It is not every day that veteran Indian-American journalist, author and political thinker Fareed Zakaria gives interviews. He hosts a widely watched show on CNN, writes books and columns that evoke debates and discussions in elite drawing rooms, boardrooms, academia and in corridors of power. One rarely sees him sitting in the hot seat.
It was, therefore, with great interest that I saw and read his interview he gave recently to Canadian journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell at an event in New York.
Responding to a question about how he looked India’s polity and economy in the last 10 years, Zakaria said: “In the last 10 years it has been a very complicated story because the economic rise continues apace and that continues to be dazzling and thrilling, but you’re also seeing the rise of Hindu nationalism.”
“And, in many ways — my father died about 15 years ago — I’m very glad he hasn’t lived to see that because in a way his whole life’s work was trying to build a secular India, an India pluralistic which tolerated and encouraged diversity. There’s no other way to put it. India has moved in a very different direction. It’s economically surging but politically becoming more intolerant, more illiberal.”
Fareed is not off the mark. Having enjoyed immense love and affection from Fareed’s father, eminent Islamic scholar, senior politician and former minister, Dr Rafiq Zakaria, for close to two decades before his death in July 2005, I can say with certain knowledge that Dr Zakaria would have felt utterly miserable and cursed himself had he been alive today.
Opposed Two-Nation theory
Dr Zakaria grew up in pre-independence India when the colonial powers were struggling to adhere to power through the divisive scheme of divide-and-rule. He opposed Jinnah’s diabolical two-nation theory and rooted for the secular, pluralist India the likes of Gandhi, Nehru and Maulana Azad espoused. Through his several books and innumerable newspaper and magazine articles, Zakaria argued how Indian Muslims’ destiny lay with India of diverse, composite culture and not with narrow Islamic Pakistan.
Zakaria had fought for inclusive and pluralistic India at University debates in Mumbai and England and, on his return to India, in the state assembly as well as on the streets of his country. He loved his India which was built on centuries of coexistence and cooperation. The poet Iqbal was among his favourites and he would often quote the poet.
Peerless patriot
Once I was at Zakaria’s book-lined study at his posh Cuffe Prade home in South Mumbai. We were discussing Iqbal and he began reciting Iqbal’s famous poem Naya Shivala (New Temple). He loudly recited this particular line: “Pather ki moorton mein samjha hai tu khuda hai, khake watan ka mujhko har zarra devta hai (You think your god lies in idols of stone, to me every particle of the country’s soil is a deity.” Perhaps through this evocative couplet of the Iqbal, Zakaria wanted to assert his own patriotism.
All his life Zakaria fought for the principles he had imbibed quite early. Hindu-Muslim unity and communal harmony were not fashionable projects for him. To him, they were articles of faith. Had he been around today, he would have cried at the way the country’s peace and harmony are being squandered in the name of vote politics. He would have mourned the daily murder of tolerance. He had great respect for tolerance which describes Hinduism. Zakaria would have been livid had he heard the prime minister at a poll campaign calling a section of legitimate Indians “infiltrators and baby boomers.”
Zakaria’s ticket to heaven
If his barbs did not spare Hindu communalists, Zakaria was equally harsh at Muslim communalists. He believed that the answer to blasphemy was not an Ayatollah’s fatwa of death against the blasphemer. Which is why he never approved of the violent protests of Muslims against author Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses. Instead, Zakaria wrote Muhammad and Quran, a strong rebuttal to Rushdie’s blasphemous book. Gifting me a signed copy of Muhammad and Quran in his study, Zakaria recalled that a very eminent Pakistani religious scholar had hailed this book as “Zakaria’s ticket to heaven.” “I do not know how many sins Zakaria has committed in his life, but I can say with confidence that this book will help him enter the Paradise,” the Pakistani maulana had said.
True friend of Indian Muslims
Zakaria was conscious about the educational and economic backwardness of Indian Muslims and tried his best to improve the community’s lot. Through educational institutions at Mumbai’s Khilafat House in Byculla, Maharashtra College near Nagpada and the educational campus he created at Aurangabad (Maharashtra), Zakaria left no stone unturned to help the community. Though he set up institutions for the minorities, he kept the doors open for all communities. He knew education was the key to development and he did whatever he could to facilitate education of the community, especially its underprivileged.
Fareed’s pain is genuine
Fareed Zakaria grew up in the 1960s India which was not materially advanced, but the country took pride in its secular character. Fareed is genuinely in pain at the aggressive Hindu nationalism of today. This majoritarian mindset of the ruling class is antagonistic to the Indian ethos, Vasudhaiv Kutumb Kam (the world is a family). The Hindutva being propagated today undermines Hinduism’s basic principle of tolerance. In the same interview Fareed also mentions that he knows Hinduism which is adoptive, so much so that a Hindu can both be a vegetarian and non-vegetarian, religious and atheist.
And here we have a Hindu leader who is unhappy with another Hindu leader because the latter allegedly ate fish on Ramnavami, a sacred day for the Hindus.
Fareed was fortunate to have been blessed with educated, enlightened parents (his mother Fatma Zakaria was a senior editor) who exposed him to the best that modern education could offer. Fareed left for the USA at 18, excelled in education, journalism and as a political thinker. Fortunately, he has not cut his roots with the country he was born in.
Fareed’s father Dr Rafiq Zakaria was more fortunate as he did not live to see his beloved India made to shed its secular character.
Siast.com has reproduced the above blog by Mohammed Wajihuddin with his permission. Wajihuddin works with the Times of India, Mumbai.
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