| 07 January 2005 | Friday | 25 Ziqa'ad 1425 |
A third front finally?
What went wrong with the Muslim world
Was it the vengeance of a just and benevolent God who is angry with men, women and children 'tainted with sin,' revelling in the tourist resorts on the warm and hospitable beaches washed by the Indian Ocean's waves? Those who are religiously inclined may be asking themselves if the tsunami havoc of last month that claimed 150,000 lives or more was a re-play of the pre-historic deluge of Noah.
Nothing can be more preposterous than such a thought. This is not the first case of a natural disaster of this kind in recorded history when human failings were not the remotest cause and where the elements of nature alone were the agents of destruction and devastation - earth's primeval plates under the bed of the ocean shifting and swerving, thereby prompting the otherwise calm waters to rise like an enraged giant waking from deep slumber. Earthquakes, cyclones, inland river floods and volcanic eruptions have caused worse disasters in the past.
All rational minds will view these natural disasters not as cases of God's fury but implementation of the Divine law of ecological balance of which modern man, at this stage of intellectual development, has become aware and at a time when ecology has acquired the status of a science devoted to the study of plants, animals and humans in relation to the environment.
But natural disasters on this scale have been, through the ages, seen in a different light by sages. Buddha (563 BC), after receiving 'enlightenment' in the wake of a protracted period of penance and meditation, concluded that the world is evil and human life basically unhappy because of carnal desires in every soul. Seeking 'nirvana', or extinction, by renouncing the world was the recommended recipe.
Buddha's contemporary, Zoroaster of Persia, in order to reconcile the goodness of God with the ills and pains of actual life, bifurcated God, function wise, Ormuzd, concerned with things good and noble, having a fleet of angels of virtue; and Ahraman, concerned with things evil and bad with an equally large fleet of angels of vice. This is how he explained the dualism in nature.
In Greece, the land of philosophers and sages, Pythagoras, a distant contemporary of Buddha and Zoroaster, also sought to explain this duality by postulating that the sources of good and evil were separate. But since, like Buddha, he too did not believe in God and the after-life, he thought that every soul had to atone for his/her sins and vices in this world, through a process of transmigration an unending chain of births and rebirths.
Hinduism, which was later introduced in India by Aryans after occupying that country in sixth century B.C., the period when the preachings of Buddha, Zoroaster and Pythagoras, had gained sufficient currency in the Middle East and Central Asia, rests on the dogma of 'Awa-Gawan' or endless arrivals and departures of soul, i.e. an interminable cycle of births and rebirths till the attainment of 'mukti' or salvation.
Also, a kind of trinity of supreme gods became the main plank of the Brahmanic theology - Brahma being the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Mahesha, the destroyer.
According to the Quran, Allah, the one and only God, has declared that "no calamity befalls but with His leave" (64:11). Thus, calamities and miseries and misfortunes that afflict mankind are traceable to the Almighty's inscrutable grand design and are the natural consequence of the divine laws governing the smooth functioning of the universe until the apocalypse, or Qi'amat, occurs to destroy the existing system and erect a new order to dispense justice - rewarding resurrected humans for good deeds performed on earth and punishing them for bad deeds within the external framework provided to each individual and his/her in-built and inborn capacity.
One has to bear in mind that, according to the Quran, human beings have been "created in affliction" (90:4) and that "every soul must taste death and will be tried with evil and with good (21:35) and, finally, "this life of the world is but a pastime and sport, life hereafter being the real life" (29:64).
These cryptic hints paint a complete picture of the present world, peopled by "weaklings" (4:28) facing "affliction" but not tainted with "original sin" transmitted, supposedly, by the first parents, who incurred God's displeasure right after their creation in their primordial abode.
According to Islam, the question of atonement for any kind of sin in the present world does not arise nor any kind of punishment from above, in the form of a calamity or natural disaster, is due in the present life.
Past cases of punishment meted out to citizens of "evil" city-states, who were repeatedly warned by local prophets sent by God, are a part of ancient history.
So a Muslim who believes that the ills and afflictions of the present life are not worth worrying about in a world unabated by ephemeral mortals are likely to treat natural disasters merely as a chance happening for people to die the inevitable, pre-ordained death, which is the passage to face one's Maker in the next everlasting world.
But those who think that all the misery, suffering and affliction seen around in this world are a picture of the divine scheme of gruesome retribution and punishment, then any effort to alleviate human sufferings will not be a noble act of charity and a humanitarian step to help fellow human beings in their hour of distress. It will, according to them, be a criminal act of intervention in the dispensation of divine justice.
A third front finally?
It is understandable from the Congress point of view that there should be no third alternative. It is also understandable that the party should be angry with Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav who has made the suggestion for a non- Congress, non-BJP combination.
He was the one who did not support Congress chief Sonia Gandhi when she fell short of the magic figure of 272 in the 543-member Lok Sabha required to become the prime minister some seven years ago. But it is not understandable how the third alternative is harmful to the country. At present, the nation is at the mercy of two political parties: the Congress and the BJP.
Lack of direction by the one and a communal approach by the other are too horrifying prospects to ignore. Fortunately, neither of the two parties is in a majority in parliament. They have to depend on others to form the government.
Had they been in a majority, the Congress would have been ruling in its characteristic authoritarian way and the BJP leading yet another yatra on the line which L.K. Advani did, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction.
Nonetheless, it suits the Congress if no other secular option emerges. The party then becomes the sole representative of anti-communal forces. The voters who want a pluralistic India may be forced to opt for it, notwithstanding its non-performance.
Strange, the Congress should feel happy that the BJP is the only alternative. The pitiable condition in which the BJP is after the shattering defeat at the Lok Sabha polls can improve only if the voters have no option other than the Congress which has done little in its seven-month-old rule.
The BJP is confident of harnessing people's disillusionment to come back. In fact, the second line of the BJP leadership is already convinced that the country has come to adopt the two-party system. It has only to wait for the next election to return to power.
This make-believe world in which the two parties live has been made somewhat real by the CPI (Marxist) which has said that there is no need for a third alternative. The backseat driving probably fits into the party's scheme of things. But people are looking for some party or a combination which could attend to the immediate problems: the absence of law and order, corrupt ministers and public servants and mounting unemployment. They have found both the Congress and the BJP loud in rhetoric and low in performance.
The real disappointment is that both the Congress and the BJP are tethered to such economic and foreign policies which primarily favour the multinationals and big powers.
New Delhi's obsession to increase the growth rate has pushed the welfare of people to the background. Social sector was a casualty in the long rule of the Congress after independence. Things did not improve during the BJP rule.
The third alternative, which both the Congress and the BJP want to stall, is primarily a combination of regional parties. This, as the very formation suggests, will be nearer to the grassroots and oppose the concentration of power at the centre which the Congress and the BJP have been doing.
Such a combination will keep regional identities intact on the one hand and strengthen the country's pluralism on the other. It is a pity that the left is opposing this for its temporary gains.
During the short span of Janata Dal rule, the states had more say because they constituted the government at the centre. The combination would have probably done better if V.P. Singh did not have to depend on the support of the BJP and Deve Gowda and Inder Kumar Gujral of the Congress.
The two parties played politics and pulled the carpet from beneath all the three when the game they were playing was over. The discomfort of the Congress and the BJP can be seen when they face the assembly elections. Except Haryana, where the Congress has negative vote coming to it, the two main parties will have little showing either in Bihar or Jharkhand.
Candidates have queued up at the headquarters of the two in the capital to get tickets. It is their high command which has decided who will contest and from where. The proximity to the central leaders has counted, not merit.
Regional parties have at least conducted the exercise of selecting candidates from their respective states, some time going even to the district headquarters for the purpose.
Naturally, regional parties react adversely to the Congress and the BJP when there are assembly elections. That the two have a lion's share in the Lok Sabha is understandable because they are all-India parties. But when they poach the territory of regional parties, the two show their ugly side of acquisitiveness. Both the Congress and the BJP should voluntarily allow regional parties to have their majority in the assemblies. They represent local aspirations. This is what federalism is all about.
The Congress and the BJP should realize that the all-India character of political parties has got restricted over the years. The main factor is the language.
English, even though understood more widely than before, is not the language of the common man in a state. He is proficient in his mother language. He wants to understand the solution of his problems in that very language. Leaders in Delhi are not proficient in regional languages.
The BJP dominates Rajasthan and Mahdya Pradesh because it works through their regional language, Hindi. Regional parties have an effective say in the south because their medium is the mother tongue.
Kerala where the Congress has formed the government has done so with the assistance of the Muslim League which is regional in character. In Karnataka it is Deve Gowda's regional party, the Janata Dal (secular), which has given the Congress a majority in the state assembly.
Therefore, when the Congress or the BJP wants a major share in the states, they come a cropper. Even in the eyes of voters, the all-India parties are suited for parliament and regional parties for the assemblies.
There are exceptions to the general trend but only exceptions. They do not change the basic thinking. I personally think that those who are tainted cannot lead an alternative.
The ideal combination is that of human rights activists. One which is in the making is the People's Political Front (PPF). The decision was born out of people's movements to engage with electoral politics. The leading lights are Medha Patkar, Aruna Roy, Thomas Kochery, Sandip Patil, Nikhil Dey and Arundati Roy. They are evolving an "alternative political force" leading to the formation of a party.
The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.
What went wrong with the Muslim world
In the post-9/11 world, the state and society in Muslim countries have come under intense scrutiny all over the world. Much has been said and done and much more is expected in the coming years as millions in this, and possibly the next, generation are going to be affected one way or another.
But more than what anyone else may say or do, however, it is important how the Muslim ummah understands and analyze its situation and works to pull itself out of its predicament.
'What went wrong' has been a lament repeatedly heard from Morocco to Indonesia as the countries of the crescent went on losing their economic prosperity and political independence since the eighteenth century.
The soul-searching produced many answers over the years - substantive as well as superficial ones - and yet 'what went wrong' has not been righted. Now the anger and frustrations of increasing numbers is spilling across the borders of some countries and giving new dimension and urgency to the age-old question.
So let us reframe the issue and ask: what is wrong with the mathematics of the Islamic fraternity when 57 countries (1.3 billion people) with trillions of dollars of their funds invested all over the world, possessing one half of the world's energy reserves, and occupying the strategic cross-roads between the East and the West, do not provide even respectable levels of basic needs for their people? No member of the OIC ranks among the top 30 countries in HDI in the world, and most rank among the bottom 100 countries.
Of course, it was not always like that. The wealth and power as well as the scholarship from Baghdad to Cordoba to Cairo to Isfahan to Istanbul were dominant facts of life for centuries in Europe and Asia and need not be recounted here. But this lasted during the medieval age. It has been a downward journey since then, as most of the efforts have revolved round the symptoms rather than the root cause of 'what went wrong'.
What turned the tables against the Muslim ummah more than any other single factor was the Industrial Revolution as it went on multiplying their capabilities and creating new sources of wealth and power the Europeans over the non-industrialized world.
The countries of the Crescent missed on the industrial revolution, lost its economic prosperity as well as political power. More than two hundred years later, many are still nowhere near digging themselves out of the deep hole of medievalism in this age of globalization.
The Industrial Revolution was more than merely handling of machines. It was not a one time affair but a continuing process. The essence of the Industrial Revolution lay in establishing the fundamental fact that knowledge is power and that wealth and power can be created by the application of knowledge.
While the agricultural and mineral resources of a country may be finite, there are no limits to the creative energies of the people and hence no limits to the wealth and power that can be produced by them.
This was the quantum leap that distinguished European nations from their mediaeval counterparts (Ottomans, Mughals and others) and established their supremacy over the bigger and richer non-European nations whose mediaeval frameworks lacked this vital quality.
Most Muslim countries are still reluctant to take this quantum leap and open up the pursuit of economic and political power - hitherto the play-thing of royalty, the nobility and the military for centuries - to all their citizens.
This still remains the critical weakness of the institutional mosaic of economic and political governance prevalent in most of the ummah. But it also remains the root cause of its continuing backwardness.
The Ottomans empire, Mughal India (and China) were the largest economies in the world in the late eighteenth century as the Industrial Revolution was unfolding in Europe.
These empires ruled large populations, controlled vast tracts of territory and owned fertile lands and rich mineral wealth. None of these could save them from the onslaught of the newly acquired capabilities which the Industrial Revolution had created in the hands of the people of even the small states of Europe.
The world GDP which took 1,000 years to double in the pre-industrial revolution days, now doubled in 100 years during 1800, and quadrupled during 1900. Asia, which in the pre-industrial age produced over 50 per cent of the world GDP saw its share shrink to only 20 per cent in the industrial age.
While many Asian countries have now successfully entered the age of industrialization, much of the ummah still presents a picture from the Neolithic age.
By design or ignorance, however, industrialization has been mislabelled and wrapped in controvery. Called westernization, modernization, Europeanization, Americanization or whatever else, it has been pushed into cultural and religious controversies and its core issues have been confused.
Forgetting the message, the debate in many Muslim countries has often been over the messengers. Some reacted with wholesale rejection of everything foreign- on nationalistic or religious grounds. Some sought refuge in past glories refusing to address the new challenges.
An equally superficial reaction came from those who believed the secret of the West's succes in lay outwardly appearances- dress, custom, food habits and so forth - and not in educational, economic and political reforms and work ethics. They embraced the outward appearances and went on modernizing/ westernizing their society without industrializing it.
But it is to the credit of the Japanese that they first understood that it was the powers unleashed by industrialization which were behind European domination, and Japan went on to develop the most successful Asian response to the challenge.
They were also the first non-European nation to realize that the essence of industrialization lay in enhancing the capabilities of their people, and that this could not be accomplished without reforming governance and incorporating people into the economic and political processes.
Spurred by the Meiji reformation (1867), Japan undertook reforms in education, science and technology, economy and the democratization of its polity. They kept their kimonos, and went on to become a world power twice - before the First World War and again, within a generation span of the Second World War.
The Industrial Revolution had therefore, no superficial labels attached to it. It was neither a miracle of faith nor a product of any religious or racial dogma; as Japan went on to prove.
The knowledge acquired through the Renaissance made very important contribution but Industrial Revolution did not unfold in Italy. The Reformation helped to liberate minds from the clutches of the clergy, but again, the Industrial Revolution did not materialize in Germany where the Reformation began.
Although it arrived on the wings of scientific discoveries and inventions, the revolution was not all science and technology either. As important as education, skills and inventions are, they cannot turn themselves into sources of wealth and power unless the people have the incentive to use these.
Above all, and this is the essence of the argument the Industrial Revolution was heralded by the empowerment of the people - by the reforms in governance which opened the doors of opportunities to all and unleashed the creative energies of the people to transform their societies.
It was not a coincidence that England was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. It started there because England led other European nations in legal, economic and political reforms that liberated people from their mediaeval bonds, opened opportunities to all, led them to adopt economic and political self-governance and protected them with the rule of law.
Empowered by these reforms in the governance of their societies, even small European states went on to control and colonize much bigger and richer nations in the world because of the enhanced quality of their human resources, organizational skills, technological capabilities, work ethics, and popular support through participation in the economic and political enterprises of their countries.
But industrialization is not a permit raj, nor the distribution of spoils of power among friends and the family. It was people's power that was the driving force behind the Industrial Revolution and that created the critical mass.
Once this critical mass is reached, countries can be rich and powerful even when they do not have much to show in terms of the Neolithic assets of agrarian and mineral resources.
In our age and time, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and now Dubai, have proved how wealth and value can be created even when a country is poorly endowed in terms of natural resources.
As Singapore's former prime minister Lee Kwan Yew, told the writer, "Singapore does not have even its own water to drink and yet it created assets where none existed' - through the quality of its human resources - and went on to join any list of the top ten countries in the world along with Japan.
But creating the critical mass of quality human resources continues to be a persistent problem with most Muslim countries. Talking about the development of human resources is an important to the ummah.
The UN Arab Human Development Report (2002) has described the Middle East as "more rich than developed". A recent (2004) survey of the Middle East, where over 66 per cent of the population is under 30 years, found that 40 per cent of this youthful lot of the oil rich region is unemployed.
The position of the rest of the ummah is even worse as most of the rest could be classified as "neither rich nor developed." But rich or poor, the ummah has essentially remained a mass of countries stuck in Neolithic times, living off the sale of what God has given them in the shape of agrarian or natural resources, with little to show by way of creating value through the application of knowledge.
Email: smshah@alum.mit.edu.