the saliva of a dog is napaak and his body paak—these are grave sins. To ask for the well-being of a kafir, be he ever so saintly, even upon his death, to fail to believe that a Muslim, be he ever so sinful, is better than a kafir, be the latter ever so virtuous, is kufr itself. Such is the mindset of the ulema. It pervades their rulings on all aspects of life."

"Education is central to advancement—of the country, of the individual. But the ulema have fought hard and long against what most today would consider education. For them religious education must take priority over modern, technical education. Only those subjects are to be studied, only that knowledge is to be imparted which strengthens one’s faith— in practical terms, only those subjects are to be studied, only that knowledge pursued which confirms one in the belief that whatever is written in the Quran and Hadis, whatever has been put out by the ulema over the centuries is true and the acme of wisdom as well as perfection. The education of women, in particular their being awakened to new values, their being trained for new professions, their being awakened to their rights—all this is anathema; it is held to be injurious to them, in fact it is declared to be the way to disrupting society and undermining Islam."

"Is an institution the Indian history course of which covers only the period from the raids of Mahmud Ghaznavi to 1947, the geography course of which focuses on the Arabian peninsula, an institution of and for India?"

"Predictably, in Maulana Ahmad Riza Khan’s reckoning the Shias are not Muslims at all. Their ‘mosques’ are not mosques—and remember, as Mir Baqi and his descendants, the mutwallis of the mosque were Shias, the ‘Babri masjid’ was a Shia mosque."

"‘Arrey bhai, but why don’t you write on Hindu fatwas?,’—that from a prominent intellectual who carries a haloed name. There is nothing like the fatwa among Hindus—but surely even our intellectuals know that. The point of such admonitions is different. In this view of the matter, a Hindu should stay clear of writing on Islam. Rather, that if he writes about matters Islamic or Muslim, he should only pen Hosannas—’the religion of tolerance, equality...’—he should only write books ‘understanding’, that is explaining away the ‘Muslim mind’. At the least, if he just has to allude to some unfortunate drawback in it, he must attribute it to some special time and place and exculpate Islam from it! Even more important, he must make sure that he ‘balances’ his remark about that point in Islam with denunciation about something in Hinduism, anything—the caste system, dowry deaths, looking upon foreigners as malechh, at least sati if nothing else fits the bill!"

"What we are witnessing today in relation to the criminals of the Emergency is not the rule of law but the destruction of it. We are witnessing how the bourgeois rule of law is destroyed - members of the class itself destroy it for their personal aggrandizement and the bourgeoisie is unable to muster up the firmness needed to bring these blackguards to book. Today two features of our legal system are being laid bare for all to see. First, it cannot catch criminals if they are influential and well connected. Second, it cannot catch them for their principal crimes against the people and the State."