‘Can you impose a two-month curfew in Malabar as you’ve done in Shaheen Bagh now?’

Saeed Naqvi raises pertinent questions in the context of the ban on the Popular Front of India.

In this segment of The AIDEM interactions, Venkitesh Ramakrishnan, Managing Editor, interacts with Saeed Naqvi, a world renowned journalist and a specialist in international and national affairs, who, in recent years, has been focusing on the issue of communal polarisation in India and how it impacts all communities, especially the minorities.

There is a special context to this interaction _ the Popular Front of India (PFI), an organisation that was considered to be having extremist Islamic views and which is accused of being jehadist in nature, has been banned by the Union Government of India. Its front organisations have also been banned. In response, the PFI has dismantled itself. At the same time, the Campus Front, the student wing of the organisation, has decided to appeal to the court against the ban. Here, the edited transcript of the interaction:

Venkitesh Ramakrishnan: Naqvi saab, as somebody who has been observing the developments in society, especially the increasing communal polarisation, how do you look at the whole situation in India?

Saeed Naqvi: The atmosphere at this moment in the country is rife with Hindu-Muslim distrust and communalism. At this particular juncture, in normal times, one would have gone along with the government’s version, its description of a group being terrorist or being jehadist.

Moreover, I think, at this moment, I am presenting myself as a metaphor for certain members of the community. I would ask: What is being a jehadist? When you say, allegedly jehadist, what do you mean? Do you know? Do the cops know? Do the intelligence agencies know? What is jehadist? Al-Qaeda was jehadist. Are these Al-Qaeda? They went and blew up the Twin Towers [in New York]. And even that has not been totally proved.

It is a very peculiar story. Mohammad Shah Masood of the Panjshir Valley [in Afghanistan] had gone to a European Parliament and said, “Look, I am hearing a buzz… that something big is likely to happen on the American mainland”. He said this. There is total silence about that. It was only four days before the incident. Later he came back and he was finished by Islamists. Now, they were jehadists. Those who killed him.

What are these people doing? Is there some evidence for what they say?. Venkitesh, as a journalist of great renown, I respect you as somebody who does not write from the couch, I know how much you travel, I have travelled with you. So, without travelling, without empirical data, how do we say anything?

And as I said, I would go along with the government totally in normal times. At the moment, there is a suspicion in the community that the government is also mean, that the government is out to get us. Therefore, whatever has happened has to be explained.

I would be very honest. I don’t know what the genesis of the Popular Front is. I do not know whether they are the same who were in touch with this extreme Islamist group in Indonesia _ which had a strong Islamist movement. So we have to have more evidence. In recent years, a culture has developed, which has invaded our media space also. There is a certain kind of a journalist who the intelligence agencies, not at the top level but at the operational level, at a very low operational level, interact with, plants stories, and so on. That culture has grown. I can’t make any allegation but I do believe that there are many questions to be answered.

Venkitesh Ramakrishnan: You talked about the growing communal polarisation and distrust between Hindus and Muslims, which is growing. There is a kind of thesis that is being built around this sudden and stringent action against the PFI _ that the ideological leaders of the Narendra Modi-led government, which of course includes the RSS and its complex organisations, want to create another instrument, another tool, to aggravate the communal polarisation in the country, especially in the background of the economic crisis the country is facing _ the price rise that the people are facing, the kind of general distrust that has come about, the growing disillusionment among the people on the question of unemployment. What do you think of all these?

Saeed Naqvi: In Delhi for instance, in the Batla house area, the very area where you have the Shaheen Bagh, the very area where you have the Jamia, the situation is very complex; do you know that there is a curfew until to the 17th of November, in other words for two months? This place where Muslims live is going to be under curfew for two months. Why? What for? For what guilt? Out of what fear? Show us the evidence. Now they say, this is for national security. We can’t prove it to you. We can’t show you the evidence, but there is something we have. No, you are stumped. You are finished. Time was when these kinds of stories were related to Kashmir. They were Kashmir-oriented, the Lashkar-e-Taiba … after the mujahideen had pushed out Soviets from Afghanistan in 1989. A whole lot of problems there was in Kashmir because of the spare jehadi talent that the Americans had left behind there. They found work. The Americans picked up their bags and left. Then they [the mujahideen] came into Kashmir. Then they went to Cairo, Egypt, Algeria.. They were resurrected for the action in Syria which began in 2011. Therefore, there was a huge problem there. My own impression is (I may be wrong): You are from Kerala… I am a great admirer of Kerala. I find that the State is the most liberal, the most tolerant piece of real estate… there are problems, but you have the most secure Muslims. I have written for the newspaper Madhyamam, and I had a meeting with them [the Muslims of Kerala]. I found them super-confident, very secular, very Muslim, very much part of the national ethos. Now are they [the government] trying to hit the pockets where Muslims are secure, as they are in the whole Malabar area? Is that the idea? Because that is what seems to be the main thrust of the BJP argument. Are they going to move to Tamil Nadu where there is a lot of money in the leather industry, where multi-billionaires who are Muslims live? Are they going to say, well, now let’s move in there? Are they locating and identifying Muslims who are prosperous, where Muslims are secure, where they have made some money, maybe out of the Gulf, out of the interaction with the Gulf? I have no idea… I am only guessing.

Venkitesh Ramakrishnan: What you are trying to say is that it is a very complex situation, where there seem to be a lot of hidden factors at play.

Saeed Naqvi: Yeah.. The factors which you or I do not know. If you do know, speak about them.

Venkitesh Ramakrishnan: I do not know. But the point is that there is another significant view among the Muslim intelligentsia in Kerala and in some parts of Uttar Pradesh as well that the PFI is to blame. I was trying to get a couple of more people to be part of this discussion today. I was talking to a legal person based in Lucknow who is closely following many of these cases. But he refused to come to the programme saying that “from the strict legal point of view, I think that the PFI is to be blamed and that I have taken a position against them in many cases. So I cannot be part of a discussion like this where I cannot pretend that I am a neutral person.” That is one stream of opinion. The other stream of opinion which I heard two days ago in Kerala from a very senior Muslim intellectual and also from a young Muslim intellectual who teaches in Delhi. Both of them said that organisations like PFI,and the kind of violent actions that they carried out during a hartal recently are counterproductive to any sort of Muslim resistance. That’s another factor that is playing very strongly among the Muslim community.

Saeed Naqvi: Any Muslim organisation which is into violence has got to be condemned. But for them to be painted as a jehadist organisation, I need evidence. But if they are jehadists, they have to be banned. If they are terrorists, they have to be banned. There is another factor. There is a north-south divide. You will have a different approach in the north and you will have a different approach in the south. And I dare say, you may have a different approach in the northeastern region and you may have a different approach in West Bengal. In this in the Hindi belt which consists of nine States, where Hindutva is at its speak, this kind of fear exists. It is not in evidence as far as the south or Bengal or the northeastern region is concerned. because they [the Muslims???] may be picked up.

In this particular case, the legal person you have quoted, I do not know whose side to take. So I take no side. I am a journalist who believes that the truth must prevail. If the state is right, full strength to it. But if the PFI is being attacked because of it being Muslim, they need to be protected. I like to imagine that the evidence is there. But the evidence is not there. You cited this hartal incident [in Kerala]. Can you cite others?

Venkitesh Ramakrishnan: It is not as if other political organisations in Kerala never had resorted to similarly violent hartals.

Saeed Naqvi: One can turn around and say, ‘what about the Dharam Sansad?’ Are we going to establish that anything that is Hindu does no wrong? A Minister, who is the most visible Minister in the Cabinet, says “Goli maro salon ko.” [Shoot those fellows] He is there. He can get away with it. But I can’t get away with saying, “Bhai, inko ek thappad mar do.” [Brother, give him a tight slap] This differentiation has got to be established and fought.

There is yet another very interesting dimension and that is very interesting. The day the PFI-related arrests happened was also the day when Mohan Bhagwat visited a mosque and a madrassa in Delhi. It is precisely the day when Mr. Najeeb Jung, former Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, S.Y. Quraishi, former Election Commissioner, and Shahid Siddiqui, a busybody journalist who brings out an Urdu newspaper, Mr. Saeed Sherwani, a gentleman hotelier whose hotel happens to be in Yogi Adityanath’s area and a General, Zaheeruddin Shah who says things which you may or may not take seriously had gone and met him. Very huge propaganda was made out of it. These stories do not get this kind of currency unless there is a signal from somewhere. When the media is controlled, it is controlled thoroughly . And you have a whole lot of stories about them [the Sangh Parivar]. And they themselves are writing edit page articles. And there is this news that peace is breaking out, Hindu-Muslim amity is breaking out. And on the same day, this thing [the arrest of PFI activists] also happens. Is there a forked tongue? Are there two tongues? This has to be established. Because exactly on the same day, Mohan Bhagwat visited a madrassa! Remarkable act! A madrassa run by Maulana Ilyasi. People have views on him which are not very palatable. Anyway, he is a great favourite of theirs. He is a favourite of the Israelis. And he is someone to whom Muslims are very averse to. Maybe he is a very good chap, I don’t know.

Mohan Bhagwat visited his mosque. He called him ‘Desh ka neta’ [leader of the nation]. And he visited Ilyasi’s madrassa on the same day they are arresting 2500 PFI people.

Venkitesh Ramakrishnan: What I hear from some Hindutva-oriented theorists in Uttar Pradesh is that the Sangh plan now is to create a differentiation between a Muslim who is devoted to the country and a Muslim who is a jehadist, a traitor. This differentiation is what is being played out in the action against the PFI and the overtures that Mohan is making to the Muslim community. What is your take on that?

Saeed Naqvi: I am not acceptable because I am not with the PFI; nor am I acceptable because I am not part of the delegation that went to Mohan Bhagwat. So, where do I stand? Am I in the middle in this huge white space? Which is where most Muslims, the Indian Muslims are. Very interesting things happened in that conversation with Mohan Bhagwat. In fact I was going through an interview that I did with Bhaurao Deoras in 1990, which is part of my book. It is a full two-hour interview with him. Various things were discussed. He said, ‘why do you call us kafirs? We don’t like it.’ So someone said, why do you call us Pakistanis? So that is very easily settled. Kafir means a non-believer. But there is a huge body of poetry in Urdu in which they say, “who the hell are you to call someone a kafir? Are you the given who is on the righteous side? Everybody else on the wrong side?” But there is literature available against this. I have never understood why these politicians, the intelligentsia, identify Indian Muslims with the Mullah, who has been berated and criticised down the line. In the body of poetry in Urdu, there is not a single line in praise of the Mullah. He is chastised, right through. But they [Those who support partisan views ]don’t do poetry. No one cites Ghalib to me. No one cites all these great poets who are nationalists. Ram Prasad Bismil was a nationalist, whose song is still sung as a song of patriotism. Why doesn’t the Indian intelligentsia do a little homework? Acquaint yourselves with the poets of the community you are berating in the north. In the south, it is a different picture altogether. Because Muslims are much much more secure by my reckoning. I lay a bet, let them try and impose a two-month curfew” in Malabar.

Venkitesh Ramakrishnan: I don’t think it is possible.

Saeed Naqvi: But you have done it in the Jamia Milia area, the Batla House area, the Shaheen Bagh area. So you got these captive people you get to play with. But try it with the Labbai community in Tamil Nadu, the Kilakarai Muslims in Ramanathapuram. Therefore there is a differentiation not only between Hindus and Muslims but also between Muslims and Muslims.

Venkitesh Ramakrishnan: That’s exactly the point I am talking about. The aggravation of this difference between Muslims and Muslims, I think, is being talked about as a possible political tactic of the Sangh Parivar in its future course of action. But there is also the argument at one level that the Sangh itself, RSS itself, grew from strength to strength after it was banned twice. First, after the Mahatma Gandhi assassination and later, recently, after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. So, the argument is that the PFI’s political organisation, the SDPI (Social Democracy Party of India], has not been banned because you require the Election Commission’s clearance to ban a political organisation. So one argument that I am hearing is that the SDPI may become stronger and it may get some validation in mainstream politics in the days to come. But that is something that we have to wait and see. As you’ve very rightly pointed out, it is a complex situation and the average Muslim or the average Indian who does not support the PFI and who has doubts about the motives of the government, they are in the white space which cannot be really categorised.

Saeed Naqvi: There is another aspect which is surprising. Namely, after the Ukraine war and in the context of the war, India for the first time is in a very long period on a very sweet spot. We are on a very sweet spot. We can’t bargain this side and we can’t bargain with that side [simultaneously]. But war helps one to do that. Because this war is not about Ukraine. It is about the international order, whether the hegemon remains the hegemon, or the hegemony is shared and we become a multi-polar world. That is the precise ‘jhagda’ (conflict). We are at a sweet spot. Now, we can bargain with who we like to and we must say we have a very very brilliant External Affairs Minister in Jaishankar. He is managing it so nimbly and so well given his own predilections into which we will not go, but managing it very well. At this time, it is your turn to become a big power. You can, but when the international human rights body says that you are in the 160th position in the world order, when every human rights index is against you, when all the unemployment indices are against you, you have to pull up your socks there. I see Mohan Bhagwat’s effort as one aimed at setting right that image. That image will have to be refurbished if we are to be the power that we at the moment are positioned to be. But in the course of which, if we are going to carry on this dividing and polarisation politics, then it is not going to reflect well on you. But I say there is a horizon where the sun is rising; it is 2024, and maybe after that, there is another dawn.

Venkitesh Ramakrishnan: Saeed Saab, you have summed it up beautifully with an international perspective and on that note, we will end this discussion but we will continue to interact with you on various topics on a regular basis. Once again, thank you for being associated with The AIDEM as its Chief Content Advisor.

Watch the full interview here on The AIDEM YouTube Channel

Subscribe to our channels onYouTube&WhatsApp