Being the Other: The Muslim in India

by Saeed Naqvi

On 9 November 1989, one of the wisest Congressmen I have known, Saiyid Nasir Hussain, sat in his office in the Faizabad mosque, contiguous with Ayodhya, holding his head in his hands and weeping: ‘They have cheated the Muslims.’ He then blurted out: ‘The deal with the VHP was struck at the very top.’ He knew what he was talking about. ‘In UP the Congress is finished,’ he declared. His words would prove prophetic. In a move to pre-empt Hindu mobilization to liberate Ram’s birthplace in Ayodhya, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had ordered the locks of the Babri Masjid to be opened in 1986. This would allow Hindus to have ‘darshan’ or be able to see the Ram idols which were placed under the central dome of the mosque. Rajiv Gandhi was advised that by opening the locks of the Babri Masjid, he would kill two birds with one stone—he would defuse Hindutva mobilization and, at the same time, silence mounting criticism that he was appeasing Muslims on the Shah Bano issue. The Shah Bano case was a landmark judgement in April 1985, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Muslim Personal Law could not stand in the way of Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which applied uniformly to all Indians, including Muslims. The issue was the case of Shah Bano, a sixty-two-year-old divorcee claiming maintenance, which Muslim Personal Law denied her. Conservative Muslim opinion was incensed at the court interfering in their Personal Law. Rajiv Gandhi decided to placate the Muslim vote bank. He ...